blessed britons

In 1965, [Denis] Healey asked Sir Donald Stokes, the head of Leyland Motors, to enquire into the possibility of establishing a sales body for British weapons...
[Following Stokes’ feasibility study], Sir Henry Hardman, the top civil servant at the MoD, said: ‘Sir Donald Stokes had indicated that it was often necessary to offer bribes to make sales... The commercial technique was to gather intelligence on the right people who controlled sales and purchases. When the right person was found, effort would be concentrated on him and, in time, a sale would be effected. Sir Donald stressed that a great many arms sales were made, not because anyone wanted the arms, but because of the commissions involved en route.’

— Tim Webb

Bribing for Britain

mad world

... estimates using International Panel on Climate Change assumptions show that stabilising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at 1990 levels would have implied a global, equal carbon entitlement of about 0.43 tons per person. Yet in 2000, actual per capita emissions in the rich countries were about 3.4 tons, meaning that each person in the rich world was over the limit by approximately 3 tons. According to the UK government, the damage cost of carbon emissions is US$56 to US$223 per ton of carbon. Using a mid range estimate of US$140, each person in the rich world owes US$420 annually through excessive use of carbon. In total, this results in a South-North flow of around US$400 billion.

— Action Aid

Real Aid

was it worth it?

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Submitted by antarchi on May 14, 2007 - 01:17.

We rarely stop and ask ourselves. It is hard to stop and ask, not only because the money dries up, the cv dries up, the prestige* plummets; but more because if the answer - heaven forbid - turns out to be a NO, then what on earth have we been doing so far? And what on earth could we do next?

So - how about 'so-called human rights education': what would it mean to answer 'yes' (or no)?

- that the work has had some positive effects (made people happy?)
- that the work has had no negative effects (done no harm)
- that the work has had more positive effects than negative ones
- that the work was very well-intentioned (and the effects cannot really be predicted)
- that the work will... very likely ... lead to unimaginably positive effects (when?)
- that we (probably) could not have done anything more worthwhile in the given time and with the given resources
- that we could not have made a greater contribution to human rights (at this moment, given the resources)

HRE is expensive. And it is not as though there are not a million other far more urgent things we could be doing NOW for human rights with our energies and the available resources. Can we justify armies of well-intentioned educators taking the slow (and expensive) road?

And could we ever answer 'no' to that question?

* I wasn't aware before that the original meaning of 'prestige' was: an illusion, a conjuring trick, a deception an imposture. Funny that we happen to have mislaid that derivation.

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blessed britons

mad world

was it worth it?