Are you who you think you are?

This may sound nuts, but today I found out that I'm not, according to a credit-checking company called Equifax. I'd never heard of them personally, but when I tried to set up a direct debit for my new cellphone, I was rejected. Why? I asked naively. I have no unpaid debts, my bank account is in credit, I only want a ten-pound top-up every month. It turns out that my date of birth, the same one I've always had and which my mother (who was there at the time) assures me is correct, doesn't match that in the files of Equifax.

I wouldn't mind that so much in itself; the 11th September has become an inauspicious date in the last 4 years, I'd happily change it for the 9th of February, say, or sometime in July when the weather's nice and we could have a barbecue. However, the incovenience of this is that all my other forms of identification, birth certificates, bank accounts, passports etc., include the DOB 9/11/1966. They would; it was the day on which I was born, after all.

I think I can reasonably discount an enormous organised conspiracy by my mother, father, grandparents etc., to have a good laugh at my expense 39 years later; I admit to paranoid tendencies but even I can see that's loony. No, I'm afraid Equifax have got their facts (or fax) wrong. So tonight I visited their website with the intention of correcting this, even prepared to scan in a copy of my birth certificate if necessary. Stymied. The only way to contact them was to sign up, and the only way to sign up was to pay £9.95 for a full credit report, and when I typed in my details (frustrated and foaming at the ears) I was continually rejected for an error in the DOB field. I have no way of knowing what incorrect DOB they're holding for me, and even if I did, typing it in would only confirm it; I'm trapped in an electronic Catch 22. Okay, for the moment I don't care, I'll pay for a top-up card for my cellphone like everyone else, but what if I want a mortgage, or a loan for a yacht (unlikely, but I can dream, can't I?).

So who are Equifax, how come they have an file on me anyway? Here in the UK we have a thing called the Data Protection Act, which (allegedly) allows any citizen to access any data stored about them anywhere, by anyone. This is all very well and good, but I didn't know of the existence of Equifax until today, let alone that they knew about me, and they're almost certainly one of many. Every time we use our plastic fantastic, our tastes, shopping-habits, musical preferences, preferred contraceptives and petfoods are stored on a database somewhere. How on earth are any of us supposed to go about finding out who is storing what and why, and more importantly, if they're getting it right?

And some of it is partly our own fault. For instance, I have a store loyalty card which belonged to my deceased grandmother. It's mostly through laziness that I haven't changed this to my own name, but also partly because I don't use that store much and also because last time I tried it (in another store) I somehow "lost" all the accumulated points. So on some databases, my Gran is still alive and well and spending her pension on stuffed artichokes and Cabernet Sauvignon. I routinely get junk-mail for her, since I now live at her address; I've formulated a letter along the lines of "Dear X, Thank you for your offer of life insurance/cruise holidays/adoption of a Spanish donkey; I regret to inform you that Mrs. X (Gran) has been deceased for over 4 years, and our local authority have strict criteria about the exhumation of human bodies. Tempting though your offer is, I feel that it does not meet these criteria etc., etc." I like to print these form letters off and stick them in any pre-paid envelope that arrives; hopefully someone in an office somewhere will be marginally amused by this. It's nice to think I can contribute to the sum of human happiness, even in so miniscule and macabre a fashion.

Identity theft has been big news recently, as has the introduction of biometric ID. These gizmos, fingerprinted ID cards and iris-recognition passports and security cards are (so we're told here in the UK at least) going to make this kind of fraud almost impossible. Oh yeah? If you look at the history of crime, you'll find that criminals are almost always one step ahead; that's why hacking and ID theft have been so successful, after all. I read an article in the "New Scientist" this week, and according to the NS people are already being divided into sheep, lambs, wolves and goats. Sheep (so I read) will be easy to classify; lambs will be most vulnerable to fraud; wolves will be good mimics; goats will be people like manual workers (erased fingerprints) or people with facial deformities (not susceptible to iris scans) who just won't get into the system in the first place. If you're interested, the last two editions of New Scientist - www.newscientist.com - deal with biometric identity systems and their drawbacks; in the light of my experience with Equifax, I've found these articles both enlightening and more than a little frightening.

So if anyone has any ideas how I can convince Equifax that they've got it wrong, I'd be interested to know. I have a feeling it will be the first of many dilemmas for me with electronic identity; I've never knowingly passed myself off as anyone else, and as far as I know, people aren't queueing up to be me. But how can you know, until you check? I didn't - I've got a passport, a home, all the usual trappings of civilisation except a credit card (I'm an old hippy), but apparently I'm not who I think I am. But hey, I wouldn't mind losing a decade, maybe even 10lbs or so, come to think of it.........

Dr Mo Mowlam by Rob Beckett 2005 

The March of Unreason

Every year in Northern Ireland, something called "The Marching Season" occurs. That's a rather interesting name, as though this particularly human phenomenon were something as unstoppable and inevitable as El Nino or the Mistral. Most of these marches are organised by people who call themselves variously Unionists, Loyalists, Orangemen and Protestants; the Marches are predominantly anti-Catholic, sectarian and (frankly) rankly provocative.

This is the year that the IRA finally gave up the "armed struggle", the murderous inter-faith Intifada that has ripped apart Northern Ireland and (often) the British mainland since before I was born. Here, if you like, is the Dark Heart of Christianity; if there really is a Satan, I reckon he lives somewhere between the Garvachy Road and the Church of Dumcree. So there was a lot of hope at the beginning of this "Marching Season", because the Loyalists had, effectively, got what they were supposed to be wanting. But it wasn't enough. These "Loyalists" (I use these quotation marks because I'm a subject in the Kingdom they purport to be loyal too, and I'd really rather they weren't) have traditionally insisted on marching through Catholic areas of Belfast. In the past, the Royal Ulster Contabulary, which is over 90% Protestant, have allowed this; it's hard to say whether they (the RUC) were secretly sympathetic to the Orangemen, or were simply intimidated by the force of numbers.

However, this year, with the IRA cease-fire and decommissioning of weapons in progress, the traditional marches were routed away from Catholic areas (or ghettos, as we'd all be calling them if black people or Jews lived there) and a different story unfolded. In the last 3 nights, we've seen the worst violence in Northern Ireland for years; this time it was the Loyalists v. the Police, apparently in an attempt to get into Catholic areas of Belfast.

A bit of background might be in order here, for those normal member of the human race who don't know what's going on or why. The Orange Order was formed in Loughall in 1795 (wait, it gets better) amongst other things to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne in 1609, in which the Protestant King William of Orange (Dutch and tedious) defeated his Catholic father-in-law King James II (English and mad). This was known as the Glorious Revolution to those who (I presume) won, and wrote the history books. 396 years later, we could all be forgiven for thinking "Get over it!", especially since they won, but apparently that's not going to happen. "King Billy" is still a presence on the Northern Irish stage. So the Orangemen are "loyal" not only to a king who's been dead for 3 and a half centuries or so, but whose dynasty vanished from the British throne shortly after.

The RUC have today declared the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to be no longer "on ceasefire". They've been officially on ceasefire for 11 years now, but in Northern Ireland, with the Ulster Defence Force, the Real IRA, and the Devil only knows how many other splinter groups abounding, it's hard to backtrack any specific bullet to any specific gun. You find good politicians, by which I mean people of good faith like David Trimble, a Unionist who was prepared to deal politically with the Catholic Sinn Fein, forced out of office, and disingenuous fanatics like the self-proclaimed "Reverend" Ian Paisley playing on the inherited fears and mistrusts of ordinary people to further their own careers.

Anyone who's ever heard the "Rev." Paisley speak (actually I should say "rant", and it's an education, believe me) will immediately recognise someone not prepared to relent or compromise on any level; the gestures, the rhetoric and the deliberately-heightened tension are reminiscent of Hitler in the Nuremberg Rally days. It's my belief that as long as the "Rev." remains a "power" in Northern Irish politics, long-term peace and stability will be an impossibility. The wounds are far too fresh, only just scabbing over, for someone as abrasive as him to be at loose. Unfortunately, although the "Rev" is pretty ancient, he has a son (also called Ian - what is it about megalomaniacs which makes them call their offspring after them - ahem, Mr. Bush?) who seems prepared to take over where his father - well, he won't leave off, but at some point he will inevitably shuffle off this mortal coil.

We in the UK lost a great stateswoman this year. You probably haven't heard of Mo Mowlam, but she was the principal architect of the Good Friday Agreement, which was the first real signed and sealed step on the arduous road to peace in Northern Ireland. Like a lot of people, I genuinely mourned her; she fell out with Tony Blair and got herself demoted out of the Cabinet, but most ordinary Labour supporters and (certainly) the people of Northern Ireland recognised her acheivements in that deeply riven province. Being made Secretary for Northern Ireland, in itself, is a political "punishment" for a Cabinet minister; it's traditionally been a no-win job where every bombing and political murder washes up at your door. Mo Mowlam turned that around, and was instrumental in making the Stormont Parliament a workable idea - and even though it's been closed down for now, the idea has been planted, there's something for the new generation of politicians to aspire to, and I believe the seed will grow.

I'm glad Mo didn't live to see the Marching Season this year. It would have been very hard, I think, for her to have witnessed the violence and brutality committed not by "terrorists" who hate the UK and want to break away, but by so-called "Loyalist freedom-fighters", people who call themselves UK citizens and claim to want to live as part of the UK and abide by our laws. Which is odd in itself, because the police take a pretty dim view of Molotov cocktails whoever throws them.

Magic Cat (for Olympiada) 

Sad But True 

How to Get Rid of a President

Twice in this blog I've mentioned that I'm not very "savvy" on the American Constitution, which means by my own standards that I shouldn't be writing about it. So I spent this morning reading it, and making notes (thanks, Word, for cut'n'paste). Of course there's the bit everyone knows about High Crimes and Misdemeanours, which is a bit weasel-worded and judging by the late Mr. Nixon they have to be pretty high (in the old sense of "high meat", i.e. stinking and rotten), and more importantly, you have to get well and truly caught. I don't for a moment suspect GWB of being as intelligent - oops, I mean corrupt - as Richard Milhouse, and besides, the Democrats are perfectly capable (and seemingly happy) to shoot their own selves in the foot nowadays. I'm certainly not suggesting that any honest politician should be making capital out of a disaster like Katrina, but if ever there was a moment to savage the President in the name of the people, this is it.

So, reading on through the Constitution, I came across a definition of "Treason" which might be applicable in this case; it's in Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1, and it goes like this: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort (my italics)". It goes on to say that two witnesses are required to each or any treasonous action, which is okay because a few million of us at the very least have been watching GWB giving aid, comfort and probably (such is the unpleasantness of human nature) much hilarity to the enemies of the US by his total incompetence.

In the last week I've seen things on the BBC and CNN that will stay with me until I die. I've seen extraordinary human courage and endurance, great dignity in the face of misery and loss, acts of kindness and generosity - none of which amounted to the proverbial hill of beans, because there was nothing to eat, and more deadly still, nothing to drink. Thirst is a terrible way to die; I haven't experienced it myself, since I'm clearly alive and typing, but during chemotherapy a couple of years ago I suffered from massive dehydration almost all the time, and I can tell you that there were times when I couldn't get water for myself and I wanted to die. There must have been hundreds, thousands maybe, of people who died from thirst in that searing heat; we'll never know, of course, and maybe it's better that we don't. If you have the empathy to imagine what it must be like to have nothing to drink but your own urine, then you probably don't want to know how many people died that way.

I feel that the clincher for Bush will be the number of people who lost their lives btween the end of Katrina herself and the arrival of the emergency services - the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency, something like that? According to a very hacked off truck-driver, his lorry had been loaded up with water bottles in Texas on Monday, but he didn't get permission to go into New Orleans until Thursday. Watching from across the Atlantic, on the BBC's rolling news converage and through the blogosphere, it seemed that the first people to go in were SWAT teams with orders to "shoot to kill" looters - and by day 3 or 4 anyone who wanted to eat or drink was forced to become a looter. Certainly, property rights are important, but not more so than human life - any human life. And yes, I do include the young black guy with the armful of designer jeans in that; I think that clip must have been played a thousand times, every time the word "looting" was mentioned in fact.

So all in all, this President has been providing quite some aid and comfort to America's enemies, as far as I can see. It must be a huge morale-booster to any anti-American organisations, to know that the Administration is so incapable. What better incentive to mount another terrorist attack than the conviction, fostered by the FEMA debacle and the cavalier attitude of Bush and Congress (still golfing, guys?), that the US is run by incompetents for the elite? Surely all Al Qaeda need to do is wait until the next Recess, and they'll have at least a 3-day head start?

There's another article in the Constitution (Section 3), namely that "(the President) may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both (the Houses) or either of them", something which GWB signally failed to do. He didn't even convene himself! If the destruction of New Orleans was an "extraordinary occasion", I'd like to know what he's waiting for - the War of the Worlds?

Maybe, just maybe, all American citizens good and true should take another look at your Constitution, and re-read it in the light of an outsider. Maybe, because you learn it at school the way we British learn Shakespeare (we don't have a Constitution), you don't pay enough attention to what it means. Has your President been grossly negligent, and has this given "aid and comfort" to America's enemies? I think so. I think a lot of lunatic fringes all over the world will be seeing this as God's punishment for this, that or the other, and Bush's incompetence will be seen as a further chastisement, even an encouragement. It's time to get rid; how many more years can you afford to babysit a lame-duck administration? Wake up and smell the rotting bodies, America; most of us are crying with you, but a lot of people will be laughing.

Georgie Through The Looking Glass

I must admit that "North American refugees" is a phrase I never expected to read or hear in my lifetime; in fact, it's taken a week for commentators to get there, graduating through "survivors" to "victims", or "victims" to "survivors", depending on who you listen to - at this very moment the Mayor of New Orleans is speaking to a BBC reporter, ramming home the point that these "refugees" are in fact US citizens, not Boat People or Displaced Persons in Chad or Darfur. From over here, on the other side of the water, the race issue is not being overly emphasised because it doesn't need to be: we can all see for ourselves that 9/10 of the people there inside and outside the Superbowl, or paddling though the LaFitte Projects, or in three cases bobbing face-down in the filthy water, are black. The dead lady rotting in the wheelchair had a black (and bloodstained) foot. The seven-week-old baby with dysentery lying naked in his father's arms was black. Mary Landry cried on air (after, let's not forget, endorsing the "shoot to kill" policy for "looters", even those "looting" food or water) for help from GWB, as though a US Governor needs to beg for help from her President.

As I said in my last post, it's been a bad year for humanity. My daughter (4 and a half) and I have watched most of it on TV, the Asian Tsunami, the misery of Darfur and Niger, and now Katrina. We send money; I talk to her about it, explaining as well as I can, and we decide what we'll give up; maybe it's Teletubbies magazines for her and cigarettes for me, maybe chocolate for her and no hash for me. I've given up almost all my vices this year, except maybe weltschmertz. This is the first time, however, that she's asked me to write to someone; "You should write to them, Mama, you should tell them about us." She said, with big earnest eyes. I said "I will, if you like, but who to, sweetheart?" And she hesitated - "The black people, the dead people - and the bad people!"

I can't write to the dead, and I imagine that the living, the survivors, the refugees have better things to do than to read my blog. As for the bad people - Lennie, my daughter, seems convinced that there must be some bad people, or this couldn't possibly happen, right? The world is very simple when you're 4. Then again, the BBC news correspondants who are covering Katrina are openly incredulous at the length of time it took for aid to get through. At the moment I'm listening to BBC News 24, and GWB is making an appeal for money, asking us to give to the Red Cross. We already did, as it happens, but it does seem bizarre that the world's richest nation should be so slow off the mark, so niggardly in its response, so slipshod. The UK Government is donating half a million military ration-packs - why? We're a small country, you know; less indeed than the total area destroyed by Katrina. We don't even have half a million in the military!

Donald Rumsfeldt (long may he live and line his pockets) is now pontificating that this is a "natural disaster of unprecedented proportions in US History (sic)". Well, there was the Great Fire of Chigaco and the California Earthquake, and maybe the only reason they didn't claim as many lives (or maybe they did, and I just don't know it) is because they weren't so well-documented or the populations were smaller and less dense. Who am I to dispute with Mr. Rumsfeldt? The point still is, I feel, that a great deal more could have been done to prevent the loss of life (I've read, for instance, that the Army Engineers reports on the condition of the Levees were 40 years out of date), and surely what we here in the UK call Rapid Response Units could have been on hand (not six days away, or in Iraq) to move in as soon as Katrina moved out?

I saw a photo of GWB on day 2 of Katrina playing the Gee-tar at some kind of barbecue fundraising event. You have to wonder what he's paying his aids for:

"Er - Mr. Bush, Sir - "
"Whaddya want, son, I'm on a riff here!"(KerTwaaaang)
"Er - Hurricane Katrina has hit the Gulf Coast, Sir!"
"Well whaddya wait'n' for? Get aholt of the Ambassador to Kyooowait!"

Like I said, I'm not that savvy on how to get rid of an incompetent President; Impeachment (on the grounds of fiddling while New Orleans downs?) might be one, and of course there's always the tried and true Lincoln Remedy. But I feel that making a martyr of an idiot would be too much; he doesn't deserve it. Is there any mechanism by which an election can be called early? Is there no such thing (or equivalent) of the British "vote of no confidence", in which Parliament does what it says on the can, and votes that it has no confidence in the PM?

If not, maybe the American constitution needs updating. All constitutions do from time to time (women vote now, don't they?), and in this "unprecedented natural disaster" the US is burdened, crippled even, with an unnaturally incomptetent president. Get rid, get real, and get on with rebuilding the country.

Midnight Webcam 

Katrina, four days in.

From Banda Aceh to Biloxi, it's been a hard old year for the human race. I had to stop writing for a while after the London bombings; the UK is a small place, and almost all of us down here in the South East where I live have family and friends in the capital. My closest friend passed through King's Cross on his way to work about 45 minutes before the bomb went off there; it took a while for the shock of that one to settle, for both of us.

But lately I've been back out in the blogosphere, especially since Katrina blew away the Gulf Coast of the US; firstly I simply wanted to get news and views, although the BBC coverage has been excellent as usual. Reactions to events like this are often as informative as factual reporting, and so I found it in this case.

Of course, the blogosphere itself is still very slanted towards America, simply because more Americans have pcs and blogs than us poor old Europeans, and because English (Amercian?) has established itself as the lingua franca of the Web. The first thing I noticed when visiting my usual sites (which I must admit are in general liberal, left-wing orgs like Alternet, though I try to balance it out with sites like The Washington Post) was how many people seemed to be using this natural disaster as a stick to beat each other with. Not only the usual suspects on the political left, but the right seemed to be thrown into an orgy of mudslinging too; some bunch of pseudo-Christian nutters insisting that Katrina (from a satellite view) was a representation of a six-week-old foetus and therefore was God's way of saying etc., etc. (I expect you can guess the rest - it would be funny if it weren't so scary and so sad), other self-procalimed rationalists somehow managing to use a hurricane as a direct political message from - well, who cares? - to - well, everyone else, I suppose - to overthrow the US Government. Such as it is.

What is both stupefying and terrifying is the lack of preparation and directed response to this wholly predictable (and widely predicted) disaster. What's going on? Or rather, what isn't? We all knew last week - at least, I did; I read it in the newspaper and I saw it on the telly - that Katrina was going to hit New Orleans. The "worst case scenario" (which turned out to be accurate) was thoroughly discussed, there were a clear three days or so to get things moving before the hurricane hit - so how come people are still stranded amongst the rotting dead, without food or water, in the most highly-developed nation in the world? I hear that Bush is going to visit (or fly over, or whatever) the Gulf Coast today; why? Does he need to see it with his own eyes for some reason? Wouldn't a payload of, say, water purification tablets be of more use to the people on the ground?

It's like a farce, like a grotesque morality play on greed and incompetency; where are one third of the National Guard? In Iraq. The Army? Likewise. And if GWB was sincere in his protestation that what he's doing in Iraq is for the good of the Iraqi people, and not for oil, then surely it's his duty to his own people, the people who elected him to govern them and to protect them, to bring the National Guard and the Army home? Certainly, by his own rhetoric the "job" in Iraq isn't finished, but surely a President's first duty is to his own people? As a UK citizen, I'd expect Tony Blair to do just that in similar circumstances, and to give him his due, Blair probably would. Contrast Tony's reaction to the London bombings with Bush's incompetence in the face of Katrina. I'm not often proud of Tony, in fact it rather sticks in my throat to admit it, but there was no doubt that he was both sincere and efficient. It seems to me the GWB is neither; in the final analysis, his sincerity doesn't matter a damn; his efficiency does. For lack of it, people are dying in their hundreds. Soon they will be dying in their thousands.

There's a lot of speculation now as to how, when and even if New Orleans will recover/be rebuilt. It seems unthinkable to write off a city like that, but what's really unthinkable is that this should have happened at all. This was a predictable and predicted disaster, eminently preventable if the will had been there. Money which could and should have been spent on reinforcing the flood defences of this highly vulnerable city has gone elsewhere - in tax cuts to the rich, on an indefensible war in Iraq - and the poor of New Orleans are paying the price in human misery. There's not a thing GWB or anyone else could have done to stop Katrina, but a great deal could have been done to reinforce and protect the towns and cities in its path. Certainly more could and should have been done to prepare for this disaster, to evacuate beforehand - and I mean help people to evacuate, not advise people; of course everyone who can afford to will get out of the way, but the most vulnerable people are those who can't afford it. And on that subject, I think that "looting" needs to be redefined in this situation; anyone stealing food or water to survive isn't a looter, they're just doing what any one of us would do to stay alive. How can you expect soldiers or police to "shoot to kill" their own fellow citizens, and how do you suppose these wounds will ever heal if they do?

I'm not savvy enough about the American Constitution to know how Impeachment works, or if there's any other way available to get rid of a dangerously incompetent president, but I think it's time to do so if possible. I also think that the left should stop bickering (and even in some cases gloating - Bush's incomptetence here is measured in human life and death, it's in very poor taste to trumpet "We told you so!") and use this example of gross negligence to get rid of the man. Anyone for a revolution?