Oh yes! Oh yes! You're gonna get it. Yes, naughty little boys. You little fuckers, you little fuckers. Die. Ha Ha.

A video published by News of the World on Sunday shows British soldiers abusing Iraqi children. The video was taken in 2004, one of the soldiers was apparently taken into custody Sunday evening. (The Guardian article)

Already facing a couple of accusations over abuse cases, the British Army seems to take up the American defence line of accusing individual soldiers and their direct supervisors of wrongdoing. But this "black-sheep" argument is insufficient: Britain is both participating in the human-rights breaching torture actions of the United States (as the HRW report shows) and part of the occupation of Iraq that can be upheld only through force.

In the broader context of governmental human right violation policies and military occupation, it's an almost surreal move of the Army to depict the abusing soldiers as the black sheep of a clean armed force. Abuse cases can hardly be seen as exceptions when the overall policies and institutions see human right abuses and military occupation as a necessairy means.

Stating that the overall majority of soldiers behave well, as the Army did, is a highly unfair move towards the soldiers. The frequent outbursts of violence (be it intentional or unintentional) is an almost logical result of the British politics of violence. And when those outbursts actually get known to the public it's highly hypocritical to shift the responsibility of those who helped forming the politics of violence (like PM Blair) to a few low-rank soldiers.

WTO General Council

The WTO General Council held its meeting from Tuesday until today. It was the first major meeting after the infamous Hong Kong ministerial conference in December 2005. One outcome already became public: EU bans on genetically modified organisms contravenes trade rules, stated the dispute resolution panel in a preliminary ruling on Tuesday. (Greenpeace press release). It means that governments lose their ability to regulate in health and environmental fields despite scientific uncertainity. From a democratic point of view that's troublesome.

Further outcomes of the General Council are not yet open to the public. As the Hong Kong ministerial left a wide field of questions unsolved, more answers are to be expected from today's meeting. I want to take the chance and rediscuss specifically the trade issues concerning developing countries.

EU: European trade interests instead of development

The WTO - especially after the failure of Cancun - had a strong need to emphasise its concern for fair trade conditions with the developing world. The ministerial in Hong Kong has ingloriously failed to deliver any significant results in this matter, as major NGO's unanimously state (see, for example, the Oxfam briefing). Not surprisingly, it was the European Union who took the role of the major villain - fighting to upkeep trade-distorting agriculture subsidies and to push forward liberalization in the market access to developing countries for non-agricultural products (NAMA) and services.

1. Agricultural tariffs, subsidies and industrial tariffs

Both the US and the EU still protect fully their key agricultural markets with high tariffs. Meanwhile, they push hard for market access in services and the industrial field. Export-subsidies (that will run out in 2013) and domestic subsidies (that represent 80% and more of the trade distortions) leads to heavy dumping on the world market. Neither the EU nor the US plan to erase those domestic subsidies although they are anti-development and help keeping the world majority in poverty.

2. Fake development package

The development packages presented by the EU (and the US) are purely cosmetic. Preferences for the so-called least-developed countries (LDC) ammount to almost nothing. An example: Aid-for-trade was a new label for already development-assigned money "granted" by the EU ("recycled money", as Oxfam puts it) in exchange for market access concessions by the developing countries. Making development money a bargain chip is simply wrong.

WTO: Goals for the EU in 2006

Due to the compicated ratification process in the American congress and the negative overall-trend of the Doha-round in recent years a positive outcome of the WTO-negotiations is already much at risk. With its dirty post-colonial behavior the EU (and the US) risk to smash the Doha-round altogether. The result will be a major setback for developing countries (and, of course, for the EU as well, economically speaking).

Therefor the EU has to promote the following goals at the WTO in 2006:

- reduction of domestic subsidies for agriculture to end dumping at the world market
- true market access for developing countries and totally open market for LDCs.
- allow developing countries' governments flexibility in what markets they want to open for competition. Market access in services and NAMA must not be pushed forward any more.
- finally design a true development package, including easy access to cheap drugs for developing countries (in contrast to the complicated and burdensome current TRIPS-amendment)

As soon as results of the General Council are available, I'll discuss them further. (And don't ask me why I chose yellow shoes as the picture for this entry. But there's no easy imaginary association to the WTO)

Kill the service directive 2

The socialist and the conservative fraction of the EP have agreed today on a compromise concerning the service directive.

The wording of the agreement is not yet public, but the major cornerstones of the agreement are the following: 1) the phrase "country of origin" or similar phrases will be deleted from the draft, 2) labor and social law of the host country shall apply, but 3) service providers licensed in one country are to provide in all EU countries (usual exceptions from this market principle - security, national health, etc. do rarely apply). 4) Exemption of public-interest sectors like healthcare or education is still not agreed upon. The conservative fraction does not seem to be willing to compromise on this issue.

This means that national regulations for employees can be averted by forms of self-employment, fake pseudo-self-employment (a practice already widely used by service-providing companies) and temporary employment.

In this form, the compromise on the service directive is not at all adequate. Especially the exemption for sectors of public interest must be a sinequanon-condition.

countdown 11 to kill service directive

11 more days to the European Parliament's plenary session that will discuss the service directive (Bolkestein directive) - and hopefully reject it.

The "county of origin" rule will ruin labor standards and lead to social dumping.

Sign the petition of the Austrian trade unions and of the StopBolkestein initiative:

Read more at the website of the Austrian Student Union (OeH):

And after the rejection Bolkestein's successor Neelie Kroes might finally want to think about plans of how to reconcile the need of common standards of social security (the unions have worked years on this issue) and the interest of the New Member States to stronger market access. That might be a better idea than renaming the "country of origin" rule ... again.

Is the current "free speech" - debate hypocritical and boring? (Yes it is)

For everybody who is as bored as I am with the current debate about "funny Mohammed-caricatures are free speech" vs. "those who depict the prophet shall be beheaded"

I just want you guys to keep in mind that the Austrian caricaturist Gerhard Haderer was indicted for his little Jesus-book in Greece only 3 years ago for sparking religious hatred (or something similar). There is no specific Islam-aspect to the current discussion. Religious zealots, be it freaky islamists in Denmark or Benedict XVI in Rome continouosly cause trouble and spoil all the fun.

That's why for example Poland - not really a islamic country - is able to develop a brutal and agressive anti-everything right-wing scene (beating up of gay prides, ...) has nothing to do with Islam but a lot with intolerance. The Catholic church has a pretty high record of spreading intolerance in recent years, too.

Why is it that only now - when it's about islam, not catholic, zealots for a change - there's suddenly a huge number of hysterics who rally around "our values"?

Here's something, it's just an idea:

For all those interested in defending "our values" - freedom and peace, for example - there are EU countries still occupying the Iraq. Britain would be one, Denmark another. I don't exactly see how a colonial occupation of the Iraq could possibly spread tolerance in the world. Getting the European troops out of Iraq would be a true sign of European values for a change.

The picture shows a British anti-war demonstration. This is the free speech I currently favor.

Flexicurity

The Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs - agreed upon in 2000 - never got off the ground (only 4 years to go for being the strongest knowledge-based economic region in the world, Mr. Barroso!) and was therefor streamlined and redone a year ago.

The National Reform Programmes - strategy plans based upon boosting Research and Development (R&D) to 3% of the GDP and creating jobs - are the new backbones of the reform efforts and shall now be implemented. This is what the Spring Report of the Commission is about. ("Spring Report" ... thus the picture)

Research goes private

Until 2010, R&D investment shall go up to 3% of the GDP (from 1.9% in 2005). That's good and important. It's interesting how strongly the Spring Report emphasises the role of the private sector in this calculation. The Commission's strategy is not so much about direct investment into R&D (for example in existing public universities): "The biggest contribution, however, should come from the private sector". The keywords are public-private partnership, "improving market access conditions" (read: further liberalization), "modern and affordable property rights" (read: public investment in Research shall become private property) and new sources of financing (e.g. "risk sharing instruments", read: public bears the risk, private sector the profits).

Lisbon 1 was a failure exactly because everything from market liberalization to pension privatization was stuffed into the program that didn't find the focus on research and education.

The Lisbon Strategy is and shall not be common policy: the goal is the same (more jobs, more R&D), but the means shall be up to the member states. Countries that want to try it the "old-fashioned" style of broad public participation (via public universities, etc) shall be capable of doing so. Paleo-liberals shall try it their way (and hopefully fail). The better way will be found much quicker in this way.

EU goes higher education (and higher education goes private)

Don't get me wrong: I am very much in favor of a system where universities are incentives for economic success. I'm not so much in favor of a "public private partnership university" that pays for the research of private companies. Public universities shall get the profit of their research.

Although higher education is not a EU-field, the Commission is more and more interested in this topic. It calls for doubling of expenditure for higher education (=2% of GDP) by 2010. Good thing. But primary source for the money boost shall be (in the Commission's eyes) private sources of funding. And here's where the problem starts. As in the field of pension, public services and gas/energy/water the Commission frequently pushes for privatization. But neither the Commission nor the Council has any saying in that. They are far in excess of their competences.

Higher education shall be better financed. Fullstop. How the member states achieve it is their own business. There is simply no example that privatization of higher education would lead to better results.

"Flexicurity": EU goes neologism

Cuts in social security have a new name: Flexicurity. As this cute neologism shows, Security will be only half of what it once was. But seriously, "Flexicurity" leads to projects like the French CPE (go www.stopcpe.net). A flexible labor market and flexible employment structures are important, there are few persons who doubt that. But it's not social security that blocks more flexibility. It's the dirty goal of "Flexicurity" to shift the risk of investment into labor from the employer to the employee. This is far from acceptable. Small businesses shouldn't be overburdened by labor investment. But it's taxes and dues that make labor so "risky" for small businesses. Shifting the burden of taxation (for services that every business gladly consumates!) from labor to capital would be a far more effective way of creating flexibility. Again: flexibility is important. But not at the expense of social security.

Probably more on the Spring Report tomorrow. (Let's see)