Amid the mounting fiscal and economic crisis that is threatening to undermine the project of European integration, the Group of Lecce has issued a new statement on the need to reform European economic governance. The Group of Lecce aims to develop policies “to strengthen economic and financial multilateralism”, strengthening the democratic underpinnings of the Union, along with the dynamism of the European economy, through advanced ongoing cooperation.

According to this report: “we do not see any alternative to reinforcing cooperation and to achieving stronger unity across and within the EU, with the very same spirit that has animated in the past all major reforms of the European institutions. Indeed, a major step forward to greater cooperation and unity would make Europe the strong international player that all its national economies need to face the challenges of todayrsquo;s globalised world.”

As today’s more-than-ever integrated Europe faces a crisis of unprecedented proportions, and some in government speak openly of dismantling, at least in part, the common currency or other mechanisms for long-term cooperative integration, the Group of Lecce argues that major structural reforms are needed, to move the Union closer to real, viable, and more agile, policy integration.

The report also concludes that: “We strongly believe that the apparent trade offs between democracy and efficiency, and between solidarity and rigor in managing EU economic policies can be resolved by establishing an adequate system of checks and balances, and by limiting to the extent possible emergency and transitory intergovernmental measures and actions. Severe difficulties seem to lie in the different degrees of integration characterizing the Euro area and the other EU members. A higher economic and fiscal integration is necessary for the European Monetary Union to work effectively…”

• To read the full report, visit ProjectQuipu.net

The European Union has reached an agreement to relieve Greece of half of its sovereign debt, and to boost the Eurozone bailout fund to €1 trillion. The agreement may well be funded, in part, by non-European governments, even private investors, but it shows a new commitment to the Union as such, even amid a surge of anti-Union feeling in several key democracies. For years, the leading obstacle to true integration of the European economies has been seen to be cultural and political reluctance to fully embrace political union.

Will this new commitment to shared responsibility and the future of the Euro currency mean the European Union itself will begin to commit more fully to long-term political union? - Join the discussion here

On Monday, the first day of trading after a credit downgrade of US Treasury bonds from Standard and Poors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 624 points. On Tuesday, it gained 429 points. On Wednesday, it dropped by 509. And on Thursday, it gained 414. It is the first time in its history that the DJIA saw swings of 400 points or more for four consecutive days, swings that far out-strip some of the worst one-day declines in its history.

But perhaps most importantly, Thursday, August 11, 2011, marked the eighth consecutive trading session in which the DJIA changed the direction of its net increase or decrease. The volatility is literally unprecedented, and analysts have been at a loss to explain why. Some say US employment numbers drove the market down, others that they are what pulled the market back up. Some say European banks are “scaring” investors, others that American banks may be less solvent than previously known.

According to Dow Jones, as of Aug 11, 2011:

• The DJIA has changed directions each day for the past eight sessions.
• This is the first time in its history, the DJIA has closed with a net change of 400 points or greater for four consecutive days.
• This is the fourth straight day of 3.5% + moves; the last time this occurred was the four-day period ended November 24, 2008.
• Second largest point and percent gain this year.
• An intraday high of 11278.90 occurred at 15:46:44 today, representing an increase of 558.96 points, or 5.21%.
• An intraday low of 10729.85 occurred at the open today.
• The DJIA has now had six consecutive days of 400+ point high/low swings (549.05 points today) — The last time this occurred was during the six-day period ended 10/29/2008.
• Down 3021.22 points, or 21.33% from its record close of 14164.53 on October 9, 2007.
• Up 7.98% from 52 weeks ago.
• Up 70.20% from its 12-year closing low of 6547.05 on March 9, 2009.

What may astonish many of the uninitiated is that in just one day, on August 11, “The market capitalization of the DJIA rose $140.8B today.” That means the 30 corporations that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average appreciated in value by a total of $140.8 billion, in just a few hours.

What’s more, “All 30 component stocks closed up today; the last session where all 30 stocks traded higher was 08/09/2011.” So, in the midst of this “summer of uncertainty”, every “blue-chip” stock on the DJIA gained in value for two out of the four most volatile trading days in history.

Some have said the reason for the declines was that American businesses are not as competitive; others say Apple’s new position as the nation’s most valuable corporation has buoyed stocks in general, showing that innovation and consumer products can restore economic growth. Some say markets are worried about government policy; others say it is the Fed’s unprecedented decision to set interest rates as near zero for at least two years that has allowed a rebound to occur.

Nevertheless, over the eight sessions in which the DJIA has swung back and forth each day, the overall decline has been 986 points or 8.1%. Since July 22, when concerns that the US would default on its debt actually became credible, as Republicans walked out of talks, the decline has been 1,581 points, or 12.4%.

Why is that important? It is important, because it actually gives us a real and relevant marker of enough significance to explain why the market has seen some of the most intense volatility it has ever seen. It began to become clear, on the 22nd of July, that Republicans in the US House of Representatives were not willing to make a “grand bargain” to reduce the American budget deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years, because they had vowed not to raise taxes.

Markets responded by declining steadily. In fact, between July 22 and August 3, the DJIA declined steadily every single day, as the US debt crisis came to a head. Then, on August 4, began the daily reversals that have puzzled so many investors, analysts and policy makers. And there is good reason for this period of intense confusion: US Treasury bonds, the value of which was called into question by the debt-ceiling crisis, underpin the entire global financial system.

August 2011 has posed grave and unanswerable questions to the worldwide financial sector: What would happen if the US defaulted on its debt? What would happen if the most stable financial investment in the world suddenly saw its credit rating downgraded? More confusing still: what if only one agency downgraded it, while the rest disagreed with what are patently unsound calculations by that one agency?

What will happen to the American economy if Texas experiences its fifth energy emergency of the year, while Dallas endures 40 consecutive days of 100ºF heat and the state begins importing electricity from Mexico? What if austerity measures—deep cuts in government spending—in Europe and the US begin to impede economic growth and destabilize major consumer economies?

This period of intense volatility is attributable to a lot of economic challenges, but mainly to the unprecedented confusion over whether the US government will work across party lines to support its long-term debt obligations. That policy logjam has very savvy investors, some of the world’s best, confused as to how best to judge the long-term value of not just US Treasury bonds, but thousands of different kinds of investments.

The relentless inflexibility of anti-tax radicals in the House of Representatives has destabilized the world financial system, in that it has injected irrationality into the management of the most rational, stable, form of financial investment and called into question. The world’s major industrial economies are facing unprecedented coordinated pressures, with food prices and cost of living rising in China, and Europe and the US experiencing massive employment crises and declining overall wages.

While Pres. Obama’s economic stewardship has coincided with the DJIA having gained “70.20% from its 12-year closing low of 6547.05 on March 9, 2009″, he has not had a cooperative opposition, and the steady—if gradual—recovery is seen as being in doubt by many investors. Yet Warren Buffett, thought by many to be the world’s most successful, steady and reliable investor, has said the entire debate is off the mark, that he would give US Treasury bonds a AAAA rating, if one existed.

So, four days of radical stock market swings—eight days of unprecedented back-and-forthing—show… very little with clarity. More than half of all trades are now computerized, following pattern-based programs for investment, which means the markets are not necessarily “commenting” on economic reality, so much as they are being driven by machines trying to maximize returns, given the moment to moment activity of other traders.

Whatever the underlying dynamic, it will surely play out as ripple effects of uncertainty that have very certain impacts, jogging or slowing credit markets and undermining the ability of home-buyers to fund new purchases or new construction. Indeed, in what may be a story of massive overriding significance, 60 Minutes this week began to report on what may yet be the most important economic trend of the year: how banks’ insistence on foreclosure as a tool for optimizing their home-loan ROI might be dragging the housing sector down.

After the shooting of an unarmed man by London’s Metropolitan Police force, in Tottenham, the community organized a peaceful protest, which through a series of events that remains difficult to trace, turned into clashes between police and youths. A rash of riots have now spread across greater London, with arson attacks, looting, and violent clashes between masked youth and armored police.

Prime Minister David Cameron has, after three nights of the worst violence in London since World War II, returned from his family vacation in Tuscany to deal with the crisis. The prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home secretary, were all out of the country, as the violence erupted. Cameron has now called Parliament into special session for hearings on the violence.

More than 500 people have been arrested, and buildings across London have been burned, including furniture company run by the same family for five generations, and a warehouse holding major inventory for independent record labels. Several independent labels may have seen their entire UK inventory destroyed in the fire.

The violence has now spread not only across London, but to other major cities across England, including Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. In some areas, curfews have been imposed, and cities are mobilizing large numbers of police to secure the streets. Fires have been set, buildings burned to the ground, and there are videos splashed across the Internet showing rioters attacking police lines.

In London, the effort to clean up the damage, after three nights of looting and arson, have brought people together. The hashtags #prayforlondon and #riotcleanup have been top trends on Twitter today, and residents are posting photos that show the solidarity of citizens joining together to counter the violence and erase the scars of the rioting.

Police are now being deployed en masse, with Prime Minister Cameron promising massive numbers of arrests. As many as 16,000 police will be deployed to “flood” the streets of London, in order to prevent a fourth night of arson and looting. On Monday night, police in London used armored vehicles and anti-riot squads to disrupt the violence and clear the streets.

According to the Guardian:

Senior officers say the violence and looting on Monday night was the worst in living memory; eclipsing the 1980s inner city riots in Toxteth, Brixton and Tottenham at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

Armoured vehicles – known as Jankels – were brought in during the early hours of Tuesday morning in Clapham Junction where much of the worst looting and arson took place. The vehicles were driven on to Lavender Hill to push back a crowd of 150 looters who had smashed up Debenhams and other stores and businesses in the area. Jankels were also out in Hackney.

That the riots are occurring now, under the most extreme austerity measures imposed on public services since the Thatcher premiership, has raised criticisms of the Cameron government, suggesting that his policies have been socially unfair, politically biased and economically ill-conceived. Critics are now expressing concern that the UK is undergoing the beginning phases of the “austerity riots” that are threatening to bring down the Greek economy and government.

In Athens, the rioting has been only one element of the response to austerity measures. The protest movement of the “indignants”—similar to the encampments in cities across Spain—is staging massive, persistent, peaceful demonstrations, and urging the ouster of the government, in favor of a new administration focused on healing economic inequities and fostering generalized prosperity.

According to the Montreal Gazette:

Politicians, including Lammy, have been quick to blame the riots and looting on Saturday night and “copycat” outbreaks of violence elsewhere in London on Sunday and Monday on small groups of criminals.

But locals and commentators warn that high levels of long-term and youth unemployment and cuts in services like youth centres in places like Haringey – the borough where Tottenham sits – are creating a tinder box for unrest.

There are concerns that the dysfunctional and obsessive focus of the American political system on austerity may lead to street violence there as well, and some say recent violent assaults by large “flash mobs” in central Philadelphia are the early example. A report from the credit rating agency Moody’s warns that austerity measures in the US could undermine “social cohesion” and lead to outbreaks of violence. The Telegraph reports:

Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister and chancellor of the Exchequer denounces “the systematic criminality of News International”, accusing the media conglomerate of “lawbreaking on an industrial scale” and of abusing the rights of citizens, crime victims and the families of soldiers who lost their lives in war, for financial gain by the most cynical methods. He added that Murdoch’s UK tabloids had “brought the rats out of the sewer” and acted in league with the “criminal underworld” to attack the innocent and vulnerable.

Brown accused News International not only of using criminal activity to target and to persecute innocent and vulnerable citizens, but of attempting to engineer a systematic sabotage of the BBC, and to establish a de facto monopoly over British media and politics. He accused top News Corp. executives of using their influence and their personal relationships to intimidate public officials. He alleged there was constant resistance by News Corp. to Labour’s view that the UK needed a diverse media, including financially disinterested news sources, in order to have a free media.

Rupert Murdoch has, today, told a Parliamentary committee in London that he was “clearly” misled by unknown persons within News Corp. Several of the committee members have sought to clarify who may have been responsible for misleading him. His son James told the committee that “What happened at News of the World was wrong”, adding that “the company has admitted liability, and we have set up the appropriate compensation schemes”.

The first question was directed to the son, James Murdoch, who was asked what new information had come to light, since the time he had said, in 2008, that there was no apparent information relating to further illegal phone hacking. He prefaced his response with a brief explanation that he and his father were cooperating fully with police, that they took this matter extremely seriously and that they wanted to make sure that all evidence came to light.

Rupert Murdoch interjected, before his son’s response to the question, saying that he wanted to add “This is the most humble day of my life.” He was thanked by the minister asking the question, and the hearing continued.

When asked if he recognizes that as chief executive of News Corp. he is ultimately “responsible”, Rupert Murdoch said flatly “No.” The question was repeated, and Mr. Murdoch specified “The people I trusted, and the people they trusted.” He added “I have known Mr. Hinton for 52 years, and I would trust him with my life.”

Mr. Hinton resigned from News Corp. last week.

Rupert Murdoch also said the decision to close the 168-year-old newspaper News of the World was “far from” commercial in nature, and stemmed from his family’s being “ashamed” of what the paper had done.

When asked about payments made to victims of the illegal spying, James Murdoch said the legal settlements included payments that did not, in his estimation, require any approval from the global company or the board of directors.

James Murdoch was asked about what standards were in place to allow for hiring individuals who would file no invoices. He said he had no knowledge of any established practice for doing so, and said reporters and staff could use cash for such contacts but would normally have to report having done so.

He was also asked whether News Corp. had any practice in place allowing for other forms of remuneration, aside from cash, cheque or bank transfer. He said he had no knowledge of any.

His father said “reporters have no authority to make payments”, in cash or any other form, and that this authority rests with the managing editor.

Rupert Murdoch as asked if after having been raked over the coals in the UK press, he could think differently in future about using his news outlets to do the same to other, potentially innocent people. He declined to say whether he would change his practices, saying “it’s not deliberate” when his newspapers and news outlets cause harm or discomfort to subjects of their reporting.

Critics may bristle at this suggestion, given allegations that News Corp.’s tabloids not only spied on and/or harassed potentially thousands of individuals, but that there may be a tendency to report without evidence or even fabricate accusations, in order to pressure public figures or profit from unfounded gossip.

The elder Murdoch then added, tapping his hand repeatedly on the table, “This country does benefit greatly from having a free press, and so having a transparent society, though it may be inconvenient for some people.”

James Murdoch, when asked for a third time what the nature of the information was that he said came to light only after prior litigation was closed and police had closed their prior investigation, he said that he had been led to believe that there was no additional information to be sought.

He had testified earlier that three sources of information regarding the investigation into illegal phone hacking led News Corp.’s managerial executives, himself included, to conclude that there was no need for further investigation:

• The finding of police that no further evidence of wrongdoing was known to exist;
• The PCC finding that the situation had been properly dealt with;
• The conviction of two individuals for criminal phone hacking, with no evidence of further wrongdoing.

He also said that had he know then, in 2008, what he now knows, he would have supported further internal investigation by News Corp. He also repeatedly

He was asked yet again: “What do you know now that you did not know then?” Murdoch cited the civil litigations underway “at the end of 2010, which indicated to us that there was wider involvement”. He did not specify what information, aside from the fact that “there was wider involvement” of News Corp. media properties and personnel in illegal spying.

The question was posed to both Messrs. Murdoch what sort of coaching they had before testifying today. James Murdoch answered that they consulted counsel on the nature of such hearings, and what to expect, as they were new to the forum, and that they were eager to cooperate, to show that they take the allegations seriously and want to get to the bottom of what went on.

Rupert Murdoch was asked if he in fact had such a “hands off” approach to management as he had suggested in his earlier testimony. He responded that “hands off” was probably not the appropriate way to describe his style of management, but that he felt it was possible he had “lost sight of” some activities and developments at News of the World, “because it was such a small” part of the overall News Corp. business—roughly 1% of global revenues, according to some reports.

He denied speaking once or even twice daily, as has been alleged, to the editor of one or more of his UK newspapers.

There were probing questions regarding payouts to alleged victims of illegal spying activity. There was, for instance, a difference as wide as compensation paid in the amount of £20,000 and £600,000, for the same sort of illegal spying, according to the committee’s questioning.

James Murdoch was then asked to answer whether News Corp. paid the legal fees for Clive Goodman, who was convicted of criminal wrongdoing in the prior phone hacking investigations.

“I was very surprised to hear that the company had made contributions to certain legal fees.” When asked who authorized the payments, he answered that they were done in consultation with the firm’s legal officers, and “the management of the legal cases”.

Rupert Murdoch said “it could have been” Les Hinton, or “the chief legal officer”, and that whoever made the decision, “it would have been on the advice of the chief legal officer”.

Murdoch said it was “sad” that Les Hinton stepped down, after “52 years service”, and that Mr. Hinton resigned, saying that though he was not involved in what took place, he was in charge when it took place, and he felt it was better for him to step down.

He was asked how much “all of these characters”, including Mr. Hinton, Ms. Brooks and others who have resigned, received as compensation upon their resignation. He noted Mr. Hinton’s “would be considerable”, given his many decades of accumulated pension benefits, but said such information was “confidential”.

James Murdoch was again asked whether he could accept or believe that News Corp. was paying legal fees for an employee convicted of illegal phone hacking.

“These are serious litigations, and it was important for all of the evidence from all involved to get to the court at the right time.” He said the “strong advice” was that it was “customary” to cover costs for co-defendents, in order to ensure compliance with legal requirements.

Rupert Murdoch, when asked if was time to cut someone like Clive Goodman loose, to let the prosecution ‘do their worst’, said he “would like to do that”, but that he was not aware of the specifics of what News Corp. was in fact doing, with regard to Mr. Goodman’s legal fees or what the terms of his contract had been regarding such issues.

James Murdoch was again asked about the question of what is now known, specifically with regard to an outside legal review having written an opinion that there was no further evidence to be examined and no indication of further wrongdoing.

It is now known that several cubic meters’ worth of documents and evidence were not yet examined by Scotland Yard, at the time the police investigation, the PCC findings and the legal review were issued, suggesting that there was nothing further to look into. Critics have been pressing for information as to whether undue influence of some kind was used to secure those findings and ‘wipe the slate clean’, even before an exhaustive investigation had been concluded.

One of the questions asked regarded whether Rupert Murdoch had entered Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence, “through the back door”. He said he had, and that he had been asked by the prime minister or the prime minister’s staff to do so. The questioning was contentious, almost as if attempting to draw him out emotionally, as it was suggested that heads of state and others enter through the front door, and he was asked to enter through the back door.

He said he had made many visits to Number 10, during the tenures of various prime ministers, including Gordon Brown, where he had been asked to enter through the back door. It was unclear at first, whether the question was intended to bring to light suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of Prime Minister David Cameron or whether it was simply meant to embarrass Mr. Murdoch.

Nothing explicitly suggestive of wrongdoing was revealed in that line of questioning.

Much of the hearing was devoted to personnel issues: How did information become known to News Corp. management, regarding the involvement of various editors, executives and contractors, and when? Who was paid what, and when, and by what means? How was compensation calculated? Were internal investigations thwarted by an effort to mislead top executives? Is there evidence of lying or giving false evidence?

The most significant sticking point seemed to be, throughout the hearing, that a file with emails suggesting wider wrongdoing was given to the outside law firm Harbottle and Lewis. The Harbottle and Lewis file, repeatedly referred to as “the file” or “the emails” during today’s questioning, was reported by the BBC to be a “smoking gun” making evident that News Corp. was aware of wider criminal activity as early as 2007.

Neither Rupert nor James Murdoch seemed willing to reveal who at News Corp. had direct knowledge of the information contained in the Harbottle and Lewis file. The question was posed repeatedly throughout the hearing what information came to light that was not known to top executives in 2007 and 2008, and who might have been responsible for hiding that information. It was also repeatedly asked what the two top executives thought could explain how the outside law firm had issued a report finding no extant evidence, while in possession of this “smoking gun” bundle of documents.

Neither offered an explanation of how that would have happened, though they both said it was important to understand that News Corp. relied on the advice of Harbottle and Lewis as evidence that there was no further wrongdoing to look into.

Rupert Murdoch’s personal connection to the people at the top of his organization was evident, when he was asked whether the close relationships with top officers of the News Corp. family of media properties blinded him or his son to what they may have been doing. Mr. Murdoch was more animated in his response to that question than to any other and vigorously defended Les Hinton by name, saying he did not believe Mr. Hinton misled him or abused his trust in any way.

Asked if people under him might conceal information “in order to curry favor” with the boss, he said “not my trusted advisers”, but that such behavior would be human nature, and “it’s my responsibility to see through that.”

“No, I think it’s terribly wrong. There is no excuse for breaking the law at any time.” He added that it is legitimate for journalists and news outlets to campaign to change the law, but never to break it.

Rupert Murdoch said that he often had contact with prime ministers over the years, and that perhaps his closest relationship was with Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor of the exchequer. He lamented that his relationship with Brown was now so strained and broken, after news came to light News Corp. reporters had spied on Brown’s family. He said he hoped in time he could repair that friendship.

Brown gave an impassioned denunciation of the “sewer” culture that seemed to have taken over the tabloid publications of News International, Murdoch’s UK subsidiary.

UPDATE, 11:55 am EDT: At 4:52 local time, there was a disturbance that appeared to include an attempt, which caused a sudden reflex response from all present, to reach Rupert Murdoch. It is not clear whether something was thrown or whether an individual attempted to breach security and/or attack Mr. Murdoch. As the disturbance occurred, James Murdoch jumped to his feet to defend his father.

The hearing was immediately suspended, for 10 minutes, and cameras were pointed to the wall and/or ceiling, in keeping with protocol.

Security appear to have detained at least one individual, and the BBC reported that a “white substance” of some kind, now perhaps confirmed to be a “pie of foam” thrown at Murdoch. Twitter had come alive with comments regarding foam, a pie in the face attempt and Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng leaping to his defense, swatting at the protester.

UPDATE, 12:10 pm EDT: The BBC is now reporting the item thrown at Rupert Murdoch was “a plate of shaving foam”, or the like, and that the incident constitutes an extremely serious and improbable breach of security. A former volleyball player, Ms. Deng reportedly smacked her husband’s attacker and hurled the foam pie back at him.

According to the BBC, police detained, and cleaned up the assailant, then escorted him out of the building, taking him into custody.

The hearing resumed at 5:09 local time, with Rupert Murdoch no longer wearing the jacket that had been smeared with the foam from the assailant’s pie.

UPDATE, 12:26 pm EDT: The questioning was some of the toughest of the day, when it resumed. James Murdoch was asked whether settlements that cost News Corp. significantly more included non-disclosure clauses and whether that was an indication of an attempt by the corporation “to buy silence”. Murdoch said that suggestion would not be true.

Murdoch said the illegal hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s voicemail was “a total shock”. He said it was totally unacceptable and something News Corp. would not and cannot justify. He later added that “Illegal activity has no place in this company [and] that goes for the whole company.”

The allegation made by the actor Jude Law that his phone was hacked, while he was on American soil, was raised, as a possible indication that News Corp. employees may in fact have engaged in police bribery and/or illegal spying in order to gain access to private information of victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.

Citing a litany of revelations about illegal and unethical activity by British tabloid journalists, including an admission by CNN’s Piers Morgan, who used to edit Murdoch’s News of the World, that he had, while working for the Daily Mirror, used phone hacking to win a scoop, the last minister to question the Murdoch’s asked, pointedly: ”Is it not the fact, is it not the truth of the matter, that journalists at the News of the World felt entitled to go out there and use blagging, deception and phone hacking, because that was part of the general culture of corruption in the British tabloid press, and that they didn’t kick it up the chain to you, because they felt they were entitled to use the same methods as everybody else.”

She then asked Rupert Murdoch whether or not he had considered suing Harbottle and Lewis for having failed to reveal evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing, allegedly in its possession. James Murdoch answered that they had not yet explored that possibility. When pressed as to why he had not read through the entire file containing evidence of widespread criminal wrongdoing, James Murdoch answered he had seen enough of it, but that he would “be happy to” read more, looking somewhat quizzical and disgruntled for the first time in the hearing.

Rupert Murdoch was asked, given his testimony that he was not a “hands off” chief executive, whether he had considered resigning. He said no, but that those who misled him, whose identity he did not know or would not reveal, should be the ones “to pay”. He added, “I think I am the best person to clean this up.”

UPDATE, 12:30 pm EDT: Rupert Murdoch made a closing statement, which the committee agreed to, apparently after Mr. Murdoch continued his appearance, despite the assault he underwent.

“At no time do I remember being as sickened as when I heard what the Dowler family had to endure.” He added that he wanted “to thank the Dowlers for graciously giving me the opportunity to apologize in person. I would like all the victims of phone hacking to know how deeply and personally sorry I am… the depth of my regret for the horrible invasion into their lives.”

He denounced paying police bribes and using illegal phone hacking as “wrong” and said they had no place in the company he runs. He added that “It is our duty not to prejudice the outcome of the legal process.” He also noted that he had been led to believe by executives at News International, and others, that with the convictions of Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, in 2007, the phone hacking issue had been fully exposed and resolved.

In a shocking development, a former News of the World reporter and key whistleblower in the phone-hacking scandal now sweeping the News Corp. media empire and British political landscape has been found dead at his home in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. Sean Hoare was the first named journalist to have alleged that Andy Coulson, former News of the World editor and top media officer for Prime Minister David Cameron, knew of and openly encouraged illegal phone hacking and other corrupt practices.

The death is not, at present, being treated as suspicious. But, the investigation is ongoing, and police have yet to publicly confirm the identity of the deceased. A cause of death is not yet known. The news comes as Mr. Hoare’s testimony lends weight to several ongoing inquiries into alleged illegal spying and corruption, and just one day before Rupert Murdoch, his son and the former head of his UK newspaper operations, are scheduled to testify before Parliament.

According to the Guardian:

[Hoare] told the [New York Times] that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson’s insistence that he didn’t know about the practice was “a lie, it is simply a lie”.

Mr. Coulson was arrested on July 8, for questioning in connection with the alleged campaign of illegal hacking, bribery and attempted influence or intimidation of public officials. Specifically, Coulson was suspected of lying during previous inquiries into the alleged illegal activity at News International’s tabloid publications, under his management.

Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and his recently arrested protégée, Rebekah Brooks, are scheduled to testify before Parliament, tomorrow. With more than ten people now arrested on allegations of corruption and illegal hacking into private files, the scandal that closed the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid is now threatening to metastasize to the rest of the News Corp. news media properties, and to high-ranking public officials. For the second time in as many days, a top-ranking police official has stepped down, due to alleged connections to the News Corp. scandal.

John Yates, the London police commissioner, who was in charge of a 2006 investigation into the same alleged illegal activity, has resigned, as criticism mounts over his alleged intervention to end the investigation on the grounds that there was no evidence of further illegal activity. The arrest of Rebekah Brooks, who resigned last week, raised speculation there could be evidence of higher-level corruption, not yet revealed in the reporting on phone hacking allegations.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

“The scandal is letting out a lot of anger that has been built up for years in the British public,” says Jasmine Birtles, who runs the Moneymagpie website in London. “Brooks has been arrested on the same day as the British public is hearing she told [Prime Minister] Cameron he had to hire Andy Coulson as chief press officer.”

Whether there was undue influence applied to Mr. Cameron to place Mr. Coulson at Number 10 Downing Street, or whether promises were made regarding access to information that might not otherwise change hands between the Prime Minister’s office and the tabloids, unless it were first made public, is an increasingly widely asked question both Mr. Cameron and Ms. Brooks will be expected to answer.

Cameron has been careful to side with the rest of the Parliament in expressing extreme revulsion at the crimes alleged to have been committed by the News of the World and other Murdoch tabloids. The files of just one private investigator used by the Murdoch tabloids to illegally hack into private phone accounts suggests nearly 4,000 people were targeted. There is at least one other investigator whose files police have not yet begun to parse, and so the possibility that many more people were targeted over what is thought to be at least a decade of illegal spying.

Mr. Yates was under increasing pressure, due to what is now thought to be the incredible claim that police did not have evidence of widespread illegal spying at News of the World and/or other Murdoch tabloids. As long ago as 2003, if not longer, police were aware of efforts by Murdoch employees to spy on the family of Gordon Brown, the eventual and now former prime minister. That information came to light as part of a wider investigation in which the names of some of the victims cited in the current investigation may have already been known to police.

Mr. Yates is not, so far, officially alleged to have engaged in wrongdoing. He says his resignation was necessary, because he had become the target of “inaccurate, uninformed and … malicious gossip”, and that he needed to step down to put a stop to the distraction from preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games. He was, however, to be suspended, and is now thought to have been “too close to” the journalists and editors he was to be investigating.

CNN International is reporting that for Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, their testimony before Parliament tomorrow may turn out to be the single most crucial moment of their entire careers in media. Lord John Prescott has said Murdoch “is responsible” and must be called to account for the alleged crimes committed by more than one of his publications. Others have alleged that the illegal spying may have been used to exert political pressure on key figures.

The downward spiral of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has deepened, as Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, accused of bribery and illegal hacking of private phone messages and other documents, has now been arrested. Now, the multinational News Corp., which owns not only the now closed News of the World, and other British newspapers, but also Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, in the US, is facing criminal investigation in the UK and the US. There is mounting expectation that concrete evidence of police bribery will come to light, as the chief of the London Metropolitan Police, has now stepped down.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Late Sunday, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, known as Scotland Yard, resigned due largely to connections between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson cited intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corp. tabloid editor to advise police on public relations; that editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.

The arrest of Brooks is the most serious development to date in the ongoing investigation into alleged pervasive corruption and spying at Murdoch’s UK tabloids. She had been considered to be a “firewall” for the media boss, and he had pledged to protect her. The Scotsman is now reporting that Murdoch’s firewall has burned through.

Her arrest also makes the situation still more uncomfortable for Prime Minister David Cameron, whose former media director was also arrested in connection with the scandal. According to the Scotsman:

The arrest of somebody who was a personal friend of the Prime Minister David Cameron has also put the focus back on him. Mr Cameron met Brooks up to 14 times in the 14 months since he became Prime Minister, Downing Street revealed last week, including social occasions, private meals and two stays at his official country retreat, Chequers.

And the Tories yesterday had to deny reports that Brooks had told Mr Cameron to take on Andy Coulson, her successor at the News of the World, as his director of communications so that he would have a direct line into News international.

The New York Times has reported on the intense media fixation on Ms. Brooks’ arrest, as she has long been a figure of controversy, intensely criticized for the methods of the newspapers she edited:

The blogosphere was awash with taunts on Sunday for Ms. Brooks, who once edited The News of the World, a News International tabloid that has been accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and others, including a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered. The paper was Britain’s best-selling Sunday tabloid until it closed last week.

“Rebekah Brooks will be allowed one phone call after her arrest. By rights, we should all be able to listen in on it,” Toby Hadoke, a British comedian, tweeted sardonically on Sunday. Some questioned whether the arrest, just two days before Ms. Brooks was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee with Mr. Murdoch and his son James, was little more than a pretext to avoid being eviscerated in public.

The Independent is reporting that the arrest caught some by surprise, including Ms. Brooks herself, and appears to indicate that the fortunes of News Corp. generally might be steadily declining:

While she was still chief executive of News International and the “fifth daughter” of the Murdoch clan last week, Rebekah Brooks wrote to Scotland Yard offering to be interviewed as a witness in its intensifying investigation into the phone-hacking scandal.

The extent to which the fortunes of the former editor of The Sun and the News of the World have been transformed in the space of 72 hours was underlined at midday yesterday when she arrived at a London police station in the expectation that she would be helping police with their inquiries – only to find herself under arrest.

Brooks is the second top executive to step down in recent days who spent most of her life working for Rupert Murdoch. It had been widely considered crucial to Murdoch’s effort to contain the scandal to keep his top-ranking allies inside the corporation. On the outside, and now facing extreme legal pressure, Brooks, Hinton and others, are expected to provide more useful information about what is now widely perceived as a culture of routine corruption and illegal spying, at least across multiple News Corp. publications.

The resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Service chief, has led observers to speculate that police involvement in the scandal may be more widespread, and reach higher into the ranks, than was previously suspected. Stephenson was firm in his claim that this was not the case:

I have heard suggestions that we must have suspected the alleged involvement of Mr. Wallis in phone hacking. Let me say unequivocally that I did not and had no reason to have done so. I do not occupy a position in the world of journalism; I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging; nor of its apparent reach into senior levels. I saw senior figures from News International providing evidence that the misbehavior was confined to a rogue few and not known about at the top.

One can only wonder about the motives of those within the newspaper industry or beyond, who now claim that they did know but kept quiet. Though mine and the Met’s current severe discomfort is a consequence of those few that did speak out, I am grateful to them for doing so, giving us the opportunity to right the wrong done to victims – and here I think most of those especially vulnerable people who deserved so much better from us all.

He took pains to make clear that he knows of nothing improper in a contractual business relationship with Neil Wallis, a former editor for News of the World, who some suspect of having been involved in the illegal hacking. Wallis was arrested last week in connection with the investigation, and there have been questions raised about the coincidence of Stephenson’s treatment at a spa where Wallis worked.

Murdoch has hired the public relations firm Edelman to manage “damage control” for News Corp., which is steadily losing ground both in terms of public reputation and the confidence of investors. There are allegations of illegal hacking and bribery in the United States, and calls from some to break up the media conglomerate. There are also questions about what the firm was hired to do, and whether this indicates a potential strategy aimed at limiting the release of facts about what took place at News Corp.’s publications.

News Corp., the New York-based multinational media conglomerate whose majority shareholder is the controversial billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is now facing an FBI investigation for illegal activity in news gathering. Long maligned by press advocacy groups as a leading source of biased and abusive media activity, and even of attacks on genuine news sources, News Corp. is now being accused of having authorized bribery and/or hacking activity to gain illegal access to the private files of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Murdoch hacking scandal has been rapidly spreading across the Atlantic, since it was revealed last week in Britain that the News of the World tabloid had not only hacked into the private voicemail of a 13-year-old murder victim, but had deleted messages, interfering with criminal evidence and a police investigation. Some raised concerns that the illegal hacking was not only obstruction of justice, but that it may have made it more difficult to identify and mount an effective legal case against the murderer.

Since then, the scandal has widened, as news has come to light of investigations into illegal hacking at numerous News Corp. publications, going back to 2002. Prime Minister Cameron’s hand-picked (and now former) media director Andy Coulson, who had Murdoch’s UK operations, has been taken into custody. Several other employees of the media company have been arrested, and now Mr. Murdoch and his son will be required to give sworn testimony to the British Parliament, this coming week.

Rebekah Brooks, whom Murdoch had said he would protect, come what may, has now resigned, under significant pressure from inside the Murdoch family, from among her former staff and from Britain’s political elite. According to the Washington Post:

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: Spain’s May 15th movement is often called the revolution of the indignados, indignant at the failure of elective government to solve the problems that increasingly define the lives of ordinary people. The complaint, succinctly, is that the powers that be are collaborating in a systemic failure to live up to the rigors of a healthy, legitimate social contract.

Working people, young adults with university degrees but next to zero job prospects, families pushed from their homes by a real estate boom now shown to be a speculator’s wild west show, congregate, organize assemblies, vote on matters of policy, and demand meaningful political change. They argue together, though often in clashing voices, that the political system is rigged against the majority of ordinary citizens.

The demand has been centered on an opposition to all forms of violence, and a call for civic cooperation, for citizenship and for a recommitment to enforcing and expanding basic rights. It is a movement that draws inspiration from Tunis, from Cairo, from Madison, which positing a new world in which the people, and not the powerful, decide.

Yesterday, in Barcelona, the pressures of the moment briefly turned to violence, and it has to be said the May 15th movement, decentralized as it may be, denounced the violence of some protesters and called for an end to all forms of violence.

The clashes between demonstrators and police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, seem to have begun when the police tried to disperse throngs of thousands who sought to block access to the Parc de la Ciutadela, where Catalunya’s Parlament does business. The estimated 2,000 demonstrators wanted to stop action on a budget they say will harm ordinary Catalans.

The police reportedly moved into the crowd, trying to open safe passage for members of the Parlament, around 6:30, but as the protesters would not move, the action turned to physical force. Many were injured in the clashes, and the action radicalized the demonstration.

Several members of the Parlament were intimidated or assaulted, being sprayed or having paint thrown at them. Police used batons against people in the crowd, with photos showing what appear to be assaults on non-violent bystanders and people trying to flee. The melee was the latest in a series of security missteps, but the movement insists violence is not an option and can never be part of their protest actions.

The last violent clash in Barcelona came in late May, when the Mossos d’Esquadra tried to clear the Plaça Catalunya by force, in order to make room for a soccer celebration. Over 120 people were injured, and the movement became more entrenched.

There seems to be a bias among agents of the political system toward the idea that they are the legitimate representatives of a functioning social contract. But democracy demands recognition of the fragility of that shared obligation to abide by rules of civility and deliberative government.

It is often the presumption of one’s own superiority that leads to the breakdown of the social contract, and a descent into violence. Movements like the May 15th indignados and the Egyptian uprising test the boundaries of political power, calling into question the devotion of those who wield power to the principle that even they, or they especially, are subject to the law’s constraints.

Non-violent protest aims to show the moral inferiority of those who wield power unjustly, thus to pressure them to shift position and return some power to the people. It is a way for people who do not hold political power to enforce the terms of the social contract.

Spain enjoys a functioning representative democracy, but many of the Spanish people feel the system ignores their needs and tramples on their rights. Yesterday in the Plaça Sant Jaume, one of the chants heard with coordinated vocal force was “No Más Crisis”, essentially “no more crashes”. It was a demand that banks not be rewarded for causing economic chaos and that social infrastructure not be degraded by austerity and rescue packages.

The conservatives now in charge in Catalunya are seen as being too close to the banks, and too distant from the people. But the movement of the indignados is not just opposition to the political right; the complaint has gathered force because the popular view is that in Spain, all parties are collaborating in a wave of fiscal actions that seem likely to prolong the crisis and further diminish the political influence of ordinary people.

There does not seem, for instance, to be a recovery plan, as was implemented by the Obama administration in the United States. Spaniards have now lived three to four years with the agony of economic collapse, and there is a sense of vertigo, that the IMF and EU might be moving in with imposed austerity measures most people believe will make matters far worse.

45% of young adults are unemployed across Spain, and yesterday, the defiance of political leaders who refuse to hear the popular complaint about misguided priorities was accompanied by a police action seen by some as an attempt to violently suppress the people’s voice. When the social contract is in such crisis, tensions flare.

The attacks on members of Catalunya’s Parlament were unjust and undemocratic, but there can be no room for police using force against unarmed civilian demonstrators. Far from showing the illegitimacy of Spain’s new citizen assembly movement, the Catalan situation is showing how desperately fragile is the standing social contract for many in this economically besieged society.

The appropriate response to rhetorical and ideological disharmony is conversation. It is in the debate of ideas that a legitimate democratic government finds its footing. Politicians in Spain need to be clear: it is a legitimate democratic social contract we seek to uphold and expand, not an established order of haves and have-nots.

Today, the Spanish press are reporting that one in three Spaniards is now eating worse than before the crisis. Lower quality food, less nutritional value, smaller portions, more health problems. And many believe the one-in-three figure is understated—people will complain of hardship, but are averse to report personal weakness or a failure to be responsible about their health, whatever the cause.

One of the most important differences between what is taking place among the movement of the indignados and what is perceived to be the case, I’m the press, is the manner in which the protest movement has committed itself not only to civility, but to civics and to social action.

While conservative politicians who favor dismantling corporate regulation focus on an incident in Barcelona, the cause of which remains unclear, the indignados across Spain have joined with vulnerable neighbors who are on the verge of being evicted due to what are widely perceived as predatory lending practices.

Antisocial lending practices, which have ruined the finances of individuals, families, towns and cities, and may lead to the nationalization of four bank chains by the end of the year, have motivated a backlash among people of every age and socio-economic class who firmly believe lives should not be ruined by that way in a democratic society.

There are obligations unique to those in positions of leadership or public service, and powerful interests that benefit from the organizational health and cooperative efficiency of a free society have similar responsibilities. Spain’s movement to redefine democracy by involving citizens more directly is a sign of how the lessons of Tunis and Cairo are enriching the landscape of modern democracy, and it should be an example to those who serve.

WordsAgainstChaos.com :: An effort by the Catalan state police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, to remove protesters from the Plaça Catalunya, by use of force, has ended with at least 125 people reported injured, the demonstrators retaking the square, and the Mossos forced to retreat. Protests have now spread to other parts of the city, as students have reportedly closed la Avinguda Diagonal, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, “in solidarity with the protesters in Plaça Catalunya”.

Closer to the central square, chants have been going out, along with sms, email and social media messages, calling on the people of Barcelona to flood the streets and join the demonstrators at Plaça Catalunya, in their demand for “economic democracy” and an end to all forms of “state oppression”. The violence is thought to be likely to spark renewed passion among adherents to the spreading movement, and new calls during the coming weekend, for permanent occupation of public squares, until reforms are instituted.

There is a call now from the protest movement for citizens across Spain to gather in public squares to protest the use of violence by police, and to demand an end to all forms of political and economic oppression.

In Spain’s capital, Madrid, in the heart of the city, at the Puerta del Sol, from which major roads radiate out toward all corners of the country, thousands of protesters, of all ages and social classes, young and old, have set up camp, literally, in what is now a Europe-wide demand for economic democracy. The protesters and “participantes” include not only young and old, students, post-grads and laborers, but also those who work and those who cannot find work.

Spain, at present, is suffering an astonishing 45% rate of unemployment among young people, principally those between the ages of 18 and 25. Many of them blame the ruling class and the generation that holds power for setting up an economic and political system they say is rigged against their interests. But the movement has spread far beyond the young and the unemployed.

Many of the those who attend the protests, and some who camp in Puerta del Sol, are fully employed, and spend their days working and their evenings and mornings protesting. The movement is best described as a peaceful grassroots uprising, demanding full “economic democracy”, a term that is often heard circulating among those gathered in the square and at the “assemblies” (asambleas) that form around specific issues.

There are meetings, or asambleas, to debate the specifics of a given political or economic issue, and out of those asambleas, a ground-up democratic process forms “commissions” (comisiones), which then help to organize the process of debate and the exchange of ideas, regarding that specific issue. Some of the comisiones in the square have a practical on-the-ground function relating to keeping the encampment functioning.

There are comisiones for food, energy, legal issues, communications and outreach, and there are tables that are set up to take down people’s ideas and suggestions. Donations of food and clothes have been brought in to make it possible for the (mostly young) people who are camping overnight in the square to stay there and keep the footprint of the movement visible.

A public address system announces when one of the asambleas is about to form, in a certain part of the square, so that people can attend or join the debate, and have their say. The movement has spread to villages and cities across Spain, and a coordinated effort to formulate parallel local and “global” strategies and platform positions, is ongoing.

An online campaign, involving multiple different websites, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, and hashtag discussions, is helping to give material shape to the spontaneously formed, “people power” revolution. Protests are now being staged in Athens, in Paris, in London, and across Europe, with the demand for prosecution of financial felons, and political reforms oriented toward fairness and toward honoring the voice of the people.

In Puerta del Sol, one of the initiatives being considered would require a referendum to approve any new binding economic agreements that would affect people living in Spain, one of its autonomous regions, provinces or cities, to ensure that narrow economic interests don’t impose the structures that benefit them on a populace, to the detriment of democracy. Specifics of the initiative are under consideration, including the frequency and manner in which such referenda would be staged.

The movement in Spain is clearly rooted in the energy, methodology and ideas of similar actions taken in Tunisia, in Cairo, and in Madison, Wisconsin, to protest against misuse of government power, the purchasing of political influence and the suppression of fundamental rights for citizens.

Tens of thousands of youth protesters are occupying la Puerta del Sol, the central square in Madrid, the capital of Spain. They have been occupying the square for a week, and last night camped overnight, despite a new government ban. The protesters are calling themselves “los Indignados”, the indignant.

They are demanding new employment opportunity, “better living standards, a fairer system of democracy and changes to the Socialist government’s austerity plans,” according to the BBC. The complained to the press that the government wants them to leave the Puerta del Sol without access to public health (a guaranteed right, in Spain), without universal public education (due to massive budget cuts), with nearly half of the nation’s young people unemployed.

Natividad García complained that on top of all of these hardships the protesters link to the government’s “austerity measures”, they have also increased the age for retirement benefits. There is widespread concern that Spain’s modern welfare state may be failing, and that this generation of youth will live in a less equitable, less free democratic society.

According to the BBC:

Spain’s electoral commission had ordered them to leave ahead of local elections on Sunday.

But as the ban came into effect at midnight, the crowds started cheering and police did not move in.

The protest began six days ago in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol as a spontaneous sit-in by young Spaniards frustrated at 45% youth unemployment.

With police holding back, the protests are expected to spread. Spain has a history of major protest: in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the war in Iraq, there were massive street demonstrations, with 94% of the public opposing the Aznar government’s support for the invasion, but the government ignored public sentiment and sent troops into Iraq.

For decades, there have been massive anti-terrorism protests across Spain, demanding an end to separatist violence and a commitment to civics and the rule of law. In 2004, when the Aznar government lied publicly about the evidence for who had carried out the Madrid train bombings, hundreds of thousands flooded the streets to demand the truth be told, rushing Zapatero into government in the election just three days after the attacks.

Spain has long-running, endemic economic problems that have not been resolved by either the Zapatero government or the Aznar government before it. Labor laws are not as well enforced as they should be, leading to widespread exploitation of young or marginal workers, and incentives to start new businesses are not as bold as they could be, keeping pressure on small business owners, holding back employment.

Some have said that enrolling in “el paro” —unemployment— is a rite of passage for young adults, and many expect to go through this rite of passage after receiving a university degree.

There are now large protests growing in cities across Spain, with thousands gathered in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Sevilla, and elsewhere.

The BBC radio today described the Madrid protest as “a large open-air democracy camp”, where protesters have begun forming small civic debates in locations across the square. Sarah Rainsford has reported:

The protesters’ demands, pasted up all over Puerta del Sol, are impossible to ignore.

A statue of King Carlos III on horseback has been decorated with declarations. The metro entrance is now a vast citizens’ noticeboard. “We are not slaves,” one sign says; another instructs: “No alcohol: today the priority is revolution!”

The camp has become more organised by the day, with bright blue tarpaulins strung from statues and lamp posts and tents pitched on the cobblestones. There are sofas, mattresses and – since Wednesday – four chemical toilets, provided by the firm for free.

The protests will, as across the Arabic-speaking world, be fed by the widespread unemployment, which allows the demonstrators to attend and to swell the numbers of the vanguard who seek to occupy the square around the clock. Today’s debate activities and new media attention may be leading toward something of a coordinated list of demands.

In the past, such large demonstrations in Spain have been linked to labor activity, and have included threats of general strike or of attempts to shut down the national economy. In 2008, there was an effort by truckers to literally close down the capital by blocking all access roads. There will be mounting pressure for the Spanish government to alter course, repeal its austerity measures and move toward an investment-oriented recovery plan.

Today, Juan Cole published an open letter to the political left, asking them to understand the humanitarian urgency of the situation in Libya, and to balance their desire for an end to war and foreign interventions against the need to protect human life and ensure that a viable democracy movement is not put down through massive slaughter of thousands or tens of thousands of civilians. Cole is right. Though military action is never the best of all possible outcomes, it is sometimes the only way to protect innocent human life against plans of deliberate mass murder.

The Jasmine Revolution, the spreading pro-democracy movement that has reached into the capitals of so many nations across North Africa and the Middle East, marks an historical moment entirely without precedent in the history of the region. Peaceful, pro-democracy movements telling dictatorial regimes they are no longer afraid and they will not accept any future that continues to fail to be democratic. Muammar Qadhafi has already inspired several regimes to follow his lead and use extreme, massive, lethal violence to put down this peaceful revolution.

In Libya, that scheme of slaughter has gone further than anywhere else. What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and in Tehran in 2009, has been turned into an all-out ground and air war against civilians across the nation of Libya. Qadhafi openly explained, in multiple public speeches, that he would slaughter thousands in Benghazi. He already did so in multiple other rebel-controlled cities. It has only been with sustained coalition airstrikes, and the imposition of a no-fly zone, that the pro-democracy resistance has been able to drive Qadhafi’s forces out of Ajdabiya, Brega and Ras Lanuf.

The pro-democracy movement became a de fact armed rebellion, when large factions of the military defected and joined the resistance. Qadhafi made hysterical claims that he was fighting a perverse coalition of al Qaeda, Israel, the United States, Iran, and “drug addicts”. His son said they were at war with “terrorists and gangsters”.

On one after another occasion, Qadhafi’s government declared a “ceasefire”, in an apparent effort to cause the coalition air forces and the pro-democracy resistance to stand down, while his air and ground assault continued virtually unabated. Footage from international journalists able to gain access to Qadhafi’s front-line positions showed a continual barrage of hundreds, if not thousands, of heavy artillery shells being fired into rebel-held civilian areas.

Yesterday, a woman found her way to a gathering of press at a government-controlled hotel in Tripoli, and screamed and cried that she had been kidnapped by Qadhafi’s militia, held prisoner for two days, and violently raped by 15 men. Reporters scuffled with hotel employees and government agents who tried to silence her. A TV camera was destroyed, the woman was threatened by at least one hotel employee with a butter-knife, and Qadhafi’s forces then forcibly removed her to an unknown location.

The incident clearly amounts to a brutal physical assault by pro-Qadhafi forces on foreign journalists. The woman’s fate is now unknown. The Qadhafi regime is using all force possible to brutally subdue not only the pro-democracy movement itself, but support from the civilian population and the ability of foreign journalists to report facts from the conflict.

In the United States, and across Europe, there has been friction on both the progressive left and the conservative right, among factions that do or do not favor military intervention in Libya, for ideological, practical or political reasons. There has been an unfortunate split between people who feel human life and democracy matter more than ideological preference and partisan interest, clouding the landscape and raising questions about the commitment of the allied forces to helping promote justice in Libya.

It has to be said, no one, of any political persuasion, in the US, Europe or the Arabic-speaking world, views Qadhafi as a legitimate head of state. This means there is a moral blur and intellectual incoherence among those who seek to oppose a limited airborne intervention to limit Qadhafi’s ability to use force against his own people.

In the US, there has been a split on the right between those who have been pushing for swift military action and those who seek to oppose Obama, either for partisan reasons or in adherence to an absolute prioritization of budget cuts. On the left, there has been a split between those who vehemently oppose the so-called “imperial presidency” and those who prioritize the interest of the pro-democracy movement.

In both cases, there has been significant rhetorical confusion about what is happening, how to characterize it, and whether or not there is public support for military action. In the US, polling clearly shows support for Pres. Obama’s response to the Libyan crisis. The people of the United States believe Qadhafi needs to be stopped from slaughtering thousands of civilians in a quest to perpetuate a 42-year-long dictatorship.

The United States Congress will likely soon face the choice of whether or not to retro-actively authorize military force, perhaps for a sustained period, to assist in maintaining the no-fly zone. If NATO officially takes control of the mission, it may be unnecessary to secure a Congressional vote on assistance to NATO, but politicos right and left will be challenged to find coherent positions: do they favor limited action to prevent massive civilian death, or a world in which principled people stand by and watch the slaughter go forward, with the explicit intent of crushing the pro-democracy movement spreading across the Middle East?

The wishful defeatism that is cynically promoting the idea that we should not be involved in implementing the Libyan no-fly zone because it cannot succeed is a cynical attempt to undermine the success of the action, and little more. It depends almost entirely on the view that because we cannot guarantee the perfect democratic success of the people of Libya, in their aspirations for democratic freedom, they don’t deserve recognition or assistance.

This flies in the face of the entire historical political culture of the United States. Though seen as imperialist leanings in much of the rest of the world, the Monroe doctrine —that the US would defend democratic freedom anywhere it cropped up in the Americas— and the Truman doctrine —extending this principle to the entire world— resonated in the US because they echo the sentiment of the American people that the American revolution was 1) not ideological, 2) universal, and 3) a humanitarian and morally necessary action to which all people should have a right.

The aspirations of the Libyan people are the aspirations of people everywhere, to be free of the brutality and torment of a rapacious dictator who imposes his will through thuggish secret police, kidnap, torture and the use of naked military force against civilian populations. But perhaps more significantly, in this particular historical moment, these aspirations are linked to the fate of millions of people in at least a dozen countries, where non-violent protest movements are calling for change, and where even “moderate” regimes appear tempted to try their hand at violent suppression.

The international community failed to act to protect civilians in Rwanda, and nearly 1 million people were murdered in cold blood, in medieval fashion, in just 100 days. The international community has never intervened effectively in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and over the last 13 years, an estimated 6 million people, most of them civilians, have died. Darfur continues to live under threat of genocide and in the case of Libya, the international community has three things that warrant immediate action:

1. Qadhafi’s open declaration of an intent to use his military to slaughter thousands of civilians in Benghazi;
2. The invitation of the resistance movement in Libya, which has formed a transitional government;
3. The unanimous support of the Arab League and the UN Security Council for imposing a no-fly zone, using “all necessary measures” to protect civilian life.

To not act, with the historical imperatives, the moral imperatives, the democratic movement at risk, and these three factors, aligning with an international legal imperative to act, would be a morally bankrupt betrayal of our own fundamental principles as a free people that prize the value of individual human life over the whims of the powerful.

Thousands of demonstrators are gathering at Rome’s Piazza del Popolo, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Demonstrations are being staged across the nation to protest against Berlusconi’s alleged sexual indiscretions and political corruption. Supporters of the conservative politician say the protests are partisan in nature.

According to Reuters, “hundreds of thousands of women rallied in Rome and other cities” to demand Berlusconi’s removal from office. Berlusconi has long been embattled by accusations of corruption, criminal activity and flouting media regulations, but the latest scandal, involving accusations he paid for sex with an underage stripper, seem to have solidified the view that he mistreats women and does not share the values of most Italians.

According to Reuters:

Leaked wiretaps from the investigation have been splashed over newspapers for weeks with references to bundles of cash, talk of sex games and gifts that would-be starlets received after attending parties at Berlusconi’s villa.

“I love my boyfriend for free,” read one banner in Rome, where crowds of women of all ages packed into a central square flanked by husbands, brothers and male friends.

“It’s a scandal. I do not believe in his values, his behavior and the way he treats women. Italy doesn’t have a future if these are the values that sustain us,” said Paolo Campedel, a worker attending a rally in Padua in northern Italy.

Berlusconi was intensely criticized during the last election for allegedly motivating a shift toward featuring attractive young women as candidates for his party. There are now images spreading of young women apparently linked to Berlusconi from throughout the media world, in which his private empire is a major power.

Supporters of Berlusconi have sought to dismiss the protests as “puritanical” and “un-Italian” in nature. Some observers say the dismissive nature of the Berlusconi camp may serve to widen the scope of the protests and popularize the view that support for Berlusconi amounts to an opposition to fundamental rights for women.

Today, the Russian parliament officially finalized ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The ratification, following the December vote in the US Senate, brings the new treaty officially into effect. Bilateral nuclear disarmament is now moving forward, with historic reductions and new provisions to allow for cooperation and verification, and the securing of technologies that could fall through the cracks if not carefully supervised.

The New York Times is reporting:

“The arms race is a thing of the past,” the chairman of the international affairs committee in the Russian senate, Mikhail Margelov, told Radio Russia on Monday. “The disarmament race is taking its place.”

The treaty, the first major revamping of nuclear disarmament deals since the late cold war era, sets new limits for strategic nuclear warheads and delivery systems, the doomsday weapons of a nuclear exchange. The pact requires the United States and Russia to reduce their nuclear arsenals to levels slightly lower than today’s — down to 1,550 warheads each, from between 1,700 and 2,200 now — within seven years of ratification, and to immediately renew mutual inspections.

The START agreement is one of Pres. Obama’s signature achievements to date, and a cornerstone of his aggressive “3D” foreign policy (diplomacy, development, defense). The agreement puts the two leading nuclear powers solidly in alignment with the goal of a broader reduction of nuclear arms and with efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology to any new states.

As a result of the START negotiations, Pres. Obama was also able to secure, for the first time in history, the unanimous support of the UN Security Council’s permanent members (the world’s first 5 nuclear powers and Allied victors in WWII) for eventual total nuclear disarmament. That resolution was crucial toward building a safer, freer democratic world in the 21st century.

In October 2009, we observed:

UN SC Res. 1887 is one of the most important documents ever produced by the UN system, in that it lays the groundwork for a world free of nuclear weapons, however long it may take to achieve that goal. In the entire history of the nuclear arms race, no one has achieved that level of consensus on disarmament.

Now, according to AFP:

Russia’s upper house of parliament ratified the new US nuclear disarmament treaty Wednesday, the final step in approving the first nuclear pact between the two former Cold War rivals in 20 years.

Senators at the Federation Council voted unanimously to approve the new START treaty, which US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed in Prague on April 8, 2010.

The ratification also has the possibility of ushering in a new era of collaboration on security and economic policy, between rival superpowers with entrenched opposition on a wide array of issues. Pres. Obama and Pres. Medvedev now have a signal achievement in securing their people against warfare and chaos, and can be expected to continue moving for better relations going forward.

One of Pres. Obama’s signature initiatives, announced upon taking office, in an historic address to over 100,000 people in Prague, is moving the international community toward a “world without nuclear weapons”. Despite rising tensions with an increasingly authoritarian Russian Federation, under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Obama negotiated a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Putin’s younger successor, Pres. Dmitry Medvedev.

The treaty is an historic step forward in US-Russian relations, and would reduce the total number of strategic nuclear warheads, while allowing the US inspection access to Russian nuclear facilities, to ensure maximum security and reliable safeguards against the snatching of “loose nukes” by black marketeers, foreign spies or terrorists groups. The Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has promised to destroy the Obama presidency, had vowed to oppose the treaty’s ratification, despite so many provisions that would enhance national and international nuclear security.

Late yesterday, the Senate achieved not only the 60 votes needed to end debate, but fully 67 votes to end debate on the nuclear treaty. Those 67 senators are expected to vote to ratify the START agreement, promoting nuclear arms reduction, making the US and the world safer in terms of the risk of nuclear attack, and undermining the aspirations of extremist groups and hostile regimes. What is unclear is how many of the remaining senators will vote to sink the treaty, knowing what is at stake for the nation.

The Senate is in the midst of a roll-call vote, at present, as of 2:47 EST.

UPDATE, 3:01 pm EST: At 2:59 pm EST, it was announced by Vice President Joe Biden, serving in his Constitutional responsibility as president of the Senate, that the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russian Federation was ratified by a vote of 71 in favor, 26 opposed.

UPDATE, 3:20 pm EST: The Russian news site Voice of Russia is reporting the US Senate’s ratification vote:

On the 22nd of December, the New START treaty was finally ratified by the U.S. Senate. This is a triumph for President Barak [sic] Obama who has made the ratification the top priority of his foreign policy. The treaty will cut the nuclear weapons of both countries by about one third and restarts the bilateral inspections between Russia and the U.S. This ratification is the first time a Democratic president has successfully negotiated and ratified a nuclear-arms reduction treaty.

The Russian parliament is now expected to proceed with simultaneous ratification of the treaty, without debate, in both houses. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has praised the ratification as a step in the right direction and said the next step, after the US-Russian agreement takes effect will be to use the treaty as the basis for arms reduction negotiations with other nuclear powers.

UPDATE, 3:44 pm EST: While 13 Republicans voted alongside 58 Democratic members, to ratify the new arms reduction treaty, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl, both opposed ratification. McConnell appeared to view the treaty as working against his campaign to “topple the Obama presidency” and Kyl called the treaty “distraction”, alleging that reducing and securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal is not instrumental to reducing the threat of proliferation.

Republicans voting to ratify —most of whom openly professed the view that the treaty was too vital to national security to be treated like a political issue for partisan maneuvering— were: Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine, Corker and Alexander of Tennessee, Lugar of Indiana, Murkowski of Alaska, Voinovich of Ohio, Cochran of Mississippi, Gregg of New Hampshire, Bennett of Utah, Brown of Massachusetts, Johanns of Nebraska, and Isakson of Georgia.

The treaty marks the first time a Democratic president has successfully negotiated and ratified a nuclear arms reduction treaty, which only serves to highlight the significance of the achievement as a move toward one of Pres. Obama’s signature issues, the worldwide reduction and eventual elimination of the most destructive weapons the world has ever known.

David Cameron, who campaigned as a rights-focused, green-conscious Tory, claims a steep rise in tuition fees will be good for Britons educational aspirations; but his plan to triple tuition fees for average British citizens seeking a university education initially led to nationwide protests, student rallies and sit-ins at the Conservative party headquarters. Now, the political crisis has escalated as passage of the tuition fee hikes has provoked violent riots in the streets of London.

There are accusations the police assigned to prevent violence may have used hard-line repressive tactics, surrounding, pressuring, even pushing against protesters throughout the demonstrations, eventually leading to violent clashes.

According to the Guardian newspaper:

As the night progressed, those who remained at Parliament Square were surrounded by police officers in riot gear. Hundreds tried to get out of the square but were contained by police at all exits.

For much of the afternoon, protesters had been kettled inside the square, unable to leave and sporadically pushed back by officers on foot and horseback.

Allegations of Police Intimidation

Witnesses are reported to have said police also trapped (“kettled”) protesters on a bridge for up to two hours, penning them in and pushing them, both on foot and on horseback. Violent outbursts and attacks on the Royal Family —as on any human beings— are not justified in response to pressure tactics, but they are a logical consequence, and if the reports emerging from London are accurate, the Metropolitan Police have succumbed to the temptation to provoke.

It is not the work of police anywhere to detain and punish; it is their work to keep the peace. Provoking violent reactions to aggressive behavior that, if committed by civilians, could be prosecuted as assault does not give adequate grounds for mass detention. Yet in highly charged political standoffs, in cities around the world, we have seen this cheap excuse for serious police work take the place of principled public service.

In the US, we can recall the anti-globalization riots in Seattle, the tasering of a student in Florida who asked a critical question of former presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, or the shameful police attack on student residence halls in Pittsburgh, caught on video. It is, of course, not standard operating procedure, and it is owing to a few unimaginative underachievers that this kind of shameful act occurs.

But the news from Great Britain is not that someone in the police force gave in to these sad abuses; it is that Prime Minister David Cameron appears to be getting embroiled in a kind of class war, where Tiananmen Square type tactics are used to pen in protesters and pressure them to disperse, where police assault is considered justified and civilian resistance is considered a crime against the state.

Again, no violence should be considered legitimate in a society where the law governs, but Mr. Cameron has assaulted the very prospect of ordinary Britons rising through the socio-economic ranks through the benefit of education; whether his intention or not, whether the true logical outcome of his massive budget cuts and steep tuition fee increases, Mr. Cameron appears to be saying the UK must save its cultural identity by preventing merit from governing the fate of individuals and families.

Cameron’s Thatcherite Policy Dreamland

Cameron is now seen, by many, as more Thatcherite than Thatcher and subscribing to an ill-conceived and inhumane classist attitude, whereby the privileged have a right to remain privileged, regardless of ability, performance or character. For some, the postmodern cultural psychology of the problem is that Mr. Cameron is adhering to ancient visions of social order, in which the wealthy and the privileged maintain a hold on power and the masses are made subservient, to avoid an uprising.

And yet, what he has sparked —perhaps because these are not ancient times, and Great Britain today is in fact a multicultural democratic society— is an uprising. Mr. Cameron, a deliberate conspirator in the conjuring of this crisis, cannot now turn around and say he has no means of understanding wherefore the anger of so many British subjects.

He painted himself as a leader for a new age, a green conservative interested in equality of opportunity, fairness and basic rights, and he has governed as if hard economic times warrant a reflexive return to the most absolutist anti-public-service form of extremist conservative government. Some economists fear that his radical budget-cutting measures will only serve to undermine private enterprise and job-creation and plunge Britain into a decade of slow to zero growth and generalized economic malaise.

Core Economic Inefficiencies

Mr. Cameron is not addressing the core problem with the British economy, which is that wages have not kept pace with the cost of living. More and more Britons were becoming dependent on credit, when the housing-and-credit bubble burst. Throughout the British economy, there are small inefficiencies that, taken together, put the whole economy on a path to unsustainability.

In housing, for instance, rapidly escalating property valuations combined with a dishonest per-week rental rate system, where consumers are left to calculate that in any given month, the cost of rent will be anywhere from 4.0 to 4.42857143 times the weekly rate. This allows property owners —or mortgage holders— to take in an extra 26% to 43% per month, over and above what common sense tells renters they will pay.

The cumulative effect of this strategy is a rapid escalation in rental prices, designed to match the unsustainable expansion of property valuations. Though property values have fallen, and in many corners of London, rental prices have fallen as well, the atmosphere of collapse will continue, so long as core inefficiencies, like rental rate pricing, go unaddressed.

Mr. Cameron campaigned on his ability to deal with the flaws in the British economy, but major banking and housing reforms may be needed before the coalition leader could even be considered to have begun to do this. Government austerity policies are based on a fundamental kind of unreason: that government budgets and household budgets are the same animal; they are not.

When a government “borrows”, it makes a promise to repay a bond, at a relatively low rate of interest, over a long period of time, and bond holders are incentivized to continue buying bonds, to keep values higher and keep the borrower solvent. Households and businesses can go under without causing massive harm to the wider economy —unless they do so in the millions—, but governments cannot. Investors understand this; minute-to-minute financial news reporters and right-of-center politicians seem unable to.

The Prime Minister’s Motives

A question any serious political scientist or economist, or British citizen, must be asking about David Cameron is whether the unprecedented austerity measures, the widespread assault on working families, public services and education, is really about “living within our means” or whether it’s about using the crisis as an excuse to undermine the public sector.

It’s a serious question, because while many in top earning levels of the private sector, and many in politics, spend a lot of energy ranting about government inefficiency and the need to cut spending and “privatize”, major institutional investors across the world understand that a nation’s markets are a better bet when the public sector is vibrant and reliable.

While the Keynesian model of budgetary macro-economics is proven accurate and useful by the massive worldwide collapse of a private sector stretched by inefficiency and soft corruption, Mr. Cameron would have us believe that the Keynesian model of budgetary macro-economics is totally wrong on the usefulness of public investment to spur private sector recovery and growth.

From a policy standpoint, nothing could be more patently absurd: it is not a Blair-Brown big government binge that sent the UK into the economic doldrums, it was Blair and Brown colluding in a generation-long deregulation of banking and finance, which stripped consumers and institutional investors of basic protections and incentivized binge economics, an invitation to accelerated and widespread collapse.

Now, Mr. Cameron proposes to target for systematic undermining the most basic services provided by the government to the people, stripping away the reliable underpinnings of a functional democratic capitalist economy. It does not really matter whether he does this from malice, from ignorance or from greed; the truth is: people across Britain are dismayed to see their government putting the burden of their generation’s policy failure on their children’s shoulders.

Couple that widespread perception with generalized economic malaise and the ire of students who feel their right to education is being swept out from under them, and you get unrest. Nothing could be more predictable, and nothing could be more concerning. Yet Mr. Cameron appears to be taking a hard-line, calling student demonstrators a “mob” and demanding severe action to prevent further protest against his policies.

Harmful Policies Are Bad Politics

The problem Mr. Cameron faces is troubling from every angle: he promised fairness but has promoted entrenched socio-economic stratification; he promised to shore up the economy with serious reforms but has committed to sabotaging the public services that best do this; he promised to bring Britons together but has declared opposition to those who disagree with his views; he promised a brighter future but has made enemies of millions of students and seeks to undermine the future of British education.

On security policy, he seems undecided: Should demonstrators be treated like terrorists or like concerned citizens? Should education be demonized as an unaffordable waste of government money, or promoted as a path to prosperity in the 21st century? He has a coalition government, which many believe is far more fragile than he and Mr. Clegg would have us believe, and his actions are alienating almost 100% of the base of his coalition partners.

In the end, it is not the police who are to be blamed for the violence; there are many brave and committed public servants who do police work because they want to devote their lives to the betterment of their communities and to public safety. But some members of the Metropolitan Police appear to have failed in their obligation to protect and serve and to keep the peace, and Mr. Cameron is clearly now engaged in an adversarial relationship with a generation of students who will no longer believe his rhetoric about fairness and opportunity.

Could tuition fee hikes be the greatest miscalculation he could have made, on a par with former US president Bush’s lax, and later adversarial, response to the suffering of people trapped in New Orleans as the flood-waters rose and civilization disintegrated? Clearly, David Cameron’s approval ratings have “fallen off a cliff”, as one publication put it, steadily plummeting since he took office. Both Cameron and Clegg are at personal lows, and polling suggests a new election might not return the coalition to power.

Instead of casting himself as the postmodern conservative, able to be fiscally responsible and also socially conscious, David Cameron has pit himself and his government against the people, attacking fundamental rights, like education, as wasteful spending and demanding that students’ access to education depend on their ability to pay. While violence is a tragic departure from civilized protest, the incidents of the last month might serve to urge Mr. Cameron to think differently about whom to punish for the financial collapse.

French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and to reform the pension system has sparked a massive, coordinated general strike that has seen air traffic cut in half, and fuel supplies interrupted across the country. More than one-quarter of filling stations are reportedly out of fuel, and gas lines are causing commerce to break down: strike organizers promise a war of attrition.

Pres. Sarkozy is no less strident, promising to pass the reforms regardless of the strikers’ persistence or the strike’s effect on the nation’s economy. With clashes between young protesters and police spreading, there are concerns security forces may begin to crack down on demonstrations and that Pres. Sarkozy, who as interior minister used heavy-handed tactics to end rioting that overtook France in 2006, may return to the methodology of using force to crush potentially violent gatherings.

In the 2006 crisis, Sarkozy won infamy across the world for referring to the French-born children of immigrants, outraged by a policeman’s killing of a young Franco-Arab man, when he referred to the youths as “scum” and suggested they should all be rounded up and deported. He was accused of racism and of a shocking ignorance of his own country’s demographic makeup, and the remarks spurred even more violence.

This week, he has referred to youths he blames for the clashes with police as “troublemakers” and has sought to associate their actions with the entire protest movement. Unions and protest organizers have urged all strikers to refrain from violence to avoid staining the image of the cause. There are concerns among protesters that police have been plotting the clashes, in order to have an excuse to detain demonstrators and break the will of the strikers.

Such police actions have been seen in the past in response to massive street protests (in Barcelona, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere), but so far no evidence of secret police involvement in launching the clashes has emerged. The government blames youths and students for the petty arson and car-burnings and a misguided desire to create an atmosphere of barricades and confrontation across the nation’s major cities.

Pres. Sarkozy and his government are pushing for the Senate to pass the pension reform legislation as soon as possible, believing passage will effectively end the strike. But the opposition, sympathetic to the goal of the strikers, says it has a constitutional responsibility to continue examining the merits of the proposed law, and to amend it where necessary. Sarkozy accuses the Socialists of slowing down the process in order to help the strikers and undermine his government.

At least one quarter of all gas stations are now out of fuel, despite Pres. Sarkozy’s having ordered police to force open national reserves blocked by strikers. The organizers say they have come to embrace the power of the true labor strike and are less interested in the inflammatory effect of clashes and barricades. They believe they can choke off French commerce and industry to the point where the government would have to cede to public pressure. Polls show more than 70% of the French people support the strikers’ cause.

David Cameron, the Conservative party leader who heads a coalition UK government in partnership with Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, is forcing record cuts to social spending, slashing the military budget and plans to lay off 500,000 Britons. In an atmosphere where private investment and new hires are both stagnant, such cuts could undermine any economic recovery, however stunted. Critics say the move is ideological and may be intended to consolidate his support among the conservative base.

The cuts to military spending may be the most constructive, in that they need not reduce the efficacy or strength of the British military per se, but could serve as a mechanism for instituting more aggressive monitoring of spending patterns and for ramping up development of energy efficiency measures, both on bases and in transport. But the social services cuts are steep and could pose a serious threat to domestic economic wellbeing, given that so many of the services to be cut cannot easily be offset by the private sector.

The firing of some 500,000 public sector workers also threatens to have a negative ripple effect: on the one hand, that income for that population will disappear, so will not be taxable, making the projected savings somewhat illusory; what’s more, the steep decrease in general income will hurt consumer spending and could deepen both the credit and foreclosure crisis in Britain. There does not appear to be any aspect of the Cameron-Clegg spending-cut plan that would dampen these blows to the broader economy.

David Cameron has had trouble with his Conservative party base, as he has consistently sought to represent a new kind of conservatism: determined to do right by future generations on the ethics of human rights, civil rights, multiculturalism and environmental and climate policy. He has sought to operate as a “green conservative”, capable of appealing to the political center and even to independents on the left who have become disenchanted with New Labour.

The result was a lukewarm-at-best reception for his governing strategy, when he spoke to a Conservative party conference, and speculation that a failure to tack hard to the right, to “Thatcherize”, could leave him and the coalition a de facto “lame duck” before the process of governing even really got underway. With the unprecedented cuts in social spending and the massive government layoffs, Cameron appears to have effectively Thatcherized his governing agenda, and he has brought the Lib-Dems along with him.

He has less room to maneuver than he might suspect, as the Lib-Dem base is already upset about what are seen as capitulations to the Conservative ideological agenda, and Clegg will be under constant pressure to back out of the coalition if things go too far. Some may now see this as a bridge too far toward the bad old days of buyer-beware social-darwinist conservatism. In France, an effort to raise the retirement age has led to a general strike that is now paralyzing the country.

The United Kingdom emerged only very slowly from the catastrophe of World War II, through a combination of structured social programs, the building of an expansive welfare state, and the modernization of its infrastructure. Margaret Thatcher, beloved by conservatives for her persona, her moxy and her ideological bent, took on that system, leading to widespread economic malaise and what many see as a confused pattern of pro-conservative liberals and pro-liberal conservatives, and the generation-long mismanagement of both the state’s finances and the broader economy.

Cameron is doing more than buying into a commonly held distortion of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” theory of the marketplace —the view that for Smith there should be no rules limiting the freedom of investors to do as they please, come what may, which is absolutely not what Smith wrote—, he is threatening to remove the undermine the practical foundations of the British economy, at a time when virtually no other sector of the British economy is functioning as intended, and household wealth is still falling relative to cost of living.

There are concerns from all segments of the political spectrum that Cameron is acting more ideologically than from pragmatic good intention. But Clegg’s support and the miraculous holding together of the coalition give credibility to his claim that this is the only option available. After all, the UK has an obligation under its membership in the European Union to not run excessive budget deficits, and the crisis spanning from Greece and Hungary to Spain and Portugal has shown that letting the deficit problem slip too far can make matters far worse.

But there is the Keynesian theory to think of: at a time of historic and widespread economic slowdown, even if it’s not appropriate to use the term “depression”, when the private sector cannot borrow and will not spend, and consumers are tapped out and worried about losing their homes, the government must continue driving economic activity.

Cameron is now the latest in a string of European leaders to suddenly sign on to the anti-Keynesian view that was so aggressively pushed by the Bush administration, both at home and abroad, but it’s worth considering that it was that administration’s approach to market economics that led, in large part, to the financial misdeeds and the global crisis. It is not clear that Cameron’s ultra-austerity policy will help Britain emerge from the now three-year-long credit mess, but he will have a hard time getting out from under the legacy of this move, politically.

The European Commission is considering new rules that would give it far more control over the domestic fiscal policy of member states, including the possibility of fines to countries in distress that do not adopt austerity measures to reduce spending. Today, across Europe, there are protests organized by labor unions and citizens groups who allege austerity is just a veiled way of making the majority of working people, innocent of the financial system’s collapse, pay for the abuse or misjudgment of top executives and reckless investors.

Spain is under a general strike, and unions representing workers in over 30 countries have descended on Brussels to argue that austerity measures are hurting Europe’s economic base and slowing recovery. Will individual European nations rebel against the EC’s claim of control over domestic spending policies? Will a more federal style of union gain traction if budget-related tensions are not diffused?

• Join the discussion now, on the Hot Spring Network

The Guardian reports that a proposed piece of legislation up for debate in the Italian senate would mean:

No more reporting of criminal investigations before they come to trial (even if that takes years). No more recording or photographing of anyone, even a Mafia boss, unless that person approves. Only members of the state-approved “National Order of Journalists” allowed to film or record. Fines approaching half-a-million euros for publishers who transgress, with €20,000 per reporter also on the table.

Such extreme limitations on press freedom could undermine the very functioning of democracy in Italy, and may violate basic principles of democratic personal freedom and freedom of information that underpin the European Union and the obligations of its member states to afford and protect basic human rights.

Help inform the debate with specifics about Italian media law, European Union legislation on informational freedom, and the underlying motivations for this proposed radical expansion of the Italian government’s censorship powers…

• Join the discussion now on the Hot Spring Network

The European Union is dealing harshly with nations that are suffering the converging crises of economic downturn, joblessness and swelling budget deficits. Spain is taking aggressive action to reduce public spending, but such “austerity measures” may be deepening, instead of resolving, the economic crisis.

The UK’s Telegraph newspaper is reporting that “[T]he policy of 1930s wage cuts — or ‘internal devaluations’ — being imposed on southern Europe’s humiliated states as a quid pro quo for the EU shield is itself part of the problem. Ultra-austerity will bleed the economy, shrivel tax revenues and fail to close deficit anyway.”

Spain’s El País newspaper says the memo explaining why Fitch Ratings has downgraded Spain from its AAA credit rating reveals the nation is in a “perverse spiral” of negative feedback between policy and practice, noting that “To maintain debt solvency Spain must squeeze public spending: yet this policy undermines the chances of recovery which itself causes further loss of confidence.”

Is an extreme allegiance to the logic of “austerity” undermining the ability of governments to make the reforms and investments necessary to start on the road to sustainable economic recovery?

• Join the discussion now on The Hot Spring Network

As the Labour party’s leadership seems to indicate resignation to working from the opposition to what is likely to be a coalition formed by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, it looks like the Liberal Democratic leadership have their eye on a major parliamentary reform: proportional representation.

This would change the way governments are formed in the British Parliament, and the Liberal Democrats’ prospects for having a role in government could be substantially increased in future elections. The two dominant parties, Labour and the Conservatives, may object for the simple reason that true proportional representation would always give the other of the two a large number of posts in any new government.

It is expected a debate may emerge as to whether proportional representation is more or less legitimate if it follows one or the other logic, either proportional power-sharing according to representation within a coalition or proportional power-sharing according to the outcome of the popular vote.

There is a potent political paradox inherent in the Liberal Democrats forming a coalition government with the Conservative party, given their opposing views on such a wide range of issues. It is likely the fate of the coalition will hinge on whether the Liberal Democrats can persuade David Cameron to commit to pushing real electoral reform that would establish proportional representation as the norm in future elections.

It now looks like a foregone conclusion that David Cameron will become prime minister, at the head of a coalition government, if and when Gordon Brown hands in his resignation to the Queen. There are serious questions as to whether Brown would retire from politics or whether he would seek to retain the leadership of the Labour party in order to give the opposition strong leadership.

The fate of a coalition pact cannot be officially known until and unless the Liberal Democrats hold two votes approving the terms of any deal made by party leader Nick Clegg. Those votes could produce specific demands the Conservatives would then have to consider. David Cameron can decide for his party, but whether a Cameron-Clegg deal can be struck will likely depend on Liberal Democratic party politics.

David Cameron really began his campaign to become prime minister before Tony Blair won his third term, and he rose to prominence in the Conservative party in party by tacking aggressively to the center, seeking to co-opt traditionally Labour-relevant issues like environmental protections and human rights.

That angle allowed him to out-maneuver some more hard-line, more seasoned figures, and to expand the Conservatives’ appeal, in a country that seemed to be treating Labour as too conservative and expanding its interest in the Liberal Democratic platform, a green, social-justice-oriented, anti-war platform.

Some observers believe this Conservative centrism may be part of Nick Clegg’s coalition calculus: he may see an opportunity to join with the Tories to force Cameron to live up to those more liberal promises and help steer the nation’s politics in the direction of the Liberal Democratic agenda, a fact which might mean the coalition itself would be highly precarious in any situation in which such centrism does not in fact dominate policy.

There has been talk among seasoned observers that no strong, viable coalition could emerge from the current electoral outcome, meaning a new vote would likely be called within a matter of months, even if a coalition is formed. Today’s news that Gordon Brown and the Labour party have withdrawn from negotiations may be, in part, a sign they hold this view.

As reported by the Washington Post:

The visual images across London on Saturday displayed the uncertainty. Politicians have been shuttling between meetings. A group of demonstrators took to the streets, calling for electoral reform. Round-the-clock coverage keeps everyone abreast of any developments.

Most extraordinary was the side-by-side appearance of the three major-party leaders at a ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe — which symbolized more than anything else the fact that no one knows who will lead Britain.

With the Labour party winning just 29% of the popular vote, it lost 97 seats, its worst loss in 80 years. Labour is not close enough to the magic number that would establish an outright majority to reach that majority with a coalition with the Liberal Democratic party. This puts significant pressure on the Conservatives to do what is necessary to win favor with the Liberal Democrats, but there is skepticism about whether such terms can really be hammered out.

UPDATE, 19:00 GMT: Prime Minister Gordon Brown has resigned as leader of the Labour party and as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He gave a statement of resignation immediately before his short trip to Buckingham Palace, where he gave the Queen his resignation. Brown’s resignation ends a 13-year period of Labour rule, which the outgoing prime minister has said was such a period of generalized prosperity that a young woman he met, who was born on the day Tony Blair took power in 1997 “took for granted” that prosperity and opportunity were the norm.

UPDATE, 19:35 GMT: David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party has now met with Queen Elizabeth II, and is leaving Buckingham Palace, presumably to drive to 10 Downing Street where he will officially take over as prime minister. There is as yet no official announcement of a coalition deal between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, without which Cameron would not govern with an outright majority.

A crush of press and onlookers have lined the route from the Palace to 10 Downing Street and are massing outside the prime minister’s residence. There is speculation he may announce an official agreement with the Liberal Democrats and disclose whether or not the deal has been approved by Liberal Democratic committee votes in the House of Commons. Cameron will be the youngest prime minister to take power in the UK since 1812.

UPDATE, 19:47 GMT: At 19:43 GMT, David Cameron began to speak even as he took his last step up to the microphone outside 10 Downing Street. He began by praising the long period of Labour government, saying that “Compared with a decade ago, this country is more open abroad and more compassionate at home… I’d like to pay tribute to the outgoing prime minister for his long record of public service”.

He then announced his intention to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democratic party, saying this was the best way to “rebuild trust in our political system” and to make the right decisions for the nation in difficult times. He said the coalition would have as a priority the rooting out of corruption and electoral reform that ensures that “politicians are always their servants and never their masters”.

Cameron said he wanted the nation’s ethic to ask “not what do I own but what can I give” and said that “those who can should and those who can’t we will will always help”. He said he seeks to form a government based on “values of freedom, values of fairness, and values of responsibility; I want us to build an economy that rewards work, I want us to build a society of stronger families and stronger communities”.

Pres. Obama’s nuclear diplomacy has already defined one of the most successful periods of progress toward collaboration on international peace and security since the Second World War. His Nuclear Security Summit, hosted this month in Washington, DC, helped further the goal of steering the world toward a moment in which nuclear proliferation is more science fiction than an immediate threat.

Pres. Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons in a landmark speech before over 100,000 people in Prague, early last year, and since then has advanced nuclear diplomacy at an historic pace, negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (StART) with Russia, which will reduce major strategic nuclear warheads from 2,200 to 1,500, and set the stage for further reductions in the future, and passing by unanimous vote a Security Council resolution (the first ever presided over by a sitting US president) declaring the goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

According to Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, previous presidents rarely even fully read the nation’s Nuclear Posture Review, while Pres. Obama has just reviewed, crafted and released a new version, which helped secure the StART agreement with Russia and which establishes that the United States will not use nuclear weapons in a first-strike capacity or against non-nuclear-armed states. The new Nuclear Posture Review does not in any way reduce the nation’s security, but does improve its position for negotiating diplomatically.

According to the Washington Post:

“President Obama was making editing changes in the Nuclear Posture Review right up to the last minutes before it was to go to press,” says William J. Perry, defense secretary in the Clinton administration and a member of a quartet of elder statesmen whose advocacy of nuclear disarmament has informed and influenced Obama’s thinking.

The president used the review process to force the national security fiefdoms in his administration to sign up to his vision — and the means for achieving it. “They were not lined up that way two months ago, and it took a lot of work to get it done in a way that his predecessors have not done,” according to Perry.

According to Steven Clemons, of the New America Foundation:

Obama is changing the direction of global gravity. He is also confronting Iran without the shallowness of bombing vs. sanctions vs. public humiliation that his administration has been flirting with. In the past week, and over the next month, Obama is showing what a U.S.-led world order should look like.

This is a huge shift, for the world hasn’t had much faith in America’s abilities to deliver. For example, in taking on strategic challenges like getting the Israelis and Palestinians on a two-state pathway; or ending the anachronistically simmering Cold War conflict in U.S.-Cuba relations; or persuading Iran to forgo a nuclear weapons track, most of the world has seen an America unable to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself.

Pres. Obama is demonstrating by way of his aggressive pursuit of a responsible global consensus on comprehensive nuclear disarmament that the United States is neither imperialist nor isolationist, and that the Fortress America paradigm need not be the guiding vision for US foreign policy in the 21st century.

Where just over one year ago, the stated US policy was that a new generation of “mini-nukes” might be used to take out militarily important targets in non-nuclear states, and negotiation with nations like Iran was conducted through threats and innuendo, Pres. Obama has taken the lead on a new global age of cooperation and responsible security policy. That alone has helped to revitalize the international structures that help guarantee peace and stability.

The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (StART) is a major accomplishment for US foreign policy, helping to move the world toward a future without nuclear weapons. The signing caps a year of bold, imaginative diplomacy, kicked off with an historic speech in Prague, in which he declared “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

Since then, Obama has not only popularized the goal of a world free of nuclear threat, but has persuaded China, Russia and others to sign on to the mission, with a landmark UN vote backed by all permanent Security Council members, each of them nuclear-armed. Obama was also bold in his outreach to the Russian Federation, and his clear intent to form a partnership with Pres. Dmitry Medvedev, in a deliberate concerted effort to achieve historic change.

At the time of his meeting with Pres. Medvedev, in Moscow, last year, Pres. Obama explained:

“We are confident that we can continue to build off the extraordinary discussions that we had in London,” Mr. Obama said, “and that on a whole host of issues — including security issues, economic issues, energy issues, environmental issues — that the United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences, and that if we work hard during these next few days, that we can make extraordinary progress that will benefit the people of both countries.”

Securing a new StART pact to reduce the US and Russian nuclear arsenals is a major diplomatic victor for Pres. Obama, after years of mounting tensions between a US administration with an unapologetically aggressive foreign policy, under Pres. Bush, and the hardline presidency of now Russian PM Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev and Obama have both helped build their reputations as serious-minded constitutional law scholars with an interest in pragmatic solutions to crises of international scope and long-term relevance. In the short term, one of the major considerations inherent in achieving the arms reduction targets of this pact is the effective scaling back of risk involved in maintaining thousands of excess weapons with no legitimate strategic purpose.

It is an importantly pragmatic first step, in part because it does not really weaken either of the world’s leading nuclear powers, but helps rein in the cost and complexity of their nuclear weapons arsenals —unlikely ever to be used— while establishing their clear leadership role in shifting the world away from a nuclear-centered diplomacy.

A prominent muslim scholar and cleric has issued a 600-page fatwa, or religious edict, drawing from authoritative historical sources and scripture, to rule that true Islam bars any form of bloodshed. Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, a muslim theologian from Pakistan, who lives and teaches in Britain, said an honest examination of the teachings and doctrines of Islam demonstrates an absolute prohibition on the shedding of blood for political or religious purposes.

In his speech, announcing the fatwa against bloodshed, ul-Qadri said “Whatever these terrorists are doing, it’s not martyrdom”. He sought to illustrate the difference between the kind of holy struggle sanctioned by Islamic teaching and the unjust use of violence for personal or political gain. The scholar said his fatwa has the weight of a jurisdictional finding, and should be taken as direct advice as to the real spiritual meaning of Islam’s treatment of violence.

According to CNN, where he appeared in an interview with Christiane Amanpour:

Ul-Qadri was speaking to CNN just over a week after he issued a 600-page fatwa in London denouncing terrorists as “the biggest enemies of Islam.”

In his fatwa, ul-Qadri also said suicide bombers are destined for hell and strongly criticized Islamic extremists who cite Islam to justify violence.

“Terrorism and violence cannot be considered to be permissible in Islam on the basis of any excuse,” he said.

Ul-Qadri explained that no matter of foreign policy, no act of aggression by a foreign state, no “good intention” could justify terrorism. His fatwa is the most thorough, researched and high-profile such ruling to rule out the possibility of radical terrorists having any legitimate claim to Islam justifying their activities.

He told Amanpour that while the most radical of the violent extremists will likely not accept his finding, he believes that a thorough reading of the document would convince even those on the verge of being “brainwashed” by those violent extremists. He said the most violent and incorrigible of the religiously motivated terrorists are a tiny minority of the global muslim population, even among and widely profiled angry young muslim men.

His aim is to set forth in clear, authoritative, historically founded and spiritually resonant language, once and for all the doctrine that Islam does not and cannot condone violence of any kind.

According to the CBC:

Qadri condemned suicide bombers as destined for hell, a counter to the extremist promise of eternal paradise after death. Qadri said the fatwa outlaws suicide bombings “without any excuses, any pretexts, or exceptions.”

He said he was compelled to issue the fatwa because of concerns about the radicalization of British Muslims at university campuses, most of whom are of Pakistani descent.

The fatwa could be a watershed moment in the struggle for the soul of Islam, across so many denominations where radical fringe elements are trying to radicalize the moderate core population. Ul-Qadri’s finding has been called an “absolute” condemnation of terrorism and bloodshed, allowing for no “excuses or pretexts”.

In 2008, Reuters reported that “An ultra conservative Muslim seminary in India, which is said to have inspired the Taliban, issued a fatwa, or edict, against terrorism during a meeting attended by thousands of clerics and students.” But ul-Qadri’s fatwa is the most sweeping and absolute condemnation of violence within Islam, and comes at a time when there is a proliferation of grassroots protest within Islam against the hijacking of the faith by terrorists and extremists.

En mesa redonda, en el programa 59 segundos de la TVE, un panel de periodistas y analistas políticos debaten los méritos y desafíos del primer año del mandato de Barack Obama, presidente de Estados Unidos. Entre las complicaciones, debaten las expectativas, tal vez más globales y desafiantes que las que encontró ningún otro presidente al llegar al poder, y la agresiva resistencia de sus contrincantes políticos a la ética del diálogo y de la política colaborativa.

Entre las preocupaciones del Presidente Obama, la reforma comprensiva del sistema de seguros médicos, la reforma global de la economía energética, una renovación de las regulaciones federales sobre la industria financiera de Wall Street, y las dos guerras iniciadas durante la época de su predecesor, dominan la atención ejecutiva del presidente durante su primer año. El mayor problema que tiene Obama, según el panel, parece ser la percepción entre los votantes independientes —registrados sin partido declarado— de que Obama no puede llevar a cabo todas sus propuestas reformas, dada la feroz oposición que se ha armado contra él entre los conservadores.

Un comentarista del partido conservador español, el Partido Popular, cita la casi “dictadura” de las encuestas de opinión pública como uno de los grandes obstáculos que tiene un presidente cuyo agenda propone reformas tan comprensivas. Enfrentándose con múltiples crisis económicas y militares de proporciones históricas, Obama se encuentra en la cruz de la historia: o tendrá éxitos de tamaño histórico o se verá vencido por crisis de tamaño histórico.

Citan la especial condición de esperanza en la que llegó Obama a la presidencia como una complicación más para su mandato ejecutivo. Millones de ciudadanos celebraron su victoria en las calles, y 2 millones asistieron a su histórica toma de posesión, en temperaturas bajo cero, exigiendo al joven jefe de estado casi mayor responsabilidad de ser representante de todos y cada uno de los ciudadanos que se impuso a ninguno de sus antecedentes en el puesto.

Su mujer, Michelle, también se vio halagada por su apertura y su amabilidad con el público. Fue ella, notan, que incitó al presidente abrir la Casa Blanca al público cada miércoles, para que fuera como en las primeras décadas de la república la casa de todos los ciudadanos, y para que su marido, el presidente, pudiera mantener un contacto regular con la gente normal, su verdadera “base” política.

Otra de las enormes complicaciones de una presidencia abiertamente reformista es que se ve obligado, por responsabilidad a sus electores y a su partido, a gastar su “capital político” durante su primer año e incluso durante su segundo año. Esto hace que algunos de sus aliados en el Congreso tengan que “jugar su vida política” en las elecciones del 2010, pero el mayor respaldo que puede ofrecerles el Presidente Obama ante la opinión pública será conseguir éxitos importantes en su ambicioso agenda reformista.

El 2010 puede que se defina por la reacción del público ante el avance de varios aspectos del agenda reformista de Obama. Mientras los Demócratas se estén jugando la vida política en reforma de manera comprensiva varios aspectos de la política de los servicios públicos y la regulación sobre varias industrias, un éxito a favor del bienestar a largo plazo debería verse como reflejo del enorme apoyo que consiguió Obama durante la campaña del 2008, haciendo que el público espere abiertamente que un presidente decidido a servir los intereses del público siga no sólo en el poder, sino con apoyo de un Congreso colaborador y pragmático.

• More documentation from the Copenhagen conference on climate change (UNFCCC)