Cambridge student gets seven-term ban for poetic protest at Willetts speech

Sentence against PhD student imposed by the university's court of discipline condemned as 'the height of hypocrisy'

• Jeevan Vasagar, education editor
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 March 2012 18.08 GMT

Higher education minister David Willetts was told 'your gods have failed' in the protest at Cambridge University. Photograph: Anna Gordon for the Guardian

A PhD student at Cambridge University has been suspended until the end of 2014 for his role in a protest against the higher education minister, David Willetts.

In a ruling condemned as a travesty by fellow students, the English literature student was suspended for seven terms after reading out a poem that disrupted a speech by the minister.

The student, named by a student newspaper as Owen Holland, read out a poem that included the lines: "You are a man who believes in the market and in the power of competition to drive up quality. But look to the world around you: your gods have failed."

The minister was forced to abandon the speech on the "Idea of a University" last November, as protesters repeated the lines of the poem in response to the student.

The sentence – known as rusticating – was imposed by the university's court of discipline, an independent body presided over by a high court judge.

In response, more than 60 academics and students wrote a "Spartacus" letter to the university admitting to their role in the original protest and demanding that they be charged for the same offence.

Rees Arnott-Davies, a student at Corpus Christi college, who was among the protesters, said: "This is out of all proportion. Two and a half years for an entirely legal and peaceful protest is an absolute travesty and makes me ashamed to study at this university. The idea that you can protect freedom of speech by silencing protest is the height of hypocrisy."

Arnott-Davies said the court had exceeded the punishment requested by the university's legal counsel, which sought a one-term suspension.

A Cambridge University spokesman said: "The university notes the decision of the court of discipline in its proceedings. By statute, the court of discipline is an independent body, which is empowered to adjudicate when a student is charged with an offence against the discipline of the university by the university advocate. The court may impose a range of sentences as defined by the statute."

Beyond Goldman Sachs: the nasty culture

Greg Smith's portrait of Goldman Sachs is shocking, but investment banks treat their clients as poorly as they do their staff

• 
• • Joris Luyendijk
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 March 2012 14.32 GMT

In his resignation letter, Greg Smith described the environment at Goldman Sachs as 'toxic and destructive'. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

The resignation letter on the New York Times opinion page today by Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith is shocking. But dozens of interviews with people working in finance in London over the past months for the banking blog suggest that it's not only Goldman Sachs where clients are treated like "muppets" getting their "eyeballs" ripped out. And it's not only clients that are exploited. Investment banks treat their own employees exactly the same way.

Investment banking breaks roughly into two main areas: the financial markets that Smith was working in, and deal-making such as mergers and acquisitions. This is how a young banker in M&A at a major bank described his experiences:

"There's this idea of bankers, especially in a prestigious sector like M&A, as very sophisticated and civil. But you do hear things like 'We're gonna suck this client dry.' … When we'd discuss a pitch or potential project with the team, nine out of 10 times the first question would be: 'Where's the "fee event"? How can we make money from this?' I mean, I understand banks need to make money, but you can't think of yourself as 'trusted adviser' – the big term in M&A – while at the same time putting your own fee first?"

Or listen to this risk and compliance officer at another major bank:

"I remember in my first few weeks I sat down with one of the structured products guys. He was selling so-called PFI deals, where local authorities buy a complicated financial instrument to pay for, say, a hospital. I asked him: where's the benefit for the local authorities in this? He was aghast. "What are you, a socialist?""

Smith's letter is ultimately about loyalty between a bank and its clients, and the alleged lack thereof at Goldman Sachs. This word "loyalty" comes up in many interviews, but mostly when people describe their relation to their own bank. Here's a head of marketing at a bank in the City: "Anyone here can lose their job at any time. One moment you're working on a project, the next you're hugging and saying, 'Well, bye' because the other has just been made redundant and is being led out of the building by security."

That's right. In most financial firms you can be marched out of the building by security at five minutes' notice. Your email is blocked, as well as your phone and your security pass, and there you are, literally on the pavement as you wait for someone else to collect your personal stuff from your desk. An IT consultant with another bank said: "People just disappear. They're called in, fired and led out. And you don't get info on who has been made redundant."

I could give many more quotes like these. In fact, almost everyone in finance has a redundancy horror story to tell. This banker recently got "the call". Looking back, she said:

"I may have been overly loyal to my dysfunctional family – the bank I worked in. I was making £80,000 a year, not including bonuses – though bonuses were negligible in the last few years. I could have made more, probably, had I done what many do: change jobs every 18 months to two years. Come in, make an impact, and move on … This summer I turned down a pretty awesome job, as I was dedicated to my bank. I am not sure if this is a female thing, to be overly loyal, but it's definitely a mistake I'll never make again."

There is no reason to feel sorry for people in investment banks, and I've met very few, if any, who want our pity. They enter the sector of their own free will, they earn well (though rarely the "telephone number bonuses" you read about) and nobody forces them to stay. But people working in banks are on their own and their employer has zero loyalty to them. One wonders: how realistic is it to expect investment bankers to treat clients any better than they are treated themselves?

Hasya Kavi Sammelan - Sampat Saral

India's patent ruling on cancer may open door for cheaper HIV drugs

It is only the second time a nation has issued a compulsory license for a cancer drug after Thailand did so on four drugs between 2006 and 2008, also on affordability grounds. (Reuters photo)

Reuters | Mar 13, 2012, 08.04PM IST

India's move to strip German drugmaker Bayer of its exclusive rights to a cancer drug has set a precedent that could extend to other treatments, including modern HIV/AIDS drugs, in a major blow to global pharmaceutical firms, experts say.

On Monday, the Indian Patent Office effectively ended Bayer's monopoly for its Nexavar drug and issued its first-ever compulsory license allowing local generic maker Natco Pharma to make and sell the drug cheaply in India.

It is only the second time a nation has issued a compulsory license for a cancer drug after Thailand did so on four drugs between 2006 and 2008, also on affordability grounds. Thailand also issued licenses for HIV/AIDS and heart disease treatments.

"This could well be the first of many compulsory rulings here," said Gopakumar G Nair, head of patent law firm Gopakumar Nair Associates and former president of the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association.

"Global pharmaceutical manufacturers are likely to be worried as a result ... given that the wording in India's Patent Act that had been amended from 'reasonably priced' to 'reasonably affordable priced' has come into play now."

The new wording is seen as a lower threshold for compulsory licenses, which can be issued under world trade rules by nations that deem major life-saving drugs to be too costly. The licenses allow them to authorise the local manufacture or importation of much cheaper, generic versions.

Global drugmakers see emerging markets such as India as key growth opportunities, but remain concerned over intellectual property protection. Nair said HIV-related medicines were likely to be the most at risk by compulsory licenses in the future.

India has one of the world's fastest-growing rates of HIV and heart disease is also the country's biggest killer, but widespread poverty in Asia's third-largest economy makes many non-generic drugs unaffordable for millions.

Currently, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline sell a modern HIV/AIDS drug known as Selzentry through their joint venture firm ViiV Healthcare. The treatment costs more than 60,000 rupees for one month's dosage in India.

Bayer's Nexavar cancer drug costs around $5,500 a month in India, making it "not available to the public at a reasonably affordable price", the patent office ruled. About 40 percent of Indians live below the poverty line, government data shows.

A provision of the Indian Patents Act allows for a compulsory license to be awarded after three years of the grant of patent on drugs that are deemed to be too costly.

MORE TO COME?

Other patent rulings are imminent. A long-running case involving the granting of an Indian patent for Swiss drugmaker Novartis' cancer drug Glivec is expected to be heard in the country's Supreme Court this month.

The case does not involve the issue of compulsory license, but it has also pitted advocates of free trade and intellectual property rights against pro-generics campaigners who say a ruling in favour of Novartis could see other drugs in India priced outside of the reach of most of the population.

"This (Bayer) case might become a trend-setter, wherein generic players can make copies of patented products," said Siddhant Khandekar, analyst at ICICI Direct.

"While global giants might not like this, generic companies will benefit along with common people," he said, adding that the cancer treatment market in India was worth up to 30 billion rupees.

The Bayer case underscores the still fractious relationship between global pharmaceutical firms and India. Companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis are eyeing India and other emerging markets, notably China, as a growth opportunity but worry about property protection in a country that is also a leading source of cheap copycat medicines.

"Big Pharma" has recently struck some alliances with Indian drugmakers to tap into their generics expertise, but these have also not always run smoothly, with Pfizer on Tuesday scrapping a partnership with India's Biocon Ltd.

In cancer treatments, India's Cipla Ltd, which has the second largest share of the local drugs market, may also benefit from the Bayer case. Cipla is fighting a Bayer suit for patent infringement after the Indian drugmaker launched a generic version of Nexavar in India in April 2010.

BAYER CONSIDERS OPTIONS

Natco's finance chief, Baskara Narayana, told Reuters that sales of the generic version of Nexavar, whose chemical name is sorafenib, were expected to be about 250 million to 300 million rupees a year once it is launched.

Bayer, which developed Nexavar with US biotech firm Onyx Pharmaceuticals, said it was evaluating its options.

"We are disappointed by the decision of the Patent Controller in India to grant a compulsory license for Nexavar," Bayer said in a statement.

Tapan Ray, director general of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, an industry group of multi-national drugmakers, said the Bayer ruling was disappointing.

"The solution to helping patients with innovative medicines does not lie in breaking patents or denying patent rights to the innovators," Ray said.

Pfizer has questioned the issue of affordability, saying many Indians are well off and can afford Western medicines.

"There is huge wealth in India," Pfizer CEO Ian Read told Reuters in London on Monday. "There are maybe 100 million people in India who have wealth equivalent to or greater than the average European or American, who don't pay for innovation. So this is going to have to be a discussion at some point."

But groups that campaign for cheap access to drugs in poor countries have welcomed the Bayer ruling.

Medecins Sans Frontieres said the ruling means that new medicines in India that are still under patent, including some of the latest treatments for HIV/AIDS, could potentially have generic versions produced for a fraction of the cost.

"It's a bold move by the government and it's a good judgment ... which will benefit people," said Dara Patel, secretary general of the Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association, an industry body of Indian companies.

"Drugs to treat heart-related diseases and HIV are costly," said Patel. "Compulsory licensing will make them available at one-fourth or one-fifth of the price, which is good."

In praise of Public Sector Banks

Black sheep of finance
By Ellen Brown in Asia Times Online

Once the black sheep of high finance, government owned banks can reassure depositors about the safety of their savings and can help maintain a focus on productive investment in a world in which effective financial regulation remains more of an aspiration than a reality. - Centre for Economic Policy Research, VoxEU.org (January 2010). [1]

Public sector banking is a concept that is relatively unknown in the United States. Only one state - North Dakota - owns its own bank. North Dakota is also the only state to escape the credit crisis of 2008, sporting a budget surplus every year since; but skeptics write this off to coincidence or other factors.

The common perception is that government bureaucrats are bad businessmen. To determine whether government-owned banks are assets or liabilities, then, we need to look farther afield.

When we remove our myopic US blinders, it turns out that globally, not only are publicly owned banks quite common but that countries with strong public banking sectors generally have strong, stable economies.

According to an Inter-American Development Bank paper presented in 2005, the percentage of state ownership in the banking industry globally by the mid-nineties was over 40%. [2] The BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - contain nearly three billion of the world’s seven billion people, or 40% of the global population. The BRICs all make heavy use of public sector banks, which compose about 75% of the banks in India, 69% or more in China, 45% in Brazil, and 60% in Russia.

The BRICs have been the main locus of world economic growth in the last decade. China Daily reports, "Between 2000 and 2010, BRIC's GDP grew by an incredible 92.7%, compared to a global GDP growth of just 32%, with industrialized economies having a very modest 15.5%."

All the leading banks in the BRIC half of the globe are state-owned. [3] In fact the largest banks globally are state-owned, including:

The two largest banks by market capitalization (ICBC and China Construction Bank); The largest bank by deposits (Japan Post Bank); The largest bank by assets (Royal Bank of Scotland, now nationalized); The world's largest development bank (BNDES in Brazil). [4] A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the rest of the world in the last few years. [5] According to Professor Kurt von Mettenheim of the Sao Paulo Business School of Brazil: Government banks provided counter cyclical credit and policy options to counter the effects of the recent financial crisis, while realizing competitive advantage over private and foreign banks. Greater client confidence and official deposits reinforced liability base and lending capacity. The credit policies of BRIC government banks help explain why these countries experienced shorter and milder economic downturns during 2007-2008. [6] Surprising findings In a 2010 research paper summarized on VoxEU.org, economists Svetlana Andrianova, et al, wrote that the post-2008 nationalization of a number of very large banks, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, "offers an opportune moment to reduce the political power of bankers and to carry out much needed financial reforms." [7] But "there are concerns that governments may be unable to run nationalized banks efficiently." Not to worry, say the authors: Follow-on research we have carried out (Andrianova et al, 2009) ... shows that government ownership of banks has, if anything, been robustly associated with higher long run growth rates. Using data from a large number of countries for 1995-2007, we find that, other things equal, countries with high degrees of government ownership of banking have grown faster than countries with little government ownership of banks. We show that this finding is robust to a battery of econometric tests. Expanding on this theme in their research paper, the authors write: While many countries in continental Europe, including Germany and France, have had a fair amount of experience with government-owned banks, the UK and the USA have found themselves in unfamiliar territory. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that there is deeply ingrained hostility in these countries towards the notion that governments can run banks effectively. ... Hostility towards government-owned banks reflects the hypothesis ... that these banks are established by politicians who use them to shore up their power by instructing them to lend to political supporters and government-owned enterprises. In return, politicians receive votes and other favours. This hypothesis also postulates that politically motivated banks make bad lending decisions, resulting in non-performing loans, financial fragility and slower growth. But that is not what the data of these researchers showed: [W]e have found that ... countries with government-owned banks have, on average, grown faster than countries with no or little government ownership of banks. ... This is, of course, a surprising result, especially in light of the widespread belief - typically supported by anecdotal evidence - that " ... bureaucrats are generally bad bankers" ... What accounts for their surprising findings? The authors provide a novel explanation: We suggest that politicians may actually prefer banks not to be in the public sector. ... Conditions of weak corporate governance in banks provide fertile ground for quick enrichment for both bankers and politicians - at the expense ultimately of the taxpayer. In such circumstances politicians can offer bankers a system of weak regulation in exchange for party political contributions, positions on the boards of banks or lucrative consultancies. Activities that are more likely to provide both sides with quick returns are the more speculative ones, especially if they are sufficiently opaque as not to be well understood by the shareholders such as complex derivatives trading. Government-owned banks, on the other hand, have less freedom to engage in speculative strategies that result in quick enrichment for bank insiders and politicians. Moreover, politicians tend to be held accountable for wrongdoings or bad management in the public sector but are typically only indirectly blamed, if at all, for the misdemeanors of private banks. It is the shareholders who are expected to prevent these but lack of transparency and weak governance stops them from doing so in practice. On the other hand, when it comes to banks that are in the public sector, democratic accountability of politicians is more likely to discourage them from engaging in speculation. In such banks, top managers are more likely to be compelled to focus on the more mundane job of financing real businesses and economic growth. The BRICs as a global power Focusing on the financing of real businesses and economic growth seems to be the secret of the BRICs, which are leading the world in economic development today. But the BRIC phenomenon is more than just a growth trend identified by an economist. It is now an international organization, an alliance of countries representing the common interests and goals of its members. The first BRIC meeting, held in 2008, was called a triumph for Russian leader Vladimir Putin's policy of promoting multilateral arrangements that would challenge the United States' concept of a unipolar world. [8] The BRIC countries had their first official summit and became a formal organization in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009. They met in Brazil in 2010 and in China in 2011, and they will meet in India in 2012. In 2010, at China's invitation, South Africa joined the group, making it "BRICS" and adding a strategic presence on the African continent. The BRICS seek more voice in the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. They are even discussing their own multicultural bank to fund projects within their own nations, in direct competition with the IMF. They oppose the dollar as global reserve currency. After the Yekaterinburg summit, they called for a new global reserve currency, one that was diversified, stable and predictable; and they have the clout to get it. [9] According to Liam Halligan, writing in The UK's Telegraph: The BRICs account for ... around three-quarters of total currency reserves. They have few serious fiscal issues and all are net external creditors. [10] Western financial interests have long fought to maintain the dollar as global reserve currency, but they are losing that battle, despite economic and military coercion. Russia, China and India are now nuclear powers. The BRICS will have to be negotiated with, and the first step to forming a working relationship is to understand how their economies work.

Three stages of Jihad

The dirty war on WikiLeaks

Media smears suggest Swedish complicity in a Washington-driven push to punish Julian Assange

• 
• • John Pilger
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 March 2012 21.00 GMT

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, arriving for an extradition hearing at the high court in London on 2 November 2011. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

War by media, says current military doctrine, is as important as the battlefield. This is because the real enemy is the public at home, whose manipulation and deception is essential for starting an unpopular colonial war. Like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, attacks on Iran and Syria require a steady drip-effect on readers' and viewers' consciousness. This is the essence of a propaganda that rarely speaks its name.

To the chagrin of many in authority and the media, WikiLeaks has torn down the facade behind which rapacious western power and journalism collude. This was an enduring taboo; the BBC could claim impartiality and expect people to believe it. Today, war by media is increasingly understood by the public, as is the trial by media of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange.

Assange will soon know if the supreme court in London is to allow his appeal against extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual misconduct, most of which were dismissed by a senior prosecutor in Stockholm. On bail for 16 months, tagged and effectively under house arrest, he has been charged with nothing. His "crime" has been an epic form of investigative journalism: revealing to millions of people the lies and machinations of their politicians and officials and the barbarism of criminal war conducted in their name.

For this, as the American historian William Blum points out, "dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for [his] execution or assassination". If he is passed from Sweden to the US, an orange jumpsuit, shackles and a fabricated indictment await him. And there go all who dare challenge rogue America.

In Britain, Assange's trial by media has been a campaign of character assassination, often cowardly and inhuman, reeking of jealousy of the courageous outsider, while books of perfidious hearsay have been published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or resuscitated on the assumption that he is too poor to sue. In Sweden this trial by media has become, according to one observer there, "a full-on mobbing campaign with the victim denied a voice". For more than 18 months, the salacious Expressen, Sweden's equivalent of the Sun, has been fed the ingredients of a smear by Stockholm police.

Expressen is the megaphone of the Swedish right, including the Conservative party, which dominates the governing coalition. Its latest "scoop" is an unsubstantiated story about "the great WikiLeaks war against Sweden". On 6 March Expressen claimed, with no evidence, that WikiLeaks was running a conspiracy against Sweden and its foreign minister Carl Bildt. The political pique is understandable. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as sham. (Cable title: "Sweden puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History.") Another US diplomatic cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with Nato] is not widely known", and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism".

Swedish foreign policy is largely controlled by Bildt, whose obeisance to the US goes back to his defence of the Vietnam war and includes his leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He retains close ties to Republican party extreme rightwing figures such as the disgraced Bush spin doctor, Karl Rove. It is known that his government has "informally" discussed Assange's future with Washington, which has made its position clear. A secret Pentagon document describes US intelligence plans to destroy WikiLeaks' "centre of gravity" with "threats of exposure [and] criminal prosecution".

In much of the Swedish media, proper journalistic scepticism about the allegations against Assange is overwhelmed by a defensive jingoism, as if the nation's honour is defiled by revelations about dodgy coppers and politicians, a universal breed. On Swedish public TV "experts" debate not the country's deepening militarist state and its service to Nato and Washington, but the state of Assange's mind and his "paranoia". A headline in Tuesday's Aftonbladet declared: "Assange's moral collapse". The article suggests Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks' alleged source, may not be sane, and attacks Assange for not protecting Manning from himself. What was not mentioned was that the source was anonymous, that no connection has been demonstrated between Assange and Manning, and that Aftonbladet, WikiLeaks' Swedish partner, had published the same leaks undeterred.

Ironically, this circus has performed under cover of some of the world's most enlightened laws protecting journalists, which attracted Assange to Sweden in 2010 to establish a base for WikiLeaks. Should his extradition be allowed, and with Damocles swords of malice and a vengeful Washington hanging over his head, who will protect him and provide the justice to which we all have a right?