Will a decline in reporting European news result in more paid-for journalism?20 Apr 2008Like other powerful but controversial institutions the European Parliament is stepping up its investment in what amounts to paid-for journalism. Contracts are about to be awarded for funding programmes to be broadcast by local and international television channels. But, with editorial budgets for investigative and analytical journalism in steep decline, are the European Parliament — and also the European Commission — faced with no alternative but to buy news coverage in the media market place in the hope of gaining some favourable exposure? If the initial reports are correct, and if the contracts likely to be awarded for programmes on CNN and ITV are to be controlled by script and even post-production approval, the European Parliament could be in danger of repeating the worst examples of embedded journalism during the Iraq War and might well end up financing nothing more than blatant propaganda. Nicholas Jones examines an initiative which is already producing some agonised soul searching among Europe?s journalists. Journalists trying to wrestle with the complexities of the European Union pose a difficult dilemma for both the European Parliament and the European Commission: How are these two institutions going to overcome an appalling information deficit among the people of Europe? And, perhaps more alarmingly, is the news media about to be manipulated? Having spent the last five years meeting and talking to reporters in many of the newer and most recent EU member states, I know how irritated they can become in their dealings with the Parliament and Commission. Not only are there language problems but all too often they say that in their search for reliable facts and guidance they come up against a seemingly impenetrable bureaucratic barrier. Such is their frustration they tend to fall back on reporting the facts and opinions relayed to them by their national governments and politicians rather than do their own investigation. As a result, there is little analysis and their reporting is stuck in the rut of pre-determined agendas. Nowhere is the communications gap more apparent than in an accession country like Turkey. In its south-east corner, on the borders with Syria — and what might finally become the EU?s ultimate eastern frontier — the plight of local journalists was all too evident when their representatives met to consider how to improve coverage of European affairs. Although anxious to learn more about the implications of Turkey?s proposed membership of the EU, the difficulties which the journalists faced seemed insurmountable. At a seminar in Gaziantep (28.3.2008) to discuss the response so far by media organisations in south-east Anatolia, Murat Gures of the Gaziantep Journalists? Association, painted a bleak picture. The Association represents journalists on seven television channels, fifteen local newspapers and twenty local magazines but he readily acknowledged that negotiations for Turkey?s accession to the EU have sparked little interest. There was not enough understanding of European issues to generate an adequate level of reporting. Nor was any solution forthcoming from the newspaper owners. Orhan Kizilaslan, president of the Gaziantep Anatolian Press Association, freely admitted that the local press did not have the economic wherewithal to provide the kind of journalism that would inform the local people of the EU accession process. ?Local newspapers are the most important instrument for providing the people of Anatolia with information about the EU. But although the local press could be used as a tool for providing news and comment we do not have the economic means to inform the public and support the EU process?. What compounded the difficulties faced by the Anatolian news media was an equally frank acknowledgement by Ms Ulrike Hauer, a counsellor and head of section in the European Commission?s delegation to Turkey, that its communication strategies, especially in accession countries, were woefully inadequate. Surely the right answer is for the EU to do much more to disseminate information in an accessible form to media organisations in the 27 member states and those countries hoping to join. As a first step it could invite journalists to Brussels at the Commission?s expense so that they could be instructed on how best to extract information on EU policies and how to follow the Parliament?s decision-making process. Instead of reaching out to the journalists themselves, the Parliament seems to think the only realistic solution is to invest in collaborative projects with local media outlets in order to help them finance the production of more informed reporting of its proceedings. Rather than opt for what could turn into some pretty blatant product placement, another more imaginative solution might be to fund an arms-length television and radio service along the lines of the BBC or even a channel like Al Jazeera, which has transformed news coverage in the Arab world thanks to the foresight and generosity of the Emir of Qatar? When facing the twin pressures of strained resources and increased competition, journalists realise they cannot turn their back entirely on the reality of media economics. Subsidised reporting comes in many different forms: without an agreement to accept advertisements there would be no way of sustaining both BBC World and overseas access to BBC News Online. What seems to be missing in the plethora of documents about the development of the European Union?s media strategies is a clear-cut statement on the need to protect journalistic independence and an assurance that subsidised reporting and collaborative programming will not undermine the financial viability of existing hard-pressed media outlets. Awarding prizes to journalists for the most informed reporting of the European Parliament will alarm some MEPs who fear this will encourage sycophancy. The test of any such contest will be its independence from the donor of the prizes and the degree to which it can reflect differing national agendas. Perhaps there will have to be prizes in each member state which might make the cost prohibitive but so great is the lack of understanding among journalists about EU affairs and so few are the opportunities to learn more, that an awards system might at least generate some interest.
IMF and OECD: Europe will be hit hard by US recession20 Apr 2008Reports issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warn that the United States is entering into a recession and reject all claims that Europe will be able to avoid severe economic dislocations as a result of America?s worsening situation. The OECD meeting in Paris this week estimated that global losses from the US subprime mortgage crisis would surpass $440 billion. This was a sharp upward revision of its previous estimate of $200-300 billion. Europe was more vulnerable than many thought to the global financial markets crisis, and would be especially so if trouble spread to the equity derivatives markets, officials said on April 15. The OECD?s estimate of likely bank losses ranges from $350 billion to $420 billion, based on different assumptions as to the amount of distressed assets the banks will be able to recover. Assuming a 40 percent recovery rate, the OECD estimated losses in excess of $422 billion, of which $87 billion would be borne by US banks?$60 billion by commercial banks and the rest by investment banks. These losses would ripple throughout the world. A third of the collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and other financial instruments based on US residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) that are tied to sub-prime markets have moved offshore, mainly to Europe, the OECD said. Forbes magazine, commenting on the OECD report, noted: ?More dangerous still, it said, was another area so far not hit by the crisis that spilled out of the subprime market last August?capital-guaranteed financial products with exposure to equities and based on complex operations-replication programmes.? The OECD stated that a $1 trillion equity derivatives market based on these products had developed between 2003 and the start of this year. These instruments are the basis for many of the savings products offered by scores of retail banks and building societies. Europe is the dominant force in these Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance (CPPI) products. Thomas Weiser of the OECD said one of the big risks now was that economic growth could be hit by loss of capital at banks which played a key role in the wider economy. He called for massive injections of cash by the world?s central banks. The IMF described last summer?s crisis in the financial markets as ?the largest financial shock since the Great Depression.? It stated that the world?s bankers have created a pool of $1 trillion in toxic debt, twice the sum estimated in earlier projections. The IMF?s conclusions are conservative, given such a description. It predicts that the US will go into a ?mild recession? this year, with growth of around 0.5 percent, even after the economic stimulus package from the Bush administration and sweeping cuts in interest rates. It warns that there is a one-in-four chance of a full-blown global recession over the next 12 months. At best, it forecasts that world economic growth will fall to 3.7 percent for the next two years. The IMF issued particular warnings that house price inflation in several European countries, including Britain and the Netherlands, where housing was said to be 30 percent overvalued, would make them more susceptible to the global downturn. Britain has long been recognised as the European country most exposed to the economic turmoil unleashed in the United States and most heavily dependent on world financial markets. The IMF downwardly revised UK growth figures from the Treasury?s estimate of 2 percent this year and 2.5 percent next to 1.6 percent for both 2008 and 2009, the worst performance since the last recession ended in 1992. After nationalising Northern Rock and injecting 50 billion of liquidity into the markets, the Brown government and the Bank of England plan to risk billions more, emulating the US Federal Reserve by taking over bad mortgage debts from banks in return for secure government bonds. House prices in Britain already fell by 2.5 percent last month and are expected to decline by as much as 10 percent this year. Britain?s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reports that the number of residential property agents saying prices declined exceeded those reporting gains by 78.5 percentage points in March, the worst since records began in 1978. Britain is also labouring under staggering levels of personal, unsecured debt. Total UK unsecured debt is 1.3 trillion?more than the rest of the European Union put together. Lorna Bourke, writing in Citywire, rejects claims that the present housing crisis is not as bad as that in the 1990s, when there were 78,000 repossessions a year, because unemployment is lower. She notes that ?In the early nineties high unemployment created by the collapse of the debt market in 1987 and rising inflation meant homebuyers could not meet their mortgage obligations. Does that sound familiar?? Credit card debt is much greater than it was in 1990. Financial analysts Mintel have reported that mortgage costs in Britain trebled during the past 10 years and now account for 25 percent of consumer spending, compared to 14 percent a decade earlier. The debt management company TDX Group estimates that the number of people struggling with debt is set to double during 2008. Around one million people have unsecured debts totalling 25 billion, averaging a staggering 25,000 each. Some 60 percent is owed on credit cards, with the rest mainly in personal loans. London?s role as a financial centre will translate into a massive and relatively immediate impact from a global economic downturn. JPMorgan Chase analysts estimate that 40,000 City of London jobs could be lost as a result of the credit crunch, doubling the forecast by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Amongst the cuts already announced are 900 jobs at UBS, the European bank worst hit by the credit crunch, representing 10 percent of its London workforce. Merrill Lynch has warned of 450 imminent job losses in London. Initial signs have emerged of a rise in unemployment from its present 1.6 million. Although the claimant count rate fell by 1,200 in March, the previous month?s 2,800 decline was revised to show a 600 increase?the first since September 2006. Sterling has hit repeated all-time lows against the euro, which is presently worth more than 80 pence. The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 5 percent in an attempt to stimulate the release of credit by banks and building societies. Europe?s economic powerhouse, Germany, does not at first appear to be in such a precarious position. Its exports continue to rise, even though the euro has dramatically risen in relation to the dollar. But there are clear signs of troubles ahead, of which the ?4.3 billion losses incurred by the Bavarian State Bank (BayernLB) from its dealings on the US subprime mortgage market, as well as the billions lost by SaxonyLB and WestLB, are only a foretaste. These banks, partly owned by the federal government and various German states, are to be bailed out to the tune of ?30 billion?at taxpayer expense. According to Der Spiegel, this is only the tip of the iceberg. It wrote on April 2, ?The end of the crisis is not in sight: According to one study (by business advisory group Ernst and Young) German banks have hidden away rotten credits in their books?amounting to a total sum of ?200 billion.? This week, four leading German economic think tanks cut their forecasts for growth this year to 1.8 percent, down from the 2.2 percent they predicted last October, and projected even slower growth of 1.4 percent next year. The German government is less confident still, predicting growth of just 1.7 percent this year. The Financial Times reported April 14 the views of several leading European industrialists that the worst effects of the credit crunch will not be felt for six months. Peter Lscher, chief executive of Siemens, said, ?I don?t see any impact at the moment. But I have no doubt it is coming, probably in 6 to 12 months? time.? Wolfgang Reitzle, chief executive of the Linde industrial gases group, added, ?It will happen with a time lag … of maybe a year…. We are in the most critical business environment in decades.? Gareth Williams of ING Financial Markets stated, ?This [financial] quarter is going to be pretty horrible. But the worst will come in the fourth quarter.? Teun Draaisma of Morgan Stanley is forecasting a 16 percent drop in earnings over the year and an ?earnings recession in Europe.? Germany and Europe, with a monetary system based on stability and spending targets, are particularly fearful of the impact of runaway inflation and angry over how the US Federal Reserve is pumping money into the economy. An article in Der Spiegel from April 14, entitled ?The Madness of Ben Bernanke,? gave full vent to these tensions. Comparing Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, the former and current heads of the Federal Reserve, to Siegfried and Roy, it described their ?pumping easy credit into the system? as ?a crazy policy that will worsen the crisis…. The aim is to keep on financing consumer spending and even to stimulate it further?for reasons of patriotism. There?s a word for this policy?madness.? The strong euro has not so far done major damage to the European economy, particularly because it has reduced the cost of dollar-priced oil imports. But companies reliant on dollar sales such as Airbus have been hit and a ?pain threshold? will eventually be breached. More long term, the divergence of policy between the Fed and the European Central Bank (ECB), which has kept interest rates steady, cannot but destabilise the global economy. The dollar?s decline also means that its repayment of debts has less value, punishing US creditors in Europe and elsewhere. Inflation is a major problem for Europe, now running at a record 3.6 percent in the euro zone. The ECB has set its main policy rate at 4 percent, but fears that inflation will make this unsustainable. Food and energy price rises alone added 1.6 percentage points to March?s inflation figures. Jorg Kramer, chief economist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, told the International Herald Tribune, ?The Fed is not so interested in inflation, currently. They have a bigger problem: recession.? But he warned that ?someday, this crisis will be over? and inflation will necessitate drastic action. The Fed?s benchmark rate is currently at 2.25 percent and a further cut is expected. Krmer said he expected Bernanke to cut the fed funds rate to 1.25 percent by June. The ?fight against inflation? is always a codeword for moves to cut the wages of the working class. German government and bank officials are complaining of recent high wage settlements being unsustainable, including a meagre 8 percent agreement in Germany?s chemical sector that is staged over two years and barely matches the official inflation rate. In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has imposed a 2.5 percent pay ceiling throughout the public sector, already provoking strikes involving hundreds of thousands of civil servants and teachers. Draconian attacks are being prepared in France, where dissatisfaction with the country?s economic performance in ruling circles is most pronounced. Prime Minister Francois Fillon has cut the official forecast for gross domestic product (GDP) growth in France in 2008 to 1.7-2.0 percent from a previous estimate of ?around 2.0 percent.? The right-wing administration of Nicolas Sarkozy has announced public spending cuts of ?6-7 billion annually to run for a three-year period in 2009-2011. But with a public deficit running at ?1.2 trillion in 2007, far greater attacks must be anticipated.
March to Stop the St Athan’s Military Academy19 Apr 2008The Government is spending 14 billion building a huge, privatised UK Military Academy to train the latest recruits to the ‘war on terror’ and foreign militaries and mercenaries, funded by our taxes, the profits will pour into the coffers of companies like Raytheon. It looks set to become Britain’s ‘School of the Americas’ – a centre for counterinsurgency training and future imperialist adventures abroad. A mass-demonstration is planned for this month called by the Stop the St Athan’s Military Academy Campaign & supported by local peace groups, anarchists, socialists, trade unions, UK Stop the War Coalition and CND Cymru and anti-war campaigners from across the length and breadth of Britain! Imagine a world in which the armed forces are trained by arms dealers. And we subsidise their profits. That world will become reality unless we stop the proposed school of death at St Athan. The creation of a military super-academy at St Athan, between Cardiff and Swansea, was announced as a done deal in January 2007. Despite the fact this represented the biggest PFI in history, involving 14 billion of taxpayers’ money, there had been no debate in either Westminster or the Welsh Assembly (Senedd). A promise of 5500 local jobs was trumpeted loudly by an uncritical news media and presented as a great victory for Wales. No wonder the politicians didn’t want any debate. The new super-academy, replacing many smaller centres, means that military training will now be in the hands of shameless profiteers. The winning bidders for the project were the Metrix consortium. This consortium includes Qinetiq, the privatised research and development wing of the MoD. Qinetiq was recently the subject of intense criticism by the National Audit Office. Its privatisation was proposed by MoD managers ? who then saw their shares rise 10,000% on the day of the sale! 33.8% of Qinetiq was also bought by the US-based Carlyle Group, a sinister lash-up of politicians and arms dealers with a vested interest in promoting war. Former members of its board include one George W. Bush. Then there is the US arms manufacturer Raytheon. Raytheon make the missiles which deliver cluster bombs, the horrendous weapons which are estimated to have killed 100,000 people ? 98% of them innocent civilians. The world can also thank Raytheon for the depleted uranium weapons which have led to thousands of horribly deformed babies and large increases in cancers in war zones and beyond. Raytheon, Qinetiq and friends will not just be training UK armed forces at St Athan. They will train any soldiers, sailors and air force personnel that are willing to pay for the privilege. And like all PFIs, the St Athan academy will be subsidised by the taxpayer, and if necessary, bailed out with public money. There has never been a detailed breakdown of the jobs the academy will bring. However, even Metrix admit that many of the military trainers will relocate from elsewhere. Every PFI has secured profits by cutting costs. St Athan will mean less MoD jobs overall, and the poorest pay and conditions for lowskilled workers. In any case, imagine what else could be done with 14 billion! With hospitals and schools closing throughout Wales and the UK, with a desperate need to improve social facilities, create sustainable sources of energy etc, such public money could be invested in socially useful projects rather than the preparation for future wars of occupation like Iraq. If this development goes ahead, 21 st century Wales will be become a militarised, security-obsessed nightmare. If you want to stop the war profiteers in their tracks, support the campaign and raise it in your union, student union, workplace and community. The March to stop the St Athan’s Military Academy will take place on Saturday 26 April. Assemble 1.30 pm, Cathays Park (opp. City Hall & Museum), Cardiff City Centre. Demo at 2pm. To join the mailing list, email no2militaryacademy@inbox.com , or write to:
Stop The St Athan Academy c/o Temple of Peace, Cardiff, CF10 3AP. For more details visit www.cynefinywerin.org.uk/index.php?docid=265
Groundhog Day for Boom and Bust18 Apr 2008ANYONE looking at the recent Financial Services Authority report on its failures to supervise Northern Rock properly would be struck by how it neglects the systemic aspects of the current financial crisis. The informed view is that the credit crunch will result in global losses of around $1.2 trillion (600 billion). About 40 per cent of these losses ? or $480 billion ? is expected to be absorbed by banks and financial institutions in the United States. Some expect the crisis to spread to the insurance sector. Britain does not come out unscathed. Gordon Brown?s Government has barely managed to bail out Northern Rock ? the cost of which could be anything from 25 billion upwards. Huge Government credits are being made available to other banks while the Government is unable find resources to fund a decent state pension, rebuild schools and hospitals. Not only have the financial regulators failed, there are also failures of other institutions. Credit rating agencies failed to downgrade banks holding toxic loans. Company accounts are supposed to alert markets and regulators, but failed to alert anyone. Company auditors collected huge fees, but their audit reports turned out to be worthless. Consider four examples. Northern Rock received a clean bill of health from its auditors on its 2006 accounts. The auditing firm also acted as a consultant to the bank and received 700,000 for the non-audit work. The fee dependence is always likely to dull any sense of inquisitiveness. On January 25 2008, Bear Stearns, America?s fifth largest bank, received a clean bill of health from auditors on the financial statements for the year to November 30 2007. Yet Bear Stearns could not sustain its financial position and, on March 17, it was sold to JP Morgan Chase for $2 (1) a share, valuing it at 118 million. Just 16 days earlier, it was valued at 30 billion. Under pressure from major investors, the offer was raised to $10 a share. On February 27 2008, Carlyle Capital Corporation, an 11-billion hedge fund registered in Guernsey, received a clean bill of health from auditors on its financial statements for the year to December 31 2007. The accounts stated that the directors were satisfied the group has adequate resources to continue to operate as a going concern for the foreseeable future. Two weeks later, Carlyle collapsed, as it could not reach financing agreements with its key creditors. On February 27 2008, Thornburg Mortgage, America?s second-largest independent mortgage provider, published its audited accounts for the year to December 31 2007. These accounts carried a clean bill of health from auditors. Six days later, the company explained that it was renegotiating its financial position. The auditors retracted their opinion. Although some financial institutions might grab headlines, similar failures have occurred in the recent past, most notably at Equitable Life, Independent Insurance, Barings, Johnson Matthey and Bank of Credit and Commerce International ? to name just a few. The usual response after each of these is to tweak the regulatory structures, but little has changed. Above all, no questions are asked about the values embedded within the regulatory and political positions. The regulatory Humpty-Dumpty cannot be put back together by re-arranging the deckchairs. There are too many institutionalised failures. The financial regulators are part of a political structure that is available for hire to the highest bidder. Corporations and a wealthy elite fund political parties and individual politicians with the aim of keeping threatening issues off the political agenda. They also fund think-tanks and various media to ensure that an ideological climate favourable to their interests is sustained. Through revolving doors, corporate executives become regulators and regulators looking for higher financial rewards and company jobs go easy on corporate misdemeanours. The possibilities of emancipatory change are stymied and institutionalised social squalor is the inevitable result. Effective financial regulation is unlikely to be developed without a major change to the institutions of politics. The crisis has been fuelled by the poverty of political policies. Successive governments have vacated the commanding heights and instead placed excessive reliance on interest rates to steer the economy. Companies wanted cheap money and successive governments obliged. With the low cost of borrowing, companies found it easier to make profits. Cheap money discouraged savings and fuelled a borrowing binge. Combined with speculative activities and cheap money, major companies doubled their profits. Yet regulators ask no questions about the quality of corporate earnings. Governments continue to mistake growth in company profits for economic renaissance. Regulators reflect the broader political culture and are too close to business interests. Banks have been allowed to get way with booking their profits offshore, avoiding taxes, not passing interest rate cuts on to borrowers, slapping exorbitant interest charges on credit cards, imposing excessive overdraft charges and closing branches even though banks make huge profits. Yet no government has charged the regulators to protect the wider social interest. That task would require them to keep a certain distance from the regulated and develop alternative values, vocabularies and agendas. Openness would be a vital part of that drive. Thus all correspondence between the FSA and any financial institution must be publicly available. Yet there is little sign of such changes proposed in the FSA report. Successive governments have refused to create effective regulatory structures on grounds of cost. Yet they fail to recognise that the lack of regulation also results in ?costs?. Just ask anyone suffering from the consequences of the credit crunch. Now, after Northern Rock, the FSA is promising to recruit additional staff and undertake annual reviews of banks? strategy and plans. The examples of Bear Stearns, Carlyle and Thornburg show that, with a fundamental shift in the role of finance, the situation changes very quickly and an annual review is simply not timely enough to deal with any crisis. The FSA needs to eliminate accounting firms and instead create a dedicated taskforce of bank auditors or inspectors who are permanently present at banks and conduct continuous audits of business strategy, plans, liquidity, solvency, financial products and accounts. Yet politicians are not ready to take on corporate interests to promote this change. Successive governments have shied away from doing anything about excessive executive remuneration. Yet this is central to the current financial crisis. At most banks and insurance companies, executive pay is linked to published profits. That provides plenty of temptations to massage company accounts, keep liabilities off balance sheets and even show bad debts as good. Ministers have no proposals to reform the executive reward system ? for example, by linking it to broader performance benchmarks which include innovation, services to the local community and free banking for the poor. The timidity of financial regulators has encouraged banks and financial businesses to become casinos above all. People?s savings and investments entrusted to them are gambled on the likely movement of the price of oil, gas, commodities, food, interest and exchange rate movements, often without adequate public accountability. This state of affairs is promoted as ?risk management?, but has inflicted hardship on millions of people. This system has produced neither responsible management nor a vibrant economy. Yet no financial regulator has shown the inclination to tackle these habitual gamblers. Without attention to the systemic factors and failures of institutions, such financial crises will continue to recur. Prem Sikka is professor of accounting at Essex University
Secrecy and Corporate Dominance -18 Apr 2008A study on the composition and transparency of European Commission Expert Groups Executive Summary (the rest of the report can be found here) The European Commission?s Expert Groups play an influential role in shaping policies at EU level in the crucial early stages. They are involved in drafting and commenting on EU legislation covering awide range of policy issues, including, for example, energy and climate change, and the import/export of dangerous chemical substances. The composition of the Expert Groups, and the interests that are represented,will to a large degree, determine the outcome of the consultation. The input provided by such Expert Groups often forms the backbone of the Commission?s proposals and through a process
that often involves very little change, eventually become adopted as European legislation.(1) For example, currently, Expert Groups controlled by lobbyists representing commercial interests are playing a key role influencing critical policy-decisions such as the EU definition of ?clean coal? (a possible ?alternative? in order to reduce CO2 emissions) and whether/how the EU should promote biotechnology or agrofuels. So far, in spite of this crucial role, very little has been written about Expert Groups; their place in the decision-making process, their influence, composition and methods of operation. It is clear from theCommission?s own Register of ExpertGroups that there are more than1,200 Expert Groups advising the EuropeanCommission, but the exact number is likely tobe far higher. The lack of transparency concerning their number, composition and meetings means that these powerful consultative bodies are able to operate away from the glare ofpublic scrutiny. The Commission?s online register of Expert Groups has existed since 2005, but it fails to provide the names of the individual members and the organisations they represent, making it impossible to assess the balance in representation. The register moreover is neither up-to-date nor complete. Therefore, concerned about improving the democratic quality of EU policy-making, ALTER-EU has conducted an analysis of a sample of 44 Expert Groups. The 44 Expert Groups were chosen based on a range of key policy areas identified by the ALTER-EU member groups carrying out the analysis as being of particular importance due both to the EU?s legislative role and the need for the wider public interest to be reflected in policy-making.(2) These areas can be categorised as environment, energy, agriculture, consumers, health, water and biotechnology. In testing the legitimacy of Expert Groups according to theirmake-up, the analysis only focused on Expert Groups in which industry was represented and excluded those composed of only government representatives.(3) The aim of this research is to provide an initial indication of the extent to which the composition of Expert Groups in key public interest policy areas provides a balanced representation of concerned stakeholders, or whether lack of transparency has allowed for certain interest groups to dominate and thereby benefit from privileged access to decision-making processes within European institutions. As most of the information needed for analysing these questions is not in the Commission?s register, nor anywhere else in the public domain, formal requests to the European Commission were made using the EU ?access-to-documents? directive (1049/2001). The aim was to obtain the membership lists, reports and meeting minutes for these 44 Experts Groups, data which according to the ?access-to-documents?directive should be available to EU citizens upon request. So additionally, this allowed an assessment of the effectiveness of this directive as a means of providing the publicwith policy-related information. Unfortunately, this experience was not positive. In total, information was provided on 29 of the 44 expert groups investigated, with full details provided for just 14 of the groups (see also table 1). In many cases, no explanation was offered as to why the missing data had not been provided. While in 60% of the cases the European Commission released the names of the Expert Groups? member organisations (25 of 42)(4), only in 43% (18 out of 42) of the cases were the names of the individual members released in addition to the organisation names. The Commission used a range of flawed arguments for withholding the names of Expert Groups? members, including ?commercial interests? and ?personal data protection.? Both the European Ombudsman and the European Court of First Instance have last year rejected the Commission?s arguments for withholding lobbyist names and in unmistakable terms called upon the Commission to disclose names of lobbyist. The Commission?s failure to provide us with the requested information obviously also constituted amajor hurdle for our research project, reducing the sample of expert groups whose composition we could include in our analysis. Basing conclusions on these sample findings, two major shortcomings with the EU decision-making process emerge. First is a serious lack of transparency surrounding key bodies involved in decisions-making and a very worrying degree of secrecy with the Commission seemingly reluctant to provide full and accurate information on the nature, composition and workings of Expert Groups. The problems encountered in obtaining relevant information amount to a systematic failure by the Commission to be open and transparent. Another transparency failure confirmed by ALTER-EU?s research is that the Commission?s online register of Expert Groups is seriously incomplete and outdated. To add insult to injury, some of the Expert Groups that are listed in the register do not actually exist. They are included because one of the Commission?s Directorates-General (DGs) asked for and got permission for establishing the group and a budget for its functioning, but the group was never actually established. As table 1 shows, the composition of a significant number of Expert Groups in our sample proved to be seriously unbalanced. In a range of key public interest policy areas, Expert Groups appear to be dominated by representatives fromthe business sector. These findings raise serious concerns over the democratic quality of decision-making within the European Commission. On a number of pressing policy issues, such as biotechnology, textiles and climate change for instance, the European Commission is formulating European policies based almost exclusively on the advice of those stakeholders who have a direct commercial interest and whose judgment might not be themost objective ormost suited to serving the common good. Despite covering only a small sample of the Commission?s expert groups, these cases of industry dominance are not only very serious in their own right: the findings are likely to be indicative of a broader problemwhich the Commissionmust take determined action to address. This could start by undertaking a broad review to identify which Expert Groups are controlled by industry (or by any other special interests), and result in dissolving Expert Groups with a seriously problematic unbalanced composition. Strong safeguardmechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups must be developed. To help avoiding corporate capture of Expert Groups the Commission must provide full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups and establishing an open and fair process for selecting Expert Group members. In summer 2007, the European Commission on several occasions made clear its intention to improve transparency around the Expert Groups. For example, in June 2007, during the ?third joint Parliamentary meeting on the future of Europe? EU Commission President Barroso said that a list of the organisations represented on the Expert Groups, as well as the names of the individuals that participate, would become publicly available in 2008.(5) This statement was repeated by EU Commission Vice president Kallas during a hearing in the European Parliament.(6) Such statements are certainly encouraging and need to be followed by swift action, not only to provide this basic level of transparency but also to prevent commercial lobbyists fromdominating the membership of Expert Groups. It is clearly necessary, given the strong influence of Expert Groups, for the European Commission to make changes in response to the situation uncovered by this research. In order to adhere to the EU?s own declarations on ?good governance? and ?participatory democracy?,(7) ALTER-EU recommends that the European Commission acts immediately to: 1. Disclose on internet themembership and key documents of all Expert Groups;
2. Ensure full transparency around the creation of new Expert Groups;
3. Ensure an open and fair process for selecting the Expert Groups?membership;
4. Devise strong safeguard mechanisms against privileged access and unbalanced composition of Expert Groups;
5. Dissolve all Expert Groups that are controlled by industry or by any other special interests;
6. Conduct a broad review on the composition of all Expert Groups. Table 1 Overview of the findings: On the effectiveness of the Access to Documents Directive ? In 34% of all cases, the European Commission failed to provide any information about the Expert Groups;
? In 34% of all cases the European Commission only provided partial information.
? The Commission only provided a complete and satisfactory response in 32% of the cases.
? In only 36% of the cases the European Commission provided information within the prescribed 15 working days.
? In only 43% of the cases the European Commission provided names of organisations and individuals that were represented in Expert Groups. On the composition of the expert groups (based on the scant information provided by the Commission). ? Over 25% of Expert Groups appear to be controlled by corporate interests:more than half of all theirmembers (including governments) are industry representatives.
? In 64% of the Expert Groups being studied, business interests appear to be over-represented: industry representativesmake up more than 50% of the non-Commission and non-government members.
? Only 32% of the Expert Groups sampled appear to have amore balanced allocation of stakeholders.
? One Expert Group (4%) was unbalanced in favour of NGOs. Table 2: The Corporate-Controlled Expert Groups revealed by the survey: 1. Competitiveness in Biotechnology Advisory Groupwith Industry and Academia (CBAG)
2. High Level Group on Textiles and Clothing
3. Supervisory Group of the voluntary commitments of carmanufacturers
to reduce CO2 emissions
4. Informing Consumer BehaviourWorking Group
5. Coal Combustion Clean Coal and efficient coal technologies, CO2 capture
6. Alternative fuels
7. Changement Climatique et Industrie Notes 1 Between 1986 and 1995, 80%of the Commission proposals got adopted ? Simon Hix, ?The Political System of the European Union?, Palgrave 1999, p. 60
2 Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, Food & Water Watch and Spinwatch
3 For more information about the methodology for our research project, see page 10-12.
4 Two out of the 44 groups investigated have never been convoked and never had any members. Consequently, we do not count them here.
5 See MEP Jens-Peter Bonde?s reaction to this announcement. http://www.bonde.com/index.php/bonde_uk/article/bonde24241
6 Discussion on the European Transparency Initiative in the European Parliament?s AFCO committee, 16 July 2007. See also: http://www.bonde.com/index.phtml?sid=487&aid=24241
7 The White Paper on European Governance (latest version: 25.07.2001) proposes opening up the policymaking process to get more people and organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU policy. TheWhite Paper promotes greater openness, accountability and responsibility for all those involved. The Commission underlines its intention to ?reduce the risk of the policymakers just listening to one side of the argument or of particular groups getting privileged access [?].?The importance of involving civil society organisations in consultation processes is explicitly stressed.
After 5 Years, Let’s Put the Record Straight17 Apr 2008FIVE years on, and the spin is as thick on the ground as ever. General David Petraeus ? the latest American commander in Iraq and author of the ?surge? policy ? blames continuing attacks on the Iranian ?Quds? movement. We are told of the ongoing British commitment to the coalition, while our remaining forces sit in isolation in an airbase, awaiting repatriation. In short, we are no closer to hearing the truth from our governments today than we were during the build-up to this pointless war. Five years on, and British Government statements continue to be characterised by distortion, misrepresentation and downright lies. One would have thought that the powers-that-be would have learned some lessons by now, but perhaps we expect too much. Yet this collective mindset of denial displayed by the governing class poses fresh dangers. There is a belief by many among them that they can literally get away with murder. It would be no surprise to me if George Bush?s administration ? or a John McCain successor ? launched another attack, this time on Iran, and possibly through the Americans? Israeli proxies, with British support. The truth is that the leading lights in both the Labour and Conservative parties believe they have got away with their dirty war on a sovereign state, in defiance of national and international opinion. Tony Blair appears to have walked away from his personal responsibility to a multi-faceted new role, including, improbably, as a Middle East peace envoy. He is also being seriously peddled as a possible president of the European Union. That is a measure of how much of the establishment believe that Iraq as an issue is behind us. All those who so enthusiastically backed the illegal and immoral attack on Iraq ? in politics, media, the forces and business ? are happy now to criticise the post-invasion planning (or lack of it) in the vain hope that the dishonest and venal rationale for the invasion can be glossed over. Well, it cannot for a variety of reasons ? not least is the possibility of arraigning those responsible for this war of aggression before the international courts. At the very least, if we mouth platitudes about democracy and human rights, there ought to be a practical demonstration of our commitment to them before the international community. Otherwise, we will rightly be condemned as the hypocrites our leaders have shown themselves to be. Of course, none of this could come to pass without there first being a full and independent inquiry into why we went to war in Iraq in the first place. There remains vigorous opposition to such an investigation. Conservative calls for one are based on the cynical view that they will not secure a parliamentary majority to ensure that there is one. Even if they were to succeed, we can rest assured that the Tories would scupper such an inquiry. After all, the record shows that they were more gung-ho for war than Blair. The Hutton and Butler inquiries were narrow, controlled ones. Their terms of reference ensured that in neither case could they get to the nub of the issue: what had Blair agreed with Bush and when? What decisions were made to lie to the British Parliament and people to wage an illegal and immoral war? Now is the time to set the record straight. Peter Kilfoyle is Labour MP for Liverpool Walton and a former defence minister
Deaths in Detention17 Apr 2008‘When I calmed down I asked them why they hit me in the nose and jumped on me. They said it was because I wouldn’t go in my room so I said what gives them the right to hit a 14 year old child in the nose and they said it was restraint.’ These poignant words were written by Adam Rickwood who was found hanging in his room at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in August 2004 ? at 14 he was the youngest child to die in custody. Hours before his death, he had been subject to restraint by four male officers including the use of a technique designed to inflict pain known as ‘nose distraction’ and which caused his nose to bleed for an hour. His death followed that of Gareth Myatt a mixed race 15 year old boy who was killed at Rainsbrook STC on 19 April 2004 during the application of physical restraint methods which continued despite Gareth complaining he could not breathe, that he was going to defecate, did defecate, and then vomited. He died from asphyxia and was the first child to die following the use of restraint. What became clear from the inquests in 2007 was the complete failure of the Youth Justice Board to properly manage the circumstances in which physical restraint was used and the safety and appropriateness of the techniques used. INQUEST has worked closely with the families and their legal team to brief parliamentarians, other child rights and penal reform organisations and the Children’s Commissioner on the human rights abuses these cases exposed resulting in widespread public, parliamentary, and media concern about the treatment of children in custody. After the conclusion of the inquest into Gareth Myatt’s death the Coroner, His Honour Judge Pollard made a report to Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, under Rule 43 (of the Coroners’ Rules). Following extensive consultation with the family’s lawyers, the report specified 34 preventative actions which range widely over the treatment of children, the use of restraint, monitoring, good practice, access for emergency vehicles, and inspection saying that it would be ‘wholly unforgivable and a double tragedy’ if there was any delay in learning from and acting upon the lessons of Gareth’s death. This followed the scathing narrative verdict reached by the inquest jury which implicated failures by the Home Office/Ministry of Justice and Youth Justice Board in the death. The government’s abiding lack of will to engage with the serious and wide-ranging failures to emerge from the tragic deaths is reflected by unjustified and undemocratic amending of the Secure Training Centre Rules. This broadened the circumstances in which children can be forcibly restrained without parliamentary debate or consultation. Instead, in July 2007, the government announced a joint review of the use of restraint in STCs, Young Offender Institutions and Local Authority Secure Children’s Homes. This review is an inadequate response to the broader systemic issues these deaths raise about how we deal with children in trouble with the law. A proper legacy for these families and their children would be an independent, holistic enquiry in public of the juvenile justice system with the effective participation of families, children, and those working within the youth justice system. Such an enquiry could effect meaningful change by moving us towards a more humane and safer society ? and by preventing future child deaths. We fervently believe that there can be fewer goals which are more important. INQUEST has been calling for such an enquiry since the death of 16 year old Joseph Scholes in HMYOI Stoke Heath in 2002. He was a vulnerable boy with a history of self-harming behaviour who, despite the expressed concerns of professionals with whom he was engaged and clear warnings by himself, took his own life, by hanging, in his prison cell just nine days into his sentence. At the time of writing, we learned of the death of a 15 year old boy found hanging in HMYOI Lancaster Farms. Why, despite the deaths of 30 children in detention since 1990, have successive governments resisted a public enquiry? The deaths raise issues that go beyond the prison walls and to the heart of society’s collective responsibility for tolerating a system that responds to challenging children and young people with punishment and the infliction of pain to control behaviour. What often goes unmentioned is the high price paid by bereaved families in remaining involved in the lengthy, complicated investigation and inquest process. The families have shown incredible courage, diligence, and persistence to ensure that the disturbing issues surrounding the deaths of Gareth and Adam came to light. Without their participation in the process, it is doubtful that these hidden practices within STCs would have been exposed to any proper scrutiny. While these two deaths are deeply shocking because they involve children, INQUEST deals on a daily basis with some of the most horrendous consequences of detention in prison, in police custody or in psychiatric detention. Last year, INQUEST published Unlocking the Truth: Families’ Experiences of Investigation of Deaths in Custody that documents some of the unseen consequences of deaths in detention ? the impact of a death and its investigation on the family of the deceased and the lack of adequate mechanisms to ensure similar deaths are prevented. INQUEST has consistently worked alongside families to build up relationships of trust, respect, and compassion so that the families feel empowered and engaged, and feel they can cope with the intrusive and complex legal process in which they are involuntarily engaged. The strategy of persisting in trying to broaden scope of enquiry at inquests, supported by detailed knowledge of other cases and an experienced network of lawyers, has ensured that the details of many deaths in custody are made public. Establishing the truth about deaths in custody sheds light on the way we treat some of the most vulnerable men, women, and children in society. It is important that we recognise, scrutinise, criticise, and argue for reform of the way the state deals with deaths in custody, as these processes are an indicator of the condition of its democracy. Last year, of the 45 inquests that have concluded on INQUEST’s cases, many after delays of years since the death, four have involved deaths in psychiatric detention, six police custody, and 35 deaths in prison. Many of these inquests have been unreported, not even deemed worthy of a couple of lines in the local media. But they reveal, again, shocking failures in the treatment of vulnerable detainees. Inquests into deaths in police custody have highlighted ongoing concerns about the poor treatment of people with mental health problems, drug and alcohol problems, and poor medical care. Running through INQUEST’s work are concerns about the lack of accountability and failure to learn lessons to prevent similar deaths by taking follow up action on inquest and investigation outcomes across custodial institutions. We worked with others to successfully achieve amendments to the Corporate Manslaughter and Homicide Act 2007 to ensure it would apply to deaths in detention. The government attempted to present the current mechanisms of investigation and accountability as sufficiently robust. Parliament disagreed, and this was further underlined when the Forum on Deaths in Custody published its Annual Report in September 2007 in which the number of deaths in all forms of custody in the preceding year were officially collated and published centrally for the first time. These figures need more scrutiny and analysis than the Forum can provide, in particular the 328 deaths in psychiatric detention. It does not have the capacity to research deaths in custody, to collate and analyse jury findings and coroner’s reports or to monitor the implementation of recommendations arising from inquests or investigation reports. It cannot call to account and recommend action against those institutions and individuals who fail to take action. In May 2007, the government conceded that the Forum’s powers and resources were insufficient and made a commitment to reviewing and strengthening the current arrangements, something which is ongoing. INQUEST has proposed a properly resourced independent overarching Standing Commission on Custodial Deaths with statutory powers to address the complexity and breadth of issues that arise. It is clear that the current mechanisms are insufficient as death after death occurs revealing horrific conditions and lack of basic humanity in the care of detainees. In November 2007, the inquest into the death of 25 year old Martin Green, who died in HMP Blakenhurst in July 2002, concluded with the jury returning a highly critical narrative verdict. Found dead in his cell in the health care centre while undergoing detoxification, Martin, who was 188 cm (6 ft 2 in) tall, weighed just 43 kg (6 st 10 lbs). The jury made numerous criticisms in their verdict, and concluded that his poor medical state coupled with poor assessment, planning, and communication contributed significantly to his death. The shocking fact of this case, the lack of media interest in the inquest, and the delay of nearly five years in concluding the investigation make a mockery of the government’s arguments earlier last year that current investigation mechanisms are sufficient, further illustrated by the last-minute ditching of the promised coroners reform bill. The circumstances of this death raise very serious questions about the quality of medical care afforded prisoners in the custody and care of the state. Martin Green was owed a particular duty of care, and that duty was not met. As a result, he died an inhuman and degrading death. The number of custodial deaths remains far too high, and many cases reveal a horrendous catalogue of failings in the treatment and care of vulnerable people in custody or otherwise dependent on others for their care. They raise questions about excessive and inappropriate use of custody for some of the most vulnerable people in society; they also highlight failures to fulfil the state’s duty to protect life. Inquests repeatedly identify the failure to implement existing guidelines on the care of ‘at risk’ detainees. It is clear from INQUEST’s monitoring and analysis of deaths in custody that understanding why these deaths occur requires an examination of their broader social and political context. No discussion of self-inflicted deaths in prison can ignore the regimes and conditions operating in prisons, criminal justice policies that imprison the mentally ill and vulnerable or the institutional culture of violence and racism that exists there. Deborah Coles and Helen Shaw are co-directors of INQUEST.
http://www.inquest.org.uk
Iran’s Struggle for a More Equitable World Order17 Apr 2008Iran does not deserve the hostility of, and is no threat to, the United States. In fact, the West’s current obsession with Iran is fueled by little more than Iran’s rejection of double standards in international relations. Accusations that Iran will develop nuclear weapons come most forcefully from sources that lied about Iraq. Even the US intelligence agencies’ claim that Iran had a clandestine nuclear weapons project until 2003 fails for lack of evidence. Despite years of arm-twisting by Washington, UN inspectors on the ground have found no trace of nuclear weapons intentions in Iran. The accusers, on the other hand, have violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by rejecting Iran’s invitation to participate in Iran’s nonmilitary nuclear sector and by refusing to eliminate their massive stockpiles. Worse yet, the US is designing small “tactical” nuclear weapons for use against non-nuclear states. Among the accusers, Israel has, with US approval, built a nuclear arsenal but refuses to join the Treaty or allow inspections. Another nuclear outlaw, India, has been promised American nuclear technology assistance. Based on known facts, then, the US is the world’s leading proliferator. Iran’s nuclear program was in fact prompted in the 1950s by Washington, shortly after the CIA overthrew the country’s revered secular prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. During the 70s Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz led a Ford administration drive to sell Iran a half-dozen reactors. Iran’s electricity needs were a quarter of what they are today, but they did not insist then as they do today that Iran has enough oil and gas to generate power. Iran has not attacked another country in more than two centuries, and it developed powerful missiles only after the US banned the sale of air force jets to Iran by all suppliers. Harsh rhetoric aside, Iran spends less per capita on its military than most countries in the region do. It can not possibly challenge the legendary military superiority of Israel, which fears US-Iranian reconciliation would diminish its strategic value to Washington and therefore make the occupation of Palestinian lands politically untenable. Iran helped create Hezbollah in Lebanon but no longer directs its actions, according to most knowledgeable analysts. In Iraq, the White House has produced zero evidence to back its claim that Iranian infiltration contributes to the deaths of US troops. Iraqi president and prime minister have often praised Iran’s role in Iraq. Washington, on the other hand, is funding terror groups that aim to destabilize Iran, according to Seymour Hersch and ABC’s Brian Ross. If keeping Tehran from possibly contemplating nuclear weapons is a US priority, why not stop threatening Iran so the least reasonable elements in its policy circles remain marginal? Why did the White House dismiss Iran’s formal offer in 2003 to negotiate about all outstanding issues? And why ignore Tehran’s offer earlier this month to permit extra-intrusive inspections (the “Additional Protocol”) if Iran’s file is sent back from the UN Security Council to the International Atomic Energy Agency? The answer lies in Washington’s bipartisan insistence to replace the Cold War with a world order that includes no rivals large or small, as articulated in the official National Security Strategy of the United States in 2002 and reaffirmed in 2006. Iran, along with Russia, China, Venezuela, and other assertive nations are equally determined to resist the empire and steer the world towards a multi-polar order. To American leaders, China in particular is an awakening “menace” that is on track to rival the US in two decades, unless its dependence on imported energy can be exploited against it. But an American chokehold on the global energy market is not easy as long as Iran, located strategically between the world’s largest oil and gas reserves in Central Asia and Persian Gulf, refuses to take orders. Thus it is the US insistence on domination, rather than any legitimate national security worries, that underlies Washington’s obsessive push to marginalize and destabilize Iran. The antiwar movement should demand that the White House initiate a wide-ranging, unconditional, and sustained dialog with Iran to test its sincerity. American activists can also make war with Iran less likely by insisting that the International Atomic Energy Agency, rather than the UN Security Council, be the arbiter of Iran’s nuclear file. Editor’s note: Rostam Pourzal is a member of the US board of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran. The preceeding text is of his presentation in Atlanta on April 11, 2008 at the biennial conference of Historians Against the War, which boasts two thousand members in 400 colleges and universities. In an unprecedented step last month, the American Historical Association, the nation’s oldest and largest society of historians, adopted HAW’s proposed resolution against the Iraq War.
Afghanistan?s Vietnam portent17 Apr 2008There have been many suggestions among media and military analysts since 2003 of possible parallels between the war in Iraq and the United States imbroglio in Vietnam that ended so humiliatingly in 1975. The argument is most prominently made by critics of both wars, though it has also been articulated by defence scholars or officials concerned that the US learns the “right” lessons from its costly Vietnam experience. Three aspects of this approach are notable, however. First, fewer such comparisons have been made with the conflict in Afghanistan, which arguably in some respects offers a closer “fit” with the Vietnam war than does Iraq. Second, the Vietnam precedent is invoked as if the devastating wars in that country started only with the significant American involvement in the mid-1950s and later, and almost completely ignores the earlier, post-1945 clash of arms between Vietnamese nationalists and French colonialists. Third, when parallels (whether Iraqi or Afghan) are drawn, they tend to be presented exclusively from the viewpoint of the Americans. It is as if “only” the United States (and by extension western forces or combatants in general) have the capacity or the interest to draw lessons from the past. This context makes all the more interesting a report which cites the view of an (anonymous) Taliban media source that much of the military activity in Afghanistan in the coming months will resemble the tactics employed by the Vietminh guerrillas and their renowned military commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, in the war against French control of “Indochina” (see Syed Saleem Shahzad, “The Taliban talk the talk”, Asia Times, 11 April 2008). The reference is startling and ominous. In the early 1950s, the Vietminh – faced with an imbalance between their own forces and conventional French military power – concentrated on attacking isolated garrisons in the northern part of Vietnam well away from the main colonial centres of control: Hanoi, Haiphong and the densely populated Hong (Red) river delta. This strategy, combined with attacks on French supply-lines, gradually wore down the French military and political leadership’s resolve. Now, it seems, the Taliban aim to do the same against an equivalently “asymmetrical” enemy: Nato, and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) forces in Afghanistan. The Taliban shifts gear The Taliban source highlights the success of this kind of strategy against Pakistani army units in the border districts; recent assaults on the key supply-routes delivering equipment and provisions through Pakistan to Afghanistan also fit the pattern. The latter have included the destruction on 24 March of forty petrol-tankers at a border-post, and the detonation on 1 April of a bridge on the Indus highway in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Nato’s concern with its dependence on the insecure Pakistan-Afghanistan roads is reflected in its agreement with Russia (at the Nato summit in Bucharest on 2-4 April) on the land-transit of “non-lethal supplies” to its troops in Afghanistan. At the same time, other parts of Nato exhibit a blithe confidence in the coalition’s capacity to counter such Taliban initiatives; for example the Isaf spokesman Brigadier-General Carlos Branco dismisses Taliban claims of a new strategy and expresses confidence in Nato’s superior firepower and ability to counter the movement’s initiatives. Carlos Branco responds to the Vietnam analogy by comparing Giap’s use of coordinated guerrilla and conventional attacks backed by a range of weaponry, with the far less effective Taliban campaign. The group, he argues, have little to show for the last few years; Nato’s firepower remains clearly superior and Taliban claims of a new approach are boasts without substance. The director of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), reporting on a seven-day visit to Afghanistan, reaches a somewhat different conclusion. Jakob Kellenberger stated on behalf of his organisation: “We are extremely concerned about the worsening humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. There is growing insecurity and a clear intensification of the armed conflict, which is no longer limited to the south but has spread to the east and west.” He continues: “The harsh reality is that in large parts of Afghanistan, little development is taking place. Instead, the conflict is forcing more and more people from their homes. Their growing humanitarian needs and those of other vulnerable people must be met as a matter of urgency.” The ICRC – which has extensive experience in humanitarian work in Afghanistan, including after many other NGOs left in response to deteriorating security there – thus presents a bleaker prognosis than Nato officialdom (see Laura King, “US troops gird for a spring offensive in Afghanistan”, Boston Globe, 16 April 2008). But in any case, does what is happening in the country relate at all to the Indochina war of 1945-54 and the tactics of Vo Nguyen Giap and the Vietminh? The Dien Bien Phu drama The Vietminh originated as a unified force in the face of Japanese occupation in the early 1940s, under the political leadership of the nationalist-communist leader Ho Chi Minh. After the Japanese collapse and the end of the war in August 1945, the Vietminh came to control substantial parts of northern Vietnam; the return of the French in 1946 to reclaim their colonial lands, however, forced the Vietminh to retreat to rural areas and attempt to wage war from bases there (see David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power [University of California Press, 1997]). In the 1946-50 period the anti-colonial struggle was small-scale as the Vietminh slowly built its support. The Vietminh gained an important external sources of arms after the Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and took control of China (Vietnam’s northern neighbour, as well as its ancient and intimate rival) on 1 October 1949. In the next four years, the Vietminh conducted a series of bitterly-fought guerrilla actions which resulted in their securing control of most of the rural areas in the north of Vietnam. But the French retained military superiority and administrative control in the major cities and the densely populated Hong delta. By 1953, the war was stalemated, though heavy French casualties were increasing hostility to the war in France itself. Most of the fighting had been taking place during the dry winter seasons, but in 1953-54 Giap attempted to open up a new front by aiding the Pathet Lao insurgents in neighbouring Laos. This was potentially disastrous for the overstretched French, who responded by occupying and reinforcing the remote town of Dien Bien Phu. The garrison town was strategically placed to intercept Vietminh supply routes to the Pathet Lao, but also hundreds of kilometres from other French positions. It was a move too far. The French did not have the resources to supply Dien Bien Phu by air; the Vietminh controlled the access routes, and mounted an epic effort to transfer supplies (a huge amount of them by bicycle) across densely forested and mountainous tracks to encircle and besiege the French forces. After a bitter siege in which many thousands were killed on both sides, the French garrison surrendered in early May 1954. The French may still have controlled Hanoi, Haiphong, Saigon and most of Indochina, but the devastating defeat at Dien Bien Phu finally crushed public support in France for the war; within three months, a ceasefire and withdrawal were agreed (see Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French defeat in Vietnam [Orion, 2005]). East Asia, West Asia Three obvious comparisons can be drawn between Indochina and Afghanistan. First, the seasonal nature of both conflicts (in Indochina the fighting was intense during the winter dry season and far less during the summer monsoons; in Afghanistan, the snows limit warfare in winter, so most fighting is done in spring and summer). Second, the Vietminh had opposed the Japanese and the French, so were experienced in fighting foreign enemies long before the Americans emerged to try to subdue them; in the same way, the Taliban can be regarded as inheriting the mantle of the fighters who defeated the forces of the mighty British empire in the 19th century, as well as successors of the anti-Soviet mujahideen of the 1980s. Third, the Vietminh had help from the Chinese communists across the border, just as the Taliban have ample support in western Pakistan. There are also significant differences. The Taliban do not have a political leader of the power of Ho Chi Minh, nor a military commander with the quite extraordinary capabilities of General Vo Nguyen Giap. The asymmetry of their forces with Nato’s may be even greater than with the respective sides in Vietnam (even if the alliance pleads shortages of helicopters and other equipment). Yet the recent experience of the anti-Soviet struggle, the emergence of a new generation of military commanders, and – perhaps above all – the mobilisation of centuries-old memories of opposition to foreign occupations, are potent weapons in the Taliban armoury. The heart grown tired In balancing always inexact historical analogies against always singular current circumstances, caution is in order. Yet there is another relevant factor that may indicate the direction of the deeper current of events in Afghanistan: whether Nato can maintain the will to continue to fight and build in Afghanistan for the many years that may be necessary. Three current news items are relevant in this respect. The first reports a claim that British forces in southern Afghanstan have killed as many as 7,000 Taliban – and no less than 6,000 of them since January 2007 (see Michael Smith, “Army Has Killed 7000 Taliban”, Sunday Times, 13 April 2008). The human costs of this carnage are grave enough, but leaving that aside it might be assumed that the figure is regarded as a sign of military success. Not so: the story reflects an intelligent recognition that deaths on this scale “are a boost for the Taliban when fighters recruited from the local population are killed, as the dead insurgent’s family then feels a debt of honour to take up arms against British soldiers.” The assessment, put bluntly, is that killing Taliban makes even more enemies. The second news item indicates a recognition in the Pentagon that troop numbers in Afghanistan are inadequate for the task assigned to them, as Taliban militias seek to avoid open conflict with well-armed Nato forces and move to operate in areas where Nato is largely absent (see Jonathan S Landay, “U.S. Seeking Troops To Send to Afghanistan”, Miami Herald, 16 April 2008). The Pentagon is seeking 7,000 more troops to supplement the 3,200 United States marines that have been deployed in early 2008 (and are due to return by the year’s end, with no replacements yet identified. Even in these circumstances, most Nato allies will not agree to increase their forces. The small prospect of troop withdrawals from Iraq was still alive until the upsurge in violence there – reflected in the mood of the senatorial hearings of David H Petraeus and Ryan C Crocker, and the statement of George W Bush on 10 April 2008 – effectively killed it (see “A war of decades”, 10 April 2008). Thus the combination of military overstretch and a lack of Nato solidarity means that the United States is facing conflicts in two areas without the forces it believes it needs. The third report concerns the level of US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan (reflected in new figures released by the Pentagon that barely registered in the media). The US military death-toll in the two main wars is now 4,492; but at least as significant is the huge number of wounded, together with the troops evacuated back to the United States because of accidental injury or mental of physical illness (see Pia Malbran, “Military Releases High Casualty Figures”, CBS News, 14 April 2008). The number of those injured in combat now runs to 31,590, and another 38,631 have been returned to the United States for non-combat problems. Some of the latter may have been withdrawn for routine treatment or tests; but the great majority are, at the very least, indirect casualties of war. Furthermore, a increasing proportion of recent veterans has been reporting to the department of veterans’ affairs (DVA) for treatment, frequently for problems originating during active service. The DVA had treated 299,585 from January 2002 to January 2008, 120,049 (40% of the total) for mental-health disorders. These three stories together portray a very different picture of the strategic predicament of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan (and Iraq) from the optimistic comments of Brigadier-General Carlos Branco – and perhaps a more accurate one. In 1954, the French gave up in the face not just of “external” pressure and setback but of an “inner” corrosion of their resolve. Nato in general and the United States in particular may not yet be at that point: but they face wars that could stretch for decades, and – whether or not they suffer an Afghan or Iraqi equivalent of Dien Bien Phu – their opponents are expecting their hearts eventually to fail.
Interview with Robert Fisk16 Apr 2008Robert Fisk has a well-earned reputation as one of the most honest and hard-hitting foreign correspondents in the British media. He has worked in Northern Ireland, where he exposed the presence of the SAS in the mid-1970s, as well as Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. It was in Lebanon, as a witness to the immediate aftermath of the Israeli-organised Sabra and Shatila massacre of 2,000 Palestinian refugees, that his journalism took on its current form: angry, passionate, and as he puts it, “partial on the side of the victims” – a style of journalism which, unfortunately, is not shared by many of his colleagues in the profession. In the midst of a torrent of lies and propaganda emanating from our media about British and US policy on the Middle East, Fisk’s writings are a breath of fresh air – although the hellish reality he depicts does not always make for pleasant reading. When I met him in Christchurch College, sandwiched between an earlier speaking engagement in Bristol and a lecture at the Oxford Literary Festival – seemingly without a moment’s rest – we began by talking about the role of journalism in times of war. Firstly, I wanted to know, does journalism, by sanitising or justifying war, also have a role in perpetuating it? “There are several things. First of all, there’s the inability of many journalists from the US to actually tell the truth about the Israel-Palestine situation – hence, occupied territories are called disputed territories, the wall is called the security barrier, a colony or settlement is called a neighbourhood or an outpost. “Which means that if you see a Palestinian chucking a stone, if it’s about an occupation, you can understand it, but if it’s about a dispute, which you can presumably settle over a cup of tea, then obviously the Palestinians are generically violent. So you demean one side in this appalling conflict. “Then you have this business where TV won’t show what we see, for reasons of so-called ‘bad taste.’ I remember once being on the phone to a TV editor in London when Al Jazeera were asked to feed some tape of children killed and wounded by British shell fire in Basra, and the guy started saying, ‘there’s no point feeding us this, we can’t show this.’ “The first excuse was, ‘people will be having their tea, so we can’t put it on,’ then it was, ‘this is sort of pornography, we don’t show this.’ And it ended up – it is mesmeric to listen to this stuff – the last thing was, ‘we have to show respect for the dead.’ So we don’t show any respect for them when they are alive, we blow them to bits, and then we show respect for them. “So because of this – and these bloodless sandpits with ex-generals pontificating – it becomes a game; you start propagating this idea that war is primarily about victory or defeat – when in fact, it’s about death, and the infliction of massive pain. “I was in Iraq in 1991, when the British and Americans had been bombing one of the highways. There were women and children dead and in bits, and all these dogs came out of the desert and started eating them. “If you saw what I saw you’d never ever think of supporting war of any kind against anyone again. But of course, the politicians – our leaders – are very happy that these pictures are not shown, because they make war more attractive, less painful.” Do the British public never get to see this more realistic picture of war? “If an Iraqi soldier is obliging enough to die by the side of the road in a romantic pose, and you can get him against the skyline without any boiled flesh – ‘the price of war: an Iraqi soldier lies dead,’ you know the sort of caption by now – you can do that.” Journalistic standards are degenerating rapidly in other areas too. Watching the news two weeks ago, I was shocked to see Yassin Nassari and Abdul Patel referred to by the BBC as “terrorists” – not “alleged” or “suspected,” but straight down-the-line “terrorists” – when the only charges they faced related to “possession of materials” (Islamist literature and video), and they had not even been accused of planning terrorist attacks, let alone carrying any out. Has ‘terrorism’ become a catch-all phrase? “I’ve seen cases in the US where the evidence of terrorism is a copy of a Lebanese newspaper. “I’ve just had an interesting example of what’s going on. I was lecturing in Ottawa to 600 Muslim Canadians, and I said to them, ‘you’re absolutely right to exercise your right to free speech to attack the US and Israel when they kill people, commit torture, occupy other people’s lands – but why don’t I ever hear you condemning the regimes in Egypt, Damascus, Libya and so on?’ Silence. I couldn’t work it out.” So what was going on? “Later, I was driving across Canada with two Muslims and they told me. In Canada, if they speak out against these regimes – the Syrian regime, or the Egyptian – these various countries have their own mukhabarat people in Canada – security people – who’ll pass home the message that certain people are speaking up against Mubarak, Assad or whoever. “Then, under the new friendship between intelligence services, the Syrian or Egyptian regime tells the Canadians that there’s a potential terrorist – anti-regime, right? – and CSIS, the Canadian version of the FBI, starts putting taps on them. “So by exercising their freedom of speech against dictatorships, they end up being suspected of terrorism by their new country of citizenship. So the result is, at the end of the day, they’re silent, as I’d be too in their position.” What about the silence of the rest of us, who are not so easily excused? With ever-dwindling numbers on the anti-war demonstrations, have we forgotten what is really going on in those countries suffering Western “liberation”? “You keep having to say to people in London, ‘but it’s real’ – because most people don’t have any experience of war in the West anymore. There isn’t a single one of our political leaders with any experience of war. Bush dodged it, Cheney dodged it, Powell was in Vietnam, but he’s gone. “Hollywood is their experience of war. And when you send people off to war, and your experience is Hollywood, you might be a bit shocked when they start dying. At the end of the day, it isn’t real to them.” But it is all too real to the inhabitants of the Middle East, who have been subjected to Western-sponsored blitzkrieg and massacre for decades – from the ongoing nakbah [catastrophe] against the Palestinians, through Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the US arming of Iraq in the eight-year war against Iran, the 1991 Gulf ‘War’, and subsequent economic genocide of UN sanctions on Iraq – not to mention the West’s backing of the dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. All of this has been witnessed first-hand by Fisk, who believes the Muslim world has shown incredible restraint in the face of all this oppression: “I’m surprised 9/11 didn’t happen before, that it took that long. Whether that’s because it took a lot of planning, I don’t know. “But I’m amazed that you can knock on a front door in the West Bank and not have them slap you in the face – instead of that, they offer you in for coffee and a meal. Can you imagine putting it the other way around – if we were being bombed and occupied by Arab armies and a friendly Arab reporter turned to chat? I don’t know if I’d open the door. Would you?” The true extent of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan has been masked by the massive use of mercenaries – hidden from the troop figures. Estimates suggest 1,000 have been killed in Iraq alone. Fisk is one of very few journalists to call them by their name, as opposed to the “contractor” euphemism: “Just as the wall is called a fence instead of a wall, and it?s a neighbourhood not a settlement, so these are now contractors rather than mercenaries. I?ve always called them mercenaries. When they say two ‘contractors’ have been murdered, the idea that they are going around in an armoured humvee loaded with weapons doesn’t come into the brain pod immediately does it?” What is his experience with these mercenaries? “I noticed that in 2003, they were popping up with belts loaded with machinegun bullets in the hotel I was in. It was obvious they were going to attract attacks like honey. “So I went to some of them and said, ‘for God’s sakes, can’t you just keep your weapons in your room?’ – in those days, you weren’t being attacked in the street – ‘you’re making this out to be a barracks – you’re endangering yourselves and us.’ “And this guy walked up to me with two rifles – he’d overheard the conversation – and he said, ‘well when you’re in trouble mate, don’t come asking me for help.’ I said, ‘I don’t want your fucking help, I want you to leave.” But they did not leave. And the big excuse for staying now is the looming spectre of civil war. Is there, then, a functional value to the occupation of the “civil war theory”? “The first man I ever heard mention the danger of civil war in Iraq was Dan Semor, spokesman for the occupying power in the Green Zone in August 2003. No one had ever heard about the danger of civil war before, no Iraqi ever mentioned it. I remember thinking, ‘what are they trying to do, frighten the Iraqis into obedience?’ “I?m not suggesting that the American military are trying to stir up sectarian strife, but it’s not impossible that there are certain institutions operating either at one remove – i.e. with Iraqis or not – in order to get militias to fight each other rather than fight the Americans. “The French did that in Algeria – it’s a fact. I don’t know if the same thing is happening in Iraq, but given everything else that’s gone on – murder, torture etc – who knows? But you don’t actually have to set off car bombs to do this. Look at the way we as journalists publish all these maps – Shiites at the bottom, Sunnis in the middle, Kurds at the top. “The British did the same in Belfast – green for Catholics, orange for Protestants, medium sherry colour for mixed areas, for people who are inconsiderate enough to marry across the religious divide. But we don’t, obviously, do these ethnic maps about Birmingham or Bradford or Washington. “I could draw you an ethnic map of Toronto, with the suburb of Mississauga green for Muslim. But they wouldn’t print it. Because in our superior, civilised Western society, we don’t acknowledge it. In their society, we spend our time pointing it out to them. “I was in New York some months ago, and on the front cover of Time was ‘How to tell a Sunni from a Shia.’ Can you imagine it? And one of the ways was to look at the licence plate of the car. So we contribute to civil strife by constantly saying, ‘look at the guy in the next village.’ “So you don’t need to set up car bombs to divide people, you can do it quite successfully just by constant repetition – civil war, Shiites, militias, Sunnis, power. You create the narrative. And then in due course, people fall into line because it’s the only one they get. “I once asked the brother of a Sunni dentist who’d been shot dead, ‘will there be civil war?’ He replied, ‘Why do you people want us to have a civil war? I’m married to a Shiite – do you want me to kill my wife? We’re not a sectarian society, we’re a tribal society – the Duleimis have got lots of Sunnis and Shias.’ And that was a response to an idea that had been set off by Dan Semor, the official spokesman for the occupying power.” Unfortunately, the sectarian lines are becoming clearer in Iraq by the day, with the US army building walls to create separate ghettoes in Baghdad, and with the Kurdish north now negotiating its own oil deals. The Western-imposed solution for Bosnia was full-scale ethnic partition. Will this be the future of Iraq? “Bosnia was in Europe, so eventually we wanted to switch the war off. Iraq is a different matter – we’re in Iraq for oil. If the national product of Iraq was asparagus, we wouldn’t be there, I promise. There are parallels with Bosnia, not least indifference towards the Muslim victims – we did nothing for them until the war had consumed a quarter of a million of them – and we don’t care about the Iraqis. “But I think there are big differences with Bosnia. There are more parallels, I think, between the NATO-Serb Kosovo war, because that’s where we got people used to the idea that bombing civilian trains on railway bridges, bombing hospitals, bombing TV stations was OK. “So when we hit lots of civilians in Iraq, it was, ‘well, we were doing that back in Serbia, weren’t we?’ We bombed Al Jazeera in Kabul, they bombed Al Jazeera in Baghdad, which wasn’t even an Iraqi station. So I think the Kosovo war started off the acceptability of doing these things.” Whatever the occupiers’ plans for Iraq, and whatever barbarities they impose, one thing is for sure: the future of that country is not entirely in their hands. Even with their full-scale promotion of sectarian violence in 1950s Algeria, the French were still forced to leave. The dilemma for the US in Iraq, as Fisk puts it, is that “they must leave, they will leave, but they can’t leave – that’s the equation that turns sand into blood.” For those who want to understand this process, and what it means in human terms, rather than simply be lied to about it, Fisk’s reporting is a good place to start. Dan Glazebrook can be contacted at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk
Race History Made 36 Years Ago16 Apr 2008On a balmy evening thirty-six years ago, a motley crew of suited businessmen, Black power activists, academics, journalists, community activists, members of the Lords and Commons and tellers from the Electoral Reform Services made their way down the narrow steps into the basement room of Wren’s church, St James’ on Piccadilly. An hour and a half later as the businessmen, Lords and MPs slunk defeated into the night, the staff of the IRR and the membership, who had defeated the board of management by 94 votes to 8, made merry in the IRR’s annexe offices above the Chelsea Cobbler (the kind with one pair of hand-made boots in the window) on Sackville Street. The vote of IRR’s members on 18 April 1972 to support the IRR staff’s execution of IRR’s aims and commend the coverage of its magazine, Race Today, was one of the most significant steps in British race relations. Till then the study of race relations had been firmly in the grasp of the establishment, under the political sway of government and the economic control of big business. The number of writers on the subject could be counted on the fingers of one hand. There were no departments in universities, no equality programmes in local authorities, no Black people to be seen in the media, politics, church or civil society. In a sense the battle at the IRR – over how it was funded and what knowledge it produced – could be seen as part and parcel of the battles that had raged through the universities during the sixties. But in another sense the IRR’s struggle was unique in that Black people’s experience of racism was so obviously at odds with the focus of the IRR, it had to bring about the collision. Black people were being criminalised by the police (the Mangrove trial had just taken place), Black children were being systematically failed by schooling (Bernard Coard’s How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal in the British school system had just been published), racial violence, especially ‘Paki-bashing’ was rife, stories about brutality were being smuggled out of prisons, the patriality clause of the 1971 Immigration Act was overtly racist. But the Institute of Race Relations, aloof in its Jermyn Street headquarters, was still speaking the language of the gentleman’s club. It was incumbent upon the IRR to be impartial, said the Board of Management, to give both sides of any argument. When, after much discussion, we managed to get a representative of Frelimo (fighting for independence in Mozambique) to speak at a lunchtime meeting, we were forced the next week to invite the Portuguese Ambassador. Similarly when we carried stories about police excesses in the monthly magazine, Race Today, we had to offer space to a senior policeman to put his point of view. The staff were neither seen nor heard by the Board. Only the director, his assistant and Company Secretary were present at Council meetings. After strong representations by the staff, heads of departments were admitted to meetings, though still without speaking and certainly without voting rights. Though there were one or two staff members, particularly in the international research unit, who fought the IRR’s battle on a high ideological level – we must not take money from the capitalists, especially when they were committed to things like the Cabora Bassa damn project on the Zambezi. Eventually the terrain on which the staff united to fight were the liberal values of free speech and freedom of expression. At a meeting of the Race and Neo-imperialism Section of the British Sociological Association, an IRR researcher read a paper in which he critiqued the basis of Colour and Citizenship, the book from the IRR’s ten-year Survey on the basis that it served to make the power elite more powerful and the ‘subject (immigrant) population relatively more impotent and ignorant’. In future he suggested that immigrants being ‘surveyed’ should simply tell IRR researchers to ‘fuck off’. The book had been a best-seller, it contained all the recommendations for lobbying the government, and, its principal author, who was also the owner of Westminister Press, sat on IRR’s board. The board closed ranks and decided the researcher had to be sacked. When the staff persuaded Hugh Tinker, the director, not to sack him on the grounds of freedom of expression, the Board turned on the director as incompetent himself. Meanwhile, Race Today had published an issue whose cover, according to the board, had cost its fund-raising programme thousands of pounds. The offending cover had on the back an advert for an anti-apartheid demonstration and on the front a picture of Lord Goodman (then negotiating for the British government with Rhodesia) and the caption ‘five million Africans say no’. The editor of the magazine should, the Board said, be sacked, the staff said no way. And now the staff took the issue to the general public by cultivating support in the press on the grounds of press freedom. (It has to be remembered, that, in the tradition of its forebears the Indian Civil Service and the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the IRR was run by and for its Board of Management. The staff were seen and treated as minions, without voice or volition, carrying out the bidding of their masters, who, though technically answerable to a membership, were in effect, their absolute rulers.) On 20 March 1972 the board summoned all its members to a meeting which was to sort out all the recalcitrant staff once and for all: the director was to be sent on study leave and Race Today shut down. The staff members present asked for a discussion and were refused, whereupon they summoned the whole body of the staff, who, conscious that the future of IRR was at stake, had stayed on in another part of the building after hours. Imagine the horror of Lord Boyle (former Tory minister), Michael Caine (head of Booker Brothers), David Sieff (of Marks and Spencer), Sir Frederic Seebohm (of Barclays Bank), and other luminaries of the business world as ‘their space’ was literally invaded by a horde of some forty angry staff (mainly women) who perched themselves along the side of the polished boardroom tables as they leant over to make their points. The ‘Lords of Human Kind’ had no experience of this kind of dogfight, they were never face to face with the hoipolloi like this. But their struggle to control the gaggle was to founder completely when the phone rang. It was the Financial Times, they were going to press and needed the story that they had been promised. The staff realised that they had been stitched up, the Board realised that their pre-emptive decision looked undemocratic, the Chairman decided to take the matters away from the board and present them instead to a meeting of all the Institute’s members at an Extraordinary General Meeting. So that is what happened on 18 April 1972. The changes to the internal workings of the IRR have been fundamental and enduring. And the impact of those changes will be celebrated later this year when IRR has its 50th birthday event on 1 November 2008. But what is important to recognise is the way in which that struggle so many years ago was to change the parameters of debate, policy, research and representation around race throughout the country. It is hard to convey now, in a context where the race scene is so diverse, how the IRR’s struggle influenced every quarter – trades unions, academic departments, newspapers, churches, the burgeoning race relations industry, social workers and other NGOs. In internal meeting after meeting, groups voted to support the IRR’s staff and held special meetings to discuss the issues thrown up. Essentially the struggle at IRR challenged a multitude of race relations shibboleths: the ‘problem’ was not Black immigrants but White society; the government was not part of the solution but part of the problem; it was not a question of educating Black and Whites about integration, but of fighting institutional racism; it was not race relations that was the field of study, but racism; racism was a moral and political issue which necessitated taking sides; it was those who experienced racism who should be in command of the fight against it. The reason that the battle at the IRR caught the public imagination is because it showed, too, that it was not necessary in the words of A. Sivanandan, who became director in 1973, to be ‘paralysed by our histories’. ‘We do not have to be at the barricades to be revolutionaries’, he wrote in the preface to Race and Resistance: the IRR story, ‘we do not have to be grassroots to be radical. To apprehend the social consequences of what we ourselves are doing and to set out to change them – is in itself a revolutionary act.’
Questions for Ken16 Apr 2008London mayor Ken Livingstone can justifiably boast that he has done much over the last 30 years to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Londoners. As leader of the Greater London council in the 1980s, he was the first major politician to speak out publicly in support of gay human rights. His funding of previously unsupported LGBT welfare and advice agencies was trailblazing and immensely positive. In his first term as mayor of London, Livingstone set up the UK’s first same-sex partnership register, which paved the way for the subsequent legislation of civil partnerships. But during his second term as mayor, he caused widespread dismay in the LGBT community when he welcomed to City Hall as his “honoured guest” Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The mayor subsequently repeatedly excused and defended the viciously homophobic and murder-inciting cleric. Qaradawi supports the execution of gay people in Islamic states, the killing of Muslims who abandon their faith, wife-beating, female genital mutilation, forcing women to wear the hijab, terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in Israel and the flogging of women who have sex outside of marriage. He also said the 2004 Asian tsunami was punishment by God because the people who died had allowed their countries to become centres of “sexual perversion”. Together with many other people, I criticised Livingstone over his embrace of Qaradawi. He responded with the wholly untrue claim that I am an “Islamophobe” and a person with “a long history of Islamophobia”. Since then, despite an occasional pro-gay initiative, like opposing Westminster council’s attempt to ban rainbow flags in Soho, Livingstone’s record of supporting the LGBT community has been somewhat patchy. LGBT Londoners are, of course, not only interested in LGBT policies. Like the rest of London, they are also concerned about transport, crime, housing and the environment, as well as the candidates’ stance on matters that specifically affect lesbian and gay people. On four issues Livingstone needs to explain why he has let down the LGBT community. The other mayoral candidates also need to state where they stand. What are the Conservative, Lib Dem and Green policies on these questions? Refusal to fund the gay football world championships in London Livingstone has refused to contribute to the funding of the 2008 international gay and lesbian football association world championship, which is being held in London in August. London has won the honour of being the host city, and the UK’s Stonewall FC team is a strong contender for the world title, but the mayor is withholding financial backing. Livingstone also refused to sign a letter of support for the associations’s grant application to the lottery fund. Having the high-profile support of the mayor would increase the likelihood of the grant succeeding. It costs nothing to sign a letter of support. The unexpected lack of financial assistance from the mayor has contributed to the association being left with a funding shortfall. How does the mayor justify this denial of a few thousand pounds to the gay football world championships when he has showered billions on the 2012 Olympics? Where do the other mayoral candidates stand on funding the gay football world cup and similar gay sporting events? And will they offer financial support to increase youth, women’s, disabled and ethnic minority participation in sport? Lesbian and gay museum During the 2004 Mayoral election campaign, Livingstone promised to fund a lesbian and gay museum, which is now called Proud Heritage. The idea is to add to the diversity of London’s museums by creating a new institution dedicated to documenting and celebrating the lives and contributions of LGBT people, in a similar way to the existing specialist Jewish, children’s and slavery museums. It took until 2007 for Livingstone to grant a rather modest start-up grant of 5,000. Further money was pledged. Proud Heritage made a bid for an additional 10,000, so it could launch the first stage online version of the museum this week. The mayor eventually agreed a further 5,000. This money has been contracted by Livingstone but not delivered as of 15 April. Why not? On the basis of Livingstone’s contracted 5,000 grant, Proud Heritage organised development work. This work on the website, which opens on April 18, has not been completed because Livingstone’s money has not materialised. This has created needless last-minute stress for the Proud Heritage organisers. Why has Livingstone delayed his election pledge on the lesbian and gay museum? Why, four years after his promise, has the Proud Heritage project been underfunded by the mayor? What will other candidates pledge towards this project? Proud Heritage is, so far, only an online museum. Will the mayoral candidates support and help finance a physical LGBT museum as well? Mayor’s LGBT forum The mayor’s LGBT forum was set up to liaise with the LGBT community. But from the outset it has been structured in a wholly undemocratic way. Why isn’t the forum allowed to elect its own chair? Why did Livingstone impose as chair one of his own people, a straight woman, Anni Marjoram? Why is the LGBT forum banned from proposing resolutions or holding votes on policy recommendations to the mayor? Attempts to propose and vote on policy issues are ruled out of order by the chair. This has disillusioned many of us who proposed and backed the forum as an open, democratic space for dialogue and consultation. The forum is now widely dismissed as a PR exercise, with no real power or influence. Many grassroots activists no longer bother to attend. What is the point? Anything that questions mayoral policy doesn’t get on the agenda and uncomfortable debates are curtailed by the chair. How does the mayor explain the fact that many grassroots LGBT campaigners in London no longer participate in the forum? What does he say to allegations that it has become an unrepresentative forum attended mostly by pro-Livingstone factions and LGBT groups hoping to get money out of the Greater London authority? What would other mayoral candidates do to rectify this democratic deficit? Underfunding of LGBT groups and events The mayor has given millions to black projects, which is a very good thing. The empowerment of ethnic communities is vital to redress social exclusion and discrimination. But Livingstone has granted comparatively little to LGBT projects. The mayor keeps promising LGBT funding but he seems rarely to deliver. He is quite good at verbal support, but little more. How does Livingstone justify the millions of pounds he and the London development agency have given to black community groups and the largesse provided for the St Patrick’s Day events, compared to the much smaller grants that he has given to Pride London and LGBT community organisations? In 2006, the mayor gave 175,000 to the St Patrick’s Day festival and 288,000 to the Rise festival – but only 100,000 for the LGBT Pride London festival. I don’t begrudge support for Irish, Black, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and women’s groups and events. The mayor has duty to support all of London’s wonderful diverse communities. He is right to do so. It helps create a more liberal, tolerant and cohesive city. But shouldn’t there be a more equitable distribution of mayoral funding, with all community events receiving roughly similar levels of financial backing? Or at least there should not be such huge disparities in the mayor’s financial support. Where do the other candidates stand on this question? Livingstone’s mishandling of these four issues has implications way beyond the LGBT community. It is symptomatic of a style of governance that adversely impacts on many Londoners. As well as Livingstone, all the mayoral candidates need to address this issue, so Londoners know what they will do if they are elected mayor on May 1.
Science cuts threaten Jodrell Bank radio telescope16 Apr 2008The Labour government of Prime Mister Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts in the UK science budget, with many critical programmes and facilities now threatened. In March, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) outlined a Programmatic Review listing all the science projects it funds in order of priority. The review followed the STFC?s December 11 budget announcement proposing severe cuts to the budgets of critical physics research and astronomy projects in the UK. The council cited an 80 million shortfall in its 670 million triannual budget as the reason for the cuts. The report divides scientific projects into High, Medium-High, Medium-Lower and Lower categories. Scientists fear that funding may be withdrawn from those facilities deemed to be ?Lower Priority? and some of those listed as ?Medium-Lower Priority.? Some 18 projects are listed as ?Medium-Lower Priority? and a further 25 as ?Lower Priority.? Among the many projects described as being of ?Lower Priority? are the following: MERLIN, e-MERLIN and ?Jive??The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an array of radio telescopes centred on the world-famous Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and is operated by the nearby University of Manchester. The array is distributed around Britain, with separations of up to 217 km. The project is preparing to complete a full 8 million upgrade to fibre-optic cables, enabling the full use of each dish to be made. The latter is known as e-MERLIN. Astrogrid: An open-source project leading worldwide efforts in partnership with established astronomical archives and facilities to establish a Virtual Observatory. The project has already designed much of the infrastructure to enable simultaneous access to most astronomical catalogues, images, spectra and other datasets in a standardised way from anywhere in the world. BiSON: The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network consists of a network of six remote solar observatories monitoring low-degree solar oscillation modes. CASU/WFAU: The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is part of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, and is mainly involved in survey astronomy. Gemini: The Gemini Observatory consists of two of the largest telescopes in the world, one in Hawaii and one in Chile. Gemini North is both a very advanced and the largest telescope UK astronomers have access to in the northern hemisphere. EISCAT: The EISCAT Scientific Association project operates three incoherent scatter radar systems, at 931 MHz, 224 MHz and 500 MHz, in northern Scandinavia. EISCAT monitors and studies the interaction between the Sun and the Earth as revealed by disturbances in the magnetosphere and the ionised parts of the atmosphere. It is these interactions that produce the spectacular aurora known as the Northern Lights. UKIRT: The United Kingdom InfraRed telescope is located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It is currently carrying out the most extensive survey of the infrared sky ever attempted. UKATC: Based at the historic and world-renowned Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre is the national centre for astronomical technology. UKATC designs and builds instruments for many of the world?s major telescopes. ING: The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes has been listed as a ?Medium-Lower? priority. The ING consists of three important telescopes on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain. Also listed as ?Medium-Lower? is the UK Solar System Data Centre (UKSSDC). This is a central archive and data centre facility for Solar System science in the UK, supporting the archives for all the researchers in the UK?s solar system scientific community. Jodrell Bank Immediately following the publication of the STFC review, there were protests throughout the astronomy and physics communities and among scientists in general. Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded and oversaw the construction of Jodrell Bank and who still works there at the age of 96, said, ?We are all astonished. I?m sure some solution will be found. It is the wrong time to close it. The work is of such fundamental importance. It would just not be sensible for them to pull the plug now.? Prominent astronomer Patrick Moore condemned the STFC plans. He said, ?If we lose Jodrell Bank, it will be a devastating blow not only to British radio astronomy, but to astronomy all over the world. The amount involved is not very much in the bigger scheme of things. It?s about the same amount claimed by Cabinet ministers last year for their expenses.? Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society said, ?We are very concerned about these plans?they are a real threat to Jodrell Bank. Jodrell Bank is a world-class facility and to save 2.7 million a year by axing something the UK is so good at is terribly disappointing. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.? Since it was constructed in 1957, the huge 76.2 metre (250 ft)wide Jodrell Bank radio telescope dish located in the Cheshire countryside, 20 miles south of Manchester, has become known and loved by millions of people. One letter published in the local newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, said, ?I can?t believe that this is happening. I was inspired to study science myself by visits to Jodrell Bank as a child and I know that a lot of other people had the same experience.? Such is the public affinity with Jodrell Bank that in 2006, it was named the winner in a BBC News online competition to find the UK?s greatest ?Unsung Landmarks.? For more than 50 years, the Jodrell Bank Observatory, originally known as the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station, has been at the forefront of worldwide radio astronomy. Sir Bernard Lovell had worked on radar in the Second World War and wanted to investigate the phenomena of cosmic rays. He had originally used a 218-ft wire mesh Transit aerial on the same site. Unlike the aerial, the dish could be pointed to any part of the sky to detect radio waves emanating from space. It was built at an estimated cost of 260,000?at least 3 million at today?s costs. Despite the great advances in radio astronomy since 1957, and the building of many other dishes worldwide, the Lovell remains the third-largest steerable radio telescope in the world today. Today, there are four radio telescopes of varying sizes on the site, with the main one being the Lovell. Over the past five decades, Jodrell Bank has made an astounding contribution to science and our understanding of the universe. Stars, galaxies and other objects in the universe emit different types of radiation?from visible light to invisible X-rays, gamma rays and infrared. Prior to the advent of Jodrell Bank and the radio telescope age, astronomers were only able to view the visible light emitted by stars. Overnight, it revolutionised astronomy, as it was able to detect radio waves from objects at the far reaches of the universe. The Lovell telescope allows these radio waves to bounce off its dish onto an aerial and radio receiver at its centre. Among its many achievements, it has developed our understanding of the age of the universe and what it is made of. It has led the way in the understanding of quasars, pulsars and supernovae and played a critical part in a number of space missions. Today, it researches various fields in physics and astronomy including gravitational lenses, cosmic microwave background, active galaxies, stellar Physics, solar plasmas, starburst galaxies and supernovae. On becoming operational in the summer of 1957, it was the only telescope able to track Sputnik 1, the world?s first artificial satellite launched into space by the Soviet Union. On October 12, 1957, Jodrell Bank located the satellite. In 1959, Jodrell Bank received the very first pictures transmitted from the far side of the Moon by the Soviet probe Luna 3. Jodrell Bank also tracked the NASA probe Pioneer 5 between March 11 and June 12, 1960. It was also used to send commands to the probe, including the one to separate the probe from its carrier rocket and the ones to turn on the more powerful transmitter when the probe was 8 million miles away. It was the only telescope in the world capable of receiving data from Pioneer 5. Recalling the tumultuous era that marked the beginning of humanity?s exploration beyond Earth, Lovell commented in 2003, ?Both the Soviets and Americans had the ability to launch payloads into space, but no means of tracking them!? Another milestone in the history of Jodrell Bank was in February 1966. The telescope tracked the Soviet Union?s first unmanned moon lander, Luna 9. It was able to detect the facsimile transmission of photographs from the moon?s surface being relayed back to the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most outstanding moment in the history of Jodrell Bank was when it assisted in tracking the Apollo mission that put man on the moon on July 20, 1969. During the descent of the Eagle lander to the surface of the moon, Jodrell Bank mapped out a plot chart of it based on Doppler Shift measures. This plot showed a very discernable movement that marked the exact moment when the crew assumed manual control of the craft and momentarily changed course in the last seconds before landing. This was because they had seen a potentially hazardous crater that may have jeopardised the mission. Today, that plot chart can be seen by visitors on the wall of the cafe in the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. Even as recently as 1993, the Lovell Telescope was asked by NASA to help in the search for the lost Mars Observer spacecraft. Although the craft was not detected, the Lovell was the only instrument on Earth with the capability to do so. Scientific observations carried out by the telescope included using radar to measure the distance to the Moon and to Venus. It has also observed pulsars and discovered various types of pulsars including millisecond pulsars and the first pulsar in a globular cluster. In 1979, it inaugurated the field of the study of ?gravitational lenses? as its radio observation led to the discovery of the first such lenses. Gravitational lenses had first been predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of General Relativity at the turn of the last century. Einstein conjectured that instead of light from a source travelling in a straight line (in three dimensions), it is actually bent by the presence of a massive body. This allows the observer to see the object that is further away and would not actually be detected without the presence of the large object. Further discoveries in this field were made in 1998 with the joint Jodrell Bank/NASA detection of a special type of gravitational lensing known as Einstein Rings. In September 2006, Jodrell Bank announced that following three years of observing a double pulsar with three of its telescopes, the attending results showed that the general theory of relativity is accurate to 99.5 percent. Last but not least, the telescope also plays an important role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Jodrell Bank?s latest groundbreaking research Jodrell Bank/MERLIN has recently been instrumental once again in another monumental scientific breakthrough. On April 2, the team at MERLIN in collaboration with a network of scientists in the US announced the discovery of the youngest planet ever detected. The planet is still in the process of formation and is known as a ?protoplanet.? The gas planet and its surrounding mix of rocky particles and dust is thought to be just a few hundred years old and orbits around the star HL Tau. The parent star itself is very young and is estimated to be less than 100,000 years old. It lies in the direction of the constellation of Taurus at a distance of 520 light years. Our own Sun, in comparison, is 4,600 million years old. The discovery reveals a new planetary system in the process of formation. The evolving planet is a gas giant, some 14 times the size of our Jupiter. Prior to its discovery, the previous youngest planet was confirmed to be 10 million years old. The HL Tau star region was initially imaged by the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in the US at emission wavelengths. These were specifically chosen to detect rocky particles about the size of pebbles. Scientists hoped that the presence of such tiny rocky material would reveal that they were beginning to clump together to form planets. MERLIN, including Jodrell Bank, was able to study the same system at longer wavelengths. These observations confirmed the emissions were from rocks and not from other sources such as hot gas. Dr. Anita Richards, one of two scientists at Jodrell Bank who analysed the data, said, ?The new object, designated HL Tau b, is the youngest planetary object ever seen and is just one percent as old as the young planet found in orbit around the star TW Hydrae that made the news last year. HL Tau b gives a unique view of how planets take shape, because the VLA image also shows the parent disk material from which it formed.? Jodrell Bank?s future is bound up with the eMERLIN project, which is currently being finalised. It is due to be operational in late 2008 or early 2009 at a total cost of 8 million. It has also been selected as the headquarters of a larger international project?the Square Kilometre Array. This proposes to connect dozens of radio dishes at a remote facility to be built either in South Africa or Australia at a cost of about 1 billion. This project is not intended to be fully operational until 2020, meaning that Jodrell Bank is reliant on the continuation of the e-MERLIN project. The upgrade of Jodrell Bank associated with e-MERLIN will increase the resolution and sensitivity of the system by 30 times. This would result in the telescope being able to observe a much wider range of objects in the universe. The scrapping of e-MERLIN would result in no new science being achieved from the 8 million investment and the possible closure of Jodrell Bank altogether. Phil Diamond, the director of the observatory, said, ?It means there is a threat to the whole facility. We are coming to the end of the 8 million MERLIN upgrade, which when it comes on stream, will make us one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, so it is unbelievable.? The cuts being proposed by the STFC have been aptly described as ?scientific vandalism.? For several generations, Jodrell Bank has been a powerful symbol representing scientific achievement and progress. For many school children, including this writer, seeing the giant telescope up close as a child left an indelible memory. Tens of thousands of people still visit Jodrell Bank each year and marvel at the structure and what it represents historically. Lectures are regularly held there that continue to play an important role in the dissemination of the latest developments in the fields of radio astronomy and physics. Precisely due to the great advances in scientific understanding and discoveries, in which it played a major role, today Jodrell Bank and the other projects threatened in the STFC review are ever more critical in both enhancing and promoting scientific enquiry. The slashing of the science budget is bound up with a general onslaught being carried out by a government whose policies are based on facilitating the requirements of big business. The pursuit of science and knowledge is being sacrificed to the narrower and more immediate demands of corporations for returns on their investments. A web site www.savejodrellbank.org.uk has been set up by students at the University of Manchester in response to the threat.
Brown may rue leaving Northern Ireland out of Britain16 Apr 2008After 28 years as deputy, Peter Robinson is poised to take over the leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party and assume the First Ministership of Northern Ireland. He will emerge fully from the shadow of Ian Paisley to lead Unionism, and the fourth part of the Union, in June. The Paisley- Robinson relationship has been central to the DUP. Paisley with his oratorical skills and emotional intelligence of Ulster?s Unionist community was the standard bearer, but it was Robinson that honed the DUP machine. Robinson?s importance came into sharp focus as the DUP overhauled the Ulster Unionist Party and negotiated the St Andrews Agreement. Post devolution, he used his powerful position as Finance minister to full effect, driving forward an agreed budget and programme for government. However, the relationship between Paisley and McGuinness, nicknamed the ?Chuckle Brothers,? caused unease among Unionists and finally accelerated Robinson?s accession. The expectation is now that the bonhomie will decline – it?s not Robinson?s style anyway. But the devolution will continue. Its path may be bumpier than in the past year, but this is because of genuine disputes rather than personalities. Robinson has already met with the leader-in-waiting of the Republic of Ireland, Brian Cowen, in a co-announcement of an investment package that could bring 5,000 jobs to Northern Ireland. The clear message was that when business can be done it will be done. In terms of Unionism locally, a post-Paisley DUP creates new dynamics which can only be guessed at – but a scenario that gives the UUP much comfort is hard to find. Nationally, the relationship with Gordon Brown is probably the coolest of all, mostly at his own behest. Brown was indifferent to Blair?s peace project, gave short shrift to proposals for a better financial package and the DUP has been angered by the in-out (usually out) attitude to Northern Ireland in Brown?s Britishness project. Beyond devolution, Unionism is eyeing the possibility of a hu
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