Cognitive Conga: a blog

The title of this post comes from a phrase taught in the medical profession, the intended interpretation of which is along the lines, given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good. As with intervention by doctors, intervention by police, especially violent intervention - however well-intentioned - has the possibility of being more harmful than helpful. It is important that police officers are aware of this, and that they are imaginitive enough to consider and assess the likely outcomes of the different courses of action available to them when handling an incident.

Police brutality - the use of excessive or inappropriate force by police officers while engaged in other professional misconduct or in the course of their duties - has been a popular topic in the British media since the death of Ian Tomlinson during the recent G20 protests in London. It's a phenomenon I was aware of by the time of the Hillsborough Disaster, if not before. I have a vague idea that I had heard of the Battle of Orgreave by then, but I am not certain that I had.

Police brutality was something I first learned about via newspapers, via the television news programmes I saw at friends' houses (my family did not own a TV when I was little), and also by reading the sleeves of some of my parents' records - e.g. The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, and Victor Jara's Manifesto - and asking what they meant.

In 1992, my mother visited Los Angeles after her mother's death, and later told me how Los Angeles had, at the time, been aflame in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating. The media, both in the US and in the UK, had been aflame with the Rodney King story too, and the US media certainly bore some responsibility for stoking the anger that led to the riots. Still, it meant that everyone in those countries with a newspaper or a television set now knew what police brutality was supposed looked like. That year was also, if my memory serves, when I first obtained a copy of Rage Against The Machine's eponymous debut album. Songs like Know Your Enemy, not to mention Pearl Jam's w.m.a., which I came to know a year later, increased my awareness of the idea that police misconduct could be insidious and covert, in addition to the spectacular and overt brutality of the kind that generates a media frenzy. The uncovering of substantial corruption at my local police station a year after that served to confirm the legitimacy of this awareness.

Whether it involved children being shot in South Africa in the '70s and '80s, peaceful World Trade Organisation protestors being tear-gassed and unconstitutionally arrested in Seattle in the '90s or riot police beating monks to death in Burma in the noughties, the same conclusion could be drawn from every instance of police brutality I learned of during my youth and subsequently: although the police exist ostensibly to help prevent citizens from harming each other, police officers can - and do, on occasion - needlessly harm civilians themselves, unless those police are responsibly governed.

That last point is important, because it is key to a safe, free society. Without an effective police force, vigilantism - which can be far worse - rises largely unchecked and the risk to personal safety increases. But police, like the government, should be - to paraphrase the Gettysburg Address - of the people, by the people, and for the people. They must abide by the same laws they exist to help enforce. Responsible government of police would ensure that not only are police of the people and for the people, but also that those police officers see themselves in this light. Otherwise there is a risk that the following statement by Victor Jara could - as I'm afraid it sometimes does - apply to those police officers as well as to the Chilean soldiers Jara was referring to:

I think that the professional soldier, from the fact of wearing a uniform and having power over the rest of the contingent, loses the sense of his own class. I think the exercise of command makes him, consciously or unconsciously, put himself on a different plane and see life from a different point of view. He believes himself to be superior.

Substitute police officer for soldier, and this statement explains much of the behaviour seen in the instances of brutality I have mentioned.

Let's just consider the other side of the coin for a moment. Is it possible that police brutality is beneficial or deserved? In short, no. Police brutality cannot ever be deserved, as it is, by my understanding (see above) unnecessary a priori. That's not to say that police should never use force - clearly, force can sometimes be needed to take a suspect into custody or to keep him there - merely that a minimum of force should be used.

There are some oblique ways in which the harm caused by police brutality can be mitigated. One is by inspiring artistic responses. If there were no police brutality, songs like N.W.A.'s Fuck Tha Police and bands like T.B.A.C. would surely have no raison d'être. But I, for one, would be willing to trade this music - which I like, by the way, even if I don't agree with every one of the artists' sentiments - for proportionate policing.

There is one other mitigation I can think of: if the brutality is widely reported, the outrage it prompts can lead to official reviews of police tactics, which, if carried out well, could limit further brutalities. This may yet happen as a result of the Ian Tomlinson tragedy. But it comes a very poor second to having no brutalities at all.

Despite growing up in England, I'm not fond of many English drinks. The school canteens, vending machines, newsagents, mini-supermarkets and pubs at which, in my youth, I sought refreshment typically offered no healthy options except overpriced still mineral water. The fruit juice was thin and sharply acidic and everything else was carbonated (bad for the teeth, because of carbonic acid), sugary (also, obviously, bad for the teeth - but also very high-GI), loaded with dubious artificial sweeteners like aspartame (laxatives; possible carcinogens; and more's the point, an unnecessary industrial adulterant), or some combination of these. In the US, on the other hand, it was easy to buy fresh drinks with wholly natural ingredients: horchata, for instance, or fruit smoothies. I longed for these to be available in the UK. They're delicious, affordable, hydrating, nutritive, and have, if I'm not mistaken, a lower GI than conventional sugary soft drinks.

As for hot drinks and alcoholic ones: the former tend to burn my tongue, waste prodigious quantities of energy, usually contain caffeine I neither need nor want, and often contain pesticide residues; and the latter, while nice to have a little of occasionally, are hardly a sensible choice for daily rehydration.

So when P&J Smoothies, and then Innocent Smoothies, started to become available from supermarkets, and other food sellers in the UK, I was thrilled. At last, I could set out to buy a drink at a local shop with enthusiasm!

But the honeymoon's over now. I've just heard that Innocent has sold a £30m stake to Coca-Cola, a company I loathe not only for its mostly worthless products and brainwashing advertising campaigns but also for its serious failures to take life-and-death corporate social responsibility seriously. These failures have been reported on in the better newspapers at various times over the last few years, so ignorance of them isn't a terribly convincing excuse. Moreover, the investigative activist comedian Mark Thomas has written a fairly comprehensive book on the subject, and he's written to one of Innocent's co-founders, asking him to reconsider the sale, so Innocent really can't claim to be acting innocently: they have the facts before them. Yet the deal has not, it seems, been reconsidered.

Consequently, I plan to extend my boycott of Coke to Innocent. While this might reduce my options next time I'm at the chill cabinet, my conscience will be easier for it, and some Colombian trade unionists and Indian farmers might also sleep a tiny bit better at night.

I wrote a quick email to Innocent to let them know:

Dear Adam, Jon and Richard,

Despite being in many ways a clone of P&J, which I think might have been first to the (super)market in the UK, Innocent won my affection by providing delicious fresh fruit smoothies and challenging the previously dire state of the UK soft drinks market. One of the reasons the drinks market was so dire in the first place was due to the hegemony of a few unimaginitive companies and their unhealthy products: Smithkline, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo et al.

Now, with £30m of Coca-Cola's (partly criminally earned) riches in your pockets, you're sleeping with the enemy, in my opinion. Innocent was successful already, and solvent too, as far as I can tell, so I don't think you needed the money. That being so, it would have behooved you to refuse it.

Mark Thomas has already written to you to explain why Coca-Cola is not a corporation to be trusted, and much one less to promote or support in any fashion.

So bye-bye, Innocent, I'll be missing your innocence.

Here are Mark's messages to Innocent, which I've copied - hoping he won't mind; I'll take them down if he asks me to - from his website since they aren't directly linkable.

Mark's [first] message to Innocent

Mark's response to Innocent who are apparently an ethical company but have now received a £30 Million investment from Coca Cola who are probably not an ethical company:

Hi Richard,

I just wanted to drop you a note regarding your new found partnership with Coca Cola. An acquaintance mailed you earlier today and passed your response on to me. There are some fundamental factual inaccuracies and ignorance in your reply. You wrote:

As a business, Coke are definitely not perfect (although it is worth saying that independent judicial enquiries at the time found that the Columbia (sic) allegations to be unfounded, the same with India water although I am nervous about saying these things as it makes it sound like I am here to represent Coke, which I am not). But they do show a relatively good track record in learning and making good on the things they get things wrong. And the people we've met have been decent, ordinary folk.

The allegations against Coca Cola in Colombia are simple: trade unionists working for the company have been intimidated and murdered, in one case Isidro Segundo Gil was killed inside the plant, virtually under the Coca Cola logo, to this day Coca Cola have not had any independent investigation into the allegation that managers of the bottling plants in Colombia colluded with or directed the para military death squads. The murders happened over 12 years ago.

Your response states that independent judicial enquiries at the time found that the Colombia allegations to be unfounded, What independent judicial enquiries are you referring to? The Colombian judicial system has managed to investigate, prosecute and convict about 1% of the trade unionist murders, out of thousands. So any investigations conducted in Columbia are hardly independent and barely qualify as enquiries.

Or do you refer to the USA court case? Here the Alien Tort Claims Act is being used to try and get the Colombian bottlers and the parent company in the dock. But it can't be that one as initially the case was found to be inadmissible (though it is being appealed), so this is obviously not the 'independent judicial enquiries' that you refer to, is it?

So what independent judicial enquiries are you referring to?

You do not mention the fact that the Coca Cola Company tried to silence the Colombian trade unionists who brought the case against them in the USA. Coke offered to settle out of court to the tune of about $13 million on condition that they give up their jobs working in the Coke bottling plants and that the trade unionists never ever criticise Coke nor any other company that work with Coke in the future. Had the trade unionists signed and taken the $13 million they would break the terms of the settlement and be liable to court action if they criticised you Richard.

Neither do you mention the trade union busting of the company bottlers. The cases of Coke plant managers falsifying evidence against trade unionists, accusing them of terrorism. resulting in innocent men wrongly imprisoned for 6 months before the charges against them being dismissed.

You do not mention the fact that over some 15 years the company bottlers have gone from about 80% of the work force being in permanent employment with 20% casual labour to the situation we now find, where 20% of the work force is permanent and 80% casualised with no rights to even join a trade union.

Richard, I have spent some time in Colombia interviewing and taking testimony from people who witnessed Isidro Segundo Gil's murder to the delivery men who are not allowed to join a union. I am happy for you to have all of these interviews and for you to review them and see for yourself. I can even put you in touch with the people themselves , so if you wish you can visit Colombia and talk to them face to face, I think you would find them decent ordinary folk.

And so onto India, there are many stories here but let us stay with the stories about the Company opening plants (in a water intensive industry) in water sensitive areas with with little or no regard for the communities who find their water compromised and depleted. Once again you say independent judicial enquiries have found claims unfounded. Once again I ask what independent judicial enquiries?

Firstly there are four plants where Cokes operations have put the local community water in danger, in Kerala, near Jaipur and two in Uttra Pradesh. Two of these four plants have been shut down after protests and legal challenges. Coke were forced to close these plants.

The two remaining plants are near Jaipur and near Varanasi, neither plants have had judicial enquiries that found any claims of water depletion unfounded. So I am at a loss as to what judicial enquiries you refer to.

Happily for you Richard I have spent time in India too, and am happy for you to have access to all the interviews I have conducted with local people from all four of the plants, so you can hear for yourself what the allegations are.

Richard, you fail to mention the allegations that are raised against the company in Turkey regarding union busting or in El Salvador regarding Coke's sugar being produced with the help of child labour. Neither do you refer to the allegations of union busting in Ireland or the court findings against the company in Mexico, where they were found to be in breech of anti-monopoly law and intimidated some of the poorest shop owners.

So I am happy to send you a copy of my book which details some of these things BUT more importantly I offer to make my research and interviews on all of these issues available for you to come and peruse , so you might be able to make a more balanced comment on your partnership with the company. I do not understand how you can make comments that Coke have a relatively good track record in learning and making good on the things they get things wrong without considering these points.

Yours, Mark Thomas

Additional response:

Dear Richard, just seen another reply you have made to an enquiry about Smoothie and Coke, you quote the ILO report made in 2008 - referring to direct employees. You say everything suggests that conditions of work and rights applicable to direct employees [in Columbia (sic)] are duly respected. The key here is that over 15 years the ratio of direct employment to casual labour has been reversed, from 80% of the workforce that was 'direct' labour and 20% that was casualised, to the present day where 20% of the work force is direct labour and 80% is casualised. Casual labour have no rights to join a trade union. None whatsoever, I met and talked to plenty of people who testified that this is the case.

So your quote is selective and deceptive that is being used to promote a vision of the company that is simply not true. once again I am happy for you to come and see the interviews and bring your own translator if you wish to go through what these men and women say about working for the company.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Mark Thomas

UPDATE: I've had a reply from Innocent (I'm not sure if MT had one too, or not). Frankly, Innocent's reply smells of whitewash. It fails to substantively address the serious concerns people have about Coca-Cola's ethics and Innocent's implicit endorsement of them. Still, since I'm more inclined to fairness than, Coca-Cola is (not difficult!), I'll publish a copy of it below, so that readers of this post can see both sides of the correspondence (although again, I'll take it down if requested to):

Hello Sam,

Thanks for your e-mail.

We're sorry to hear you're unhappy with Coca-Cola becoming a minority investor in innocent, and just want you to know that we really respect your opinion, and are gutted to hear we'll be losing you as a customer - can we just say thank you for all your support in the past.

It's important for us to stress they are just a minority stakeholder (between 10-20%). We are still a standalone company, and Richard, Jon and Adam (the three founders of innocent) will still continue to lead and manage the company just as they always have done. We are not changing - so all those things you liked about us will still be here. In fact, one of the main reasons we chose Coca Cola as our investor is because they were the only investor that promised a completely hands off approach - allowing us to continue running the business in the way we always have done.

You may be interested to know that all of the money raised is going into the business (none is being paid out to the shareholders) and the funds raised will allow us to do more of the things we're here to do - getting natural, healthy drinks and food to as many as possible, pioneering the use of better socially and environmentally aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques and supporting charities in the countries where our fruit comes from. All of this remains very much in place.

If you haven't already, it may be worth having a look at the letter from Richard, Jon and Adam here, which outlines what's happened, just so you have the full story. http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/a-letter-from-the-founders/

Thanks again for taking the time to get in touch. Before we go we would just like to say this (without, we hope, angering you in any way): if you've trusted us in the past, and always liked what we've done, please keep your faith for the future, as we don't plan on changing. I joined this company because it represented an ethical, human approach to business that I massively admired, and I honestly don't see that approach changing - after all, a company is no more than the product of the people who work for and lead it and we're all still here. We needed an injection of cash to survive and grow at a time when many businesses - small and large - are struggling, and we got this from Coca Cola. However, this does not in any way change who we are, or what we're about.

All the best,

Joe

There's a lot to be said for Street View. I've wanted something like this to exist ever since I realised that the Encarta '95 globe barely let you zoom in at all. I wanted full zoom on the world! And Google, via Google Maps, Google Earth, and Street View, have pulled this off - finally - to an impressive degree.

There are concerns, however, that these technologies, especially Street View, invade people's privacy. Street View photos are automatically post-processed to blur faces and car license plates, in order to combat this alleged invasion, but this processing is not always successful, as an instance I noticed today proves.

Still, I'm not convinced that the privacy implications are as great as have been claimed. There's nothing the Street View car can see on its travels that any passerby wouldn't also have the opportunity to see. In other words, what it photographs is already in public - and therefore is not private information.

In fact, I think the publication of satellite or high-altitude reconnaissance photos - which are available, for instance, via Google Earth and Google Maps - is, from a privacy point of view, of greater concern, simply because historically, measures to protect privacy have tended to involve obscuring private areas from public view or hearing. Since that public was at ground level, the measures usually ran to walls, fences or hedges - or, if you could afford one, a large garden. None of these measures, although they may have worked for millenia to separate private areas from the senses of the ground level public, fare terribly well in the era of the satellite photograph, because the satellites can see what's behind those walls, hedges and gardens (as the government departments are all too aware!).

So, what's the solution? Should we just accept that we have zero privacy anyway and get over it? Or should we be building canopies as well as walls, to isolate our private spaces from viewers above as well as beside them?

Jon Stewart's public dissection of Jim Cramer reminded me of an activity pattern I try to exercise whenever there's an appropriate opportunity. It's a pattern I think of as moving attention upstream. It's something that I feel driven to do on a slightly subconscious level, but I'll try to explain it nonetheless.

The basic principle is to encourage people not to simply take information at face value, but to also consider the source(s) of the information and the motives and competencies of those sources. A more advanced approach is to also direct attention further upstream still, beyond the immediate information sources to the historical, social or other factors that have put the sources in a position to expostulate.

Stewart, for instance, not only called Cramer's motives and competence into question; he also called into question TV network CNBC's interests in hosting Cramer's shows. The audience was forced - and rightly - to examine the part TV networks have played in stoking fear and confusion about the current bear market: fear and confusion which may in fact have contributed to that bear market, and which - if the networks had been less obvious in their exploitation of the situation - might have kept American investors indefinitely psychologically dependent on the media for advice about what to do in such frightening and confusing times. The insinuation was that CNBC was willing to cynically risk the economy for the sake of keeping its viewers hooked. Or, as Fox rather charitably put it, CNBC's dilemma is to make a recession seem entertaining. Worse still, this was being done by people who, like Cramer, and like the bankers he dealt with on his show, were in a position to play games - games they evidently found entertaining - with other people's money. So not only were the networks inconsistent in the seriousness of their portrayals of the country's financial situation, they were glorifying the very activities that were aggravating that situation.

But let's move further upstream now ourselves, further than Stewart or Fox went, and consider why CNBC would act this way. Surely, turning a crisis into a drama - and thereby a worse crisis - isn't a mandatory requirement for a news channel. Couldn't CNBC have simply sobered with the times? Why, in fact, was CNBC so unsober to begin with? Here's a comment from social technology consultant Gordon Rae that is perceptive and relevant:

What if newspapers had done any real reporting in last 8 yrs? I say: more subscriptions, lower ad revenues[.] (Source.)

Is Rae correct? I'm not sure; I can't prove his claim. I can provide an illustration of it, though, from the British media. The Sun and News of the World are the country's most popular newspapers. They are rarely analytical - let alone critical - of consumer culture, or indeed anything at all, and each enjoy a readership of almost 8m.^[1][2] Of these two, let's focus on The Sun. Its website today has four top headlines, of which three are about Z-list celebrities either dying young or looking a million dollars; the other is about an unremarkable football result. The Guardian newspaper has a readership roughly a sixth this size,^[3] and is frequently analytical and even critical of consumer culture. The Guardian's readers are, on average, better off than The Sun's readers, but not only are they not six times better off (which would yield a pot as great as that of The Sun's readers), they are also more likely to question advertisements directed at them. The Sun, therefore, appears to be the more attractive place to advertise, and I would be surprised indeed if it were not the more financially profitable paper. The Guardian, on the other hand, has found itself able to recycle much of its content into a weekly international subscription-only paper, the Guardian Weekly. So perhaps Rae is right to assert that the result of real reporting is more subscriptions and lower ad revenues.

Although The Guardian has been able to generate subscribers where The Sun has been able to generate advertisers, if The Sun is still the more profitable paper, why doesn't The Guardian try to emulate it, by increasing its readership and softening-up that readership's critical faculties so that it is more susceptible to advertisements? Before answering that question, it's worth asking whether the two acts must go together, because if they must, then The Guardian is duty-bound not to carry them out. Unlike The Sun, which has increasing the profits of its parent company, News International, as its primary objective, The Guardian operates under a pledge to be run for public benefit, not private gain.^[4] So let us now consider whether increasing readership must correlate with a weakening of cultural criticism.

A common perception is that a sophisticated media outlet must dumb down its output if it wants to appeal to a broader audience. If that perception is true, perhaps its truth lies in the bell-curve distribution of characteristics like reading ability: if The Guardian is to appeal to a larger audience, the only one available to it lies towards the centre of the curve. (As I write this, I am reminded of something once said to me by a former employer, the manager of a bank branch, who was a Sun reader: I tried reading the Guardian once, but I didn't understand all the long words, so I gave up.) So perhaps if the Guardian does want to grow its readership substantially, it must dumb down somewhat. But would this necessarily entail writing in a manner that prevented informed critiques of consumer culture? In principle, I don't think so; but in practice, I think it might. The reason for the latter is that a body of writers that is selected for its appeal to the mass market probably appeals to that market precisely because it is familiar with it, sympathetic to it, and uncritical of it. It is willing to be, editorially, less than sober - especially if that increases the readership. The Sun's body of writers fits this description pretty well. If The Guardian could find a writing team that retained its critical bite, analytical insight, and editorial sobriety, but that could also express those properties via the common tongue, it would be on to an absolute winner; but this is a tall order.

Returning our attention to the US, we can see that it's an order Jon Stewart often fills rather well.

We can also observe that Commercial US TV networks, like commercial US newspapers, obtain revenue from both subscribers and from advertisers. In the case of CNBC, subscribers become CNBC Plus customers and get to watch CNBC channels ad-free.* However, individual advertisers, who are typically businesses, generally have far more money than individual subscribers, who are typically private citizens. So even though private citizens outnumber businesses, it is still more financially profitable for a network like CNBC to prioritise advertiser income over subscriber income.

Here are some figures, which are a little out of date, but which should give you an idea of the strength of the incentive. In 2000, the total number of US businesses was 25m, and between them these had total revenues of $21 trillion.^[5] In 1999, which was not massively different from 2000 economically, the US population was 273m^[6] with a mean income of $21,587,^[7] which means a total income of only $6 trillion.

(Let me point out that I am not an economist, and even though I expected to see a disparity between business and personal income in the US, I did not expect it to be quite so enormous. $21 trillion vs $6 trillion seems like a huge gap: 3½ times the amount! If you, dear reader, are an economist, and you feel my numbers are wrong, please get in touch.)

CNBC, which is ultimately controlled by General Electric (an arms manufacturer and financial services company, among other things), is, like The Sun, obligated to help its parent company make a financial profit. Unlike The Guardian, it is not under a requirement to be first and foremost a benefit to society. This, then, is why CNBC was so unsober: it wasn't obliged to behave soberly, and it was in its financial interests - its short term ones, anyway - not to.

We have now turned our attention quite far upstream, but not quite far enough. A question Stewart did not pose in his interview with Cramer - although he came close - was, Why is our society tolerating this? I wish he had asked that question. It's one I want Westerners to be asking themselves. Why is it that maximising private profit is allowed to be prioritised over social benefit, when clearly in at least some cases the two are mutually exclusive? Why isn't corporate social responsibility mandatory, substantive, and enforced?

The historical answers may be found among various branches of economic, social and psychological theory. But these Why? questions are practical too: they ask, Why must the situation continue, now it's been shown to be detrimental?

At this point, perhaps, we have moved far enough upstream that we have reached a point where the causal flow is gentle enough that comparatively minor legislation might be able to divert it. Such legislation might, I think, be welcome. The causal flow would have to be investigated in much more detail than I have given in this informal essay - and causality is notoriously hard to establish! - but at least we now have a sense of what sort of action it might be useful to take, and why.

If we permit ourselves a little inductive reasoning here, we can conclude that in general there is a need for moving attention upstream, if we are to identify problems and if we are to identify possible solutions. Happily, this can take place pretty much anywhere: it doesn't have to be on a TV talk show. Next time you're making dinner with some friends, don't just talk about the recipe or the ingredients: talk about the agricultural society that makes your meal possible; discuss the threats it faces; discuss the proposals you think might alleviate them; consider the impact of your meal on your culture as well as on your individual health. If you're flagging, remind yourself that that knowing how to cook a potato could be useless if society doesn't act on potato blight!**

Fundamentally, it is our responsibility to ourselves, as citizens who must share the world's resources if we are to survive (not necessarily to survive as TV hosts or bankers, but as human beings), to raise awareness in our societies of things that threaten that survival. Such things include compulsory eviction, pension loss and many of the other results of dangerous financial speculation. Only by raising awareness can informed consensus for improvements be reached. And one of the best tools we have for raising awareness, is moving attention upstream.

* Incidentally, at time of writing, when Jim Cramer's credibility is at an all-time low, the CNBC Plus website is - apparently without irony - promoting Cramer's show Mad Money as its primary attraction (see above).

** Society is working on this, and there are two rival solutions proposed: selectively bred potato varieties that are naturally blight resistant, and genetically-modified potatoes from BASF that might be, or might not be, and might damage other crops whether or not they turn out to be blight resistant. So there's a pretty rich vein of conversation to be mined herein!