The International

In the film The International, an arms dealer, explains to Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) assistant DA about the functioning of banks. He says, “You control the debt, you control everything”. And which inevitably makes people slaves to debt.

A rather prescient comment especially at this current economic crisis (The International was written before the credit crunch and the story is based on the BCCI scandal).

The International is scripted as a slow-burning thriller, rooted in corruption, skullduggery, low-level espionage and assassinations. Storylines that reflect real life events such as poison tipped umbrellas (this case it’s a syringe laced with poison).

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is a dishevelled former cop who works for Interpol. He works in tandem with assistant DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) as both are investigating corruption, money laundering and arms dealing at the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBCC). Salinger’s colleague sets up a meet with someone who has links with IBCC. Unfortunately, as Salinger’s colleague informs him of his meet he collapses with a suspected heart attack. Salinger’s wall is covered with autopsy pictures of people assassinated who were about to spill the beans about IBCC. Salinger is dogged and determined to bring down this bank, and its head Jonas Skarssen.

There’s a lot of globe trotting around Europe, north Africa and USA. The architecture of the IBCC is an enormous glass and steel contruction which creates a alienating and intimidating powerful force, a secular house of worship where anonymous bankers call the shots, literally.

Whitman (Naomi Watts) counterbalances Salinger’s nomadic lifestyle, she has a partner and child. Though this fulfills the usual gender stereotype and traditional role where woman is nurturing (Whitman is worried about Salinger’s state of health and during a traumatic scene , touchingly, she holds his hand in an act of compassion and consideration) while Salinger is dogged in his desire to hunt these people down without care about his own state of mind. Whitman is depicted as a strong willed and determined woman but we don’t get to see as much as Salinger. The film revolves around Salinger and women are sidelined, it has a very masculine feel. But the action-adventure genre is very masculine inclined.

The film is a slow burner, and lacks pace along with character development, we never get under the skin of Salinger and what makes him tick, nor why he is so determined to bring Skarssen et al to justice. Whitman isn’t developed, she’s always one step behind Salinger. Thankfully, there wasn’t the perfunctory shag between the two leads (though I woulda been kinda keen to see Owen in the buff!), it is based on professional respect and an equality between the two.

The dialogue veered between insightful commentary to overblown melodrama. There’s a scene between Whitman and her boss that’s reminiscent  to the Cruise/Nicholson  ‘you-can’t-handle-the-truth’ scene, Few Good Men-esque, which is so over-the-top and disappointing. The interactions between Salinger and Whitman (though I like the literary surnames of the two protagonists)  is very sparing and I don’t think the script writer doesn’t really know what to do with their relationship. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that Whitman is nothing more than a cypher. Why was she included in the film when really it is Clive Owen who is the driving force?

In saying that, the shoot-out scene at the Guggenheim Museum was spectacular and probably will end up in the annals of shoot-outs, along with thrilling stunts. It is a very basic scene, where the museum’s architecture and spiral shaped interiors are used intelligently that add so much dramatic impact. There’s a scene shot from a aerial view which shows hundreds of people running from a mass rally after an assassination, it gives an added dynamic of people reduced to ant like creatures scuttling away.

One scene that sticks with me is where Salinger interviews an old Stalinist Wilhelm Wexler who is Skarssen’s trusted adviser. Wexler talks about the ‘grey and black latitudes’ which emphasises all forms of criminality and corruption. The same can be applied to the global establishment’s excuse for the War on Terror. Nothing about moral good but about them serving their own corrupt and greedy interests.

The ending isn’t an anticlimax, and sometimes you get that with thrillers but it makes you think how Salinger’s character’s has evolved, and whether he is morally compromised. Also, whether justice is possible even when it comes to corporate capitalism, the many-headed hydra.

Overall, the film has its merits especially its message about corporate greed and corruption. It certainly rivals the James Bond franchise and gives the Bourne stories a run for their money. If the film had been better edited, and shortened along with a punchy fast paced script, character development and dialogue then I think it would have been a gripping stand-out thriller. But not bad overall.

In real life the banks don’t really need to indulge in money laundering and arms dealing when all they need to do to is go cap in hand to Alistair Darling and ask for a bailout, and get to keep their gigantic pension.

Get yourself tested

Reading Madam Miaow’s post about Jade Goody made me think about a whole complex of issues that have been brought up.

 

I will put aside the actual voyeuristic nature in which Jade Goody’s cancer has been reported along  with this commodification of death, as other blogs have discussed it at length. But it has sparked commentary and debate about cervical cancer.

 

In 2003, the age for a cervical smear was raised from 20 to 25. And lately I have been reading about women who were denied smears as they were too young (one was 24 and sexually active), and both developed cervical cancer.

 

One woman is campaigning for a change in the law. The Dept of Health state: cervical cancer was extremely rare in under 25s while changes in the cervix were common – which could lead to misdiagnosis and more unnecessary tests.

My older sister discovered, after a routine smear test, that she had abnormal cells. She was under 25 at the time. Had the changes been around then, who knows what the prognosis would have been (fortunately they were able to treat it in time).

 

I had my first smear at 19 way back in 1989, my doctor was adamant I should have one, this wouldn’t happen now. I have smears every 3 years though received wisdom says between 3 to 5 years.

 

Yet women are still not having smears. In the North of Ireland, it has been estimated that 1 in 4 women have not had a smear in the past 5 years.

 

In Northern Ireland, women aged 20 to 64 years are currently invited for screening every three to five years. In 2008, only 74% of women in this age group had had a smear test in the last five years.

 

In Scotland the picture is: All women aged between 20 and 60 in Scotland are offered smear tests every three years but the number of women undergoing the screening has dropped from about 80% 10 years ago to 69.7% last year.

 

And in the UK there has been reasearch that suggests a class dynamic in regards to deprivation and cervical cancer.

 

But the cancer tsar expert Prof Mike Richards believes the drop in women being tested for cervical cancer isn’t to do with the raising of the screening age. The number of women tested for cervical cancer has dropped significantly over the past decade from 83% to 79%, the biggest drop is between the 25-29 age range. The national statistics show that around 22 women under the age of 25 have died of cervical cancer since the raising of the age in 2003.

 

But the raising of the age of 25 seems to be nothing more than a cost cutting exercise where NL are playing Russian roulette with women’s lives.

 

But there has been an increase in women demanding smears due to the ‘Goody effect’. If the sensationalist media coverage has made women more consciously aware about the necessity of smear tests and the importance of their health then something positive has come out of this tragic affair. Though, obviously, more has to be done to raise awareness about the need for young women to get access and to lower the age for smear testing.

 

And surely the importance of educating young women about smears is getting them into a routine of being tested every three years?

 

Claimants’ Charter

James Purnell indicated during the second reading of the Welfare Reform Bill that he was prepared to look at a Claimants’ Charter.

The following Charter has been put together by Disability Alliance, CPAG, Gingerbread, CAB.

Draft Claimants’ Charter – key principles

 

This draft Claimants’ Charter is intended to represent the first step in the development of a scheme to protect benefit claimants in their dealings with public, private and third sector welfare to work employment services. Additionally, it intends to provide clear criteria against which the performance of such services can be measured beyond simple employment outcomes. It is a discussion document and we welcome comments on the content. It is not intended to replace or remove any statutory powers of review or appeal from benefit claimants.

 

Key to the effectiveness of the Claimants’ Charter is the existence of an independent Employment Services Ombudsman, responsible for ensuring that the Charter is upheld across Jobcentre Plus and contracted out services. The Ombudsman would not replace existing appeal rights, but would deal with disputes between claimants and Jobcentre Plus, or between claimants and private or third sector providers of welfare to work services. All providers engaged in Government contracts would be required to belong to the scheme.

 

We would expect the Claimants’ Charter to include the following key areas:

 

1.    A copy of the Charter should be given to each claimant at their initial contact with Jobcentre Plus, together with information about the independent Employment Services Ombudsman.

 

2.    Claimants who are not in employment should not expect to live below the poverty line as a consequence of claiming benefits. Jobcentre Plus and providers of contracted out services must work with claimants to maximise their income by ensuring full take-up of benefit entitlements.

 

3.    Claimants must be treated with dignity and respect and not subject to degrading or discriminatory treatment in any of their interactions with Jobcentre Plus and external providers of services, including taking steps to meet disabled people’s needs, even if this requires more favourable treatment as required under the Disability Equality Duty.

 

4.    During the first interview with Jobcentre Plus, claimants must be informed of, and given appropriate and accessible information about, the conditions of their benefit claim as well as the consequences of failing to meet those conditions. This information could be incorporated with that currently given to claimants about requirements to report changes.

 

5.    Claimants can expect to have their claims for benefits, as well as changes of circumstances, dealt with in a timely and accurate manner, with the ability to monitor progress of claims free of any telephone charges. Claimants who have difficulties using the telephone must be entitled to a face to face service.

 

6.    Claimants must have an opportunity to appeal against a decision to reduce their benefit in the form of a sanction and should be clearly advised of this right before a sanction is applied.

 

7.    Claimants are entitled to high-quality, individually tailored support, based on their needs and aspirations, and must be given access to services that will improve their ability to enter good quality, sustainable work, including education, training, condition management programmes, treatment programmes and legal support in instances of employer discrimination.

 

8.    Claimants must be made aware of, and advised on, all of the support for training, childcare, transport and interview costs that they are entitled to receive. Claimants shall not be required to participate in an activity which would otherwise be a condition of benefit entitlement if appropriate childcare, or other reasonable support required to participate is not available, nor if participation would exacerbate health conditions.

 

9.    Claimants should not be required to take part in activities for which it would be reasonable to expect payment, unless they receive compensation for that activity in line with the National Minimum Wage. Activities for which it would not be reasonable to expect payment, except for expenses, include voluntary work, limited periods of work experience, work trials etc.

 

10.     Claimants must be able to access free, independent and appropriate advice in relation to all of the above. The Government has the duty to advise how claimants can access independent advice.

 

 

Further piss-poor plans for the Social Fund…

In response to the feedback received regarding the consultation on The Social Fund: A new approach published at the end of last year, NL has come up with these proposals:

We will also change the way that Community Care Grants are awarded so that some individuals will receive goods or services instead of money. This will ensure hard pressed families receive good value and good quality products in these difficult times.

We will also be able to negotiate with the suppliers to get a better deal for the taxpayer so that we can make our budgets go further. We hope for constructive dialogue with stakeholders throughout the passage of the bill, as we develop the detail of these proposals further.

The question that comes to my mind is why? People at the moment receive money to buy necessities and usually from shops like Argos. And it also gives control to the individual. Surely this new proposal will create more bureaucracy? Someone somewhere will be pricing necessities, probably contracted out as well. And what do they exactly mean when they say better deal for the taxpayer?

And furthermore:

But we want to go further. We want to ensure that the support we offer is active and enabling – a means of promoting financial inclusion for people on low incomes and to help individuals access mainstream financial services.

As a first step in this direction we will take the power to work through outside organisations that are better placed to offer financial advice than we are. However, should we in the future ever decide to offer loans through external stakeholders such as credit unions, to replace the current Social Fund provision we will not charge interest on these loans.

In other words poverty is viewed mainly as being a manifestation of people’s own financial ignorance and irresponsibility: the idea that what people really need is not money but a good dose of patronising and lecturing.

Jack Straw: publish and be damned!

This is utterly politically obscene and beneath contempt. Right-wingers whinging on about taxpayers’ money along with the racist bilge about Binyam Mohamed’s immigration status is shocking. But what can you expect from a Tory vile rag. The gaping hole in this frenzied political attack is no mention that this man endured torture including the hellhole Guantánamo Bay:

(His account of  his imprisonment and torture  at ‘Dark Prison’ near Kabul, Afghanistan, a secret prison run by the CIA)

It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time. They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb. There was loud music, Slim Shady [by Eminem] and Dr. Dre for 20 days. Then they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. At one point, I was chained to the rails for a fortnight. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.

And the British State were complicit in all of this and desperate in their cover-up. It’s up to the Americans, according to Miliband, to release the information. Talk about smoke and mirrors…with a large helping of obfuscation.

Talking of complicity, lying and spinelessness, the latest from Jack Straw about why he won’t release the cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq War from March 2003:

Cabinet is the pinnacle of the decision-making machinery of government. It is the forum in which debates on the issues of greatest significance and complexity are conducted.

This matter – whether the nation took military action – was indisputably of the utmost seriousness.

However, I disagree with the reasoning of the majority of the tribunal. In their decision they refer to the “momentous” nature of the decision taken, the public interest in understanding the approach taken to that decision, and the public interest in the accountability of those who took the decision

Mind you, is it really believable that someone in the cabinet, knowing they were being minuted, would come out with “we must go in with the Bush administration if we are going to stay in their good books and get a share of the spoils”. No you are going to say something along the  lines of “I have considered this matter with the utmost care and in the light of all the evidence Saddam is a threat blah pompous blah…”

We are living in a surveillance society where what we do is under scrutiny, unfortunately the same can’t be said for NL and the possibility of any of these sordid individuals to be prosecuted as war criminals….

Mark Serwotka on welfare reform

Below is an article by Mark Serwotka (General Secretary PCS) on welfare reform. Very remiss of me not to post this before but have been netless (though it has now been sorted out with new router..hopefully).

Just to reiterate the point he makes regarding the Lobby of Parliament. It will be on the 3rd March from 12:30-2:30, Committee Room 14.

There’s a Facebook events page been set up. So please if you want to oppose this draconian and punitive Bill turn up to this Lobby of Parliament.

David Freud, investment banker and key architect of the current welfare reform bill, has waved goodbye to the government, but he won’t be stigmatised for adding to the rising claimant count, because he’s opted to embrace a job on the Tory frontbench instead.

Let us remember that back in 2007 Freud wrote the government’s controversial white paper Reducing dependency, increasing opportunity: options for the future of welfare to work (pdf).

At the time he identified a “multi-billion pound market” for companies to profiteer from the sick and unemployed. Despite admitting he “didn’t know anything about welfare at all” when he started, politicians on all sides of the House embraced his ideas.

Fast forward to February 2009 and Freud’s original proposals to privatise the public employment service are at the heart of the current welfare reform bill. The bill also includes powers to privatise the social fund, abolish income support and introduce compulsory “work for your benefit” schemes. These are defined as compulsory full-time community activities that will be exchanged for the pittance that is jobseekers’ allowance. In common with a growing number of people and organisations, the members of my union are opposed to these plans. We want public ownership of our welfare state.

The government should be creating jobs instead of introducing punitive sanctions and increased conditionality for claimants. Cutting up to 40% of benefit payments will drive more people, including children, into poverty. The UK is near the bottom of the western European league table in comparative rates of unemployment benefit, so we are campaigning for the government to urgently increase benefit levels to help people in these difficult times.

The government has repeatedly asserted it is doing “what works”, yet it blatantly ignores the evidence. Jobcentre advisers outperform the private sector. The government’s own workforce already has the skills and expertise to respond to increasing levels of unemployment. The welfare state is one of the UK’s greatest achievements. We want to protect our public services from the drive for profits. We want the government to treat unemployed people with the respect they deserve.

That is why we have organised a lobby of parliament and public meeting on Tuesday 3 March 2009. This event will bring together trade unions, service user groups and campaigning organisations to demonstrate our opposition to the bill.

Now that the banker has ditched the government, we think Gordon Brown should respond by ditching the banker’s ideas.

I need a new router…apparently

So, according to BT they will send me a new router for my internet connection cos it is my router that’s at fault. And the BT techies couldn’t explain why my computer can’t find the IP address. Ah, the mysteries of the internet. But they have promised to send me one of those magical gateways to the internet by special delivery. Wow…I am highly honoured…

Well, I am supposed to be hosting the Carnival of Socialism on the 12th April….and the way BT is behaving it is worth warning comrades eagerly awaiting the Carnival in April that I still may be netless and possibly climbing the ceiling due to a bout of ‘cold turkey’ (Most. Have. Access. To. Feed. My. Addiction…) And optimism is in short supply after spending a weekend talking to techies.

If in doubt, send a new router….and go through the motions of pulling out wires while watching for non-existent flickering green lights.

Taking liberties…..

I eventually got around to seeing the British Library exhibition, Taking Liberties: the struggle for Britain’s freedoms and rights, at the weekend. And with various new laws that NL have introduced curtailing civil liberties and freedoms this exhibition is very timely!

The blurb from the exhibition says: This exhibition tells the story of a 900 struggle for rights and freedoms in the British Isles. It brings together key documents that record that struggle and its effect on our modern law and government.

An interesting aspect of the exhibition is that you were able to participate interactively. This involved wearing a paper wristband where you scanned the serial numbers at various points of the exhibition (I did have the urge to proclaim: ‘I am a person, not a number’!!). Samples questions included; ‘Do you believe in a national DNA database?, ‘Do you believe stop and search powers are a vital component in combatting terrorism’?  ‘As part of a healthy democracy, is it important to have the right to criticise’?

The answers were analysed at the end of the exhibition, the results were the most fascinating part of the show!

The exhibition gave a brief romp through the 900 years. Starting with the cornerstones of democracy, Magna Carta (1215) and Habeas Corpus (1679), which was nicely juxtaposed by a video of ‘talking heads’ discussing the rights/wrongs of 42 days and the Counter Terrorism legislation.

You witness the fights and struggles throughout history, which created the foundations of bourgeois British democracy. And that for me is where the exhibition fell down. It concentrated far too much on the individual’s relationship to the State. There were exhibits of the Chartists but nothing, strangely, regarding the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Nothing about about formation and rise of trade unionism, collective and industrial action. The exhibit on the history of Ireland was firmly from a bourgeois interpretation.

The exhibition gave a glossy, slick and acceptable explanation of the fight for freedoms and rights. There was a small space given to women’s suffrage along with lesbian and gay rights (the glass case contained a small paragraph about the Wolfenden Report and eventual the 1967 Act that legalised homosexuality but the age of consent was 21…Nothing about the continued campaigns to equalise the age of consent, nor about the constant attacks on sexuality especially Section 28).

I found the exhibit on freedom of speech and belief the most fascinating part. The Oz trial was included there though I didn’t see anything about the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial but I may have missed it.

One of the ‘talking heads’ on a video illustrated a very powerful point about freedom of speech and religion: ‘ Freedom of religion is the freedom to exert authority over others’ while freedom of speech and expression isn’t about exerting authority it is about questioning authority’.

Overall, the exhibition sanitised 900 years of rights and freedoms. These ‘rights’ were not given because of the generosity of the ruling class but were fought for, where people were imprisoned, criminalised, persecuted, suffered violent repression and often death. The gains were hard won! If people suffered defeats they suffered dearly at the hands of the State (Diggers, Tolpuddle Martyrs, to name but a few). It seems like this exhibition sanitises working class resistance.

Also absent was any account about the recent miscarriages of justice and deaths in state custody. The impact of protests and strikes on Parliamentary legislation (anti-trade union laws), which is more about curtailing and eroding rights and freedoms.

The history of rights and freedoms ( and the interpretation and definition ‘rights and freedoms’ come from a bourgeois perspective) are presented in a static way, it examines upsurges in class struggle in a bourgeois context that lacks any social interpretation. There are tensions, stresses, constraints and contradictions between individual(s) and the State but are seen as resoluble and not complex. Again, this analysis is deemed acceptable understanding of bourgeois freedoms.

You don’t need to have a Marxist understanding of the State to recognise that there’s a gaping hole of analysis in this exhibition. It is a timely exhibition reminding people  who may take all this for granted (and currently NL seem to be desperate in eroding our civil liberties). It is good to remind people that freedoms and rights have been hard fought, against, usually a climate of hostility, repression and violence orchestrated by the State.

The results from the interactive survey showed that there were some progressive minded people attending the exhibition…. And that was optimistic….

Neither Crystal Palace nor Herne Hill….

Having lived in Herne Hill and now Crystal Palace, the areas can be neatly divided up as liberal thesps (Herne Hill) and leftie intelligentsia (Crystal Palace). Wandering around Herne Hill, which leads you straight into the bourgeois territory of Dulwich Village or if you decide to slum it in the less bourgeois Camberwell/Peckham (a friend describes it as the Camberwell/Peckham cusp). Anyway, if you are in Herne Hill way you end up star spotting on a regular basis….

So I was kinda amused reading the acknowledgements at the end of Mark Steel’s What’s Going On? He wanted to thank all the cafes he frequented in Crystal Palace. Why I found it funny is that I possibly visit the same cafes as Mark Steel. Ha…Claim to fame!

Yeah, my favourite one is the petit-bourgeois cafe that plays decent music, exhibits paintings and photographs by artists from around this neck of the woods and do very nice mainly vegetarian food (though they do capitulate to the needs of carnivores and do a series of fish dishes). And while frequenting this abode I saw John Pilger.

Ok, I get a tad transfixed and dazzled and probably a bit giddy when I see someone famous especially ones you admire. So it seemed kinda out of place and a bit unexpected seeing Pilger in my local chi chi cafe in quiet and tranquil downtown Crystal Palace…

Oh, and back to Steel’s book. He mentions filming in Dulwich College, shocked he at how expansive and opulent it was. Indeed it is such an enormous place with vast green spaces for the paying elite to get an education. Again, some of these privileged duffers would gravitate towards the jazz style cafes of Herne Hill and there would be gaagle of them holding court, pontificating loudly in their well heeled accents. And you couldn’t help but listen in as their conversations revealed a lot….about a posh education…

Example: Discussion on the Mel Gibson film, Passion of the Christ.

“Who was that dude who washed his hands of Christ again”?

I was sitting adjacent and muttered into my skinny Latte, ‘Pontius Pilate’ (and me a mere comprehensive educated member of the masses) and the woman who was taking their order interrupted them by saying: “I think you mean Pontius Pilate”….

Says it all….

Anyway, once I finished Mark Steel’s book I’ll give my own tuppence h’alfpenny view.

Oscars: Slumdog does it again…

Well, Slumdog Millionaire swept the board at the Oscars. Predictably, Kate Winslet won Best Actress though I was pleased that Sean Penn got the Oscar for Best Actor for ’Milk’.

Oh, and Heath Ledger posthumously awarded Best Supporting Actor for the Joker in the Dark Knight.

But the night was devoted to Danny Boyle and Slumdog Millionaire….