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• Gladwell and Minister Harney

  April 28, 2010 @ 11:55 pm | by Bryan

  I really like Malcolm Gladwell. I had the privilege of listening to him speak when UCD hosted the writer a little over a year ago. On that occasion, he even kindly answered a question I put before him as he signed my copy of Outliers. Days later, while reading the book, I remember disagreeing with something he had written (the first and only time that I’ve seriously disagreed with Gladwell). Mixed in with stories about Mozart, Steve Jobs, and Korean pilots, while defending his 10 000 hour thesis, Gladwell makes the case for charter schools.

  Charter schools seem to me to be a particularly American solution to poverty. A testimony to the mastery of the market, they demonstrate what can be accomplished given the right incentives. Typically, inner-city American children fall behind their better-off cohorts academically. The root problem is that social issues keep these children from devoting as much time to their studies as others. Charter schools therefore start early in the morning and end late in the day. They also offer shorter vacations since they aim to keep their pupils in active learning for as long as possible. The idea is that if these children are in school for a sufficient period of time, they will cover as much ground as children in better social circumstances and will therefore be more likely to succeed academically. And they do just that, making the schools very popular in poor areas, despite being almost cruelly taxing on their pupils.

  I don’t like the idea of charter schools. An old paediatrician once called me a bleeding heart liberal, but on this issue, I think we would agree. Charter schools, in my opinion, treat the symptom rather than the underlying pathology. If poverty is the issue, I don’t see how allowing a few to keep up academically can be thought of as anything but a temporary bandage. Reading Gladwell hold up this bandage as a potential solution makes me more than a little uncomfortable.

  That same feeling was evoked in me by the minister for health, who wrote:

  …The critical question is how we use all resources, particularly public resources, to help people stay healthy and to get best outcomes for patients from healthcare…

  …It’s a critical question for all developed countries because the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable…

  …I invite people to recognise that it’s more important how money is spent than how it is raised from the public…

  …Our policy is equity of access to publicly-funded health services. We are open to using all providers who meet quality and value for money standards to contribute to public services…

  A comparison between Gladwell and Minister Harney isn’t quite fair. I generally tend to agree with the former while I mostly disagree with the latter. I just don’t share her faith in the market. Gladwell believes in charter schools because he believes that if you spend long enough at something (10 000 hours), you’ll do well at it given some aptitude. Minister Harney on the other hand, from what I can gather, believes in the market.

  But even before we get to the question of service delivery, an important question must be answered. What does ‘equity of access to publicly-funded health services’ mean? We can even simplify that. What is equity? Does it mean that people get what they pay for, such that those who are willing to pay extra are entitled to more or better or faster services? Does it mean that absolutely no distinctions should be drawn between patients, so that regardless of one’s ability to pay, or how expensive one’s treatment may be, each will be treated ‘equally’? Or does it mean that each citizen will be allocated a fixed sum of money, health credits so to speak, and will be entitled only to their fair share such that when those credits run out, they are no longer eligible for state health services? Or that the state’s health services will be structured so as to serve the greatest number; meaning that those whose ailments are expensive to treat will have to access their healthcare elsewhere?

  And what about the suggestion that ‘the hospitalisation model of healthcare is financially unsustainable’? Isn’t it only unsustainable if one holds to a certain set of values? The Cubans (I know, this example is well worn now), seem to value healthcare above modern consumer goods. I imagine that the idea that the hospitalisation model is unsustainable, on a budget of €15 billion, when far greater sums can be found to prop up the financial services sector, would make no sense to them.

  Doesn’t the question of what is or isn’t financially sustainable then really rest on what we take as our foundational principles? Isn’t the same true of what we mean by the word ‘equitable’?

  I suppose what worries me most about the minister’s article isn’t so much the matter of our ideological differences, or my fear that, as Dr Christine O’Malley suggested on radio today, the subtext is a desire to privatise health. No, the real worry for me is that we make Gladwell’s mistake and fight over which bandage to apply rather than engaging in debate over the real underlying issue. What are our views on justice? What does equity look like? Who should get what and why?

  The only way €15 billion isn’t enough to sustain the health of less than 5 million people is when there is an attempt to throw money at the issue instead of directly addressing those difficult core issues.

  Comments (25)

• On global migration

  April 21, 2010 @ 2:56 pm | by Bryan

  The topic that seems to generate the most response on this blog is immigration. That makes sense, I suppose. There aren’t too many fora out there that facilitate a back and forth between those who are concerned about the consequences of immigration (imagined and real), and immigrants themselves, or those who view immigration in a positive light.

  Although I often refer to the issue, I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly spelt out my own position. Here goes:

  Like most of you, I remember my parents’ painstaking attempts to get me to understand the difference between right and wrong. One of the main pillars of this concept was the idea of fairness. There is something about the fact that just about anyone on one end of the world can visit, or relocate to most parts of the other, while only a very small proportion of the latter can even visit the former, that violates that basic sense of fairness. As I got older, I was taught that life isn’t fair, but that it ought to be just. I was taught that fairness would mean every time my sister got a doll I should get one too, whether or not I ‘deserved’ or even wanted one. Justice, on the other hand, meant that the same concern shown to her would be shown to me. We would be treated in a similar manner, based on consistent principles, and shown the same love, even if that meant sometimes one got gifts, rewards, privileges or duties that the other did not.

  That the rules governing global migration are unfair is in my opinion uncontroversial; they obviously are. That just makes them consistent with life, and I can happily live with that. What I struggle with is the fact that they are also unjust. What has the average Irish person done to deserve the option to visit or relocate to a bunch of different countries should she so wish that the average Tswana, Peruvian or Bangladeshi has not?

  The highly influential political philosopher John Rawls believed the answer lies in political culture. His answer in The Law of Peoples, sounds like a version of a conservative American politician’s self-help, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, take-responsibility philosophy. The Tswana, Peruvian and Bangladeshi, by this account, need to sort out the political culture in their country because all countries have the resources to reach a satisfactory level of ‘development’, and then they won’t have to migrate. Not only can they then stay put, but once they no longer pose the risk of not returning to their own place of origin, rich countries will grant them the privilege of visiting and spending their money on said rich countries’ tourism sector. I’ve added to it, but that seems to me to be Rawls’ general point, and it’s one that many, maybe most people in the rich world, share.

  I’m all for personal responsibility. And should an individual, a group, or a national culture have negative consequences, then it’s perfectly just to let them have to deal with those consequences. But I struggle to understand how anyone who has ever paid any attention to the world beyond their front door can believe that a nation’s condition is solely, even primarily the result of its culture. Take Ireland for example. It hasn’t been a closed system in which the only things that have really mattered to its trajectory have been internal. Nations are open systems, and a lot of national culture comes about as a result of external influences. And then, as Thomas Pogge brilliantly highlights, the global political economy is such that with all the will in the world, few nations can pursue the policies they want without first taking note of the external environment.

  Maybe that’s where the fork in the road lies with respect to migration and global justice more broadly. Some see the matter as predominantly local while others think the international context is decisive. That most of the former are the beneficiaries of the status quo and the latter the losers is telling of human nature, and that probably cuts both ways.

  So, if the material benefits of human labour are unevenly, and unjustly distributed, if the same is also true of natural resources, such that some places give up the resources around and beneath them for much less benefit than that accrued by those who take them, why shouldn’t people be allowed to follow the wealth? I completely understand and empathise with the concerns that some have over the effects of ‘mass migration’, but frankly, I think the right to follow the world’s resources trumps those concerns (empirical studies show that the average American consumes something like 6 times his share of the planet, the average European 4, and the African less than her full share).

  The real issue, of course, is global distributive and regulatory justice. But until that’s addressed, I can’t see there being a plausible moral argument against the right of the poor to follow their share of planet.

  Comments (21)

• Why we aren’t bothered

  February 28, 2010 @ 11:42 pm | by Bryan

  Breda O’Brien’s disturbing article, What happened to all the missing foreign children? demands, I think, an answer. She asks:

  Are we, as Phil Garland, HSE assistant national director for children and families, suggested, simply racist? … I can only imagine the resources that would be marshalled and the blanket media coverage if Irish children whom I teach went missing. Between 2000 and 2009 a total of 501 migrant children went missing from HSE care. Only 67 have been successfully traced.

  How is it that hundreds of children disappear from the state’s care, and almost no-one takes any notice? Does this simply boil down to racism or some variation of it? Or is it something else; the outworking of the same phenomenon that makes the death of a few individuals in The United States or Western Europe considerably more news worthy than the deaths of scores of poor rural Asians or Africans? The outworking of an accepted, albeit rarely acknowledged human life value index? The same index which confers some missing children and their families near celebrity status while leaving others in their anonymity?

  Maybe what’s really at work has more to do with the same things that allowed children to be abused by priests for so many years. Could it be that Irish culture, like many traditional African cultures, has an aversion to the discussion of unpleasant topics? Maybe, for the sake of ‘peace’, or something like that, we just don’t like to disturb the many with the difficulties of a few? And perhaps the secular variant of that culture is what informs the prevailing attitude towards gang violence, and criminality in general: provided it is contained, so long as it does not spill over into the nice parts of town or affect innocent people – while it remains out of sight in other words – we seem to be perfectly capable of living with the scourge.

  Before we collectively lost our minds, before power and the pursuit of material gain intoxicated much of Zimbabwe, people generally held the view that life was sacred. For some, this went so far as to believe that the lack of respect for the sanctity of life leads to all sorts of calamities, personal and collective, ranging from natural disasters like drought, to things like financial ruin.

  That a lack of respect for human life leads to ruin has been upheld in Zimbabwe. I think the same can be said for Ireland. Had the nation taken time out from its frenzied pursuit of development, progress, and wealth in order to look for missing children, to deal with allegations of clerical abuse, to focus on crime and the factors that give rise to criminality, and the like; had the priorities been different, who knows? There may never have been a financial collapse, or even a housing bubble for that matter. But as things stand, several hundred missing foreign children aren’t nearly as important as a few hundred potential Ryanair jobs, or speculation on the extent of the dysfunctionality of the FF/Green marriage. Not in Zimbabwe, Ireland, or very many places for that matter.

  That being the case, if the old folks back home are to be believed, we should all brace ourselves for disaster. Or, if you prefer Hobbes:

  Seeing every man, not only by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed to endeavor all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation; he that shall oppose himself against it, for things superfluous, is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow.

  Comments (18)

• Pirates

  January 26, 2010 @ 2:46 pm | by Bryan

  Rihanna has released a version of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song in order to raise funds for people in Haiti. As the pop star told Oprah, “This song, for me, any time there was a difficult situation, I always listened to this song. It’s so liberating. Even now, I listen to it when my back is up against the wall. I feel the people of Haiti need to hear something inspiring.” Hmmm….

  Redemption Song is my favorite Bob Marley track. Rita Marley said that her late husband was already in a lot of pain when he wrote it. I don’t know if that pain is what separates the song from others. Or if it’s the simplicity of a man singing with nothing but a guitar to aid him. Or maybe it’s the knowledge that there’s something subversive in the lyrics, even if you don’t know what that something is.

  Years ago, in a dingy room in one of the halls of residence at the University of Zimbabwe, a friend tried to explain to me exactly why those lyrics are subversives. Imagine genuinely believing that someone had literally saved your soul from eternal damnation; pulled you out of ‘the bottomless pit’, so to speak. Imagine then that the same person, minutes later, put you in chains and sold you into a cruel, brutal captivity.

  Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
  Sold I to the merchant ships,
  Minutes after they took I
  From the bottomless pit.

  What does that have to do with Haiti’s earthquake? Simply put, I think you, me, Rihanna and anyone else who can afford to get onto the internet and read this, we’re today’s pirates.

  I once lived in a cockroach infested house. They were invisible most of the time and would only come out after we had all gone to bed. But if you got up in the middle of the night and switched on a light, especially in the kitchen, you would see them scurrying towards the closest hiding place. The response to Haiti’s earthquake reminded me of that house; I felt as though I were seeing the same process, only in reverse. Disaster struck, and where many saw international solidarity and good will, I saw a swarm scurrying onto a vulnerable population for all sorts of reasons – some, genuinely there to help; more for chess-like geopolitical positional advantage; and even more for marketing reasons, in order to gain greater brand exposure and recognition for one’s country, company or organisation. And I suppose it was inevitable: a disaster like that, it was bound to have a huge television audience.

  And let’s be honest, under normal circumstances, who cares about Haiti? Who really cares about it’s history? So what if the French and Americans have plundered and sucked it dry? And if it’s political instability is in good part the result of the meddling of Western countries (including the seemingly benign, like Canada) and institutions like the United Nations?

  What if said meddling leads to your financial gain and mine? Thomas Pogge, in several books and academic papers, argues that if we are involved in, or benefit from institutions that exploit or in other ways harm people, even if those people are on the other side of the world, we are guilty of harming those people and have a duty towards them. Pogge, in my opinion, convincingly makes his point, and he clearly demonstrates the fact that we the global aristocrats – we who don’t worry about whether or not we’ll eat anything tomorrow – do in fact benefit from institutions that harm people in places like Haiti.

  But if we took the likes of Pogge seriously, we couldn’t continue to live as we do. So when Senator David Norris suggested on radio yesterday that people in Ireland may be partially responsible for the situation in Haiti, he was unsurprisingly put in his place by his audience. Not only was he told that the Irish are incredibly generous (the Department of Foreign Affairs have been very busy lately because there has been a lot to say about the Irish government’s response to the earthquake), but what happened in Haiti was a natural disaster. It wasn’t, of course. There may have been an earthquake, but the exaggerated loss of life resulted from the structural failures that led to poor infrastructure and administration in that country. Those structural failures, if you believe Pogge, come back to you and I.

  So what are we to do? We’ll express remorse. We might even learn where the country is on the map. Some will give. Some will give a lot, maybe even of their time. They’ll try to raise funds for the disaster relief, and they may even go to Haiti or other miserable places to help comfort the suffering. But for most of us, something else will capture our attention in the coming months. The World Cup maybe. Or we’ll find out that some other celebrity had an affair. Or a row will erupt over whether bankers should be burdened with an additional tax on their second imported luxury car. Whatever it is, we’ll forget about Haiti until its next disaster.

  Institutionally, the likes of John O’Shea and The Economist will do their best to turn Haiti into a modern day colony, only with benevolent colonial masters. Bill Clinton will probably get another term in office, even if it is a smaller one. Naomi Klein will despair as she watches the process she described in her book unfold. Things will probably go wrong. Poor Haitians are likely to go on being the wretched of the earth (or at the very least, the wretched of the Western Hemisphere). And you and I will be the better for it, even if we oblivious to the workings of the world.

  I wonder if that is what Rihanna had in mind when she decided to fundraise for Haiti with Bob Marley’s song? Probably not. But I’m sure Marley would have seen the irony in the fact that I gain financially from this piece. I too am a pirate.

  Comments (23)

• The Drogba effect

  January 13, 2010 @ 11:45 pm | by Bryan

  There was an interesting documentary on TV over the weekend on the history of the noughties from a British perspective. Besides the almost ridiculous self-aggrandisement, it was an incredibly enlightening and thought provoking film.

  One of the things I learnt from it was the term, ‘the Drogba effect’. Didier Drogba is an Ivorian who plays football for Chelsea. As much as it pains me to admit this fact, he is one of the best forwards in the world at the moment. ‘The Drogba effect’ is apparently the effect that foreign born players, like Drogba, have had on the viewership of the English Premier League. It is the richest sport league in the world, most of which is down to global television rights.

  One of the commentators on this documentary compared Drogba to some of the immigrants who have made their way to Britain by means of rickety boats, and other dubious means. He then went on to make the point that in some ways, there isn’t very much that separates Drogba from those illegal immigrants, while in other ways, they literally inhabit different worlds.

  At the risk of beating this issue to death, it got me thinking about John Rawls’ idea of the morally arbitrary. That Drogba is an incredibly talented footballer is morally arbitrary. That he was born into a situation that allowed him to leverage hard work and discipline – or even into a situation that fostered that hard work and discipline – is also in many ways morally arbitrary. That as a global community we esteem football to the level that we do, from the perspective of someone in Drogba’s situation, is in many ways morally arbitrary. He could have been born into the type of situation, and with natural gifts that made him a brilliant goat herder. There would be no such thing as a ‘Drogba effect’ then.

  Thinking about the attack on Togo’s football team in Angola has made the Drogba-anonymous illegal comparison even more grotesque in my mind. There doesn’t seem to be very much separating the perpetrators of that attack from their victims – many of whom, like Drogba, help to bring in billions to a football league worlds apart from where they could have ended up.

  There’s something of a Stephen King quality to the whole thing.

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• 2010 pessimism

  January 4, 2010 @ 9:00 pm | by Bryan

  Regular readers of this blog may find the next statement hard to believe. I am, by nature, an optimist. Really, I am. But over the course of 2009, a cloud of pessimism settled over me. And to be honest, I don’t see it lifting over the course of the coming 12 months.

  Here’s an example of where my negativity stems from. Based on conversations with a mix of people in Belfast, it seems as though one of the largest determinants to peace and stability is economic well-being. Money, or more precisely, the process of pursing ‘the good life’ with a reasonable expectation of one day attaining it, can be positively distracting – in a “an idle mind is the devil’s playground” sense. Granted, an argument could be made for the role of things like intrusive body scanners and remote controlled planes that can bomb whole villages to smithereens. But does anyone really think that airport security, a hypertrophied ‘intelligence community’, or wars in far off places will rid the world of people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, let alone the people who armed and trained him?

  Once upon a time, before that great IMF idea that was economic structural adjustment, Zimbabwe was a relatively prosperous little country. We were wealthier than most of our neighbours, so we did our bit to keep out the poorer Malawians and Mozambicans. Those who got into the country were tolerated, but I’m pretty sure we tried to keep them to a minimum. And then the IMF came along and in a relatively brief period of time, income inequality within the country soared. People who were relatively well off built large walls to keep out their poor fellow citizens. For the most part, the walls served their purpose, but with increasing regularity, some found ways over them. They would then help themselves to things they couldn’t otherwise afford while the owners of the big houses were asleep. There came a point where we wrecked the country. Things got so bad that even those living in big houses behind bigger walls began to struggle. So a lot of Zimbabweans, rich and poor alike, made their way to neighbouring and distant countries, sometimes illegally scaling real and metaphorical walls and fences.

  So why am I pessimistic? Because, it’s easier to build, buy and install body scanners and to blow stuff up than to try to understand the world on the other side of our walls. The world seems destined to imitate the likes of Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, who have found it easier to live with their fear than address the structures that give birth to their underworld. I’m pessimistic because I get the feeling that we’re a year closer to the day parts of the world are relegated to rubbish heap status, while others become fortified cities.

  But I could be wrong.

  Happy 2010.

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• Things superfluous and things important

  December 14, 2009 @ 4:22 pm | by Bryan

  I spent the last few days in London visiting an old friend who works in the city’s financial services sector. Most of our time together was spent arguing, and ultimately, those arguments boiled down to the fact that he sees individual freedom as the most important, or foundational value, while I’m not convinced.

  Both of us are Zimbabweans who, as the result of some form of privilege, were able to attend the kind of academic institutions that allowed us to leverage hard work and ability into professional roles for which there is global demand. As a result, we both now live in a part of the world that leverages its economic advantage to ensure that its citizenry enjoys a much more comfortable existence than most. The structure of Zimbabwe’s education system, and society at large, was such that those opportunities weren’t available to everyone. In fact, they were only available to a small minority. Far more Zimbabweans were born into situations that meant an enormous risk of ending up in a virtually inescapable poverty cycle. And poverty in that context meant much more than being dependent on social welfare.

  With that in mind, I just don’t buy the argument that my right to hold onto my wealth, or my freedom to do with my things whatever I see fit, somehow trumps an infant’s right to live. Either society at large, or ‘the state’ has the right to restrict some of my freedoms and take part of my wealth (or restrict my ability to accumulate that wealth) in order to feed that infant, or there is no such thing as a right to life. And if we do hold to the notion of a right to life, what do we make of the fact that the child born in Iceland is more that 20 times more likely to live to their first birthday than the child born in Pakistan? Is it any wonder that so many Pakistanis migrate from their country, legally or otherwise, to places where they feel their children are more likely to thrive?

  According to a Department of Foreign Affairs press release, “Ireland is working with our partner countries to find ways to adapt to climate changes and reduce their vulnerability … Today we committed to strengthening our efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals, increasing support to adaptation and to focusing on the poorest and most vulnerable. In all our negotiation, we are determined to focus on the human dimension of climate change, including food security, gender equality and women’s empowerment.”

  That’s great news, but is it enough? When it was thought that the world’s financial system might implode, the ‘global leaders’ dropped everything and did what needed doing in order to keep that system going. Poverty doesn’t evoke the same response. But what if Hobbes was right when he wrote, “Seeing every man, not only by Right, but also by necessity of Nature, is supposed to endeavor all he can, to obtain that which is necessary for his conservation; he that shall oppose himself against it, for things superfluous, is guilty of the war that thereupon is to follow?”

  May I suggest that most things, stood beside an infant’s life, are superfluous, regardless of their monetary value?

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• Copenhagen and Dublin

  December 8, 2009 @ 3:29 pm | by Bryan

  

  Members of an environmentalist group pretend to be dead during a protest demanding a real climate deal on the first day of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Photograph: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images.

  What do Copenhagen and Dublin have in common? Probably quite a few things. At the moment, the biggest might be that they are both sites of struggle over distribution. In Dublin’s case, what is being distributed are the costs of Ireland’s economic recovery. In the case of Copenhagen, it is the distribution of the benefits of industrialisation and the burden of the planet’s upkeep.

  I don’t often agree with The Economist’s take on things, but their analysis of the situation in Copenhagen is, in my opinion, spot on. In an article titled Stopping climate change, the newspaper writes:

  …The problem is not a lack of low-carbon technologies. Electricity can be generated by nuclear fission, hydropower, biomass, wind and solar energy; and cars and lorries can run on electricity or biofuels. Nor is the problem an economic one. A percentage point of global economic output is affordable for a worthwhile project. Saving the banks has cost around 5% of global output.

  So the problem is both simpler and cheaper to fix than most people think. But mankind has to agree on how to share out the costs, both between and within countries…

  It is only fair to point out that the science of climate change – especially the idea that human activity is responsible – is a contested field. Let’s therefore assume that there is only a strong possibility that our industrial activity currently poses a grave challenge to the future of the planet. Let’s also assume that The Economist is wrong and that correcting for climate change will cost something like 20% of global GDP. Doesn’t the same rationale that leads me to buy insurance still force us to take the potential threat of the ecological disaster seriously enough to fork out that 20%?

  If it does, who should pay? What does ‘global justice’ require? If the current consensus is right, if climate change is man made and disproportionately affects the poorest nations, then as things stand, wealth is unjustly being transferred from the poor to the rich. As things stand, the poor are paying for my lattes, high-speed broadband, and for my relatively cheap fuel by way of the destruction of their natural environment and the problems that creates – food insecurity, political instability, and others.

  And supposing the politicians in Denmark come to the same conclusion, what then? Is it the biggest polluters, or the people who consume their products who have a moral responsibility to pay for the damage they’ve done? Is it possible to separate self-interest and greed from such ethical considerations? Do the delegates have a responsibility to anyone other than the citizens they represent? Should this be an opportunity for the transfer of wealth back to the poor nations?

  If what has come out of Dublin thus far is anything to go by, the outcome will lead to a distribution of wealth along the lines of the current distribution of power. In other words, I don’t think Copenhagen will bring about very much substantial change. Poor people don’t tend to have very much power and the environment is easy to ignore – especially when you don’t live in a drought-prone area.

  Comments (9)

• Serfs and aristocrats

  November 10, 2009 @ 1:38 pm | by Bryan

  

  At the launch of From The Republic of Conscience in the National Library last night were Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International’s Irish section, former president Mary Robinson, and poet Seamus Heaney.
  Photograph: Aidan Crawley.

  Former President Mary Robinson is reported to have said that

  …the question of overseas aid was “no longer a them and us” question. “If you add it to climate there’s an interconnection . . . We’re going to be all in this together because we need to reduce the emissions across the world. It’s a really interconnected future until 2050. The future of the poorest is also our children’s and our grandchildren’s future.”

  I wonder how many people believe that. I know I’m not completely sold.

  Is there an interconnection? Absolutely. People in places like Ireland and the United States aren’t just concerned about the emissions from China’s factories out of concern for Chinese workers. The effects of climate change aren’t limited to the source of the human activity responsible for the causal environmental damage. That said, isn’t it curious that while most of us would rather the Chinese didn’t do anything that jeopardises our future, we’re still very happy with the fact that we have access to cheap manufactured goods? The world may be interconnected in some ways, but I suspect that the future of the poorest will be as removed from that of the wealthy as is currently the case.

  There’s a fascinating dichotomy in the realm of global interconnectedness. On one hand, there are the areas in which everyone seems happy to be related. Climate change is a perfect example. The human rights arena an even better one. Climate change is a no-brainer because simple self-interest dictates that I should care about something that could have disastrous consequences for me, regardless of who is doing it. Human rights are more complicated. Provided that countries like Ireland don’t have to accommodate plane loads of refugees, and that export markets aren’t significantly affected, it’s hard to see how self-interest could possible be the driving force behind a concern for the rights of women in Benin.

  Then there is the other side of the coin. If there really is this interconnectedness, what are my responsibilities? If climate change really is a shared challenge; if it is primarily the product of human industrial and commercial activity; if the benefits of that activity predominantly accrue to one group of people and the burdens to another – surely some sort of redistribution and overall commitment to getting by on less is required? But take note, no OECD country has decided to redistribute wealth to the ‘bottom billion’ by implementing a drastic national tax (ideally a tax that would also drastically reduce consumption so that those in poor countries could increase theirs without threatening the environment). Similarly, with human rights, if we value them that much, if we think that poor women in Benin are due the inalienable rights enjoyed by those in liberal Western democracies, then why is it virtually impossible for those same women to get access into an OECD country? And it’s not the illiberal state of Benin that denies them this access, but the liberal, human rights-championing OECD democracies.

  The future of the poorest is also our children’s and our grandchildren’s future.

  No it’s not. Not so long ago I heard a political scientist refer to the ordinary citizens of rich nations as the aristocrats of the world. He was right. The world is still very much a ‘them’ and ‘us’ place. The definitions determining who constitutes ‘them’ and ‘us’ may be more fluid today than in past, but the future of the serf is still likely to be serfdom. That of the aristocrat, provided the established order of things doesn’t change, will likely be aristocracy.

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• The role of the mainstream in curbing the extreme

  October 22, 2009 @ 10:29 am | by Bryan

  According to David Adams, the focus on whether the BBC should host the far right British National Party’s (BNP) Nick Griffin, is neither here nor there. Leaders of mainstream political parties need to confront the BNP head on and tackle issues from which they have previously shied away. Issues like immigration reform.

  Gary Younge takes this line of thinking even further. He claims that we have New Labour to thank for Griffin’s scheduled appearance this evening. As far as Younge is concerned:

  Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture. The ramifications of its role in the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, were to elevate fear of a racialised “other” to a matter of life and death at home … Meanwhile New Labour’s race-baiting rhetoric gave the state’s imprimatur to the notion that Britain’s racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people … Having inflated racism’s political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time. (More…)

  The problems highlighted by Adams also apply to Ireland. Presumably in order to avoid any slip ups that could see one labelled a racist, Ireland’s mainstream political establishment has kept as far as possible from meaningful debate on immigration and race. What Ireland has had, to its credit, is a variety of non-racist social and political groups which represent the interests of the indigenous poor and middle classes. Maybe that is why there isn’t an Irish BNP.

  Then again, it could also have to do with the fact that the non-white segment of the Irish population does not yet feel entirely secure. Once properly ‘integrated’ and with a sense of entitlement to a just slice of the national pie, who knows? A sufficiently large segment of the indigenous population might feel sufficiently threatened by some of their fellow citizens to give rise to a BNP-like entity.

  In any case, how Britain responds to Griffin and those like him will be instructive.

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