The plight of the dispossessed Palestinians

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Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, when three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced to leave their homes. Some 100,000 Palestinians fled to Lebanon and, with their descendants, have been prevented ever since from returning. The residents of the camps are condemned to poverty, marginalisation and ill-health. This community has also endured the horrors of the Lebanese Civil War, including massacres and further displacement, disappearances, hunger and so much more besides.

The Palestinians of Lebanon are of course just one segment of the Palestinian refugee diaspora. There are now 5 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. They all continue to suffer the hardships and lack of dignity associated with being refugees.

With the death toll in Gaza rising to sixty yesterday, with the totally unnecessary slaughter met with indifference by self-described “Christians” and fellow Moslems, at least this follower of Epicurus and his friends, unable to be of practical help except to send money, know the history of the Nakba and acknowledge and mourn the losses suffered 70 years ago and every day since. The crass election-driven policy of the American government has only worsened a terrible problem, blamed exclusively, of course, on Hamas and the Palestinians.

I have seen a Palestinian refugee camp. A glimpse was enough. It was a shock. The place was a total dump. Nobody should be condemned to live like it. To discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue and do it justice would take too long, except to say that those who have turned their backs on these poor people should be deeply ashamed. The Palestinian leaders are not faultless, but their people do not deserve to be virtually imprisoned and killed when they protest. No human beings deserve it….further words fail me. (Inspired by comments made by Aimee Shalan, Chief Executive of Medical Aid to Palestinians)

A moment for a happy thought

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In the US, it emerged that a billionaire philanthropist had made good on his promise to give away almost his entire fortune. Charles F. Feeney, 86, made his final grant – $7m to Cornell University – at the end of 2016, bringing his lifetime donations to $8bn, and leaving him with $2m. His largesse (kept secret for years) has benefited everything from AIDS charities in Africa to hospitals in Vietnam.

How the Trump presidency has improved American politics.

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It’s fair to say I think the Trump presidency has been an unmitigated disaster.  His casual bigotry, dishonesty and regressive economic policies are terrible for America, and have made the world a less stable and safe place. The most recent example of Trump’s destructiveness is his withdrawal from the Iran deal, which will only hasten Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon, and makes war with Israel more likely.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and Trump is no exception. Trump’s success has forced anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats to rethink their policies and electoral appeal. The fact that a man so obviously unqualified and unfit to be president has one office should give everyone pause for thought. Here are a few lessons from the Trump era I think Republicans and Democrats could learn from.

Republicans:

  • Prejudice is still a real and present problem in America, particularly on the Right. Before Trump, many conservatives would downplay the extent to which racism, sexism and xenophobia were prevalent, often dismissing people who say they had been discriminated against. But since Trump- a man so frank in his prejudices- won the Republican primary and then the presidency, Republicans have been forced to take the problem of prejudice more seriously. On National Review, the most prominent anti-Trump conservative publication, there have been several articles rethinking conservative support for police stop and search policies, taking seriously the prospect of discrimination against young black men. During the Republican primary, Trump’s sexist attacks on Carly Fiorina made Republicans more concerned about misogyny. A post- Trump Republican Party will have to show it is on the side of equality if it wants to win convincing majorities in the future.
  • Banging on about the free market doesn’t win you votes. Most people believe in capitalism. What they don’t want is an unadulterated, unregulated free market, where poverty is high and public services poor. This includes the Republican base, who value programmes like Social Security, Medicare and government infrastructure investment. Trump didn’t stick to free market orthodoxy, instead promising to protect entitlements. Now Trump’s plans are unrealistic and will increase the deficit. But Republicans should learn that a more pragmatic approach to the economy, while maintaining the more popular aspects of fiscal conservatism like tax simplification, will be more resonant.
  • Banging on about God doesn’t win you votes. There’s nothing wrong with sharing your faith, or admitting it constitutes an important part of your decision-making. But America is an increasingly irreligious country, even amongst Republicans. While candidates like Cruz and Carson talked about God, Trump didn’t, and no one cared. The most religious candidates, Huckabee and Santorum, were also the most unpopular. Trying to be overtly religious is likely to be a turn-off for most people, particularly the wider electorate who are less Christian than Republican primary voters.
  • Neoconservatism is unpopular and unworkable. There’s no doubt Trump’s opposition to the Iraq War contributed to his success. Americans are sick and tired of wars which have no lasting benefit to the countries they are supposed to help- they certainly have no benefit to America. While it would be a mistake to embrace doctrinaire pacifism, a post-Trump foreign policy should be realist in nature, putting American interests first while maintaining non-military involvement in the wider world. It would also help the Republican goal of balancing the budget if the military was slimmed down.

Democrats:

  • Illegal immigration is a serious problem that must be addressed. Under pressure from pro-amnesty advocates, Clinton ended up advocating an end to all deportations unless the illegal immigrants in question has committed a crime. But a de-facto legalisation of 11 million people is a profound violation of the rule of law, American sovereignty, and a major contravention to public opinion. Democrats should ensure they see the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. And while the former should be encouraged, the latter should certainly not be.
  • Personal morality matters. During the Clinton years, Democrats were keen to ignore the Monica Lewinsky affair. But with Trump’s affair with Stormy Daniels, Democrats are far more interested. The fact is, Democrat or Republican, how a president conducts their personal life matters because it shows whether they are a trustworthy and moral person. Democrats shouldn’t reflexively dismiss interest in personal scandals as puritanism in the future.
  • A detailed trade policy is important. Democrats are in a mess on trade. While Clinton defended the free trade record of her husband, Sanders mirrored Trump in his critique of ‘neoliberal’ free trade deals- they lead to lower wages, jobs going overseas and deindustrialisation. The Democrats’ divisions on trade allowed Trump to win in places like Ohio and Michigan, where scepticism of free trade is high. To win back the Rust Belt, Democrats need a united and detailed trade policy. They should either embrace a full-throttled defence of America’s trade agreements, hoping to change opinion. Or they should explain how they are going to renegotiate America’s trade agreements in the national interest, as Trump did. Obfuscation is not an option.
  • Demographics are not destiny. Clinton bet on America’s increasing numbers of graduates and ethnic minorities to deliver a win on the same scale as Obama. This was a mistake. Yes, America’s demographics are changing, and some (but not all) of those changes benefits Democrats. But while working class voters living outside the major cities are still an important part of any successful electoral coalition, and shouldn’t be ignored.
  • Political correctness is unappealing. Clinton ran the most politically correct campaign in living memory, paying lip service to every minority imaginable, without a transformative policy programme or unifying vision. Talking in meaningless platitudes about people fulfilling their potential won’t win votes. Instead, a future Democrat candidate should talk straight and fire the spin doctors. Americans like honesty and plain English. Trump seemed like he told it as it is, which is why he won.

The US lobbying bonanza

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The successful Republican drive to overhaul the tax code in 2017, resulted in a bonanza of business for Washington’s law and lobby firms. Bolstered by GOP control of Washington, lobbyists saw their business explode grow last year. The prospect of tax legislation and regulatory reform was the big reason why.

The 20 largest lobbying firms took in a total of $368 million in lobbying revenue last year, a 15 percent increase over 2016, according to “The Hill”. Akin Gump, which has about 200 lobbying clients, remained the top-earning K Street firm in 2017, taking in almost $39 million for its advocacy work. The revenue of law and lobbying firm Hogan Lovells jumped 45 percent in the last three months of 2017 compared with osame period the year before. Hogan Lovells took in $11.44 million for its lobbying work last year, working for clients such as Nissan, Xcel Energy and TPG Capital, a giant private equity firm. Ernst & Young, who specializes in tax issues brought in almost $4.5 million in the three-month period, while the revenue of the exclusively Republican BGR Group rose 53% the last three months of 2017.

An analysis from Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, showed that more than half of all the registered lobbyists in Washington worked on tax reform, which equates to upwards of 6,000 people pounding the marble on Capitol Hill, catering to clients trying to capitalize on the sweeping regulatory reforms (or, rather, abolitions) and tax give-aways that will surely bust the federal budget.

When those outside Washington refer to the “swamp” many refer to this disagreeable business of lobbying. There is nothing wrong with lobbying by citizens – I have done it (once in the US and once in the UK) myself; it is part and parcel of democracy. But the huge value of the bucks at stake and the obscene level of remuneration of a handful of connected lawyers and hangers-on has enhanced, not democracy but oligarchy, shoveling money into the pockets of special interests and the already-rich, undermining democracy, and bringing it into disrepute. The average voter gives up, concluding the the system is rigged. Well, it is!

No apologies for this political post. This is exzctly why Epicurus despised the hypocrisy of politicians and their financial enablers. (Statistics from The Hill)

The cry of the self- made man: I did it all myself (a poem)

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“I did it all myself.
For sure, I did it all myself.
I never used networks or old college friends
On whom the success of so many depends.
I went out to work at the age of eighteen
Thin as a rake, but determined and lean,
And I laid rows of bricks and mixed tons of cement,
Made ten bucks a day for my food and my rent.
Twelve hours with no break did I labor on site,
And I did my book-learning by candle at night.
Then one day the boss man said, “Hey, come here, kid,
I’ve been watching you, boy, and I like what you did.
You’ve got brains, you work hard, but your problem is knowledge.”
So I chucked it and went to community college.
I learned my house building from sewer to gable,
And earned extra money by waiting on table.

“Then I built up a company, just as I’d planned,
Scouring the country, developing land.
I have been real successful, the business has grown,
And I’ve ten million bucks that I’ve made on my own.
I’d have made twice as much and could maybe relax
If it wasn’t for government, liberals and tax,
The planners, the lawyers, the dumb regulations,
Activist judges, red-tape strangulations;
The NIMBYS who get up a great caterwaul
When you build on a green field a new shopping mall.
It’s always the do-gooding, meddling few
Who complain at the loss of some trees or a view.

“No, all the restrictions should now be relaxed
And government prohibitions be axed.
We don’t need these laws, they all need up-ending,
And let’s call a halt to all government spending.
Send bureaucrats off up to Mars in a rocket,
But stop pilfering profit from my hard-earned pocket.
Sack all pen-pushers, ignore stupid rules
Made for the work-shy and drawn up by fools.
The need for it’s gone, it is all over-blown.
After all, what I’ve done, I have done on my own.”

………..Truth replies

“Are you telling me your parents had nothing to do
With the bundle of talents and hang-ups that’s you?
Where is the mention of school on your part,
That taught you the culture and gave you a start?
You must owe a debt to some of your teachers,
Those lousily paid and unrecognized creatures.
Who established the college you studied at later?
It wasn’t the wages you earned as a waiter.
Who paid for the roads that we all take for granted?
Our whole infrastructure was not simply planted,
But grew from decades of investment, and sacks
Of public subventions you now spurn as “tax”.
What is the value you put upon peace,
Containment of crime and the role of police?

“Who bought your houses, your suburban sprawls,
Your gas stations, offices, car parks and malls?
Why, government workers, contractors and such
And similar folk whom you now hate so much.
The fortune Five Hundred fattens and waxes
On recycled money from Federal taxes;
Directly or not, here’s a thought to astound:
You probably shared in this merry-go-round!
Who laid the ground rules that draw to this nation
Immigrants swelling a huge population,
All needing housing? These guys you can thank
For increasing your profits and cash in your bank.?
Have you had no advantage from new medication??
Half the research is paid from taxation.
Have you had no advantage from rules about drugs,
Or water we drink, free of threatening bugs?
I bet were you sick I would hear through your sobs
“Wish they’d get a grip and start doing their jobs.”
Scrap Social Security? Wow, you are plucky,
But perhaps, just like you, everyone will get lucky,
The market might rise and its rise might not vary,
Believe that? Believe in the good Christmas Fairy!

“Thank God for the people who faithfully strive
To frame equal rules which have let business thrive,
Where corruption is modest, the playing field fair
And the whole business culture’s not governed by fear.
You’d have a real reason to grumble and moan
If you had to do business in Sierra Leone.

“No, none of us prosper alone, I would say.
A little humility goes a long way.”
…………………………….

From “The Rueful Hippopotamus”, by Robert Hanrott,
Published by ByD Press, available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Opioid antidotes and the huge profits they generate

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In 2016, 36 states joined a lawsuit against Reckitt Benckiser Group that alleged that the company had profited from the opioid crisis and siphoned money from Medicaid. The drug company allegedly worked to preserve its monopolistic hold on profits drawn from its control of addiction treatment drug Suboxone.

The 2016 lawsuit in Philadelphia has received little news coverage since its announcement. Reckitt is accused of spinning the court case out and has banked $5.8 billion in revenue from Suboxone just while the trial has been pending. It’s another example of a corporation tying up legal proceedings as it continues to profit off alleged bad practices. (From Tarbell, who investigate the activities of profiteering Big Pharma companies).

If you follow the money you discover why it is so difficult to police American pharmaceutical companies, and why the rational and common sense idea of allowing Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate prices, as is done centrally in other advanced countries, will never happen because Big Pharma fund the politicians. A huge, corrupt system which acts against the interests of the poor and sick. Meanwhile, we have a government trying to ensure that poor people have zero healthcare. No wonder Epicurus despise politics and politicians!

Further education again: the decline of the liberal arts

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The proportion of university undergraduates studying the liberal arts in the US has fallen by almost 50% since 1970. Business studies is the favourite; up and coming are statistics and data science.

The justification for studying the liberal arts – set out several times on this blog over the years – is that they teach people to problem solve, to communicate effectively, and to think for themselves.  The liberal arts should also prepare people for the increasing possibility that their chosen profession eventually disappears altogether. These reasons fall upon deaf ears, despite the fact that out of the 10 million jobs created in the United States since 2012, only 6% were in areas related to software, and information technology, and most were non-technical. What those in the liberal arts are well set up for are fast-growing areas like project management, market research, fundraising, and jobs where you have to think on your feet, work with ambiguity, write and speak well, and, most importantly, relate to and manage other people.

In my opinion, Business Studies as a first degree is a total waste of time, unless you are very lucky and are taught by someone who has had extensive business experience, has a sense of humour (the theory is boring), and who really understands and is good at people management (rare birds). If this latter is happily the case, then I’m surprised he or she isn’t “doing” rather than “teaching” the subject.

Politics are worse now that earmarks are banned

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“The problem with Washington today is that there just isn’t enough bribery. In the old days, when parties lacked a few crucial votes to pass important legislation, they could win over opponents with the help of so-called earmarks. These were sentences included in spending bills that directed some of the money to specific projects – a new day centre, a new motorway junction – at the request of a member of Congress. This pork barrel politics wasn’t pretty but it did grease the wheels of Congress. In 2011, however, Congress bowed to campaigners and banned earmarks.

“The then-Republican Speaker John Boehner said he hoped the move would stop members of Congress viewing politics in “transactional” terms, and encourage them to “think on a higher plane”. The effect has not been so benign. Having reduced Washington politics to “a pure battle of ideologies”, there are fewer opportunities for compromise and fewer downsides for members of Congress when bills fail. “After all, it’s not going to contain any goodies for your district, so who cares?” Earmarks may have been “unseemly”, but they were a price worth paying “to keep the government humming along”. (Kevin Drum, Mother Jones)

One could argue that the deep, tribal divisions in the country embrace a host of issues and for a host of reasons. But the incompetence and incapacity of Congress is truly scary. Kevin Drum has a very good point – if Congressmen had an incentive to cooperate with the opposite party we would see some progress. But they are hammered back home if they are seen to be too moderate (which means crossing party lines). Clearly, those who pushed through the change on earmarks were incapable of imagining the worst possible outcome – an ineffective government.

All that now matters is raising money, money, money, and keeping the financial backers happy. Exhibit One is the so-called Tax Reform bill, which is one of the most gross bribes in history (bribes to donors, thst is), and will result in horrendous deficits and no more growth than there would have been anyway.

Why is this posting is on an Epicurean blog? Because I am very fearful for the country, as are so many people who try to look ahead and know their history. Did the Civil War dver really end? Why does it seem to keep popping back up in various guises, albeit peacefully at present? The bullying corruption and lies are, at the very least, very bad both for morale and ataraxia.

An interesting take on Brexit

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Anthony Bennett is the author of a book called “The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump”. The author writes that Brexit was the result of successive breaches of trust on the part of the British ruling class. This included the calamity of the Iraq war, the 2008 financial crash and the bank bailout, paid for, not by bankers, but by the people. Along with these two events you got the decline of the monarchy, the constitutional reforms, the decline of the patrician class and the parallel rise of a celebrity mediocracy. Worse
was the English disenfranchisement and the lack of a specific English parliament, which meant that Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish have their feelings of identity catered to, but not the English.

An IPPR survey of 2014 found that, being deprived of a credible, representative power that belongs to them, people rebelled, not against the English politicians who presided over the series of mis-steps, but against the most remote authority of all – the EU. It is not the EU itself, Barnett argues, that is the main target of Brexit, but the unrepresentative British State. Only when England has dispensed with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (mainly the legacy of the Norman Conquest, nearly 1000 years ago), can England free itself to be a European country.

There are, of course, several other factors: immigration, nostalgia for lost world influence, the dissatisfaction of older, conservative people, the lingering class system, the loss of a feeling of community, the growing discourtesy and perceived lack of respect. And of course, economic problems, not the least of which are short-term work contracts and a growing gap between rich and poor. One could go on, but the author’s comments about the constitution are interesting. I for one identify with the constitutional observation, although I have never thought it through or articulated my feelings. The United Kingdom increasingly seems to be a throwback, a relic of empire. If the Scots want independence, well, why not. All these smaller entities could have been accommodated under the EU umbrella. But we missed the opportunity.

Thought for the day from Inequality.org

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According to Jeff Bezos, billionaires have a hard time finding ways to spend their money. In an interview with Axel Springer CEO, Mathias Döpfner, the Amazon head and richest person in the world called space travel the only way he could imagine using his vast financial resources.

But billionaires don’t need to go to space to spend their money. They have plenty of options right here on Earth. A good place for Bezos to start: actually paying Amazon’s corporate taxes.

Our oceans are dying!

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The proportion of the world’s oceans defined as “dead” – containing such low levels of oxygen that very little marine life can survive – has increased alarmingly in the past 70 years, scientists have warned. The researchers, from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre, among other institutions, studied dead zones both in open waters and around coasts, and found that the former have quadrupled in size since 1950, expanding by an area roughly the size of the European Union. Meanwhile, coastal dead zones have grown tenfold, from fewer than 50 to more than 500 today. The deoxygenation of open waters has been linked to global warming: water holds less oxygen the warmer it gets. In coastal areas, dead zones are more likely to be caused by sewage and fertiliser run-off giving rise to algal blooms, which, as they decompose, suck the oxygen from the water. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers warn that if the problem isn’t addressed, it could lead to the “major extinction” of sea life.

Deeply frustrating, isn’t it? I wish one could actually do something about it, but it is a matter for governments, and there isn’t the will among many nations to take action. One can point to some man-made causes: crass ignorance about global climate change, over-population that ends up helping foul the seas; and over-fishing everywhere. It all seems overwhelming, especially since there is a sinister increase in the number of extremist, dictatorial governments who don‘t care. As individuals we can only do what we can do.
Epicurus, shocked, would ask, “The human race has done ….what?!”

Homeless people in England and the US

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If it seems to British people that there are more people sleeping on the streets these days than there used to be, they are right. Statistics published recently show that rough sleeping in England has increased for the seventh consecutive year: local authorities estimated that there were 4,751 people bedded down outside on any given night in autumn 2017, up 15% on the previous year. And it is no coincidence that the rise in rough sleeping began in 2010, the year the Tories started imposing austerity, reducing funding for homeless hostels and other support services, arbitrarily capping benefits, and raising rents.

A quarter of the rough sleepers are in London and a fifth of are foreign nationals. There are two sorts of rough sleeper: the transient homeless who get picked up and placed in at least temporary accommodation quite quickly, and those who suffer from a range of addictions and mental health issues. In the case of latter the difficulty isn’t finding them a roof, but keeping them under it. Then there is the much larger group of people languishing in poor, temporary accommodation all over the country.

Conservatives criticise Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting the purchase of 8,000 properties across the country to provide free housing for these people. Has he given any thought to “the perverse incentives that would be created by such a move?”, they ask. Buying more homes may not be the answer, but the Tory government needs to tackle the deeper causes behind homelessness. Back in the 1980s and early 90s the spike in homelessness helped bring about their electoral defeat by reinforcing the image of them as “selfish and uncaring”. The same could happen again. If Britons keep witnessing the “scandalous” sight of people sleeping outside in icy weather, they’ll turn their wrath on those who failed to fix the problem. (various news articles, including The Times and the New Statesman).

The British may think they have a bad problem but there were, according to Reuters and the Department of Urban Development, 554,000(!) homeless people in the United States in January 2018, a quarter of them children! 193,000 of these were living on the streets and had no access to shelters or safe havens. New York, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Hawaii, and California were the worst affected states. Of these DC is by far the worst (high house prices, a big black population and many very poor people).

Were Epicurus alive today I have no doubt he would consider this a disastrous reflection on a society which in many ways is so advanced, and in others so heartless.

Are the super-rich uncaring?

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The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the richest part of Europe, recently held elections for the borough council. The elections were believed to be unpredictable because of a terrible tragedy that had occurred last year, where a public housing tower block called Grenfell Tower burnt down, killing 71 people. The tower burnt because it contained low-quality cladding. The council had been warned by residents that this was unsafe, yet chose not to take action. Although the fire was technically an accident, it was also a needless tragedy- it would’ve been avoided had basic fire safety standards been adhered to. And while the obvious story of the fire was one of the council’s neglect, it also showed how poor people are often treated by the wealthy.

As a consequence of the Grenfell Tower disaster, you would expect the council’s Conservative administration to be voted out of office due to a total abdication of responsibility. Not only did they fail to prevent the fire, they have since failed to permanently rehouse many of the tower’s former residents. But astoundingly, the Kensington and Chelsea Conservatives emerged from the election barely unscathed, losing only one councillor in a 50-member council. The opposition Labour party increased their representation from 11 to 13 councillors. And the third party, the Liberal Democrats, went from having 2 councillors to 1. But with 36 councillors out of 50, the Conservatives retained a comfortable majority. This was because most of the borough is very wealthy, and all of the wealthy wards chose Conservatives. Turnout was up considerably, which meant that some of the richer residents would have chosen to vote specifically to ensure the Conservatives retained their majority.

This is a perfect example of why many people question the basic morality of the super rich. Is paying a bit less in council tax really that much more important than holding people to account for an appalling disaster? Is it possible for a potential Labour council to be any worse than the incumbents? Most importantly, isn’t living in a fair society more important than enriching yourself? If the rich are as uncaring as the Kensington and Chelsea election results suggest, then perhaps radical steps must be taken to reduce their political influence.

Overall I don’t know whether its fair to say that the rich are uncaring. I don’t believe voting Conservative necessarily makes someone selfish- I’m just as sceptical of Britain’s left-wing parties as I am of the Tories. I certainly accept than many rich people, including in the United Kingdom, do not vote Conservative; the well-heeled London borough of Richmond upon Thames ousted a Conservative council in favour of a Liberal Democrat one the same day Kensington and Chelsea re-elected the Tories. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are increasingly popular amongst middle-class young people like myself, which is why the thriving university cities of Oxford and Cambridge no longer have any Conservative councillors. In socially liberal wealthy neighbourhoods in cities like Bristol, Edinburgh or Sheffield, liberal and left-leaning parties are entrenched.

The point is that in the context of the Grenfell Tower disaster, I think re-electing the Conservatives was a very callous and parochial thing for Kensington and Chelsea to do. I certainly hope groups like Justice for Grenfell hold the council to account, even if they can’t achieve electoral success. Were I the Labour Party, I would use the Kensington and Chelsea results as proof the wealthy only care for themselves, and so must be forced to contribute to the society that made them rich. The Conservatives may have won a local election in Britain’s wealthiest borough. But if they aren’t careful, they could lose the trust of the rest of the country.

Facebook and developing countries

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The Washington Post, in today’s edition, states that Facebook estimates that there were as many 87 million fake accounts in the last quarter, a dramatic jump over 2016, when an estimated 18 million were judged to be fake. A large number of these accounts were created in such countries as Indonesia, Turkey and Vietnam. Not included in this figure are the duplicate accounts created by accident or by people who have private and professional sites. These latter two categories account for an estimated 10% of Facebook’s global user base.

“The troubling implications of Facebook’s global monopoly are at last becoming clear. The worst threat is to developing societies, which lack a free press or an independent judiciary to check the pernicious influence of social media. Now that its market in the West is approaching saturation, Facebook is assiduously targeting less developed parts of the world, where it often offers free connectivity as part of the deal to get its app.

“The result is that for many, Facebook is now the sole source of online information – and a far from wholesome one. In Myanmar, it was essentially the medium for the anti-Muslim hysteria that led to ethnic cleansing: the ultra-nationalist monk Ashin Wirathu, who was banned from preaching to crowds, used Facebook to broadcast his inflammatory propaganda. Sri Lanka’s recent descent into communal violence was similarly fuelled by provocative Facebook content. “Fake news affects elections in the West, but in the rest of the world it costs lives. And Facebook is often a carrier of it.”. (part-adapted from an article by John Naughton in The Observer, reproduced in The Week).

Maybe I am anti-social, but I am also far too busy to mess with Facebook. From time to time I am told that my eldest son is in Warsaw or Dubai, or some such place, but although I am proud of him for handling a good career so well and seeing the world while he is about it, I cannot get too excited. For one thing he is too busy to give me his take on Warsaw or Dubai, and what he did there, and I like to think that, like him, I am a doer, not a watcher or a follower. But these comments are simply a preface to a much more important observation: Facebook is turning out to be a malign influence in far too many places. We have had promise after promise from the company, mea culpa after mea culpa about bogus news and political manipulation. Facebook has become sinister and is too concerned about money and unconcerned about the use to which the service is put. It should either be policed firmly and effectively or be closed down – in the name of decency. It turns out increasingly that it has little positive social value. Talk to your friends and family, phone them, visit them look them in the eye, relate with them directly for heaven’s sake!