Shame on you, David Cameron!

What type of person would be against Human Rights? Well, if we take a look at modern history we can see that dictators like Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Tito, Ceauşescu, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein all was against Human Rights. Today we can also add David Cameron to the list when he suggest that UK should abolish the Human Rights Act.*/** Shame on you David Cameron!

 

When you look at the world in terms of us and them, the them group often tends to be looked at as inferior to the more superior group, us. All the dictators above had this type of ‘us and them’ thinking and simply just imprisoned or killed them. For such a leader the absence of Human Rights is very practical. It leaves the floor open to get rid of the opposition. The them-group in Cameron’s case is people living on benefits, in other words - the poor.

 

We need the Human Rights Act to prevent political leaders to prosecute, imprison or exterminate what they perceive as unwanted sections of the society.

 

In propaganda during the period leading up to persecution or total genocide of a group, the messages are full with stereotypical generalisations of what they are. We can call this behaviour otherisation.

The otherisation propaganda describes the group others as sub-human by using words as vermin, dirty, evil and totally dehumanise and demonising the group others.

This was very clear in for example Rwanda, “...genocide resulted from the conscious choice of the elite to promote hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This small, privileged group first set the majority against the minority to counter a growing political opposition within Rwanda...”*** Then the genocide commenced!
 

David Cameron is increasingly using otherisation arguments in his political statements. He says things like:

“...those who are on the wrong side of the British Public...”

“...something for nothing culture...”

“...These people, hard working, decent, patriotic people are who the Conservative Party has always been for. We are on the side of those who want to work hard and get on in life...”

 

Basically, whenever he opens his mouth he mention something about ‘us hardworking people who wants to move on’ (the superior people) and insinuate then that the non-working people are inferior (not hard working or wanting to move on, the unemployed choose to not work).

This divide and rule propaganda is a prelude to the prosecution period that might be followed by an extermination process. Unless someone stops him and the Conservative Party before it comes to that.

 

Sadly , we have now reached the prosecution period in Cameron’s master scheme when the new benefit legislation came into effect yesterday and others (people on benefits) has to pay council tax and bedroom tax leaving people with as little as £5 per week to buy food and clothes for. The new rules punish people for being poor as if poverty is self-inflicted. Cameron and the party have the audacity to suggest that the new benefit system is fairer! Fair to who? According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies the poorest 10% lose around £127 and the richest 10% gain around £1,265. Shame on you Cameron!

 

Another worrying part of Cameron’s scheme is the changes to NHS where GPs take charge of a local budget. This obviously mean that if you live in a poor area there are less access to healthcare because more people have to share the local pot. Whilst in rich areas where many have private healthcare and better health in general there is more money in the pot. Cameron and his friends call this fair. Shame on you!

It is even more shame on Cameron when the Fiscal Watchdog says the cuts reduced economical growth.**** In other words, Cameron’s austerity cuts are not good for the country. The problem for the economy is not the poor people, it is the rich people that are too greedy and that greed has to stop!

Where is the opposition in all this?
 

Cameron is allowed to freely express his propaganda against the others without any protest from society. I say as Martin Luther King, Jr. did, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

Hitler would not have got his power if the German people had protested against him before he was in power. Do your bit for the country and vote Cameron and the Conservatives out of Government in the next election!
 

 

 

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Materialism

I recently visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and came across an exhibition donated by Sir Arthur Gilbert at his death in 2001. Sir Arthur Gilbert and his wife Rosalinde were one of the largest private antique collectors in the world. The complete collection is valued to £75 million!

 The pieces displayed at Albert and Victoria is just a tiny fraction of the entire collection. The craftsmanship of the things was amazing.

 

We are used to see the wealth that the aristocracy used to have and eagerly pump into their stately homes. But the English aristocracy had to stop their lavish lifestyle when they had to stop using slaves and when employment rights forced them to pay minimum wages and stick to human work hours.

 

But the wealth of the Gilberts was built during modern times (Sir Arthur Gilbert lived 1913 to 2001) and the question is – what do you have to do to others in order to accumulate so much personal wealth in a lifetime?

 

 I think that there is something seriously wrong with the world when one married couple can have so much cash to spare so that they can blow it on a hobby worth £75 million whilst children are homeless and starve. Walking around the room looking at the pieces I suddenly started to feel sick.

 I believe that each person on earth has an intrinsic, built-in value that is equal to all others. Therefore, it is something wrong when some people swim in money whilst others have to starve. I do think we need to re-allocate the overall wealth in the world differently or we are heading straight to total disaster. If current unequal distribution of wealth continues we will see more of the riots and violence we seen last summer. I say to the politicians, ‘you keep on going on this path on your own peril'

Madness

My alarm clock goes straight into some news station, not sure which though, maybe BBC? This is a very distressing way to start your day and I might have to stop it and just use the alarm function instead of radio.
The other day I woke up to the “news” that the Tory back benchers wanted to reduce taxes further. Seriously!

Lower taxes means less money left for public spending, which lead to more cuts in public services. More people will be redundant and less people can afford to buy things and the economy will slow down as a result.
Obviously, the back benchers are only thinking about the amount of money they themselves can pile up by paying less tax, a selfish greed in other words.
When politicians talk about doing something for the economy, you need to ask yourself; whose economy are they talking about, yours or theirs?

Another pie brain of politician then suggested that we reduce the NI. But if the Government are making cuts in spending in order to pay off the national debt then surely a reduction in NI (Government income) will take away any “savings” made by the cuts in spending? Basically the bloody woman just wanted more money in her pocket.

Let us all get some reality check here. Economics has a tendency to regard the world in terms of competition over limited resources and therefore companies need to constantly increase their profit, regardless of the consequences for others. We can see an example of this thinking in the bankers’ greedy and selfish behaviour that led us all into the economical crisis we now find ourselves in.

However, if you look at the world as a place of abundance and where co-operation and compassion becomes the determent for your actions then there will be more for all and all will increase their welfare and standard of living.
Sadly, this is made impossible because of the actions of the selfish, greedy and racist* elite that build their fortunes by exploiting others.
For example, we could read in the papers about the £18bn hidden away in overseas tax heavens by the rich. The Government’s response is to come up with a proposal to make it even easier for the rich to do this! Talk about madness!!!!

I read in Metro the other day about a think tank (who ever that is) that ¼ of all children in Britain will live in poverty by 2020.
And a research into cost of rents by the charity Shelter shows that “ordinary working families face unaffordable private rents in 55% of local authorities in England**. That means that the rent cost more than 1/3 of the total family income.
I find the above facts more disturbing when I read the Sunday Times rich list of 2011 and that Duke of Westminster’s fortune increased with £250 million during the last twelve months and his fortune comes from properties!

I say like Martin Luther King, Jr., “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it”.

This selfish madness by the rich has to stop!
  

* Racism here meaning using biological explanations for their own superior position compare to poor peoples’ inferiority in abilities and therefore lower social/economical position.

** Shelter website

Biological determinism

After Cameron’s and others rants about how to clamp down on the rioters with a firm hand, we can now start to see the facts coming through from the court papers and there are no surprises there.

Despite that Cameron and his friends tried to make us think that the rioters were only ‘mindless criminals’ and not actually rioters, the facts show a different story. Two thirds of the charged came from the poorest areas of the capital and the average distance between the alleged looting and the suspects home was 2.9km*.

The demand from the top on harsh punishment trickles down the society pyramid and the New Scotland Yard Chief Bernard Hogan-Howe (a favourite candidate with the Conservatives) say that he will make criminals fear the police. This is worrying tendencies. Is it not better if the police force starts to behave in a fair and just manner instead so that people will respect them? Hard core policing is never successful because crime stem from unmet needs and appears when huge portions of society is excluded. Fear does not change that.

But sadly, instead of equality it is very clear that the Government make a difference between people and people when two former Conservative peers only had to serve a quarter of their sentence for fiddling their expenses. Why does not Mr Cameron demand the highest punishment for these rich looters as well as for the poor street looters?

I think it is time for the Government and the parliament as a whole to pay attention to the dangers of excluding people from society with their talk about deserving and undeserving people. We are all humans, none of us is more or less!

We need a loud opposition that speak out about what their politics of austerity actually means. I like to quote Daniel Dorling here to make my point clear, ‘if poor people in affluent nations believed that all human beings were alike, then it would not be possible under affluent conditions to justify the exclusion of so many from so many social norms. The majority would find it abhorrent that a large minority should be allowed to live in poverty if they saw that minority as the same sort of people as themselves**.’

The Government is driving a politics based on ideas of elitism and according to this viewpoint some people are seen as inferior. This view is based on a biological determinism that is horribly close to the eugenics of the early twentieth century.

I surely hope we will not end up with concentration camps for the race of the undeserving poor.

Vote the Conservatives out of Government!

*According to Evening Standard: 5 Sept 2001, p6.

**Daniel Dorking, p.103

Clip round the ear

During the August riots we were fed by media about the widespread looting and how youngsters had lost all common sense. Cameron called the rioters for scum and by that managed to dehumanise the youngsters. He made a big number of trying to make us believe that the rioters were criminals rather than angry young people resisting his politics if austerity.
Cameron also wanted swift handling of the rioters and called for water guns and harsh punishments.

In the heat of the riot it can be hard to see what is actually going on and the dust from the battle is still hovering around the court houses where draconian punishments has been handed out. The sentencing frenzy has left the prison services unable to cope with the sudden and drastic increase of prisoners within such a short period of time.

I thought that punishment in UK was based on the particular circumstances of each crime and that all of us are equal before the law. But clearly not, there has been some pre-judgement going on in the media and the emotional fury in Cameron’s statements.

When the hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans we also got these media report of looting, violence and rape committed by young black men. But actually these reports were far from the truth. In reality, it was the police that went berserk and killed African Americans at sight. (See link below)

I have a feeling that in some years from now the real truth about what went on during the August riots will come out and it will change the public opinion of the rioters, when the dust have settled, just as it done in New Orleans.

In the aftermath of the riots there has been suggestions to use the practice of ‘clip round the ear’ as a way for the police to deal with the young poor people in UK, or the ‘pockets of our society that are broken’ as Cameron calls it.

Is it not better to mend what’s broken rather than release a racist police force to clamp down on so called thugs with a clip round the ear? Surely that is not the solution?

Clearly we can’t trust the Metropolitan Police Force to deal with the public in a just and fair manner. What we do see instead is blatant racism and a police force that kill black men on our streets. Men like Mark Duggan, Demetre Fraser and others.

Clip round the ear is not a solution because violence breeds violence.

What we need is a society where all have a fair chance to take part in society on equal terms - a society that includes all.

Katrina verdicts, full article

Human rights, democracy and equality

I firmly believe in equal rights for all and therefore also a fair legal system where we are treated the same before the law. Each case should be judged on its own circumstances and the punishment should be fair for all.

It is obvious to me that David Cameron has a different view on human rights, democracy and equality. Despite his talk about how ‘we are in this together’ and his big society the riots has made him reveal his true view on humans. It becomes clear that he view some people as scum and vermin that should be punished by the full force of the law. He says that ‘there are pockets of our society that are broken’ with a collapse of moral values. But when he say this he is not referring to the bankers that looted the global economy or the millionaires steeling from the public with their tax reduction or the MPs’ looting of the taxpayers with their allowances claims.

Instead, his society is populated by worthy people (the rich) and unworthy (the poor) and it scares me to think of what his plans are for the unworthy people. Has his treatment of the rioters set the bar?

In the heat of the riots Cameron came out with his contempt for the unworthy people and now we see how his view has trickled down to the courts and the punishments for the rioters are 25% harsher than usual causing the prison service to struggle to deal with the 700 people that the courts sent to prison. We also hear that parents of rioters are being evicted from council flats, which is also a suggestion of Cameron’s. Since when could you be punished for actions of other people? There is no affordable housing around and young people are forced to stay at home for longer, can these parents really be responsible for these young adults’ actions?

I would like to see Cameron deal with the policemen that killed Mark Duggan just as firmly as he treats the rioters. The police officers in question actually killed a man, it was murder! As far as I know they are still at large in our society, free to do it again. But maybe the Government think it is okay to just kill off the ‘scum’ in this way?

The August riots might have been stopped but the fire is still burning. Cameron has lost touch with the reality some people faces in UK today. More than 50% of the children in Lambeth lives in poverty, black boys are more frequently expelled from school than their white peers, every winter people freeze to death in their flats because they can’t afford their heating costs. The list can go on forever.

Cameron is completely oblivious how it is to live without a trust fund like most of has to do. He should try to live in poverty on a concil estate with no prospect to get a job or an education and then he might change his views.

Riots - London Burning

Thirty years ago the Brixton riots started because of police harassment of black young men by the ‘sus’ laws. Thirty years later new riots are triggered because the police shot a black man dead on the streets of Tottenham. Mark Duggan is not the first casualty of police brutality towards young black men. We have also seen the killing of Smiley Culture during a police raid, Ricky Bishop was killed by police during the Operation Clean Sweep, Demetre Fraser from Peckham died in Police custody in Birmingham and so did Kingsley Burrell. The list can go on forever. No person has been charged for these young men’s deaths!
The shooting of Mark Duggan was not an isolated event.
Black men are still stopped and searched by police and killed in cold blood on our streets. This has to stop!

Over the last few days we have seen the riots spread across England and young men take to the streets to show their anger and frustration. The last time we saw London Burning like this was during Thatcher’s Tory Government. It’s not a coincident that it’s happening again under a Tory Government.
Since Cameron came to power he has put into place a politics of austerity and a moral war against the poor. The unemployment among young people is proportionally higher than in the rest of society, education costs are increased and affordable housing is impossible to find. So yes, young people are angry, particularly the young and poor that are completely excluded from society. (The white middle class youngsters are probably away on nice holidays at the moment.)

I said it before and I say it again; if you don’t share your stability and wealth with the poor then the poor will share their poverty and instability with you. The riots are a spill-over effect of poverty.

The reactions to the riots has been scary, people talk about bringing in the army and mow down the ‘thugs and scum’. Vigilantes have been taking to the streets to ‘defend’ themselves. Some vigilantes were even armed with cricket bats! What were they going to do to a ten year old rioter? Kill him? It’s getting harder to see who is the good guy and who is the baddie in the battle of the streets.

Cameron then break his nice holiday and uses the riots for his own purpose by dehumanizes the angry rioters and talk about bringing in more police armed with baton rounds and water cannons. He also suggested that the Human Right Act will not be seen as a hinder for publishing pictures of suspects! This could seriously harm innocent people and put suspects in danger of vigilante attacks. Cameron needs to stand up and take his responsibility for the crisis his politics of austerity has created.

The middle classes need to wake up to Cameron’s agenda, to bring the poor people down by making people see them as moral deviants and monsters.

The violence is scary and some individual victims have suffered severely but it’s not completely irrational, it does not happen in a vacuum. There is anger in the poor areas and this anger might spread to other parts of society as Cameron’s cut backs are started to affect more people.

Cameron need to sit up and see that we are in this together and that he has the main responsibility for  looking after all people of the country not only his millionaire friends!