This kind of terror prevention constrains us all
20 Aug 2008
Aabid Khan, Sultan Muhammed and Hammad Munshi were all found guilty under the Terrorism Act this week. Between them they had what?s been described as a ?terrorist library?: manuals on weapons, explosives and poisons, as well as video clips of mujahideen fighting and information about transport systems in the US and UK. Their online conversations included discussing how to smuggle a sword through airport security. The dominant figure in the group — Aabid Khan — wrote chillingly of wanting to ?cause trouble for the kuffar?cause fear and panic in their countries? and aimed to recruit ?a group of at least 12?. Khan received a 12-year sentence; Muhammad was sentenced to 10 years and Munshi — the youngest person to be convicted under the Terrorism Act — is still to receive his sentence. Yet the main evidence against them was the documents in their possession. There does not appear to have been a plot. As far as the Crown Prosecution Service is concerned, there doesn?t have to be a plot. The men were prosecuted under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 — possessing an article for a purpose connected with terrorism. ?The purpose of this legislation is to enable the police and the prosecuting authorities to act early against people who possess articles for a terrorist purpose, before a plan or conspiracy to commit a particular act has necessarily been formed.? It?s worth comparing these convictions with a case that was quashed earlier this year in the Court of Appeal. A group of young men were convicted under the Section 57 of the Terrorism Act in similar circumstances (although less well connected than Aabid Khan to other extremists). They too had downloaded huge quantities of material and they too were excitedly discussing potentially violent ideas (the group also included a schoolboy). Yet the Court of Appeal found that possession of an article in itself was not an offence — what mattered was if was there an intention to use the material for terrorism. It?s possible on this basis that there might be grounds for appeal. The problem with this kind of terrorism prevention is that it constrains us all. There is no room for intellectual curiosity, for flirting with unfashionable ideology or even for engaging in serious research on the topic: Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were reported to the police by their own university and detained for six days last May. Sabir had been studying extremism and had asked Yezza to print out a document for him. Such is the culture of fear and confusion that he was not even safe to do his research in a centre of academic freedom. There can be no better example of how counter terrorism has pervaded our culture — and of the damage caused by such a broadly defined offence.

Laughable rhetoric
19 Aug 2008
When an occupying military power knows that it has the backing of the most powerful global information outlets, it can indulge itself in the most laughable rhetoric. And this was underlined in the wake of the killing of an Afghan woman and two children by rockets fired by British forces in Helmand province. Although these civilian casualties were caused by troops who came from thousands of miles away to occupy the country, an International Security Assistance Force spokesman had the temerity to say: “The enemies of Afghanistan have yet again shown a complete disregard for the lives of the innocent who they claim to fight for.” That is precisely what the Afghans who oppose imperialist occupation would say and with far greater reason. Yet the pro-occupation international media continues to relay propaganda about Taliban forces launching attacks from among civilians, even though they would know that this would result in bloody responses from the occupying forces against their own families. The allegation beggars belief, as does puppet governor Gulab Mangal’s comment that “support for the Taliban in Helmand is reducing.” Resistance to occupation in the entire south and east of Afghanistan has escalated in recent years and the steady increase in British military casualties illustrates this. The British troops sent to Afghanistan have been lied to over their role. They are in an unwinnable conflict and are kept there as tokens of new Labour’s subservience to the White House. They should be brought home immediately, leaving the Afghan people to work out their future without outside interference. US stooge Outgoing Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf has always been a loyal toady of US imperialism and his resignation will suit Washington as much as it does the general himself. Gen Musharraf’s expectation is that his stepping down will short-circuit the growing public clamour for his impeachment, while the US will hope for no in-depth investigation of the dirty alliance it foisted on him. That means that the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in setting up the Taliban in the early 1990s will not be investigated. Nor will the activities of the ISI during his time as Pakistani military commander. It will also mean that Washington’s support for the general, especially since 2001 when he executed a political back-flip to join the White House “war on terror,” will not be subject to inquiry. Gen Musharraf has all along been susceptible to US power, which is why he dropped the Taliban and was passive in the face of US bombing raids on Pakistani tribal areas abutting the border with Afghanistan. Despite this influence and its constant rhetoric about democracy, freedom and the rule of law, the Bush administration was unbothered by the general’s political dictatorship and his assaults on the judiciary. Washington’s readiness to see him stand down only came about when it could see the scale of opposition building up against him and the dictatorship. Development of democracy in Pakistan will depend on the level to which political forces are able to resist US tutelage and assert popular sovereignty.

Policing of climate camp a major attack on democratic rights
19 Aug 2008
A week-long climate protest camp in north Kent has ended, amidst widespread claims of disproportionate and aggressive policing. Around 100 people were arrested over the course of the protest, 46 of whom have been charged, mostly with obstruction offences. The multimillion-pound policing of the camp marked a significant attack on democratic rights and civil liberties. The camp was held to protest the building of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, on the Medway estuary. Energy company E.ON UK is proposing replacing the existing coal power station with a new one. This would be the first new coal power station built in Britain in more than 30 years. The proposal has yet to be agreed by John Hutton, whose portfolio as secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform includes energy security issues. The proposal has been passed to Hutton?s office following its agreement by the local authority, Medway Council. Kingsnorth is the first of several new coal-fired power stations proposed for sites across the UK. The government has made these stations a key factor in ensuring energy supplies. Protestors argue that coal power stations, with their high CO2 emissions, are the most polluting means of producing electricity. Between 1,000 and 2,000 protestors came to the camp over the course of the week to protest at the development of Kingsnorth. Aside from their direct protest activities, the camp also staged workshop and discussion events. Assistant Chief Constable Gary Beautridge of Kent Police acknowledged in a press conference that the police had been planning their response to the camp since April of this year. That response saw 1,400 officers, from 26 different forces across Britain, being brought into the area. They were supported by constant air surveillance. The Medway Ports Authority also authorised the police to ?enforce? sections of their bylaws to prevent protestors approaching the power station from the river. The final cost of the policing operation is not yet known, but has been estimated variously between 1 million and 8 million. It is understood the Kent Police are considering applying to the Home Office for financial support in footing the bill. There has been a noticeable trend in recent years for the police to underreport numbers of demonstrators and protestors. In the case of Kingsnorth, the police set the attendance at 1,000. According to their own figures, therefore, they had provided a level of policing intended to overwhelm the protestors. The organisers? own estimate of attendance was 1,500, giving a 1:1 ratio of police to protestors. Even the highest estimate only put attendance at 2,000. That the police levels were aimed at discouraging protest was reinforced when Beautridge said he regarded ?the majority of the protestors? as ?law-abiding people there for a legitimate reason.? He justified the policing levels as a response to ?a small hard core of people…prepared to use criminal tactics and criminal activity.? According to one report, this ?small hard core? was set at just 150 people. As the camp?s legal spokesman Kevin Smith noted, ?Every year police use the supposed existence of a hardcore minority as justification for the heavy-handedness and every year this hardcore minority fails to materialise.? It is quite evident that the policing was aimed at deterring any form of protest. Protestors at the camp have described the constant attention of police helicopters, which served to disrupt meetings and speeches. There are also reports of police impounding vehicles being used by protestors to bring supplies into the camp. In particular, protestors drew attention to the aggressive tactics of the riot police, who used batons and shields in making arrests. Several protestors were injured when police baton-charged them as they tried to enter a cornfield. Beautridge maintained that such a response was ?proportionate…. Because of the level of resistance, officers were authorised to carry batons during two days of the protest. There are strict legal standards for their use and we gave clear warnings when any specialist team was deployed.? Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who visited the camp, said she was ?horrified that [the] police…have used pepper spray, riot gear, [and] physical intimidation.? The police controlled demonstrators with horses, dogs and trail bikes, as well as with constant helicopter coverage. To sustain this level of intimidation and intrusion, the police sought extraordinary powers to stop and search protestors. Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was implemented to authorise this. Initially, the Section 60 provisions were applied only to the immediate area of the camp. They were subsequently extended to cover the whole of the Hoo peninsula. The provision allows police to stop and search a suspect if an officer of superintendent rank or above believes there may be incidents of serious violence. At Kingsnorth, Section 60 was used to monitor all visitors to the camp. One eyewitness describes joining a queue to be searched. The searching officer did not know who had authorised the searches. Having been frisked and had his bag searched, the witness was then issued with a pink slip. He had to show this to another three officers before he actually reached the camp. He was searched again when he tried to leave the camp. There were also reports of protestors being threatened with strip searches. Elsewhere there were reports of police attempting to use Section 60 to justify destruction of homemade rafts. Lucas, along with Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker and Labour MP Colin Challen, wrote to Kent Police to express concern about such use of discretionary powers. Lucas warned that this was ?undermining our civil liberties.? Lucas, amongst others, has also drawn attention to a booklet apparently dropped by an officer policing the camp. The booklet, ?Policing Protest,? is produced by the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit and offers ?tactical advice and guidance on policing single-issue domestic extremism.? Police mounted a systematic programme of confiscation from the protestors during the searches. The police told press that they had confiscated many knives, although demonstrators described this as a smear tactic. Police also showed journalists a satirical board game (?War on Terror?) they had confiscated. There seems to have been a policy of making life as uncomfortable and awkward as possible for protestors. Other items confiscated included glue, soap, a clown costume, bits of carpet, toilet paper, disabled ramps, marker pens, blackboard paint, nuts and bolts for toilet cubicles, and banners. They also confiscated demonstrators? emergency radios and lifejackets. One demonstrator involved in the river-borne protest described a meeting with a local coast guard crew. The coast guards were complimentary about the demonstrators? attention to safety, but criticised the police confiscations of lifejackets, saying, ?It was irresponsible and could have put lives at risk.? Such tactics were clearly designed to stifle any form of dissent and deter any future protests. Of particular concern in this regard is the complaint by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) that its members were also subject to the same searches, manhandling, and observation. The NUJ is looking at legal challenges against ?this unwarranted conduct by the police.? According to the NUJ, journalists were searched as they entered and left the camp. Searches continued after police were shown press cards. Journalists were also ?pushed and shoved? by police, and filmed whilst using WiFi facilities at a local McDonalds. Such developments indicate a determination to clamp down on any form of legitimate protest, and should be taken as a very serious attack on democratic rights.

Big Art and Perspex Panels
19 Aug 2008
Now this is getting silly. A series of emails released to the Camden New Journal under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that the local council has been trying to obtain insurance cover for some of street artist Banksy?s work on its property. One of the works in question is an early Banksy stencil of a rat carrying a placard with an exclamation mark on it. It?s on the side of the council headquarters in King?s Cross, north London, and is currently protected by a scratched and grubby Perspex panel. When council workers repainted the wall last year they didn?t dare replace the panel because they were afraid that removing it would damage the original graffiti. The rat used to be a bit of fun, at once at home in and livening up the grimy streetscape. Now it?s ?art? and, like the Banksy-adorned wall in Portobello Road that attracted a winning bid of 208,100 in an online auction in January, it?s become a commodity that has lost any connection with the ethos that originally inspired it. What Banksy should do now to preserve his artistic integrity is to flood the market with stencilled street art, playing capitalism at its own game by using the laws of supply and demand to prick the absurdist bubble. It?s the only way to take back control from the folk who think that every act of creative energy has its price. Spray it loud I had a brief career as a graffiti artist myself. Jill Posener wrote me up as a ?graffitist? (she made up the description, although she put the word into my mouth) in her 1982 book Spray it Loud, which featured some of my efforts. I got picked up by the Special Patrol Group for my troubles, paint pot and dripping brush in hand; and I think I?m the only person alive who ever got prosecuted for ?putting up posters without permission on the market buildings? in Widnes. (Actually it was a hand-painted eight-verse poem but the magistrate ruled that was the same thing legally.) A couple of us even redecorated Aldwych tube station, which closed in 1994, in some long-forgotten protest over democracy in Greece. But no one ever thought of preserving my efforts behind Perspex. I got fined a few times but never got paid for anything, and eventually moved on to other artistic outlets. Now I complain with the rest of them about scratched graffiti tags on bus windows and in communal stairwells. (Since this is the only criminal act that comes with a signed confession as a matter of course, why do the police find it so very difficult to deal with?) And instead of doing it myself I write copy for Channel 4?s Big Art Project website and the accompanying Big Art Mob, which has won Royal Television Society and Guardian New Media awards for an innovative set-up whereby people can post photos of ?public art? from around the country via their mobile phones. The Big Art Project is based on the notion that public art can transform a space into a place. When a community participates in that transformation, it can change how people feel about living in or visiting that place. So, in October 2005, Channel 4 invited nominations for sites ? and communities ? where they wanted new works of public art. More than 1,400 members of the public across the UK responded, and seven sites were selected where the local communities have been involved in choosing the kind of public art they want to create and which artists they want to commission to do it. It?s a ?bottom-up? approach that has produced very different outcomes in different places. In Burnley, the first of the seven commissions to be unveiled in March, the Greyworld arts collective has worked with 15 local teenagers to produce Invisible, a series of paintings that can only be seen when lit from an ultraviolet source. The paintings include a series of ?local heroes?, who range from the Burnley FC mascot to a Big Issue seller, a community worker, a head teacher and a local actor and dramatist. In St Helens, a group of ex-miners and other local people has commissioned Dream, a 20-metre-high sculpture of a child?s head, from the internationally renowned artist Jaume Plensa for the former Sutton Manor colliery site. In east London, the arts and architecture collective, Muf, is working on a community engagement project to transform the ?Beckton Alp?, a former spoil heap alongside the A13 that enjoyed a second incarnation as an artificial ski-slope but is now derelict. Other projects are taking place in Mull, Belfast, Sheffield and Cardigan, where the local community is discussing a proposal with Canadian multimedia artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, best known for his huge hi-tech, interactive works using lights and shadows. Sheffield has been the most controversial site, with Big Art Project supporters pitted against the E On energy giant in defence of the Tinsley cooling towers, which E On has insisted on demolishing. The iconic 76-metre high towers, just 17 metres from the M1 and the first things that most people see on entering Sheffield, have been described as ?the Stonehenge of the carbon age? by Antony Gormley, the artist whose Angel of the North has probably done most to demonstrate the potential of mega-public art. Their selection as one of the seven Big Art Project sites was a victory for local campaigners battling for their preservation. When E On refused to back down on demolition and instead offered 500,000 towards the cost of a new regional artwork, the campaigners pulled out of the planning group. When it comes to a clash between public art (or the preservation of our industrial heritage) and profit, it?s obvious which way big business will turn ? and, as in the case of the Tinsley cooling towers, which were getting in the way of a new 60-million biomass power station, the local planning authorities are generally only too eager to march to the profit-makers? drum. Increasingly, though, business is also alert to the potential of public art in marking out its own profit-making space. Angel of the South So it?s no surprise, for instance, that the Thames Gateway development at Ebbsfleet in north Kent includes plans for a 2-million landmark mega-sculpture to put itself on the map (literally, since there?s nothing there at the moment). The ?Angel of the South?, as it?s inevitably been dubbed, although its official title is the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project, is going to be twice as big as its northern cousin, about the size of the Statue of Liberty. It?s being funded to the tune of 1 million by Land Securities, which is building a new residential development on the site; the rest is being raised by the project manager, Futurecity Arts. The ?UK?s leading cultural agency?, as Futurecity bills itself, specialises in ?kick-starting the regeneration of run down, brownfield and post-industrial areas in towns and cities across the UK?. To this list, presumably, it must now add greenfield sites and hills in Kent. The shortlist of five entries to the competition to design the Ebbsfleet landmark is currently on display, appropriately enough perhaps, at the Bluewater shopping centre. A decision is expected in the autumn between a huge white horse (Mark Wallinger, of State Britain fame); a giant Meccano construction (Richard Deacon); a modernist mausoleum (Daniel Buren); a winged white-concrete disc (Christopher Le Brun); and an artificial mini-mountain with the cast of a house on top (Rachel Whiteread). The project is being accompanied by ?one of the largest ever public engagement programmes? to ?involve and inform? the local community and ?to create a legacy of community ownership of the landmark?. I am not one of those who sneers at the significance of such initiatives, however they are devised and funded, and I have no doubt that the Ebbsfleet Landmark will come to be as highly regarded and locally loved, if that?s not too strong a word, as the Angel of the North, the concrete cows of Milton Keynes, the Tinsley cooling towers, the Millennium Dome or any number of other monuments over which the local community had little or no say in their construction. But it is impossible to resist the conclusion that what is happening here is that the public engagement programme has more in common with a massive, modern advertising campaign to induce brand loyalty than a public participation exercise to find out what people want in the first place. What the public wants Of course, what people want when it comes to public art isn?t easy to discern ? and it often varies from one person to the next. There are those who can?t wait to say goodbye to the Tinsley cooling towers. There are those who fought for years to stop a statue of Nelson Mandela finding a site in central London (and there are those who felt that a statue of Winston Churchill required improving with red paint and a grass mohican). There are those who believe that the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square should be reserved for yet another statue of a traditional British war hero rather than its current showcasing of different sculptures ? living sculptures, 2,400 of them standing on it for an hour apiece, when Antony Gormley gets his go shortly. I like Gormley?s work, by the way, but I do wish he wouldn?t open his mouth. He may be good at public art but like many artists his ideas about the effect it has on the public seems intended to turn them off. ?Through elevation onto the plinth and removal from common ground, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol and allows us to reflect on … the individual in contemporary society,? he said on winning the chance to put his proposal on the fourth plinth. No doubt there are readers who think Gormley?s words make perfect sense, and that is as it should be with art and artists. They are meant to challenge; we are meant to disagree. But the fact that the public rarely agrees over what constitutes ?good? public art can militate against anything truly imaginative. Seeking to please (or at any rate not offend) the public can too often lead to the corporate and the bland, a kind of lowest common artistic denominator, taking the place of real creativity. Perhaps the most interesting things about Channel 4?s Big Art Project is what people have chosen to post to the website as examples of ?public art? in their localities. Banksy and Banksy-wannabes proliferate, and street art and graffiti makes up the biggest single category. But there are also people?s photos of performance art and installations, alongside architecture, statues and sculptures, by well-known artists and unknowns, temporary and more permanent, from the UK and worldwide. Some of them are good, some are bad, some indifferent (make up your own

Strking a Chord: from Milibland to Johnson Land
19 Aug 2008
What was extraordinary about the commentary surrounding David Milliband?s short, bland Guardian piece a couple of weeks ago was how little was made of its sheer banality. Beyond vague evocations of the need for change, his prescriptions were so resolutely non-specific that they could have been interpreted as justifying any policy programme from the wholesale privatisation of the NHS to the nationalisation of all major financial institutions. But what was depressing was not the age-old sight of a young and ambitious politician generating generic rhetoric in an effort to play to all sides of an argument, but the sight of commentators as intelligent as Sunder Katwala completely failing to call his bluff on it. However, the content of Milliband?s statement does tell us something about the wider political formation. The fact is that any politician in the ?developed? world must make a predictable set of noises today. Whatever part of the political spectrum they hail from, they must offer to do something about the combined sense of political disenfranchisement and economic insecurity which any national citizenry must feel in a globalised economy; they must address the sense of a ?loss of community? which is so profound and so widespread, and yet impossible to diagnose within the terms of liberal political discourse; they must indicate that they know that something really has to be done about the environment. This is why David Cameron in 2008 sounds so much like Tony Blair in 1997. If your political position obliges you to acknowledge the various things which most humans inevitably find discomfiting about living with neoliberal capitalism, but without ever acknowledging that it is neoliberal capitalism which produces their discomfort, then there is not much else you can say (unless you plan to start blaming immigrants, the ungodly, or non-nuclear families). It seems very unlikely that any contender for the Labour leadership – least of all David Milliband – is going to do any different. But still: the issue has been raised, so let?s have a think about it. Would changing Labour?s leader make any difference to anything? Could any of the touted candidates help, in however small a way, to shift the terms a little bit, in such a direction as to contribute to some eventual bigger change in the political landscape? Certainly not at the level of explicit policy or strategy. None of them have ever shown anything like the capacity to offer a coherent analysis of the crisis of political democracy and the catastrophic social consequences of neoliberalism, never mind developing or endorsing a policy programme which responds to these endemic issues. John Cruddas stands out as an exception, and although his potential candidacy is only for the deputy leadership, the quality of his political commentary in recent years (e.g. Towards a Progressive Immigration Policy) should be enough to make us pause and reflect upon what the Cruddas-Johnson ?dream ticket? might actually produce if were to become a real possibility. Quantum Politics * So the issue is Alan Johnson. But let?s be clear what this means. The issue is not Johnson the man, or Johnson the political theorist or even Johnson the minister. The issue is Johnson the potential Labour leader, and there is no point in denying that the first job of a political leader in Britain in 2008 is to connect with voters through the medium of television. A tiny proportion of the electorate is actually swayed in any way by the perceived televisual personality of a party leader, but all the evidence suggests that is precisely those voters – middle income, middle England – in marginal constituencies, who are the only voters who really matter in a UK general election, who are swayed by such issues. Let?s be clearer still. When I say ?swayed?, I do not mean ?duped?. Rather, I mean that such voters make up their minds on the basis of a complex set of factors which are not easily quantified or rationalised, and hence tend to be mistrusted by political scientists (or their students, as most political journalists have been at one time), dismissed as ?amorphous?, ?irrational?, ?emotional?. The language of liberal political theory is quite incapable of grasping the reality of the complex cultural and social resonances between different groups and individuals which produce political identifications and decisions in a context like postmodern Britain, and this is pretty much the only language which the Anglo-Saxon political classes – journalists and politicians alike – ever get taught (just go look at the curriculum for an Oxford PPE degree or a Kennedy School programme). Hence they are generally incapable of grasping the complexity of those cultural resonances which political showmen like Blair can understand intuitively and the occasional political genius – Thatcher, for example – can figure out for themselves. Hence their habitual resort to the most unimaginative technique for trying to map such currents of emotion and sensation: the focus group. It is perhaps no accident that Thatcher was a chemist by training: the logics of molecular matter are closer to the real processes of aggregation, disaggregation, stabilisation and dissolution which give rise to political identifications than are the rational calculations of liberal mythology (this is one of the lasting insights of the great French radical, Flix Guattari). Contemporary politics is a quantum phenomenon, but mainstream political thought is stuck with Newtonian preconceptions, falsely imagining its basic units to be self-contained little atoms which bounce around in a vacuum, or else members of clearly defined groups which act together all the time. If that analogy is too confusing, then try thinking of politics like music. Ordinary English already has a phrase to capture the reality which I am trying to pin down: a politician must ?strike a chord? with her constituency. This is different from saying that she must look exactly like them or persuade them to think exactly as she does. Rather, she must offer something which is in harmony with the aspirations and self-images and daily experiences of voters. Harmony is not unity, but a sympathetic, non-discordant vibration between two distinct but compatible wavelengths. The politician need not be an object of identification or adoration, but must indicate, somewhere in the distance, a point of potential convergence, some sense that she is going in a direction which will not create obstacles to the voters? ability to travel in the direction that they want to go in. This is not necessarily – although it could be – the same thing as offering herself as a competent manager or an intellectual heavyweight. It must often involve the politician presenting themselves as someone who is not so unlike the voter as to be entirely alien, but they need not be identical, and sometimes their differences can be inspiring rather than frightening. Above all, it must involve the politician convincing the voter that their desires are either shared, or mutually compatible. This is what Brown has so signally failed to do, and what we must ask is if Johnson could do. Does this all sound far-fetched? Then reflect that not only was Thatcher a chemist: Tony Blair was an aspiring rock musician rather than a diligent scholar of political ?science? during his time at university, while John Major was the child of a music-hall artist and never went to university. They all understood something that the bright boys from the policy unit have never been able to get their heads around. For while it all may seem very abstract, I think that this approach can help us to understand the strange parabola of the Brown premiership. Brown came into office with a cacophony of mixed signals, explicitly promising to continue and intensify the Blair project, while clearly implying that he had other intentions. He skilfully rode the long wave of anti-Blair feeling – which had never really died down once Blair had hitched his fortunes to Bush?s – and did much to encourage the general sense that he was a figure whose moral purpose would orient the country in a different direction to that in which had been driven by the exigencies of consumer capitalism. It is easy to forget now, but Brown was popular even with Southern English voters until his policy agenda crystallised to the point that it became apparent that it would, indeed, be ultra-Blairite. It may or may not be true that Brown?s heart is social democratic while his head his astutely pragmatic, but either way, this turn of events caused his public persona – previously always somewhat vague – to come into focus in a particular way, and it was a way that the public did not like. Either Brown was a coward – ultimately too scared of the CBI and Rupert Murdoch to follow through on his promise to change course and seek consent for such a change at the promised 2007 election – or he was a snake, having deliberately undermined Blair for years while actually having no alternative policy agenda at all. Despite his lack of telegenic charm, despite even the growing nationalist fracture within the British political psyche identified by commentators such as Gerry Hassan and Steve Richards – Brown had the chance to tap into a generalised dissatisfaction with neoliberal outcomes and start to orient it in a more progressive direction. If ever there was a moment for a new Roosevelt, then this year – which finally saw some of the key elements of the post-New Deal financial regime come crashing to the ground – was it. But FDR knew that he had to mobilise the unions and the public against the speculators, and Brown showed nothing like the nerve for such a fight. He blew it, and now there is no reason for anyone to trust him again. It isn?t entirely surprising. Brown would have had to take an almost Churchillian heroic stand in order to persuade the public that his type of serious political intellectuality, a character trait which few of them share, was something which they could admire enough to harmonise with for the long-term: caution and transparent political calculation was never going to do it, and the result has been terminal for Brown and possibly for an entire generation of Labour politicians. So if the question is, ?Could Johnson – the direct opposite of Brown, admired for his telegenic personality rather than his politics or his intellect – be the figure to rescue Labour after all?? – then any answer has to take account of Brown?s initial popularity. Today, it is evident that Labour is doomed to electoral defeat under his leadership. But it is not the Prime Minister?s personality or appearance that is in itself so rebarbative as to be the cause of this. Steve Richards regrets the way Kinnock, and now Brown, are hated. But Thatcher was hated far more, and just as personally. However, many who loathed Thatcher voted for her because they continued to see her as ?necessary? in terms of the deeper music. At first, many, including those who are now intending to vote Tory, also saw Brown as orchestrating ?necessary? change. Today, no one thinks he is needed. An Alan Johnson leadership would have to get down to the necessary – and set out a new relationship between government, the public and the wider world – as well as finding a way to make it resonate with wider popular aspirations. *Johnson to the Rescue? The historical precedents are not encouraging. It is only 30 years since the last time Labour was led by a right-wing Southern trade-unionist who had become leader while in government during a period of international economic crisis, and 18 of those subsequent years saw the Conservatives in power. It must be instructive, then, to reflect that the Callaghan government made the catastrophic historical mistake of capitulating to the demands of finance capital while alienating its core supporters, desperately trying to shore up a failed economic model (subsidising failing nationalised industries), while opening the door to a new one which could only benefit its enemies (with the first turns towards monetarism and fiscal austerity). If a Johnson leadership were to have any chance of succeeding, it would have to take a quite different approach, and risk the effort of finding new points of resonance between the desires of the 5 million lost Labour voters – including social-democratic Scots – and the swing-voters of the Southern suburbs. This could happen: it is conceivable. Whatever his personal political convictions, Johnson has come up through the union ranks, and so is presumably less ideologically programmed than Milliband and the rest of his PPE/ Kennedy cohort to reproduce the assumptions of public choice theory (which, whatever the question or social problem under discussion, seem only to give the same answer: privatise something ? unless, of course, it is a major financial institution we are permitted to feel sorry for). Johnson?s estuary accent, easy manner and admirable dress sense could line up with his fascinating biography to produce the image of someone who is at the same time the embodiment of labour movement values and an icon of middle English aspiration. This might even open up the space for such a figure to say publicly what so many already know privately, even unconsciously: that the neoliberal project has gone as far as it can go while offering any benefit at all to consumers and citizens, that a new politics which harnesses the dynamic and democratic power of the collective (without nostalgia for the social democracy of the 1940s) must be found to tackle the challenges of the new century, that building such a new politics will demand direct confrontation between communities and state institutions on the one hand and corporations on the other. That this all sounds so unlikely is indicative of just what a parlous state contemporary British politics is in. It is highly improbable that any of this will happen, or even that it really could without some much wider revival of coherent and explicit hostility to neoliberalism and the threat it poses to democracy and the ecosystem. But it is worth reflecting on the outside chance of such a scenario materialising, if only as an indicator of the kind of thing that democratic forces must try to imagine making possible in the years, and probably decades, to come.

Beyond the dogma: the real abortion debate
14 Aug 2008
The debate about abortion today often takes the form of competing scientific claims: about exactly when the fetus becomes viable, whether it feels pain, the psychological effects on the woman, and so on. These are the issues regarded on both sides as the crucial ones on which to convince the public and more particularly policy-makers. But fundamentally the question of whether women should be free to have abortions is not a scientific one but a moral and political one. And this was the focus of a public debate taking place as part of the Future of Abortion conference organised by BPAS (the British Pregnancy Advisory Service), with heavyweight speakers on either side. BPAS chief Ann Furedi was joined by Jon O?Brien of the intriguing US lobby group Catholics for Choice, up against Josephine Quintavalle of the anti-abortion Comment on Reproductive Ethics and conservative journalist Dominic Lawson. The discussion ranged widely, but was most interesting when it touched on the core moral question that is at the heart of the political controversy. While acknowledging that nobody ever sets out to have an abortion for fun, Ann Furedi made the case boldly that abortion can be a morally good thing, as opposed to a ?necessary evil?. This position is rarely heard, but it is crucial to any serious debate about abortion. Dominic Lawson?s anti-abortion argument hinged on the idea that a woman?s decision to abort is the crucial moral factor. This seems reasonable enough, but it is one-sided. Too often the discussion proceeds from the assumption that once pregnant all a woman has to do to have a baby is not have an abortion. Debates about ?when life begins? focus on the sperm, the egg and the embryo as if those factors alone are sufficient to create a human life. The forgotten ?factor of production? is nine months of a woman?s life. The availability of abortion means this factor cannot be taken for granted. The principles of autonomy and equality mean that it should not. Of course, it is quite true that if a woman does not abort her embryo or fetus, and if she continues to look after herself and eat properly, ?nature will take its course?, and the chances are she will have a child. But human beings have always tried to exert control over this process, and modern medicine allows women to have relatively simple and easy abortions at almost any point during pregnancy. In this context, it is disingenuous to pretend that women, like wild animals or plants, are mere vessels for natural processes. Not only is it untrue, but it obscures the resulting moral significance of a woman?s decision not to abort. A woman?s decision to go ahead with a pregnancy, to have a child, is not morally neutral ? depending on the circumstances, it can be a morally good or morally bad decision. Crucially, since it concerns her own life, it need not ? and probably should not ? be a selfless decision. In fact, many mainstream anti-abortion arguments implicitly acknowledge that what is really at issue is not the life of the fetus, but the motivation of the woman, and especially whether it is selfless or selfish. The greatest moral condemnation is reserved for those women who have abortions because they want to pursue their careers, or simply for the sake of convenience (as with the notorious news story about a woman choosing to have an abortion because pregnancy would have interfered with a skiing holiday). Dominic Lawson suggested at the debate that, with so many infertile couples desperate for children, it was obvious that women with unwanted pregnancies ought to opt for adoption rather than abortion. In this view, abortion is immoral because it is selfish. Ultimately, who is to decide whether any particular woman?s reason is good enough? The real question here is how much value we place on individual autonomy. Anti-abortionists typically see virtue in resignation (especially when it comes to women), and ?accepting the consequences of our actions?, however avoidable. Those of us who support the right to abortion do so because we believe men and women should take responsibility for our own lives, and assert as much control over them as possible. Even those who condemn abortion in general are usually sympathetic to women who want abortions because they?ve been raped. Living with the consequences of a careless night of passion is one thing, but the idea that a brutal physical violation should lead to such a serious disruption to a woman?s life as having to carry the child of her attacker is abhorrent to most people. Given the possibility of a swift abortion, it is impossible to justify in ordinary moral terms. Here, anti-abortionists must fall back on ?the absolute sanctity of life?. Josephine Quintavalle deliberately brought the example of rape up at the debate, because it is the one most often used against her. She gave the example of a woman she?d counselled and who had gone ahead with a pregnancy in such circumstances and now had no regrets. This anecdote is hardly a convincing argument for denying abortion to anyone else, but Quintavalle had already confessed that her position is grounded in Roman Catholic doctrine rather than moral reasoning. Too often, religious doctrine is presented as the beginning and the end of the anti-abortion argument. This is partly because Catholics and other religious activists are the most vocal opponents of abortion. But Jon O?Brien reminded us that millions of morally thoughtful Catholics do not accept the teaching of the Vatican on the issue (as is even more the case with contraception), and some actually question its theological foundations. Perhaps more importantly, millions of non-believers (like Lawson) have strong moral intuitions against abortion, which they bring to bear on the political debate without recourse to irrational absolutes. It is not enough, then, to dismiss anti-abortionists as zealots. Most people, certainly in Britain, do accept that abortion is morally acceptable at least some of the time, and further, that the best person to decide whether it is or isn?t is the particular woman in question. If these women are to continue to have access to safe abortion, we must not be afraid to have out the argument, and should not be afraid to make a strong moral case grounded not in science, but in respect for individual autonomy and equality between the sexes.

Truth truck or lie lorry?
14 Aug 2008
?After months of research, we have come up with a better way of spreading the ?Nationalist Message? right across this country,? says the message that the British National Party has been sending out to its supporters for several weeks. ?Our very own personal advertising lorry, a ?Truth Truck? ? brand new and custom-built, complete with a high definition special lighting system for night-time use, and a massive audio system for addressing the public. Can you imagine it?? continues the appeal in terms designed to pull hard at the purse strings of ?nationalists?. There have been personalised letters from Nick Griffin, the party chairman, headed and ?last chance to help ?Operation Truth Truck??, imploring in underlined type: ?Just imagine how you will feel, being part owner of our very own British National Party advertising lorry ??. The party website has carried a picture and online donation form for several weeks. But behind all the excitement lurks yet another dodgy deal by the BNP to hoodwink its own members. One appeal letter puts a figure on the cost of buying and equipping the ?truth truck? of 39,550, arrived at after Griffin personally ?worked very hard researching this project?. It then suggests that ?we can knock 13,000 off the amount needed? by opting for a ?used lorry in first class condition?. Yet there is no indication on the website appeal that the lorry will be anything other than ?brand new and custom built?. Such a compromise could be explained away as a better use of members? hard-earned and generously given donations, though that is no excuse for pulling the wool over potential donors? eyes long after the decision to go for a second-hand vehicle has already been taken. But the lies go further than this. At first the excitement rubbed off onto BNP members. Posting on the members? internet forum, one person, who claimed to have ?surprised myself by not even hesitating to donate 100 towards the campaign?, said the truck would also ?counter commie smear leaflets?. One discerning poster was more cautious. ?Just one thing What happened to Bodicea [sic]?? asked ?the benwell hopper?. ?Boudica?, as ?Captain Black? was quick to correct, was a second-hand ?battle bus? and the target of an appeal in 2006 for money to put it on the road. Agreeing that ?a few people will be very miffed that it has never been seen by the rank and file?, Captain Black could only plead that ?the failings of the Boudica hobby horse should not detract from the ambitions of this new venture?. Others smelt a rat. Despite Griffin?s claims to have carried out ?months of research? before coming up with this ?new, innovative? idea, if it comes to fruition the BNP will not be the first organisation in the UK to pin its hopes on a ?truth truck?. Two years ago the anti-abortion UK LifeLeague boldly announced the ?Launch of Britain?s first ever ?Truth Truck??. A press release on 21 April 2006 thanked supporters who ?donated generously to make this project possible? and claimed this would be: ?the most innovative and what will possibly be the most effective campaign in UK Pro-life history?. ?Operation Truth Truck? would: ?enable the pro-life message to reach the unreached across the towns and cities of Britain. These vehicles are wholly owned and operated by LifeLeague activists,? it continued. There was a picture. And it was no coincidence that the only difference between the LifeLeague?s ?truth truck? and the BNP?s one was the particular lie on the billboard, because it was the same vehicle. The UK LifeLeague and the BNP had milked their gullible supporters twice over for the same truck. This is not the first time the BNP has had dealings with the UK LifeLeague, and more particularly its founder and national coordinator, James Dowson. Earlier this year many BNP members were angry when they found out that the party was sending key BNP officers on management training courses in Spain. Why could the training not be held in the UK, asked irate, xenophobic party members on a popular nazi internet forum until the site administrators pulled the discussion thread. The courses were organised by Dowson?s Belfast-based fundraising and management training business, the Midas Consultancy, which has signed a three-year consultancy contract with the BNP. Whether it was because of the BNP?s growing financial difficulties or because Griffin was reacting to criticism of his poor administrative skills, the party has handed over key organisational functions to the self-styled vicar and militant anti-abortion campaigner. It was Dowson who wrote the ?truth truck? appeal letters in professional fundraising style. The Building to Grow appeal at the end of last year was also his work. The BNP claimed that appeal had raised 70,000, which paid for the party to move into the new Excalibur warehouse and buy ?a vast array of new equipment? including ?an envelope stuffing machine?, which by June had mysteriously disappeared when Simon Darby, the BNP?s deputy leader, appealed for volunteers to stuff election leaflets into envelopes by hand. The involvement of Dowson has already upset some BNP members who do not share his extreme anti-abortion views and think he is a Catholic, which is anathema to many in the nationalist party who view the Battle of the Boyne as one of England?s greatest historical triumphs. In fact Dowson is a Protestant but has been linked to far-right Catholics in Ireland, including Justin Barrett, an anti-EU campaigner and vocal opponent of immigration, which he describes as a ?genetic? problem. Back in 2001, when Searchlight first exposed Dowson, Barrett had donated 50,000 so that Dowson?s outfit could produce anti-abortion hate CDs and videos to distribute in schools and churches in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Dowson is a former member of the Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland and has admitted involvement with hardline loyalist groups in the West of Scotland. His tattooed arms are evidence of his extremist hate connections. The LifeLeague, which is secretive about its finances, uses highly provocative tactics, such as publishing the home addresses of abortion clinic staff. Similar actions by anti-abortion groups in the US have resulted in the murder of doctors. Dowson?s professional ?begging letters?, as one disillusioned party member described them, have not been universally welcomed in the BNP. Some see their ?tone of desperation? as indicative of the BNP?s ?very serious financial trouble?, according to the blogsite set up in support of Colin Auty?s failed attempt to challenge Griffin for the party leadership. One member is quoted saying: ?These bloody letters are an embarrassment, I?ll not pay another penny so he can go and waste it or lose another blimp?, in a reference to the BNP?s helium balloon that slipped its moorings in June because, Darby suggested, David Shapcote failed to secure it properly. The BNP later blamed the loss on a faulty rope. The letters themselves may have been professional, but Dowson fell down in compiling the mailing lists. Naturally he needed to dispatch the letters to a much wider audience than the BNP?s members, who have little left to give after constant appeals at branch meetings and to support election campaigns. However Searchlight has received a stream of complaints from anti-fascist trade unionists and members of the Jewish community who have received them. The website appeal for the ?truth truck? shows it adorned with the BNP?s ubiquitous election picture of Nick Cass and his family alongside the slogan ?Decent people vote British National Party?. The picture, which adorned election leaflets and newspaper advertisements all over the country in this year?s May elections and several by-elections, concealed Cass?s less than decent ?tree of life? tattoo. The symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide and, under Hitler, was used to represent a project that encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with ?Aryan? mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. A lying picture for a lying appeal. How appropriate.

National Health Service denies kidney cancer drugs to patients
14 Aug 2008
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has ruled that patients with advanced kidney cancer will be denied four treatments on the National Health Service (NHS) in England and Wales. NICE is the government?s drugs advisory body. It ruled that the drugs?bevacizumab, sorafenib, sunitinib and temsirolimus?do not offer ?value for money.? The drugs are routinely available in the United States and in the rest of Europe. The brand name for the drugs are Avastin (bevacizumab), Nexavar (sorafenib), Sutent (sunitinib) and Torisel (temsirolimus). More than 7,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer annually in the UK, and of these, around 1,700 patients will be diagnosed with advanced cancer. Although the drugs are not able to cure renal cell carcinoma or cancer that has spread from the initial tumour, they are able to extend life by five to six months. Drugs can be prescribed on the NHS once NICE has given them approval. The body was established by the Labour government in 1999 with a remit to offer ?independent? advice on drugs and clinical best practice for the NHS. However, its main criterion for assessing drugs is whether they offer ?value for money? and are ?cost-effective.? In accepting or rejecting drugs for the NHS, NICE adheres to a formula called the ?Quality-adjusted Life Year? (QALY). Within this, a drug is deemed to be cost-effective if it delivers an extra QALY at a cost of roughly 20,000 a year or less. The four kidney cancer drugs were primarily rejected, as their QALY was above 20,000. Extending a patient?s life by six months was deemed to be uneconomical. Some patients in England and Wales are currently using the drugs on a trial basis pending the decision from NICE. Many of them had to wage a protracted campaign to get treatment. Jean Murphy, a terminally ill 68-year-old from Manchester, was denied the drug Sutent despite a High Court ruling in her favour. Murphy said, ?I can?t see any reason why it can?t be funded on the National Health Service if it?s a case of living or dying. The only thing that will help me is the Sutent…. It?s like manslaughter because if I can?t get this I will die.? Murphy was only able to get the drug this month following an anonymous donation of 10,000. In its assessment of the drugs, NICE admitted that they provided ?significant gains? in survival. However, its final ruling on rejecting the use of the drugs was strictly based on financial considerations. Professor Peter Littlejohns of NICE said, ?The decisions NICE has to make are some of the hardest in public life. NHS resources are not limitless and Nice has to decide what treatments represent best value to the patient as well as the NHS. Although these treatments are clinically effective, regrettably, the cost to the NHS is such that they are not a cost-effective use of NHS resources. Bevacizumab, sorafenib, sunitinib or temsirolimus have the potential to extend progression-free survival by five to six months, but at a cost of 20,000-35,000 per patient per year.? ?If these treatments were provided on the NHS,? he added, ?other patients would lose out on treatments that are both clinically and cost effective.? NHS resources are limited as the result of government policy, determined by the demands of a financial elite that views funds devoted to public health as a drain on profits. The inevitable result of the NICE policy is that patients who could be offered treatment are being condemned to death unless they can buy the drugs themselves. The decision prompted an outcry from patients, healthcare campaigners, healthcare professionals and particularly doctors who treat kidney cancer patients. Kate Spall, an activist on behalf of cancer patients, said of the decision, ?We plough billions into cancer research but the benefits of that research?some remarkable drug treatments?are not available to all who need them. Patients are disregarded and given up on because they cannot get the drugs they need.? Professor John Wagstaff, an honorary consultant in medical oncology at the South Wales Cancer Institute in Swansea, told the media: ?The possibility that we clinicians may be prevented from offering Sutent to our patients is an outrage and a devastating blow to the kidney cancer community. ?If this draft guidance is not overturned, there will be no point in me accepting referrals of patients with metastatic renal cell cancer as three quarters of patients do not gain any real benefit from interferon, leaving only the option of palliative care. ?This decision will mean that the UK will have the poorest survival figures for metastatic renal cell cancer in Europe. Sutent produces a remarkable effect on survival for patients. It is now no longer ethical or reasonable for patients to have access to treatment with only interferon.? Two years ago, the NICE ?citizen?s council??27 members of the public who advise the body?recommended that it should adopt the ?rule of rescue? as a general policy. ?It is human nature to help in an emergency,? one member of the council said. NICE rejected this principle. ?There is a powerful human impulse, known as the ?rule of rescue?, to attempt to help an identifiable person whose life is in danger, no matter how much it costs,? NICE responded in a document entitled Social Value Judgments. ?When there are limited resources for healthcare, applying the ?rule of rescue? may mean that other people will not be able to have the care or treatment they need…. The Institute has not therefore adopted an additional ?rule of rescue.? ? NICE also rejects both what it calls the ?utilitarian approach? and the ?egalitarian approach? in allocating health resources, in favour of its own guidelines based on ?procedural justice.? It describes the utilitarian approach as allowing an ?efficient distribution of resources, but sometimes at the expense of fairness. It can allow the interests of minorities to be overridden by the majority; and it may not help in eradicating health inequalities.? NICE defines the ?egalitarian approach? as the effort to distribute ?healthcare resources to allow each individual to have a fair share of the opportunities available, as far as is possible. It allows an adequate, but not necessarily maximum, level of healthcare, but raises questions as to what is ?fair.? But an egalitarian approach cannot be fully applied when there are limits on resources.? According to NICE, the fundamental basis of ?procedural justice? is that it provides for ?accountability for reasonableness,? which is essential because the ?NHS is funded from general taxation, and it is right that UK citizens have the opportunity to be involved in the decisions about how the NHS?s limited resources should be allocated.? Having rejected the recommendation of the 27-member ?citizens? council,? NICE cannot legitimately claim that it is responding to the interests of the public. The decision of NICE to deny treatment to patients is in fact a reflection of the interests of a small plutocratic layer who can pay for their own medical treatment and have nothing in common with the majority of the population who rely on the NHS for care.

BAE case in the Lords
14 Aug 2008
Buried The five senior Judges are technically a committee of the Lords so the hearing took place in a Lords? Committee room, dominated by a huge painting of the burial of King Harold. Only the tops of the heads of the Judges (without wigs) were visible from most of the public seats as the banks of case documents formed a wall across the room. Between the Judges and the rest of us sat eleven bewigged barristers ? CAAT and The Corner House had four (David Pannick QC, Philippe Sands QC, Dinah Rose QC and Ben Jaffey) and the Government five, whilst ?interested party? BAE, and ?intervener? Justice, a human rights and law reform organisation, had one apiece. All these barristers were backed by teams of solicitors. Even though the Lords? authorities had added an extra bench, this retinue left little space in the room. We all crammed in ? CAAT and Corner House people; the Guardian?s Rob Evans, who had done so much to expose the BAE corruption allegations, was there along with journalists from other papers, the BBC and specialist legal magazines; representatives from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, concerned that its 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention will be rendered meaningless if the Government is allowed to stop corruption inquiries as in this case, took copious notes; Peter Gardiner, the former BAE travel agent who gave evidence to the SFO looked on; and many others were present. The arguments The Government?s lead barrister, Jonathan Sumption QC, went first. He argued that the Director of the SFO, as an independent prosecutor, had a wide discretion as to which cases he investigated or prosecuted, he just had to act ?reasonably? in making his decisions. He also produced a witness statement from the Foreign Office in an attempt to show that, in contrast to what Lord Justice Moses had said in the High Court, the attention of Saudi Arabian officials had been drawn to the separation of powers between the Government and the legal authorities in the UK. David Pannick challenged this. He said the rule of law had to prevail and that this demanded that the SFO did not give into threats by Saudi Arabia to withdraw cooperation on anti-terrorism until all other options had been exhausted and, even then, only if it was strictly necessary. The Government, he said, did not meet this test, as all bar one of the approaches to Saudi Arabia listed in the Foreign Office statement had been made before the threats were issued and all were fairly casual mentions in the course of other meetings. Additionally, the UK did not seem to have reminded Saudi Arabia of its anti-terrorism commitments. With regards to the OECD Convention, Dinah Rose argued that this was a relevant consideration because the SFO Director said his decision was made in accordance with it ? the question was whether ?national security? was an implied exemption or not and she said not ? whilst the Government said it was up to the OECD to decide on this issue. No decision as yet There was very little intervention by the Judges as the barristers made their submissions. This, we were told, is unusual. Each of five Judges now considers the submissions, looks up the precedents and writes his or her own speech ? the verdict is the majority view. The result will be announced, most likely in October, when the Judges? committee reports to the full House of Lords. Justice? Campaign update The House of Lords has overturned the High Court’s ruling that the Government broke the law by stopping the corruption investigation into BAE Systems’ Saudi arms deals. The case had been brought by CAAT and The Corner House with widespread support. The Serious Fraud Office’s appeal was heard by the House of Lords on the 7th and 8th of July and judgment was given on 30th July. One of the judges, Baroness Hale, said that she would have liked to have been able to say that it was wrong to stop the investigation as it was “extremely distasteful that an independent public official should feel himself obliged to give way to threats of any sort.” However, she had to agree with her colleagues that the decision taken by the SFO Director was lawful. The judgment means that those with powerful friends prepared to make threats can effectively evade justice, particularly if the threats are couched in terms of national security. The ruling also confirms that the UK government has driven a coach and horses through a key international anti-bribery convention to protect its friends in BAE. CAAT and The Corner House are not dejected by the result as it has brought the whole issue into the public realm and clarified the law.

Adapt to 4 Degrees?
13 Aug 2008
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, “the end of living and the beginning of survival” for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world’s coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world’s most productive farmland. The world’s geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth’s carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. Watson’s call was supported by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that “if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase”. This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane ? a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger than carbon dioxide over 20 years ? captured under melting permafrost is already under way. To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth. But what are we to do? All our policies to date to tackle global warming have been miserable failures. The Kyoto protocol has created a vast carbon market but done little to reduce emissions. The main effect of the EU’s emissions trading scheme has been to transfer about ?30bn or more from consumers to Europe’s biggest polluters, the power companies. The EU and US foray into biofuels has, at huge cost, increased greenhouse gas emissions and created a world food crisis, causing starvation in many poor countries. So are all our efforts doomed to failure? Yes, so long as our governments remain craven to special interests, whether carbon traders or fossil fuel companies. The carbon market is a valuable tool, but must be subordinate to climatic imperatives. The truth is that to prevent runaway greenhouse warming, we will have to leave most of the world’s fossil fuels in the ground, especially carbon-heavy coal, oil shales and tar sands. The fossil fuel and power companies must be faced down. Global problems need global solutions, and we also need an effective replacement for the failed Kyoto protocol. The entire Kyoto system of national allocations is obsolete because of the huge volumes of energy embodied in products traded across national boundaries. It also presents a major obstacle to any new agreement ? as demonstrated by the 2008 G8 meeting in Japan that degenerated into a squabble over national emission rights. The answer? Scrap national allocations and place a single global cap on greenhouse gas emissions, applied “upstream” ? for instance, at the oil refinery, coal-washing station and cement factory. Sell permits up to that cap in a global auction, and use the proceeds to finance solutions to climate change ? accelerating the use of renewable energy, raising energy efficiency, protecting forests, promoting climate-friendly farming, and researching geoengineering technologies. And commit hundreds of billions of dollars per year to finance adaptation to climate change, especially in poor countries. Such a package of measures would allow us to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and long-term stabilisation at 350 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. This avoids the economic pain that a cap-and-trade system alone would cause, and targets assistance at the poor, who are least to blame and most need help. The permit auction would raise about $1 trillion per year, enough to finance a spread of solutions. At a quarter of the world’s annual oil spending, it is a price well worth paying. Oliver Tickell’s book Kyoto2 has just been published kyoto2.org

Putin wins (probably)
13 Aug 2008
It is obvious by now that Georgia is going to suffer a humiliating loss, even with extensive Western backing. Not only is its weary army fighting Russian troops, but they are also being battered by attacks from independence fighters in Abkhazia. The Russian press have openly spoken of annexing Abkhazia. For example, Alexander Bobkov in the Russkii Kurier summarised some of the common Russian press perceptions about the region – dispelling worries that it is a “purely Muslim republic” or that annexing it would stimulate a war with the EU and US, and pointing out the economic benefits of “210 kilometers of sub-tropical Black Sea coastline”. Since the region has already declared itself independent of Georgia, and has suffered international isolation and blockade as a result, it may even welcome integration into Russia so that it is part of a recognised world power with an accessible economy. Russia is already devoting aid to the region in anticipation of future tax receipts. Meanwhile, Putin’s forces are systematically taking out economic and military targets in Georgia, including the Black Sea port of Poti. Georgia claims Russia is preparing an invasion – probably an exaggeration, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see thousands of Russian troops being stationed around the seceding regions. If the Bush administration did endorse Saakashvili’s actions, it blundered horribly, and Russia may well end up with an expanded territory in a geo-economically prized region. Even if Bush was somehow taken by surprise, which I think is unlikely, there is no doubt that the US government and its supporters are now throwing their weight decisively behind Georgia, and are about to get a bloody nose for their trouble. Russia has sought a peace deal through the UN Security Council, but “council concluded it was at a stalemate after the United States, Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides ?to renounce the use of force,? council diplomats said.” That’s fairly clear, isn’t it? Georgia and its backers are being absolutely intransigent, refusing to withdraw Georgian troops from South Ossetia, where – not that you would know it from much of the reporting – they are actually carrying out serious atrocities. So when the Observer and papers like it say the “world pleads for peace”, they aren’t being strictly up-front with us. Georgia is claiming this morning to have withdrawn all troops from South Ossetia. I doubt that is the case – why reject a bilateral ceasefire at the UN, only to engage in a unilateral one the next day? But to the extent that this reflects Georgia’s weakness, it surely augurs their imminent defeat. You have to wonder how far the US is prepared to take this – they aren’t going to commit troops and, no matter how much Saakashvili may wish it, NATO is not going to overstretch itself even further. There are also rumours going around sites like DEBKAFile and other sites that Israeli advisors are assisting the Georgian side of the conflict. Yossi Melman of Ha’aretz has apparently supported this claim. It is no secret that there are Israeli military advisors in Georgia, but Israel has a delicate relationship with Russia that it doesn’t want to upset. That is presumably why Israel froze defense sales to Georgia on Tuesday. Israel is clearly far more beholden to the US than to Russia, but I suspect the Bush administration would rather Israel stayed out of any explicit involvement. So, unless I drastically underestimate the Georgian military, I can’t see any other outcome than a decisive Russian victory here. Incidentally, just so that this point isn’t lost in the deliberately confusing reportage. Yes, Russian jets are attacking Georgian targets and killing civilians. Yes, the reported civilian casualties “on both sides” is reported to be over 2,000. What is quite often not stated or just gently skated over in the reporting, so laden with images of Georgian dead and wounded, is that the estimate of 2,000 civilian deaths comes from the Russian government and it applies overwhelmingly to the Georgian attacks on South Ossetia on Friday. In fact, this is the basis for Vladimir Putin’s claims of a “genocide” against South Osettians by the Georgians (is he deliberately referencing the ICTY judgment about Srebrenica here?). The Georgian side, by contrast, claims 129 deaths of both soldiers and civilians. So, if Russian figures are good enough to reference, why is the source of the figures and their context obscured? Why is being made to look as if Russian forces are behind most of those alleged deaths? Doesn’t this just amount to a whitewash of the actions of the Georgian army in South Ossetia? And why not mention 30,000 refugees too?

EU-Latin America Trade Negotiations
12 Aug 2008
Since 1993, representatives from the member countries of the Andean Community of Nations (ACN) and the European Union (EU) have met periodically to strengthen their commercial and political ties. From the European side, the eventual goal of these meetings was to allow for the Andean countries to find an alternative development model to the one proposed by Washington. This would allow for the EU to assist in creating development programmes and offer the Andean nations opportunities for economic integration with the European body. As part of this assistance, the ACN and the EU would negotiate a treaty to enhance their political dialogue and cooperation. Though negotiations have been stalled for quite some time, the potential Association Agreement resulting from the meetings would include pursuing common political and economic goals, such as a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two blocs and for further support for development within the Andean region. Analysing the Association Agreement European politicians would like their Latin American counterparts to believe that the above are the goals of the Agreement. In reality, the actions of EU leaders do not begin to address the complex political-economic situation found within the Andean region. Furthermore, it would be nave to underestimate the possibility of special interests pressuring Andean politicians to sign an FTA and equally as far-fetched to assume that Europe intends to help the ACN out of pure altruism. The proposed FTA is based on previous agreements negotiated by Peru and Colombia (the latter ones, yet to be ratified) with the U.S. and must be closely scrutinized in order to ensure that it is both efficient and rejection proof. What is the EU’s real interest? The growing commodities crisis is transforming Latin America into a crucial region because of its abundant natural resources. Therefore, Europe developed a heightened interest in improving its commercial relations with the ACN. Other countries, such as the U.S., have already been doing so for some time. It is not a coincidence that both the EU and the U.S. started negotiating with the Andean countries in 1993, and that they compete in similar export markets such as machinery and other capital goods, in addition to both importing huge amounts of raw resources from the region. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was the U.S. attempt at pulling the region into its sphere of influence, though it utterly failed at this due to tough-minded opposition from populist and anti-imperialist presidents in South America. With the Western powers displaying a sobering interest in trading with South America, it became clear that it would be beneficial for the ACN to pursue an Association Agreement with the EU. Taking into consideration that the ACN already is under the jurisdiction of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), and that the GSP allows the ACN to export to the EU under a relatively low tariff regime without having to lower its import tariffs, the intrinsic importance of a new FTA to the ACN could easily be overestimated. The ACN wants the bargaining process to start with the GSP as a reference point, but the EU demands that negotiations must start from scratch. If talks fail, the GSP will be able to ensure that Andean imports still have some commercial preferences in entering the EU market. Again, in order for any potential FTA to be acceptable to the Andean trade association, it must be considered just as beneficial to its commercial interests as the GSP is today. Furthermore, while the FTA is supposed to include mechanisms that protect its members against artificially low-priced imports, such as subsidized agricultural goods, it is evident from the NAFTA experience that, in practice, these mechanisms usually are insufficient. An FTA, in comparison to the GSP, may be less advantageous for the ACN if subsidized agricultural goods end up potentially bankrupting many more already impoverished Andean farmers. There are even more reasons to be sceptical of an Association Agreement. Despite a pledge at the Lima summit by EU leaders to protect human rights and the right of migration, a July 18th “return directive” calls the EU’s motivations into question. The return directive standardizes procedures for dealing with illegal immigrants hoping to migrate to a European Union country, of which an estimated three million have come from Latin America. While Europeans argue that they favour legal migration and a strong human rights code, Latin American leaders are concerned over the treatment of illegal immigrants in the region. For example, under the new EU directive, minors can be detained and extradited to their home countries without their parents, cruelly separating families. In defence of the law, Francesca Mosca, the ambassador of the EU to Panama, said that the law seeks to unite families and establishes the voluntary return of illegal immigrants. Reactions to a Shameful Law In response to the EU’s approval of its directive, President Evo Morales of Bolivia dispatched a letter to European leaders, reminding them of the pledge to protect human rights made at the Lima summit. He stressed that the Americas have always welcomed poor European immigrants to their member countries and that it would be impossible to continue trade negotiations if the EU did not modify its new regulations. Morales threatened to require visas for Europeans desiring to enter Bolivia, following the diplomatic principle of reciprocity. The other Andean presidents have joined Morales in condemning the new EU directive. A total of nine Latin American presidents have expressed their disapproval for the directive to date. Bolivia and Venezuela have gone so far as to threaten cutting off oil and natural gas supplies to Europe, while Ecuador has announced the suspension of the EU-ACN negotiation because of the immigration issue. In addition, the Organization of American States (OAS) has organized a multinational commission to discuss the issue with European delegates. Colombia and Peru have not abandoned trade negotiations altogether, but in order to successfully influence European politicians to create a more humanitarian law, all Latin American nations must unite. The already slow trade negotiations have now stalled completely, arguably for good reason. If the EU cannot fulfil its pledge on immigration, the Andean countries have some logic on their side to be suspicious of EU intentions regarding other outstanding issues, including free trade. Will the Association Agreement include some sort of protection against subsidized European farm goods? Will the new trade deal be more beneficial for the ACN than the GSP has been? Most importantly, is European influence preferable to U.S. influence? Or will it be less benign? Andean leaders are likely to be asking themselves at least some of these very questions. Divide and conquer, the U.S. strategy The U.S. seems to be fully aware of the EU’s competition for political and economic influence in South America. For this reason, when the FTAA failed, Washington threw itself into pursuing individual bilateral agreements, a strategy that worked in Peru and may yet be successful in Colombia. Thus far, the U.S. has a negative trade balance with both of these countries, and signing the FTAs will probably serve to only increase the U.S. trade deficit. Such sacrifice can only be explained by the belief that a larger long-term benefit, such as the securing of Andean natural resources, would be in the offering. By signing individual FTAs, the U.S. has been able to slow the negotiation process between the EU and the ACN. These FTAs have divided the members of the ACN. Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia have lower import tariffs among themselves in order to promote commercial integration. If the U.S. implements an FTA with one of these countries, subsidized imports from the U.S. may be resold to any of the other three using the FTA signer as a middle man. The result is that cheaper, subsidized American products compete unfairly against poor farmers from the entire ACN bloc. To prevent this, tariffs between ACN members would need to be raised, effectively defeating the purpose of forming the ACN to begin with. Individual FTAs have contributed substantially to the undermining of the ACN. Venezuela left the pact in part because it disagreed with Peru and Colombia’s FTAs with the U.S. The former two have also attempted to sign trade agreements with the EU before Ecuador and Bolivia, which could further accelerate the disintegration of the ACN. The inability of the Andean group to establish a common foreign trade policy has led to the failure of the EU-ACN negotiations, which were postponed by the EU on June 30th. It remains unclear whether the application of U.S. influence was intentional or not, but the recent mobilization of the Fourth Fleet in regional waters is undeniable proof that Latin America is once again on the minds of U.S. policymakers. South American Economic Alternatives Given the clear geopolitical and economic interests that both the U.S. and EU have in the Andean region, the reaction of area left-leaning governments, like that of Chavez’s, is not surprising. The creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an alternative to the American FTAA, was based on a mutual regional cooperation formula instead of neoliberal trade procedures. Up to this point, it has been signed by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia and Dominica. ALBA member countries do not have to fear for the livelihood of their impoverished farmers since they can still use tariff barriers to protect themselves from artificially inexpensive agricultural products coming from the subsidized farms of Europe or the U.S. Though the potential trade among member countries is quite limited in comparison to trade with the Western powers, ALBA brings on a commitment to economic modernization. For example, Cuba sent doctors and teachers to aid Venezuela in exchange for favourable oil prices, marrying social justice to hardcore economics. ALBA may represent what other regional economic agreements are failing to do: trade designed to benefit the poor. While Venezuela leads ALBA, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has strong ties to Brazil. In years to come, UNASUR may represent a significantly greater potential for South American interests in terms of economic trade, defence and political influence than ALBA. The GDP and population of ALBA nations is only one-eighth that of UNASUR. Founded in May of 2008, UNASUR seeks to eventually unite the ACN and Mercosur in an effort to create a single free market for South America and to promote further integration among member countries. UNASUR may be able to project increased negotiation power and an obvious ability to stand up for Latin America when it comes to formulating free trade agreements. However, different national interests may cause conflicts and delay the whole-hearted implementation of UNASUR. In any case, Brazil could use the treaty as a wedge to expand its growing influence in the region. Whatever their motives, these countries have the theoretical opportunity to improve their socio-economic situation through UNASUR membership. With the full participation of all South American countries, the combined GDP of UNASUR would be approximately $2 trillion, making it one of the largest markets in the world and irresistibly attractive for investors. Infrastructure projects connecting the different countries would greatly benefit their local economies, whose competitiveness and size are limited because the market for their products is relatively small. Also, new trade routes are likely to open, creating additional opportunities and helping to solve local supply problems. An example of such integration is the Transatlantic Highway between Brazil and Peru, currently under construction. The free movement of people will allow for greater flexibility in accessing the membership’s labour market, while the full advent of the South American Defence Council might render UNASUR as an international power once it is fully implemented. However, international disputes like the conflict between Peru and Chile over Pacific ocean borders and fishing rights may slow a much-needed integration process. Despite the favourable economic conditions that much of South America enjoys, it seems likely that UNASUR could remain a distant dream due to ideological differences and the sometime conflicting interests of its member nations. Other concerns over free trade According to neoliberal economic theory, liberalization of trade should benefit Latin American economies through increasing competitiveness and foreign investment. Two instances that nurture this idea are the experiences of the Asian Tigers and Chile. It must be noted that when the Asian economies started implementing neoliberal policies, they did not suffer the degree of inequality found in ACN economies today. In the case of Chile, neoliberal policies in the 1973 – 1986 period, under the Pinochet dictatorship, did not bring substantial per capita GDP growth rates. Although in the long term Chilean neoliberal economics brought sustained GDP growth, the stringent controls affecting structural adjustment process led to repeated human rights violations under the Pinochet regime. It is questionable whether neoliberal policies can be implemented in ACN democracies, given the possibility that the adjustment process involved will result in popular dissatisfaction with the government. This in turn may lead to the election of populist leaders pledged to reverse neoliberal policies. Discrimination lessens the benefits to certain sectors of society, especially the indigenous and those of African descent. Will free markets be plausible in countries like Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, where these often have excluded groups that represent sizeable segments of the population? It remains to be seen if the Andean countries will be able to meet the conditions for free trade to succeed, and it will be interesting to compare the future economic stability of Colombia and Peru with that of their neighbours Ecuador and Bolivia. Whether or not the ACN-EU trade agreement is signed, it can be comprehended that the Andean countries are each following disparate trends, from trade liberalization to statism, which has led the ACN into disarray. One school of thought believes that if some of these countries insist on pursuing conflicting interests, they will never be able to establish the unity that would give the group the leverage needed to achieve more favourable deals, like the final form of the Association Agreement proposed by the EU. If properly bargained, this agreement would be more beneficial than previous accords such as the GSP. While the lack of unity has slowed the creation of UNASUR, it also has prevented the possibility for an unfair negotiation that would further impoverish the already neglected farmers of the Andes. Either way, no sign of major change is likely to be seen in the near future in Latin America if increased cooperation is not promoted between the Western and Eastern hemispheres. This analysis was prepared by COHA. Guillermo Cornejo is a Research Associate of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

Boris Johnson pulls out of Mayors for Peace
12 Aug 2008
Last month, Boris Johnson announced the withdrawal of London?s membership of the global ?Mayors for Peace? initiative. This was founded by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1982, in an effort to prevent any other city going through similar suffering. In 1945, atom bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US air force, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the devastating consequences of radiation poisoning affecting subsequent generations. Since that time, mayors of those cities have felt a responsibility to make sure people understand the consequences: ?to prevent any repetition of the A-bomb tragedy, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have continually sought to tell the world about the inhumane cruelty of nuclear weapons and have consistently urged that nuclear weapons be abolished.? Mayors for Peace is hardly an extremist organisation. There are currently 2,277 member cities in 129 countries, including Paris, Berlin, Rome, Ottawa, Los Angeles and Sydney. Members are drawn from across the political spectrum. Tadatoshi Akiba, the Mayor of Hiroshima, believes that the role of city mayors in raising awareness of nuclear weapons is key, given that cities are the targets of nuclear weapons. We were aware when Boris Johnson was elected that he supported Britain?s nuclear weapons system Trident, as well as the war on Iraq, but there is no reason for him to reject participation in an international body committed to the global abolition of nuclear weapons. Every Conservative government has supported Britain?s participation in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the goal of which is global nuclear disarmament. This decision suggests that Boris Johnson is retreating from that common goal. This decision is insulting to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the work of their mayors for global peace, and goes against the views of the majority of the British people, who support global nuclear disarmament. So why has Boris Johnson pulled out? Does he have no concern for peace? Mayors for Peace was established so that cities and their residents need no longer fear nuclear annihilation ? that cities should no longer be the targets of nuclear weapons. Is Boris Johnson giving up on that goal? Johnson?s approach is in marked contrast to that of the former mayor, Ken Livingstone. Ken is a strong supporter of the peace movement and was a staunch ally during his terms in office and his moral commitment to peace and disarmament helped to work towards a culture of peace in London. This was demonstrated in many ways, not only on the nuclear issue, but also on the anti-war issue and ? drawing this more widely ? on building constructive and harmonious relationships between London?s many communities. In all of these areas, I believe he was in line with the majority opinions of London?s residents and working in their best interests. As Tadatoshi Akiba says, it is the residents of cities that suffer most in war. In very stark contrast recently, was the different experiences of the two visits of President Bush, firstly in 2003, and secondly just a few weeks ago. In 2003, Mayor Livingstone supported our protests against Bush?s visit, and he welcomed the disabled US Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic to City Hall, to pay tribute to his work for peace. Our rally and demonstration proceeded peacefully and unimpeded. During Bush?s recent visit, the anti-war movement was prevented from demonstrating in Whitehall ? signalling unnecessary restrictions on our right to protest ? and a number of protestors were on the receiving end of police brutality. It is to be hoped that these incidents are not symptomatic of a new attitude in London, contemptuous of those who struggle for peace and disarmament, and cavalier with our right to peaceful protest.

Picking Up the Gauntlet
12 Aug 2008
Arthur Scargill is a brave man. He was brave to come to the climate camp last week. Though we disagreed with most of what he said, he earned our respect for his willingness to debate. He is brave to return to public life, after suffering one of the nastiest vilification campaigns in British history, and he is brave to be fighting for coal again. He is especially brave to offer to asphixiate himself in the interests of science. Many people would be willing to help him perform this experiment at the earliest possible opportunity. But he is also wrong, on almost all counts. In his article last week demanding a return to coal and accusing me of selling out, Scargill suggested that radioactive discharges are more dangerous than carbon emissions(1). This, of course, is nonsense, but if he really believes it he should be campaigning against the burning of coal. The odd and widely-ignored truth is that routine radioactive discharges from coal-burning are greater than those produced by nuclear plants. Coal contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium. Though these are present at much lower levels than in nuclear fuel, a lot more coal is burnt, which means that total emissions are greater. An article in Scientific American last year maintained that levels of ionising radiation in the bones of people living around coal plants are up to six times higher than the levels in people living around atomic power stations(2). The people most at risk from the radioactivity associated with coal (not to mention far greater hazards such as dust, heavy metals and sulphur and nitrous oxide pollution) are the workers ? both in the mines and in the power plants. Coal mining is associated with some of the most unpleasant industrial diseases ever recorded. Why would a trade unionist wish to expose working people to these dangers, when they could instead be employed, at minimal risk to their health, building and installing wind turbines, wave machines and solar power plants? Scargill maintains that nuclear power is four times as expensive as coal-fired electricity. There?s a standard model for estimating future costs, of which he should be aware, produced by the International Energy Agency(3). This shows that it?s likely to be 10-50% more expensive to save a tonne of carbon through coal burning with carbon capture and storage than by means of nuclear energy. (Wind power, incidentally, is much cheaper than either)(4). The agency?s figures are not definitive (nothing in this field is), but the estimates it gives are for coal bought at anticipated market prices, not for the much more expensive fuel Arthur proposes: coal produced only from deep mines in the United Kingdom. I feel I need to point out that I have not become an advocate for nuclear power. My position is that environmentalists should stop trying to pick technologies for electricity generation. Instead we should demand a maximum level for the carbon dioxide produced per megawatt-hour, impose a number of other public safety measures, then allow the energy companies to find the cheapest means of delivering it. Otherwise we are in danger of backing the solutions we find aethestically appealing and delaying the massive carbon cuts that need to be made. If nuclear power meets the very tough conditions I proposed last week, we should no longer oppose it; though that remains a big if. This is too subtle a point for Arthur and other commentators, who are shrieking that Monbiot has gone nuclear. Scargill claims that the closure of most of the UK?s coal plants has not been accompanied by lower carbon emissions. In fact carbon pollution has faithfully tracked coal burning for the past 18 years. In 1990, when consistent carbon data for the UK begin, this country used 108.3 million tonnes of coal(5) and produced 592.4mt of carbon dioxide(6). In 1999, coal consumption fell to its lowest level since 1970 (55.7mt) and the UK?s emissions fell to their lowest level since 1990 (540.3mt). Emissions rose in 2006 because coal burning increased when gas prices shot up. They fell back again in 2007 when the gas price dropped. In all cases, coal has been the key swing factor for CO2 production. When Arthur suggests that, by mining and refining coal, ?we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment?, he shows that he is living in a world of make-believe. He rightly demands that we ?end the import of shale oil, tar sands and other so-called unconventional oils? and calls them ?the dirtiest fuels on the planet?. But while the total carbon emissions from petrol made out of tar sands are 30-70% higher than those from conventional petroleum(7), turning coal into transport fuel raises emissions by 85%(8). The process also requires ten gallons of fresh water for every gallon of fuel produced. Coal, not tar sand, is the dirtiest fuel on the planet. When he speaks of a resurgent coal industry, he pictures deep seams hacked out by grimy workers romantically dying of silicosis. But, with a few minor exceptions, this is no longer how coal is produced in the UK. New research I?ve commissioned, published for the first time here, shows that the industry is planning a great opencast revival. Since January last year, 22 new opencast coal mines or mine extensions have been approved by British planning authorities. Only two schemes ? both of them quite small ? have been rejected without appeal. My researcher, Ketty Dean, has discovered that mining companies have applied for planning permission for a further 22 schemes, while 11 more applications in England alone are about to be submitted(9). Altogether, if the new proposals are accepted, 55mt of coal extraction is in the pipeline. If we accept the outer limit proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the carbon cut required to prevent more than 2C of warming (85% worldwide(10), which means 95.9% in the UK(11)), the coal these pits will produce equates to the sustainable annual emissions of 280 million people(12). This digging can happen only at the expense of the communities Scargill claims to support. The Coal Forum is a government-funded lobby group in which coal companies and civil servants plot against the public interest. Its latest minutes reveal that if – as the Welsh Assembly government now proposes – there is a minimum distance of 500 metres between opencast pits and the nearest homes, this would ?sterilise? all the useful coal reserves in Wales(13). This means that they could no longer be dug. The pits are viable only if they are allowed the wreck the lives of local people. Even before a lump of clean coal is burnt, its extraction trashes the environment. Arthur Scargill ends his column with a final appeal to reason: by challenging me to a duel. ?I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.? I accept his challenge, as long as I can choose my source of radiation. I invite Arthur to propose a date and send me the name of his second. I hope he can hold his breath. www.monbiot.com References: 1. Arthur Scargill, 8th August 2008. Coal isn?t the climate enemy, Mr Monbiot. It?s the solution. The Guardian. 2. Mara Hvistendahl, 13th December 2007. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste. Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nu… 3. The MARKAL model. 4. The MARKAL figures are reproduced in Department of Trade and Industry, 2003. Energy White Paper – Supplementary Annexes, p7. 5. DBERR, 2007. Long Term Trends. Table 2.1.2 Inland consumption of solid fuels: 1970 to 2006. stats.berr.gov.uk/energystats/dukes2_1_2.xls 6. Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, Table 2. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann… 7. Institute of Physics, 7th December 2006. Greenhouse gas emissions set to rise as new sources for transport fuel are used. Press release. http://www.iop.org/News/Community_News_Archive/2006/news_9600.html 8. Natural Resources Defence Council, February 2007. Why Liquid Coal Is Not a Viable Option to Move America Beyond Oil. http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/liquids.pdf 9. If you want a copy of the spreadsheet, please contact george@monbiot.com 10. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Fourth Assessment Report. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers, Table SPM.6. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf 11. CO2 production in 2000 (the baseline for the IPCC?s proposed cut), divided by the current population gives a figure of 3.58 tonnes of CO2 per person. An 85% cut means that (if the population remains constant) the global output per head should be reduced to 0.537t by 2050. The UK currently produces 9.6 tonnes per head. But the world population will rise in the same period. If we assume a population of 9bn in 2050, the cut rises to 95.9% in the UK. 12. Coal contains an average of 746kg C/tonne. The molecular weight of CO2 is 3.667x that of C. Multiplied by 55.1mt, this gives 150.7mtCO2. Divided by 0.537 gives 281m. 13. UK Coal Forum, 13th May 2008. Eighth Meeting. http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file46985.pdf

Labour Must Endorse Living Wage Campaign to Win Back Popular Support
11 Aug 2008
Cast your mind back nine years to a time when the Labour party had recently stormed to power and a wave of public optimism still swept the nation. We may have been duped but back then Labour did implement some radical reforms. Now, as the poorest members of society are struggling to cope with rising food and utility bills, it is time for the government to revisit one of its most successful policies, the minimum wage. It is clear that the introduction of the minimum wage improved the circumstances of many workers, and even Conservative critics now back the policy, with the predicted negative impact on businesses never materialising. 5.52 per hour, however, is no longer enough and as the minimum wage has failed to increase in line with inflation its impact has diminished. Labour should now go further. Introducing a national living wage – which allows anyone in full-time employment to enjoy an acceptable standard of living – would do more than any of the policies being mooted at present to tackle the impact of the ?credit crunch? on the poorest workers. London is already leading the way with its own living wage. Without enforcement, however, the majority of employers have understandably chosen to stick with the national minimum wage. The Living Wage Employer Award hopes to change this. Stephen O?Brien, joint president of London First, described the award as ?a new and much anticipated mark of socially responsible business practice”. ?A growing number of high profile organisations are now part of the Living Wage Employer Group and London 2012 is set to be the first ever living wage Olympics.? While the benefits of a living wage for workers and society are obvious ? social cohesion, higher living standards, lower crime levels, improvements in health, greater incentive to work – there are also many benefits for employers. A KPMG report stated that since becoming a living wage employer the Royal London Hospital reduced its cleaning staff turnover by 50%. Furthermore, better pay means higher productivity and a happier and more motivated workforce. Even Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who opposed the national minimum wage, is an advocate of the London living wage and earlier this year increased it to 7.45 per hour. ?This is not only morally right but makes good business sense contributing to better recruitment and retention of staff, higher productivity, and a more loyal workforce with high morale,? he said. It is a sad state of affairs when a Tory such as Johnson is the one defending workers? rights and the Conservatives are claiming to be the party of the poor. They will not fool many but there is, at the moment, no alternative. London may have been an exceptional case in the past but nationally wages of average earners have remained almost static in recent years and those of the bottom third fell between 2004 and 2007. A national living wage would help to change these damning statistics. If Labour want to tackle poverty they should export the living wage to the rest of the UK. By implementing a national living wage, perhaps with regional variances, they would be able to help those most at need. Business leaders would plead poverty themselves, as many did prior to the introduction of the minimum wage, but the cost would not have to sit solely with them. By increasing the tax free allowance the government could, in effect, pay much of the cost itself. Public opinion, for a change, would be behind them with a recent Harris poll showing that the majority of people favoured lowering taxes for the poor. The same poll also showed the majority in favour of higher taxes for the richest, but that would surely be asking too much from a government in thrall to the super-rich. How to decide the level of the living wage would be a contentious issue. However, the results of a recent research project carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated the amount of money required for a ?socially acceptable standard of living.? The report concluded that ?a single adult, working full time, needs to earn 6.88 per hour to reach this weekly standard.? The study also found that the minimum income standard calculated was higher than the current threshold for relative poverty. The government?s already poor record on tackling poverty, therefore, is even worse than current measures indicate. Julie Unwin, director of the foundation, said: ?This research is designed to encourage debate and to start building a public consensus about what level of income no one should have to live below.? If Labour, whoever their leader is, want to regain the trust of core supporters and improve their chances before the next election they need to be the party leading this debate. Back in their heyday they fought hard to introduce a national minimum wage; they should now do the same for a national living wage.

The global financial mess: blaming the victims
11 Aug 2008
We now know that on 9 August 2007 – which I called “debtonation day” – central bankers and regulators finally woke up to the scale of bad debts on the balance-sheets of banks and other financial institutions. On that day blindfolds were removed and scales fell from the eyes – of at least some of the key players in the finance sector. The “guardians of the nation’s and the world’s finances” finally began to emerge from a long period of stupid and unforgivable denial of the havoc wrought on the international economy by the privatised, deregulated and globally integrated finance sector. But it has taken more than a year for the wider public to realise that “debtonation day” was but the prelude to a terrifying prospect: large-scale and prolonged economic failure of a globalised, highly integrated economy, built on a financial house of cards. The floating world In creating huge burdens of debt, particularly in the Anglo-American economies, private financiers have defrauded and deceived tax collectors, investors and regulators – a level of deception partially exposed on “debtonation day”. Worse, they have burdened the productive sectors of the economy – the companies that you and I work for – with unpayable debts, which have already begun to hurt consumers, bankrupt key sectors of the economy in the United States and Britain, and to weaken the economies of (among others) Germany and Japan. Now the private-finance sector – represented for example by the management and shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Northern Rock – are holding a gun to the heads of regulators and politicians. The demand is that losses be socialised or nationalised. The alternative, they warn, is global financial armageddon. Until recently the vast bubble of debt these private institutions created was regarded by orthodox economists, regulators, politicians and investors as representing real, and possibly eternal wealth. Their delusions fed on the economic mantra that asset prices (such as property, commodities, works of art, racehorses, or commercial brands) were rising because of a shortage of supply and an excess of demand for assets: not because they were being powered upwards by the availability of “easy money” or credit. By finally admitting to the unpayability of debts on their books, and by making write-downs and write-offs, banks were and are in effect admitting to extensive deception of their fellow-bankers, regulators and investors. Each day brings fresh news of the destruction of wealth – and fresh allegations, such as the revelation that Merrill Lynch wrote off $9.4 billion in July 2008 (see Jeremy Lerner, “Citigroup results set to lift US stocks”, Financial Times, 18 July 2008). This brings the company’s losses over the last year to $19 billion – losses largely suffered by investors, including pension- funds. It is reported that the Massachusetts secretary of state promptly charged Merrill with “fraud” and “dishonest and unethical” conduct “for creating and implementing a sales and marketing scheme, which significantly misstated the nature and stability of the auction-rate market. As a result, thousands of investors were abandoned with illiquid investments…....” (see “Massachusetts sues Merrill over auction securities”, Reuters, 31 July, 2008). These losses and alleged deceptions have generated deep distrust in the whole sector, which stopped making credit available in the week running up to 9 August 2007, and thereafter tightened up on lending to all borrowers. This shortage of credit led in turn to the bursting of housing and other asset bubbles in the Anglo-American economies, and in economies like that of Spain. Central bankers and elected politicians acted swiftly to refinance heavily indebted banks, and bail out incompetent managers and shareholders. However nothing has been done to remove the debt burden from borrowers in either the domestic or the corporate sectors. It was announced on 5 August 2008 that the British government is offering Northern Rock, a failed private bank now nationalised, a further 3.4 billion of taxpayer-backed funds. But the current Labour government in Britain has little consolation for their debtors. Northern Rock?s notorious “Together” loans were offered to a market of desperate people anxious to buy a roof over their heads in a rising market. These were set at 125% of the value of a property and six times the borrower’s salary. Now, the number of house repossessions by this government-owned bank has risen from 2,215 to 3,710 in 2007-08, an increase of 67%; more than two-thirds of 70% of these repossessions related to ?Together? loans. So while the British government is using taxpayer funds to socialise the losses of a bank whose gains were largely privatised, it is simultaneously punishing the Rock’s borrowers by evicting them from their homes. Herein lie the seeds of social upheaval and discontent. The house of cards The stupidity, poor economic analysis and sheer ignorance of those – central bankers, politicians, auditors – that have a duty to act as guardians of the nation’s and the world’s finances has had and will continue to have very grave consequences for the whole of the global economy, but also for millions of individual and corporate borrowers. Their conduct stems in part from a failure of economic analysis. More precisely, the economics profession has failed to correctly analyse and alert policy makers to the impact of the finance sector – and of privatised credit creation – on the global economy. Indeed the economics profession has had a (not accidental?) blindspot for the role of haute finance in the economy, while at the same time encouraging its deregulation. Now, just as the curtain is being raised on the house of cards built by the finance sector, so a cabal of economists is working to pull it down. Their main concern is – of course – to protect the sector from governmental or democratic oversight and regulation, and to transfer private losses to taxpayers. To do so, they need to distract attention from the sector, limit debate, prevent a coherent analysis of the causes of the crisis emerging, and blind citizens to the “science” of finance. The first tactic in the campaign to divert attention is to blame the victims. The most hapless of these are sub-prime borrowers – people in low-paid work earning $7 an hour in the poorest districts of Ohio (for example) who were persuaded by dodgy mortgage-floggers that they could take on a adjustable rate mortgage at “teaser rates”, go to the ball and have a roof over their heads. The game of blaming the victim is conducted of course, in more elevated terms by the high priests of finance, and by the economics profession. One of these is Josef Ackermann, chairman of the board of directors of the Institute of International Finance, and chairman of the management board and group executive committee of Deutsche Bank. Ackermann has explained the current financial crisis thus: “for the first time in history, a crisis triggered by US housing finance problems is having global ramifications” (see “How the banks can win back confidence”, Financial Times, 31 July 2008). No mention here of sub-prime borrowers, but the inference is clear: this crisis originated with those borrowers and with the property market, not with reckless credit creation by the private finance sector. Others prefer just to blame “the bursting of the housing bubble” – which they would have us believe occurred simply as a result of spontaneous combustion. Alan Greenspan now argues that the “financial crisis is heralded, in fact defined, by sharp discontinuities of asset prices” (see “The world must repel calls to contain competitive markets”, Financial Times, 4 August 2008) In other words, it’s the spontaneous combustion of property and other asset prices, he suggests, that caused the financial crisis. We beg to differ and contend that it was the dramatic contraction of credit in August, 2007 that precipitated the collapse in asset prices. The arguments put forward by Greenspan and mainstream economists has as its main goal the maintenance of the system of financial globalisation. To do so, they insist in effect that the crisis “is nothing to do with us, guv.” That way analysis of the role of the finance sector, and excessive credit creation can be avoided. Yet another frequently repeated analysis is that the crisis was caused by the decision of the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates after 2001, in order to lessen the impact of an earlier crisis – the bursting of the dot.com bubble. So Chris Giles argues that “there is little doubt that the immediate cause of both the commodities price boom and the credit crisis has been low global interest rates” (see “Shifting down the gears…”, Financial Times, 5 August 2008). Alan Greenspan, governor of the Federal Reserve, was indeed obliged to cut interest rates in 2001 as a reaction to the financial crisis of that time, tackling one of the increasingly frequent crises of international financial capitalism over the decades since deregulation began in the 1970s. The 2001 crisis was caused by easy, if costly credit (offered at high real rates of interest to corporates) blowing up and then bursting the dot.com bubble. It’s true too that Greenspan’s actions eased the crisis, and encouraged banks and other lenders to go on yet another spree, and lend even more recklessly. But if he had not acted, then the credit-crunch of 2007 would have occurred much, much sooner. The fact is that while official rates of interest were low for a period after 2001, they had been much higher before. And even while official rates were low, few companies embarking on risky investment were able to borrow at these low official rates. But the credit-crunch occurred precisely because the scale and cost of debt was too high, so debtors began to fall into arrears and default. The exit strategy There is a frequently heard and self-justifying argument – expressed especially at times of crisis – that bankers have no responsibility for the amount of credit in the economy; they are mere intermediaries (like restaurateurs, one has said, “struck down by a sudden drying up of a food supply for which they have no responsibility”). This argument is more than a little ingenuous. Bankers create their own “food supply” for serving borrowers: credit. Credit is not created by an outside body, like the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve. Thanks to the outsourcing of credit creation by central bankers and politicians, the provision of credit is overwhelmingly an activity undertaken by private banks, few of which have been, or are adequately regulated. The fact that credit (or “the food supply”) has dried up is entirely a function of the incompetence of bank managers like Adam Applegarth of Northern Rock, and of the loss of trust that he and others created between banks and other financial institutions. It has nothing whatsoever to do with governments. The public – the borrowers, and therefore ultimately the victims of this vast private debt-creation machine – must not be fooled. Credit creation is a remarkable power, granted to banks and other financial institutions. By entering a number into a ledger, and guaranteeing the sum against an asset (like a property) a private financial institution can leverage very large sums of credit. The private sector has used these powers like a magic wand – to inflate a vast bubble of credit, or debt, which in turn inflated the housing and other bubbles. Since JM Keynes and FD Roosevelt first argued that finance must be regulated – must be servant, not master of the economy – the finance sector and its apologists in the economics profession have lobbied, deceived, bullied and bribed regulators and politicians to prevent all effective regulation over its activities. They have also demanded the removal of all controls over the movement of capital and effectively removed central-bank control over the setting of interest rates. On 9 August 2008, the anniversary of “debtonation day” it is incumbent on citizens to hold haute finance’s feet to the fire, and to demand strict regulation, transparency and oversight of the sector’s activities. But on this anniversary it is also important to begin to promote solutions. I suggest that there are only two solutions to the credit-crunch. The first is a grand jubilee – the cancellation of all unpayable debts, the clearing up of balance-sheets, and the restoration of stability to the financial system. If this solution is unacceptable there is a second: to raise the incomes of the indebted, to enable them to repay debts, and to drastically lower interest-rates to enable companies to reschedule and repay debts. If neither of these solutions are applied, the outcome will be the accelerated destruction of the financial system.

We Really Did It ? And We?ll Be Back
11 Aug 2008
It?s easy to feel powerless in the face of huge institutions such as energy corporations and governments. But the Climate Camp has shown that we don?t have to feel that way. This weekend, we proved our power. Today, we learned that – despite E.ON?s bluster that the power station had been running normally all weekend ? we most definitely succeeded in disrupting its operations. We learned this from a most unlikely source: the police. On Saturday, four bold rebel rafters got very close to the power station water intake pipe before being boarded and captured. They were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass and, according to their charge sheets, ?they did an act, namely disrupting the running of the power station by causing the water inlet cooling system to be shut down.? That doesn?t sound like E.ON?s claim of ?business as usual? to us! Despite the fact that we had publicly announced what we were going to do months in advance; despite E.ON spending millions on extra security, and the Government spending millions on policing; despite the extra fences, the smear campaigns, the scare stories, and the most repressive and heavy-handed policing of peaceful protest for many years; despite all of this, we got over the fences, disrupted the power station, and massively embarrassed an international energy giant. We outsmarted 26 police forces to run the biggest climate camp ever. We covered the river in boats, filled the streets with people, covered the power station gates with banners and hit at least eight other targets with autonomous actions. We flooded the national, local and independent media with our stories and messages. E.ON and the Government threw everything they could at us, and they still couldn?t hold us back. We?re just ordinary people with a cause. And we proved our power ? not just to the outside world, but to ourselves. Now we know what we can do, and our movement is stronger than ever. If the Government gives Kingsnorth the go-ahead, we will be back to stop it. Why not join us? The Camp for Climate Action is an open and welcoming network with a group near you.

Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: After 50 Years, Alive and Kicking
10 Aug 2008
In July 2008, at the invitation of CND, I traveled to London to address the national council of this venerable peace and disarmament group. The assumption in CND circles was that, thanks to my authorship of a scholarly trilogy on the history of the worldwide antinuclear movement (i.e. The Struggle Against the Bomb, published by Stanford University Press), I might be able to provide activists with some useful information. While meeting in London with CND leaders, however, I decided to gather some information myself about CND’s recent ventures. CND was founded in February 1958 by Bertrand Russell, A.J.P. Taylor, J.B. Priestley, Michael Foot, and other British luminaries who were appalled by the nuclear arms race and the drift toward nuclear war. Determined to “ban the Bomb,” CND organized annual antinuclear marches from Aldermaston (the site of the British government’s nuclear weapons research facility) to London, where thousands of antinuclear activists rallied in Trafalgar Square. The emblem designed for these first Aldermaston marches—a circle encompassing a stick figure with arms outstretched in the semaphore signals for N and D (i.e. nuclear disarmament)—grew immensely popular and soon became a worldwide peace symbol. Meanwhile, CND churned out vast quantities of antinuclear literature, held public meetings throughout the British Isles, converted politicians to its position, and emerged as Britain’s largest, most influential peace and disarmament organization. Of course, CND activists did not succeed in banning the Bomb. But they did have the satisfaction of turning British public opinion against the nuclear arms race, thereby pushing Britain and other nuclear-armed nations toward nuclear arms control and disarmament measures and helping to prevent nuclear war. Today, although CND’s membership is far from the heights that it reached during the heady 1980s, it is also well above the depths to which it sank during past periods of decline. Indeed, having grown by roughly 10 percent in the last three years, CND now has a very respectable 35,000 members, with branches all over the country. It draws on older, long-time stalwarts like Bruce Kent, as well as on younger, newer activists, such as its current chair, Kate Hudson. As in past decades, CND’s primary goal is abolition of nuclear weapons. Last year, it led a tumultuous campaign against the British government’s plan to replace the country’s aging Trident nuclear missile-carrying submarines with an upgraded nuclear weapons force. The largest of the numerous demonstrations organized against Trident replacement drew up to 100,000 participants, and polls found that 72 percent of the British public opposed the nation’s acquisition of new nuclear weapons. Although the government managed to carry a key Trident replacement vote in parliament, it was shaken by the extraordinary level of opposition. As a result, officials promised to bring the issue back to parliament for further consideration. This concession to antinuclear sentiment might actually mean something, for there is growing pressure to move Britain’s defense policy away from its decades-old reliance upon nuclear weapons. Recently, for example, a number of former top British government officials spoke out in favor of the Shultz-Kissinger-Perry-Nunn call for nuclear abolition. Furthermore, the European parliament has voted to make Europe a nuclear weapons-free zone. In addition, Barack Obama—who might well become the next U.S. President—has pledged to make the building of a nuclear-free world a top priority. In these circumstances, CND’s efforts to block the development of a new British nuclear striking force might yet bear fruit. Despite the centrality of nuclear issues to CND, it does grapple with other foreign and defense policy issues. As a participant in Britain’s Stop the War Coalition, it works to end the war in Iraq. Also, like its U.S. counterparts, CND is attempting to head off the possibility of a U.S. military attack upon Iran. Moreover, CND seeks to block the deployment of a controversial U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Lithuania. There is substantial resistance to this revised “Star Wars” system in the host countries, and especially in the Czech Republic. In addition, the Russian government—which, despite its decline in the international power hierarchy, possesses more nuclear weapons than any other—views the deployment of this system as a highly provocative act. CND also faces some significant problems at home, including a largely hostile press, an escapist television and mass culture, and a poverty of public discussion and debate on defense issues. Perhaps most worrisome are the rising political fortunes of the Tories, who seem poised to sweep into power in the next nationwide elections. Conservative-dominated local governments have begun denying tabling rights to CND, while the newly-elected Conservative mayor of London has pulled his city out of the Mayors for Peace campaign, a nuclear abolition venture comprised of 2,317 member cities in 130 countries, headed by the mayor of Hiroshima. Even so, CND has managed to emerge from fifty years of antinuclear agitation as a sprightly and effective force on the British political landscape. It might even live to see that bright day when, thanks in part to its efforts, nuclear weapons are banned forever.

Fixation on the market
10 Aug 2008
The dreadful figures on the soaring rate of house repossessions give added emphasis to the decision of the Bank of England monetary policy committee to maintain interest rates at 5 per cent. This was a decision that hit hard the struggling mortgage payers in the interests of controlling inflation which, it should be pointed out, is none of the mortgage-payers’ fault but can be attributed largely to fuel profiteering, speculation, oil and gas company super-profits and the resulting transport cost rises which affect almost every commodity. It also brings into sharp focus the Financial Services Authority warning to lenders earlier this week that specialist mortgage firms are “too ready” to take court action against borrowers. But these are not the only factors which have affected and damaged the 18,900 families who have lost their homes in the first six months of this year or the 45,000 whom the Council of Mortgage Lenders forecast will fall victim throughout the full year. The real elephant in the room is, as seems to be increasingly the case, the policies of a government which point-blank refuses to abandon its fixation with the market and take real measures to solve a housing crisis which is totally of its own making. Throughout the life of this Labour government, it has steadfastly refused to reverse its disastrous policies on council housing, attempting to drive a wedge between councils and their tenants with so-called arm’s-length management organisations, bribes to force occupants to relinquish their status as council tenants in favour of housing associations, reinforcing the ring-fencing of councils’ housing revenue accounts and blocking any attempt by councils to pick up their former role as the premier suppliers of social housing in this country. This has led to a dearth of affordable housing at the lower end of the housing market, driving hard-up families into mortgage deals that they cannot afford, simply because there is little or no alternative except an over-priced and insecure private rented sector. This, in turn, increases the scarcity of houses for sale at the bottom end of the market yet again and thus drives up the prices, overheating the housing market and making housing ever more expensive and ever less affordable, until such time as lenders get panicky as they see their borrowers becoming over-extended and start pulling in credit availability, causing the so-called credit crunch which then makes mortgages even more expensive. Yes, of course, greedy mortgage lenders carry a portion of blame, lending even to those who clearly can’t afford it on the basis of trousering their commission and moving onto the next victim, leaving the families in their wake with a headache which gets worse as the bank tries to halt inflation by hitting those on the bottom of the heap. But the majority of the blame must rest with a government which, for purely right-wing ideological reasons, will not countenance the public supply of anything be it health, housing or transport. And it is the same government which handed over interest-rate setting to the bankers, in the certain knowledge that bankers’ solutions rarely benefit the low-paid. This government should be squeezing the profiteers in the oil and power supply industry until the pips squeak. Instead, it chooses to be an audience on the spectacle of bankers squeezing the poor, while it does its best to make the problems worse by ensuring that the low-paid remain exactly that.

Evidence Uncovered of Political Policing at Climate Camp
10 Aug 2008
Ninety percent of the costs of the heavy-handed policing at the Climate Camp are being paid for by the Government, local council sources have admitted this week [1]. Campers are pointing to this revelation as evidence that the government has been directly involved in the decision to police the camp in this fashion. ?The Government claims to care about climate change, but is pressing ahead with new coal fired power stations? said Jessica Glynn, one of the campers. ?Now we discover that the Home Office is paying the police to harass and attack people who are peacefully opposing this decision. It’s not hard to put two and two together.? Meanwhile, at 8.30 on Friday morning, people from the camp superglued themselves to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s oil and gas offices, in protest at the bank’s financing of the expansion of the fossil fuel industry all over the world. A few hours later, twelve naked campaigners superglued themselves to the offices of BERR (the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform), the Government department colluding with E.ON to give the green light to new coal power stations. Miniature protestors also struck at Legoland (sponsored by E.ON) in Windsor, where a Lego model of Kingsnorth coal power station was scaled by Lego activists, who dodged the Lego police helicopters to drop a banner reading ?STOP CLIMATE CHANGE?. [2] Cambridge Liberal Democrat Councillor, Neale Upstone announced at the camp today that he is prepared to break the law on Saturday’s day of mass action. Speaking from the camp, Councillor Upstone said, ?It has now become impossible for citizens to assert their views against the money and influence of a wealthy few. The only option left is for us to take personal responsibility for the actions where the government is failing us… For the sake of our children, tomorrow, I am willing to peacefully break the law in order to draw a line in the sand. It’s time more politicians joined me.? Participants at the camp, who now number more than 2,000, are spending the evening busily preparing for the day of mass action on Saturday. ?This is the clearest expression yet of the widespread public disapproval for E.ON’s plans to build new coal plants,? said Shri Gupta. ?Despite the police campaign of intimidation and harassment, thousands have turned out to stop this environmental catastrophe. People across the country are showing they are no longer prepared to sit back and watch politicians andcompanies destroy our future. Today the climate movement has come of age.? Notes 1.Medway Messenger, 08 August 2008 2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykkJJWgOu8A

E.ON’s defences breached following Olympic efforts by protesters
10 Aug 2008
The main marquee is buzzing with sporadic cheers at the feedback meet-up from the day of action. Celebrations are certainly the order of the day as protesters succeeded in breaching the perimeter fence and inner 10,000 volt electric fence to enter the power station site despite the best efforts of 26 police forces with over 1,500 police. The day started early with a flotilla of boats ? the Blue group – sailing towards Kingsnorth in the sun. Over twenty crafts made their way up the Medway to converge on the coal loading jetty. Three people occupied the ledge above the power station’s water inlet tunnel while a banner proclaiming ‘CO2AL: Starter Gun for Climate Chaos’ was hung from Darnet Fort on an island in the Medway directly opposite the power station. Kent Police are on form as ever with the lies – claiming that they had to rescue rafters from the Medway. Rafters told quite a different story saying that at no point were they in any danger. ?Its a bit cheeky for the police to say that we had to be rescued when for starters we weren’t in any danger, and secondly, they were the ones who had confiscated our safety boat this morning,? said Rebel Rafter Harold Cryer. Interestingly the river police were super professional and courteous, as were the sea-king helicopter search and rescue folks. Pity the land-based cops weren’t more similar. Talking of unprofessional behaviour, news came in that the number of complaints against Kent police were so many that the Kent Police Professional Standards Authority were out today (yep, a Saturday too), to keep tabs on the police. Talk of the camp is that this year we must fight the police’s unlawful conduct over the coming months, much in the same way that last year we fought sections of the media for their less-than-fair coverage (coverage has been noticeably more accurate this year). So do keep in touch with the camp legal team if you were mis-treated. Ok, back to the day of action: around 1,000 people from the Orange group headed from the Camp directly to the main gates at Kingsnorth, led by a colourful carnival dragon made by children during the camp. At the gates the Camp’s Christian Cafe crew held a service giving the power station its last rites. The group sat outside the main entrance for an hour, some longer, even after a police helicopter circling above had demanded through a loud-hailer that the marchers disperse, threatening them with ‘horses and dogs’ if they didn’t. Another surreally big-brother moment, and a classic example of the police ‘facilitating lawful protest’, as their mantra says. The few hundred strong Green group made it to the perimeter fence of the power station. Some used a section of fencing to make a ladder to breach both the outer and the inner electric fence. Others climbed a nearby pylon to hang a banner reading ‘Shut Down Kingsnorth’(1). Spokeswoman Emily Davies said in a press release this afternon, ?It shows how serious we are about stopping climate change that people from all walks of life were prepared, despite blatantly intimidatory policing, to take direct action to disrupt E.ON. This Olympic effort certainly deserves a gold medal.? Which nicely sums it up! Campers have been signing pledges to return to Kingsnorth if Minister for Business John Hutton gives E.ON the go-ahead to build the first coal-fired power station in the UK for 30 years. The promise is to take action against E.ON and other companies until they abandon all such plans. More from the camps press release: ?It’s been a great today, but a real victory for us will be when we have conclusively scuppered E.ON’s coal-fuelled mania. If Hutton gives the green light to this power plant, E.ON can expect to be seeing a lot more of us in the future,? said Ewa Steckel, who has signed one of the pledges to stop the plant. Outside the camp, and more bizarrely than taking a home-made raft down the Medway, Malcolm Wicks, Energy Minister stated yesterday that we need Kingsnorth to counter catastrophic climate change! Campers reacted furiously, ?Malcolm Wicks’ claim that building an unabated coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth is necessary to save us from climate change shows him to be delusional and dangerously scientifically illiterate. ? said camper Ania Kemp.

Hoo u gonna coal?
9 Aug 2008
AS CLIMATE CAMP FOR ACTION GETS STOKED UP AT KINGSNORTH… It’s another mediocre summer and we?re back at the Camp for Climate Action. First there was Drax, then Heathrow and now the sequel… Climate Camp III has been set on the east coast of Kent three miles or so from Kingsnorth – already home to a power station that pumps out as much carbon dioxide as the 30 least-polluting countries in the world combined ? and proposed site of first new UK coal-fired power station for 30 years. So SchNEWS reporters have joined the great unwashed throng of around a thousand and a half others, made up of yer usual rabble-rousing regulars – including, according to cops, 150 extremists (only 150? Come on black bloc let?s be aving yer!), plus up-for-it students, ageing hippies and Guardian-carrying liberals (the paper did their own bijoux guide to the camp – getting the day of the mass action wrong. Oops). Having taken the site ? a mile outside Hoo St Weburgh on Wednesday last week (July 30), initially there were not enough people to defend it and riot police carried out a number of heavy-handed raids, beating up campaigners and nicking important infrastructure gear like plumbing etc. Whilst some of this is still impounded, ever-resourceful campers have found ways round it and the actual organisation is once again clockwork. One hard-bitten, over-60 was heard to comment: ?How come it?s always the anarchists who provide the best organised, most efficient kitchens?. Couldn?t agree more mate – the SchNEWS chef de resistance has given the vegan food a rating of 8/10 this year! Police tactics have been the main talking point at the camp so far. A rumoured wholly-proportionate 1,400 cops are involved at a cost of 5m, with forces from Wales, Kent itself and the trusty ?boot ?em first pay compensation later? Met. Unlike the hotels which were laid on for cops last year, it looks like they?re slumming it in their very own super tent (a kind of close encounters white dome structure) up on the hill back down past Hoo. Clearly unhappy at being so completely out-manoeuvred once again by camp organisers – setting up camp under their noses – they are venting their frustrations in a number of ways. For starters everyone on the main route into the camp (on Dux Court Rd) gets searched, coming in as well as out (one to bear in mind for Saturday?s mass action when green/orange/blue/silver blocks will aim to shut Kingsnorth down for the day). Things which have been so far been confiscated include, er, some glue and a bar of soap. As well as wheeling out a War on Terror board game for Murdoch journo types to slaver over, police claim they found a stash of weapons in the woods nearby including a ?replica? ninja throwing star (a plastic toy maybe?) and an assortment of knives including a three bladed affair which could allegedley be used against a police horse (lots of vegan horse killers at the camp this year then?) Other bullshit to come protesters way include the constant buzzing of police helicopters during the day and night ? including low flying for the purposes of thermal imaging or intimidation presumably. It looks like top brass are looking to cause as much discomfort to campers as possible, despite paying lip-service with the softly softly police liaison teams. These have tried to get a police caravan on site – which was turned down – and last year?s arrangements of an escorted police beat every couple of hours is not happening. With the stand-off hardening, each night the camp has been awoken two or three times to deal with the threat of a raid with increased numbers pigging out the front and rear access points. Vehicles have been impounded ? included the camp shuttle bus running from Strood to site on one occasion ? and most of the supplies have as a result had to be carried in on bikes/wheelbarrows and Shanks pony. Still, not to be put off, the camp is proving popular with locals around the Medway area, despite the welcoming local paper A-boards (?Medway invaded by eco-warriors? and the like). More families, pensioners, and terrible teens have been turning up than did last year at Heathrow. With Saturday?s shenanighans to come it?s looking like Kingsnorth could be a timely reminder to Brown and co. that we won?t be taking their greenwash lying down. For more info on the mass action and the reasons behind the No New Coal message go to www.climatecamp.org.uk

Court decides to electronically tag dementia sufferer
9 Aug 2008
A Scottish judge has ordered a dementia sufferer to be electronically tagged. Lord Matthews ruled that Edward Flaherty, who killed his wife in an incident of which he has no recollection, be confined to his tower block flat in Glasgow?s east-end. The case exposes the brutality and callousness with which the Scottish legal authorities treat vulnerable people. Flaherty, a pensioner and retired scaffolding worker, was convicted of strangling his wife Ina with a tie in April last year, after she refused to give him money to go back to the local public house where they had both been drinking. The 74-year-old Flaherty, the Glasgow High Court was told, had developed an alcohol problem since retiring and was also seriously mentally ill due to his degenerative mental condition. A medical report prepared for the court noted that at one point, Flaherty claimed he had killed his sister because she was being cheeky. On another occasion, he took a train to Bristol, 385 miles away, arrived not knowing where he was and had to have money forwarded to pay for his return. He thought the current US president was Richard Nixon. He has had three heart attacks and will ultimately require 24-hour-a-day care. When he gave evidence, Flaherty accepted that he must have killed Ina. He told the court, ?It must have been me. There are no ghosts running about the house who would have done that.? He denied a suggestion from the prosecution that he ?blocked? memories of the killing. Members of the jury wept when Flaherty told the court that his 52-year marriage with Ina had been ?strong and firm.? They had never once struck each other. Medical reports on Ina explained that even slight pressure on her neck could have caused death because the 69-year-old woman?s arteries were badly furred. The jury found Flaherty guilty of culpable homicide, a charge to which, according to the defence, he was always willing to plead guilty. The Crown, however, had sought a murder conviction and the ordeal of a trial. Flaherty?s terrible circumstances are an expression of the routine, widespread and deliberate neglect of vulnerable older people, particularly those struggling to cope with appalling consequences of dementia. There are estimated to be between 5,776 and 6,475 people with senile dementia in Glasgow City alone, the vast majority over 65. Some 700,000 sufferers are estimated across the UK, with numbers expected to rise as the population ages. In addition to memory loss and confusion, the complicated condition, mostly Alzheimer?s disease, which is associated with a progressive loss of neurons, can dramatically affect behaviour. Each sufferer of dementia is affected in a unique way, as skills and abilities taken for granted become compromised and inhibitions can disappear, for example. To the extent that an individually tailored and comprehensive support regime is not available for sufferers and their families, which is frequently the case, the disease can place a huge burden on those closest to the patient. This is in addition to the emotional strain on all concerned of seeing a loved one decline. Flaherty?s drinking is also part of a far broader trend of endemic alcohol abuse. Some 789 people died from alcohol-related causes in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area in 2005. Across the UK, the figure was 8,758 in 2006. Figures between 1998 and 2004 suggested that 15 of the top 20 greatest concentrations of alcohol-related deaths were in Scotland. All this was lost on Lord Matthews, whose sole concern was to punish the retired and ailing worker in a manner that did not place any burdens on the prison system. Lord Matthews informed the court that in normal circumstances ?this would attract a prison sentence in double figures.? He went on, ?It is plain to me that…you would be released in a very short time because prison would not be able to cope with your condition. Sentencing you would just be a token gesture. I am anxious to impose a sentence that restricts your liberty.? The judge concluded that a ?more meaningful? punishment would be to electronically tag Flaherty, and to ban him from leaving home between the hours of 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. This would prevent Flaherty from attending the local pub. Having deprived Flaherty of what is likely one of the few sources of social contact available, Lord Matthews made no attempt at all to ensure that Flaherty received the care he so desperately needs. Instead, Flaherty has effectively been curfewed to his isolated flat in one of the poorest areas in Britain.

The truth is, we’re fighting for survival
9 Aug 2008
Up to 4 billion people left without water. Up to 5 billion at risk of flooding. Half a billion left hungry as agricultural yields decline by 15-35% in Africa with entire swaths of the world ceasing food production altogether. More than 80 million exposed to malaria in Africa. The Amazon collapses and 50% of species go extinct. It’s basically the end of the world. And it’s reported in this morning’s Guardian. There is such a gaping chasm between the matter-of-fact reporting of this nightmarish 4C scenario that government scientists now say we should be planning for, and the total failure of apparently rational people to understand what is happening on the Hoo peninsula this week. Reports from Kingsnorth, the site of this year’s climate camp, completely fail to scrutinise the pin-striped criminals who are pushing the planet towards the brink. Instead, the Press Association runs stories on apparent conspiracies to attack police with knives without even phoning the accused activists for a reaction to these smears. What other set of people could be accused of conspiracy to commit cop killings without being asked for any reaction? This is a victory for the police and the rightwing media they leak to. Equally, E.ON UK’s greenwashing PR campaign is run without any question. Every report repeats the myth that the proposed new power station would be a “cleaner coal” plant. No one reports that in fact, this coal plant will pollute as much as more than 30 developing countries combined, that there will be no use of carbon capture and storage (CSS) technology, and that the plant will be so inefficient as to waste half of all the energy it creates. No mention of the fact that Chris Davies, the Lib Dem MEP, who is notoriously pro-CCS coal, has pledged to attend the camp precisely because Kingsnorth won’t be a “cleaner coal” plant. E.ON UK keeps pumping out the spin that “we need coal to keep the lights on”, even following reports in the Financial Times that independent energy experts, Pyry, have proven (pdf) that if the UK hit its existing renewables and efficiency targets, no new coal would be required. Even when emails expose close contact between E.ON UK and the business department, they are only reported in the Guardian. As the prime minister has a last look at a bit of beautiful coastline already succumbing to the sea, the media frenzy focuses on the same old soap opera personality politics. Is so-and-so too remote/young/jaded/damaged to be the next majorette marching us over the cliff? Whoever it is, we know it’ll be one of the same crew who got us into this mess and can’t get us out because the solutions don’t fit the electoral cycle. There is an echo here too of the US media’s response to Iraq. Even now, anyone who opposed the war is on some sort of “radical fringe”, and having supported the war, at least at the time of its inception, is a necessary qualification to be seen as “serious”. With climate change, in order to be “serious” you need to acknowledge that the end of the world is an interesting detail in the broader pattern of economic “progress”, but never succumb to the incredible naivety of the protesters, who fail to realise that the survival of life on earth is a bourgeois luxury which we can ill afford in these times of economic constraint. The harsh reality is that there is no way we could plan for a 4C rise. No amount of adaptation is going to make that liveable for most of the world’s population, and it’s going to be pretty damn nasty for those lucky few of us living in the north as well. Despite this, we end up with two possible stories ? the front page banner “dangerous anarchists threaten chaos”, or, tucked away at the back of the paper, “peaceful protest passes without incident”. And all the time, not even the liberal press is concerned that, even if every single person at the camp arrived with a heavy machine gun, they couldn’t kill half the number of people who will die as a result of the effects of climate change.

Open letter to police on repression at Kingsnorth
9 Aug 2008
In light of events at this week?s Climate Camp in Kingsnorth, Green MEP for the South East Caroline Lucas has joined forces with Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, and Colin Challen, Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, to write a letter to the Gold Commander of Kent Police – please see below. Dr Lucas MEP is also querying Kent police about emerging reports that legal observers are being restricted from observing searches on individuals. Letter in full: Dear Mr Allyn Thomas, RE: Climate camp at Kingsnorth We are writing to express our concern at the developing situation on this site. There has undoubtedly been a steady escalation of friction between the climate change protesters and police. On one morning, we are informed, riot police with dogs entered the site. During the course of this operation a vehicle was damaged and a number of arrests were made. Twenty protesters apparently required medical attention and a number were taken to the A & E Department of Medway Hospital with suspected head injuries. In the past few days there have been a series of searches and confiscations. No doubt some of these have been justified under the terms of a general search warrant. Others, such as the confiscation of tents, ground sheets, marker pens, mobile phones and protest banners are difficult to justify on any other basis than an attempt to disrupt the protest itself. Policing of demonstrations and protests is always necessary. However, growing and confirmed anecdotal evidence suggests that this serious and escalating situation has been caused, at least in part, by a disproportionate police response. Norman Baker MP has reinforced this during his visit to the site itself. Despite undertakings to him by DCI Ian Hall (Kent Police) that only regular, uniformed police officers would be employed on patrol duties within the site, he witnessed, immediately afterwards, a charge by full riot police (Metropolitan) and the inappropriate use of batons on two occasions. We have severally been in contact with police officers charged with this operation and have received various undertakings including the provision of an inventory of seized material and the reason for its retention. This has not been forthcoming but may well have been overtaken by these serious events. Climate change must be a wholly legitimate subject of protest and demonstration. If it is met (or is perceived to be met) by an arbitrary, destructive and aggressive police response the consequences will undoubtedly be a continued alienation between police and many decent, law abiding people, particularly the young. In view of the above we would ask you as a matter of urgency to take personal, immediate and direct action to resolve an increasingly threatening confrontation. We look forward to your very early response. Yours sincerely, Caroline Lucas MEP Norman Baker MP Colin Challon MP