Thought Economics

The Role of Addictions in Human Culture

2012-01-31T08:53:00.006Z

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Professor Griffith Edwards, CBE (A world expert in alcohol and drug addiction) who founded the National Addiction Centre, served as Editor in Chief of the Addiction journal and is Professor Emeritus of Addiction Behaviour at Kings College London. We discuss the role of drugs in society, and examine the social, economic and political implications of drugs use for the future of our world.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, January 2012

In hypothetical-land, global corporations and criminal organisations used (often subversive) techniques to hook individuals onto dangerous substances which would alter their minds and bodies, often killing them. Together, these organisations (conservatively) generated over USD 2 trillion in revenues and were (again, conservatively) linked to the deaths of almost 9 million people every single year (of which 8.5 million deaths were caused by the legally sanctioned products of corporations).

The above paragraph is not science fiction, but a reflection on part of the global market for addiction. The 'corporations' in our tale refer to the tobacco and alcohol companies, while the 'criminal organisations' refer to the estimated supply participants in the global market for illicit drugs.

In their 2000 book, "A Critique of Nicotine Addiction", Reuven Dar and Hanan Frenk note that, "... many psychoactive drugs have been used by humans for hundreds and even thousands of years, the term drug addiction was a creation of the twentieth century. Originally the word ‘addiction’ (from the Latin source, addicere) was used for a strong inclination towards any kind of conduct, good or bad. Only towards the end of the nineteenth century did ‘addiction’ begin to be used to describe a preoccupation with drugs, but it still did not have the connotations that the term would receive later. Thus, when the German physician Levinstein wrote the first detailed description of opium addiction in 1877, he still saw addiction as a human passion, such as smoking, gambling, greediness for profit, sexual excesses, etc. This may be related to the fact that opium and its derivatives, the opiates (e.g., heroin, morphine, and codeine), were openly and legally used in the USA until the beginning of the twentieth century and were considered by many less offensive than cigarette smoking. The observation that opium caused less health damage than alcohol even led physicians in the USA to prescribe opium and morphine for alcoholics as a substitute for alcohol. Thus, until the end of the 19th century, 'most physicians regarded addiction as a morbid appetite, a habit, or a vice .' In fact, caffeine drew nearly as much concern as the opiates during that period. The twentieth century gave the word ‘addiction’ a new meaning, that of an uncontrollable disease..."

That 'disease' (which the World Health Organisation refer to as 'dependence') is characterised by, "...the state of needing or depending on something or someone for support or to function or survive...." and presents as, "...a cluster of cognitive, behavioural and physiologic symptoms that indicate a person has impaired control of psychoactive substance use and continues use of the substance despite adverse consequences..."

The adverse consequences to which that rhetoric refers are not limited to the individual who is dependent, but create negative effects for their immediate families and wider society. Each year, tens of thousands are killed and hundreds of thousands subjected to violence and inhumane conditions in the licit and illicit supply chains for these substances. For the communities their users inhabit, the situation is different- albeit hardly an improvement. Edward M. Brecher (in his 1972 Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs) noted that "...Alcohol is by a wide margin the biggest law-enforcement problem in the United States today..." The economic impacts are no less staggering, with addictions. Alcohol alone is estimated to have cost the global economy up-to USD 665billion in 2002 alone. So why have addictions become such a big part of human culture?

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Professor Griffith Edwards, CBE (A world expert in alcohol and drug addiction) who founded the National Addiction Centre, served as Editor in Chief of the Addiction journal and is Professor Emeritus of Addiction Behaviour at Kings College London. We discuss the role of drugs in society, and examine the social, economic and political implications of drugs use for the future of our world.

Griffith Edwards, CBE was born in India, and received his M.D. from Oxford University. He has spent his life focussing on the study and treatment of alcohol and other drug dependencies and has advised governments around the world in these areas. He was Director of the Medical Research Council's Addiction Research Unit from 1968 till his retirement. He also established the UK National Addiction Centre in London, and served as Editor in Chief of the journal "Addiction". He wrote the original description of alcohol dependence and the terminology of dependence has become the global term adopted in international disease classification systems including the DSM and ICD classifications. Edwards has published a wide range of original scientific studies on alcohol and other drugs and has also written several well-respected books on the subject including Alcohol, The World's Favourite Drug, Matters Of Substance: Drugs, and Why Everyone is a User.

Q: Why do we use drugs?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] There are as many answers as you can think of... and one more. We don't use drugs for one reason, it's a mix. What's special about it as a science subject is that it is so awkward, it doesn't lend itself to easy solutions. It's a multi-factorial problem, very different to- for example- the question of what causes influenza?

In terms of what drugs do to our bodies and how we get addicted... Different drugs are all unique in their action. It's a family of disorders, with families of very different drugs. How we get addicted is actually rather simple, it's the fact that we're exposed to drugs! You can't get addicted to drugs unless you're exposed to them. You have to be exposed in situation where you can determine the dose. If you take the drug long enough and in a high-enough dose... most drugs which are addictive, will give you withdrawal symptom... making you feel rotten, and giving you another reason to take more (albeit this is at a later stage).

Q: What is the relationship between drugs (and their usage) with human culture?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] There's a litter of clichés in this regard. What is obvious is that the first reason people use drugs is that they're there. You can't use drugs unless they're there, and they're cheap for your pocket or for the fruits of your stealing! For that reason, we need to get a deeper understanding of the fundamental question of why drugs are available on our streets.

In the country as well as towns now, drugs are very available and reasonably cheap. Economics comes in as a big deterrent. Concern with the economic and legal aspects of drug use, in the last twenty years of the science, has largely replaced the anthropological questions which is perhaps a pity....

The next person I see with a heroin problem will probably be working class. They will probably have gone to the sort of school which is itself tragedy, and will have come from a family environment, such as a run-down council estate, which is a sink-hole. There's a very strong relationship between depravation and drug use in many western cultures. It's not the sole reason- you do get the rich and mega-privileged using drugs... You can't go shouting from the rooftops that it's all about depravation... a lot of it is... but there are other social factors, personal factors, genetic factors and economic factors - all mixed into the pot.

I went to Jamaica for research, and found that the Rastafarians had a deep symbolic valuation of cannabis. They know some people get very nasty symptoms from cannabis and they will tell them not to use it... and they won't! The Rastafarian culture is a strong one. If I go to Thailand, to the northern areas, there are people in villages growing heroin instead of cucumbers but they have strong rules against using it themselves. If someone is found using heroin they will be seen as a social pariah and nobody will want to marry them.

There was some fascinating research in Judaism which showed that as an individual moved from being orthodox, to conservative and eventually liberal.. there was a steep rise in the prevalence of drug use and drunkenness in society. It's not because the Jewish faith, at an orthodox level, derides drugs or drinking- but more that it derides letting yourself down publically.

Q: Why are tobacco and alcohol treated differently to other addictive substances?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] When I first became interested in this field, it was understood that smokers smoked because they enjoyed holding a cigarette in their hand, and it was a social habit- and wasn't an addiction. It's only in the last thirty years, that we've had overwhelming evidence that it is the nicotine which hooks you. It is fortunate that there is a readily available substitute for the smoker which are nicotine patches and so forth. You have in that, a very safe substitute available which also forms a substantive treatment. Strange to say, with alcohol there is no safe substitute drug. If you start giving valium as a substitute drug, you will very soon get a person hooked on that [valium] instead. For that reason, psychologists have a big role to play in treatment- and the advance of psychology as a clinical subject has, in my opinion, been led by alcohol problems.

Q: Do you think caffeine is an addictive substance?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I think that is the case. Far more often than people realise, caffeine does produce anxiety, headaches and so on. It's not a harmless drug, but doesn't kill people with the frequency of heroin for example.

Within my lifetime the science of addiction and the awareness of its dangers has advanced significantly. The evidence is that 50% of young heroin users who are under 19 will die by the age of 50. It's a terrible danger. People with alcohol problems have got a full 400% increase in expectation of death, than people without alcohol problems.... and so on. Advances in epidemiology have been very important too- to help us find cases, do long-term follow-up studies.

Q: Why are drugs are considered a taboo or unacceptable?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] The idea of the cycle of harm was only really established around 1880. In 19th century England, there was no law against opium use until something like the 1890's. It was freely available, people didn't talk about addiction but rather about "bad use of opium" (prevalent in mill towns). Mothers used to dope their babies, mills gave a reward of opium dissolved in alcohol.... People in the Fenlands, when Malaria was common, used to control the symptoms using opium.... Charles Dickens used to use it extensively! It wasn't always banned!

Alcohol attracted legal concerns far before what we now call 'illicit drugs'. Alcohol has a long-history of involvement in the western world. In the Christian church, you can find books of penances which are very interesting in historical record. In these records you can find what punishment was accepted for what rank of person, and for what sort of drunkenness. Bishops had the hardest time... They would have to leave as soon as it was darkness if they started getting drunk. A village priest would simply have to say a number of "Ave Marias". In Germany, they used to cut off the ears of drunkards.... In some areas of South America, they would kill anyone who was publically drunk. As you can see, there were extreme efforts to control it....

Q: In the developed world, what are the social, political and economic outcomes of drug use for society?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I think, if I had grown up in a grim council-estate... with not got much going for me... without good school exam results... I might, even as underprivileged as I am, get into work... find some way forward and have a happy, productive and social life. But then, if I started using heroin... I would not keep any job for long, and then would have to steal to pay for my heroin. I think it's a fact that one of the troubles we have is that there isn't really much in the way of culture. People may 'hang out' together, but they don't share values, loyalty and so on. There is a void of culture. I don't think culture itself will protect someone, but the fact that it's OK to use drugs is bad news. In the developed world, the problems of drug-use are predominantly, therefore, social and economic- it's hard to attribute them to being purely cultural.

If we look at richer parts of society. You see that there is still a prevalence of drug-use, but it doesn't occur as frequently as other groups. If you've got yourself a good O-Level, you will probably want a good A-Level, and you'll find that at university, a lot of students may smoke cannabis, but you won't find many shooting heroin.

There was some very good research from Liverpool looking at different towns around the Wirral peninsula. There was a straight line relationship between indicators of depravation and prevalence of heroin use. In the poorest areas, 10% of people by the age of 20 used heroin. In the wealthy areas and affluent suburbs, by the age of 20, 0 - 0.001% of people use heroin.

Q: How do you see addictions impacting the developing world?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] The biggest problem affecting the developing world is alcohol. I once undertook some research in Zambia with the World Health Organisation. We wanted to see how an emerging culture dealt with drinking problems. At the time, drink was only available when it was brewed by the village women. It was a thick, stodgy pudding-like beer which was drunk by the men sitting under a banyan tree. It could only be drunk by men of good standing - and supplies were soon gone. It was very ritualised, very ceremonial. We went back a few years later, when beer-halls were opening- and they didn't even have time to put labels on the beer bottles because they had to produce them so quick. People were falling into the road drunk, there were many frightful car smashes, increases in violence and knives drawn. The rules of culture can even change with socioeconomic development in these parts of the world. What then really hit me was the actions of the international drinks industry, who exploit what they describe as these "emerging markets".

Q: How do drug economies impact the third world?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I once went on a mission to Bolivia, where I sent by an English Foreign Minister who had been out there and was appalled by the site of children who were chewing their fingers off under the influence of cocaine. The government wanted someone to go out and tell them where to send the money to show their sympathy.

When I got there, I sat around with some lovely people in a very distant village in the jungle and got them to talk about their experiences. I don't like reading books and journals, but I do like listening to people! These people told me that when cocoa leaves come down from the mountain, schools close and schoolteachers take time off to help prepare these leaves for processing. They will get paid as much for a nights work doing this, as a month of work in school. Economics determine outcomes in these (and many other) societies. It's clear that to do well in this trade, you want to have more than the villages to sell your cocaine- so you export it.

In Afghanistan, you have no computer industry, no real industry... you have poor farmers. If these farmers can grow opium, they will. We can get understandably worried about it, these pose very real dangers for the rich world.

Q: Do you think drug economies have any impact on global security?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] They talk about it as 'narco-terrorism'. Certainly in Latin America and Mexico, you see it manifesting as terrorism or, at the very least, anti-state movements on a large scale. You also, in this regard, see a huge amount of violence from gang wars. We recently had a governmental conference on this topic in London, and noted that a lot of the terrorism aimed at us in this sense was due to the perception these individuals have that the western world simply does not care about them.

Q: What do you see as the future of drug-use?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I have learned that when people ask me to predict the future, I tend not to answer..... I simply can't do it! History teaches this....

In the United States, during the 1880's towards 1912... there was a very serious problem with morphine and cocaine. Why? because clever chemists in Germany had pulled opium out of the poppy as a pure and dangerous chemical. They then did the same for cocaine and doctors, who were after a reasonably fast buck, were using these drugs promiscuously as cure-alls. They were prescribing opium as a hay fever remedy! I could not have predicted in 1820 that this would happen.

I think I can only ever have a five-year perspective on what I'm dealing with. In this sense, I think a lot of what the future holds will be influenced by changes in society. Will it be more equal? Will we have different personal values? Will we be more supportive to individuals? I think drug use may considerably reduce if these conditions are met.

Meanwhile... for policy-makers, research shows that if you price alcohol or cigarettes higher, less people will use them and less will be harmed. Whereas... civil remedies such as education simply doesn't work at all. This is something which science has repeatedly shown, in very good quality research from many different countries, specifically that alcohol is price elastic. By setting a minimum price for alcohol, you could save the national health service millions every year. With drugs, I don't think it's at all easy to do research on pricing. Prices vary so much from case to case and week to week.

There are also questions for evolutionary science to understand in this regard. We are still in the process of social evolution. Even the very idea of what a family is has changed dramatically from Victorian times. The idea of love is very different. Sexual revolutions also have an impact on human culture. Society is in flux... it is changing.

Q: How do you think drugs are currently handled by the criminal justice system?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I have seen some very fine research done on this topic. Drugs are, for the state, a convenient enemy. So far as I can understand in a science policy context, if you were to legalise all drugs- I would expect the industry to become heavily commercialised, heavily promoted, branded and advertised. In a free-market world, if you legalise a subject, you can't half legalise it... You will find today that people have already patented the names of potential brands of drugs against the happy day when drugs are legalised!

I think you have got to keep measure of control for the more dangerous sorts of drugs, but I think drug-laws in general are radically in need of overhaul.

It's a bit of a false-dawn to think that we'll see a day when all drugs will be freely available and the world will be a better place.

Q: What do you see as the most effective treatment and care modalities for addictions?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] The history of treatment is fascinating. Right up till the 1850's and 60's in the United States, there was no strong treatment movement anywhere. This meant setting up asylums! In Britain, we did the same and there was a cry for "...more asylums for more drugs!" You even found lovely little nursing homes in the country with a little piano maybe and other activities for middle-class persons with addictions. Even primitive research showed these approaches were useless. This strategy centred on shutting people out of society for a long time. There is even medical research which shows evidence of brain surgery done on alcoholics and drug-addicts, along with promiscuous use of electric-shock therapy.

The humanising influence was alcoholics anonymous. It's about people themselves discovering what can be done about their problems. It's about people getting together, showing each other humanity. I've been privileged to attend some AA meetings now and again. What is so lovely is the laughter- they are very funny! There are so many stories, so much encouragement. It's astonishing what AA can do, and it leads on to asking what psychiatry and psychiatry really are.... It's not about giving things to people, but enabling them to do things for themselves.

We are going through a radical change in the understanding of treatment.

Q: What can be done at the prevention stage?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] Education doesn't work in this regard. There is very good research to show that education, however expensive, doesn't work.... It's therefore the favoured remedy proposed by the drinks industry who put millions every year into promoting education as a solution. I don't want to demonise this industry, but it's not a credible solution.

Ultimately, when you look at prevention, the key is to keep drugs as far from society as possible. This means trying to keep the prices up!

Q: What are your views on the attitude of national and international policy-makers toward drugs use?

[Prof. Griffith Edwards] I think that many of the people involved do. There is a wonderful man of Iranian origin who has worked in this field for many years, Hamid Ghodse. Just before the terrible attacks on New York, he was negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan. They came back and said they wanted to present him with a scroll to say that they had agreed to ban opium in perpetuity. He has travelled the world and has an acute understanding of the issues and WH0 has an important role.

While such individuals can do great work, it's important to remember that can't have inflated expectations about what a government or even a UN agency can do. The need for more political awareness is real. It's very important to foster the relationship, in this regard, between science and policy. It's a long-haul.

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Understanding addiction reveals one of the great hypocrisies of the current iteration of society. Specifically the cultural context which defines what is and isn't a drug, and the social context which defines whether that drug is good or bad.

There is little to suggest that either alcohol or tobacco (two largely domesticated drugs) are any less harmful than their illicit counterparts. The overwhelming majority of users know the dangers these substances cause, but as they are culturally accepted and socially contextualised, it's close to impossible to change behaviours towards them. To put it another way, they are not seen as a problem.

David E. Schoen in his 2009 book, 'The War of the Gods in Addiction' wrote, "...If everything is an addiction, then nothing is an addiction, and the term becomes so overused, generalized and watered down it becomes meaningless and of no use in a clinical sense to help describe and understand that phenomenon..." he continues, "...my definition of psychological addiction has two key components. First, the addictive substance, activity, or behaviour must ultimately take over complete and total control of the individual, psychologically. That is, it must take over control of normal ego functioning... And the second part of this definition is crucial: the addiction takes over control in an inherently destructive and ultimately life threatening way. It is not an addiction unless it is a death sentence..."

Even using this very clear definition, it is hard for us to deny that many 'accepted' human behaviours can be seen as addictions. Capitalism and the pursuit of profit, our engagement with brands and celebrity, our relationship with food, technology and so many more aspects of human life can "take over complete and total control of the individual" and can often become "destructive and life threatening.."; we need only to see the levels of poverty and inequality around the world to understand the negative impact of our pursuit of wealth... we need only to see rates of eating disorders to understand the destructive impact of addictions to food, or addictions to the pursuit of self image... the list goes on. Some would even argue that many of our world's policy makers and political institutions are addicted to conflict. The story isn't all negative. From arts to science and most every discipline of human endeavour, our greatest achievements have come from individuals and groups for whom their passion was an addiction.

Perhaps it is more accurate, therefore, to state that our species has the habit of becoming addicted. To understand that as a characteristic rather than a disease may change our attitudes and ultimately help us to become more human.

We are all addicts, it's what makes us who we are.

The Internet

2011-12-05T12:35:00.006Z

In this exclusive interview we talk to Dr. Vint Cerf (Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet"). We discuss the growth of the Internet, together with its role in human culture and society. We then look at the state of the Internet now, and what to expect from the future of this profoundly important technology.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, December 2011

There are many reasons for the astonishing success of our species, but our ability to co-operate is surely one of the most profound. The phenomenon of co-operation is, itself, the manifestation of a gamut of intellectual-technologies (which Nicholas Carr, in his 2011 book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" describes as being those we use to think with, to find information, gather information, exchange information and so forth). “Intellectual technologies…” explains Carr, “...have the greatest and most lasting power over what and how we think. They are our most intimate tools, the ones we use for self-expression, for shaping personal and public identity, and for cultivating relations with others…”

For the majority of human history, such technologies (language, writing and so on) were contained within a small group of the population comprised of the political and social elite, religious figures, scientists, philosophers to name a few. Things remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years but “The last century…” observed Lewis Mumford (in his 1966 essay, ‘Knowledge Among Men’) “… has witnessed a radical transformation in the entire human environment, largely as a result of the impact of the mathematical and physical sciences upon technology… In terms of the currently accepted picture of the relation of man to technics, our age is passing from the primeval state of man, marked by his invention of tools and weapons for the purpose of achieving mastery over the forces of nature, to a radically different condition, in which he will not only have conquered nature but detached himself completely from the organic habitat.”

The past half-century has been an astounding period of cognitive enlightenment where innovation after innovation added new dimensions to the human experience (across all social and intellectual dimensions). Of these innovations, it has been the technologies of mass-communication that have been the most dramatic in their influence. Carr quotes from Marshall McLuhan’s seminal work ‘Understanding Media’ describing how these advances, “…were breaking the tyranny of text over our thoughts and senses. Our isolated fragmented selves, locked for centuries in the private reading of printed pages, were becoming whole again, merging into the global equivalent of a tribal village. We were approaching the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society.” These technologies of mass-communication have unified with the Internet- an anarchic network of interconnected devices which now links over 2.1billion people (30% of the world population) . Carr describes how the Internet is ‘subsuming’ most of our other intellectual technologies, “…it’s becoming our typewriter and our printing press, our map and our clock, our calculator and our telephone, our post office and our library, our radio and our TV.” Even the very essence of ‘who’ we are is changing.

“… Electronic systems change not only what we know, but how we know it (Posner, 1990). With the steady expansion of cyberspace, the Enlightenment notion of the human subject-unified, consistent, and non-contradictory-is being increasingly replaced by ‘Netizens’, who may occupy numerous, even contradictory social positions and inhabit multiple, overlapping communities simultaneously. Foucault (1986, 22) put it well: ‘We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed…’” (‘Counterhegemonic Discourses and the Internet’, Barney Warf and John Grime, 1997). So what will be the impact of the Internet on our civilisation?

In this exclusive interview we talk to Dr. Vint Cerf (Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet"). We discuss the growth of the Internet, together with its role in human culture and society. We then look at the state of the Internet now, and what to expect from the future of this profoundly important technology.

Vinton G. Cerf has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google since October 2005 and was previously senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.

Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet (During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies). In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens. In April 2008, Cerf and Kahn received the prestigious Japan Prize.

Vint Cerf served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000-2007. Cerf also served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Excellence in Education, the Broadband for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Corporation, StopBadWare, the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel governing board (2009-2011) and the Intaba Institute (for the Deaf). He serves on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director's Advisory Committee and is a distinguished visiting scientist (it is in this latter role where he is working on the design of an interplanetary Internet) and serves as Chair of the Visitors Committee on Advanced Technology of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also serves as 1st Vice President and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation.

Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award , the Rotary Club International Paul P. Harris Medal, the Joseph Priestley Award from Dickinson College, the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld / Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal.

Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006. He was made an Eminent Member of the IEEE Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) honor society of the IEEE in 2009. In February 2011 he was named a Stanford Engineering School "Hero" for his work on the Internet.

Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA. He also holds honorary Doctorate degrees from twenty internationally respected universities.

Q: ‘What’ is the Internet and why did it grow so fast?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] The 'Internet' arose in response to a problem the defence department was trying to solve. We were looking at the possibility of using computers for command and control and the theory was that if you could use a programmed computer, or a collection of computers, to manage military resources- you may enable a smaller force to overcome a bigger one (the force multiplier). The first experiment was called the 'ARPANET'. This was a packet switching experiment. The second experiment was called 'The Internetting' project, started by Bob Kahn when he was the American Defence Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA). That project basically said, "...If I can put computers in places that the military uses they'll have to work in aircraft, ships at sea, mobile devices, mobile vehicles as well as fixed land installations...." This meant you had to use satellite and radio technology in addition to fixed circuits to build the networks- and then find some way to interconnect them so the computers on any one of the networks could communicate with any other. That was the TCP/IP design, which was originally done in 1973, published in 1974 and elaborated over a period of several years- finally being implemented operationally January 1st 1983.

The reason the Internet grew so quickly is that it happened to come at a time when workstations were becoming increasingly popular. Ethernets had been around since 1973 and were also very widely available. The research community was enthusiastic about having computer resources closer to the users as opposed to the big time-shared mainframes of the day. During this same period of time, specifications for the TCP/IP protocols were widely and openly available without any intellectual property restrictions on their use. They gained a great deal credibility… because they worked! (Compared to the OSI initiative which was mainly paper, and even though it was initiated by the international standards organisation and apparently endorsed by a large number of countries including the US, it simply did not have the experience in the field). During that period of time from '83 onward, especially after '88- we saw serious commercialisation. We saw routers commercialised around 1986- by Cisco systems and their peers- which made them highly accessible and useful to not only the academic community, but also the private sector. Networking services, which had the province of governments primarily, became commercially accessible- at least in the US- around 1989. That unleashed a substantial demand because people were very interested in using computers for all kinds of things!

There are two things to observe. Firstly, the rate at which the Internet grew... the numbers of computers, users and pieces of equipment on the system doubled every year starting in 1988 for quite a while. Secondly, In 1991 or so, Tim Berners Lee released his "World Wide Web" design which sat on top of the internet and made it even more useful. This became commercially visible in the form of Netscape Communications in around 1994 and as soon as that company went public- the 'dot boom' was triggered, and everybody wanted to invest in the Internet. Fast-forward to April 2000, and this all fell apart- investments were made without sensible business models. People were throwing money around hoping to have another big success like Netscape Communications.... The 'dot bust' happened, which persisted for around five years, but even during that period of time- the Internet continued to grow. Perhaps not doubling every year, but certainly increasing at least 40% per year- as there was still a latent demand for that capability.

Q: How has the Internet changed our relationship with information?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] Humans have always had a relationship with information, and it's always been important to our society and culture. Even if you were a cave man, if you didn't know that a sabre-toothed tiger was dangerous you wouldn't live long enough to affect the gene pool! ...Knowledge was always important, it just got more and more important as society developed. The internet is simply the latest in a series of information sharing capabilities which started with writing and came through major milestones like the Gutenberg press and other mass-media like newspapers, television, radio and so on. It has the interesting property that it permits interactive use, whereas most mass-media mechanisms are one-way through publishing, broadcast television, radio and so on. Internet, on the other hand, allows for two-way and group interaction.

The Internet created an avenue for group communication that hadn't existed before. We could see it very early. Not long after ARPANET's 'email' was invented in around 1971-72, we started to see distribution lists emerge which had very clear social elements to them. In addition to being used for project management and sharing of technical information, they were also used for comments on science fiction stories, observations about restaurants and so on. It was very clear there was a social-element to even very early email! This was expanded over time until we now have these very elaborate systems we label 'social networking’. These ideas have, though, been around for quite a long time. Online chatting, for example, was quite readily in-use way back in the early 1970's. You could meet someone in a time-sharing system somewhere and type at each other, or a group could be typing- and everyone in the group could see. Many of the ideas that people think are 'brand new' to the internet are actually old, but have been incarnated at higher speeds and in different modalities such as audio, video and so on.

Q: What has been the impact of the Internet on the world's economic and political landscape?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] It's plain that politics is all about communication- so we've seen huge amplifying effects that the Internet and web permit. The Arab Spring is a fairly dramatic example of that, but the Obama campaign during 2008 also demonstrated how strongly one could use the Internet and related technologies in order to organise people. Alongside that immediate and obvious observation, but perhaps even more importantly from the standpoint of human progress, the exchange of scientific and technical information has been dramatically improved by having the ability to share data in substantial quantities and to analyse it. Certainly, Google's efforts to scan books and supply technical information through Google Scholar are just two small examples of the ways that information sharing has been possible. The World Wide Web, with all of its pages, blogs and so on- has allowed human expression in ways that would have been uneconomic and out of reach before. The most dramatic effect has been this ability for almost anyone to express himself or herself whenever they want to- and potentially be heard by many others.

Q: Do you feel the Internet has made the world more 'democratic'?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] I think it [the Internet] has the potential to make a more democratic society, but it's pretty clear that governments- now that they've figured out it's a two way medium- are also trying to control it and use it as an avenue for either disinformation or for inhibiting people from finding information out- the Chinese being the classic example, although they are not alone. Many countries are feeling threatened by the ability of people to exchange information freely over the net. You also have the intellectual property community who have gone bonkers in my opinion. Once technology allows information to be digitised, it's very easy to duplicate and distribute. Rather than understanding that, and trying to leverage it- we have the intellectual property community lobbying to produce really terrible pieces of legislations (like the ones in the US).

The Internet Today

Q: What has been the impact of mobile technologies on the Internet?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] In the case of mobiles, two important things to keep in mind are that ‘the mobile’ started out as a telephone, and then- as we emerged into the smart-phone environment (where you could run programmes on the device)- they became mobile computers. When the mobile became capable of reaching applications on the Internet, its functionality and power increased dramatically as you were no longer confined to the computing power of your handset. Twitter, for example, wouldn't work if it were purely mobile based- or at least wouldn't work as well…. The mobile, in this context, activates something on some server on the net which then cascades to hundreds and thousands of mobiles elsewhere... it's this enabling of access to the internet which has created such a dramatic impact. The fact that you can build applications which can run on the mobile, and interact with the net, gives a mutual re-enforcement and once you start internet enabling other things… like office and home appliances, sensor systems, control systems- even to the extent of internet enabling light-bulbs... you suddenly have an opportunity to apply computing on the network to these distributed devices (that can be reached by means of the internet).

It also creates opportunities for third parties to offer managed services by building platforms that run on the internet, but which can interact with these internet enabled devices. I'm anticipating a very dramatic evolution over the next decade, especially in the US with the advent of the smart-grid, and comparable technologies elsewhere in the world.

Q: What are the greatest challenges facing the Internet in its current form?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] Security on the net is unsatisfactory right now. We need to have much better tools to control access. We have to improve people's sense of confidence and safety when they're on the net, so the existence of viruses, hackers, worms and botnets and so on are all things we have to do something about. Some of the things we can do are technical, some are policy and some are personal choices about how we behave.

We don't have national or global norms as to what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour on the Internet. We will have to live through a period of time where we try to decide what is it that we accept and don't accept in terms of use of the net. Some of those decisions will be codified in law, and some of those laws will have to be global in scope as bad actors can be in one jurisdiction, while their victims are in another. Until we have international treaties that allow for enforcement, it will be very hard to either track down or prosecute those [committing crimes].

Not everything that happens on the Net which is 'bad' is necessarily an illegal or criminal act. In some cases we hurt ourselves because of our behaviour. An example of that is the invasion of privacy as a consequence of being able to post video and imagery and everything else on social networking sites. Third parties can comment on that content and fourth parties can discover things about people that they wouldn't otherwise know- because someone tagged a photo or made a comment on a blog or entry on a social networking site. We are, in some sense, very wide open to potential abuse in these shared facilities. That's why bullying is such a serious problem. Whether it's a crime or not is debatable, but it's negative impact is indisputable.

There are a number of social and economic risks that we have to do something about. Identity theft is another good example of that. Weak operating systems and weak browsers allow machines to be infected and become parts of botnets or release information that you wouldn't normally want to share like your passwords, account numbers and so on. I think we have a lot of work ahead of us to make this very flexible and rich medium into something that not only feels safer… but also IS safer for all of us to use. In the places we can't enforce safety by technical means, we will have to do so using law and to ensure people know there will be consequences for their actions.

Q: What are your thoughts on the Internet as a future theatre of conflict?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] It's clear that the Internet is another avenue through which certain kinds of abuse can take place including espionage (industrial or otherwise), disinformation campaigns, and so on. These are all things which, while not new in the absolute sense, are new to this particular environment- and therefore operate by different means, and our responses thus may have to be tailored to the methods by which these things occur.

This is one of the frustrating things about putting humanity online. When this [Internet] was the province of a collection of engineers, they were all relatively homogenous, they had common objectives (to get the network to actually function!) and we didn't have nearly the problem we have now with the general public. The problem is, of course, the general public includes bad actors whose interests are not necessarily aligned with society. I think we have to accept that if we have an environment as accessible as this one- and as rich in its ability to share information- we have to find ground-rules that will make it a more acceptable environment to be in.

The term 'cyber warfare' is a very dangerous one in my view. It's easy to formulate the view that an attack against 'my' communications network (for example) is an attack against the critical infrastructure of society- and therefore it's a national scale event, and deserves a response accordingly. General Alexander here in the U.S. recently implied that his thinking is such that the responses [to cyber-attacks] should include conventional methods. The troublesome aspect is that if you are not able to attribute the attack to the responsible party- the response may go awry. If you think about botnets which may be made up of all kinds of machines in the civilian sector, and your response is to launch a counter-attack that hits all those civilian machines... you may, in fact, harm your economics and society in the process of trying to defend it. Also, consider 'false flag' attacks which are not all that hard to launch and may cause retribution against the wrong party.

I get nervous when people throw around terms like cyber warfare as if to say our means of determining that we've been attacked or we are at war are clear. I don't think they are. I'm worried about the mind-set that leads people declare cyber-war and then launch even conventional attacks against parties they think are responsible unless there is absolutely clear evidence. This suggests in addition to everything else that we need much better forensic capability than we have right now. So in addition to building defences against various forms of attack, we have to determine where they came from, how they were founded, who was responsible and so on. That's a non-trivial exercise.

Q: Do you think the Internet as a medium can help us overcome global crises such as climate change and poverty?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] In a tangential way, maybe.... The Internet is an avenue through which people's attitudes can be 'adjusted'. I don't mean for this to sound like a 'brave new world' exactly, I'm thinking more about the kinds of social interactions that lead people to choose to act in certain ways… whether that be political or something else. If people could be persuaded that global warming requires action, and that each of them have individual actions that can add up into something significant, that would be a good thing. That could be one element in persuasion... The other is scientific, the ability to share documents, validate and even quantify the threat against the climate- such as human greenhouse gas generation amongst other things. People have to be persuaded that their individual actions will make a difference.... they think, "I'm just driving one car, it can't be that bad......" but when a billion or two people think like that? It makes a difference. They don't see the consequences of their own actions... and I think the net has a role to play, but it's not magic. The real issue is convincing arguments and incentives for people to change their behaviours.

One might also make an argument that if all the power generation and consumption systems, and all the heating and cooling systems and so on could be managed in a more comprehensive way... we could do a better job of their efficient use. This is sort of like traffic engineering, having the lights and streets synchronised and having the entry to the highway controlled by selectively allowing cars on. Things like that might actually be helpful, but once again- when you begin doing things like that- the net can become a target for people to disrupt.

In the background here is the continuing threat that the more we depend on something, the more others will seek to disrupt it for their own purposes and our dependency now becomes our disability.

Q: What do you feel is the role of artificial intelligence technologies and the Internet?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] …Keep in mind that artificial intelligence is a big term. I would argue that some of the speech understanding and translation that Google and Apple are doing represent a significant kind of artificial intelligence- however its not the same as having a human conversation as we are now, or analysing a complex situation and making recommendations. I don't think we're likely to see the kind of artificial intelligence the science fiction writers talk about any time soon, despite Ray Kurzweil's optimism.

On the other hand, there are extraordinary things computers can do, that humans cannot do well- and that includes handling extremely large amounts of information and finding correlation. Despite the fact that we claim that humans are very good at seeing patterns, computers are very good at seeing patterns of certain kinds and that's exactly what we do when we index the web- we try and work things out for you!

I see the future not so much as 'autonomous' artificial intelligence, but as a collaborative tool. I think someday we'll be able to have conversations, within limits, with these machine intelligences in order to do things for us that will make us more effective- but I don't want to overstate the capability. In a book called "Alone Together", Sherry Turkle discussed how human beings are remarkably willing to imbue artificial intelligences with a great deal more understanding than they actually have. Therein lies a great deal of danger. If you believe that a device is smart enough to make informed judgement and it's actually a dumb robot? ....you get what you deserve!

Q: Do you think the Internet will help us understand our place in the universe?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] For the last 13 years, I've been working on a project looking at the extension of the Internet across the solar system. This project was started at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1998 and involves the creation of a new set of protocols that will work over the very large distances, and the large speed of light delays, which occur over interplanetary distances- to say nothing of the disruption that occurs through celestial motion, and so on.

We have a set of protocols that are derived from, but go beyond, the protocols of the Internet to deal with these wide ranges of parametric variation. Those protocols are being standardised and are on board the space station, a spacecraft that has rendezvoused with two comets, and are also in use here on earth. Prototypes of these protocols are also in use on the Mars science laboratory which just launched, and on the rovers which are currently on the planet. We are confident that we have a set of protocols that will allow for very rich networking on interplanetary exploration.

The next project being funded by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (which, I will remind you, funded the ARPANET, the internet and the interplanetary architecture) is an interstellar mission plan. Here we are interested in getting to Proxima Centauri or Alpha Centauri in a hundred years… actually getting there and going into orbit. The first problem is getting there in a hundred years rather than 65,000 and the second problem is once we get there, how do we send information back. How can we detect a coherent signal from that far away? What power sources can we use- how can they be modulated? What kind of antenna system would you need to do it? That's all part of our study- and I'm part of one of the teams who are proposing answers.

Although this all sounds like science fiction, it's what engineering does... it turns science fiction into reality.

Q: Do you think we'll see direct connections between our physiology and the Internet?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] This touches on the edge of the 'cyborg' question.

My wife has two cochlear implants, and there cannot be any question at all that this has made her life better. She was totally deaf before she had the implants, and now she carries on a more or less normal life in an auditory world. There's also no question that we now understand the sensory-neural systems well enough to fool the brain- and we will, eventually, do that with optical and spinal implants. In the latter case, dealing with not just sensory- but sensory and motor systems together. It won't stop there.... when you start seeing some of the biomechanical devices for the repair of injuries, especially the really traumatic ones you see from wartime- and you see the complex behaviours that can be controlled by the same sensory-motor signals that would manage a biological arm.... you begin to see there's some real potential... not only to recover capability, but to exceed it. T

he likelihood that we will have implants that exceed human capability is very high. I would anticipate that happening. Whether we ever get to the point where there are cognitive interfaces? I think that's highly speculative and I'm doubtful of it- at least within the next ten or twenty years.

Q: Has the Internet changed the nature of human intelligence?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] There is some evidence that the use of computers- whether video gaming or 'normal' interactions with the web- is having a measurable effect on brain function... this is not a surprise. Any kind of interaction you have as a child, the brain adapts to... so your interactions with the world have a direct effect on the way your brain interconnections develop.

Use of computers and the net are having some measurable effect, but I don't think we entirely understand the significance of those effects yet. It's one thing to look at a functional MRI scan and say, "...look, part of the brain is lighting up..." and it's quite another to say, "...and therefore we reach the following conclusion" or "...the brain is doing this..." I don't think we have that depth of knowledge yet.

I talked to Henry Kissinger about this. He was ranting about the fact that people were willing to accept two paragraphs in response to a query rather than reading a 700-page book. This bugged him because he wrote 700-page books! My response was to say, "...look Henry, I bet you'd be saying that when the invention of writing came along! The world won't remember anything! All the oral history will go away because now you can read it!..." I think that argument is partly true... we tend to remember less now than we felt we needed to in the past because we have such ready access to information. I find myself turning to the net to remember people's names and to recall facts. You could have made the same argument about books. Books remember things for you, if you can find the book to find the right fact.

We may have a society which is less dependent on our remembering facts and more dependent on our ability to find things out. When we invented hand calculators, for example.... there was a great cry that nobody would remember multiplication tables anymore. It's entirely possible that's true... but as long as the devices work, it functionally doesn't make much difference. There is a book called "The Machine Stops" which was written around 1909. The idea of the book was a society that was built around a machine that served everyone, took care of their needs, food and everything else- one day, the machine doesn't work. The story is what happens to society when the machine stops working.

We will probably encounter some emergent properties of systems like this. One of the worries that I have is that one emergent property will be our dependence on these things- and to the degree that they are either 'disruptable' or not-reliable, then we will create a more fragile society, and a more brittle one- and that worries me.

Q: Do you think our relationship with the Internet and allied technologies is going to change the nature of what it means to 'be human’?

[Dr. Vint Cerf] The Internet offers alternative avenues for human interaction. The consequence of that is the discovery of people of like-mind who are not necessarily geographically nearby. That change has been happening for quite a while, as transportation developed. When we got horses we could go further than we could walking.... when we got boats and airplanes, we could go further than we could before. Our community of interest grew and now the 'global village' phrase comes to mind. In that sense, we have a rather different society whose boundary conditions are not necessarily what they were before. National boundaries become less critical to, at least, a lot of human interaction. if you want to find a proxy for understanding the internet- you should pay attention to electricity and ask yourself how dependent we are on that, and what happens when it is not available. You will see a society crumble very quickly when electricity goes away. You don't need an Internet to be scared, you need dependence on electricity in all its forms- including batteries.

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In his 1998 book “The Control Revolution” Robert Beniger notes that, “...one tragedy of the human condition is that each of us lives and dies with little hint of even the most profound transformations of our society and our species that play themselves out in some small part through our own existence. When the earliest Homo sapiens encountered Homo erectus, or whatever species was our immediate forebear, it is unlikely that the two saw in their differences a major turning point in the development of our race. Much the same conclusion could be drawn from any of a succession of revolutionary societal transformations: the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals, the growth of permanent settlements, the development of metal tools and writing, urbanisation, the invention of wheeled vehicles and the plough, the rise of market economies, social classes, a world commerce. The origins and early histories of these and many other developments of comparable significance went unnoticed or at least unrecorded by contemporary observers. Human society seems rather to evolve largely through changes so gradual as to be all but imperceptible, at least compared to the generational cycles of the individuals through whose lives they unfold.”

It is with this in mind that we must reflect that the world’s first stored program computer (The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine) was built in 1948, with a memory of just 32 words and now, less than 70 years later, we find over five billion devices are connected to the internet, enabling billions to instantly access close to the total sum of human knowledge and experience.

As individual humans, our faculties are severely limited. From birth, it would be close to impossible for one of our species to survive through to adulthood without the support of a "society of others". Our technologies (be they mechanical or intellectual) have largely realised this ethic- initially enabling us to work together- not just with the incumbent civilisation but through our ability to store and pass knowledge, between generations. “If I have seen further than others," wrote Isaac Newton, "...it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

We are also a species drugged by ego- fascinated by our own ingenuity and capability. It seems the very process of invention, together with the sense of mastery it gives over nature and ourselves is the end, as well as the means, to our existence. Of all these inventions- the internet is surely one of the greatest. It is (as Eric Schmidt commented), "...the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand."

The truth is, I doubt we'll ever understand the technical ontology of the internet. By the time we realise what 'it' is, the essence has already moved on. Instead, we must consider the metaphysical- the internet is not just a reflection of the zeitgeist- it is an embodiment of 'us' as individuals and as a society. The internet connects us cognitively and becomes a membrane through which our minds can interact, manifesting a whole new iteration of our species, who have begun to exist in a connected symbiotic relationship with technology.

The internet is the first technology we have created, that makes us more human.

The Vulnerability of Man

2011-11-01T01:00:00.000Z

In this exclusive interview we talk to Professor Sir John Beddington (the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser) and Sir Crispin Tickell (former diplomat and advisor to successive UK Prime Ministers, who is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on climate change and environmental issues). We tackle the question of how vulnerable our species really is and explore threats ranging from climate change and natural disasters to food, energy and water security, viruses, near earth objects and the biggest threat to humanity… humans themselves.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, November 2011

“People underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative events” Wrote Frank McKenna in the British Journal of Psychology (1993, Volume 84), “…it is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.”

In much the same way that children underestimate their own vulnerability, humanity does too and a lot of this attitude can be attributed to the relative ‘youth’ of our species. Behaviourally modern man has only existed for one thousandth of a percent of the Earth’s life (a mere snapshot when you consider that species such as dolphins are a magnitude of a thousand times more ancient than us). During this chronologically insignificant stretch, man has largely avoided any great extinction events (be they from natural disasters, biological events or near earth objects) and has grown to become the dominant species on the planet (by influence rather than numbers) with no real predators to speak of. This uncontested growth has led our species to be blinded by the ‘illusion of control’, a phenomenon that manifests in two ways. Firstly we compensate for our failure to exercise actual control over events by creating a “generalized, subjective sense of control… by undertaking acts the effect of which on the environment is illusory.” (Friedland et. al, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1992, Vol. 63). Historically this may have included phenomena such as rain dances and sacrifices, and in more modern society has become more abstract with economic and political instruments used to give (governments) a notional sense of control over populations. Secondly the illusion manifests in a (group held) sense of control imbued by our perceived species-immortality. In this case humanity, having always had ample access to whatever resources it needed, and having never faced any (serious) competition or whole-species-threats, feels relatively safe from existential events and cannot conceive any threats it may be creating. In much the same way, therefore, that individuals perceive their own chance of experiencing accidents or being struck by illness as lower than ‘others’, our incumbent generation of humanity irrationally group-thinks that unfortunate events will happen to ‘other’ generations or species.

William B. Meyer (in his 1996 book, ‘Human Impact on the Earth’) describes how, “…humankind has become a force in the biosphere as powerful as many natural forces of change, stronger than some, and sometimes as mindless as any. Nature has not retired from the construction (or demolition) business, but humankind has in the recent past emerged as a strong competitor. It is now, indeed, the principal agent modifying the earth's surface.” Thomas Malthus extended this dramatically this in his essay ‘on the Principle of Population’ (first published in 1798) in which he states, “…the power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction; and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague, advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and ten thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world..” So how vulnerable is humanity?

In this exclusive interview we talk to Professor Sir John Beddington (the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser) and Sir Crispin Tickell (former diplomat and advisor to successive UK Prime Ministers, who is regarded as the world’s foremost authority on climate change and environmental issues). We tackle the question of how vulnerable our species really is and explore threats ranging from climate change and natural disasters to food, energy and water security, viruses, near earth objects and the biggest threat to humanity… humans themselves.

Sir John Beddington was appointed as Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) on 1 January 2008. Since being in post, the GCSA has led on providing scientific advice to Government during the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the 2010 volcanic ash incident, and the emergency at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011. The GCSA has also been responsible for increasing the scientific capacity across Whitehall by encouraging all major departments of state to recruit a Chief Scientific Adviser.

Throughout 2008 and 2009 Sir John raised the concept of the "Perfect Storm" of food, energy and water security in the context of climate change, gaining considerable media attention and raising this as a priority in the UK and internationally. Prior to his appointment as GCSA, he was Professor of Applied Population Biology and headed the main departments of environmental science and technology at Imperial College. His main research interests are the application of biological and economic analysis to problems of Natural Resource Management. Sir John has previously been advisor to a number of UK Government departments including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office. He has also advised several Governments and international bodies including the Australian, New Zealand and US Governments, the European Commission, the United Nations Environment Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation.

He was, for six years, a member of the Natural Environment Research Council. In June 1997 he was awarded the Heidelberg Award for Environmental Excellence, in 2001 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2004 he was awarded the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George by Her Majesty the Queen and in June 2010 was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Sir Crispin Tickell has long been a pioneer in linking environmental and in particular climate change to the worlds of politics and business. For many years he was an informal adviser on such issues to successive British Prime Ministers. Until recently he was Director of the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University. He is associated with several other British universities as well as universities in the United States.

Most of his career was in the Diplomatic Service. He was Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission (1977-80); Ambassador to Mexico (1981-83); Permanent Secretary of the Overseas Development Administration (now DFID) (1984-87); and British Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1987-90). He then became Warden of Green College, Oxford (1990-97), and set up the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding, which later became the Policy Foresight Programme at the James Martin School. Among other things he was President of the Royal Geographical Society (1990-93); Chairman of the Board of the Climate Institute of Washington DC (1990-2002); Convenor of the Government Panel on Sustainable Development (1994-2000); a Trustee of the Baring Foundation (1992-2002); Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species (1992-99); a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (1992-2006); Chancellor of the University of Kent (1996-2006); Inaugural Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment (2002-03); and Adviser At Large to the President of Arizona State University from 2002. Since 2007 he has been President of Tree Aid. He also has business interests, including being Director (Non Executive) of IBM (UK) (1990-95). He is author of Climate Change and World Affairs (1977 and 1986) and Mary Anning of Lyme Regis (1996). He was a member of two Government Task Forces: one on Urban Regeneration, the other on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects (a minor planet no. 5971 has been named after him). He has received many honours and distinctions.

On Resource Crisis

Q: What are the potential impacts of the food, water and energy security crises?

[Sir John] I think the first thing to do, is step back from the issue and say, "ok what are the major drivers out there..." One is population growth- which drives demand for goods and services. A second driver is, arguably, increasing prosperity- meaning that the purchasing power of this growing population is increasing. The third important trend is urbanisation. If you take these factors together, the time-scales are really quite frighteningly short and the potential impact on food supply is a real concern. The sort of challenges that one is thinking about is how to maintain a sustainable and secure global food system, while protecting the environment, to meet the increasing demand for food, with an increasing proportion of so called 'higher value' commodities like meat and dairy products, which require a larger resource footprint. For example, the production of one kilogram of grain-fed beef, uses at least 15m3of water, compared with less than 2m³ of water to produce a kilogram of grains, pulses or root crops. In terms of the availability of water, even if you ignore climate change, increasing competition in demand of water for agriculture, industrial and domestic use, threatens adequate supply. Energy security is also a significant challenge. Energy poverty has been relatively ignored compared with access to food and water. Approximately, 1.4 billion people globally have no access to electricity.

We cannot afford to continue with 'business as usual', as the current food system is unsustainable. In the last three or four years, real food prices have increased substantially, firstly in 2007/8,and then again in 2010/11. These significant increases in food prices, dramatically out of step with the all-time low prices experienced over the last 3 decades, have contributed to a large increase in the number of hungry people globally, and political instability. There are serious issues in increasing competition for access to water which mean that water supplies are not managed appropriately or efficiently. Urbanisation means that a growing urban population will have more political and purchasing power to access water, potentially reducing the amount available to rural communities where agriculture is the major use of water. As you can see, food, water and energy security are therefore intimately related.

If you combine these factors with the fact that climate change is happening, and that irrespective of what happens at the COP17 in Durban, or has happened in the proceeding COPs.... the time lags in the climate system are such that the climate for the next twenty years at least, probably rather more, is already determined by the greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere at the moment. These challenges are not going to go away, and globally we need to work together to find solutions.

Q: What is the role of climate change in conflict, famine, migration and inequality?

[Sir John] You have to be fairly careful considering these links. The idea that you may have warfare breaking out nationally or across borders about water resources is arguably a bit overstated- but these are additional stresses to a very stressed world.

If we look at famine, this is more clear cut- albeit more looking at 'poverty' rather than famine itself. The price rises that occurred in 2007/8 pushed about 100 million people into poverty. Price rises that occurred in 2010/11 put another 40 million into poverty- as demonstrated by research published by the World Bank and appropriate UN bodies. Increased levels of poverty is absolutely one of the things which will follow from an increase in food prices, food poverty in particular.

A failure to look at these issues is likely to lead also to higher chances of failed states- I think that's fair. I think the idea that the world is going to break out into mass global migration across borders, or that wars will break out over resource... That's more science fiction than likely.

On Food Security

Q: What has been the impact of climate change on food security?

[Sir John] We already experience some of the effects of climate change now, but it is still relatively early days. What we can observe shows that there is no doubt that growing seasons have altered, and there will be significant challenges with access to sufficient water for agricultural production. Some types of extreme weather events, such as flooding and droughts, are expected to occur more frequently in some regions in the future as our climate changes. This could impact on global agricultural production and have implications for food security. For example, in 2010, heat-waves, with large forest fires, in Russia and increased rainfall in China and Pakistan, both had consequent reductions on cereal production. The effects on global trade and food prices were also exacerbated by decisions of these countries not to export cereals.

In terms of what climate change has done. It is hard to remove that from particular weather events. The attribution of particular weather events to climate change is actually quite subtle. The sort of thing people are having to do is to understand if a particular weather event has a greater probability of having occurred as a result of climate change versus 'business as usual'. This is very early in the science.

The key here is that inevitably some climate change is going to happen in the next twenty or thirty years, irrespective of what happens now. So we need to be thinking about how agriculture operates. Agriculture is going to have to adapt as the climate changes, and there really needs to be more global recognition that agricultural practices have to adapt to the climate change that the world is already locked into. There are big uncertainties, but some things are rather more certain than others such as changing growing seasons, changes in precipitation, and changes to the functioning of ecosystem services - meaning you can get more rain than expected in a particular place and less where you wanted it, and so on. This is disruptive, and we need to be thinking about strategies to develop agricultural technologies and practices that are resilient to a range of future climatic uncertainties..

Q: What do you feel are the impacts of urbanisation, industrialisation and renewable energies on food security?

[Sir John] This is a very complicated situation. In terms of urbanisation, the trends are there. Currently, Africa is the second most populous continent after Asia with over 965 million people and accounts for about one-seventh of the world’s human population. The expectation is that Africa will have the fastest growth rate in the world between 2000 and 2050, twice the rate of any other region during that time. Sub-Saharan Africa is also rapidly urbanizing and is expected to sustain the highest rate of urban growth in the world for several decades. Problems from this are clear- how do you feed and get water to these populations? How do you get energy to these populations? Those are really big challenges.

In terms of land degradation... 'we cannot afford to continue with 'business as usual'...... The evidence for this is supported by the recent Government Office for Science Foresight report 'The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability 2011' which carried out an extensive analysis of the challenges facing the current food system. Approximately 12 million hectares of productive agricultural land are lost each year to land degradation, and climate change will lead to further land degradation or desertification. We have to think about regenerating degraded land and using sustainable agricultural practices. The basic solution to increase food production is really going to be saying, "...we have to grow more food on a particular unit of land." If you were operating in the nineteenth or twentieth century, for example, and faced the need to increase food production... the typical way you would do this is to generate more agricultural land by clearing forest or grassland. Changing land use contributes significantly to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and is no longer a viable solution. Effectively there is little new land for agriculture, and we need to practice sustainable intensification of agricultural productivity. This means increasing yields simultaneously while increasing the efficiency with which inputs such as water, energy and land are used, and reducing the negative environmental effects of food production.

The issue of energy crops is a complication to this - in the sense that we also want clean energy. Although some biofuel systems have net positive effects for greenhouse gas emissions, many first-generation biofuels do not contribute to greenhouse gas reductions but reduce the area available to grow food. The history of the introduction of biofuels illustrates the dangers of not considering all the consequences of a climate change policy. Whether or not bio fuel production has driven recent fluctuations in food prices is more difficult to assess. The hope is that we have second or third generation bio fuels which focus on waste products as a source of energy.

The amount of waste within the food system is really significant, and needs to be addressed. While estimates of waste are reliant on a weak evidence base, it has been estimated that 30% of all food grown worldwide is wasted. Typically between 10% and 30% of agricultural products are lost post-harvest in low-income countries By contrast in high-income counrties, roughly 25% is wasted post-purchase. For instance in the UK, 25% of purchased food was found to be wasted in the home and a family could save around £680 a year if they managed the purchase and consumption of food better.

Q: What are the potential solutions for existing food-crises in the developing world? Can we end hunger?

[Sir John] I think the first thing to say is that we're not going to get anywhere without significant investment. Historically, over the past twenty or thirty years, there has been a reduction of investment into agriculture. This needs to be reversed. Those countries that have invested in agriculture, for example, Brazil and China have demonstrated the value of agriculture in driving economic growth and poverty reduction.. It has been estimated that for every RMB 10,000 (US$1500) investment in China on agricultural R&D, seven people have moved out of poverty. If we are going to see agriculture respond and adapt to climate change, and increase productivity - there has got to be more investment in agricultural research and development. We have real potential to produce better varieties of plants which are resistant to drought, resistant to saline conditions and even plants that can sequester carbon dioxide and make better use of nitrogen. The difference between yields in the poorest farms and best farms is really rather dramatic. It has been estimated that the application of existing technology and best practice could increase yields by as much as two to three times in Africa.

One of the things which is really interesting, is whether or not agriculture becomes a central part of negotiations on climate change. In some sense, it's absolutely essential that agriculture is able to adapt to climate change. But also, in that adaptation, and in a move to more sustainable agriculture production systems - we could even mitigate against climate change by reducing greenhouse gases emissions or, indeed, even sequester carbon in soils. The FAO and World Bank alliance is promoting "climate smart agriculture" – as a central part of climate change negotiations internationally. Climate smart agriculture includes proven practical techniques and practices that can help the elusive triple win of food security, adaptation and mitigation. It not only increases yields, but also has the potential- for example- to sequester carbon dioxide, use less nitrogen fertilisers and so on... African countries are now calling upon COP17 in Durban to establish an agriculture programme of work covering adaptation and mitigation. I think sustainable agriculture should become a very central part of the climate change negotiations.

Long-term actions are needed to address hunger. This means increasing the political priority and commitments by Governments on food, agriculture and hunger reduction, and monitoring outcomes better. As we saw with the food price spikes in 2011, 44 million were thrown into poverty as food prices increased Addressing food price volatility is going to be absolutely critical. Whether that is done by targeted food reserves for those most vulnerable to food price volatility or enabling the poorest food producers to obtain specific insurance and manage their risk against volatility are decisions as much for today as for the future....

On Water Security

Q: Is the notion that water should be free realistic? and how serious a threat is water security?

[Sir John] Globally, around 70% of available fresh-water is used for agriculture. That is, arguably, not sustainable on the basis that demand is growing, and already approximately a billion people don't have access to sufficient supplies of fresh water. This is against a backdrop of increasing demand for water from industry, domestic use and the need to maintain environmental flows in rivers. There are real issues of sustainability. Some of these issues relate to the use of aquifers- which are being over-exploited around the world. These are 'historic' supplies of water, hundreds of years old, which are being used for irrigation. We need incentives to encourage greater efficiency of water use and the development of integrated water management plans need to be given high priority.

In terms of whether water should be priced, I don't think there's a 'one size fits all' solution. In some countries, most water resources belong to the state, in others to the owner of the land or water source from which it is extracted. Clearly defined property rights can incentivise conservation, and different forms of water markets have been introduced in some areas to increase water-use efficiency, with varying consequences for agriculture. Most nations currently lack water markets, but growing water scarcity may lead to them becoming more common, affecting water availability for agriculture. Social safety nets will be essential if water markets are to avoid penalising small farming communities.

Q: How is climate change affecting water security?

[Sir John] It's going to present significant problems. Give or take, one would expect that as climate change increases- it will involve overall rising global temperatures. The availability of water will be affected by climate change in complex ways. You may get more precipitation, but it's the distribution of that precipitation which will be an issue, with a general increase in high-latitude precipitation and decrease in many parts of the tropics. If you look at glaciers, they provide a very satisfactory store of fresh-water which is released over a relatively long period of time. The problem we have with glacier melt - which is occurring in some tropical glaciers- is that we don't have that storage capacity any more, and this could lead to water scarcity in the affected regions in the future.

On Energy Security:

Q: What are the key energy security threats?

[Sir John] I think the issue of energy supply and poverty is inextricably linked to how much greenhouse gas is produced. There are problems there.... the large volumes of coal in various parts of the world are very cheap supplies of energy- whereas some other fossil fuels are becoming more expensive. The sort of analysis one needs to be pondering is... where is this energy going to come from, and where is the demand? There is clearly burgeoning demand for energy in China, India, Brazil and so on... and we need to think about how that is going to be satisfied with the constraint that we don't want greenhouse gas emissions to increase- that will exacerbate the climate change problem.

Q: What are your views on nuclear energy? have disasters such as Fukushima changed our opinion of this technology?

[Sir John] If you look, for example, in the UK- it is very hard to imagine how the UK could meet its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without having a significant proportion of its energy produced through nuclear. It's very hard to imagine Europe, as a whole, being able to produce sufficient energy over the next twenty or thirty years without a significant proportion of that coming from nuclear.

We can be confident that nuclear power can fulfil a proportion of our low-carbon energy needs in the years to come. Many other low-carbon technologies, for example carbon capture and storage and certain renewables, have tremendous potential to change our energy landscape in the future, but their impact in the next few decades is far harder to predict

Fukushima is fairly straightforward. You had a very old-fashioned plant, sited on an earthquake zone. Even with that, the safety mechanisms actually did shut down the reactors. What happened subsequently was that the tsunami wiped out electrical supplies, which then caused problems. The level of radiation release was relatively modest, except in the immediate vicinity of the plant. That's not to underplay... there's a massive clean-up issue in that area! In terms of Northern Europe and North America, the design of plants is vastly different- with significantly more safety feature. They're also not on earthquake zones or at risk of tsunamis. The head of the nuclear inspectorate, Mike Weightman, was asked by Chris Huhne (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) to consider if there were any real things we may learn from Fukushima that would change our decision to build nuclear plants. He came back unequivocally saying that there were absolutely no reasons not to continue our programme. That's not to say we can't learn from Fukushima. Significant back-up and redundancy on electrical supply and control systems are essential. Mike has visited Japan a number of occasions and is producing a report for the IEA on lessons to be learned from Fukushima. I think the response of most of the world has been, "terrible disaster, but this isn't very likely here..." that's certainly my view. The effect beyond the immediate 20km exclusion zone has been quite modest.

Q: Are there any viable renewable technologies to satisfy our energy demand?

[Sir John] Renewable energy is a growing. The biggest opportunity for this, probably over several decades away, is solar production in North Africa- this has really interesting potential and big corporations such as Munich RE have been involved in significant developments of solar technology in North Africa.

We are going to need a whole lot of different sources to 'hedge bets'. As technology develops, some things may appear to become extremely effective while others may not. The current biggest issue is, in fact, whether we can get by on using fossil fuels- but with Carbon capture and sequestration of Carbon products, and that's a big 'if'. The principles are understood- but the systems of engineering to make something that works at scale hasn't happened yet...

On the Fragility of our Planet and Species.

Q: How has our understanding of the Earth’s fragility changed over the last century?

[Sir Crispin] I think there is now much greater realization of Earth’s fragility. The relationship between living organisms and the physical environment has been much better explored and understood than ever before. A lot of people resist these ideas of a relationship between the physical environment and living organisms, but there’s no question in my mind that the relationship between the physical world, and the world of life, is very close. The two constitute the Earth system as a whole.

Q: How vulnerable is the Earth system?

[Sir Crispin] The Earth is vulnerable, life systems are vulnerable, and we don’t really know where the next threat is going to come from. If you look at the history of Earth, you realize that living organisms have been subjected to disruption at fairly regular intervals. Most disruption has been manageable by organisms, but not entirely. There have been five great extinctions of life, but even after those events, life survived – changing its circumstances and characteristics for a whole variety of reasons – not all of which are yet fully understood.

I have been interested in this subject for many years and have researched nearly all of these disruptions. The interesting thing is not just whether these events occur, but whether they are fast disruptions or slow. The biggest extinction of all which occurred around 250 million years ago probably started fairly slowly. The one that everyone knows about when an object hit the coast of Mexico around 65 million years ago was probably quite rapid, although nowhere near as serious as the one which occurred long before then.

Q: How vulnerable are Earth species?

[Sir Crispin] Some organisms have survived very well. The horseshoe crab, for example, has remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. The same can be said of the now famous Coelacanth fish of the Indian Ocean, which has survived a lot of disruptions. There’s a new book on this subject called Survivors by Richard Fortey, which goes into all of these events.

Species are always being made extinct, but in recent history we’ve had a very steep increase in extinctions. That rise has been caused by a combination of things happening in which human activity plays a substantial role. Many regard this period as the current great extinction.

Humans are a very recent addition to the panoply of life. We are vulnerable, just as any other organisms are. We are vulnerable to shock. However, we are arguably better than most organisms at organizing ourselves to cope with shock. If we look at history, our species has seen a number of significant threats – but they have been relatively manageable, and we have survived.

Q: What is the risk to Earth from asteroids and other objects?

[Sir Crispin] There is nothing immediately foreseen, but there’s always the chance that something will come and hit us. Near earth objects are a fact of life, and hit the Earth every now and again. If one did so, the result would depend on how big the object was, where it hit, and whether and how we could cope.

Q: How vulnerable is our species from viruses and bacteria?

[Sir Crispin] Viruses and bacteria are part of life. There are new viruses emerging all the time, some of which are good for us – and some bad. If you get a new disease coming like the Black Death starting in around 1348, or influenza as after the First World War, you see that we as a species are vulnerable. Viruses are changing all the time, they are very versatile, and we have to be able to cope with them if and when they come. Those emergent viruses we have seen in recent history, we have managed to tame a bit but not entirely. There have been things like the West Nile virus which killed a great number of people before it was clearly understood. In these circumstances, we just have to react and do the best we can to cope.

It is important to remember that we are, indeed, products of the natural system. Each human body contains ten times more bacterial than body cells. Viruses and bacteria are the stuff of life, and we are part of that tissue of living … and like all other manifestations of the tissue of living, we are vulnerable.

Q: What has been the impact of humanity and the Anthropocene on Earth?

[Sir Crispin] It is now clear that the last 250 years – a tiny flash of time in geological terms – have seen substantial changes to the surface of the Earth, the nature of its seas and the quality of its air. The proposal to name a new geological epoch the Anthropocene therefore has my full support. Indeed, if we look at the total effect of human activity during this period, we should be staggered by the changes we have brought about.

A good way to look at this is to suppose some visitor from space came, let us say, in a hundred thousand years and looked at the geological detritus of the last little while. He would come across the end of the ice ages, the relatively warm period of the last ten thousand or so years, and then he would come to some very substantial changes where the fertility of the soil and the chemistry of the air changed substantially. He would note that the seas suffered from acidification, and there were various mass extinctions. He would realize something really remarkable had happened to the Earth during those 250 years.

By exploiting sources which cannot be replaced, we have fuelled an enormous increase in one particular animal species – our own. I regard human population increase as the most serious environmental problem we now face. When you consider there are 80 million more people on the planet every year, you see the scale of the problem. The effects of this are very hard to measure.

Q: How serious is the threat to our planet, and our species, from climate change?

[Sir Crispin] Climate change is a symptom of the changes that are taking place. We cannot regard the phenomenon by itself, rather it has to be linked to a lot of other things. Climate change is a very serious problem – but I tend to refer to it as climate destabilization, as it is not so much the change in climate but its destabilizing effects which cause problems. The manifestation of this ranges from new viruses and bacteria, which often change when climates change, to the exhaustion of raw materials and the other resources on which we all depend. Climate change also means that some areas which were fertile become less so, areas which were previously less fertile can become more so, and we could therefore get mass migrations of humans towards the north because of deteriorating conditions further south. This is already happening in some measure ...

Q: If things continue as they are, what do you see as the future of our planet?

[Sir Crispin] Even in the next 50 to 100 years a lot of the problems we have been facing will clearly look very different, we shall be thinking much more sensibly about things because we shall be forced to do so.

One of my favourite points is to describe how there are three main impulses for change. The first is when we get real leadership, and that is something we haven’t seen much: by this I mean leadership from above. The second is when humans come together through non-governmental organizations or popular feeling, and force changes from below. The third is when you have some benign catastrophe – where we can safely establish the cause, and mobilize opinion and action to do something about it. An example of a big catastrophe of the kind I have described would be a big hit from space. Leadership of the kind I have described occurs when we have politicians who are ready to face these things. Politicians face the difficulty that such big changes such as climate and events such as hits from space don’t always fit the electoral cycle – and politicians want to be re-elected!

As for the pressure from below … I think the world, certainly the world in Britain, is far better aware of the problems of climate change than even thirty years ago. We are now, for example, able to observe parts of the world where climate destabilization is already beginning.

Q: Does technology introduce any threats to our species?

[Sir Crispin] Let me make three points. The first is that technology can greatly improve our condition, we see it happening all the time – it makes our lives easier. The second is the uncertainty technology introduces – we don’t know what the consequences of our development will be, especially when we get into micro technology. The third point is that technology doesn’t match population increase. One of the effects of technology is that we require fewer people to do the things which, hitherto, were done by humans. Therefore we have a risk of not only having huge population increase, but also the prospect of widespread unemployment with all of the social consequences it brings, which we know all too well.

Many people are reluctant to have these discussions.

Q: Have we impacted the evolution of our (and other) species?

[Sir Crispin] Evolution is a very long-term process ... Humans in their present form didn’t emerge till around 200 thousand years ago, and during that time we have seen many changes including the disappearance of two other human non homo sapiens species, namely the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. I also understand that the human brain has slightly diminished in size over that period of time, while becoming no less efficient.

So what direction will evolution take next for us? Well … the truth is we have no idea. If we again use the analogy of a visitor from space, a hundred thousand years from now they may find some substantial changes. They may find that some virus or other disease had virtually wiped us all out. I don’t think that will happen – but it has happened to other species before now. I am certain they would find that humans were a bit different. I wonder playfully whether women, for example, may get over the perils of childbirth in the same way as marsupials, where babies spend only three months in the womb and the rest in a pouch … much like kangaroos ... That may be a rather sensible way forward.

Some people also speak of a singularity and how the development of artificial intelligence will impact humanity. The truth is that we simply cannot conceive what the results would be for our species if we came to rely on artificial intelligence.

We are also affecting many other species quite substantially and promoting variants in other species which would otherwise not be there. Take cows, for example, which we need for a whole variety of purposes. Cows are not like the aurochs from which they descend. The auroch looked and behaved quite differently to a cow.

Suppose also that humans disappeared entirely. What would happen to cows? frogs? rats? There have been some very interesting attempts made to try and judge what the long-term effects would be of a human disappearance. We could imagine rats would be rather successful, and become as large as dogs. We could imagine a whole variety of instances where species which we have deliberately cultivated, or which have flourished under human supervision, would change their shape, their form and their way of life if we were not here.

Q: Do you think policy-makers give enough consideration to Earth vulnerability?

[Sir Crispin] Most policy-makers are not aware of these issues, but are becoming more so. These individuals tend to be driven by local issues as politics requires you to be re-elected. Quite a good example of where you have leadership, however, was when Margaret Thatcher took up the issue of climate change at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. You could also argue that Ken Livingstone, when he was Mayor of London, took up the issue of congestion in a manner which had not been done before. In each case it was a short-term hazard politically which resulted in a long-term advantage for society.

I am afraid that so many politicians and policy-makers are reluctant to look far ahead because they see electoral consequences, or practical consequences, which would damage their positions.

Q: Do you feel economic policies take into account climate change and other issues?

[Sir Crispin] I don’t think we have very efficient pricing mechanisms. It has often been said that markets are marvellous at fixing prices but incapable of recognizing costs. Pricing is a highly dubious business and must to some extent take into account the public interest.

There has to be some measure of regulation ... There is no such thing as a free market, and never has been. If we take energy for example: in the United States it is astonishing that dependence on fossil fuels is still being encouraged by a variety of tax measures. We need incentives and disincentives which reflect the public interest.

It’s also important to understand what we mean by growth. In the classic GNP/GDP system, growth tends to mean producing more goods, regardless of whether these goods are desirable. In China there is a word which means clean, green growth, which means that you take account of not just the advantages of producing something, but the true costs incurred in doing so. That concept is something different from the current rules of the market.

Q: Do you feel that indigenous people may have more appreciation for these phenomena than contemporary civilizations?

[Sir Crispin] We shouldn’t think that indigenous people were always doing the right things all the time. I don’t think they were ... I do, though, think that people who are acquainted with the soil through agriculture or the oceans through fishing are probably better aware of the range of issues we’ve been discussing.

Cities now account for just over half the human species. People who live in cities are frequently very isolated from what is going on in the wider environment ... I believe that the whole attitude towards cities has to change and I am depressed by people demanding still bigger cities. What we should be doing is looking at how we constitute cities to make them more efficient.

In the longer term, as technology becomes even more advanced, we will probably find that the daily tides of people coming in and out of cities will change. Many more people will be working from home, and we will see a shift going much more towards local communities. This is why we have the current British government pressing the idea of the Big Society and giving more emphasis to local affairs. In considering the future of cities, we must also look at transport systems as a means to limiting rather than increasing the size of future cities. Cities are like organisms. They take in water, food, energy and so forth … and emit enormous quantities of waste.

Q: Are we as aware as we should be of the social and economic impact of climate change, and do you feel there is a cultural disconnect between humanity and the environment?

[Sir Crispin] There are people who object to the notion of climate change and like to pretend, for example, that volcanic emissions produce just as much carbon dioxide as human activities. This is nonsense. Over time volcanoes don’t on the whole make an enormous difference to atmospheric chemistry.

In times of crisis as we are today financially, economically and socially, people don’t want to think about the wider issues. The fact is the world is changing fast. I think the effects of these crises may in the long run lead us to start doing the thinking we should … thinking differently is what we need. That means measuring things differently and rethinking our economics where people make a god of the work growth and behave as if producing things was the only thing that mattered. Instead we should be focussing on the health, wealth and happiness of society at all levels.

Looking at the cultural element, if we analyse the precepts of some religions we find they feel the Earth was made for humans, and that God was there to help us develop the resources of the Earth. Instead we have to see ourselves as a super organism with other super organisms, and a small part of a vast living system. We can thereby rid ourselves of the conceit of thinking that the Earth is there for our delectation and exploitation.

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Shelley E. Taylor (in her 1988 paper for the Psychological Bulletin) argued that, "...accurate perceptions of the self, the world, and the future are essential for mental health. Yet considerable research evidence suggests that overly positive self evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought." This is a view extended by Suzanne Thompson (in Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1999) who stated that, "...because the benefits of believing oneself to have control (e.g., positive mood and increased motivation) may be realized even if one's control is illusory, it seems reasonable to suggest that people are often motivated to overestimate their control."

It's important in this sense to note that 'control' in context of humanity does not simply refer to our mastery over the environment, but also our perceived immunity from externalities which can affect us and also our strategic obliviousness to the impact of our actions on the system we exist in.

The fact is, humanity is at a critical moment. A 1993 Science Summit on World Population, organized by the U. S. National Academy of Sciences with 59 other scientific academies stated: "Humanity is approaching a crisis point with respect to the interlocking issues of population, environment, and development" because "The Earth is Finite" (D. Pimentel et. al, 1999). The same paper continues, "...unfortunately, most individuals and government leaders appear unaware, unwilling, or unable to deal with the growing imbalances between human population numbers and the energy and environmental resources that support all life. The interdependence among the availability of life-supporting resources, individual standard of living, the quality of the environment, environmental resource management, and population density are neither acknowledged nor understood. Natural resources are already severely limited, and there is emerging evidence that natural forces already starting to control human population numbers through malnutrition and other severe diseases. More than 3 billion people worldwide are already malnourished, and 3 billion are living in poverty. Historically, decisions to protect the environment have been based on isolated crises and are usually made only when catastrophes strike. Instead of examining the problem in a holistic manner, such ad hoc decisions have been designed to protect and/or promote a particular resource or aspect of human well-being in the short-term. Our concern, based on past experience, is that these urgent issues concerning human carrying capacity of the world may not be addressed until the situation becomes intolerable or, possibly, irreversible."

This is far from an unrealistic analysis. We see examples in our day to day lives ranging from individuals who only try to improve their health when afflicted by disease and countries who only try to repair flawed policies after becoming the victims of economic, political, social or other crises. We can (and do) spend generations arguing whether climate change has been caused by humans, and pointing fingers to search for notional accountability for the failures which account for poverty, inequality and other crises we experience. The truth, however, is very simple. It is time for humanity to grow up and realise that we are a part of nature, not apart from it.

We are one of the (conservatively estimated) 9 million species who make up the living diversity of the planet. As a species, our arrogance even leads us to believe we have mastery over own bodies when, in fact, each and every adult on the planet carries over 90 trillion microbes with them; the number of bacterial cells living within the average person outnumber human cells 10 to 1.

As all children fear the unknown, so do we.... and as all children must grow up and become good citizens, so must we. This coming of age is nothing to fear. Growing up will provide humanity with the most profound sense of connectedness with the physical and biological systems of our planet. By becoming 'good citizens' we will not only improve the lives of billions of our own species, but help to prevent the extinction of millions more who form a part of our biological family. This new-found sense of accountability, mortality and perspective will also help us to more effectively understand and respond to the gamut of threats our species face (including ourselves) and preserve that most precious part of being human.... passing the stewardship of our knowledge, culture and environment to the next generation.

I would like to conclude with a poem I wrote in 2006 called "Environment"

"We are the spoilt child who, caught in his own ego, tries to beat his drum louder than the rest, spoiling a perfect piece of music that has played longer than he has lived. When will he understand, we are the harmony, not the song."

Racism

2011-10-01T00:05:00.000+01:00

In this article we talk to Frank Willem (FW) de Klerk (Former President of South Africa and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), Prof. Githu Muigai (Attorney General of Kenya and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance) and Dr. Nils Muiznieks (Chair of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance 'ECRI'). We discuss the impact of racism, discrimination and intolerance on our society and explore events ranging from apartheid in South Africa, the holocaust and genocides of the twentieth century. We then look at issues surrounding contemporary forms of racism, and what this means for the future of human culture.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, October 2011

In April 2003, the Human Genome Project announced they had successfully sequenced human DNA (the building blocks of our species) for the first time. Their research showed that each of us carries around 3 billion base pairs of genetic information which define every minutiae of who we are from the colour of our eyes, to our susceptibility to disease, personality, psychology and more. Perhaps even more profound than our species ability to 'roadmap' itself in this fashion was the discovery that every human being on the planet- genetically- is 99.9 percent identical. Of the remaining 0.1 percent, only 10-15% accounts for the differences we see between asserted 'races' of humans, the remaining 85-90% being variation within individual groups and families.

This 0.1% difference however, has been enough to push our species towards acts of unimaginable 'racial' brutality including systematic extermination of over 6m Jews during the Holocaust, 4 million individuals during the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides to the made-made famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 which killed an estimated 7.5m ethnic Ukranains in the Ukranian SSR. It is this 0.1% difference which was used to jusfity the policies leading to the transatlantic slave-trade (in which 12m were forcibly shipped to their new 'owners' across the Atlantic) and which has accounted for the fact that (as Sheryl Wudunn describes) "...it appears that more girls have been killed in the past fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century." She continues, "....more girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade, than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.". In more subtle forms, our contemporary society uses this statistically insignificant variation to support the 'reasoning' behind cultural, social, economic and political practices that cause hundreds of millions of people, every day, to face discrimination based on their gender, colour, sexual orientation, ethnic background and many other arbitrary dimensions. To contextualise the absurdity of this further, our closest genetic relatives are Chimpanzees- with whom we share over 98.7% of our DNA. Apart from the occasional conflict caused (predominantly) by resource competition, our existence with this species (with whom our genetic variation differs tenfold more than the widest differences in our own species) is largely peaceful.

The past century of human advance, it would seem, has left us technologically empowered but no less brutish than our predecessors. In recent history however, things have begun to change. The difference now is that our actions are not isolated. Developments in communication mean that we now engage in a subtle yet continual process of peer-review which assesses the morality of our conduct as societies and individuals. It is this process which has led to a huge upsurge of campaigns, ranging from recognition of the rights of women to the Arab spring, all of which aim- at their heart- to secure the rights and liberties of those who are suffering discrimination, marginalisation and other atrocities... all based on that 0.1%.

In this article we talk to Frank Willem (FW) de Klerk (Former President of South Africa and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), Prof. Githu Muigai (Attorney General of Kenya and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance) and Dr. Nils Muiznieks (Chair of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance 'ECRI'). We discuss the impact of racism, discrimination and intolerance on our society and explore events ranging from apartheid in South Africa, the holocaust and genocides of the twentieth century. We then look at issues surrounding contemporary forms of racism, and what this means for the future of human culture.

Frederik Willem (FW) de Klerk graduated with a law degree from Potchefstroom University in 1958 and then practiced law in Vereeniging in the Transvaal. In 1978, F.W. de Klerk was appointed Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and Social Welfare and Pensions by Prime Minister Vorster. Under Prime Minister P.W. Botha, he held a succession of ministerial posts, including Posts and Telecommunications and Sports and Recreation (1978-1979), Mines, Energy and Environmental Planning (1979-1980), Mineral and Energy Affairs (1980-1982), Internal Affairs (1982-1985), and National Education and Planning (1984-1989). In 1985, he became chairman of the Minister's Council in the House of Assembly. On December 1, 1986, he became the leader of the House of Assembly. As Minister of National Education, F.W. de Klerk was a supporter of segregated universities, and as a leader of the National Party in Transvaal, he was not known to advocate reform. In February 1989, de Klerk was elected leader of the National Party and in September 1989 he was elected State President. In his first speech after assuming the party leadership he called for a nonracist South Africa and for negotiations about the country's future. He lifted the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela. He brought apartheid to an end and opened the way for the drafting of a new constitution for the country based on the principle of one person, one vote. In 1981 he was awarded the South African Decoration for Meritorious Service. In 1992, he received the Prix du Courage Internationale (The Prize for Political Courage) and was co-recipient of the UNESCO Houphouet-Boigny Prize. He was also awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Spain during the same year. In July 1993, together with Mr Nelson Mandela, Mr De Klerk received the Philadelphia Peace Prize and on 10 December the same year was the co-recipient, also with Nelson Mandela, of the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2004, Mr De Klerk brought together a number of respected former national leaders to join him as founding members of GLF Global Leadership Foundation. He is also the Honorary Chairman of the Prague Society for International Co-operation in the Czech Republic; a Member of the Assembly of the Parliament of Cultures in Istanbul. In addition, he serves on the advisory boards of the Peres Centre for Peace in Israel and the Global Panel in Germany.

Prof. Githu Muigai is the current Attorney General of Kenya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Discrimination and Intolerance and Managing Partner of Mohammed Muigai Advocates. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Law and was called to the bar in 1985. He also holds a Master’s Degree in International Law from Columbia University School of Law, New York and a PhD in Constitutional Law from the University of Nairobi. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK) and a member of the American Association of Trial Lawyers. In addition to Law practice, he is an Associate Professor of Public Law in the School of Law of the University of Nairobi. He specialises in Public Law, Human Rights and trans-national legal practice. Prof. Muigai has extensive experience in constitutional law and has been a Commissioner with the former Constitution of Kenya Review Commission where he advised on Constitution making in other jurisdictions. Additionally, he has researched and taught at the University of Nairobi for over 20 years on the following key topics: Constitutional law, Theories in Democracy /Governance and their applicability in Africa; Human Rights theory and practice; and the question of ethnicity and the social foundations of law. Prof Muigai was also appointed as judge to the African Court on Human Rights and People Rights (2008 – 2010) and is an ICC Defence Counsel.

Dr. Nils Muiznieks Director, Advanced Social and Political Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Latvia. He is also chair of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) and a member of the Advisory Councils of the Foreign Minister of Latvia, the Latvian Institute and the Soros Foundation (Latvia). Dr. Muiznieks holds a Ph. D. in Political science from the University of California (Berkeley), an M.A in Political Science from the University of California (Berkeley) and a B.A. in Politics (Summa cum laude) from Princeton University.

South Africa's Story

Q: In your view, what caused the racial segregation during colonial times which culminated as apartheid?

[F. W. de Klerk] The concept of human rights is a fairly new phenomenon in human affairs. For most of history, (even among the indigenous peoples of Africa, America and Asia) it was accepted that conquering powers could treat vanquished peoples and their territories more or less as they wanted. The behaviour of colonial powers toward the people they conquered was seldom restrained by law, morality or compassion - (particularly in the Americas). Relationships between settlers and the indigenous population in South Africa were generally less exploitive and less repressive than they were in the Americas, Australasia and in many parts of Asia.

Most colonial powers practised segregation against the peoples they conquered for a number of reasons: they believed that their status as 'Christians' gave them a right to discriminate against 'pagans'; there were often substantial differences in levels of development between the colonial powers and the people they subjugated; colonisers were often ignorant about the cultures that they encountered; they were usually motivated by determination to seize the land and the resources of colonial peoples; and they had an interest in keeping colonial peoples in a state of subjugation to prevent them from rising in rebellion.

However, for much of their history, a majority of black South Africans continued to live in their own tribal areas where they were ruled by their traditional authorities (whose appointment was, however, approved by white governments in Pretoria).

In South Africa's case segregation had its roots in a strong view that each of the peoples of the region should be encouraged to develop separately. From the late 50s onward South Africa embarked on a policy of internal decolonisation that culminated in the development of ten homelands, each with its own parliament, government, administration - and often its own university. Almost 40% of black South Africans lived in these areas and were, for all practical purposes, governed by their own people without any kind of racial discrimination. Six of the territories progressed to the stage of self-government - and four were granted full independence that was recognised only by South Africa and each other. Nevertheless, most of the states had budgets and economies larger than those of quite a number of independent countries elsewhere in Africa. The policy failed because the territories set aside for blacks were too small and fragmented; because economic forces were drawing more and more black people into the so-called white economy; because the policy made no provision for the political rights of black people in the so-called white areas (where whites were also a minority); and because the policy was vehemently rejected by a great majority of non-white South Africans.

Q: During apartheid, what was the view the majority held of the minority and vice versa?

[F. W. de Klerk] All peoples resent foreign domination. Black attitudes toward whites were invariably coloured by the dominant/subservient relationship that ensued. White attitudes toward black South Africans ranged from fear and prejudice to paternalistic care and concern. Personal relationships were often quite cordial - but usually within an employer/employee relationship. Many of the whites who were involved in developing black national states were idealistically committed to the welfare and advancement of black South Africans. However, relationships inevitably suffered as a result of the reality of white domination in most areas of the country and of daily life. It was only after the constitutional transformation of 1994 that South Africans from different communities could really start to relate to one another as equals.

Q: What led to the abolition of apartheid?

[F. W. de Klerk] There were a number of factors that led to the abolition of apartheid: firstly, the clear failure of the government's policy to achieve a just solution to the problems of the country; the rejection of apartheid by the overwhelming majority of non-white South Africans leading to a spiral of resistance and repression; growing international isolation and sanctions; increasing integration of black South Africans into the economy leading to substantial shifts in the distribution of income; emergence of the majority of Afrikaners into the middle class, with university education and increasing exposure to international attitudes; the acceptance by the end of the 'eighties that there was no prospect for either a military or a revolutionary solution; the successful implementation of the UN independence process in Namibia following the negotiated withdrawal of Cuban troops from Namibia; the emergence of a new generation of National Party leaders after the stroke suffered by President P W Botha at the beginning of 1989; the positive influence of exploratory talks between white business and academic leadership groups and the ANC - parallel to the initiation of informal talks between Nelson Mandela and the SA Government; and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the victory of free market democracy.

Q: Now, years later- what is the state of racism and discrimination between these groups?

[F. W. de Klerk] After seventeen years of progress in national reconciliation which reached their high point with the FIFA World Cup in 2010, race relations have begun to show serious strains. This has its roots in continuing high levels of inequality arising from unemployment of about 40% among black South Africans. The catastrophic failure of the education system has resulted in growing pool of uneducated and unemployable black youth, receptive to radical anti-white activism of populists like Julius Malema. This is compounded by the failure of ANC leadership to continue with Nelson Mandela's policies of national reconciliation and the ANC's anti-white National Democratic Revolution ideology

The Concept of Racism

Q: Why, in your view, does racism exist?

[Prof. Muigai] I think racism is a form of discrimination, and discrimination exists respective of various matters. Race is one of them, religion is another, origin, sex and a million other aspects exist that one can think of. I think there are many sociological reasons that form the basis of discrimination. Fundamentally, I think, individuals are disconcerted by what they do not know, what they are not familiar with, what is different and so on. I think, at the root of racism, is the discomfort with persons who do not like us, speak like us, eat like us, who have different customs, cultures, practices and so on. At another level, this is a phenomena about the insecurity of human beings. An insecurity that leads human beings to need to have people who they feel better than! People who they feel above from!. In a sense, this is a form of self-assurance- that at least one is better than somebody else. I think that is seen with the inferiority complexes people in society have, locked in the deep subconscious of the psyche somewhere.

We use the term 'contemporary racism' to distinguish between historical forms of racism- the sort of racism that drove colonialism, slavery and apartheid- from contemporary practices that are often more 'subtle' and not officially mandated or sanctioned, but which are nonetheless part of the way societies are governed today. I have been to many places in the world and observed this. In Singapore, for example, people were talking to be about the sort of racism they found on the bus. If, for example, you are a different sort of race or ethnic origin- you take a seat on the bus, and someone else who was sitting next to you will get up and move to someplace else. This is the form of racism where if you pick up the phone and call someone who has advertised an apartment, for example, when they hear your accent or when you get to the apartment and they see you, they may say, "in this apartment we don't encourage meat eaters.." or whatever tool of discrimination they use. Contemporary forms are the more current forms of the manifestation of racism.

[Nils Muiznieks] Racism has been defined in various ways as an ideology, as a discourse, as a belief system... or the practice of individuals, groups or institutions. Racism is, though, a belief that humans can be divided into discrete groups that do not change- that group membership is linked by both appearance and behaviour. In its hard form there is a biological and hierarchical component- and in soft form it focuses on culture and the alleged incompatibility of different cultures with each other. A lot of social science theory has suggested that it's linked to people's need to belong to a group, and the tendency of people to exaggerate their commonality with people in their group- and to exaggerate not only the differences with people in other groups, but to have a negative evaluation of those groups. These differences are exacerbated through a lack of contact, by negative experiences, by negative propaganda... but also by competition over resources.

It's the belief system that things such as 'race' exist which is used by dominant groups to justify their position and to organise groups against each other.

Q: How had social and institutional manifestations of racism changed in the last century?

[Nils Muiznieks] Many forms of racism have not changed that much. For example, many of the common themes that we see in contemporary Anti Semitism are very old and have not changed much through history- the same holds true of prejudice against the Roma or Gypsy people. If you look at the manifestations of 'how' these prejudices have manifested themselves over times? With Anti Semitism you saw ghettos and special clothing in the middle ages all the way through the Nazi period. With the Roma you have slavery and in the nineteenth century, in parts of Europe, you had Roma being hunted down and in some European countries you saw forced sterilisation that continued until the 1970's- and even forced assimilation which still goes on today. Regarding Blacks, of course, you had the slave trade and colonialism which were critical- and that has changed over the years- although the legacy of colonialism and the slave trade continue to influence relations between majorities and black minorities- not only in Europe, but more broadly in the world.

I think what we have seen in ideological terms is that biological racism, after World War II, was largely discredited. You will find few mainstream figures who will claim that people are biologically superior and so on. What we have now is the rise of a discourse of cultural incompatibility which says, "...we're not better or worse, we're different... and we're so different that we can't live together..." What we've also seen in the last hundred years is that the role and context of the state has changed. The role of the state in providing welfare, mobilising people and penetrating their daily lives has changed massively along with the context in which states interact (through globalisation, mass migration and mass communication). So here you see a situation where confrontation with 'the other' has become more common. The role of the media is also important in terms of both the 'evil' that it can do, but also the possibilities inherent in the media which could allow it to combat racism.

Many of the prejudices we see are very old and you still have elements of biological racism creeping into debates today- even when these ideologies have been discredited. This is an age old phenomenon that changes form, and changes it's manifestation based on the changing role of the state and the advance of globalisation.

Q: What 'pushes' a society to commit atrocities based on race or religion?

[Prof. Muigai] I think there are many forces that drive this. I think in most societies where you have these very, very, extreme manifestations- there are historical circumstances upon which opportunistic politicians build. If you look at the holocaust, for example, you will have seen anti Semitism in Europe and elsewhere was very established. Hitler and his Nazi's therefore were working with a very fertile ground which was already in existence. The same is true of the more severe forms of the manifestation of apartheid. Already, there was over a century during which there were attempts to exterminate whole communities in water areas of the Kalahari and so forth.... The seeds are often there, waiting for someone to water and germinate them.

We saw the same in Rwanda! The suspicions, the divide and rule tactics, employed over multiple generations. One of the most interesting things I have encountered in my experience as Rapporteur is how similar all these deeply racist thoughts- that become genocidal- really are! The first thing the propagandists do is to denigrate the existence of the persons to be eliminated so they are treated as sub-human. Language de-humanising them is concocted by the propagandists- you see people referred to as cockroaches, rats or vermin. It then makes it easy for a soldier of 16, 18 or 20- to turn his gun on a whole village. He is then not killing human beings but is exterminating cockroaches.

[Nils Muiznieks] In all of the major genocides of the last century, we have seen this aspect of 'dehumanisation' where 'the other' is not only worse, it is not even human- it is not like us at all. And not only is 'the other' not like us at all? it is scapegoated as being the cause of all of our alleged problems. In the Nazi period you had industrial means used to carry out genocide which had not been available earlier- but also in recent years, we have seen the critical role of the media. In former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, you had state controlled media propagating the prejudice and stereotypes- promoting the dehumanisation of the other group and urging people to take action against them. This is where it gets really dangerous where you have authoritarian racist regimes who have a monopoly over mass media, and use that media to push people to do horrible things.

Former Yugoslavia, especially for Europe, was a great lesson. We thought we had learned so much since World War II and we hadn't. We saw that these kind of atrocities were still possible in a very wealthy and supposedly civilised continent.

Q: How can a society which is described as 'democratic' exist with racism and intolerance?

[Nils Muiznieks] Democracy is predicated on the equality of all before the law. Therefore racism or any ideology of superiority or exclusion based on group membership is incompatible. Unfortunately, we see discrimination, racist violence and hate-speech still prevalent across Europe and around the world. This is why the international community has focussed so much of their recent efforts in this field on anti discrimination law- to try and enshrine this principle of equality in national and international legislation and to create mechanisms to punish those who violate these principles of equality. Anti discrimination is key not only to re-enforce this principle of equality in a real way, but also because discrimination leads to further prejudice. How? basically by preventing people from mixing and co-operating in work settings, schools, army and so on. There is a lot of social science research which suggests that if people co-operate and act in such organisational settings, their values change... they overcome their prejudices and grow more tolerant to 'the other'. Discrimination is an artificial 'keeping apart' of people through institutional and individual actions.

Q: What is the relationship between freedom and liberties in media, speech and elsewhere to racism and intolerance in a given country?

[Prof. Muigai] This is a complex relationship. In some ways, societies that are more free can make it easier for people to disseminate ideas which are racial in origin. Increasingly we talk, therefore, of hate-speech and the challenge of balancing the freedom of expression and containing hate speech. In other circumstances, the more backward communities- and I use backward in the sense of less democratic societies- make it even more possible to harbour retrogressive ideas. The less democratic a society is, the more demagogic the leadership is. In communist, single-party and mock-democracies you see this. The more demagogic these cultures are, the more racism can legitimately be used. You can see it is complex and you don't find that one excludes the other.

Religious Intolerance:

Q: What led to the outbreak of Anti-Semitism culminating in the holocaust, and what is the state of Anti-Semitism in the world today?

[Nils Muiznieks] It's clear that this ideology of biological racism had been around in Germany and other parts of Europe for a long time... since the early nineteenth century. This developed into full-brown theories on race in the 1930's which were exacerbated through economic competition and the envy of part of the Jewish community which had done well economically, and the big political movements of the time, such as capitalism or socialism. Individual Jews had been symbols of both socialism (through prominent representation in many of the revolutionary movements in the 1920's) but also they were prime symbols of capitalism through their success in certain economic sectors. They became the objects of an anti-modern movement which was against both socialism and capitalism. Through the evil mastermind of Hitler, and his henchmen, all the means of Germany's industrial might were turned against this one group.

Anti Semitism, unfortunately, is very much alive and well in Europe today. Some of the forms are very old and we have seen them for hundreds of years... all the traditional protocols of the elders of Zion, certain Christian groups who turn against Jews and so on. You also have new modern forms of Anti Semitism. One is linked to events in the middle-east where people have begun to link criticism of Israel with Anti Semitic stereotypes- which is quite frequent in the right wing and parts of the left wing. The global financial crisis has also led to the revival of conspiracy theories of alleged Jewish capital and so forth. On top of that, not only do we have our own 'home grown' Anti Semites in Europe but we also have 'imported' Anti Semitism where immigrants from all over the world have brought their prejudices along with them when they moved to Europe.

The sad thing is.. in many parts of Eastern Europe where the holocaust was carried out, you have very few Jews left, but Anti Semitism is still alive- so you have Anti Semitism without Jews. If you look around Europe, a very good indication of how safe the Jewish community feels is to understand to what extent are their community centres, synagogues and cultural infrastructure are fortresses and to what extent are they not heavily guarded. That will give you a good gauge of how safe that community feels in any given country.

Q: What are your views on Islamophobia, and the world perception of Islam before and after 9/11?

[Nils Muiznieks] What's interesting is that until about 1997, the term 'islamophobia' was not in broad use. Starting in 1997, you had the first big study by the Runnymede Trust in Great Britain who introduced this term in their laying out of the various aspects of prejudice against Muslims. It really took off, of course, after 9/11 and the 'link' in many people's minds between Islam and terrorism. This was exacerbated by the attacks in London, Madrid and so on. Muslims have now become the primary 'other' in much of the racist debate in Europe. There have been a number of studies looking at the programmes of right wing political parties- where you see that the old Anti Semitism of these parties has been replaced by a new Islamophobia. You also have the odd alliances being formed between right wing populists and very conservative Jewish groups who also are not very open to dialogue with Muslims. This is a very serious issue that I think we all have to pay much more attention to. Finding a way to have a respectful dialogue between different religious people, finding a way to address the social exclusion and feelings of alienation among many young Muslims in Europe. Disconnecting the discussion about terrorism from Islam is absolutely critical.

We just saw in Norway, and earlier saw in the Netherlands (with the murder by a Moroccan actor of Theo Van Gogh) that terrorists come in all shapes, sizes and convictions. Europe has focussed so much on Islamic extremists that it has forgotten that there are many other kinds of extremists around that we need to look at as well.

One very unfortunate thing which we have noticed in our work at ECRI is that before 9/11, practices of ethnic, racial and religious profiling by police, border guards and other security services had been largely delegitimized. They made a huge come-back after 9/11 in the context of 'the fight against terrorism'. Profiling based on the use of actual or alleged group membership, without a justified cause... is discrimination- it's that simple. It is affecting these communities, especially Muslims, in a very serious way.

Q: What are your views on discrimination towards people based on their 'caste' or descent?

[Nils Muiznieks] Debates about caste or descent in Europe are not very prominent. I was at the World Conference Against Racism a little over ten years ago- and there was a huge debate about the Dalits, about caste, and to what extent they should be integrated. The general consensus was that this is a form of racism which should be combated- that you have the same kind of principal of 'attributed group membership' that cannot change, that is inherited- linked with alleged abilities or behaviours. That's what racism is all about. In Europe, issues of caste have not really been on the agenda- but elsewhere- especially in the Asian subcontinent they are more serious. Given globalisation, we will certainly see this issue come to Europe in a more prominent way.

Racial Intolerance

Q: Why do we see widespread global racism and intolerance (both in developed and developing world) towards Africans, people of African descent and people of 'Black' origin? are there solutions?

[Nils Muiznieks] I think part of this has a long-history of colonialism and slavery where whites and other groups had a lot to gain from dominating and exploiting these people. They also generated a lot of theories to justify their actions. There is a strong tone of self-interest in some of the persistence about racist discourse aimed at blacks. There is also a defensiveness which you saw a lot of at the World Conference against Racism around ten years go where you first had the compensation and reparation claims coming up. Many European countries had a hard time coming to terms with their own past and their complicity in some horrible crimes and policies- and the economic benefits they derived from those policies. The demands on the part of countries and people that were subjects of slavery are also demands for symbolic recognition of their history- and these issues of history and human rights are not going to go anywhere. We see it particularly in Eastern Europe with regard to contemporary Russia. These demands will come back and provoke counter-reactions. I think, of course, blacks- as opposed to many minority groups- are immediately physically distinguishable as being different, as being 'the other' - so they become convenient targets along with other groups who are physically distinguishable from majority populations.

Q: What are your views on the causes and solutions for intolerance directed at migrants, refugees and those seeking legitimate asylum?

[Nils Muiznieks] This is going to be Europe's toughest nut to crack over the next decade or two. The old refugee regime is under serious stress and it's become increasingly difficult to sort 'who is who' among the large flows of people. In the boats arriving on the southern shores of Europe you have very mixed groups of people- you have economic migrants, refugees, victims of trafficking and their traffickers... all on the same boat! To fulfil one's international obligation is becoming increasingly problematic- potentially even impossible. These are huge issues which we must face. Firstly the erosion of the refugee regime- but secondly debates about migration in general. The trend in migration is clear- and the choices are very difficult. It is a country's sovereign right to have a zero migration policy so long as it fulfils its rights under the refugee regime. It can accept refugees and no economic migrants, for example. Very few countries are doing that, and certainly fewer will do that in the future- mainly due to demographic processes. How to have a liberal discussion based on human rights, about migration is sometimes I think that not very many European countries have succeeded in doing. Usually moderates and liberals are silent on these issues, leaving the field open to extremists who then set the tone and raise fears, linking these individuals to criminality, disease and so on... Whether or not a country wants to have immigrants and has immigrants is a sovereign choice of states. What's critical from ECRI's point of view is to look at the tone of debate, whether the debate is racist in nature, whether groups are being stigmatised, and then what happens once the people are in the country- whether they have status or not. Even illegal migrants are entitled to basic social right and the conditions upon which they are accepted are important too. Are the various measures designed to promote the integration of immigrants discriminatory in nature? do they stigmatise? do they work? what is their purpose and effect? is the purpose to keep people out? or to make people feel welcome and integrate into society? These are issues we are looking at very closely in many European countries and I think the debate is only going to get more difficult in the future. In the absence of immigration, the choices we face are very difficult. Raising the pension age- bringing more people to the labour market who aren't there now- shrinking the state- or using technology. The Japanese, for example, use technology - they have no real immigration to speak of, but instead put their cards on technology, using robots and so forth. I don't think that's really a solution which can be adapted wholesale in Europe. The choices are very difficult, and none of them are politically popular. The business community, of course, will be pushing for cheap labour. The problem is that if you are a smart and well-educated migrant, you will not come to Europe. You will go to Canada or the United States where conditions for getting residency, citizenship, labour market access and so forth are much better- rather than Europe which is fragmented into twenty seven different jurisdictions. Europe wants highly skilled and well-educated labour, but it attracts low-skilled labour and complains about the difficulty in integrating this labour. This is a dilemma which will face every European country over the next twenty or thirty years- how to cope with demographic decline and the pressures we face ahead- and how to do this in the context of our human rights obligations.

Q: What are your views on the perception of groups such as Women and of homosexuality in different races and how does that manifest with intolerance?

[Nils Muiznieks] In ECRI, we have dealt with the gender aspects of racial discrimination particularly in regards Roma, Muslim and some refugee groups. Only in passing have we dealt with issues relating to homosexuality, bisexuality or trans-sexuality. We have, though, begun to have debates on how to incorporate these issues into our agenda. Unfortunately, this is an area where there has not been a lot of contact and co-operation between different groups pushing for equality. In terms of Women- in particular if we have seen data and evidence to suggest women are facing double-discrimination- not only because of culture or religious background, but also gender- we have highlighted this and urged that states address it. Regarding homosexuality, an interesting report just came out from the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner on discrimination and intolerance against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-sexuals. You see increasing incorporation of these various 'grounds for discrimination' in legislation- for example, the equality directives within the EU. Within the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the work of various other groups involved in combating hate crimes, they find that the kind of violence and discrimination faced by both women and sexual minorities (to use a shorthand phrase) are often very similar to the kinds faced by ethnic and racial minorities and the solutions are often very similar. There are some specific issues (for example, relating to LGBT's) which stray beyond the standard agenda of anti-discrimination, hate speech, or violence- and go into the realm of family law. For example, adoption- marriage- resident partnerships and so forth which are, in some contexts, perceived under 'discrimination' but in many cases are not. There is not a common European standard on many of these things. The explanation for discrimination and intolerance against people on the grounds of sexual orientation are often different too. The two big schools of thought on racism and ethnic intolerance have to do with social identity theory where people want to belong to a group or other groups- this fits in very well with LGBT's. If, however, you look at competition for resources- it's very difficult to apply that paradigm to look at intolerance against LGBT's as a large number of these individuals are in the 'closet' and nobody knows that they have different sexual orientation- they therefore cannot identify who they are in competition with. The conceptual framework is therefore slightly different- but this is being more integrated into the mainstream. We see now that in many European equality bodies, you are getting fewer and fewer specialised commissions looking at racial discrimination, or discrimination on the grounds of gender, or sexual orientation- but more and more general purpose equality bodies are emerging- looking at discrimination against all these groups. I think that's a good thing- this debate is only beginning now, and over the next fifteen or twenty years we will find common ground to unify our approaches and explanations, and have more dialogue between activists and experts looking at discrimination on all these grounds.

Global Issues

Q: To what extent do phenomenon such as climate change, urbanisation, resource competition and so on influence racism and intolerance?

[Prof. Muigai] Without a shadow of doubt it has been quite clear to me, in my experience, that the more insecure people feel about their livelihoods, way of life, culture and future... the more intolerant they are. If you look, for example, at contemporary forms of racism- they are often fuelled by immigration- usually immigration from poorer third-world nations, to countries where there is a perception of job opportunities and increased standard of living. One of the most amazing things I have encountered is that you find people who are hostile to immigrants, who may be of different ethnicity, colour, race, religion, etc- who are doing jobs that they, themselves, would never touch- but who's excuse for racism is that "they" are taking our jobs!

If you look at the middle-east, for example, the wave of migration there by workers from South East Asia, Africa and so on is enormous. The sort of jobs they do- for example, if you look at construction workers in the Emirates... is back breaking work. This is work which, if the immigrants were not there, would simply not be done- or at least not in those conditions, circumstances or for those wages and living conditions.

[Nils Muiznieks] The research I've seen on the impact of the global economic crisis, particularly as it pertains to Europe is very mixed. In some countries you have seen a worsening of the situation where you've had a real hardening on the debate on migration and refugees, where it's been easier for right wing populists to pedal fear, and where groups have turned against Jews and revived old stereotypes, where Muslims are vilified. In other areas, this has not happened. The impact has been variable- and I don't think we have a good grip on 'why' it has been so vary variable across Europe. Apparently these things are filtered through local culture, local history and local context- and we have to adapt our conceptual framework to take that into consideration, which is not an easy endeavour. The one thing that we in ECRI have been particularly concerned about in recent years is the severe cuts that these equality bodies- and national human rights commissions and ombudsmen have taken. This is the front-line in combating discrimination in countries around Europe. These are the places that victims can turn for help, for legal assistance and advice. These are the bodies doing research, raising awareness- and if they are being undermined as a result of the economic crisis? then the most vulnerable groups will be hit even harder. Often-times if you have budget austerity across the board, ombudsmen and human rights institutions are faced with disproportionate cuts, which is of grave concern to us. Also- if you do not have money, you cannot implement the programmes designed to serve the most marginalised groups. Here in Europe I would highlight the plight of the Roma, who are socially excluded, marginalised and unemployed to begin with- and it's clear that in the context of the economic crisis- programmes designed to deal with their social exclusion have been cut or done away with altogether in some countries. This will only worsen their situation and make their problem more intractable in the future.

Solutions

Q: What are your views on the possible solutions for religious conflicts such as that between Israel & Palestine, and that between India & Pakistan?

[Prof. Muigai] Of course we must confront the reality that racial tension is also exacerbated by a million and one other factors. Not just the colour of skin, texture of hair or cultural practices. There are historical issues which have grown into major problems, and now need to be resolved... Not essentially as racial problems, but as political conflicts, albeit of racial origin. To my mind, one of the most difficult questions in modern diplomacy is the Middle East problem. I believe that there is a sense in which, in order for us to truly resolve some of these historical problems, we must recognise racial identities and we must permit- to a very large measure- self determination. One of the most complex issues at the heart of this is migration. What are we to do with migrants who come into dominant cultures, in which religion, language, cultural practices and other things are settled. Is it for these societies to adapt to immigration? or is it for migrants to adopt their societies practices? I think there isn't a simple answer to that. Some of the events recently in Europe over the last several weeks have brought us back to the realisation that this issue is still there- complex and unresolved.

[Nils Muiznieks] The path forward in any situation of severe conflict or in which prejudices, fears and stereotypes are entrenched is first of all to start with the educational system. You must look at what is being taught to the younger generation to ensure that old hatreds are not being reproduced. What is in the curriculum? how are teachers delivering it?. Secondly, if at all possible, you must promote mixing- co-operation and dialogue. Separate institutions, particularly education institutions just re-enforce intolerance and make the problem more intractable. It's important to look at NGO's in civil society also- who try to promote mixed groups- this is critical. There has been some excellent work on India and Asia looking at ethnic conflict in civil life- they made the argument that if you have ethnically mixed NGO's it is a key mechanism by which conflicts can be overcome, and violence prevented. The media is also key- looking at political discourse. This is a very difficult nut to crack as politicians have a mandate from the people- and very often abuse that mandate to further stereotypes. In ECRI, we feel that politicians should be subject to the same hate-speech restrictions as other people are faced with- that they should be prosecuted if they advocate violence or discrimination. They should also regulate themselves in this regard! Most parliaments have codes-of-conduct with regards racist or intolerant speech which are not often adhered to. The same holds true with media. Hate speech in the media should be prosecuted- but the media should be self-regulating. If I was trying to address tolerance outside Europe- this is how I would start. Socioeconomic development is also clear- if you have an economic dimension to a conflict, it makes it that much harder to solve.

Q: What do you think is the role of international institutions such as the UN and ICC in the resolution of racial conflict and discrimination?

[Prof. Muigai] Increasingly- all nations realise and appreciate the need to integrate with the international political, economic and social system. That has given a leverage to multilateral institutions to be able to exact some pressure on how countries want to run their own domestic agenda. To my own mind, apartheid would never have been conquered at the point in time that it was, if international opinion was not so strongly against it. There are many other practices today- including contemporary forms of racism- which are good indicators of this. Increasingly countries are called upon to account to their fellow world citizens about their conduct on these issues. This is a positive thing. I see positive changes! I have travelled to many countries and spoken to many governments... they worry about how they are perceived on these issues! I have never visited a country who says, "...we don't give a damn what people think, we are racist and proud of it."

I think the international criminal justice system is a step in the right direction insofar as... of course in historical times, the accountability of perpetrators of human rights violations on a gross scale was never always assured under domestic forums. To the extent that we have developed a secondary level of accountability, that is a good thing. However.... the problem we confront today is the fact that these processes are, themselves, political process. Who is arrested, who is judged etcetera.... have very clear political overtones. Is that reason enough to abandon those processes? I don't think so. Do these processes eventually create some comfort? Do they engender some comfort in the mind of victims that this may never happen to them again because those individuals may be arrested and charged? I would imagine so....

Q: What do you think is the role of youth culture in the levels of racism and discrimination experienced by a given society?

[Prof. Muigai] This is amazing. I have travelled to many countries in what I will refer to as 'The Former Eastern Europe'. You find generations of older people who have no strong racial views, who were socialised in an ideology that- at least nominally- recognised racial equality. I have found in those societies now, young people who are extremely racist. I think two major concerns emerge from this. Firstly is youth culture- some of it driven by open criminality and second is the xenophobic political discourse of right wing political parties and politicians. That is a very serious problem in Europe today, I can tell you that!

The most dangerous individual in society is a young male. A young unemployed or under-employed male... the level of aggression that generates conflict within communities from this is astonishing. If you look at the drug culture in many countries around the world- it is driven by this same profile of individual. The same is true of child soldiers in militia, and in all these places where we have serious security problems globally! I am not surprised that even in fairly 'tranquil' societies, that these are the same people driving anti-social behaviour.

Q: What is the role of arts, culture and sport in the battle against racism?

[Prof. Muigai] This is an amazing part of the schizophrenia we exhibit as societies. If you look football in Europe, for example, it's a great unifying force. People go to football stadiums to watch these games- Africans, Asians, Whites and more... They're quite happy except for the occasional flare-up! They are very proud of their teams! If you look at athletes who adopt other countries as their homes, wherever it may be... they are embraced and lionised... the countries are proud of them. I have experience of this in Kenya and feel that these phenomenon will really help us to get to the bottom of problems such a racism.

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There seem, therefore, to be many dimensions against which our species is able to discriminate ranging from cultural, biological and geographical differences to economic competition, and even historical conflicts going back many generations. It is also clear that humanity is facing a crisis of instinct versus identity. Our instinct fuels us with the primal need to be part of a group, but we are prone to define those groups by differences rather than similarities. It is thus that we, as a species, define ourselves by who we are not... rather than who we are.

"The human mind...." as Gordon Allport said in his 1954 book 'The Nature of Prejudice', "...must think with the aid of categories....Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it." Framing this in context of our social psychology (observed Scott Ploys in 2003 paper 'The Psychology of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination') we see that "...an 'ingroup' is a group to which someone belongs, and an 'outgroup' is a group to which the person does not belong (hence, one person's ingroup may be another person's outgroup, and vice versa). Research has found that when it comes to attitudes, values, personality traits, and other characteristics, people tend to see outgroup members as more alike than ingroup members. As a result, outgroup members are at risk of being seen as interchangeable or expendable, and they are more likely to be stereotyped. This perception of sameness holds true regardless of whether the outgroup is another race, religion, nationality, college major, or other naturally occurring group. Research also indicates that when people experience a drop in self-esteem, they become more likely to express prejudice...." and prejudices, as Voltaire wrote, "...are what fools use for reason."

Arbitrary dimensions such as race, religion, wealth, ethnicity, gender and so forth can (with reasonable accuracy and cognitive ease) define who we are not... but to answer who we are, we must adopt a more philosophical standpoint. We are six billion souls who (for a brief time) share the experience of being human. We are all born, we will all go through the pains of growing up, finding a purpose in life, mourning our loved ones, celebrating our successes, having likes, dislikes, and more. These are the multitude of shared experiences and shared values which bind our civilisation together, and for every dimension against which we differ- there are hundreds which we share. "We may have different religions, different languages, different coloured skin...." said Kofi Annan, "....but we all belong to one human race."

To conclude and illustrate this from the point of our own human experience, I would like to quote my 2009 poem "Anonymity" :

I see you, You see me.
We are strangers, But connected.

I am like you, But I am not you.

I am me.

Capitalism - What Comes Next?

2011-09-01T08:46:00.002+01:00

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Edmund Phelps (Director of the Columbia University Center on Capitalism & Society and the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University). We look at the story of modern capitalism, the benefits it has brought, and the challenges it has created. We explore the 'post crisis' economy, the role of government in society, the relationship between capitalism and conflict, the role of oil in our society and look at what needs to be done to 'fix' our global economy, and the science of economics itself.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, September 2011

In any iteration of human civilisation, the primary 'mode of operation' of society often impacted the 'mode of thinking' of the time. This can be seen in the spirituality and 'reverence for nature' held by agricultural and pre-industrial societies- and can also be noted in the rather more 'material' thinking (held in esteem within mercantile civilisation) and the 'mechanical and scientific' mode of thinking we saw during our industrialisation, which has persisted through to the present day. These 'modes of thinking' also influenced what we (as a species) were capable of achieving. As individuals and small family units, while reasonably successful- our actions provided little more than secured food and shelter. When we began 'group think'- however- things became interesting. Religion and culture provided us with a uniquely shared mode of thinking which mobilised tens of millions of individuals (who shared that religion or culture) to perform astonishing feats of success (e.g. building pyramids, cities, and more), and to perform astonishing feats of evil (e.g. engaging in war, committing genocide).

Economically, this mass-mobilisation of individuals, resource and capital into action (capitalism) has persisted for hundreds of years. Capitalism is, "the dominant economic system in today's world, and there appears to be no alternatives in sight..." (Richard Swedberg, Cornell University, 'The Economic Sociology of Capitalism'). This system has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of subsistence and- in a relatively short space of time- has allowed society to perform miraculous feats of innovation and development ranging from dramatic improvements in our lifespan, to the development of mass-communications, the internet, financial markets, and technologies which have sent members of our species to view Earth from other worlds while others send sensors deep into the planet, and far into space- probing the origins of man, and the origins of the universe itself.

In the past century, as our civilisation embraced technology and transportation, we globalised- connecting the dots in capitalism to create a profoundly powerful economic civilisation. Our understanding of this phenomenon, explains Swedberg, has been largely been based on, "...the proposition that interests drive the actions of the individuals, and that interests [in capitalism] come together in a very specific way. The actors in society are driven by a variety of interests – political, economic, legal and so on. The plurality of [these] interests make the analysis realistic as well as flexible. Interests of the same type, as well as of different types, may reinforce each other, counterbalance each other, block each other, and so on. Interests, very importantly, are what supplies the force in the economic system – what makes millions of people get up in the morning and work all day. Interests also explain why banks, financial markets and similar institutions are so powerful: they can mobilize and energize masses of people into action through their control over economic resources."

As the blinkers of egoism have been lifted, we (as a society) have realised that capitalism- while ostensibly responsible for the vast majority of our civilisation's advances in the past quarter millennia- has also been responsible for creating vast inequality, conflict, and potentially irreparable damage to our planet. With no viable alternative to capitalism, however, the time has come to discuss "What happens next?...."

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Edmund Phelps (the McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University and Director of the Columbia University Center on Capitalism and Society). We look at the story of modern capitalism, the benefits it has brought, and the challenges it has created. We explore the 'post crisis' economy, the role of government in society, the relationship between capitalism and conflict, the role of oil in our society and look at what needs to be done to 'fix' our global economy, and the science of economics itself.

Edmund Phelps is both the Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society and McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University. He is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. His career began with a stint at the RAND Corporation. Back east in 1960, he held appointments at Yale and its Cowles Foundation until 1966, then a professorship for five years at Penn. In 1970 he moved to New York and joined Columbia in 1971. Phelps's work can be seen as a program to put 'people as we know them' back into economic models - to take into account the incompleteness of their information and their knowledge and to study the effects of their expectations and beliefs on the workings of markets. He has adopted this perspective in studying unemployment and inclusion, economic growth, business swings and economic dynamism. Phelps was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Science in 1982 and made a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2000. In 2008 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and was awarded the Premio Pico della Mirandola for humanism and the Kiel Global Economy Prize. In the same year the University of Buenos Aires Law School established the Catedra Phelps for Programs on Dynamism and Inclusion. He also holds many honorary doctorates and several honorary professorships. An extraordinary tribute occurred when scholars came from around the world for a large Festschrift conference in his honour just three weeks after 9/11.

Q: What is capitalism?

[Edmund Phelps] As a matter of history it's crucial to distinguish between what I have taken to call 'mercantile capitalism' and what I like to call 'modern capitalism'. Mercantile capitalism I think of as prevailing in Britain, Holland, Spain and elsewhere from around 1500 to 1800 or so. The American colonies were, of course, part of that. Following this, thanks to a number of antecedent developments; political and economic- by the early years of the nineteenth century, Britain was able to put all the 'bricks in place' for a prototype of modern-capitalism that launched with the end of the Napoleonic wars in around 1815. Then I see America as joining that list in around 1830... and one must give recognition to France within this story- even though they never became as strong an example as Britain and America. In the 1860's and 70's, Germany joined the group- and things began to become complex.

Fundamentally, modern capitalism was a system for indigenous innovation- while mercantile capitalism didn't have much innovation at all. Perhaps more importantly- the innovations that did occur during the mercantile period were, in essence, applications of scientific and navigational discoveries outside the economic system. What was striking about the modern economies is that they were internally creative. I don't just mean creative in the sense that you may refer to an individual's potential creativity before they have done anything... I mean that they [participants in modern capitalism] actually delivered. They delivered new products and new methods with stunning frequency- ultimately every day! This occurred right through the early nineteenth century, and some countries went through this journey again- the United States, for example- during the inter-war period between around 1921 and 1941- it was an extraordinary time. This happened again between 1955 and 1975 and then disquieting things began to develop.

Q: What are the key problems with modern-capitalism?

[Edmund Phelps] I think there are some very worrying developments.

If we start with demographics- we have the huge wave of retirement coming up in the next ten years. The United States will be, to an appreciable extent- much more than before- a country of older people. These people will be drawing on retirement and medical benefits. More than that, they will be withdrawing their labour services from the economy, and they're not being replaced by a new-wave of young people coming up. Capital is going to find itself with less labour to work with so I'm afraid business investment activity is going to be weak ten years from now... and is weak already in anticipation of that. The decade beginning around 2020 will not be a good time for capitalism.

Next, if we turn to innovation. there's been a tremendous slow-down in productivity, beginning in the 1970's. Economists all knew about that- many wrote about it. As recently as the late 1990's I realised that the slow-downs of productivity had a lot to do with the rise of unemployment. I had thought, until then, that it was just bad-economics... that some people were just too feeble-minded to separate the level of economic activity from the growth of the output produced by the economic activity. It turns out the man on the street was right, and I was wrong... there is a very close link between productivity growth and unemployment. Primarily, the massive productivity slow-down in Europe accounts for the fact that the German unemployment rate barely budged from 0.8% from around 1960 to 1973. And now? it's around 8%. A spectacular rise in unemployment.... So why has productivity slowed down? I think there has been an underlying decline in the rate of innovation in the economy. There's not as much tinkering... not as much dreaming... not as much conceiving new-ways to do things... If we go a level below this and look at the cause of that. We see that a huge amount of short-termism which has crept into the system. CEOs routinely devote their lives to hitting the next quarterly earnings targets... and that doesn't leave very much time for thinking about the medium term future. This creates a number of mysterious questions. Taking Silicon Valley, which is so famous and so admired... why didn't all those venture-capital firms multiply and sweep through the world? You have a small number a small number of venture-capital firms which tend to operate in Shanghai and other places, but you have not had an explosion of venture capital... There are a lot of very worrisome questions about what has happened to the dynamism of modern economies such as Britain, America, France and Germany. We did, of course, have the internet revolution... but that too was in just a pretty small sector of the economy. I'm worried that a lot of that innovation is not very job-creating... and to the extent that it is also job-creating, those jobs can be done perfectly well by production workers in China... maybe it doesn't need the loving attention of craftsmen (for example).

Q: Are there any specific areas of additional dynamism needed in our economies?

[Edmund Phelps] I don't think there was ever a specific need for dynamism... Dynamism is the elixir of life. We need to have new challenges! We need to have new ideas! If we don't have new ideas, and we don't the opportunity to work on ideas, develop them, test them, try them out in the market, use them, take them home.... if we don't have that, we're going to be zombies. I think this is a very serious thing. I'm not saying that there's some problem out there which means that some particular innovation is needed for an un-met need... although a cure for cancer would be nice. The NIH actually undertook to do this, around twenty or thirty years ago, and it was an amazing thing- around a year ago- when they made a public statement confessing to failure. They confessed that they had been unable to do it.

Q: Are we facing a "new-normal"? What can we do to secure our economic future?

[Edmund Phelps] I think we are facing a new normal. This new-normal will have a higher natural rate of unemployment... like seven percent rather than five and a half that it was in the 1990's. Slower growth is also part of it.. maybe at two percent per annum instead of three percent that we have seen in more recent decades, and four that we saw in the 1950's and 1960's. This, of course, raises the question... "Oh my god, what can we do about this!?"

Sure, we can do some things that would be good to do in response... It would be good to get rid of this short-termism... some of which is coming from the financial sector. These financial guys are putting a lot of pressure on the CEO's to be short-termist... to deliver short-term results. We do need a reform of the financial sector, and we do need more ways of nurturing venture capital. I've been advocating a first-national bank of innovation. America is a country that has subsidies for almost everything.... education, farming... and hidden subsidies for manufacturing and exporting... you name it! There is very little subsidy, however, for work - and almost no subsidy for innovation. There is a tax-credit and some tax-deductibility for research and development expenditures, but research and development expenditures are confined to a small number of industries- and that's not a huge amount of money. We have to make it easier for a young entrepreneur to start a company... to start his innovative project. We have to make it easier for an established company to start a new innovative project.

I know there are a lot of scientists out there who say, "you dummies out there in economics, you don't realise that science is the fountain of all progress... and we'd have more technical progress if we had more scientific activity..." and then of course, the green people say, "...yes, we ought to set-up national institutes for reduction of carbon-use, solar, and so forth...". The trouble is... those science projects will not create a lot of jobs for ordinary people. It may create some jobs for scientists and engineers... We're not going to get back to the dawning of the modern age from 1815 to 1870, where everybody and his brother was running around trying new ideas.... we're not going to get there by having some grants for research projects. We have to get back to our roots... get back to the old spirit of experimenting, exploring, trying things out, discovery... on a broad scale. Every company would, ideally, be doing a lot of this all the time

Q: What are your thoughts on the role of government in inspiring ideas (for example, using the space programme and lunar missions)?

[Edmund Phelps] The programme to go to the moon and explore space was a wonderful expression of modernism... but I'm afraid it would be disastrous if we made that a recipe to be used all-over the economy... we wouldn't want the whole economy to be under the direction of a bunch of NASA's. This has to be at a grass-roots level.... I think Buzz-Aldrin was right that the lunar missions were inspiring... they intended to be inspiring... but maybe it's a mark of the change in our times, that nobody even thinks of proposing something new like that, they don't care anymore.

Q: What have been the benefits of, and challenges brought by, capitalism?

[Edmund Phelps] There's no question, anymore, that the material benefits of capitalism were phenomenal- almost from the get-go around 1815. There was a tremendous pick-up in the growth rate of aggregate output and standards of living were increased tremendously. That resulted in huge increases in public-health with a corresponding reduction of disease- and the emergence of all-kinds of comforts...

Modern capitalism ought not to be viewed as merely a system for producing goods (more or less the same goods that had been produced during the mercantile period). It was a system that stimulated the production of new commercial ideas- and stimulated the development of those new commercial ideas by entrepreneurs. It also stimulated the development of a crude financial system- that lent some support to entrepreneurial activity- and this system led many producers to spend time or hire people with expertise in evaluating new products and new methods of production. Consumers also came to have a new way of life! Consumers would go to the mall on Saturday morning to look at the new stuff on display! More generally, though, western society went from a life in which ordinary people were not much involved in the economy, to one where people were engaged in conceiving new ideas, experimenting, tinkering, exploring new possibilities, experiencing the 'new' - this was an intellectual revolution. I like to amuse myself by pointing out that the arts changed alongside. Music became completely different two or three times after 1815- the visual arts such as painting followed the same trend. Modern capitalism offered a new way of life, not just a higher standard of living.

The downside? Well.. of course there's always a downside to everything. Modern capitalism is a system in which some people are very lucky- they just happen to be at the right place at the right time... and can cash in big-time; while other people aren't! Some people are very unlucky- they make decisions which turn-out to be ill-fated. That could, of course, have been true to some extent in mercantile times also. With the transformation of capitalism from mercantile to 'innovational', however, there was a tremendous increase in uncertainty. The future became anyone's guess... In that sort of a world, you can find yourself on a very bad path- or you can find yourself on a marvellous path which you had never dreamed of! So there's just naturally a considerable amount of inequality that this system generates.

Q: Why do poverty and inequality exist on such a large scale?

[Edmund Phelps] As I just said, there is naturally a huge amount of inequality in modern-capitalism. Capitalism can, to a degree, address that inequality by subsidizing- in one or more ways- the employment of workers at the bottom... low wage workers. It also helps to pull up their wages. This helps increase economic inclusion and reduce inequality so that low-wage participants in an economy can feel that they're not receiving unnecessarily low-wages and low-rewards... that society has addressed their situation and done something about it. We could interpret John Rawls book, 'A Theory of Justice' as- essentially- being an argument for low-wage employment subsidies up-to the fullest level- as far as society will allow. A crude translation of Rawls would be, "maximise tax revenue in order to maximise the money the state has to put into things like low-wage subsidies."

That will, of course, leave the Bill Gates' of the world who are very rich because, besides being very bright and driven, they got extraordinarily lucky. Wealth inequality of that sort doesn't cause me concern- It doesn't matter to me that the Rockefeller's may own half of Maine (for example) or that Ted Turner may own half of Montana... What does it matter? I think Ted Turner did a great thing with CNN and he's very rich! so what? I just don't get it. I just never understood why there was such an aesthetic revulsion to outsized rewards for people who had a big idea and- generally speaking- worked their heads off to develop that idea. I don't have any problem with it. I understand, though, that some very rich people use their wealth to get involved in politics- and I find that a little bit ugly. It's important to say that this is on the 'left' and the 'right' - there are plenty of leftist billionaires, and even more right-wing billionaires around.

Q: What do you feel is the social context of capitalism?

[Edmund Phelps] I think modern-capitalism has given a huge breadth of people a range of opportunities that could not have been imagined in 1750 or earlier. Ordinary people have opportunities (at least in the more capitalist economies of the western world) for meaningful careers- careers of problem solving, venturing into the unknown- and in the course of that not only experiencing the development of their capabilities but also self-discovery- discovering who they are. More than that... it's about having an adventure that leads them to become something that they didn't know they could be... to become something way beyond what they could have been had they not taken that adventure. This development is not something you can do on an island alone (although even Robinson Crusoe could come out of his journey almost disbelieving what he had been able to do!) ... The social-interactions are an important part of this. The interactions you have with other people lead you to become a different person. A person you could not have become had you not had them.

Money culture has really taken-over to excess... In the nineteenth century, people were on a tremendous adventure. They didn't know what the future held. They were meshed in a colossal discovery process which was enormously exciting! Now it seems that people are in business just to make money. They want to take the adventure out of everything, they want to mechanise things as much as possible... they want to take the business of making mortgage loans to home-buyers, for example, and turn that into some sort of standardised packaging... so that nobody ever sees the home-buyer or even the house... people just enter a code into a system and get the terms of a loan.

Q: What do you feel is the relationship between capitalism and conflicts (such as the Arab Spring)?

[Edmund Phelps] As I see it... and I feel pretty-sure after talking with experts, that I'm right about this... The revolt of the urban youth in Tunisia and Egypt is all about wanting to have careers... wanting the ability to start your own business... wanting the ability to enter an existing enterprise without benefit of connections (i.e. solely on your CV to date and the people you or your family know).

I think Egypt and Tunisia were examples of yet-another economic system... namely the system which, for a lack of a better word, we call 'Corporatism'. This system has private ownership... one of the things that Egypt did, for example, in the last ten or fifteen years was privatise a lot of enterprises. Those enterprises became owned by people in the military. Corporatism doesn't mean social-ownership... that's socialism. Corporatism means that there is a great deal of central control, directed by the government, of the private sector. A great deal of regulation... a great deal of two-way communication occurs with the private sector seeking favours from the government and the government seeking the same from the private sector.... In Egypt and Tunisia, you had a very rudimentary corporatist system which was being exploited all-out by the rulers who took advantage of their powers to put their cronies in place as managers and owners of various enterprises. The bulk of the population, many of whom who- by this time- have college or university degrees of some sort.. cannot break into the system! They can't get jobs in those enterprises.. they are strictly for the insiders. They can't even sell their fruits on the streets without a license- and there aren't very many of those [licenses] distributed. It's a very closed system... a system that's about as far from modern capitalism as you can get! Well functioning modern capitalism allows anybody to start-up a company, to go into business for himself, and start coming up with new ideas, and working on their development.

In the European corporatist model, you have giant employer-federations and you have giant labour-unions... and so you have a tri-partite system of economic power. In Tunisia and Egypt I think it's fair to say that the labour-leg of the tripod isn't there. It's just the businesses and the government.

Big corporations are highly politicized and have close relations with their national governments... Corporatism has always been around... there were certainly corporatist strains in Bismarck's capitalism. The government was pretty-cosy with a lot of big companies. Companies were going in and out of government offices trying to get contracts, trying to get favours.

Q: Is there a relationship between Oil and the well-being of economies?

[Edmund Phelps] This is a question which has been debated for a long time... You certainly can see that in some countries in the Middle East (excluding North Africa) that the government acquires the ownership and possession of the oil- and then uses the oil to spread money around the country... not only to keep itself in power, and prevent political competition- creating an absence of new ideas, new energy and so forth... but also the whole population can live off these stipends, subventions, emoluments... this flow of money that comes to them without having to lift a finger. This is tremendously damaging to whatever curiosity, drive and zeal the individuals were presumably born with.. and becomes very damaging to these economies.

It's very dangerous to generalise though. If you look at Norway, for example, it's done a pretty good job of not throwing-around the oil wealth in a way that would be a 'death-knell' to society. They recognise that oil will not last forever, and place their oil revenues into a sovereign wealth fund. Then, of course, you have to determine what you do with the income from the sovereign wealth-fund! The returns on sovereign wealth can, of course, be used for various purposes to better society. Maybe Norway is saved by the fact that their oil-wealth is not so colossal that it puts the whole rest of the advanced economy in the shadow- so that it doesn't matter anymore. Maybe also good sense and propriety combined with prudence and abstemiousness... avoiding 'blowing' all that money day by day has also contributed.

Q: Has globalisation and the advent of multi-nationals impinged on competition and innovation?

[Edmund Phelps] Is the pharmaceutical industry more nearly-monopolised or more nearly under the control of a small oligopoly now that many companies have become globalised? It seems the case in pharmaceuticals that they have all become globalised- so they all compete with one another as before, but they're all global now- rather than national. I would suppose that there's more competition now of American pharmaceuticals, for example, with pharmaceuticals in Switzerland and Germany and so forth- than there was in the 1920's or the 1890's! A large company now has to answer to a whole-lot of governments whereas previously it only had to answer to one- or one central government, one state government and one local government. That's not only a distraction, but introduces significant red tape (getting permissions from a number of governments for example).

Q: What is the future of economics as a discipline?

[Edmund Phelps] Economics is in a tremendous crisis... especially since it doesn't know it's in a crisis.

This may sound funny... but it didn't damage me (personally). I spent most of my career trying to put people back into economics! The day I won the Nobel prize, I was asked at a press-conference to encapsulate my life's research in one sentence. I said, "...in my work, I've tried to put the people back into economic theory..." Some of my earliest work looks at a farmer considering new seeds and fertilisers... contemplating whether or not he can take the risk of trying any of these new things.... and whether he should adopt them. The answer depends on his educational background.... his willingness to bear some uncertainty... and so forth. Later on, when I was working on unemployment and inflation- I asked myself... What would I do if I was a company? I realised I would be worried about what other companies were doing about their wages! In the process of increasing their wages, to the extent that they are, I must increase mine too in anticipation. I then introduced wage-expectations and price-expectations which were not talked about before. Later on, around 2000- I started talking about the visions of entrepreneurs... those are real life people who have visions! People who from any walk of life can have an idea.... A truly modern economy is all about ideas and people!

Economics has contributed to the march away from these principles by reducing economies to 'stochastic steady-state models' in which prices are the entire interest. Prices, in these models, 'vibrate' in some way. I find this incredible.... This thinking began seeping into the financial sector so then the banks started importing French mathematicians to work out how to price various assets as if anyone could possibly know what these assets are worth? We live in an uncertain world... not just a vibrating one! Economics will (and should) always have a scientific side... but it has to remember that no piece of evidence is ever decisive on its own... we have to understand that our subject is human creativity. That will be a very different kind of science from what we have had before. There hardly is any science of creativity yet- yet alone a science of individual or societal creativity which understands the interactions of people- that's the next giant-step.

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"Economists..." wrote Sendhil Mullainathan in his 2004 paper, 'Psychology and Development Economics', "...often study scarcity, yet their conception of decision-making assumes an abundance of psychological resources. In the standard economic model, people are unbounded in their ability to think through problems. Regardless of complexity, they can costlessly figure out the optimal choice. They are also unbounded in their self-control able to costlessly implement and follow through on whatever plans they set out for themselves. Whether they want to save a certain amount of money each year or finish a paper on time, they face no internal barriers in accomplishing these goals. Furthermore, they are unbounded in their attention. They think through every single problem that comes at them and make a deliberative decision about each one. In this and many other ways, the economic model of human behaviour ignores the actual bounds on choices(Mullainathan and Thaler 2001). Every decision is thoroughly contemplated, perfectly calculated and easily executed."

The reductivist fallacy behind this 'rational economic agent' is similar to the paradox in thinking described by the British Philosopher Karl Popper, in his seminal lecture "Of Clocks and Clouds" (1966) where he makes the distinction (as summarised by David Brooks) between clocks as, "neat orderly systems that can be defined and evaluated using reductive methodologies..." and clouds which are, "irregular, dynamic and idiosyncratic." Brooks describes how Popper felt Clouds were, "...Hard to study because they change from second to second.." and can, "...best be described through narrative not numbers...". Popper himself wrote, "...according to what I may call the commonsense view of things, some natural phenomena, such as the weather, or the coming and going of clouds, are hard to predict: we speak of the `vagaries of the weather'. On the other hand, we speak of clockwork precision' if we wish to describe a highly regular and predictable phenomenon."

He elucidated his concept looking at the paradigm of a cloud or cluster of small flies or gnats. "...Like the individual molecules in a gas, the individual gnats which together form a cluster of gnats move in an . astonishingly irregular way. It is almost impossible to follow the flight of any one individual gnat, even though each of them may be quite big enough to be clearly visible." Likening this to our own society, he continues, "...the cluster does not dissolve or diffuse, but it keeps together fairly well. This is surprising, considering the disorderly character of the movement of the various gnats; but it has its analogue in a sufficiently big gas cloud (such as our atmosphere, or the sun) which is kept together by gravitational forces. In the case of the gnats, their keeping together can be easily explained if we assume that, although they fly quite irregularly in all directions, those that find that they are getting away from the crowd turn back towards that part which is densest. This assumption explains how the cluster keeps together even though it has no leader, and no structure-only a random statistical distribution resulting from the fact that each gnat does exactly what he likes, in a lawless or random manner, together with the fact that he does not like to stray too far from his comrades. I think that a philosophical gnat might claim that the gnat society is a great society or at least a good society, since it is the most egalitarian, free, and democratic society imaginable."

If we compare our economy to this 'cluster of gnats' we see a range of (disorderly) economic actors ranging from central banks, to financial institutions, investors, businesses, consumers and more. Each actor appears 'unpredictable' yet the cloud (the economy) "keeps together fairly well.." If any economic actor strays too far from the crowd, the gravitational pull of capitalism- where the human system is at its most dense (the need to work, access capital, be part of the group to flourish- manifested perhaps best in cities) quickly causes the actor to return to the core. This 'core' gives the economic system a perceived order (which we misinterpret quantitatively and reductively) and gives it a sense of arrogance claiming it is a good society, a free society, and (perhaps most arrogantly) a democratic one.

"Everyone agrees that people have reasons for what they do..." wrote H. Simon in his 1986 essay, 'Rationality in Psychology and Economics', "...they have motivations and they use reason (well or badly) to respond to these motivations and reach their goals. Even much, or most, of the behaviour that is called abnormal involves the exercise of thought and reason. Economics sometimes feels called on to defend the thesis that human beings are rational. Psychology has no quarrel at all with this thesis. If there are differences in viewpoint, they must lie in conceptions of what constitutes rationality, not in the fact of rationality itself. The judgment that certain behaviour is "rational" or "reasonable" can be reached only by viewing the behaviour in the context of a set of premises or "givens." Economics without psychological and sociological research to determine the givens of the decision-making situation, the focus of attention, the problem representation, and the processes used to identify alternatives, estimate consequences, and choose among possibilities-such economics is a one-bladed scissors. Let us replace it with an instrument capable of cutting through our ignorance about rational human behaviour."

In Simon's assessment (above) lies perhaps the biggest clue in answering "..what follows capitalism?". As society progressed through industrialisation- it was unsurprising and (largely) appropriate that our thinking became reductivist, we made machines- and those machines, in turn, made us... The world has, though, evolved and modern civilisation- in its highly globalised form, is as much a knowledge economy as a mechanical one. This is an iteration of civilisation which can leverage the power of capitalism to ensure the billions living in poverty 'join the economy'. This is an iteration of civilisation which has the innovative power to create solutions for ecological problems our predecessors have created, and the power to create economic entities which provide opportunity for a huge number of people to generate wealth in a democratic fashion.

We have had mechanical-capitalism. Now it's time for human-capitalism.

Brazil - How to Build a Great Country

2011-08-01T09:14:00.014+01:00

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Celso Amorim (Foreign Minister of Brazil from 2003-2011, and current Minister of Defence), a man who has been described as having "...masterminded a transformation of Brazil's role in the world that is almost unprecedented in modern history..." We look at what it takes to build a great country exploring areas including economics, politics, society and culture.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, August 2011

Brazil is an extraordinary country. Covering a territory of 3.29 million square miles (8.51 million square kilometres) Brazil is roughly the same size as the continent of Europe or- to use a different analogy- roughly 2.5 times the size of India and over 35 times the size of the United Kingdom. The country houses over 21,000 square miles (55,000 square kilometres) of water (almost twice the amount of water as Lake Baikal), the majority of the Amazon rainforest (which- alongside providing 20% of the Earth's Oxygen, is home to one in ten of all known species in the world, thousands of people who have yet to be contacted by modern civilisation, and potential cures for many of the diseases affecting our lives) .

Against this perpetual gamut of nature, Brazil's 191 million strong population have, within their lifetimes, seen their country exit the Great Depression of the 1930's only to end up with seemingly never-ending cycles of economic and political crises which led to a coup (in 1964), a twenty year military dictatorship and then a process of re-democratisation and rapid industrialisation (from 1985 to present-day). During this period, Brazil's GDP has grown from $15.1 billion in 1960 to almost $1.6 trillion today (making Brazil the world's seventh largest economy by purchasing power parity).

"This rapid socioeconomic transformation..." says Werner Baer in his book 'The Brazilian Economy: Growth and Development' "...can be illustrated with a few numbers. In 1940 only 30 percent of the country's population was urban; by 1970 this proportion had increased to 56 percent, and by 1999 to 78 percent. The contribution of agriculture to gross domestic product (GDP) declined from 28 percent in 1947 to about 10 percent in the late 1990's (measured in current prices), whereas that of industry rose from not quite 20 percent in 1947 to about 36 percent in the late 1990s. After four decades of intense industrialization, Brazil was producing 2 million motor vehicles in 1997, 26 million tonnes of steel in 1997, 39 million tonnes of cement in 1998, about 7.8 million television sets, and 3.7 million refrigerators in 1997. It had over 58,000 megawatts of installed electric power capacity in 1998, and over 60 percent of its exports consisted of manufactured products. Its paved road network increased from 36,000 kilometres in 196 to close to 150,000 kilometres in 1999." Recent history (since 2001) has seen more than ten percent of Brazil's population rise out of poverty- and the nation adopt a driving posture in global economics and foreign policy (having led UN peacekeeping in Haiti since 2004, and being central to missions in Liberia, the Central African republic, Cote d'Ivoire and East Timor).

Brazil's incredible economic and social transformation has been described by many commentators as a 'miracle' - but to attach metaphysical significance to this process under-values the importance of political, economic and social leadership in the story. So, how has Brazil transformed its role in the world?

In this exclusive interview, we speak to Celso Amorim (Foreign Minister of Brazil from 2003-2011, and current Minister of Defence), a man who has been described as having "...masterminded a transformation of Brazil's role in the world that is almost unprecedented in modern history...". We look at what it takes to build a great country exploring areas including economics, politics, society and culture.

Celso Amorim is an alumnus of the Rio Branco Institute (an undergraduate school of international relations run by the Ministry of External relations of Brazil) and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. He was a Portugese language professor at the Rio Branco Institute as well as political science and relations professor at the University of Brasília. He remains a permanent member of the Foreign Affairs Department of the University of São Paulo Institute of Advanced Studies.

Amorim began his government service as Secretary for International Affairs for the Ministry of Science and Technology in 1987, progressing to become the Director-General for Cultural Affairs in 1989, and Director General for Economic Affairs in 1990. He was then promoted to the position of Secretary General of the Brazilian foreign-affairs agency in 1993, serving as Foreign Minister under President Itamar Franco until 1995. He then served as Brazil's ambassador to the United Kingdom until his appointment as Foreign Minister of Brazil under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from 2003-2011. He has been described (by David Rothkopf, Foreign Policy) as, "the world's most successful foreign minister."

Looking at the macro-concept:

Q: What, in your view, does it take to build 'a great country' ?

[Celso Amorim] I don't think you can answer that in one single reply. I think several things make a big country and sometimes these things are different. Sometimes it may be technological developments such as weapons- sometimes also it can be, like it is for Brazil, that a country has a large territory, population and natural resources. These things are essential things also. In the case of Brazil, one of the most important things is the huge ethnic and cultural mixture which makes us a country with dynamism, vibrancy, and the ability to understand the psychology of other nations. We have problems, of course, but this is one of our huge strengths, and a huge foreign policy asset.

Brazil - history to present day:

Q: Can you tell us about the economic and social challenges (and solutions for them) which Brazil faced following the end of military rule in 1985?

[Celso Amorim] In a very simplified way, there were three basic things that allowed Brazil to become more self confident and- of course- to improve its self-esteem. First and foremost was the consolidation of democracy. Second was the stabilisation of the economy- you have to understand, for instance, that in my lifetime until I was fifty or so- I had not witnessed any period without inflation of twenty or thirty percent, and sometimes one hundred percent. Thirdly- and probably most importantly- was the ability of Brazil to deal with a problem we inherited from colonial times- inequality. I think this is what the Lula government, above all, did. He did, of course, build on the two other pillars- continuing to deepen democracy and retain the policies of growth and stability- but also he dealt with the question of inequality in a way that no previous government had done.

Looking at the austerity programme, international-debts and hyper-inflation (and parallels with Greece)- Brazil has many advantages over Greece I am afraid to say, and also some disadvantages- we are not in Europe, for example, and that means the rescue packages which came to Brazil were only a third or one-fourth of the size of the one that is coming to Greece- even though we are ten times as big, or more. On the other hand, of course, we have more natural resources- a bigger agricultural potential- and many other things that help. One thing that really helped us was NOT following the IMF prescription, and hence I think the fact that we insisted on having growth (alongside stability) was something that made for a big change in Brazil. I think this has really shown up in recent times- the past ten years or so.

Q: What have been the principal reasons for, and methods behind Brazil's economic and political growth since that period? And how would you describe Brazil, as a country, now?

[Celso Amorim] I would say that natural resources in themselves are not enough. We have had natural resources since the times of the colonies- and that didn't mean that we were making progress. Good polices are also very important. Just after the military government, we had the first president who was directly elected- who was then impeached! That was a big test for our democratic institutions. After that we had a succession of leaders- some of whom I agreed with more than others- but in any case- imagine that next we had a leader who was a respected intellectual, after that a metal worker, and now we have a woman who was a guerrilla fighter in her days. So all this shows that the democracy in Brazil is deepening- and for each different challenge that appears- we reply with more democracy. This, for my mind, has been the key factor in Brazil's political and economic development. It is this sense of democracy which empowers us, the people of Brazil, to elect someone like Lula who- in turn- uses that same democratic power to pursue policies to successfully combat inequality. This then reflects on the psychology of the people of our nation. If you see less poor people in the streets, and abandoned children, it makes you feel better- and that helps us to build a more independent attitude in foreign policy. That, again, has feedback in Brazil- making people more confident feeling that we don't always have to say yes to whatever is presented. I used to say that although we didn't create the wave, we were able to ride the wave- and even help a little bit when, for instance we didn't accept a negative WTO agreement in Cancun, when we didn't accept imbalanced negotiations in the free trade area of the Americas and so on... I think these things go together! When we decided to further integrate with South America, to open up to Africa and the Arab World, to India and so forth... These all came together and it is a fact that we would not have been able to take these initiatives before- and had to wait till we, as a country, were more self-confident. And these initiatives then further increased that confidence.

Q: What has been the impact of the global economic crisis on Brazil?

[Celso Amorim] I would not say we were unaffected. Some industries such as aerospace- for instance- are geared to export and so there was some effect. On the whole, Brazil was much less affected than most industrial countries or semi-industrial countries. One reason was that because of the policies of combating poverty- we augmented and expanded our internal markets, so a lot of our production was able to pick-up based on internal demand. Another reason, which is supported by our foreign policy, is that we had a much more diversified pattern of foreign trade. When we got into government- we had 25% of our exports directed to the United States and 25% directed towards Europe. Now? it's less than 11% to the United States with Latin America and the Caribbean being the biggest markets. Our biggest trade-surplus is with the Arab world. This was a sea-change which was only made-possible because the Brazilian industry responded to changing demand patters, for instance, from China- and also because our foreign policy worked in a way that avoided too much dependence on one single market. It is the opposite of what would have happened had we, for instance, signed the FTA agreement in the way it was being proposed.

Q: From the point of view of a perceived 'developing world' economy, has globalisation worked? what have been the benefits? are what are the challenges? What is the influence of multinational corporations from US, EU and other areas on Brazil?

[Celso Amorim] Globalisation is here to stay. You cannot, however, look at it as a natural phenomenon on which you have no influence- it's not like a typhoon or a cyclone. It's a process- and a process on which you can have influence. When, for instance, Brazil decided it would establish new links with South Africa and India- creating the so-called 'INSA'- or when we decided to emphasise integrating with South America- or when we decided to open up to the Arab World and China? All of those decisions were part of globalisation- but not globalisation the way it was proceeding should we have not done anything. It was globalisation with the help of agents! We are part of the class of 'agents'- we are not merely an 'object' of the process, we are the 'subject' also. There are, of course, some trends we cannot control- but there are things we can influence, and we have done the maximum we can to do that.

Looking at the role of corporations... Brazil has been rather open in some areas, but we have also taken-care that our banks (both private and public) continue to play an important role. Our public banking system is actually one of the reasons why the crisis didn't hit us so much, and even our private banks were well-preserved. As it relates to development policy, for instance, our development bank is crucial- this is the 'Bank of Brazil' which deals with Agriculture and small-business. I would not say that we have 'closed' ourselves to foreign banking- you can look around and see a lot of HSBC and Santander agencies which bought some Brazilian banks! but you also see a lot of Brazilian banks- both private and public. I would stress the role of public banking in Brazil- especially in the area of development and long-term investment. These were the banks that were lending when nobody else was lending. In the case of pharmaceutical industries, for example- whenever we have to take decisions that were not easy like, for instance, compulsory license for HIV/AIDS medicines- we did! Also, when we had chose whether to buy product from India to deal with the problem of high-blood pressure [rather than a western company]? we did!

We are, of course, happy to have investment but we want them to play by our rules and investors have largely understood that. I am not saying that everything is marvelous, we still have a lot to do- but I think this balance between foreign investment and strong instruments- financial and normative, together with state and mixed public-private companies as we have seen in Oil- is fundamental. I want to stress also the role of diversification in our foreign relations. When we started with our policy for Africa, it sounded like a purely sentimental exercise which, of course, is a good thing- sentiments is a part of policy... but now our trade with Africa has multiplied five-times and every day we get new demands for investment, technical-assistance (particularly in agriculture) and so on... This was, of course, accompanied by a very independent foreign policy in relation to problems around the world.

Q: How has Brazil tackled social issues such as human rights, mass-urbanisation, poverty and high levels of inequality, unemployment, organised crime, health etc? What role has Culture (art, music, sport, film, literature, cuisine) played in Brazil's story?

[Celso Amorim] This is really part of our struggle against dictatorship for such a long time... So the awareness of issues such as human-rights, human-dignity and so forth are very strong and in many areas we have been really in the lead. Looking, for example, at the rights of Women. There are, of course, still big problems such as the situation of children in Brazil and even the racial situation... In the latter case, while problems may not 'openly' be caused by racism, in reality- they are- but actions are being taken in terms of affirmative action and so on. If we look at the issue of violence against women, we have many police stations now which are dedicated to those who have been affected by that- which has had a strong impact.

I do, of course, have a great respect for human rights- but I like to speak of human dignity. I think dignity is an encompassing concept that involves all aspects of human rights. The division of human-rights, as if each aspect was a different thing, does not allow us to understand the whole- which includes civil liberties, freedom of speech (which in Brazil is absolute- nobody can ever complain of a lack of freedom of speech in Brazil)- but also the attention given to hunger, poverty, those who are discriminated against and more. Discrimination is often a very subtle thing- it's not like Apartheid- but it does happen in Brazil, as it does everywhere. These are things which have changed for the better in Brazil. The situation is far from being ideal, but we are making progress. Just in my last month in office, I promoted the first career-diplomat who was of African origin. The fact that it took this long is a shame for a country that prides itself on being a racial democracy, but it was done- and we are evolving.

I think culture has played a role too. I, myself, was very involved in the film industry in the past- and I feel that literature, film and music have been important. Music in Brazil has a very large audience, and cuts across all classes. Songs have praised equality, praised our African roots and more- all this helps to change a country. Alongside this, an awareness of the fact that problems continue to exist is very importance. I speak a lot on race only because I feel it is one of the lingering problems in Brazil because, for a long time, we have been more or less 'comfortable' with the fact that we were a racial democracy because there was no legal obstacle (since the abolition of slavery) for a black man, or a black woman to go up in society. The obstacles very often, though, are more subtle. This is also changing now, and is a great evolution for us.

Culture certainly plays a very important role. You can, for example, have a society which has great singers who are black- but still has discrimination. Just look at the USA? I think the good thing, in Brazil, is that cultures have evolved together- culture and real-life have not become separated.

Q: What has been the role of technology (such as telecommunications, IT and the Internet) on Brazil's economic and social story?

[Celso Amorim] The internet is widespread in Brazil. We are among the biggest users of cell-phones, the internet and similar technologies. I think this has a big impact on people's participation in life. Since we don't have a problem of lack-of-openness similar to that which is common elsewhere... technology has not played a revolutionary role such as in the Middle-East. Certainly, though, technology plays a big role with everyone participating in democracy.

Looking at Foreign Policy & Global Issues:

Q: How does economic protectionism affect emerging economies? What are your views on the role of developing nations in the Doha Round?

[Celso Amorim] The most vicious form of protectionism is subsidies. Agricultural subsidies in particular. Subsidies perpetuate poverty in many countries. In the case of Brazil, we are already in the intermediate stage of development- and our agricultural sector is rather more advanced. Even if, for example, we are affected by the agricultural subsidies within the United States and Europe- we are able to manage... But if you take countries in West Africa- for example, the cotton producers... What's the good in giving them half a billion dollars when you are taking away more than that in the subsidies that you pay to your own farmers? I think this is the most vicious form of protectionism. I know that some countries are, however, trying to change. Even in Europe, for instance, we were trying to develop a programme with Sweden in which Sweden would buy ethanol from African countries, produced by African-Brazilian firms- with some Swedish financing. This is the kind of tri-lateral deal co-operation which would be of great effect. Even that was hindered to some extent by high taxes and the charges placed on ethanol by the European Union- which were designed to protect their uncompetitive and unproductive ethanol sector (producing from Beetroot and seed-oils). So... there are all these correct claims that Africa needs more support, but on the other hand you have protectionist policies that do the exact opposite... Subsidies are a problem for Brazil- but they are an even bigger problem for poorer countries in Africa, Central America, Caribbean, Asia... and so on.

Q: What are the key objectives of Brazil's international diplomatic missions, mediations and foreign aid? Why has Brazil maintained a position of being 'weapon of mass destruction' free? How are global threats such as terrorism affecting Brazil?

[Celso Amorim] We have been free of weapons of mass destruction for several reasons. One of them is that we have very good relations with our neighbours. In the past, although we didn't ever openly military nuclear programme- there was the idea that a nuclear programme could be used for military purposes. The same happened to Argentina.

I can, of course, understand the differences relating to geographic position or political problems- but I don't believe that weapons of mass destruction make you safer. They make you, in a way, more vulnerable- and I think this is how we behave. That doesn't mean that Brazil can be un-armed! We have a lot of riches to protect- and areas such as the Amazon with huge biodiversity and water- water will be a big resource in the future... Now, of course, we also have apparently huge oil reserves offshore which also must be protected. I do not mean, in any way to be demeaning- but we cannot afford to be just a 'big Costa-Rica'- we have to have our own defences. Brazil is a big country with big natural resources! I am, though, convinced that we do not need weapons of mass destruction. What I would love to see is a world free of weapons of mass-destruction and that has been one of the main thrusts of our diplomacy.

Looking at terrorism- I would liken it to the financial crisis. Nobody can say they are totally isolated, we are taking all the precautions we have to take in respect to the World Cup and Olympic Games.... Brazil is not particularly a target, though, because of our political behaviour- the multiplicity of ethnic origins co-existing with each other- and many other factors. That cannot be seen as an absolute protection, but we have- thank god- not been a special target. You cannot, though, be in-attentive to that and for these big events- attention is rightly given.

Q: What are your views on the topic of climate change - and the responsibilities of international actors, and Brazil?

[Celso Amorim] I think Brazil has been very active in climate and environmental discussions. We played a very constructive role at Copenhagen- and if Copenhagen 'failed' it was certainly not attributable to Brazil. You may attribute it to the United States or China to some extent- more to the united States. Even the Europeans were disappointing. I was very involved in the preparations for Copenhagen and we calculated what we could do in terms of diminishing our emissions of CO2, in relation to what would be 'business as usual'- that's a kind of obligation for developing countries. We calculated what would be possible, and that was our commitment. This was not only our commitment in relation to the world, but we enacted it as law. That didn't mean that difficulties would not appear in implementation- but we are dealing with those. I was very disappointed to listen to some European leaders who said that if others can do their part, we will be able to come to 30%- otherwise we will come to 20%. This is NOT a tariff negotiation... this is not bargaining for market access! If you can do 30% you must do it! The United States- who along with China are the biggest polluters- are behaving as if they are a developing country. They want to be treated like developing countries! I think even China has changed a little bit, and so did India. I am confident that we will be able to find solutions- but we have to be quick. This is not something we can leave for ten years like the Doha round. If CO2 continues to be thrown into the atmosphere... even if we have good decisions ten years from now? it may be too late. I hope that before the Rio +20, we will be able to make some movement.

Q: In your view, and experience, have international bodies such as the United Nations, ICC, IMF and others been effective in their duties? are they truly driven by a spirit of co-operation?

[Celso Amorim] I think the biggest flaw you can see with international actions is the absolute use of double-standards. I am asking myself sometimes who will be the next dictator? I have been a diplomat and ambassador for over twenty years... and looking, for example at Ben Ali in Tunisia... he was not seen as a dictator! I never heard one word of criticism in all my time in diplomacy against Ben Ali... Of course, now we know he is a dictator. There are many more, for example- in Africa. Many of these are criticised- such as in Zimbabwe- but many are totally cleared such as in Rwanda, Uganda and so forth. The existence of double-standards is one of the worst things which takes place in foreign policy.

It is these double-standards that makes it difficult for you, for us, to act in questions like human rights. Take a country like Iran, for example- of course the human rights situation there is not the one that we would like to see but I know of other countries where the situation is much worse- in many respects including the treatment of women, the use of torture and so forth... and we do not seem bothered about these countries at all! So... the question relating to international actions is... where is the sincerity? and where is the self-interest?

It's not simple to act... There are many geopolitical factors and aspects of caution because sometimes the medicine may be worse than the disease. This is, apparently, what is happening in Libya. I am not defending Gaddafi, but probably more people are dying now as a result of war than otherwise. The two things are bad, and it is difficult to say which is worse. We now see situations evolving in Syria without foreign intervention...

What makes it difficult for the international community to act- and makes it very difficult to have real co-operation- is the double standards. It's totally hypocritical to say "we have to act here because we cannot stand such immoral behaviour..." while on other matters we remain silent because, "..this guy is an S.O.B, but he's OUR S.O.B..."

One of the important movements in the world now- including Europe.. is the movement of indignation. I think this is very interesting because it links-up with dignity as a synthesis for human rights. People have to feel that they are dignified and treated as dignified-people. That may relate to economics, civil-liberties, social differences or many other things- but this is a big change that is taking place and I hope it is for the better.

You will never be able to do anything positive while you continue to use double-standards... When these double-standards become clear, the decisions of the security-council become less legitimate, less respected and that is one of the reasons I think we must reform the security council. Not just to please India, Brazil and so on.. but also to have more diversified views represented- and the fact that you have more diversified views may lead to a more balanced set of decisions.

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Globalisation has turned the world into a single collective nation with individual countries adopting anthropomorphic traits similar to the dimensions within themselves- thus on the world stage you have huge inequality between the rich (USA, Europe, etc) and the poor (Africa, Latin America, etc), you have conflicting (political) personalities (China vs. USA), and you have a clear class struggle between developing and developed nations.

As much as we see countries as pseudo-metaphysical entities, existing as 'things' in their own right- we have to understand that they are truly cognitive entities. Notwithstanding geological events, countries do not just 'behave' on their own accord- 'they' are the product of the collective will of the population at all levels from leadership, to the lowest rung in society and even the diasporas globally.

Mr. Amorim describes above how Brazil more "self confident" and had to improve its "self esteem". He also describes how Brazil is a "country with dynamism, vibrancy, and the ability to understand the psychology of other nations. ...this is one of our huge strengths, and a huge foreign policy asset." It is this self-confidence, and self-esteem that has allowed Brazil to grow. The nation was able to adopt a less subservient posture at negotiation tables for critical issues such as trade, aid and defence- and was able to use its huge ethnic and cultural mix to bring a sense of unity to the population, making them feel- genuinely- that there were better times ahead.

"some individuals.." wrote Lauren Duncan and Abigail Stewart (in their paper 'Personal Political Salience: The Role of Personality in Collective Identity and Action') "... feel a deep connection to their time and place in history, feel that they are “handcuffed to history.” More than their peers, they feel that they are products of large social events and processes and that events in their personal lives are understood best by reference to social forces and movements. Stewart and Healy (1989) argued that some generations offer more opportunities for this linkage of the personal and the social—generations that come of age when there is a high level of social turbulence, like wars or mass social movements. They pointed to the generations that came of age during WorldWar I, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the sixties as exemplars of this process."

This 'handcuffing to history' can go in a number of directions. You can adopt a hugely defensive posture (feeling weakened by historical precedent; as you see with many African nations post-colonialism), you can adopt a hugely aggressive posture (feeling the need for retrospective retribution; as you see in the struggle between Israel and Palestine), or you can see history as an act of collective struggle."We are united because we had to struggle..." as one Brazilian favela resident was quoted as saying (interviewed by Camille Goirand in her 2003 paper 'Citizenship and Poverty in Brazil'), "...As soon as there is a struggle, people unite with a common goal, because they need this unity, because we had to struggle to get electricity, to get water, to obtain legal rights to the land. If we don't get together, if we don't unite, we are not likely to bring pressure on the authorities."

This is the story of Brazil, a country which became united, after years of struggle, by the common goal to become a great nation. This is a country which is open about its problems- ranging from massive economic inequality, to racism and other forms of discrimination- and a country which, against the odds, has fought against 'global authorities' such as the USA and Europe on trade and tariff negotiations, and taken a leading stance on climate-change and peace (being one of the only members of the top-10 global economies to be free of weapons of mass destruction, and relatively free from terrorist threat). This is a country which has lifted tens of millions of its own citizens out of poverty, while doing the same abroad. Brazil recognised- early in its industrialisation- that it was not technically marginalised but was, instead, integrated into a global-economy, albeit in a manner detrimental to its own interests (Perlman, 2007 - Marginality: From Myth to Reality in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro).

Juan Somavía (Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations) said, in 1995, "Now, as in the past, social development will depend on the energy and dynamism of people with the courage to ask fundamental questions and propose unusual solutions. We must never forget that the quality of a society is really measured by its capacity to integrate the excluded. It is the ultimate test of our values."

For our 'developing' global economy, it would be trite to quote rhetoric on inclusion and development as, frankly, there are billions of people without food or clean water and hundreds of millions who are forcibly excluded from the global economy. This is not the measure of a 'quality' society. We must, therefore, learn from the actions of countries like Brazil who are taking a stance on their own exclusion- and becoming model participants on the global stage- reclaiming their (rather human) characteristics of confidence, self-respect and dignity.

"Brazil..." as President Lula da Silva once said, "...has rediscovered itself."

Justice

2011-07-06T09:18:00.025+01:00

In this article, we exclusively talk to three of the world's leading experts on Justice. The Rt. Hon Lord Woolf of Barnes (Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000-2005), Susan Herman (President of the American Civil Liberties Union 'ACLU') and Widney Brown (Senior Director of International Law and Policy for Amnesty International). We look at the very concept of justice itself, and explore issues ranging from the concept of democracy itself to free speech, civil liberties, war and terrorism, human rights, social justice and more.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, July 2011

In his 1923 book "The Philosophy of Civilization", Albert Schweitzer describes how, "....Civilization, put quite simply, consists in our giving ourselves, as human beings, to the effort to attain the perfecting of the human race and actualization of progress of every sort in the circumstances of humanity and of the objective world. This mental attitude, however, involves a double predisposition: firstly, we must be prepared to act affirmatively toward the world and life; secondly, we must become ethical." In context of how we achieve this state he argued, "...the development of civilization comes about - to put it quite generally- by individual men thinking out ideals which aim at the progress of the whole, and then so fitting them to the realities of life that they assume the shape in which they can influence most effectively the circumstances of the time..."

It is these ideals, from a supposedly 'modern' civilization which, since 1900 have resulted in the deaths of almost 250 million people (around four percent of the current global population of 6.7 billion) in conflict, massacres, genocide and crippling diseases and famines caused as a direct result of political ideologies. Alongside these 'publicised' instances of death we must also consider research (such as that outlined in Sheryl WuDunn's book 'Half the Sky') which shows how, "....it appears that more girls have been killed in the past fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade, than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century. " It is also within this 'civilized' society where billions are close to forcibly excluded from participating in the economy and having a chance to live (forcing 1 in 7 people on the planet into hunger), hundreds of thousands continue to be persecuted for the colour of their skin, religious beliefs or sexual orientation and many face incarceration- indefinitely- without trial or cause. In a supposedly liberal 'west' the situation is no less dire (albeit seemingly less visible) as millions struggle to gain equality to participate in economic, social and democratic processes- while hundreds of thousands more get marginalised from a society which has the capacity to support them.

Aside from the obvious abhorrence we may feel towards such events, there is a deeper sense of ethical failing which occurs in our minds- a perceived sense of 'injustice'- manifest our observation that the individual(s) affected in each circumstance have come to a fate (whether fatal or not) which is not 'fair'. Justice, therefore, rather than being an act of benevolence (as it is often perceived) or a rule (as it is often misinterpreted) is part of the underlying moral framework of our society which allows us, as a species, to maintain stable social unity while being able to engage in individual activities and pursuits. "Perhaps the greatest obstacle to achieving this aim.." observed Kurt Baier in his 1989 essay 'Justice and the Aims of Political Philosophy', "...is our disagreement about how certain familiar values, such as freedom, equality, and efficiency are to be understood, mutually accommodated and realized...." In the past century, the world population has grown from around a billion in 1804, to more than 6.5 billion now- with another 3.5 billion set to join us well-within our children's lifetimes. It is with this in mind, that we must consider the implications of a society which carries injustice at every strata, in every form.

In this article, we exclusively talk to three of the world's leading experts on Justice. The Rt. Hon Lord Woolf of Barnes (Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000-2005), Susan Herman (President of the American Civil Liberties Union 'ACLU') and Widney Brown (Senior Director of Internal Law and Policy for Amnesty International). We look at the very concept of justice itself, and explore issues ranging from the concept of democracy itself to free speech, civil liberties, war and terrorism, human rights, social justice and more.

Lord Woolf was called to the Bar in 1955 and from 1973-74 was Junior Counsel for the Inland Revenue. During this time he represented the Revenue in the majority of their leading cases before the High Court, Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. In 1974 Lord Woolf was appointed first Treasury Counsel (Common Law) a post which he held for five years. During this time he appeared in a great many of the most important cases of the period on behalf of the Government. In addition he acted as an amicus curiae where the courts required assistance for difficult points of law or policy.

Lord Woolf was appointed to the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in 1979, as Lord Justice of Appeal in 1986 and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1992. Between 1996 and 2000 he held the position of Master of the Rolls and in 2000 was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales a position from which he retired in September 2005. In 2003, Lord Woolf was appointed a non permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong, acting as the overseas judge in that Court, an appointment which he continues to hold. Lord Woolf is president of the Civil and Commercial Court for Qatar. He was named in The Times Law 100 2009 listing the most influential lawyers in Britain.

Widney Brown is the Senior Director of International Law and Policy at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. She is responsible for overseeing development of law and policy. She participates in legal standard-setting negotiations at regional and international level and designs the strategic framework for Amnesty International's global campaigns. She is also responsible for overseeing Amnesty International's work on global thematic issues.

Widney has extensive experience documenting human rights violations across the world and has contributed written work to numerous publications. Prior to joining Amnesty International, Widney worked for nine years at Human Rights Watch. She was a lecturer at the Yale University School of Epidemiology and Public Health where she taught a course in Health and Human Rights. She is a graduate of the New York University School of Law where she was a Root Tilden Scholar.

Susan N. Herman was elected President of the American Civil Liberties Union in October 2008, after having served on the ACLU National Board of Directors for twenty years, as a member of the Executive Committee for sixteen years, and as General Counsel for ten years. Herman holds a chair as Centennial Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where she currently teaches courses in Constitutional Law and Criminal Procedure, and seminars on Law and Literature, and Terrorism and Civil Liberties. She writes extensively on constitutional and criminal procedure topics for scholarly and other publications, ranging from law reviews and books to periodicals and on-line publications.

Herman received a B.A. from Barnard College as a philosophy major, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a Note and Comment Editor on the N.Y.U. Law Review. Before entering teaching, Professor Herman was Pro Se Law Clerk for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Staff Attorney and then Associate Director of Prisoners' Legal Services of New York.

The Concepts of Law & Justice

Q: What is the role and purpose of law in a society?

[Lord Woolf] It is there to establish a framework in which the society works; and lay down, first of all, the parameters which form this framework- and secondly provide objective and fair ways of determining whether these have been contravened- and if so? what should be done.

[Widney Brown] I think it has two roles. One is that it defines the social contract between the people who are governed and the government itself by making clear about what is acceptable, what is unacceptable, and what the consequences are if you do something unacceptable. The second aspect is actually to create a level of certainty in society- that if you don't have law, people can do the same thing three different times, and have three different consequences- but when you have law, it enables people to understand that 'this is something I can do freely, this is acceptable' or 'this is something I can't do, and if I do this, there will be consequences'. But that certainty is the opposite of the arbitrariness of, for example, corruption- which undermines law. Laws do reflect societal values by and large. The interesting thing about law is that many of its elements are derived from early religious law. Long before you had nation states or even empires, much of what was adjudicated in people's lives was adjudicated through religious institutions and leaders. What's interesting is that you started having empires and kings come into being post-dark-ages who weren't interested in adjudicating land disputes, marriages, etc but they were concerned about the crimes of treason and taxation. Then, of course, when they realised how much power religious leaders had by making such determination in people's lives- they reached out and started bringing law under the control of the state or the kingdom. They didn't write those laws 'de novo' they pulled them in. Laws are often, therefore, reflections of old values- often religiously driven values as well as reflecting the interest of the state and its authority.

[Susan Herman] The United States constitution is my primary model in terms of being a source of law, and giving us a framework for how to measure it in terms of justice. Starting with the US constitution, James Madison- who was one of the principal people involved in setting up our constitution, once said "if all men were angels, there would be no need for laws, much less for government." I think that is a very good place to start, as the meaning of law is that all men are not angels. I think the other assumption underlying the fact that we need law in society- is that not all men are truly empathetic. If everyone truly understood the harm they would be doing to others if they just followed their own self interest and instinct- perhaps we would not need laws. Unfortunately, that's not true. I sometimes say, when talking on the US constitution and our views on rights and equality that the concept of having individual rights and equality is the golden rule. The idea that we should not be doing, to other people, what we would not have done to ourselves. I think my primary concept of law, therefore, is more utilitarian- akin to J. S. Mill who once said, in effect "my liberty stops at your nose." I think the purpose of law is to dissuade people from doing harm to others, and to do so in part by punishing them if they do harm others. There's also a concept that law must provide a statement of the common moral principles of society - that is certainly true to a great extent- through law we express who we are and who we want to be as a society. Because of my focus on the constitution, however- I worry about law being taken as an opportunity for a majority of people to inculcate into an entire society, and to freeze their own concept of what is a moral life. When we talk about laws such as not killing people or stealing their things, we can all agree on those. When you start getting into other kinds of laws- such as those limiting their choice of lifestyle, or limiting their ability to speak about things that are unpopular. there I am very resistant to the idea that a law can just restate a majority morality.

Q: How do you define justice? and how does one decide what is and isn't Just?

[Lord Woolf] Fundamental to justice is the rule of law. Part of that rule of law is that everybody should be subject to it- so one starts off with what the laws require (the framework), and then, within that legal framework, there are issues where balances have to be struck between conflicting values and when that happens? the role of Judge is a more broader one. To simplify that, his role in many situations is to interpret law. He also, where there is a dispute as to what the factual situation is, is tasked with returning those facts! Not always though- sometimes there is another body who is given the job of determining the facts and he must be loyal to those facts as determined. At the end of the process, though, there can be a need to weigh up the conflicting values and there- the judge should take into account the values of a given society and the other moral and ethical considerations that would bring.

[Widney Brown] I think justice, at its best, what it should be is a system that provides for a fundamental fairness in society. That we live in a place where people are treated equally, that nobody is marginalised and excluded. The obvious way that happens is when groups of people are excluded because of something like their race, religion, or immigration status. A just society would say that it is not ok to privilege some while marginalising and exploiting others. The other thing that justice serves is, again, not just mediating between people- but mediating the impact of institutions on people. Another example where we don't see enough justice is controlling the actions of corporations. One of the things we look at, at Amnesty International, are transnational corporations in the extractive industries- who may be incorporated in the UK but are doing horrific damage in, say, the Niger Delta but without accountability- leading to economic exploitation which is fundamentally unfair. We can contrast that with the BP oil spill in the US where the laws then worked to provide justice and remedy for the people of the United States. So the same catastrophe- one in the US and one in Nigeria- but the justice system only worked in one place, so we have a fundamental unfairness there.

[Susan Herman] I have two answers to this. The first looks at the central point of the constitution which is that law- where it is democratically created- is not always just and therefore you need superseding principals of justice which have to do with things such as individual rights such lifestyle, morality, religion, self expression (areas where people should be able to make their own decisions). The first thing the constitution does to define justice is to say that the majority, who wish to have their will done in law, cannot impose their viewpoints on a minority of people- that is the concept of individual rights. I think the second thing the constitution says- which is also one of the minimum requirements of a just society- is the concept of equal protection of the laws. There are many countries where if you look on the books- the laws are really admirable. If the laws, however, are not enforced... or not enforced equally (so people are punished differently depending on who they are, or may get the advantage of laws differently depending on who they are)- that is not a just society. That's one place where justice has more requirements than law. One thing notable about the American experience is that our original constitution said nothing about equality and equal protection of the laws. It wasn't until after the civil war, when we had a reconstruction-era including the 14th amendment to the constitution, that something akin to equal protection of the laws was seen as something a constitution should provide. It was late in coming, but we have it there now.

One of my favourite quotes is by Solon, considered to be the 'Lawmaker of Athens' - one of the people whom Plutarch's writings cover. He was once asked what city he thought was well governed. What he said was, "...that city were those who have not been injured take up the cause of one who has, and prosecute those cases earnestly as if the wrong had been done to themselves." That to me relates to the golden rule, and the rule of empathy. Part of justice is to create a legal system where we require that the injury done to other people is as important as the injury done to ourselves. In talking about the attributes of the United States constitution- I feel the constitution does recognise many of the critically important elements of justice- both the ability of individuals to make their own decisions, and the concept of equal protection of the laws. The third important concept is that of 'due process' - how laws are applied to an individual. Whether there has been an appropriate hearing, for example, to find out the facts in a criminal hearing. So we see that liberty and equal protection of the laws are important in a just society.

Q: What is the role of law in the concept of democracy?

[Lord Woolf] The law also provides the framework in which a democracy works. Democracy is, to those who are elected by the vote, an opportunity to make laws- subject to certain safeguards. Laws are essential for democracy to work effectively as much as the concept of democracy itself is committed to the rule of law. To this extent, I would say that there are some societies that work quite well even when their democratic processes are quite weak- as long as there as there are well-established processes for upholding the rule of law. I don't think democracy works at all well without even superficially recognising the rule of law.
For me, a terrorist organisation that is democratically elected- for example- is just as flawed as a terrorist organisation which is not elected. There are many examples of that. I see part of democracy as involving the values which are reflected by the rule of law.

[Widney Brown] To the extent that democracies are about participation of people who are governed and monitoring the relationship with those who govern, the law restrains the possibility of abuse by those in power. The second element which is equally critical, is that in a democracy, what you can find is that the rights of marginalised or minority people can be overlooked. What you have through law- through a concept of fundamental fairness- is a court and legal system which protects minorities from exclusion via what has been described as 'the tyranny of the majority'.

[Susan Herman] A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be visiting the Gettysburg battle-field and one thing which rings in my head are the words of Abraham Lincoln, who stated that government should be, "...of the people, by the people, for the people." That, to me, is the central idea of law in the concept of democracy. First that laws should be by the people and of the people and for the people- and when you overlay on that the concept of justice (which paradoxically is a separate concept, though it should be inseparable) that the laws are going to be fairly executed and implemented. That is the role of law in a constitutional democracy- and is a step beyond the purpose of law in society. I find that when I speak about the constitution, and some of the things the ACLU is working on- particularly in the United States- that people are surprised when I tell them that we don't really live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional democracy. It's not true that what the majority of people want to do can be put into law- because the constitution defines and sets aside certain principles (a-priori agreements) of who we want to be as a society. The rule of law then means that if a majority of people can get a law passed, that law is nevertheless invalid if it infringes on those fundamental principles. I think that is a very important element of justice, and I think it's very important in terms of law not just in democracy, but in constitutional democracy. You can have a democracy that is not just, you can have laws that are not just- so the point of justice, in this context- requires something like a constitution, or something else that can take certain values or principles and states that no matter what the majority wants to do- these principles come first and trump everything else and that, to me, distinguishes between the rule of law- and the rule of a mob!

In Society

Q: Do you believe that developed nations are offering individuals adequate access to justice?

[Lord Woolf] The extent to which access to justice is given is a very good test as to the quality of the democracy to which you refer. If you regard, as I do, the rule of law as essential for a democracy to work well- then you can't have a situation where those who allege that they have not been treated in accord of the rule of law, do not have access to justice. I think access to justice is critical to the proper working of the rule of law- and therefore, democracy.

[Widney Brown] With regards to developed countries- often the system is in place to work- whether there is political will to apply the system fairly is a larger question. We see progression in people's access to justice and we see backlashes against that. That history of a more proactive concept of justice that actively reaches out and protects people who would otherwise be marginalised, demonised and excluded often is then followed by a period of the justice system claiming to remain neutral and failing to protect people- so it is very much an ebb and flow. There are also different definitions. Globalisation has also changed who is most marginalised in the world in developing countries- you have influx of immigrants and migrant workers- who are treated unequally before the law, which is a real failure especially when their national origin becomes the justification for that exclusion. It is a constant struggle to make justice systems work as they should- which is precisely about promoting that fundamental fairness. Within society you also have to understand how justice is perceived. You can live in a country where justice is perceived as something which is for sale- that's what corruption is all about. There are other places where justice has nothing to do with the court system- it is literally who carries the biggest weapon. That's the justice that you have in, for example, the Favelas of Brazil or the streets of Mexico where it's all about might. What we want to see is a base level of justice- where every aspect, including the criminal justice system, is made accessible to all the people within a country's territory. There are many obstacles- some are obvious and some are not. For example, you have some countries where women are literally not able to make a report, for instance, if they are the victim of a crime- and if they are able to do that, their testimony may be weighted less in a court etcetera. So that's a huge obstacle- but there also can be obstacles such as your ability to participate in a justice system if your language is a minority language... so the array of obstacles or barriers that people face when they seek justice through the formal system crosses many different areas.

[Susan Herman] To me, the big question mark about the American constitution is that the constitution- as drafted does not, unlike Solon, make provision for the poorer members of society. The United States constitution, certainly as interpreted, doesn't really have any sort of protections or provisions that point in the direction of socio-economic rights, or economic justice. Another concept of equality that I find very attractive is that of John Rawls- that a just society, in addition to the preservation level (making sure that people are entitled to make their own decisions in places where they are entitled to do so without harming anyone else- and that they are being treated fairly and equally) Rawls conceived that people have just wants, and that a just society should really be taking care of people and doing something more affirmative. That is something that the United States constitution has not been interpreted to do. I think our Supreme Court has gone overboard in saying that the States have no affirmative obligations to help people- and that the constitution is really just a negative restriction on what government actors can do- and there are many examples of where that comes up. That is, in some ways, unfortunate- but is something that is endemic within American constitutional culture- that the constitution is there to preserve a base-line, a status-quo that leaves everybody in the same place socio-economically.

Looking at access to justice. Under the United States constitution we have a concept of due-process. We also have a concept, under the first amendment about access to the courts, transparency into what the courts are doing, and the guarantee of the right of petition to redress grievances. These are all things that are constitutional principles and offer everyone the opportunity to challenge if a law is un-constitutional or is being unjustly applied. In practice, the great flaw of our constitution is that it seems to be protecting a base-line without recognising what that baseline is. People who are on the fringes and margins often have a very difficult time in putting those constitutional opportunities to practice and in some ways do not have as much access to justice as more affluent people. Let's take the example of 'poor people'. The Supreme Court made one very important decision in 1963 in a case called Gideon Vs. Wainwright. They held that the sixth amendment right to counsel- that everyone has the right to counsel in criminal proceedings- meant that if you were too poor to afford a lawyer, the state must pay for a lawyer to represent you. That's very important and is one of the only examples where the Supreme Court has held that the constitution requires the state to affirmatively do something. That means that in a criminal case, if a poor person is charged, the state does have to give them a lawyer- so they are not totally treated unequally. What this case recognised is that since the state is represented by a lawyer, if you don't have a lawyer you don't really have a chance to defend yourself in a criminal case. This relates to justice as 'fairness'- it's a due process idea, an equal protection idea- the idea that if the state is going to prosecute somebody that it's not fair that the state uses all the resources at its disposal to target someone who has no resources- other people can afford their own lawyers, but if someone can't the Gideon case states that the state involved will have to pay for one. There is a however... What the state usually pays the assigned lawyers is not nearly as much as what a private lawyer could make, or an affluent person could afford to pay their lawyer, so the implementation of this principal is often a little questionable. The Gideon case doesn't apply in non-criminal cases- so if a poor person wants to bring a civil case, where they are not being prosecuted for a crime but want to take action against someone they think has wronged them- the courts will, under American law, make 'some' provision for that (they won't require a poor person to pay large filing fees) but you have no right to counsel, so the quality of justice will be determined by how much you can pay for a lawyer to represent you.

During the 1960's and 70's, the Warren Court was very interested in principles of justice and equality- this was also a time when there were a lot of legal services organisations being started and I think the United States really came to an agreement to provide more justice for poor people. Many of the legal service and legal aid organisations started then, still survive- but again, the quantity of counsel that you do not have to pay for- is much less than the need. The beginning of the Supreme Court really taking on this job- and committing to justice and equality- was when Earl Warren took over as Chief Justice. His first and most famous case was Brown Vs. Board of Education- where he took on racial segregation in public schools. Justice Warren and the people on the court at that time were truly extraordinary and had a true commitment to due-process and equal protection. They had a tremendous empathy for the poor, for prisoners, for racial minorities and those who were marginalised. They were really setting-up law in a way that it would be implemented with a much fuller understanding of our constitutional principles.

Unfortunately, since the 1970's there's been a lot of backlash- and the Supreme Court has been cutting back on a lot of the decisions of the Warren Court which means that we have less access to the Courts report for poor people and prisoners. There has been a tremendous backlash against prison litigation. Congress passed 'The Prison Litigation Reform Act' to try and close the doors- and they have also been quite restrictive on the number of cases that prisoners are allowed to bring. There are still opportunities-and there was a case just this term where prisoners in California won a really major victory on the issue of overcrowding in the Californian prison system. To give you some background, Californian prisons were running at 200% of capacity. After years of litigation, the Courts finally ordered- quite controversially- that the prison population be reduced to 137.5%. It's a victory.... but hard fought. Poor people and prisoners do, indeed, have more difficulty in receiving justice and part of this is that the constitution was originally designed to preserve the rights, opportunities and property of more affluent male white members of society. The post-civil-war reconstruction did change all of that, but the Supreme Court has consistently under-interpreted those amendments as not really changing things that much. So I think we have issues in the United States about the equality of access to justice.

Q: To what extent do laws surrounding free-speech, libel, defamation, censorship and their instruments protect and/or subvert public interests?

[Lord Woolf] These questions are not capable of easy solutions. The values to which we refer here are important features of a democracy in accord with the rule of law. There are going to be, from time to time, questions of tension- and it is extremely important that within the rule of law there should be an impartial and efficient justice system. The justice system has the task of upholding the rule of law. There are some very disturbing features of what has been happening recently, but from my vantage point- critical is that there should be respect for those who have the task of administering the justice system (we are referring to judges here) and it is unwise for another principal (if not the principal) player in a democracy to seek to devalue the other.

[Widney Brown] Being a human rights activist, I am an absolute proponent of free speech. I think rigorous discourse and the ability to express your opinion and have that opinion challenged, and to debate ideas, is absolutely critical in a society that is open, that is tolerant, and that grows. We need to have discussions, we need to have open debates, we need to have respectful bit rigorous debates about ideas- that is what makes us grow as a society. What is interesting, now, is that we are seeing a push back against openness towards freedom of expression- so we see hate crimes laws, we see self-censorship in the media because now what you publish can go viral and suddenly you are worried about the consequences of your communication even though it is legitimate speech. I would say the only permissible limit on speech would be if you are actually inciting somebody to violence. That's not acceptable. There was the classic US case of 'you cannot yell fire in a crowded theatre' but the permissible limits are very narrow and they should be narrow- and we should use the concerns that people have about what happens when speech goes beyond what used to be community boundaries. You had a community newspapers, a community radio-station- then it became national- and now we truly have not just an international formal media, but totally globalised communications- and how we deal with that respectfully without censorship is important.

[Susan Herman] Looking at the constitution, the first amendment is first for a reason in our Bill of Rights. The idea is that free-speech is the engine of democracy. Unless people can express different points of view and have discussions without having the government censor what they have to say, or privilege some points of view over others we don't have a democracy.

The ACLU has been very much opposed to all forms censorship and to more extreme libel and defamation laws which would prevent people from speaking openly. Free-speech, we believe, promotes the public interest. Internationally, although there are many contentious discussions about human rights I believe there are some universal principals. One thing I've been wondering about is the extent to which some of the first amendment assumptions of the United States are really universally applicable to all countries. To give you some examples- the principle that people should be allowed to speak, without censorship or coercion, is a universal principal and universal human right. The details come where you make exceptions to that principal or how you define itself. In Holland, a couple of years ago, there was an MP named Geert Wilders who was being prosecuted for saying nasty things about Muslims. There was a Dutch reporter who was in New York at the time- he was covering the anniversary of Henry Hudson sailing up the Hudson river- and he came to interview me about the Wilders issue assuming that Americans, and the ACLU may have a different point of view about whether it's OK to prosecute somebody for hate speech. My view is that free-speech means free-speech and that means even if people want to say things that are unpopular or hurtful to others I think there is a cost in limiting that speech. In the United States, our belief is that the antidote to bad speech is more speech. I will tell you one of my favourite examples, which is also an example of an occasion where the ACLU can become unpopular (If you are going to defend free speech, the people that are saying things that are popular- don't need to be defended). The test cases are all cases of people who are saying things that their neighbour finds unacceptable. We find ourselves very often representing people that we totally disagree with like Nazi's, members of the Klu Klux Klan and so forth- because that's where the principle has to be established that we can't rule out speech on the basis of its content just because some people won't like to hear it. There was a parade that the Klu Klux Klan did in New York City a few years back. Not very many klanspeople were left who would march in New York City so they really looked rather bedraggled- I think there were about forty people parading. Lining the parade route, however, were thousands of people talking back to them and letting them know what they thought of their stupid ideas! That's a classic first-amendment model in the United States- that the antidote to bad speech is more speech.

Our assumption is that it's a good thing to allow people to say nasty things- so that those nasty things don't fester, you can bring them out into the light and answer them. We think, in the long run, that's in the Public interest. When I look at some of the laws they have in Europe, there are a number of countries that have holocaust denial laws (you are, in effect, not allowed to say that the holocaust never happened) And sometimes I really wonder whether the American concept of freedom of speech is really fitting in all examples and countries in the same way. Maybe the different history, and different developmental stages do affect what are and are not appropriate exceptions. Our first amendment view is that the long term public interest is best served by letting the people speak, and letting there be dialogue and hoping that the good ideas will drive out the bad- in the marketplace of ideas.

Q: To what extent is it just for nations and other bodies to keep secrets from the public, and what is your view of organisations such as wikileaks?

[Lord Woolf] Firstly it is important to ensure that justice, wherever possible, is open and transparent. Therefore the use of any processes which don't accord with this paramount principal, if they can be justified at all, have to be justified on an individual basis. This results in a special situation which warrants, on a rare occasion, the transgression of this principal. It is absolutely vital that judges, who have the responsibility of deciding whether such a situation exists, operate their jurisdiction in that regard- in a conservative way, and in a way which gives due paramouncy to the normal principles of open justice. If, however, there are situations where they feel it is justified to exceptionally cross the threshold from the transparent to the non-transparent- there needs to be confidence in the judges, who know all the facts to rule the justification. Why I object to those who seek to undermine the normal-process is that they feel and act purporting to know better than those who know the facts and the justifications therein- so to speak, they are taking the law into their own hands. Society can't work that way. Society has to have confidence in its judges if they are going to have an effective justice system. If they choose to thwart what judges have decided without using established mechanisms- mainly appealing- they are going to undermine the institutions which they thwart. In recent years, public confidence in their leadership has been chipped away at in this regard. That is often, actually, the consequence of a campaign which does not have a true factual basis.

[Widney Brown] The statement of principal would be that there is an absolute assumption of transparency- and that secrecy is not permissible - particularly by governments, but even by other entities. The Trafigura case is interesting. If we go back to the idea of corporations in the extractive industries, there are countries in which the concession agreement between the government and an oil company are actually secret and cannot be published- well that gives you no ability to know what is happening to the funds that are coming in as a result of that concession, what corruption is happening etcetera. The presumption should be that states and governments should be transparent and information should be in the public domain. There is, of course, a role for confidentiality- you can't have diplomatic negotiations that deal with crises without some level of confidentiality. Confidentiality is different to secrecy- because as soon as the issue is resolved, what was once confidential should be released into the public domain. There are limited areas where secrecy may be appropriate- that usually goes to issues around security- for instance, if you have intelligence operatives working in another country, revealing their names could put them and other people at risk. So there are narrow areas where I think secrecy is legitimate, so long as it is not being used to cover-up illegal acts, crimes under international law, torture, things like that- committed by the government.

Wikileaks was a game-changer. What happened with Wikileaks was that it took the area of control of information that governments had, even governments that defend freedom of information largely did that with the knowledge that they could control it. Wikileaks was one of the first times that they started understanding that in the world that we have now, where content and information are no longer restricted to pieces of paper- that they had lost control over access and control of information. This is an ongoing battle, and we will see this battle going back and forth for years. This was one of the first times that governments were truly challenged. What they hated was two things. The US government in particular hated that what was revealed showed possible war-crimes and criminal behaviour by, for instance, US troops- which was exposed and absolutely confirmed. As Amnesty, we had often documented these cases and put them in the public domain, and governments would come back and say, "your facts are wrong, you don't know what you're talking about." It was quite vindicating to realise that not only did we have it right, but their denial was based on lies because they had the information that confirmed our report. So that is the first point, that they are using secrecy laws to cover up their bad acts- and that is never permissible. The second level is, of course, exposure of hypocrisy. That wasn't just the US government, but governments around the world. We realised the levels of duplicity and hypocrisy which drive foreign policy.

[Susan Herman] I just wrote a book on what impact the War on Terror has on ordinary citizens and in that book, I quoted Elaine Scarry- who teaches English at Harvard. She described how the problem with the Patriot Act (passed after 9/11 to give the Government more rights and powers) is that it inverts the conditions of democracy- because it makes what the people say transparent (the government can conduct surveillance and spy on everyone) while what the government does is secret. Either of those alone would be seriously harmful to democracy, but in unison they also cut-off the avenues of repair.

In terms of nations and other bodies keeping secrets, here too we have a principle which is very important- the idea that in a democracy, you have to have transparency and accountability otherwise if the people do not know what the government is doing, then the government is not of the people, by the people and for the people. That's how you risk tyranny and a government going off in the wrong direction. One of the developments which the ACLU has used to great effect recently is the 'Freedom of Information Act'. Under that law, government records are presumptively open. So if somebody says that they'd like to see what the government has in their file on me - or I'd like to see what the office of legal counsel actually wrote about their definitions of torture... what happens is that person can go to court and get a judge to mediate to decide whether or not that information is covered by one of the exceptions to the Freedom of Information Act- because, of course, there has to be exceptions. Nobody argues that the government has to publish in the newspaper where they are sending the troops- of course there are some things that do have to remain secret. The freedom of information act makes a category of things that have to remain secret and then a neutral judge mediates between the individual and the government officials and decides who has the better argument. In that framework, we think there should be a heavy thumb in favour of transparency- which leads to accountability. Once you see what government officials do, you can decide whether to vote for them again, or what you think of their conduct. It is a tremendous problem when there is a lack of accountability.

The WikiLeaks situation is interesting. I'm a little bit on both sides of this. On the one hand- it's a great thing that the American public knows more about how its government is operating, but on the other hand there are places where it is appropriate for the government to withhold information- like troop movements. The idea that any individual person can be the arbiter of where that's true, and where that isn't that's frightening. I would rather have neutral judges, under the Freedom of Information Act, who have no stake in the outcome personally, making those decisions than some random individuals who are able to steal and publish secrets. We don't think that the press should be punished for publishing secrets. We supported the New York Times when they published the Pentagon papers, for example. I think that it is not unacceptable to tell individuals that they cannot decide for themselves on which government secrets should be published- and to therefore punish individuals who steal things that really do need to be kept secret.

War, Interventions & Global-Issues

Q: How does a nation decide whether a war or intervention is legal and just?

[Lord Woolf] We have got institutions who are charged with working internationally. They may be imperfect, and we have to work to improve them. We should not, because they are imperfect, fail to make full use of them. One thing about recent interventions into, say- Libya is that everybody has been talking as though the support of UN resolutions are critical- that wasn't quite where we got to in Iraq. Imperfect as it may be, we do have international law- but it is difficult to enforce, and suffers from uncertainty. We also have international institutions including the new international criminal court- of which the same can be said. We must do the best we can with those. They are imperfect, capable of being subverted and sometimes appear partial.

Looking at issues such as sanctions- I think that we have to work with the institutions we have, and take their decisions and views very much into account. We have to work with principles of public international law as far as they are developed at this stage and continue to move towards a comprehensive principal of public international law- and greater authority for the institutions (including being more supportive of them). We can debate their shortcomings but that in turn must result in improvements- but we are ill advised to ignore them. They may be imperfect, but with all their imperfections- they are better than the alternative of not having them!

[Widney Brown] The question of whether a war is just is a long contested debate. Interestingly, last June in Kampala, for the International Criminal Court they adopted a definition of "a crime of aggression" meaning that "a crime of aggression" is now within the jurisdiction of the court. It is extremely controversial, even though everyone recognises that when the crime of aggression is started and somebody starts a war- invades a country- for no justification whatsoever- that every harm that is a result of that invasion is, itself, illegal. Whereas, if it was a just war then the same actions might not be illegal. It is the culmination of so much harm which is illegal, and that makes deciding whether a war is legal or not so charged. I'm not going to try and give a synopsis of tonnes of legal argument, but there should be a presumption against war- that governments should not invade another governments territory unless there is a truly legitimate and compelling reason. Generally that is only deemed acceptable when the UN security council, under its chapter 7 responsibilities to assure peace and security, deem it necessary.

Q: What is the purpose of human rights law? has it been effective in its application? does it present or face any challenges?

[Lord Woolf] The purpose of human rights law is to identify 'fundamental rights'. This, however, is a preliminary step to ensuring those rights are upheld. The problem is that there are those who are happy to climb firmly onto the bandwagon of human-rights when they feel that they are supporting their view- but they do so by being selective as to the rights they will support. For example they will support some rights such as freedom of speech but ignore other rights- such as the right to privacy. You simply can't do that- society must operate in the better spirit of human rights or not at all. You can't be selective as to which rights you wish to take advantage of.

[Widney Brown] Human rights law has made a remarkable difference to people's lives. Amnesty international just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. In 1961 none of the architecture of human rights was in place. You had the universal declaration of 1948, but the treaties that grew out of the universal declaration, the treaty bodies that support that, human rights courts and institutions- all that is architecture that spurred out of the idea that there are universal standards that ensure people's ability to live with dignity and be treated equally- again it comes back to that concept of fundamental fairness. What you now have are standards that are incredibly important. As with all laws, of course they are breached. What we struggle with are two different elements of it. We struggle to see that laws are actually adopted. You have some countries where you have extremely well developed laws and jurisprudence that protect human rights and you have other countries where there is an absolute dearth of laws and no systems for enforcing those laws in a way that allow people to realise their rights, so we continue to face both challenges but if you didn't have the laws then imagine how different the world would be. It's really clear that torture is wrong under all circumstances. Have we won the battle? no - but does anybody really try to argue that torture is legitimate except for in the most extreme cases? no. And yet, back in 1948 torture was absolutely routine- it was routine in every police station in every country in the world. We have changed the concept of what is allowable behaviour by the state and by state actors. When we first took on the death penalty, people thought we were crazy! At that time, most countries had the death penalty. Now we are down to about fifty eight that still retain the death penalty and significantly fewer who actually execute people - so you can make a difference. We have made a difference in challenging, for instance, the idea that- for ages- it was acceptable to see that whatever happened to women was private and had nothing to do with the idea of human rights. That perception has now changed, but do women still suffer? absolutely! But do we have the laws and the systems to challenge it when they do? yes!.

Q: Do you feel, at a nation and state level, there is accountability for actions perpetrated on citizens or across borders?

[Lord Woolf] What we've been having to learn is that we now live in a global society and whereas national mechanisms have had generations to develop, on a global level that is not the position. Even the United States and the UK have differing views as to the precise application of the principles they hold in common as being fundamental values. The same could even be said of England and Scotland, England and Northern Ireland and so on. This is just part of reality insofar as there is nobody who is capable of regulating, globally, the same "standards" and you have to accept that at this stage of the development of society there is a need to work towards higher standard.. but we are not there yet!

[Widney Brown] This is interesting, because when we talk now- we talk about how information has become globalised and how communications have become globalised in a very instantaneous way. You can tweet something and it can go viral within hours. You can post something on a social networking site that means that people show up for a protest three hours later. On the communications assembly association and so forth, we talk about how borders have been brought down by these functions- but one of the things we are not seeing well is how much justice has become internationalised. I think it is absolutely key to the idea that eventually there will be these safe-havens for people in-power who commit crimes against their own people or against people in another country. There are three elements to the internationalisation of justice. The first one, which is very obvious, is the International Criminal Court where you now have President Bashir of Sudan with an arrest warrant against him. It hasn't been executed, which is the bad news, but the good news is that his world is getting smaller and smaller. He is realising that there are places where if he goes, he will be arrested and the idea is becoming real that eventually there will be no safe-haven for him. There is also the concept of universal jurisdiction, and the most famous case to trigger that was the case in the UK when Pinochet was arrested when he visited the UK. The idea, quite aside from the International Criminal Court, that there are some crimes under International Law that are so serious that every country has an obligation if they have the opportunity to arrest, charge and try someone for those crimes also exists. Just recently when George W. Bush was supposed to go to Switzerland, we actually called for his arrest in Switzerland and he had to cancel his trip. We had already called the US government to investigate him. He basically wrote a book where he said, "yes, I ordered the torture of these people." Torture is one of those crimes where every country has the obligation, given the opportunity, to pursue prosecution of the person for that crime. So that international element- the universal jurisdiction- is another form of internationalisation. The third component that's less well developed but is certainly getting there is the concept of extrajudicial jurisdiction. I just read recently that the US Supreme Court upheld a case against an oil company based in the US for crimes it committed somewhere in Latin America. So that whole idea that, for instance, if you are in a country where your rights are being undermined and you are the victim of a crime and your courts are unable or unwilling to claim jurisdiction over the perpetrator (be it an individual or corporation) that we can argue that states can actually reach out and claim jurisdiction in those cases- which is different to universal jurisdiction but has a long history in the US under the alien-torts claim act in which both individual people like torturers and corporations have had cases brought against them. The Trafigura case, in the UK, was an example of saying that the UK has the ability to claim jurisdiction in Cote D'Ivoire.

Looking back at World War II, it was not that we didn't have the concept of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide- we had that- you can go back to the Hague conventions and such, but that you actually had justice in an international system afterwards. The problem, of course, is that it was a victors justice. Nobody looked at the USA dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but you still had the Nuremberg and Far East Tokyo tribunals bring perpetrators of such crimes to justice. The idea, after that, was that there would be the creation of what is now the International Criminal Court. The international law commission started drawing up plans for an international criminal court shortly after the end of the trials in Tokyo and Nuremberg- but the cold war got in the way, and so it was delayed for many years. The International Criminal Court has been a long time being born. I think it is precisely because it took such a long time to build, that it has held the concepts of universal and extra-territorial jurisdiction and began to grow up. But you need all three systems, you cannot just rely on any one and- again- it has internationalised justice in the way that nobody now thinks they can get away with murder and certainly not on the level of mass murder.

[Susan Herman] My greatest level of expertise is the actions perpetrated by the US government either on our own citizens, or citizens of other countries. There is an enormous lack of accountability since 9/11 for actions that the United States has taken. I'll give you two examples. One is that the ACLU represented a number of people who have extremely credible cases that they were victims of torture and extraordinary rendition. We have clients like Khaled el-Masri, the German of Lebanese decent who was captured on a bus in Macedonia and was sent to a black-hole for months even though he was clearly innocent apparently due to a mistake- because his name was similar to someone else. We brought a law-suit on his behalf which was dismissed by the court on the ground of the state secrets privilege. This is a doctrine the American courts have which means that if the government comes in and states they cannot defend the lawsuit because to talk about the issues contained would compromise national security the court would have to dismiss the case. This has happened on a number of occasions. They have dismissed cases brought by ACLU clients and others against government officials who arrested them without sufficient cause, who were conducting surveillance on them. All-sorts of attempts to challenge officials and hold people responsible post 9/11 have been dismissed by the courts. There's not a single victim of torture or extraordinary rendition who has actually got a day in court in the United States. Every single case has been dismissed on procedural grounds. A number of other cases have also been dismissed on similar grounds. The American courts, although doing a good job of insisting on some level of due-process at Guantanamo- have really not been helping to provide accountability for some of the victims of the United States' post 9/11 excesses. There too, President Obama has been at fault. He said at one stage that we should just turn the page and as long as we just agree not to torture anyone in the future and to be more transparent, that there was no need to look back. To me, you don't turn the page until the truth is written on it. In terms of the international view, across borders- the United States does not participate fully in international tribunals which is another issue. But the lack of accountability for government actions over the last ten years is hugely troubling. Even though we have a new president who was elected partially because the American people were dismayed at the actions of the last president- he is maintaining some of the policies and dragnets and has taken misguided positions on accountability.

Q: When faced by threats such as terrorism, how can a nation balance the need for freedom, with the need for security?

[Lord Woolf] Lines have to be drawn! We have institutions who can authoritatively draw those lines and indicate where you must not go. We have a combination of values which are paramount- for example- the value which forbids torture in any circumstances. There are no grey areas, you just don't torture! At the same time, you have to have a protection of citizens. This is, arguably, the first role of government- to protect its citizens. So far as you can only keep that value to a limited extent- you must, using your resources, make up for any weakness in those very resources.

Looking at increased government powers in monitoring of communications- I believe that has to be the position. We live in a society where we need to curtail rights so as to be able to protect the right of our members of society. This is another area where drawing lines is important, but very difficult.

[Widney Brown] Since we've had the concept of human rights, which is basically a post World War II phenomenon, governments have always sought to find the political justification for why they should not be limited by human rights standards. Originally it was the cold war, so the US said that we do not really need to respect these rights as we have the threat of communism as a global threat which will over-run society, crush everything and therefore we don't have to respect human rights. At the meantime, the Soviet Union was saying the same about capitalism etcetera, so we have always seen the attempt by governments to identify an external threat and therefore use it to hold human rights hostage. This is nothing new, the discourse we have on security versus rights- it is the latest incarnation of it- but the dynamic of governments making an external threat so they can justify undermining human rights is nothing new.

I think what is important to say here is that governments can do it somewhat effectively because the threat is real. It's really important that we acknowledge that the threat is real. Nonetheless it is overblown and has been used by governments to make sweeping exceptions to human rights standards. One of our biggest campaigns was to close Guantanamo Bay. The detention centre violates every principal of what is allowable under human rights law. You have arbitrary unlawful detention of people, taken across borders, put in a place where they have no access to lawyers, no access to their families, they are not charged- and they are subject to torture and ill treatment. They are languishing there for years. We've been effective in the sense that we have got the US government to acknowledge that they need to shut down Guantanamo Bay, and if they cannot bring credible cases against detainees- those detainees must be released. If there are people there who should be brought to justice, and there are... Khalid Sheik Mohammed is there- then they need to bring them to justice. But, of course, they are caught in the complex web of contradictions they have made, but the very acknowledgement by the US government about Guantanamo Bay and other governments that have participated in particularly significant violations of human rights in the name of security is an acknowledgement that they instrumentalised a very real threat in order to give a carte blanche to their security forces.

[Susan Herman] I think the first answer is, with difficulty! Right after 9/11, people were very panicky about what had happened and the temptation was to surrender some of our fundamental principals in the hope of becoming safer. There were a number of different things which happened in the United States. People talk of Guantanamo- a headline incursion on our principles of due process. The idea that you could just lock people up indefinitely with no hearing to determine whether or not they were really enemy combatants? I think that was a tremendous deviation from due-process. And in that area, the Supreme Court was somewhat helpful, and we have had- at least- some hearings. I don't think they are, perhaps, as careful as they should be- but it's a start. We also gave up on a lot of liberties because of the temptation of congress and the president to set up all-sorts of dragnets, the idea that you have to do extensive surveillance and have all-sorts of information in data-banks because maybe you will be able to catch a terrorist that you would not otherwise be able to catch. And you have to therefore have criminal laws that have few defences, without much burden of proof required for the government- because maybe then you will be able to catch a terrorist you wouldn't otherwise be able to catch. We all know, however, that when you lay out dragnets... you also catch the unintended- and the first amendment freedoms of speech, association and religion have all suffered because of the criminal laws and surveillance that we have been tempted into doing. Post 9/11 the government also became much less transparent. They developed the 'mosaic theory' that any little piece of information about how we were combating terrorism, about what kind of surveillance we were doing, and how it was operating- was dangerous because if the enemy were to combine that little piece of information with other little pieces of information, that might be helpful to them because they could adapt- and therefore, the presumption was to not tell anyone anything- to keep it all secret. That lack of transparency became an enormous problem.

The ACLU started using the Freedom of Information Act- and we did have some success with the courts- there were some judges who decided that some information was not harmful, and that the American public had the right to see particular things. The power tended to flow to the executive branch, and not to the legislative branch or the courts. George W. Bush once said he was "the decider." Under the American constitution? he is not the decider. We have three branches to run checks and balances- and they all decide the important things together. We are about to have the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and although it is understandable to me that right after 9/11- in a panic- we did change a lot of laws and went too far in the direction of giving up our freedoms because we thought we were getting increased security- which was not always true- a lot of these measures were both counterproductive and ineffective. After ten years? we should be rethinking that. There was great report done by the Eminent Jurists Panel of the International Commission of Jurists. This was chaired by Arthur Chaskalson, the former Chief Justice of the South African constitutional court and included Mary Robinson and a number of other interesting people. They spent several years visiting countries who had felt at threat of terrorism to interview people and find out how they had changed their laws in response to the threat of terrorism- and to really look at how that had gone. Their overwhelming conclusion was that in most cases, where countries have changed their laws in response to the threat of terrorism, it was a mistake.

Terrorism is not as exceptional as many people make it out to be. It is a problem of criminality primarily, and their belief was that if nations really shored up their rule of law of justice systems, that they would be better off applying that rule of law. One expert said at the time that it was not like 9/11 put us back in a state of nature where we should give up all the laws. This is why we designed our laws. We have hearings, we have courts, we have congress- because that is how we should be responding to all threats. I feel that this exceptionalism idea-that there is something so different about terrorism that all the usual laws, treaties and rights can be thrown out of the window, was very unfortunate- and I hope now, ten years later- that we may be able to re-think some more of that.

Q: How do you feel that communications and technology (including social networks) are impacting Justice?

[Lord Woolf] This is an issue which has to be discussed, and we have to hope that those who are involved in justice come together to provide international codes that these organisations will comply with should organisations involved in technology wish to be reputable.

[Widney Brown] Staying on the positives first. These are just other tools for us to work with to expose violations and crimes and getting people to support the idea that there should be justice for the victims. What is interesting, though, is that why the tool is new, the use of technology or other means of communications has a long history. I jokingly say that Amnesty International was the first global network- a group of individuals. We didn't use Facebook, we used the international postal system to write letters to dictators asking them to release prisoners of conscience- but we did it together. As individuals we got together and said we're going to make a difference in the world. In 1961, we started having an effective international postal system that meant you could write a letter that worked. Thousands, if not tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience have been released. Now, quite frankly, mail is sort-of 'obsolete' but we're using new media to convey the same messages. The way that we use technology is to expose and to witness and to demand that actions be taken to either protect people from abuses, or ensure that they have a remedy when they suffer those abuses. There is no doubt that technology is something that we always need to use as a tool to promote rights. I want to also make a point here- there is nothing deterministic about technology. That is a mistake people make. What is happening with new digital technologies is exciting, but the technology itself is neutral meaning it can be used just as much to undermine rights as to help promote them. That goes to both thinking about how states and other powerful actors are going to bend technology to serve their good and less-than-good purposed and the need therefore which exists to drive the technologies and make the commitment to not become pawns of abusive actors. That danger is there, we saw it with Vodafone killing the cellular network in Egypt- to the hacking of Facebook accounts in Tunisia and stories that we know about internet service providers turning over information about their clients where governments demands for that information was absolutely illegitimate. Another example that we have that is less focussed on the state, is the role of hackers. One example I'm going to give is that I think Wikileaks is amazing- it's levelled the playing field. The idea that the world is flat with regards to the economy... It flattened the earth with access to information and gave people the opportunity to get their information out there through user generated content- BUT what happened when governments lashed out at Wikileaks was that hackers went-in and because of the Julian Assange story, hacked into the prosecutor's office in Sweden and exposed the names and identity of the two women who had put in a complaint against him. That's hackers undermining the rights of another person. We cannot have people outside government actually using their skills as hackers to undermine or impinge on the rights of their fellow human beings.

[Susan Herman] I think that current communication technologies are having a fascinating impact as an organising tool. The experience in Egypt shows that making more information available to people, more readily really does help to expose injustice and provide methods of organising- to speak back to the government. I think that the whole presumption of our first amendment- the more speech the better- is really something that's borne out by the use of Twitter, Facebook, etc. I think that technology also has tremendous capability to ameliorate censorship and government control of speech in places where governments have been heavy handed in trying to prioritise a particular point of view. Some of the modern technologies in communications enable people to get around government censors. I was talking to one woman, for example, who did a lot of business in China. There were a lot of things she could not access there, for example, the BBC was censored on certain issues. She did, though, have a virtual private network- and through that network, even though she was in China she could access the BBC fully and so forth. It seems to be that technology really promises to break the strangle-hold of censorship in countries where censorship has been rife and heavy-handed. I think that's a very positive development about which we can be very optimistic and I think that communication technologies finally make government of the people, by the people and for the people much easier and more likely.

One negative about this, however, is that because information is so readily available from any individual- there has been a tremendous challenge to the traditional media and press. To the extent that the role of the freedom of the press in the United States is really changing and instead of being the province of organisations like the New York Times and Washington Post that are hierarchical and have a lot of quality control, and invest a lot in investigative journalism... I think we lose a lot when the traditional press is becoming economically challenged because individual people who want to write something on a blog (the Wikileaks model) create a tremendous problem for the rest of us in determining whether or not that information is reliable. There aren't the filters that major newspapers have. I'm not saying the traditional news media couldn't be fooled, but there were people whose job it was to check the accuracy of what was being published. That's a concern- in today's world there is the view that all information is equal regardless of whether or not it's true. The other problem is that individual people who are publishing things on the internet don't really have the resources to conduct investigative journalism in the way the press readily has- there has been any number of examples in the United States where enterprising reporters, supported by an organisation like a newspaper or television station, have gone out and really done investigative journalism and uncovered problems that people didn't really know about in ways that could be tremendously influential. With the traditional press being economically challenged, they have less ability to play that role. From the point of view of the ACLU, our role is changing. We are really taking on more of that job and feeling that it is more critical for us to do investigations and write reports- not just to respond what we learn.

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We can see from these insights that Justice very closely resembles the form outlined by John Rawls in his 1958 essay for 'The Philosophical Review' where he states, "Justice is to be understood in its customary sense as representing but one of the many virtues of social institutions, for these may he antiquated, inefficient, degrading, or any number of other things, without being unjust. Justice is not to be confused with an all inclusive vision of a good society; it is only one part of any such conception. It is important, for example, to distinguish that sense of equality which is an aspect of the concept of justice from that sense of equality which belongs to a more comprehensive social ideal. There may well be inequalities which one concedes are just, or at least not unjust, but which, nevertheless, one wishes, on other grounds, to do away with..." He continues, "...the conception of justice which I want to develop may be stated in the form of two principles as follows: first, each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and second, inequalities are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyone's advantage, and provided the positions and offices to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all. These principles express justice as a complex of three ideas: liberty, equality, and reward for services contributing to the common good."

(Note that where referring to a 'person', Rawls intends one to interpret the term depending on the circumstances. In political philosophy, this could mean an individual, nation, province, political party, business or organisation, team, religious society and so on. Rawls does, though, identify that there should be a 'logical priority' given to human individuals above other structures.)

We must also concede that society has grown up. We are no longer in the protracted infancy of our holocene, but in a period (popularly referred to by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen) called the Anthropocene where the humanity can have an existentially positive or negative impact not just on itself, but on the entire planet. As Schweitzer noted, "...We are living to-day under the sign of the collapse of civilization. The situation has not been produced by the war; the latter is only a manifestation of it."

It is with this in mind, that we must change our views of society- from an overly simplistic view of human nature (as has been the trend in a century of social and political sciences) to a more developed one- recognising that our profoundly conceited sense of achievement- our sense of modernity- is emergent from nothing more than ego. As Theodor Adorno (A German born sociologist and philosopher) identified, "...Human progress can be summed up as the advance from the spear to the guided missile, showing that though we have grown cleverer, we have certainly not grown wiser......"

In the theatre of Justice, this realisation is necessary to highlight the protracted differences between the 'flat-earth' view of society which policy makers often adopt, and the truth- that we are a society made of ever-richening and phenomenal interplays of complex social networks- supported by culture, institutions and a fractal structure of groupings from family, to friendships, colleagues to religious groups and on to nation states and the civilisation as a whole. For there to be true equilibrium in this dynamic system, the concept of 'justice' must be interpreted and applied holistically- society is, after all- based on the principal that social cooperation, "makes possible a better life for all than any would have in each were to live solely by his own efforts."

John Rawls, in his 'Theory of Justice' summarised this by stating, "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of a society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by the many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is only tolerable when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice."

It would be difficult for us to honestly say that our 'modern civilisation' obeys these tenets of having 'equal citizenship' as being as settled issue- and 'rights secured by justice' as not being the result of political bargaining or other interests.

Our society, like the adolescent we described earlier, has strength in creativity, innovation, technological and intellectual endeavour and through those has developed faculties which have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and provided us (predominantly in the developed world) with economic opportunity and greater wealth than at any point in human history. This has made society 'clever' but the gaping injustices we see (ranging from individual children being denied education because of their gender or racial background- to illegitimate protracted global conflicts) now place us at a unique precipice in our story, where we must realise that we are 'in this together'.

Society as Ayn Rand identified is, "...the process of setting man free from men.." and as Walter Cronkite observes- and allows me to conclude, "...there is no such thing as a little freedom. Either you are all free, or you are not free."

The Role of Film in Society

2011-06-19T21:33:00.008+01:00

In this exclusive interview we talk to Tom Sherak, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (best known for their Academy Awards, also referred to as "Oscars"). We look at the role of film in society and how it has grown to become such a ubiquitous art. We discuss what makes a 'great' movie, some history of film, the economics and future of the industry, and how the internet and other technologies such as CGI and 3D have affected the movie business.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, June 2011

Film has a uniquely powerful ubiquity within human culture. In 2009, across major territories, there were over 6.8 billion cinema admissions (compared against a world population of roughly the same number) creating global box office revenues of over US$30 billion. The convergent nature of film creates consumption across a number of channels. In the same year combined DVD and Blu-Ray sales in the United States, Canada and European Union alone were US$32.5 billion (amounting to over 1.1 billion units sold). When you start to then consider revenues and audience figures from those who consume digitally, via television, repeat view content they already own and view through the highly illegal but vast black-market in films, the figures become truly staggering.

The direct economic impact of film is clear, but the effect to the wider economy is also significant. The UK House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee- in a 2002 report on The British Film Industry stated, "...Of the 23 million people who visited the UK in 2001 — spending approximately £11.3billion — VisitBritain (formerly the British Tourist Authority) estimates that approximately 20% visited the UK because of the way it is portrayed in films or on television. The flow-on effect from film (i.e. the use of services and purchase of goods by the industry) is thought to be that for every £1 spent on film, there is a £1.50 benefit to the economy."

Cinema has become a powerful vehicle for culture, education, leisure and propaganda. In a 1963 report for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization looking at Indian Cinema and Culture, the author (Baldoon Dhingra) quoted a speech by Prime Minister Nehru who stated, "...the influence in India of films is greater than newspapers and books combined." Even at this early stage in cinema, the Indian film-market catered for over 25 million people a week- considered to be just a 'fringe' of the population.

Contemporary research has also revealed more profound aspects to film's impact on society. In a 2005 paper by S C Noah Uhrig (University of Essex, UK) entitled, "'Cinema is Good for You: The Effects of Cinema Attendance on Self-Reported Anxiety or Depression and 'Happiness'" the author describes how, "The narrative and representational aspects of film make it a wholly unique form of art. Moreover, the collective experience of film as art renders it a wholly distinct leisure activity. The unique properties of attending the cinema can have decisively positive effects on mental health. Cinema attendance can have independent and robust effects on mental wellbeing because visual stimulation can queue a range of emotions and the collective experience of these emotions through the cinema provides a safe environment in which to experience roles and emotions we might not otherwise be free to experience. The collective nature of the narrative and visual stimulation makes the experience enjoyable and controlled, thereby offering benefits beyond mere visual stimulation. Moreover, the cinema is unique in that it is a highly accessible social art form, the participation in which generally cuts across economic lines. At the same time, attending the cinema allows for the exercise of personal preferences and the human need for distinction. In a nutshell, cinema attendance can be both a personally expressive experience, good fun, and therapeutic at the same time. In a rather groundbreaking study, Konlaan, Bygren and Johansson found that frequent cinema attendees have particularly low mortality risks –those who never attended the cinema had mortality rates nearly 4 times higher than those who visit the cinema at least occasionally (Konlaan, Bygren, and Johansson 2000). Their finding holds even when other forms of social engagement are controlled, suggesting that social engagement specifically in an artistic milieu is important for human survival."

So how has cinema grown to become such a preeminent part of human culture?

In this exclusive interview we talk to Tom Sherak, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (best known for their Academy Awards, also referred to as "Oscars"). We look at the role of film in society and how it has grown to become such a ubiquitous art. We discuss what makes a 'great' movie, some history of film, the economics and future of the industry, and how the internet and other technologies such as CGI and 3D have affected the movie business.

Thomas Sherak, whose remarkable career has seen him at the pinnacle of motion picture marketing, distribution and production, is now serving as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is also consulting for Marvel Studios and Relativity Media.

Previously, Sherak was a partner at Revolution Studios. In its seven years of operation, Revolution Studios released more than thirty films, including "America's Sweethearts," "Black Hawk Down," "XXX," "Anger Management," "Daddy Day Care," "Hellboy," "13 Going On 30," "White Chicks," "The Forgotten," "Christmas with the Kranks," "Are We There Yet?," "Rent," "The Benchwarmers," "Click," "Rocky Balboa" and "Across the Universe."

Prior to joining Revolution Studios, Sherak was Chairman of Twentieth Century Fox Domestic Film Group. In addition, Sherak served as Senior Executive Vice President of Fox Filmed Entertainment. Previously, he was Senior Executive Vice President of Twentieth Century Fox. At Twentieth Century Fox, Sherak oversaw the distribution and post-production of such films as "Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "True Lies," "Speed," "Independence Day," "Broken Arrow," "Dr. Dolittle," "The X-Files," and "Star Wars: Episode 1–The Phantom Menace."

In 1990 Sherak was named Executive Vice President of Twentieth Century Fox. Previously, he was President of Domestic Distribution and Marketing for Twentieth Century Fox from May 1983 to September 1984, and again from June 1986 to July 1990. In that position, he supervised the company's domestic distribution, advertising/publicity/promotion operations and the non-theatrical film division. He has overseen the marketing and distribution of such films as "Romancing the Stone," "Commando," "Aliens," "The Fly," "Broadcast News," "Predator," "Wall Street," "Die Hard," "Working Girl," "Die Hard 2," "Home Alone," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Die Hard: With a Vengeance." Sherak joined Fox from General Cinema, where he was Vice President and head film buyer.

He is an active board member of the Southern California Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Fulfilment Fund of Southern California. Serving as Chair for the MS Dinner of Champions gala event for the past 18 years, Sherak has helped raise just under 40 million dollars for multiple sclerosis research and programs. He is a former Chairman of the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation and formerly on the Board of Directors for the Motion Picture and Television Fund as well as the Southern California Variety – the Children's Charity. Sherak has also previously served as Treasurer of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sherak received an honorary doctorate in the arts from the Academy of Art University in May 2010 and holds a degree in Marketing from New York City Community College. He is also on the faculty of the UCLA Producers Program.

The Concept Film

Q: What is the role of film in society and why has film become such a strong part of the arts?

[Tom Sherak] Film is a reflection of society, both present and past. I think the film and it's innovations sometimes has to catch up to society but sometimes it leads society too. Movies are stories, movies are people who come out with ideas about something they want to say, something they want to tell someone. Movies are a form of communication and that communication, those stories, come from societies- not just where society is presently and what it's doing now- but where society has been. It's been that way for as long as movies have been around!

Movies are different things to different people, that's what is so incredible about them. To me personally, movies are about escapism. Movies are about sitting in a theatre, watching something- watching a story unfold with people I don't know- watching that happen and emoting an emotion knowing that for those two hours, when I walk into that theatre, I don't have to worry about what is going on outside. I lose myself in what I'm watching. Movies can educate too. They tell us things we never could have known. They tell us things we might not know, and they give us a way to explore the past, the present and the future.

You asked why movies have become so popular, I'm going to tell you why, it's because the images move... They're not static. I could stare at a Van-Gogh for hours, but I sit in a theatre and the images move. As the frames move and tell a story, it is that movement which emotionally connects you. To me, this is fundamental about why movies have become global. Every country has stories to tell, about their past, their culture now, and views of what the future will look like through their eyes. What hadn't happened for many years, and what started to happen relatively recently was a couple of things. Firstly, movie theatres began to be built all over the world- not just here in the USA. In many parts of the world, the phenomenon of movie theatres is only ten or fifteen years old. These theatres give people a place to go, to escape, to learn.

Before that, society had the stories, but they didn't really have the places to go and enjoy them like that. India, for example, wasn't making six hundred films a year fifteen years ago. All of a sudden, the business part of film allowed people to invest and make movies- and also have somewhere to make their money back, in theatres! Then the internet came along...

The world is changing now faster than you and I change our socks! It's constantly changing, and that constantly changing world is going to induce more movie-making. If you go on YouTube, you can see the most talented young people all over the world who take a camera and start to film ideas they have and put them online. They're going to be the future of the industry. The internet has connected the world together so a person in Vietnam can put a movie on the internet which can be instantly seen all around the world, you simply couldn't have done that before. Movies have become a world-wide feature- and as it relates to what movies tell us? I don't know that I knew as much about, for example, Cuba as I wanted to- I'm talking socially not politically. We (the Academy) sent an outreach program to Cuba, and believe me- we learnt SO much about society from their movies. I believe, personally, that movies allow people to be taken places they can't get to on their own- be it travel, or culture, or learning.

The arts are not just one, they are all connected- and movies have become a huge part of the arts.

Q: What are the impacts of current-affairs, politics, social issues and corporate interests on film?

[Tom Sherak] This is one of the great things about movies. Some movies take sides- you can agree or disagree with the content. Some movies take sides and create a conversation, and that conversation can be in any area; be it political, social, or even within specific disciplines such as fashion. Movies can create controversy, and tell difficult stories. Movies have always either taken a side, remained central, or projected something forward.

During the Second World War movies in the USA created a feeling of valour and heroism in what we were doing and you saw this in films that came out at the time such as the Purple Heart. It was during this time also that John Wayne became a huge star, having progressed to this style from the westerns. We needed to lift our spirits basically.... There is an old movie-saying, which the distribution and marketing people love... During a recession, business gets better! It doesn't slump! If you look at the numbers of the movie business you will wonder why that happens. It's because people want to go and get away, and they want to be able to feel different. In this sense, it doesn't matter whether you agree or disagree with the movie content. I'm going to give you an example... Many years ago, when I was at Fox, I was involved with a movie called the War of the Roses starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. It was the story of a horrible divorce between the Roses. It was a brilliant movie- Danny DeVito is a brilliant Director and Actor. Michael and Kathleen, of course, speak for themselves. That movie was previewed ten times before it opened. Audiences walked out yelling and screaming "how dare you make a movie like that?", "that movie didn't work!", "that movie made us mad!", "who made that movie?" they weren't happy people! Now you have a movie that didn't test very well, and you wonder what happened?. The movie came out at Christmas... The press saw what Danny what trying to put into the movie - and all of a sudden whether you liked the movie or didn't... and believe me many people didn't like the movie... you had to see it to talk about it! It became part of culture all of a sudden with people asking each other, "did you see the War of the Roses? did you see what happened?", "what would you have done? would you have killed the dog? would you have killed each other?" - and that's what so great about the movie business. You can sit down on a plane with anybody and want to start a conversation. You start by saying hello, and asking what they do- but then, if you really want to continue the conversation? "hey! did you see Avatar?". It doesn't matter whether you like the movie or not, but it starts a conversation. It's one of the few things around the world which we all have in common. Can you give me something else which the world has in common? that we can have an opinion on without being right or wrong?

Movies also create debate, they create conversation, they create an atmosphere. Not all movies of course... I'm not going to sit here and tell you that 'Never Been Kissed' causes a debate... but movies are often made by film-makers who want to take a position on a topic, and you can debate it. One of the governors of the Academy is a gentleman by the name of Michael Moore who is to the left of the left! Michael Moore makes movies from a point of view, and whether you agree with him or not, whether you like him or not, it doesn't matter- his movies create debate, and that is a good thing.

Q: What makes a 'great film' ?

[Tom Sherak] There's a couple of caveats here. What makes a great film is that it stands the test of time... That you can look at it years later, and still enjoy it. This Friday, at the Academy, we're going to look at a film which is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, Raiders of the Lost Ark! We're going to see it digitally re-mastered, on a big screen. We're going to see a movie that, when it came out, was not just a big hit... but emoted something. When you sat in the theatre it delivered adventure, suspense, fun- true escapism. Thirty years later, we are still enjoying that movie. Other great movies like this include Godfather, Rosebud, Gone With the Wind, and so many more.

To me, the ultimate prize for a great movie is whether it can stand the test of time, across generations.

If we look at what goes into that.. It always starts with a good story, a writer who puts that story down on paper, and then a collaboration between every other guild that goes into making a movie... The Director, actors, cinematographer, make-up artists, visual effects specialists, and more.

Movies are collaborative, and to make a great movie you have to begin with the story and writing, but then when the Director takes over and brings his mindset- casting the actors, and building that team? It's that which MAKES the movie. No single person makes a movie, it's a collaborative event. As an aside, it's obvious that not all movies are successful. Some movies are just not that good... that happens right? Nobody goes out to make a bad movie, nobody starts that way! Who is going to invest in a movie that they don't think will work? Everything starts out the same, and it starts to break-down at some point and maybe the result doesn't turn out the way you wanted... It happens a lot. You can find so many people who are incredibly talented and creative who have gone on to have great careers, that started off with movies which didn't work. Look at Jack Nicholson's early work with Roger Corman for example, where he played a monster! All the crafts in the movie business are learned on the job, they are not 'schooled crafts' and often you have to fail to succeed. Failing is not as horrible as you think, as long as you learn something from the failure- so that you can take things to the next step. Talent will always come to the top, and failure will always go to the bottom.

Q: How does film sit alongside other arts such as music, theatre and the visual arts?

[Tom Sherak] Movies inspire, they have a way of setting tones. All elements of art are interconnected, they are very similar. It used to be that you go to a museum and you see an art exhibit and it was someone who was well known- you had lines to see the exhibit. If someone wasn't well known, it would start small and grow. Movies are like that- but the difference is that movies can both take the lead in creating other arts, and following arts (by which I mean they are able to take a piece of art, and tell the story behind it). When you paint a picture, you just paint that picture! A movie can take that picture to a whole other place... with a story. I think that capability is what separates film, to a degree- from the other arts.

The movie world is set up in a lot of different segments. You have the business world of movies, the art world, the esoteric, the metaphoric. This diversity gives movies their unique directional ability in arts.

Q: What is the role of events such as the Oscars on films, society and the industry?

[Tom Sherak] The Oscar is a major part of the Academy. Not the only part, but a major part nevertheless. The Oscar rewards excellence, that's what it does. It's the ultimate prize for people in this business, in all the things we just talked about. In that one year that it's given, to the movies that are released, it rewards excellence. Why is that important? It's important for the organisation to give out these statuettes in an area where hundreds of people are creating- to say that within that one year you, as a winner, are at the absolute top of your field, and we are rewarding you for that. Why does that affect culture? We all have movies in common. It doesn't matter whether we like the movie or didn't. I've always believed that we, as humans, would rather see people rewarded than thrown out with the wash-water. People love to see who wins!

As an organisation, we don't think of it as 'who won and lost' yes, someone is going to get the award and it simply reflects the fact that in that year, in the eyes of their peers, and with the world watching, they stood out above the rest. The international market for these awards will keep growing too- which is no different to the international market for movies themselves. International box office for movies has now surpassed the domestic market, and as more people watch movies, more people want to watch together on the night those awards are given out. So here we are giving out awards for excellence that not only touch the person who gets the award, but also all the people around the world who watched the movie.

Aside from something like the Nobel Peace Prize- and please believe me I am in no way even remotely comparing the Academy awards to the Nobel- I can't think of many accolades which become part of how you are introduced.. After you win, you are always referred to as the "Academy Award Winner...". You have that accolade for the rest of your life, and it becomes an internationally recognised sign of excellence.

Looking at Technology:

Q: What has been the impact of technologies such as 3D, Animation and CGI on film?

[Tom Sherak] It's important to remember that our organisation is the Academy of Arts and Sciences, not just arts. The Science part of the mix is just as important as anything else. The technology of movies, from the beginning has been important. This thing called 'sound' revolutionised films. Remember, we started with silent movies- and then sound came along and took movies to a place that the telephone took society, wow- we have sound!

The Academy is on the forefront, with its technology council, in creating technologies in the new digital world. Everybody thinks digital is easy- they think you make the movie, you stick it in a drawer on a little disk, and there you go- it's done. The disk, however, doesn't last forever. Did you know, for example, that film- as in physical film- lasts a lot longer than disks? You have to, therefore, figure out a way with digital- no different than the challenges we first faced with film- as to how we can store that forever. The Academy has dealt with these challenges in a landmark report on the 'Digital Dilemma'. Technology, however, changes every day- and moves further and further ahead. I will give you a quick personal example. I had to go get an MRI. Previously it took around 45minutes to do the scan. I went to do the same MRI three weeks ago in a brand new machine at UCLA, the same scan now takes twenty minutes.

When you get to our business and look at the technology of visual effects, 3D, and so forth. These are all things that help create an illusion, to help us escape. Some people, in this sense, have questioned whether 3D is a fad. When I grew up as a young man in the late fifties and early sixties, 3D was just coming out with films like 'House of Wax'. I think at that time, it was a fad. It came, people said wow, and then it went away for a while. All of a sudden, it has come back- and has been used very effectively by people such as Jeffrey Katzenberg and his Dreamworks studio, and Jim Cameron who has created a whole new look in the format. Is it a fad now? I don't know if that is yet answered. I know that if you look at all the televisions coming out now from Japan, everything is 3D capable- so somebody believes that this technology has a lifespan. We haven't yet had the 'product' to catch up with the platform, but it's on its way. I believe that eventually we will have 3D technologies which will not require glasses, that would have been unheard of ten years ago. Once you don't need the glasses, does that mean more people will want to watch 3D? Time will tell.... Right now, this technology is still very much in infancy. Theatres are converting screens to 3D and Hollywood will have to continue putting out 3D movies to fill these screens. For me, one of the things that makes the movie business as exciting as it is - is the impact of innovation on our economics. When you innovate something, and it works, it has a direct affect on economics around the world - meaning that, if I created a new kind of 3D like Cameron has - or if 2D to 3D conversion takes off - and exhibitors around the world put in screens because people want to see it? that creates real economic growth. Movies, in the USA, are the number one exported product! That's an amazing thing, and creates economics here and around the world! So if we look at the idea of technology and what technology does for the movies? technology allows movies to take stories to places where they couldn't have gone before, and that technology helps escapism- which is why, ultimately, you go to the movies.

Q: What has been the impact of the internet, social media and allied technologies on films and the business of movie-making?

[Tom Sherak] I believe that movies do well, and make money, by word of mouth. I know advertising is a big part, and of course having the right movie to start with, but word of mouth is powerful. Bad word of mouth can kill you, we all know that. Movies have the shortest marketable life of any marketable product. Did you know that you can make a movie for $65 million, spend another $20 million marketing it in the USA and another $30 million marketing internationally and that movie could be gone within two weeks? No other product that I can think of has such a short life, with that kind of investment required.

If, for example, I created a new soap- and I put the soap on the shelf in the supermarket and it doesn't sell- I can move it to increase visibility- it still doesn't sell, so I lower the price- I become competitive in getting people to try the product- I have the time to do that. With a movie, you have one chance. That's why the movie business is such a dangerous game to get involved in. You have a very strong heart and constitution to know that it can go that quickly. How many times have you seen a movie open, and then looked to find where its playing, and see that it's not playing any more- it doesn't play because if it doesn't work immediately! they take it off the screen. The theatres don't own the screen, they have partners- and those partners are interested in making money- so what's the sense in keeping movies on the screen if they aren't making money? So the word of mouth of a movie becomes very important.

In today's world if a movie is going to reach an audience- they have to realise that their audience, particularly younger people, spend up-to 18hrs a day connected to the internet. This means that comments about the movie get onto sites straight away. So if someone posts, "this is the worst movie I've ever seen.." and everybody feels the same way? that will kill the movie... instantly. This happens often. If a movie goes on, and is controversial- with fifty percent loving it, and fifty percent not liking it... that creates controversy... and it [that movie] has a chance in the marketplace.

We have become a world that communicates via the internet. It used to be that I would pick up the phone, or I would see you somewhere, we'd be outside! But now? all that word of mouth, where we communicated, and movies had the chance to grow and breathe? has gone. Now it's a case of, "you'd better get-em, or you're not gonna get-em". The internet has provided the good and bad of that because once a movie review is out- it's out.... Don't forget that previously, you read a review in a paper, next day- you throw the paper away. Once a review goes on the net? it never goes away! That's part of how culture is now. Studios, fifteen years ago, tried to figure out how to avoid the internet. Now they have to figure out ways of how to incorporate the internet into everything they do, because it is that powerful as a tool of both selling and killing. It's had a direct worldwide impact- it's a global event. People in Russia will read about what's happening in movie world in the USA. You will have noticed that a lot of big movies are being released internationally before being released in the USA, it never used to be that way, ever! The consideration was always that for movies which translated for international audiences... if it didn't work in the USA, it wouldn't work internationally. Jo Lewis, the boxer, once said, when you get into the ring there is no place to hide. When you make a movie now? there is no place to hide. The world is gonna' know about it the instant you show it now. Movies used to be worked on, developed and changed. Now? Once you show it, it's out there.

Looking at piracy- it is the stealing of somebody's ability to make money from something they created or were involved with. In my mind, this is a horrible illegal act. There's a whole generation that thinks, 'if it's on the internet, it's ok to have'. If something goes on the internet illegally, it's NOT ok to have- it isn't! So you have to try and stop piracy any way you can, to protect the rights of those people who have created the product. The internet has created this image that you can distribute things if you have them, it's ok, it's the internet. The fact is - it isn't ok! The property rights of the people involved in movies, who make a living from the movies, have to be protected. It is incredibly difficult to do. Piracy is all over the place, and you have to bring people to justice who act illegally- there are laws there for a reason. You cannot become a lawless society. You have to have laws to protect people's rights, these people created these things and they should be allowed to bear the fruit of what they created. Pirates take away from that. Many years ago, I came up with an idea. We were having a lot of problems with people selling videos the day they came out. They were not top quality, you maybe will miss a couple of scenes, but there was still a video, with your movie on- being sold cheap, like a dollar or something. And people would stop and buy the movie, because it was cheaper than the theatre! We were trying to shut them down. Law enforcement can't just work on the movie business, they are doing a lot of other things. So how do you shut them down? I thought maybe I should go and make a deal with them, with the crooks! Maybe I should say, "look, I can't stop you, so give me fifty cents on every video." And then I realised that wouldn't work, it was a bad idea... I was just kidding if I thought I could do that! The other thing you have to know, is that piracy affects many other businesses. You have to do something about that. Can you be totally effective against it? never... You are seeing it right now with the recent hack attacks. You cannot be totally protected- it's impossible. But either way, you have to deal with it. If there was a plug on the internet, I guess you could pull it- but that's not the case. You have to understand the environment, and have to understand that because of the internet- which has taken civilisation to a world it could simply not have reached- you have to protect yourself as best you can knowing that there's no way to do it completely. Go look at Sony and all these companies who have, unfortunately, been hacked- the bottom line is that if someone wants to hack you, or pirate a movie, they will- but you have to deal with it the best you can.

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Through Mr. Sherak's experience we can see lucidly, the power of movies and how, through the synergistic impact of moving-image, sound, narrative and other elements- they can create a powerful sense of emotion and engagement. Movies can communicate concepts, ideas and stories. They allow us to be cognitively transported to a different time or a place, and experience life through different eyes- gaining new perspectives, inspiration and understanding. Mr. Anthony Minghella (1954-2008, an accomplished film director, and ex. Chairman of the bfi) states in this regard, "...fiction becomes this sort of cultural bank balance that we can draw from. We canmomentarily be a young woman, an old woman, a black person, an Asian person, a Chinese person, and look at the world and argue a position that is not our own for a while — inhabit a position that is not our own."

McCarthy and Wright in their 2004 paper "Technology as Experience" describe the philosophy behind this suggesting four 'threads' of experience- sensual, emotional, compositional and spatio-temporal. These strands, they argue, operate as one during the 'dialogue' of a viewer with a film. Their view is supported by many others. Todd Oakley, an academic at Case Western Reserve University, in his 2004 paper "Toward a General theory of Film Spectatorship" also describes how, "Film spectatorship—or at least the most interesting aspects of it—is a conscious activity (Currie 1999): making sense of film is significantly the same as making sense of the real world (Anderson 1996); the spectator uses perceptual and conceptual systems developed for interacting with a three-dimensional world to interact with and make sense of a two dimensional world; therefore, there is no specific, encapsulated, cognitive module for experiencing the movements and gestures of fictional characters projected on a screen, nor are there specific cognitive modules for aesthetic experiences generally..."

This understanding, however, is not new. Since the emergence of man's first cave-etchings- it has become clear that we possess the ability to communicate emotionally and cognitively through art- which, in context, functions both as and aside to language. The ancient Greeks, for example, inscribed "The Healing Place of the Soul" above the door to the library at Thebes (Riordan & Wilson, 1989), and used drama as a method of dealing with emotions. This cathartic property of storytelling allows us, through metaphor, to access areas of human experience which otherwise cannot be accessed through "rational thought "Of all of our inventions for mass communication" said Walt Disney "...pictures still speak the most universally understood language."

Film, therefore holds a truly unique place in the story our civilisation. It is an art, a language, a medium for education, inspiration, and so much more. It provides employment for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and enjoyment for countless billions more and provides a living record of the human condition and imagination at any given point in our story.

Against this backdrop, however, we must not forget that more than anything- film is a hugely entertaining medium, and allows us- briefly- to escape our lives and venture somewhere else. That, in essence, is the true attraction.

I will allow Mr. Sherak to conclude with his wonderful invitation.... "See you at the movies!"

Understanding Democracy

2011-04-27T17:00:00.002+01:00

In this exclusive interview we speak to Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who (with over 150 books published) is regarded as "one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today". We discuss the state and future of democracy around the world together with the role that government, corporations and the media play in shaping our lives. We also look at the global war on terror, globalisation, and how the world will look in the next quarter century.

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Vikas Shah, Thought Economics, April 2011

In March 1949, Dr. Quincy Wright (1890-1970) of the University of Chicago presented a paper for the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) entitled "Philosophical Enquiry Into Current Ideological Conflicts; The Meaning of Democracy". Dr. Wright states, "Like all social and political terms which serve at the same time as slogans for movements and as symbols for conceptions, the word democracy has in fact varied in meaning according to time, place, and circumstances. This variability is, in fact, a condition of most forms of popular discourse. They are continually acquiring new meanings as can be seen by studying any historical dictionary." He continues by citing examples of this variability. "Democracy..." he writes, "has always suggested a wide popular participation in the support, conduct and benefits of government, but the conception has taken colour from the conditions and opinions which advocates of democracy have at particular times and places found in opposition to their aims. Thus, in a struggle against an unpopular rule of a monarch or oligarchy, democracy has referred to government by the many, rather than the few; in a struggle against social privilege, class or race discrimination, and economic inequality, democracy has referred to equality in social position and economic welfare; in a struggle against government monopoly of economic initiative, public opinion and political association, democracy has referred to freedom of enterprise, communication, opinion and association; in a struggle against corrupt and arbitrary manipulations of opinion, democracy has referred to procedures for regulating elections and party action in order to assure freedom of opinion, wide participation and fair representation; in a struggle against excesses of majorities and oppression of minorities, democracy has referred to the rule of law and protection of fundamental human rights; in a struggle for freedom of dependent or oppressed peoples, democracy has referred to home rule, self government, and self determination of distinctive groups; in a struggle for influence of suppressed groups or classes, democracy has referred to consent of the governed, non-discrimination and procedures for consultation among all interested groups in policy formation."

Humanity is a plurality made-up of many different individuals forming highly interconnected communities of mutual interest and co-operation (families, political groups, cities, countries, and so forth) and it is the individuals within the groups rather than the group 'in general' who, ultimately, exert power. "Democracy is [therefore] a compromise designed to balance interests among members of a community." (Han Zhen, Democracy as a Way to Social Compromise, 2006). As our society has grown from small villages of (at most) few hundred people to a vast interconnected global economy of six billion, the complexity of the compromise along with the incredibly varied interests of group members has introduced profound challenges to democracy itself. These challenges (often left unaddressed) leave our society in a near-permanent state of visible conflict (albeit with varying intensity) across all dimensions of struggle (akin to those outlined by Wright, above).

Against this backdrop of social, economic and political conflict, what is the future of democracy?

In this exclusive interview we speak to Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who (with over 150 books published) is regarded as "one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today". We discuss the state and future of democracy around the world together with the role that government, corporations and the media play in shaping our lives. We also look at the global war on terror, globalisation, and how the world will look in the next quarter century.

Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. He received his early education at Oak Lane Country Day School and Central High School, Philadelphia. He continued his education at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. In 1955, he received his Ph. D. from the University of Pennsylvania, however, most of the research leading to this degree was done at Harvard between 1951 and 1955. Since receiving his Ph. D., Chomsky has taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he now holds the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics. Respected and honoured numerous times in the academic arena, he has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of London and the University of Chicago, as well as having been invited to lecture all over the world. In 1967, he delivered the Beckman Lectures at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1969, he presented the John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford and Sherman Memorial Lectures at the University of London.

Looking at the UK, USA & Europe

Q: To what extent are our societies free and democratic?

[Noam Chomsky] These Societies are quite free by historical standards. They are democratic in the sense that they have formal elections that aren't stolen, and so on. They're undemocratic to the extent that forces other than popular will have an overwhelming affect on who can participate in electoral outcomes. The United States is the most extreme in this respect. Right now in the United States, elections are essentially bought. You can't run an election unless you have a huge amount of capital- which means overwhelmingly, although not one hundred percent, that capital was sought from strong corporate backing. For example, in the 2008 election- what carried Obama across the finish line first at the end was a very substantial amount of support from financial institutions which are now the core of the economy. The coming elections are supposed to be a two-billion-dollar election, and there's only one place to go for that kind of money.

There used to be a system of chairs of committees in congress, who were there through seniority and so on. By now, it is generally required that funding go to the party committee- which means those are also, in large part, bought. This means that popular opinion is very much marginalised. You can see this very clearly on issue after issue. So the huge issue right now, domestically, is the deficit. Well... People have ideas about how to get rid of the deficit. For example- most of the deficit is the result of a highly dysfunctional healthcare system which has about twice the per-capita cost of other countries and by no means better outcomes- in fact, rather poorer outcomes. The population has long favoured moving toward some kind of national healthcare system- which would be much less expensive and (judging by the outcomes) no worse, maybe better. That would, in fact, eliminate the deficit! That's not even considered!

Q: What really drives our foreign policy? and how does that impact us, as citizens?

[Noam Chomsky] Foreign policy in the UK and Europe tends to follow the United States, not entirely- but the US does remain the prime driver in foreign policy. It's not a secret what foreign policy is driven by. For example, Bill Clinton was quite explicit about it. His position, expressed clearly in congress, was that the US has the right to carry out a unilateral military action, sometimes supported by a (so-called) coalition of the willing in order to secure resources and markets and it must have military forces forward deployed- meaning foreign bases in Europe and elsewhere- in order to shape events in our interest. Our interest does not mean the American people, but rather the interests of those who design policy- primarily the corporate sector.

Foreign Policy can be undertaken in ways which are expected to harm security. In fact, that's not at all uncommon. If you follow the Chilcot enquiry- the head of MI5 testified- merely extending what was already known- but she testified that both the United States and Britain recognise that Saddam Hussein was not a threat and that the invasion would very likely increase the threat of terror. And, in fact, it did! About seven-fold in the first year according to quasi-governmental statistics. So an invasion was undertaken which would harm the citizens of the invading countries, as indeed it did. At first, of course, the reasons were presented with the usual boiler-plate which is informative presentation which goes along with every act of force citing democracy and all-sorts of wonderful things. When it was becoming clear that the war-ends could not be easily achieved, towards the end of the invasion- certain policies were stated clearly. In November 2007 the Bush administration issued a declaration of principles stating that any agreement with Iraq would have to ensure the unlimited ability of US forces to operate there- essentially permanent military bases- and such an agreement would also secure the privileging of US investors in the energy systems. In 2008 Bush re-iterated and, in fact, strengthened this in a message to congress where he said that he would ignore any legislation that limits US capacity to use force in Iraq or that interferes with US control over Iraqi oil. That was stated very clearly and explicitly. In fact, the US had to back down from this goal as a result of Iraqi resistance; but the goals themselves were clear and explicit and had nothing to do with the security of Americans. The same is true elsewhere, so one leading specialist on Pakistan recently reviewed US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan revealing once again that these policies are significantly increasing the threat of terror and in fact possibly nuclear terror. He concluded that American and British soldiers are dying in Afghanistan in order to make the world less secure for Americans and British. That's not so unusual. Security is not, typically, a very top priority of states. There are other interests.

Q: To what extent is the media influenced by corporate and government objectives?

[Noam Chomsky] There are cases where direct government and corporate interference takes place, but I don't think that's the major issue concerning corporate and government influence over the media. Using the United States as an example, the media are major corporations- so it's not a question of corporate influence, they are corporations who are closely linked to government. There's a constant flow of people from the corporate sector to government, the interactions are very close. The framework of selection of what to report, how to report it and so on is shaped overwhelmingly by the shared interests of elite sectors in the business world, government and so forth. In fact it's not very different in the Universities, and you can see it day by day. Just take the no-fly zone in Libya. In Libya, the intervention- whether one approves of it or not- is being carried out by the three traditional imperial powers, the US, Britain and France. There is marginal participation by several other NATO countries, but the major countries are simply refusing to be involved, and many are just opposed to it. The BRICS for example, are opposed and Turkey doesn't want to get involved and so on. Well the three, this imperial triumvirate, quite heavily in their propaganda discussed an Arab league request for a no-fly zone. The Arab league statement was rather tepid and was qualified shortly after but there was, in fact, a call for a no fly zone. At the same time, the Arab league called for a no-fly zone over Gaza. In the United States that literally was not reported. While some small newspapers may have discussed it, there was no majors- no New York Times, Washington Post, none of the major media reported it. In fact, in the entire Anglo-American press the only apparent story was in the Financial Times. Well, that's a no-fly zone over Gaza.. which doesn't fit US objectives and therefore it wasn't news. At the same time, the no-fly zone over Libya did fit the objectives of the imperial triumvirate and so that was major news. And this is standard, it happens all the time.

One of the very striking examples which tells you something about the general intellectual culture, had to do with Wiki Leaks. The exposure that received by far the most attention in terms of headlines and euphoric commentary was that the Arabs support US policy on Iran, hostility towards Iran. That was all over the place and was quite interesting because what it was, in fact, referring to was Arab dictators. What about Arab public opinion? Well.. that was also studied and was studied by the most prestigious US polling institutions and released by prestigious institutions like Brookings. These studies are not reported! In the United States, literally not reported- I believe there was one report in England. These reports rank Egypt as the most important country in the region, and within Egypt over ninety percent of the population regard the United States as the most major threat. Eighty percent think the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. Only a small number, maybe ten percent, regard Iran as a threat. Those figures are rather similar throughout the region. But, for policy makers that doesn't matter- as long as the dictators support us? what else matters.

This takes us back to our first question looking at the attitude towards democracy. The attitude is that the population doesn't matter, as long as it's under control; and you can see that. Incidentally, this is quite an old issue. If we had serious reporting on these issues, it would not only report Arab public opinion, but would report that the policy of ignoring Arab public opinion has been around for some time. Back in the 1950's President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called the 'campaign of hatred' in the Arab world; not by governments, but by people. In the same year, the national security council released a study concluding that there is a perception among the people of the Arab world that the United States supports harsh and brutal dictatorships, blocks democracy and development, and we do so because we want to maintain control over their energy supplies. It went onto conclude that the perception (of foreign policy objectives) is more or less accurate, and as long as the dictators support us- then who cares that there's a campaign of hatred? as long as we can control the population... That has remained a consistent policy, very dramatically so today- and as you can see by the reaction to these exposures and unreported crucial data- that's become a generally accepted attitude among educated sectors.

Q: What is the true nature of information subversion seen by governments and corporate institutions?

[Noam Chomsky] I should say that, by now, there are thousands of pages of detailed documentation on this topic. Without going too far afield, let's look at the topics we just mentioned. Is it important for us to know that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken with the expectation that it would increase terror? was undertaken with the intention of ensuring US corporations have privileged access over Iraqi oil? and it would be a permanent US military base? I think it would have been important for the public to know that. I think it would be important for the public to know now that Arab public opinion is so hostile to western (specifically US) power- that it regards the US as a prime threat, and thinks the region would be better off if Iran had nuclear weapons. Is it important for people in the United States and Britain to know that? I would think so! We can go on with case after case. Is it important for Americans, for example, to know that if we had a healthcare system similar to other industrial societies the deficit would be erased and we wouldn't have to go after teacher's pensions and Medicare payments for the elderly and so forth? Yeah, I think that would be important to know. I think, in fact, that ought to be blaring headlines!

All this information can be found out if you do a research project- but it doesn't even enter the public eye.

Q: What influence do large corporations exert in society?

[Noam Chomsky] Corporations play an overwhelming role in society. I don't think that fact is even contentious. Similar observations have been made as far back as Adam Smith who pointed out that in Britain the principal architects of policy were merchants and manufacturers, the people who own society- and they ensure that their interests are served however grievous the impact on the people of England. This is far more true today, with much higher concentrations of power- we are not just manufacturers, we have financial institutions and multinational corporations. They have an enormous influence, and the influence can not only be harmful, but in many cases lethal.

Taking the United States as an example- the corporate sector has been carrying out major propaganda campaigns to try to convince the population that there is no threat from global warming. This, in effect, has led to the majority of people now agreeing it is not a real issue. Business funding has also been the primary instrument in bringing a new group of cadres to congress- figures who are virtually all climate change deniers. These individuals are about to enact legislation to cut-back funding for the international organisation (the IPCC) and the capacity of the environmental protection agency who may not even be able to monitor the effect of greenhouse gases or carry out any other actions which could reduce the impact of global warming which is a very serious threat! This has been done by the corporate executives who are carrying out these propaganda campaigns and funding political figures who are undercutting such efforts. They understand as well as anyone else that global warming is a very serious threat, but there is an institutional role that enters here. If you are the CEO of a corporation, your task is to maximise short-term profit. That's much more true now than it ever has been in the past. We are in a new stage of state-capitalism in which the future just doesn't matter very much, even the survival of the firm doesn't matter very much. What matters increasingly is short term profit and if a CEO doesn't pursue that, he will be replaced with someone who will do it. This is institutional effect, not individual effect, and has extraordinary implications on society. It may, in fact, destroy our very existence.

Q: To what extent does a class-system still exist in western societies?

[Noam Chomsky] The business-classes are constantly fighting a bitter class war, and they are aware of it. If you read the business press they mourn about the hazard facing industrialists and the rising political power of the masses- and the need to fight the everlasting battle for the minds of men, and so forth... and they act on it! They are constantly carrying out major campaigns to ensure the concentration of power in the hands of the corporate sector will increase. In the last thirty years or so, there have been changes in the nature of the economy- shifting from capitalist to state-capitalist. A lot of the dynamism in an economy comes from the state; computers, the internet, the IT revolution and so on. The applications come from the private sector, but not the basic research and development. That has remained true, across the board. Over the past thirty years, there has been a significant change- a move towards "financialisation" of the economy. Financial institutions now have a far higher share of the profit in the economy than forty years ago. Another shift has been towards the outsourcing of production which, in effect, places working people throughout the world in competition- with obvious consequences. Well those changes have set in motion a vicious cycle in which wealth is more and more concentrated within an extremely small population. In the United States, the primary factor of inequality is the extreme concentration of wealth within a fraction of one percent of the population comprising CEO's, hedge fund managers and so on. As that concentration of wealth increases, it carries with it a concentration of political power since wealth has an enormous effect on the political system- and the political power in turn leads to legislation, which enhances the concentration of wealth. Fiscal policies, deregulation, rules of corporate governance and so on. This cycle exists all through the world, but is very striking in the United States. Within the last generation, for one thing, we have seen repeated financial crises which simply didn't occur in the fifties and sixties when new-deal regulations were still in place and the financial system was much more restricted. Increasing financial crises are not a problem for the big banks and investment firms because they can rely on the nanny state to bail them out. If we had a capitalist system, financial crises would be serious but they would be overcome simply by bankruptcy of the culprits, so Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup simply wouldn't exist- they would have gone bankrupt a long time ago! But since we don't have a capitalist system, they have been rescued by the taxpayer repeatedly. In fact, they are given what amounts to a government insurance policy called "too big to fail" and the credit-ranking agencies take that into account. When they determine the credit-level of Goldman Sachs, they take into account that if they partake in a lot of risky transactions, and hence make a lot of profit and the system collapses, there will be a bailout- that increases the firms credit-ranking and means that can get cheaper loans and so on. Meanwhile, for the general population of the past generation or so- for the overwhelming majority, incomes have pretty much stagnated while working hours have increased and benefits have declined leaving a very angry, frustrated and confused population that is pretty much divorced from political decisions. Decisions which are extremely in the hands of an extremely narrow concentration of power- and the media go along with it, as they are essentially part of the system. There is some sniping around the periphery, this is a free society after all- but the overwhelming thrust tends to support the system. These are very anti-democratic tendencies, and also quite dangerous.

Looking at Conflict:

Q: What is your view on the 'global-war-on-terror'?

[Noam Chomsky] One problem is that it doesn't exist. You don't fight a war on terror by carrying out actions which you anticipate will increase terror. The invasion of Iraq, again, was undertaken with the expectation that it would increase terror- and in fact it did. That is not a war on terror. There shouldn't be a war on terror, but rather an effort to undercut terror. The ways to do this are well-understood. Britain is a perfectly good example. Take, for example, IRA terror which was pretty serious! As long as Britain responded using violence, that increased and escalated the cycle of terror. Finally- partly through United States influence, and partly from internal pressure- they responded by paying some attention to the legitimate grievances that existed in the background of the terrorist actions. Well, that led to a decline in terror. By now, Northern Ireland- while not utopia- is certainly not how it was even fifteen years ago. That's the way you deal with terror! Look at its roots, sources and do something about them.

Looking at Globalisation & Society:

Q: What are your views on globalisation and a shift of economic power to China and India?

[Noam Chomsky] First of all, we should be a little careful when discussing a "shift of economic power". It is certainly true that China and India have had very significant growth rates, but these are very poor countries. Take a look at their GDP per capita for example. According to World Bank figures (which are grossly underestimated) China has maybe five percent of the GDP per capita of the United States, India maybe two percent. These figures ought to be doubled or tripled, but even so they are a small fraction of western power. China has grown spectacularly and there's been quite significant impact on reducing poverty and so on. Nevertheless China remains, as of now, an assembly plant. If you take a look at the trade deficit of the United States with China (which is much discussed) and calculate it accurately, in terms of value-added, it turns out the trade deficit with China is over-estimated by about twenty five to thirty percent. The trade deficit with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea is underestimated by the same figure. The reason is, within the dynamic East Asian production system- the high technology parts and components come from the periphery- from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China assembles. Over time, this will change as China moves up the technology ladder, but that's how it is now. It's even more the case in India- which has hundreds of millions of people who are completely excluded from the system. Peasant suicides are increasing at roughly the same rate as the creation of billionaires. A couple of hundred million people have gained, and many more have not- and their situation has been getting worse. There are also enormous ecological problems which are not counted as costs, though they should be. What's going on there is pretty spectacular.

There is much talk of China's holding of US debt and what that implies and so on. Japan's holding of US debt is approximately the same, that does not give Japan power over the United States. There's a lot of misleading commentary about these topics.

Q: What do you think the world will look like 25 years from now?

[Noam Chomsky] Well, there are a number of things taking place. The United States after the second World War was overwhelmingly dominant, its power has been declining since and is declining right now. In part, this decline has to do with the increasing growth in Asian production- we shouldn't exaggerate but it's certainly a part of it. Another factor is the internal attack on the health of American society- the corporate onslaught that has taken place over the past generation has severely weakened American society. There is an attack on the educational system which will have severe long-term effects on economy- there is a general attack on the workforce- the vicious cycle I described is fine for a very small sector of the population, but is harmful for everyone else. The infrastructure is in very poor shape. Anyone who travels from Europe or even Asia to the United States often think they are coming to a third-world country! This is increasing. It is not a problem for the small-sector of wealth and power that off-shore's production and engages in financial manipulations- for them it doesn't really matter if the country declines. It is declining, and it is under attack internally. The United States does have a financial crisis- deficit and debt problem- that is due to two things. One, the enormously bloated military budget which is approximately the same as the rest of the world combined and secondly, a highly dysfunctional privatised unregulated healthcare system. Those two elements are being protected and that, along with the vicious cycle that I mentioned, is leading to severe internal problems which will continue the decline. In addition, the environmental problem is very serious. If the United States does not take the lead, the rest of the world is not going to do very much. If the United States undermine efforts deal with environmental problems- as is now happening- that is going to be even more serious and that's exactly what we see in front of us for the institutional reasons that I mentioned. Thirty years from now, that will be much more significant.

There is also, unfortunately, an increasing threat of nuclear war and even nuclear terror. That's why I mentioned before US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan- part of that policy increases the risk that fissile materials will fall into the hands of radical Islamists. I should say that radical Islam has been strongly supported by the United States and Britain for a long time as a barrier to secular nationalism. The US has also supported the nuclear programmes of Pakistan, India and Israel- the three non-signers of the non-proliferation-treaty. All of that is a very combustible mix.

There are also going to be increasing conflicts over resources. Resources are being pressed to the limit and with increasing growth, there will be competition- which will lead to severe resource conflict and maybe wars of some kind. They may not be military wars, but some kind of conflict. For example- if we look at the major world energy resources in the Middle-East, more are now going East than West! The United States so far is tolerating this- they want Saudi oil to go to China to undercut China's initiatives in Iran- that's part of US geopolitical strategy but that will cause conflict and is true of other resources- Iron, Copper, Lithium and so -on. This is a growing and serious problem- and gives a pretty gloomy prediction of the future unless something significant changes.

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In his 2009 book "Freedom For Sale", John Kampfner discusses that by 2000, "... for the first time, democracy had acquired majority status in the world. Yet, as the writer Paul Ginsborg points out, at the very time it appeared to be dominant, liberal democracy had actually entered a profound crisis. This was not a crisis of quantity; quite the opposite. The crisis, rather, was one of quality." Kampfner continues by citing many cases of this quality-issue including the "dubious judicial legitimacy" of the 2000 US Presidential election along with the more recent manipulation of evidence leading up to the Iraq war, the humiliations of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the systematic use of torture in secret jails around the world, and more.

"In order to succeed in this moral void..." he writes, "the new authoritarians came to a pact with their peoples. The specific rules varied between countries, but the template was similar. Repression was selective, confined to those who openly challenged the status quo. The number of people who fell into that category was actually very few... The rest of the population could enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as they wished and to make and spend their money. This was the difference between public freedoms and private, or privatised, freedoms.... After all, how many members of the public, going on about their daily lives, wish to challenge the structures of power? One can more easily than one realises be lulled into thinking that one is sufficiently free".

His view of being sufficiently free brings us back to the view of democracy being a "...compromise designed to balance interests among members of a community" albeit rather than balancing interests in a true sense, democracy (as we see it) becomes a pseudo-negotiation between a ruling elite (be they political or corporate) and their peoples as to what freedoms they (the peoples) are prepared to cede in exchange for perceived comforts. This moral-equilibrium-point is further provoked into volatility by the huge inequality we see between societies with the population of one wishing for the freedoms (be they economic, social, or political) in another. In 'western' civilisation, consumerism has provided a unique substrate for this pact. As Kampfner points out, "...people in all countries found a way to disengage from the political process while living in comfort. Consumerism provided the ultimate anaesthetic for the brain."

Unlike true-dictatorships, citizens in 'the west' have a sense of debate, control and participation in the issues affecting their lives. This sense of participation is supported by the level of information citizens receive about their democracy and the opportunities they have to interact with it through voting rights, panels, protest, and many other means. If, therefore, they feel sufficiently engaged in the democratic process- why should they even question the democracy of it!

The fact is we are encountering what can only be described as a participation-fallacy. Yes, citizens have the right to elect leaders (albeit who have sufficient capital to run for election) and vote on a wide variety of issues; but if we consider the most important issues which have had the most profound influence on western society in the past decade (including wars, bank-bailouts, climate change and more) aside from the right to show public-opinion through protest, have citizens really had the opportunity to exercise public-opinion? The answer is no- and even the most cursory glance of public opinion polls and outlets will show the widespread displeasure at many decisions which, while ostensibly "taken in citizens' best interest", rarely were.

This is not a problem we can solve overnight, the status-quo has become embedded and systemic in every part of our society. For our world to truly become democratic, the process has begin with education and end with culture meaning that citizens are not only more aware of the opportunities and processes of democracy, but are also culturally driven towards a culture which Dr. Wright describes as, "...a theory, policy, procedure and art, emphasising human welfare, individual freedom, popular participation and general tolerance. It can adapt itself to many conditions, but it thrives in an atmosphere of education, toleration, peace and prosperity." The traits of "Ignorance, dogma, war and poverty.." Dr. Wright argues (traits which have almost become hallmarks of our civilisation) "are its enemies. They breed absolute and arbitrary government, uncritical and lethargic people, which are the reverse of democracy."

"People in the long run.." stated David Eisenhower, "are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." For that to happen, though, we must realise that we (as people) are in this together and that the notions of society and self-interest are, for the most part, incompatible. By understanding that in exchange for a few notional-comforts we (actively) give-up our own freedom and the freedoms of billions of citizens around the world, we lose any perceived moral high-ground we have and any assertion of the freedom of our society.

"There is no such thing as a little freedom..." said Walter Cronkite, "either you are all free, or you are not free."