Obama confronts issue of illegal immigrants

From The independent:

Opening a debate he admits is both "controversial" and "emotional", Barack Obama signalled his intention to overhaul America's immigration system yesterday, finally creating a means for the nation's millions of illegal residents to become fully-fledged citizens.

The President plans to take on the issue next month, confounding predictions that it would be kicked into the long grass as a result of the current gloomy economic climate.

Under proposals floated by the White House, undocumented workers who admit that they violated the law will be given a "path to citizenship", provided they agree to pay fines or undergo other sanctions. (1)

Good on him. This is a courageous move. Illegal immigration is a huge social problem, in the US and in Britain, and the intransigent hardline beloved of the rightwingers is cloud-cuckooland stuff. The problem is too big to be addressed through their prefered means of rounding all the immigrants up and shipping them off to .. somewhere or other.

Unfortunately, of course, it is also the sort of issue that any full can make political capital out of - take a bow, Oswald Mosely, Enoch Powell, Nick Griffin - and addressing the issue from a saner standpoint takes political guts. What comes of it, of course, is another matter.

Offering those that are here the opportunity to regularise their status is smart, pragmatic and brave - three qualities I'd begun to suspect the Obama administration was devoid of.

Now, will the British government - or David Cameron's government in waiting - have the guts to make a similar move to deal with the illegal immigrants in Britain? A Tory had made hopeful noises some time ago (2), but the silence from the Conservative leadership has been profound, and not, I suspect, the silence of deep thought.

1 - 'Obama's immigration overhaul,' by Guy Adams, published in The Independent, 10th of April, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obamas-immigration-overhaul-1666847.html)
2 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2008/09/tory-advocates-unthinkable-amnesty-for.html

Communism, Chinese style

... looks like American capitalism to me, with a touch more flagrant brutality.

From the horse's mouth:

The number of China's wealthiest is expected to expand to an estimated number of 320,000 people by the end of 2009 who own about 9 trillion yuan ($1.29 trillion) in private equity value, says a report released on Monday.

The China Private Wealth Report 2009, co-conducted by consultancy group Bain & Company and China Merchants Bank (CMB), says the group of multimillionaires in the Chinese mainland had expanded to nearly 300,000 in 2008, with the number of the people with private equity worth at least 100 million yuan rose to about 10,000.

The report shows the apparent potential growth of private wealth with a steady momentum despite the global economic crisis.

China's richest group grabbed about a total of 8.8 trillion yuan in equity, or 29 percent of the country's 30-trillion-yuan GDP in 2008. The report also projects an increase of 6 percent in the number of China's wealthiest this year. They will be holding more than 9 trillion yuan, up 7 percent from last year.

...

The work report delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao in mid-March targets the rural poor at a new standard. The nation sets the new poverty line at 1,196 yuan of per capita annual income, netting a broader 40.07 million, or 0.03 [sic] percent of the total population. (1)

Get that? Just 320,000 people - That is 0.025% of the population - control a third of the wealth of the whole nation. In an avowedly communist country. Obviously, the Chinese are so excited about showing how wonderfully they are doing that they forgot the point of it all. Those pesky Little Red Books - so easy to mislay.

The stats at the other end of the scale are also interesting. Based on 2008 figures, the population of China is about 1,300,000,000. So the population defined as 'in poverty' is actually 3%, going by the figures in the article. Obviously, someone forgot that you divide the sample by the whole field, then multiple by one hundred. Though I wouldn't take the figure of 3% at face value. The truth is more like 15% , based on the data below - unless the're been some signifigant changes in the last six months.

The official poverty line is set lower than the World Bank standard measurement, because (according to the ever reliable and honest Chinese government) it is cheap to live in China. More likely, setting the rate low allows the bastards of Beijing to pretend half those living in poverty aren't:

The cost of living in China is lower that in many other countries, hence the existing poverty threshold is an income of 1,067 yuan ($152) a year.

So if the proposed 1,300-yuan-a-year ($186) income (equivalent to $1 a day in other countries) becomes the new threshold, the number of Chinese living in poverty would almost double to 80 million.

About 43 million people were living below the poverty line in the country's rural areas in 2007. Their number in urban areas was more than 22 million.

...

The proposal to raise China's poverty line was put forward much before last month, when the global yardstick was changed after the World Bank (WB) raised its poverty threshold from $1 to $1.25 a day.

According to the new WB criterion, about 207 million Chinese people were living in poverty in 2005.

That was 77 million more than the estimate in 2004, when the global poverty benchmark for the world was an income of less than $1 a day. (2)

What friends of compromise the children of the Great Helmsman are! Faced with the gulf between the truth and their own figures, they have charted a middle road, wisely eschewing honesty in favour of contiuning to tell a (marginally) less extreme lie! Remorseless in their war on poverty - which would have been eradicated in the Worker's Paradise by now, if it were not for the continual activity of the Capitalist Mainroaders and the reactionary imperialists, and the nefarious influence of the Chiang Kai Shek and the Gang of Four from beyond the grave - they have decided to increase the poverty threshold to a level still well short of the minimum needed to live on!

Bear in mind, this isn't relative povery such as we enjoy in the west - this is real, can't buy food to eat, sort of poverty. 15% of the population are in thi situation, living on well under $1 a day, while a quarter of a tenth of one percent own one third of the country's GDP.

1 - "Number of multimillionaires may hit 320,000 in '09" by Du Wenjuan, publsihed on chinadaily.com, 31st of March, 2009.(http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/31/content_7635464.htm)
2 - "China set to raise poverty line," unattributed article published by China Daily, 8th of September, 2008. Reproduced on china.org. (http://www.china.org.cn/china/national/2008-09/03/content_16378509.htm)

Oh, I'm so bloody proud to be British

MI5 and MI6 carried out a review of files after the launch of an unprecedented police investigation into claims by the former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed that British intelligence services knew he was being tortured.

The review has uncovered 15 cases in which the intelligence services carried out interrogations of suspects in US custody. Most of the cases relate to a period between 2002 and 2004 at American facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. (1)

Courtesy of The Independent.

I know it has always been a stupid lie that the British were decent, believed in fairplay, over arm bowling and the like. It is the national myth that we keep telling ourselves, conveniently ignoring the slave trade, throwing the Jews out, opressing the Catholics and the Irish, conquering quarter of the planet to make the British empire, our propensity for using war as a continuation of economics by other means. But it still makes me sick to be reminded how venal and savage we are, and how easily Osama Bin Laden has revealed our moral hypocrisy.

1 - "MI5 and MI6 admit fears over 15 new torture cases," by Ian Griggs, published in The Independent, 29th of March, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mi5-and-mi6-admit-fears-over-15-new-torture-cases-1656625.html)

Tories revert to old ways

A rather boring but self-important little man, Euro-MP Daniel Hannan, is temporarily famous for making a speech in which he lambasted Gordon Brown (1):

The speech itself was secondary school debating material and Hannan has the charisma of John Major on Mogadon, but it has been heavily promoted in America by the likes of the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. The American right are so disorganised and desperate for anything that counters the current fad state intervention, they've promoted Mr Hannan's otherwise forgettable grandstanding to the level of a phenomenum. I do wonder if the slavering hordes of the American right, watching Hannan on You-Tube, as they masturbate over their copies of 'Free to Choose', even realise that he is talking about Brown, not Obama?

Given how fickle fortune is, however, I would advise Mr Hannan take advantage of her favour, and embark on an extensive - perhaps never-ending - American tour, where he can receive the acclaim of the far right underbelly of the Republican Party forever more. Christopher Hitchens seems able to make a living out of it.

The activities of the trog-right in the USA is only of passing interest, though the fact they've been reduced to recycling a naff speech by a dull Euro-MP as ammunition against Obama shows how empty the Reprublican armoury is at this time. It will be interesting to see if the moderates are able to resist this kitchen sink tactic, and what sort of Republican party emerges from it in three years time. But that's for another day.

What is of more immediate interest is the effect this will have on the British election in 2010. At the moment, the speech is being hailed as a coup-de-grace to Brow's administration, but in the longer term, I think it might signal a revival in his fortunes. Hannan is desperately anti-European. Up until now, David Cameron ha worked very hard to preserve unity on Europe, but Hannan's hour in the sun is going to maker that much more difficult for him.

Hannan's a gibbering anti-Euro loon, and a self-promoting grandstander. His antipathy to the EU is so strong it is unlikely he'll manage to keep quiet, and his vanity will further prompt him to speak out. He'll love his new found fame and will use it to bombard his suddenly attentive audience with lots of anti-Euro diatribes.

Cameron willl be forced to say something at some point. If he endorses Hannan's rantings, he'll face a 'wet' revolt from the sane part of his party. If he slaps the little tyke down, the anti-Euro's will stage a revolt and - who knows - all piss of to join the UK Independence Party, with Hannon as its new leader.

This, from the Independent, won't help:

One of the Conservative Party's biggest financial backers in effect defected to the UK Independence Party last night, claiming he was fed up with David Cameron's policy on Europe.

Spread-betting millionaire Stuart Wheeler said he doubted the Tory leader would hold a referendum on the EU's Lisbon Treaty – and revealed he is giving £100,000 to the Euro-sceptic Ukip. Mr Wheeler told the News of the World he would vote for Ukip in European polls in June.

The paper said that Mr Wheeler now intended to vote for Ukip - which campaigns for withdrawal from the EU - in the European parliamentary elections in June, although he would continue to support the Tories the local and general elections.

"The EU is doing so much damage to our economy and our way of life that I can no longer vote Conservative at the European elections," he told the paper. (2)

Expect more of this sort of stuff as the irrepressible anti-Euro Tories start to speak up again.

If it gets bad enough, it might be very interesting in 2010 and the British electorate might have an election about something real, like where they stand in relation to Europe, as opposed to something trivial, like how much they doislike Gordon Brown. Which is the opposite of what David Cameron wnts. Until now, he's been on a short, straight path to No. 10 - all he has to do is smile, blame Gordon Brown for the recession, and steer clear of any solid policy and any thing that might tear his carefully constructed facade of Tory unity apart. And unfortunately, that just happened.

1 - "Daniel Hannan Rips Gordon Brown a New One," video clip posted on You Tube by the steve Gill Show, 25th of March, 2009. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc9TVlzdEsc)
2 - "Tory backer decamps to give Ukip £100,000," by Gavin Cordon, published in The Independent, 29th of March, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-backer-decamps-to-give-ukip-163100000-1656748.html)

You have to admire the audacity II

Don Brash is all het up about the refusal by the police to reveal what they know about the identity of the person(s) who leaked National Party emails to Nicky Hager:

Dr Brash said yesterday that he was told by Mr Quinn as he was wrapping up the case that he would be sent a copy of the police file but, a year on, he had seen nothing.

He had not followed it up, "mainly because in a sense I've moved on and it doesn't generate quite the same anger as it did back then".

But he believed police should make the file public. "I frankly think that the way the police have handled this is little short of outrageous." (1)

Come on, Don. That 'outrageous' line is a bit rich. We're the ones who were - and are - outraged by your hypocrital and disingenuous conduct in 2005.

Thanks to the unidentified leaker(s), we know what you tried to do, and we thought it was disgusting. We were so digusted we voted Clark and her dithering grafters back in for another three years. Why are you such a fan of openness now, when a few years ago you were so desperately secretive and deceptive?

1 - 'Brash angry at delays in email inquiry,' by Tracy Watkins in the Dominion Post, published 24th of March, 2009. Reproduced on stuff.co.nz. (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/2286031/Brash-angry-at-delays-in-email-inquiry)

You have to admire the audacity

It has been revealed Tony McNulty, Employment Minister in Gordon Brown's government, has claimed £60,000 in expenses for staying at his parents' home in his Harrow constituency, which is just 11 miles from Westminister and a few miles from his first home.

Not a good look, though it is not clear that he has actually broken any rules - just engaged in a mammoth exercise in piss-taking.

This, from the Indie, made me chortle because of its sheer, unashamed, unapologetic arrogance:

Since the 1970s MPs' pay has been held down to avoid public criticism and they have been encouraged – they say – to use their generous allowances. But many MPs now believe that anger over expenses means they should "bite the bullet" and opt for a one-off pay hike and a more transparent expenses system. (1)

Get that? This latest exposure of their grasping and grafting means they need to get a pay rise, not that the need to start being a bit honest. It is up to us, the taxpayers, to pay them enough so that they do not feel the need to resort to bilking us, not up to them to behave to any sane standard of decency and honesty.

1 - 'Minister faces inquiry into second home cash claims,' by Michael Savage, published in The Independent, 24th of March, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-faces-inquiry-into-second-home-cash-claims-1652589.html)

Truth is the first casualty ...

The other day, The Daily Mail ran a story about how the British government was allegedly insulting World War Two veterans by refusing to contribute to their appeal to raise funds to attend the 65th commemorations of D-Day.

Shrilled the Mail:

The Ministry of Defence has rejected requests for financial aid to survivors and says there will be no further official commemoration of D-Day until its centenary - when all those involved will be dead.

To compound the farce, the American and Canadian governments are sending top-level delegations to mark the momentous date.

Even the Germans will join the commemorations and remember the fallen on both sides.

Today, the Mail launches a campaign to honour and support the 500 remaining veterans' cause. (1)

The indignation was rather phoney, however. The supposed disrespect was a long held policy, of both Labour and Tory governments, that only set anniversary dates were commemorated - the last one being the 60th anniversary in 2004. Which, you'll recall, was under a Labour government.

The Mail does admit this, far down the article and after much of the huffing and puffing and "Hell in a handcart" bollocks typical of the rag:

This is on the bureaucratic grounds that the MoD supports official events only for 25th, 50th, 60th and 100th anniversaries. (2)

So, manufactured indigantion, really. This is not a dastardly plot by New Labour to disprespect our war heroes. For all the Mail's talk of giving them one last officially sanctioned hurrah, that was what the 60th aanniversay commemorations in 2004 were all about. But there was political capital to be gained by the fiercely natonalistic Mail, and the Mail is a paper that has never let something as trifling as the truth stand in the way of a chance to spew rightwing propoganda.

Then today, another twist, to the Mail's furth discredit. The British government - demonstrating the lack of spine to which we have become accustomed - has decided to cave in and, after all the commemorations will receive lottery funding and the will be attended my government figures - even though the veterans don't want them there (3).

What was really interesting, however, was the revelation that the money is not needed - the cash needed to send the 500 British veterans to the ceremony has already been raised. How so? Through a campaign launched by The Independent:

Survivors of D-Day reacted angrily yesterday to what they claimed was a belated attempt to politicise and hijack a nine-month campaign to take British veterans to mark the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings.

A public appeal for funds to take 500 ex-service personnel to the commemorations in France, launched in The Independent on 6 June last year, has been assured of success for weeks. The Government had been criticised for not paying the travel costs, and for not planning to send Gordon Brown to the event – but yesterday it said there would be "appropriate British attendance" and that it would "provide support so veterans can participate".

So the 'patriotic' Daily Mail is in fact just seizing the Independent's coat tails, making a fuss about an issue that has already been resolved. Their interest in the issue is political, without any sincerity. Meanwhile, the Indie, the organ of the supposedly unpatriotic and revisionist left, has been quietly working for months to get the old soldiers over to France.

Laughable. God, I hate the Daily Mail.

1 - 'Obama set to shame Brown by attending D-Day anniversary... as Labour refuses to pay for veterans' return to Normandy,' by Matthew Hinckley, Ryan Kisiel and Peter Allen, published in The Daily Mail, 19th of March, 2009. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1163083/Obama-set-shame-Brown-attending-D-Day-anniversary.html)
2 - ibid.
3 - ' We'll fight Brown on the beaches,' by John Lichfield, published in The Independent, 21st of March, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/well-fight-brown-on-the-beaches-1650589.html)
4 - ibid.