Guess the driver in this hushed up hit and run case. A****i scion?

Jug Saraiya in The Times of India

Is there a conspiracy of silence in the Indian media?

The media have been loud and clear about government corruption, crimes against women and other derailments of the rule of law and order and the delivery of justice.

Which makes it all the more strange that a hit-and-run incident, in which two people were allegedly killed and several others injured, and which is said to have taken place in Mumbai on December 7 this year, has received scant, if any, attention in either the press or on TV.

However, social networking sites such as Facebook are buzzing with it, creating a web of rumours in the absence of any hard facts, or indeed any discernible  attempt by the media to try and sift through whatever evidence there may be and present the facts of the case.

According to the rumour mills, the lethal hit-and-run driver was the young son of an extremely wealthy and powerful business tycoon who enjoys political patronage at the highest levels. The recklessly speeding car is said to have rammed into two other cars, resulting in two deaths and several people injured.

The driver of the car allegedly fled the scene in one of two SUVs which were escorting the car.  A day later, a middle-aged man presented himself at the local police station saying he was the driver employed by the business family and that he had been responsible for the previous day’s accident.

A sole eyewitness to the incident, who had earlier said that the driver of the speeding car had been a young man, is believed to have retracted the statement, allegedly under pressure.

The case is similar to what has come to be called the BMW hit-and-run incident involving the son of a powerful Delhi family, and in which more than one prosecution witness became ‘hostile’, presumably through intimidation or bribery or both.

But while the media had had a field day in the BMW case, giving it full coverage, there seems to be total silence about the recent case in Mumbai. A silence which becomes strange when it is contrasted with the clamour the case has caused on social networking sites.

Is the alleged involvement of the tycoon’s son only a rumour? It might well be. But surely the insistence with which this rumour is being spread is itself worthy of notice by media, particularly when that rumour implies the accusation that there is a conspiracy of silence on the part of the press and TV channels. Shouldn’t media investigate the rumour and expose it for what it is? 

Indian media pride themselves on being both free and fair, a self-congratulatory pat on the back which more often than not is well-deserved.  TV anchors are particularly outspoken – some would say strident – in righteously denouncing all manner of foul play.

So why this silence about media’s alleged conspiracy of silence about the Mumbai hit-and-run? It makes one wonder how many other instances, regarding all manner of wrongdoing, go deliberately unreported, or under-reported, by media.

Such selective silences – if indeed they do exist – can and will be highlighted by social media, as is happening in the current case. There is much talk and controversy about appointing a political Lokpal. Should the media have their own Lokpal to look into alleged irregularities? By default, social media might become the unofficial Lokpal of mainstream media, breaking the sounds of dubious silence with irrepressible electronic chatter which brooks no censorship either state-imposed or self-imposed.

Obama's rogue state tramples over every law it demands others uphold

For 67 years the US has pursued its own interests at the expense of global justice – no wonder people are sceptical now

BETA

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 9 September 2013 20.30 BST

US troops fire a white phosphorous mortar towards a Taliban position on 3 April 2009 in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: John Moore/Getty

You could almost pity these people. For 67 years successive US governments have resisted calls to reform the UN security council. They've defended a system which grants five nations a veto over world affairs, reducing all others to impotent spectators. They have abused the powers and trust with which they have been vested. They have collaborated with the other four permanent members (the UK, Russia, China and France) in a colonial carve-up, through which these nations can pursue their own corrupt interests at the expense of peace and global justice.

Eighty-three times the US has exercised its veto. On 42 of these occasions it has done so to prevent Israel's treatment of the Palestinians being censured. On the last occasion, 130 nations supported the resolution but Barack Obama spiked it. Though veto powers have been used less often since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the US has exercised them 14 times in the interim (in 13 cases to shield Israel), while Russia has used them nine times. Increasingly the permanent members have used the threat of a veto to prevent a resolution being discussed. They have bullied the rest of the world into silence.

Through this tyrannical dispensation – created at a time when other nations were either broken or voiceless – the great warmongers of the past 60 years remain responsible for global peace. The biggest weapons traders are tasked with global disarmament. Those who trample international law control the administration of justice.

But now, as the veto powers of two permanent members (Russia and China) obstruct its attempt to pour petrol on another Middle Eastern fire, the US suddenly decides that the system is illegitimate. Obama says: "If we end up using the UN security council not as a means of enforcing international norms and international law, but rather as a barrier … then I think people rightly are going to be pretty skeptical about the system." Well, yes.

Never have Obama or his predecessors attempted a serious reform of this system. Never have they sought to replace a corrupt global oligarchy with a democratic body. Never do they lament this injustice – until they object to the outcome. The same goes for every aspect of global governance.

Obama warned last week that Syria's use of poisoned gas "threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations". Unravelling the international norm is the US president's job.

In 1997 the US agreed to decommission the 31,000 tonnes of sarin, VX, mustard gas and other agents it possessed within 10 years. In 2007 it requested the maximum extension of the deadline permitted by the Chemical Weapons Convention – five years. Again it failed to keep its promise, and in 2012 it claimed they would be gone by 2021. Russia yesterday urged Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Perhaps it should press the US to do the same.

In 1998 the Clinton administration pushed a law through Congress which forbade international weapons inspectors from taking samples of chemicals in the US and allowed the president to refuse unannounced inspections. In 2002 the Bush government forced the sacking of José Maurício Bustani, the director general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He had committed two unforgiveable crimes: seeking a rigorous inspection of US facilities; and pressing Saddam Hussein to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, to help prevent the war George Bush was itching to wage.

The US used millions of gallons of chemical weapons in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It also used them during its destruction of Falluja in 2004, then lied about it. The Reagan government helped Saddam Hussein to wage war with Iran in the 1980s while aware that he was using nerve and mustard gas. (The Bush administration then cited this deployment as an excuse to attack Iraq, 15 years later).

Smallpox has been eliminated from the human population, but two nations – the US and Russia – insist on keeping the pathogen in cold storage. They claim their purpose is to develop defences against possible biological weapons attack, but most experts in the field consider this to be nonsense. While raising concerns about each other's possession of the disease, they have worked together to bludgeon the other members of the World Health Organisation, which have pressed them to destroy their stocks.

In 2001 the New York Times reported that, without either Congressional oversight or a declaration to the Biological Weapons Convention, "the Pentagon has built a germ factory that could make enough lethal microbes to wipe out entire cities". The Pentagon claimed the purpose was defensive but, developed in contravention of international law, it didn't look good. The Bush government also sought to destroy the Biological Weapons Convention as an effective instrument by scuttling negotiations over the verification protocol required to make it work.

Looming over all this is the great unmentionable: the cover the US provides for Israel's weapons of mass destruction. It's not just that Israel – which refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention – has used white phosphorus as a weapon in Gaza (when deployed against people, phosphorus meets the convention's definition of "any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm").

It's also that, as the Washington Post points out: "Syria's chemical weapons stockpile results from a never-acknowledged gentleman's agreement in the Middle East that as long as Israel had nuclear weapons, Syria's pursuit of chemical weapons would not attract much public acknowledgement or criticism." Israel has developed its nuclear arsenal in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty, and the US supports it in defiance of its own law, which forbids the disbursement of aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction.

As for the norms of international law, let's remind ourselves where the US stands. It remains outside the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, after declaring its citizens immune from prosecution. The crime of aggression it committed in Iraq – defined by the Nuremberg tribunal as "the supreme international crime" – goes not just unpunished but also unmentioned by anyone in government. The same applies to most of the subsidiary war crimes US troops committed during the invasion and occupation. Guantánamo Bay raises a finger to any notions of justice between nations.

None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad's government – or its opponents – of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons. Nor is it to suggest that there is an easy answer to the horrors in Syria.

But Obama's failure to be honest about his nation's record of destroying international norms and undermining international law, his myth-making about the role of the US in world affairs, and his one-sided interventions in the Middle East, all render the crisis in Syria even harder to resolve. Until there is some candour about past crimes and current injustices, until there is an effort to address the inequalities over which the US presides, everything it attempts – even if it doesn't involve guns and bombs – will stoke the cynicism and anger the president says he wants to quench.

During his first inauguration speech Barack Obama promised to "set aside childish things". We all knew what he meant. He hasn't done it.

Top Lib Dem Sarah Teather to step down in despair at Nick Clegg's policies

Sarah Teather says party is not fighting for justice and describes how immigration policy left her 'desolate'

• Toby Helm, political editor
• The Observer, Saturday 7 September 2013 22.33 BST

Sarah Teather says 'something broke' in her when the Lib Dems responded to public concern about the cost of welfare by backing a government cap on benefits. Photograph: Katherine Rose for the Observer

The prominent Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather – who shot to fame when she became the youngest member of parliament a decade ago – has announced that she is to quit the House of Commons because she no longer feels that Nick Clegg's party fights sufficiently for social justice and liberal values on immigration.

In a blow to Clegg a week before his party gathers for its annual conference in Glasgow, Teather said his tougher approach to immigration – including a plan for some immigrants to pay a £1,000 deposit when applying for visas – left her feeling so "desolate" and "catastrophically depressed" that she was unable even to confront him over the issue. "It was an absolutely black moment. I couldn't even move from my seat when I read it. I was so depressed I couldn't even be angry. I was utterly desolate," she says.

Announcing her decision to turn her back on frontline politics in an interview with the Observer, she adds that "something broke" in her when the Lib Dems responded to public concern about the cost of welfare by backing a government cap on benefits.

Teather believes the £26,000-a-year limit is a political stunt that will not work, and complains that it will force many of her constituents in the ethnically diverse constituency of Brent Central, in north London, to leave their homes and seek work in cheaper areas where fewer jobs would be available.

"It was the moment of realising that my own party was just as afraid of public opinion as the Labour party," she says. "Something did break for me that was never ever repaired."

While she insists that she still has a lot of respect for Clegg, whom she regards as a "decent bloke", she says that too often he seems to lead a party that no longer appears passionate about the values that attracted her to it as a teenager.

"When I joined the party I had this really strong instinct that it was the party of social justice and liberalism. It was the only party that operated in that space." But now, with the pressure of coalition bearing down on him, Teather, 39, says Clegg and his team react too easily to immediate pressure to appease public opinion. "It is about the reactive pursuit of the latest poll irrespective of what is right and wrong.

"What really gets me is that we remove ourselves from any responsibility for forming public opinion … You achieve change not just through policy but by presenting arguments and having debate and leading debate, and using all the platforms you have in television, parliament, the media. All of those things form and respond to public opinion."

The former charity worker, who served as minister for children in the coalition until 2012, shot to prominence when she won the safe Labour seat of Brent East in September 2003, overturning a 13,047 Labour majority.

While insisting her decade in parliament has been "wonderful" in many ways, she says she no longer feels able to operate within the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party while disagreeing with its approach on fundamental issues. She will remain in parliament until the 2015 general election, and continue as a member of the party, but says she has "no idea" what she will do after that.

Her announcement creates an unfortunate backdrop to the Lib Dem meeting in Glasgow, where the party will try to present itself as distinct from the Tories as it prepares to put together a radical manifesto for 2015. The party faces a series of awkward debates on the economy, tuition fees, green policy and taxation, among other things, as it wrestles with how to present a strikingly distinct policy offering that can still be moderated in potential future coalitions with the Tories or Labour.

The Lib Dems' period in government has coincided with sharp falls not only in the opinion polls but also in party membership and income. The latest figures show it now has a membership of just 42,501. This represents a 35% drop since the height of "Cleggmania" in 2010. The fall in membership fees has also contributed to an operating deficit of £410,000 in the latest annual accounts.

The latest Opinium/Observer poll puts the Lib Dems down percentage point on a fortnight ago, at just 7%. This compares with a vote share of 23% at the 2010 general election and scores of more than 30% in some polls in the runup to polling day. Opinium has Labour on 35% (done one percentage point compared to a fortnight ago), the Tories up one at 30% and Ukip down one on 17%.

Teather says she was dismayed to be told by her party to back the recent motion paving the way for military action in Syria because it was an issue of "loyalty". "If it was a minor aspect of administrative policy then fine – talk to me about loyalty. But if they are wanting to launch military action on another country you can't tell me I need to give permission on the basis of loyalty," she says. She voted no.

A Liberal Democrat spokesman said: "Of course we are disappointed by Sarah's decision.

"The Liberal Democrats have a proud record in government, including cutting taxes for working people by £700 and lifting the poorest paid out of tax altogether; helping businesses create a million jobs; investing billions more in schools to help the poorest children and introducing radical plans for shared parental leave.

"Sarah was a part of this when she served as a minister in the coalition, as well as playing a key role in ending Labour's disgraceful policy of locking up children for immigration purposes."

We need a fair system for restructuring sovereign debt

If the debt vultures have their way, there will never be a fresh start for indebted countries - and no one will agree to restructuring

• 
• • Joseph Stiglitz
  • theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 September 2013 17.48 BST

If the debt vultures have their way, there will never be a fresh start for indebted countries - and no one will agree to restructuring. Photograph: Joe Petersburger/Getty Images/National Geographic Creative

A recent decision by a United States appeals court threatens to upend global sovereign debt markets. It may even lead to the US no longer being viewed as a good place to issue sovereign debt. At the very least, it renders non-viable all debt restructurings under the standard debt contracts. In the process, a basic principle of modern capitalism – that when debtors cannot pay back creditors, a fresh start is needed – has been overturned.

The trouble began a dozen years ago, when Argentina had no choice but to devalue its currency and default on its debt. Under the existing regime, the country had been on a rapid downward spiral of the kind that has now become familiar in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. Unemployment was soaring, and austerity, rather than restoring fiscal balance, simply exacerbated the economic downturn.

Devaluation and debt restructuring worked. In subsequent years, until the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, Argentina's annual GDP growth was 8% or higher, one of the fastest rates in the world.

Even former creditors benefited from this rebound. In a highly innovative move, Argentina exchanged old debt for new debt – at about 30 cents on the dollar or a little more – plus a GDP-indexed bond. The more Argentina grew, the more it paid to its former creditors.

Argentina's interests and those of its creditors were thus aligned: both wanted growth. It was the equivalent of a "Chapter 11" restructuring of American corporate debt, in which debt is swapped for equity, with bondholders becoming new shareholders.

Debt restructurings often entail conflicts among different claimants. That is why, for domestic debt disputes, countries have bankruptcy laws and courts. But there is no such mechanism to adjudicate international debt disputes.

Once upon a time, such contracts were enforced by armed intervention, as Mexico, Venezuela, Egypt, and a host of other countries learned at great cost in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After the Argentine crisis, President George W. Bush's administration vetoed proposals to create a mechanism for sovereign-debt restructuring. As a result, there is not even the pretence of attempting fair and efficient restructurings.

Poor countries are typically at a huge disadvantage in bargaining with big multinational lenders, which are usually backed by powerful home-country governments. Often, debtor countries are squeezed so hard for payment that they are bankrupt again after a few years.

Economists applauded Argentina's attempt to avoid this outcome through a deep restructuring accompanied by the GDP-linked bonds. But a few "vulture" funds – most notoriously the hedge fund Elliott Management, headed by the billionaire Paul E. Singer – saw Argentina's travails as an opportunity to make huge profits at the expense of the Argentine people. They bought the old bonds at a fraction of their face value, and then used litigation to try to force Argentina to pay 100 cents on the dollar.

Americans have seen how financial firms put their own interests ahead of those of the country – and the world. The vulture funds have raised greed to a new level.

Their litigation strategy took advantage of a standard contractual clause (called pari passu) intended to ensure that all claimants are treated equally. Incredibly, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York decided that this meant that if Argentina paid in full what it owed those who had accepted debt restructuring, it had to pay in full what it owed to the vultures.

If this principle prevails, no one would ever accept debt restructuring. There would never be a fresh start – with all of the unpleasant consequences that this implies.

In debt crises, blame tends to fall on the debtors. They borrowed too much. But the creditors are equally to blame – they lent too much and imprudently. Indeed, lenders are supposed to be experts on risk management and assessment, and in that sense, the onus should be on them. The risk of default or debt restructuring induces creditors to be more careful in their lending decisions.

The repercussions of this miscarriage of justice may be felt for a long time. After all, what developing country with its citizens' long-term interests in mind will be prepared to issue bonds through the US financial system, when America's courts – as so many other parts of its political system – seem to allow financial interests to trump the public interest?

Countries would be well advised not to include pari passu clauses in future debt contracts, at least without specifying more fully what is intended. Such contracts should also include collective-action clauses, which make it impossible for vulture funds to hold up debt restructuring. When a sufficient proportion of creditors agree to a restructuring plan (in the case of Argentina, the holders of more than 90% of the country's debt did), the others can be forced to go along.

The fact that the International Monetary Fund, the US Department of Justice, and anti-poverty NGOs all joined in opposing the vulture funds is revealing. But so, too, is the court's decision, which evidently assigned little weight to their arguments.

For those in developing and emerging-market countries who harbor grievances against the advanced countries, there is now one more reason for discontent with a brand of globalization that has been managed to serve rich countries' interests (especially their financial sectors' interests).

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System urged that we design an efficient and fair system for the restructuring of sovereign debt. The US court's tendentious, economically dangerous ruling shows why we need such a system now.

The political overlords of a violent underclass

RAJRISHI SINGHAL in the hindu

  

THE HINDU

 

Skewed growth is pushing the marginalised into the arms of waiting netas who turn them into tools of violence

The rape of a photojournalist in midtown Mumbai has revived public indignation and the debate that followed the brutal and barbaric rape of a young Delhi girl in December 2012. Amidst much hand-wringing and a rerun of inanities over national television, talking heads seem to have once again missed the central narrative — the rising tide of assorted violent acts, the political patronage (both explicit and implicit) that’s sponsoring it and how rape might be an integral part of this hostile environment. What’s more, the horrific incidents of rape continue unabated.

As India staggers from a semi-feudal society to one that’s embracing a strange (and hybrid) version of capitalism, violence in its myriad forms has emerged as the dominant template. The repertoire of violence has graduated from booth-capturing during elections to assassinating political opponents (including whistle-blowers), from vandalising art shows to rape and murder. And the culprits seem to be getting away each time. While the government continues to attract a large share of public censure for its inaction, the blame should ideally lie with the entire political class. It is this section of society, and the trajectory of its evolution, which seems to be strengthening the foundations of violence in our society. Every political party today — across all aisles and the entire spectrum — has to maintain a large army of warm bodies, described variously as “lumpen proletariats,” or “lumpens” or “the underclass,” for implementing its dirty tricks.

In simple terms, these are people thought to inhabit the space below the working class. Social scientists use the term to describe anybody who lives outside the pale of the formal wage-labour system. Disenfranchised and conventionally unemployable, political parties use these people to commit acts — most of which are outright criminal — to improve its own popularity and election prospects.

Becoming invincible

When utilised by political parties as the blunt edge of a bludgeon, this section of society acquires a modicum of invincibility. Given the large-scale subversion of the police force by politicians, lumpens have acquired a sense of daredevilry, a brazen approach to law and order. Immunity from arrests and indifference towards due process of law has invested them with a special feeling of invulnerability.

Some of this imperviousness is inevitable as criminals, or individuals with criminal accusations, become elected representatives themselves. This is a disease that afflicts all political parties. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, 1,448 of India’s 4,835 MPs and State legislators have declared criminal cases against them. In fact, 641 of these 1,448 are facing serious charges like murder, rape and kidnapping.

The violence is also reflective of the pushing and jostling for elusive entitlements, a handmaiden of the stop-go model of development pursued by India. Asynchronous development of the economy and its institutions often lead to the privileged sections of society cornering disproportionate gains, resulting in discontent among the less fortunate. This then becomes a fertile hunting ground for political dividends. As the economy staggers through a new model of development without overhauling the outdated feudal structure — that still discriminates on the basis of caste, sex, class — missed opportunities and unrealised aspirations push many of the deprived into the arms of opportunist politicians.

Divested of education and employment opportunities, bereft of basic health facilities, exploited by the powerful and ignored by society, the underclass can only turn to political warlords for not only survival but to also actualise their dreams and aspirations. They become the shadow army, the heaving underbelly that the urban middle class doesn’t want to talk about.

Writing in the newspaper Business Standard, T.N. Ninan described the men behind the Delhi rape: “The men who raped and killed...have biographies that are starkly different. Their families may not have been from backgrounds vastly different from that of the girl’s father; they too were mostly one generation removed from villages in North Indian states. But they fell through the cracks in the Indian system — cracks that are so large that they are the system itself.”

To be sure, the combination of economic prosperity for a select few and abject poverty for large sections of the population is a guaranteed recipe for social combustion. When privilege, or nepotism, determines access to scarce resources, conflict is bound to erupt. Inequality, of any kind, remains the spring-well for all conflicts.

Violence is also a way of ensuring maintenance of this privilege. On the day of the Mumbai rape incident, a Shiv Sena MLA abused and threatened women employees of a toll booth in Maharashtra. About a fortnight ago, Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party workers beat up North Indian migrant workers in Kolhapur at random as a protest against the rape of a five-year-old allegedly by a labourer from Jharkhand. Not very long ago, a fringe, religio-political outfit in Mangalore, Karnataka, used the excuse of moral offence to inflict violence against young boys and girls. A senior police officer in Uttar Pradesh was shot dead — allegedly by associates of a local politician — when investigating a land dispute.

Police reforms

If these examples of violence seem random and arbitrary, here is the simple truth: if you can dream up any imaginary offence against any section of society, contemporary Indian political grammar gives you the licence to inflict violence against that segment. In the meantime, certain law officers and do-gooders wanting to eradicate rape and sexual crimes from society seem intent on examining the wrong end of a telescope: they are contemplating a ban on pornography.

What’s even more unfortunate is that the police look on helplessly, since their career progression is tied closely to the moods of political masters orchestrating these unorganised armies. Sometimes, they refuse to act even against political goons out of power because who knows what hand will be dealt during the next election.

There have been numerous suggestions and various committee reports on how to reform the police force. The Supreme Court in 2006 had also suggested seven measures to improve the police force. But like all other tough decisions, the government swept this too under the carpet. In addition, lack of proper investigation and poor documentation by the police often forces the judiciary to put criminals back on the streets even before you can say Amar-Akbar-Anthony. As a result, the fear of law ceases to exist.

Growing intolerance

Another form of violent behaviour is now finding sanction from political parties across ideological divides — a new-found love for banning painters, authors, film-makers, etc. Political parties find justifications for banning any art form, using hired goons — who have perhaps never been acquainted with the contentious piece of work — to vandalise and wreak havoc. Recently, supporters of a right wing party vandalised an art show in Ahmedabad for exhibiting works of Pakistani artists. A political party has to only utter indignant statements about any creative work and a ban is immediately enforced. Canada-based, Indian-born writer Rohinton Mistry’s award winning book Such a Long Journey was hurriedly removed from Mumbai University’s syllabus after similar protests. Violence takes many forms and unfortunately India has become home to most of these varieties: imported terrorism, domestic violence, female foeticide, armed insurgency, criminal activity, communal acts, oppression (of caste or gender), etc. While politics does have an indirect role in promoting domestic violence or some criminal activities, its fingerprints are all too visible in all the other forms of violence perpetrated in the country. It’s surprising that a country which gained independence from colonial powers through the instrument of non-violence should today exhibit such a preponderance of violence in its daily life.

But what is baffling is how, increasingly, rape is committed without any fear of legal reprisal or the extent of punishment that might be meted out. Sample the West Bengal government’s reluctance to prosecute party workers accused of rape. It is therefore not surprising that increasing incidents of mindless violence and sexual assaults are being reported from across the country. Judicial commissions and committees are slowly drawing attention to this aberrant social phenomenon: political sanction for violence.

Verma report

The Justice Verma Committee castigates the political class in its report for pandering to chauvinistic and patently anti-women organisations (such as khap panchayats). The committee also pans the political class for ignoring the rights of women since Independence: “Have we seen an express denunciation by Parliament to deal with offences against women? Have we seen the political establishment ever discuss the rights of women and particularly access of women to education and such other issues over the last 60 years in Parliament? We find that over the last 60 years the space and the quantum of debates which have taken place in Parliament in respect of women’s welfare has been extremely inadequate.”

A licence to kill should ideally live only in fiction. A free hand to maim or murder has created a fascist mindset, a mental construct that is at odds with the aspirations of an ancient civilisation trying to find a place on the high table of the modern, free world. It is often argued that the first step in evolving sustainable solutions probably lies in creating independent institutions. But, that might not be enough. As Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has said in his book The Idea of Justice, the existence of democratic institutions is no guarantee of success. “It depends inescapably on our actual behaviour patterns and the working of political and social interactions.”

The first step then might be to provide everybody with equal opportunity — access to education, employment, health care, basic infrastructure (like water or power) — and to overhaul the political system itself by reforming campaign finance.

Secret courts: justice conducted behind closed doors is no justice at all

If Britain has suddenly decided that open justice is a luxury we can't afford, then I for one was not invited to the debate

• 
• • Sarosh Zaiwalla
  • theguardian.com, Monday 19 August 2013 11.31 BST

Britain's home secretary, Theresa May, leaves Downing Street in London. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Last March, I watched from afar as perhaps the most important case in my 30-year legal career was decided in a soundproofed room protected by a security guard. This was the first time in the UK supreme court's history that it had entered closed session for what has been aptly named a "secret court". It is a phrase we should get used to after a judge ruled last week that the home secretary, Theresa May, has the power to "terminate" high court challenges on national security grounds and push more cases away from public view.

This ruling is all the more worrying after my experience. Giving his final judgment on our secret court, Lord Hope described it as an "unwelcome departure from the principle of open justice", calling for a "stern and steadfast resistance to the use of that procedure" in the future. His call is one that every Briton should heed.

Representing Bank Mellat, an Iranian bank caught up in the middle of the sanctions battle between the west and Iran, I was tasked with showing that UK sanctions must be more than an indiscriminate attack on people living under regimes we dislike. My firm argued that the Treasury had no evidence to suggest the bank had somehow helped Iran's nuclear programme. The sanctions were at best irrational and at worst discriminatory. The supreme court agreed – but there was a catch. In a last ditch attempt to win the day, the Treasury claimed that they did have rock solid evidence … they just couldn't show anyone.

The dilemma was etched on Lord Neuberger's face as he announced the decision to enter a secret court. On the one hand, the Treasury insisted that the evidence must be kept secret for national security reasons, but on the other the supreme court risked undermining the whole system of open justice. Imagine being convicted of a crime by evidence you are not allowed to see and without the opportunity to defend yourself – that is the state in which the bank found itself. When the Treasury insisted that the supreme court view evidence obtained from the secret services, the judges obliged in good faith. Ultimately, the court attached little weight to this evidence and decided in Bank Mellat's favour.

The judges' concern, much like my own, is that justice conducted behind closed doors with evidence hidden from view is no kind of justice at all.

The ultimate driving force behind this self-mutilation of a proud justice system was the politics of security. Ironically, it is in our dealings with the alleged opponents of liberty that the dangerous, prejudicial and irrational politics of security push us to our most extreme. Just as the US Prism programme is unravelling the extent to which we have given up our privacy to GCHQ, so too are secret courts forcing us to be "free" in ways we are powerless to stop.

You need only look to the US to see the sacrifices made in the name of national security – a compassionless system fuelled by uncompromising secret surveillance of citizens and allowing the unchecked detention of suspects in Guantánamo Bay. Has the balance in the name of security gone too far? In Bank Mellat's instance, our supreme court may have dismissed the government's tactics, but it would be naive to hope that nine judges will be enough to rein in sustained attacks on British liberty if the rot of politics continues to eat away at our rights. Only days after the supreme court entered closed session in the case I was representing, a broad coalition of Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative MPs pushed through the Justice and Security bill, allowing the same secret courts used against foreign companies to apply to anyone living in the UK. This bill has now come into full force. Indeed, as the revelations about GCHQ's snooping make clear, there will be no dearth of information available to help the secret courts convict us.

If the British people have suddenly decided that open justice is a luxury we cannot afford, then I for one was not invited to the debate. It is perfectly reasonable to argue that the threats facing the UK warrant such suspensions of justice, but it is both absurd and dangerous to allow this vital judgment call to be made solely by those politicians who hope to wield the new powers against us. Privileges which we can surely only give up voluntarily have been wrestled from us without our consent.

The revelations of secret courts and Prism show just how little influence we have over our own rights. Indeed as Theresa May can now attest, not even high court judges can keep the government's secret courts at bay. It is time politicians asked for our permission before denying us access to open justice.

I despair as I watch the erosion of the liberal views I hold dear

Unless we take a more robust view of liberalism, tolerance ends up as not caring. Anything goes

• 
• • Will Hutton
  • The Observer, Sunday 9 June 2013

Ronald Dworkin – a great liberal thinker. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Last Wednesday, there was a memorial service for one of the doyens of American liberalism – Professor Ronnie Dworkin – who died in London, his adopted home, earlier this year. A succession of some of Britain's best-known liberal writers and thinkers took to the rostrum to pay tribute to a man who continued to honour Roosevelt's New Deal, insisted law and morality were indivisible and argued that to live well and with dignity was every human being's aim – one that law and government should support.

It was a moving occasion, but, as his wife, Irene Brendl, wrote in the service notes, this great liberal tradition is increasingly beleaguered. She is right. We live in rightwing times. Law and justice, which Ronnie Dworkin cherished so much, are depicted as burdens on the taxpayer whose costs must be minimised. If you want justice, you must pay for it yourself and have no embedded civic right to expect others to contribute. The good society and moral individuals are those who do without the state. The public sphere is derided and positive public action to promote the common or international good is acceptable only if it involves less, rather than more, government. Instead, what we are invited to hold in common is nationhood, national identity and hostility to foreigners and immigrants. The open society is in retreat.

This may seem an odd commentary in a week in which gay marriage has been agreed by the House of Lords and where companies are increasingly hounded for avoiding their tax. Both are surely liberal rather than conservative preoccupations. In an idiosyncratic leader recently, the Economist proclaimed the strange rebirth of liberal England, arguing that young people's tolerance of ethnic and sexual differences, along with growing distrust of the state and welfare, was proof positive of the emergence of a new liberalism. Ronnie Dworkin should have been happy.

He would have turned in his grave. Such a view of liberalism does not go to the heart of what it means to live well. Tolerance of other people's differences is a core element of a liberal order, but a good society is one where we go beyond just shrugging our shoulders at someone's sexual preferences, religious beliefs or ethnicity. It is one in which we engage with each other, create law and justice as a moral system enshrining human dignity and accept mutual responsibilities. The aim is to live with dignity, to be able to make the best of one's capabilities and to expect that the consequences of undeserved bad luck – what Dworkin called brute bad luck – would be compensated by society in a mutual compact. This is a million miles from the Economist's arid conception of liberalism.

Nor are these disputes just airy-fairy differences between intellectuals – they go to the heart of how we live, what we do and say. Unless we take a much more robust and rounded view of liberalism, tolerance ends up as indifference, disengagement and refusal to respect other people's ambition to live with dignity. Anything goes. One alarming dimension of value-free tolerance is the new licence it gives for men publicly to say noxiously sexist, demeaning or plain wrong things about women. If a woman dresses to appear attractive, that does not mean, as Nick Ross argues in his new book, Crime, that if they succeed they are partly responsible if they get raped. Rape is not gradable to the extent of a woman's dress or character: it is a crime and is the responsibility of – and problem for – men and women alike. To define it in any other way is to make any woman both apart and demeaned, a reversal of the century-long fight for genuine equality between the sexes.

In successive areas of public policy – "reform" of criminal justice and legal aid, the health service, climate change, employment law, social security – the debate is similarly defined wholly in terms of the need to assert individual rights and choice, to minimise social and public responsibilities and, above all, to roll back taxes. If the facts or scientific evidence do not support this drive, then the facts are changed or the science ignored.

The most breathtaking example is climate change. What fires the sceptics' passionate opposition is that preventing global warming will become the rationale for an extension of public initiative and government action, which by definition must be bad. Therefore, the science must be wrong. It is the wholesale inversion of a liberal society. The importance of limiting the state, reducing the scope of law and maximising individual choice with no compensating responsibilities defines how science should become interpreted and understood, even if it indubitably proves that global weather patterns are changing.

Even gay marriage and the quest to end tax avoidance are part of this wider trend. Gay marriage is a crucial and socially legitimate enlargement of gay people's ambitions to live with dignity. Yet the case is rarely made in those positive liberal terms: rather, gay marriage is portrayed as a harmless extension of an unobjectionable entitlement. Faith communities feel that in those terms the proposition is frivolous: their sensibilities are not respected. They feel harmed – and outraged. The row became much more intense than it should.

Equally, David Cameron and George Osborne's quest to limit the now rampant corporate abuse of tax havens is not because they believe that the state is a force for good whose services everyone must legitimately pay for – that taxation is a badge of citizenship. It is because they are against cheating and if big companies don't pay their taxes then taxes are higher for everyone else. You may think the difference is irrelevant, but crucially it offers the tax cheats a perfect line of defence – and one exploited by Eric Schmidt, chair of tax-minimising Google. Companies have no moral responsibility to respect the spirit of the law, he says; if Google can lower its taxes though obscure if legal loopholes, then it is government's responsibility to change the law. The law is not a moral proposition, as in Dworkin's conception: it is simply something to be endlessly gamed by clever tax lawyers.

Schmidt's vision is as arid as the Economist's. But if the right is dominant, a rounded liberalism has one advantage. The right's world leads to economic stagnation, social atomisation and a destructive nationalism. Nor, ultimately, is there happiness and dignity to be found by living as a tax-avoiding, climate-change-denying anti-feminist while mouthing how tolerant you are. There is a quiet and mounting crisis in conservatism. Liberalism, in its best sense, could capitalise on the opportunity. It is a pity Ronnie Dworkin won't be around to be part of the fight back. We'll just have to do it by ourselves.

Britain has said sorry to the Mau Mau. The rest of the empire is still waiting

British colonial violence was brutal, and systematic. If there is any justice, the Mau Mau's stunning legal victory should be the first of many

• 
• • Caroline Elkins
  • The Guardian, Thursday 6 June 2013 19.46 BST

Kenyans tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion are to receive compensation payments from the British government. Photograph: Dai Kurokawa/EPA

On Thursday nearly 200 elderly Kikuyu people travelled from their rural homesteads and sat before the British high commissioner in Nairobi. Over half a century had passed since many were last in front of a British official. It was a different era then in Kenya. The Mau Mau war was raging, and Britain was implementing coercive policies that left indelible scars on the bodies and minds of countless men and women suspected of subversive activities.

In the 1950s they experienced events in colonial detention camps that few imagined possible. Yesterday they gathered to witness another once unimaginable thing: the much-delayed colonial gesture at reconciliation. The high commissioner read extracts fromWilliam Hague's earlier statement in parliament. Hague acknowledged for the first time that the elderly Kikuyu and other Kenyans had been subjected to torture and other horrific abuses at the hands of the colonial administration during the Mau Mau emergency. On behalf of the British government he expressed "sincere regret" that these abuses had taken place, announced payments of £2,600 to each of 5,200 vetted claimants, and urged that the process of healing for both nations begin.

The faces of the elderly camp survivors betrayed the day's historical significance. Tears rolled down faces lined from years of internalised pain and bitterness. Many sat motionless as the high commissioner read the statement. Others let out audible gasps, and cries of joy. Some burst into song.

By any measure the announcement was stunning. With it, Britain jettisoned its appeal of the Mau Mau reparation case in the high court. Filed in 2009, the case was the first of its kind against the former British empire. Archival documents amassed for my book, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag, were submitted in support of the case, together with other historical evidence.

As it dragged on, more evidence emerged, this time from the British government. In early2011 it announced the discovery of some 300 boxes of previously undisclosed files in Hanslope Park. As expert witness I reviewed many of these documents, hundreds of which offered additional evidence of colonial-directed coercion and torture. Facing a mountain of damning facts from imperial yesteryear, the British government chose to settle.

Britain's acknowledgement of colonial era torture has opened as many doors at it has closed. Kenya was scarcely an exception. British colonial repression was systematised and honed in the years following the second world war. First in Palestine, and then Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden, Northern Ireland and elsewhere, British coercive counter-insurgency tactics evolved, as did brutal interrogation techniques. The Mau Mau detention camps were but one site in a broader policy of end-of-empire incarceration, torture and cover-up.

In the wake of its announcement, Britain now faces potential claims from across its former empire. From a historical perspective, the government has every reason to be concerned about its legacy. There is unequivocal evidence of colonial brutalities in end-of-empire Malaya, Cyprus and elsewhere. Whether there is enough for successful legal claims is another matter altogether, however.

Lessons from the Mau Mau case in the high court are instructive. History was on trial, as it would be in other cases. As such, the level of historical reconstruction needed was extraordinary, as was the volume of evidence for a successful claim. The case was one that clearly rose and fell on highly detailed levels of historical knowledge and evidence.

The Kikuyu had a team of three historical experts – myself, David Anderson and Huw Bennett. Together, we brought decades of revisionist research to the case, and with it a full range of knowledge necessary for a successful claim. Outside Kenya, no other field has the depth or breadth of revisionist scholarship documenting British colonial violence at the end of empire. In part, this is due to the fact that British colonial authorities destroyed evidence at the time of decolonisation, or withheld other boxes of files for years. Regardless, without revisionist work, other potential cases will be at a disadvantage.

From a historian's perspective, two other factors were also at play. First, the discovery of the Hanslope files added layers of additional evidence crucial to the success of the Mau Mau claims. Some 8,800 files from 36 other colonies were discovered alongside the Kenya documents. However, none of these files, or at least those that the British government has now released to the National Archives, provide the kind of evidence contained in the Kenya documents. Second, the claimants and their historical experts were guided by the sharp legal minds and experience of Leigh Day and the Kenya Human Rights Commission. In effect, this was an exercise where expert, revisionist scholarship and human rights law came together with great effect – another first for the former British empire.

A cynic might say that the British government played its hand as best it could, and with an eye to other cases; that it dragged out proceedings for years so future claimants are now deceased; that its release of potential evidence files at Hanslope has been less than transparent, despite public claims to the contrary. Moreover, the high court's rulings over the past four years have tipped its hand to other potential cases. We now know that the chances of descendants of victims filing successful claims are slim, and the watermark for overcoming the statute of limitations is exceedingly high, as is the amount of historical evidence and expert forensic analysis. None of these factors bodes well for other potential claims.

Ultimately, the Mau Mau case is as symbolic as it is instructive. Regardless of future claims, Britons can no longer hide behind the rhetoric of unequivocal imperial success. Instead, British liberalism in the empire – with its alleged spread of civilisation, progress, liberty and rule of law justifying any coercive actions – has been irreversibly exposed.

Instead of being one-offs, Britain's colonial violence was as systematised as its efforts at cover-up. The British validation of the Mau Mau claims – and its first form of an apology for modern empire – offers its citizens an opportunity to understand more fully the unholy relationship between liberalism and imperialism, and the impacts not only on the elderly Kikuyu, but on themselves.