David Bennett

Social Justice – Social Injustice

In the 1980s, the then Prime Minister famously declared that there is no such thing as society. She encouraged a free-for-all so that people would claw themselves higher. Of course, it came at the expense of ordinary working people who were not very good at clawing.

They didn’t have the advantage of money or power or friends in the right places.

They were simply consigned to the rubbish heap.

How can anyone expect people to care when the society is run by self-seekers? People aren’t stupid – they know when they are being robbed blind.

And the dominance of big business doesn’t help to make anyone feel they are a meaningful member of society.

Yes, it is for each person to bear responsibility for their personal actions and to behave ethically no matter what they see around them – or at least to do so as much as possible.

But responsibility and allegiance are not the same – and people are trying to survive in the cracks left in the framework of a system that doesn’t care about them.

People will put up with a lot when they know that they share the burden with everyone. But when social and economic justice are absent – anyone will question why he or she should owe allegiance to anything.

Why Russia Has Been Bombing ISIS

Russia has a naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. And if the Asad regime goes, so might Russia’s base.

The base is Russia’s only refuelling depot in the Mediterranean. Without it, Russia’s naval vessels would have to refuel and refit on the Black Sea and exit via Turkey, which is of course a member of NATO.

There is of course, Sebastopol – a Russian naval base on the Black Sea. In 2010, Russia and Ukraine ratified a treaty that gave Ukraine access to Russian gas in exchange for an extension of Russia’s lease of the base at Sebastopol through to 2042, with options to extend for further five-year periods beyond that.

Then came the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.

There are differing views of what the Ukrainian revolution was and is about. Is it a country that wants to express its democratic wish to join the West? Is it a country run by gangsters and opportunists banked by Western companies that see opportunities for a new market if Ukraine joins the Western club?

What you think depends on who you read.

Was Russia’s action in annexing Crimea a long-term plan crafted to look like a democratic response to the Ukrainian revolution? Or was it was a reasonable response to a desire by the Russian-population of the Crimea not be dragged away from mother Russia?

Again, what you think depends on who you read.

One thing is clear though and that is that the 2014 Ukrainian revolution put the Russian gas-for-bases treaty at risk. And without Sebastopol, Russia would have to rely on its Black Sea port at Odessa. Sebastapol has a much more equable climate. Odessa is further away from the Mediterranean and it is ice bound in winter.

So putting all this together, Russia is protecting Sebastapol and Tartus. And against that backdrop, and whatever other motivation it might have – its bombing of ISIS is easy to understand.

Lloyds, TSB, and Banco Sabadell

TSB Bank came into being on September 9, 2013 as a result of Lloyds Banking Group splitting off 631 of its branches.

Lloyds was required to split off the branches to fulfil the promise it made during the financial crisis that under EU law qualified it for UK Government aid.

In June, 2015, the Spanish bank, Banco Sabadell was been given approval by the City regulator to take over TSB.

What a strange turn of events.

Personal Freedom And History

In the first episode of Series Five of Homeland, the high-ups in the US Government ask CIA operative Peter Quinn to tell them how their strategy in Syria is going.

He asks them to tell him what their strategy is and he will tell them whether it is working. It is his introduction to tell them they have no strategy, but their enemy has.

They ask for his recommendation and he says to bomb the city of Raqqa to a parking lot. The answer is unacceptable because it is not humane to bomb a city where the enemy is mixed in among the civilian population. That’s TV.

Real Life

In 2011, Obama said that Assad must go. When ISIS came on the scene, Assad suddenly didn’t seem such a bad option, and Kerry has made some ambiguous remarks since. Now Russia is bombing in Syria and Putin claims they are doing a much better job than the US Air Force has done, and it seems to be true.

The US has protested, but I wonder whether they might not just be glad that someone else is bombing Raqqa into a parking lot for them.

Of course, there is another war going on. It is the war of how to describe Islamic fundamentalism and ISIS. Tony Blair says it is a clash of civilisations. I think GW Bush saw it the same way.

The current thinking in the US is probably to treat ISIS as criminals and deny them ideological credibility. Which is the more dangerous strategy? Time will tell.

Personally, I don’t think very much can stand in the way of personal freedom. Once people see it and get a taste for it, they want it. There is no turning the clock back. It is how the USA won the Vietnam War.