‘Creative Destruction’ – the Madness of the Global Economy
4 Feb 2008
Watching the corporate media report the ?financial crisis? is instructive. From the perspective of power, it is important that a steadying hand is applied to the tiller of news and commentary on the crisis, and the global economy itself. And so columnist Martin Wolf took a ?measured? view in the Financial Times. There have been 100 ?significant? banking crises in the past thirty years, he noted, making them almost routine. Authorities have had to intervene to ?rescue? the US financial system from four crises over that period: the developing country debt and also the ?savings and loan? crises of the 1980s; the commercial property crisis of the early 1990s; and now the subprime and credit crisis of 2007-08. As Wolf observed correctly of the banking sector: ?No industry has a comparable talent for privatising gains and socialising losses.? Wolf?s big ?fear?, though, is that the crumbling financial system will destroy ?the political legitimacy of the market economy itself.? Why this ?political legitimacy? should not be challenged is left hanging in the air. And what Wolf terms the ?market economy? is an extreme variant of capitalism known as ?neoliberalism? which is massively subsidised and protected by powerful states. Again, all this is left unsaid. Wolf turns instead to bankers? pay which, he asserts, lies at the root of the problem: ?By paying huge bonuses on the basis of short-term performance [...] banks create gigantic incentives to disguise risk-taking as value-creation.? Official intervention to regulate bankers? remuneration is a ?horrible? solution. But the alternative, an endless series of financial crises, is ?even worse.? (Wolf, ?Why regulators should intervene in bankers? pay?, Financial Times, January 16, 2008) Wolf?s ?solution?, however, is hugely impractical. Defining a link between bankers? performance and remuneration would be immensely difficult, involve unlikely international regulation of global markets and require complex mechanisms to police. As this simply is not going to happen in the current political climate, given the certain massive resistance of financial interests, we can expect similar and maybe worse crises in the future. Over at the Times, another useful gauge of establishment thinking, the title of Anatole Kaletsky?s column summed up the required pacifying message: ?Relax. Our economy isn’t manic depressive.? Happily, according to Kaletsky?s ?hunch?, it will all turn out fine: ?a combination of monetary and fiscal easing, along with some regulatory changes [...] will lessen the credit crisis and prevent a world recession.? (Kaletsky, The Times, January 24, 2008). The message was buoyant, but it was also superficial. The Independent?s economics commentator, Hamish McRae, pinned blame for the crisis simply on ?mistakes?: ?Bankers, like the rest of us, make mistakes, but the scale of the mistakes, particularly in US banks, has been enormous. We won?t fully understand for some time quite how they could persuade themselves that bundles of housing loans to clearly uncreditworthy borrowers should be ranked as almost as good as government securities.? The ?legitimate question? now, asserts McRae, is ?whether the continuing banking weakness has become so serious as to transfer what is still a financial market problem into a more general economic problem.? His reassuring conclusion: ?Banking troubles will be a drag on the world economy, slowing it down. But they won’t stop it in its tracks.? (McRae, ?The markets are bad, but don?t panic just yet?, Independent, January 23, 2008) This would be comforting news for the ?masters of the universe? who were meeting in Davos, many of them in sombre mood: 27 heads of state; 113 cabinet ministers; hundreds of chief executives, bankers, fund managers, economists and journalists: about 2,500 participants in all. Sean O?Grady, the Independent?s economics editor, was enthralled by the ?concentrated, eclectic mix of the top slice of humanity? that ?is part of the ?magic? of this mountain redoubt?; all twinkling under a ?sprinkling of stardust? brought upon proceedings by the likes of Bono. The stardust was clearly affecting O?Grady?s vision as he proposed we should rely on western political and corporate leaders to ?balance the needs and aspirations of the old economies of the West, the emerging economies of the east and the still poor billions in the south.? (O?Grady, ?Davos. Wealth, power and a sprinkling of stardust?, The Independent, January 22, 2008) In the Guardian?s comment pages there was at least a glimmer of dissent from columnist Jonathan Freedland. ?Turbo-capitalism is not just unfair,? he wrote, ?it is dishonest and dangerous.? He pleaded: ?surely this is the moment when Labour and the centre-left can dare to question the neoliberal dogma that has prevailed since the days of Thatcher.? Freedland?s dissection was limited, though, cautiously proposing that ?you could argue? that ?capitalism is always [...] parasitical on the state.? What he sought was a kinder, gentler form of capitalism instead of the ?turbo-capitalism? which is happy to rely ?on us, the public, and our instrument, the state, when it gets in trouble.? Thin on details, he concluded weakly: ?Now we should demand a say the rest of the time, too.? (Freedland, ?The free-marketeers abhor the crutch of the state – until they start limping?, Guardian, January 23, 2008) The above sample indicates the narrow spectrum of corporate media opinion on the ?financial crisis.? Viewpoints are heavily biased towards the status quo, with only occasional fig leaves of mild dissent. This is a misleading picture, avoiding scrutiny of an economic system that is both fundamentally flawed and stacked against the majority of humanity. Financial and political elites are at pains to convince the public they can get things ?back on track? by tweaking interest rates, ?stimulating? the economy and only infrequently having to intervene to make a heroic ?rescue?. Thus, although the occasional financial crisis cannot be prevented – just as a flu virus might afflict a healthy body – the economy itself is presumed to be ?inherently strong.? (President George W. Bush, quoted, Democracy Now!, January 23, 2008; http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/23/recession). This is a vital illusion; the required view of wealthy investors and corporations. After all, a basic requirement for powerful authority to prevail is the mythical projection of a benign force in control of events. Western leaders and their faithful retinue in the media are deceptively reassuring about the global economic situation – because profits and power demand it. Otherwise they run the serious risk of a huge slump in public confidence in the current economic system and even in what passes for ?democratic? politics. Corporate reporting of the ?financial crisis?, then, is yet another example of how reality is distorted in service to power and profit. Boom And Bust Despite the huge scale of yet another financial crisis, and the threat of an impending severe global economic recession, the major political parties and elite media refuse to address the possibility of fundamental weaknesses and inequality at the very heart of modern ?capitalism.? In reality, the current system, driven by private profit far beyond environmental sanity, is incapable of meeting the needs and aspirations of humanity. The inherently unstable and destructive behaviour of capitalism derives from its inevitable cycles of ?boom and bust.? We can see this in both theory and practice. Corporations operate for the primary benefit of their shareholders, as demanded by company law. The priority of shareholders is to maximise profits. The capital that they invest must increase in value to justify the risk undertaken. Demand for products and services thus needs to expand. The profits gained, or part thereof, can then be reinvested to generate further profit. But the process is unsustainable because markets become saturated as consumers reach the limit of their demand capacity. Intense competition impels producers to drive down costs, especially labour, to make a profit. As profits become squeezed, and dividend-hungry shareholders threaten to take their investment elsewhere, producers become desperate to push up total sales. They pump out ever greater volumes of commodities and spend billions on advertising to boost demand. Inevitably, the flood of commodities surpasses the capacity of the market to absorb products. Sales collapse, unemployment rises and a full-blown recession ensues: this is the ?bust? part of the cycle. Surplus productive capacity then has to be destroyed before a new ?boom? can begin. That is the theory, and it is borne out by historical experience. Since the industrial revolution, around 200 years ago in the West, boom-and-bust cycles have recurred with varying intensity. The most destructive bust occurred in the 1930s Great Depression, leading to World War Two and the deaths of over 60 million people. Historically, as Karl Marx recognised, capitalism can also be seen as the driver of technological revolutions and in boosting human powers of production. And, at least in the West, it has been associated with past increases in the living conditions of a sizeable fraction of the population. So perhaps we should accept that capitalism, with all its flaws, is the best we can do. Perhaps we should believe the official argument that governments have largely learnt to cope with boom-and-bust cycles through judicious planning. For example, a huge crisis was averted in the 1970s. However, this was only possible because, as British economist Harry Shutt explains: ?the authorities were determined (as never before) to use the forces of the state – through fiscal and monetary manipulation (including massive but unsustainable government borrowing) – to try and keep the show on the road.? (Shutt, email, January 28, 2008) But these were only short-term ?fixes? at best. Gerry Gold and Paul Feldman sum up: ?Attempts to resolve the simultaneous stagnation and inflation of the 1970s through high interest rates produced a recession in the US in the early 1980s. Parallel deflationary policies imposed by the UK?s Thatcher government from 1979 led quickly to a recession and a fullblown slump by 1985. Attempts to overcome this only led to a further recession in 1991-2.? (Gold and Feldman, ?A House of Cards: From fantasy finance to global crash?, Lupus Books, London, 2007, p. 28) Moreover, Shutt exposes the ?coping strategies? promoted over the past twenty years by government authorities in cahoots with Wall Street and the City. These have ?all involved pumping up credit bubbles around various fantasies ? ?emerging? markets, dot.com, housing – which had about as much substance as the original South Sea [Bubble] and could only be sustained even for a few years by a similar level of fraud and misinformation.? (Shutt, email, January 28, 2008) In 1997, a major financial crisis erupted, starting in East Asia. Currencies collapsed, businesses went bankrupt and millions of people lost their jobs. Many Asian enterprises were subsequently snapped up at rock-bottom prices by corporations and investors in the West. Soon after, in 2000, the speculative bubble of investment in internet-related companies burst spectacularly. This ?dot-com? bust saw a lengthy recession ensue in the developed world. Historical evidence shows, then, that governments have been largely powerless to combat capitalism?s inevitable and damaging ?business cycles?. However, this should not be confused with the resiliency of capitalism; the system has demonstrated a repeated capacity to reform itself sufficiently to allow renewed growth and to survive further rounds of business cycles. So it would be wrong to assume that the whole capitalist system, unstable and unfair as it always will be, is on the verge of total collapse. Official Fraud And Propaganda An alarming symptom of what is wrong with current economics is the increasingly desperate and cynical measures taken by powerful states, corporations and investors to maintain faltering public confidence in global capitalism. Just as Enron, Worldcom and a host of other large corporations have committed accounting fraud, so governments have falsified figures on inflation, output and unemployment to present a false picture of a healthy economy. (See Shutt, ?The Decline of Capitalism?, Zed Books, London, 2005, pp. 104-5) For example, the US government has deliberately exaggerated GDP growth rates in order to disguise the economy?s poor performance since the mid-1970s; in the developed world, growth rates have actually declined over the past three decades. As David Harvey reports, aggregate global growth rates stood at around 3.5 per cent in the 1960s. Even during the difficult 1970s, marked by energy shortages and industrial unrest, it fell only to 2.4 per cent. But the subsequent growth rates have languished at 1.4 per cent and 1.1 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, and has struggled to reach even 1 per cent since 2000. (Harvey, ?A Brief History of Neoliberalism?, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 154) In terms of public perception, however, the authorities have largely succeeded. They have maintained the fiction that they can manage the economy effectively and that global capitalism is the only game in town. How has this been possible? Shutt points to a ?media campaign of uncritical propaganda and pro-market hype.? This ?sustained act of mass deception (in which the establishment has seemingly come to believe in its own propaganda) has had disastrous consequences.? (Shutt, op. cit., pp. 36-37) Those consequences include crushing levels of poverty and inequality; wars motivated by the desire for strategic control, hydrocarbon resources and economic markets; climate instability; and the most rapid loss of species in the planet?s history. The Neoliberal Nightmare To complement the above picture, and in contrast to corporate media coverage, we must also critically describe the political-economic process summed up by that innocuous-sounding word, ?neoliberalisation?. This serious attack on democracy, the latest stage in advanced capitalism, took root in the Reagan-Thatcher era of the 1980s, and has accelerated ever since. Proponents of neoliberalism tell us that human well-being flourishes best within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, ?free? markets and ?free? trade. But what has it meant in practice? First, recall that after the trauma of the Depression and WW2 in the 1930s and 1940s, Western governments used Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies (named after the British economist John Maynard Keynes) to try to dampen business cycles and to ensure reasonably full employment. There was significant state-led planning, and even state ownership, of key industrial sectors such as coal, steel and cars. Governments also made huge investments in health care, education and infrastructure. As David Harvey explains, this system of ?embedded liberalism? involved ?market processes and entrepreneurial and corporate activities [that] were surrounded by a web of social and political constraints and a regulatory environment.?(Harvey, op. cit., pp. 10-11) During the 1950s and 1960s, embedded liberalism delivered high rates of economic growth in the West. But in the 1970s, given the inevitability of boom-and-bust, a serious crisis of capital accumulation arose. Inflation and unemployment soared, and labour unrest threatened business interests. The free-market and monetarist financial centres, notably the City of London, had never been enamoured of the postwar welfare state and were increasingly antagonistic towards state Keynesian policies. As Harvey notes, ?the nationalized industries were draining resources from the Treasury.? (op. cit., p. 57). With the oil shocks and economic stagnation of the 1970s, powerful business and political forces mobilised to set a course for the next stage of capitalism: to regain the elite class power that had been dissipated, to some extent, by postwar policies of wealth redistribution and social welfare. Neoliberalisation was born. A wave of deregulation of financial markets swept the world, and transnational mobility of capital rapidly rose. Corporate pressure intensified on governments to create a ?good business climate? and to adopt neoliberal ?reforms? that routinely squeezed state spending. Wall Street-IMF-Treasury policy measures came to dominate US economic policy and many developing countries were driven down the neoliberal road, creating social havoc and environmental disasters. Neoliberalism became the new economic orthodoxy, exerting a powerful ideological influence in the media and academia. The whole process has been a form of ?creative destruction?, weakening or even breaking down existing institutions and state powers, social welfare, health care, education systems and culture ? even modes of human interaction, behaviour and thought. In some countries, certainly, there have been ?successes? during the initial stages of neoliberalisation in lifting people out of poverty and in raising living standards for many ? just as past capitalism generally did in the West. However, this has certainly not been the motivating intent of corporations and investors, despite much pious rhetoric about ?solving poverty?. Any localised ?success? has typically been achieved at the expense of people elsewhere, in regions where neoliberal ?development? has not been as advanced. China?s achievements, for example, have been gained to the serious detriment of neighbouring economies. A persistent and deep-rooted characteristic of neoliberalisation has been its strong tendency to worsen social inequality, as we will see later. Social progress achieved during neoliberalisation of previously poor countries has not been sustained. Typically, state intervention has been required to maintain any semblance of a social welfare safety net ? or the net has simply been left to fray in the chill winds of economic ?progress?. At the other end of the social spectrum, neoliberalisation has generated spectacular concentrations of wealth and power that have not been seen since the 1920s. In China and Russia, new and powerful economic elites have been created. Harvey sums up: ?The flows of tribute into the world?s major financial centres have been astonishing. What, however, is even more astonishing is the habit of treating all of this as a mere and in some instances even unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalization. The very idea that this might be – just might be – the fundamental core of what neoliberalization has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power [...].? (Harvey, op. cit., pp. 118-119) The above is but a hint of the stark reality underpinning the ?flourishing? of the global economic system; a reality that is shamefully missing from broadcast headlines and newspaper front pages. The current system of economics, particularly the latest stage of ?turbo-capitalism?, known inoffensively as ?neoliberalism?, is built upon painful boom-and-bust cycles fuelled by corporate greed and maintained by cynical deception of the public. The costs to the planet ? in terms of human suffering and environmental collapse ? are staggering. In Part Two, to follow shortly, we tackle the establishment myth that India and China are the latest ?success? stories of global capitalism. _______ This media alert will shortly be archived here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/080205_creative_destruction_the.php The Media Lens book ?Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media? by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. John Pilger described it as: ?The most important book about journalism I can remember.? For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here: http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate Please visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org We have a lively and informative message board: http://www.medialens.org/board

This scandal makes it clear: for Labour, money trumps principle every time
4 Feb 2008
It is not difficult for Britain?s major political parties to move on from their funding scandals: there?s a new one every week. Every revelation blots out the memory of its predecessors. Peter Hain?s misdemeanours dropped out of the news before we had heard the half of it. I want to drag you back there for a moment, because there?s an aspect to this story which was either missed altogether or mentioned only briefly in most reports. It says far more about the rotten state of British politics than Hain?s failure to declare his donations. The new scandal concerns the identity of one of his donors. There is no suggestion of illegality here: it is a moral issue. But it illustrates, perhaps more clearly than ever before, the abandonment of everything the Labour party once claimed to stand for. It shows us that in any contest between money and principle, the money wins. Hain was not the first beneficiary of Isaac Kaye?s munificence. Mr Kaye, who has made many tens of millions of pounds from his drugs companies, gave the Labour party a few thousand in both 1997 and 1998, and 100,000 in 1999(1). But Hain had two powerful reasons not to put his hand in this man?s pocket. The first is that the company Kaye used to run, Norton Healthcare, is now subject to the biggest prosecution for alleged fraud ever launched in the United Kingdom. Norton is one of five firms accused of dishonestly fixing the price of drugs sold to the National Health Service. The charges relate to the period 1996-2001, when Kaye was chairman of the company. In 2006, Norton paid the Department of Health 13.5m to settle a civil case concerning the same allegations(2,3). Norton Healthcare has been involved in other controversies. In 1998 the Department of Health named it as one of the companies offering ?inducements? to doctors and chemists: Norton gave them mountain bikes and Marks and Spencer vouchers if they stocked its products. Labour?s health minister complained that ?it is completely unacceptable for pharmaceutical companies to encourage health professionals to use their products through free gifts and other sweeteners.?(4) In the same year, the government announced that it was giving a Norton plant in London?s Docklands 990,000 in the form of ?regional selective assistance?, whose purpose is to boost employment. This grant, the government claimed, would promote ?inward investment in the manufacturing sector?. As Private Eye points out, the fund – as its name suggests – is normally used to bring jobs to the regions (which means places other than London)(5). But there was something even odder: the week before the government announced this funding, Norton?s parent company revealed that it would stop manufacturing in the UK, and would shift the jobs in that sector to Ireland(6). But the particular discomfort for Mr Hain concerns Kaye?s activities in his previous place of residence. Until 1985 he lived in South Africa, where he was involved in another ?gifts for influence? scandal. His drugs company, Alumina, gave cars, televisions, chandeliers, swimming pool equipment, tennis courts, shares and trips abroad to people working in the health sector, including academics who sat on the government?s advisory panels, the head of the Medical Research Council and the minister of health(7,8,9). When these gifts were exposed, Kaye explained that they were ?not an inducement, but in appreciation of their having prescribed drugs marketed by the Alumina group.?(10) The official inquiry into the scandal found that he had ?no scruples about applying dishonest or unethical methods.?(11) More importantly as far as Hain is concerned, Isaac Kaye has been accused of providing campaign finance for National Party candidates during the apartheid years. Kaye admits to funding the National MP John Erasmus. An article in the Daily Express, drawing on an award-winning investigation by the South African journalist Martin Welz, alleges that Kaye seconded one of his company?s executives to campaign for another candidate, Gerrit Bornman(12). It also claims he provided cars to help Lapa Munnik, the minister of health and a fierce defender of apartheid, win a by-election. Gerrit Bornman told the Express that Kaye had been a ?substantial? backer of the National Party. I tried to contact Mr Kaye, but I was told he was unavailable(13). In the past he has denied funding the National Party and has maintained that his company?s gifts were not intended to win favours(14). Taking money from Isaac Kaye defaces Peter Hain?s only remaining conviction. When Hain became a Labour cabinet member and was obliged to ditch everything he once believed, he was allowed to keep just one political memento: his admirable record of opposition to the apartheid government. When he moved from South Africa to Britain he became this country?s leading opponent of apartheid. The regime first tried to kill him then tried to fit him up for a bank robbery. He was a brave and remarkable campaigner. But in 2007 he trampled his medals into the mud to get the money he needed. This is the story of our political system, of most of the world?s political systems. You enter politics with the highest ideals and end up grovelling to multi-millionaires. Campaign finance is not the only reason for the corruption of leftwing political parties. But any system without a cap on individual donations encourages the mass abandonment of political programmes. You need to spend much less time and effort and money to secure thousands of pounds from a rich man than to shake it out of the piggybanks of hundreds of new members. Who can blame you if you adjust your programme to please the millionaires? The newspapers say that our system is one of the least corrupt in the world. It?s probably true – but so much the worse for the world. The British Labour Party knows that no enormity would persuade the trade unions to disaffiliate. So it can ignore their demands and concentrate on the needs of the multi-millionaires. In 2006 and 2007, 27% of its money came from individual donations of more than 100,000(15). Aside from the largesse of Lord Sainsbury and Lakshmi Mittal, almost all of this is City money, much of it from men who run private equity companies(16). To what extent this influences Labour?s failure to tax the super-rich, we will never know – which is, of course, the problem. Because the Labour Party (thanks to the endless funding scandals) is always on the brink of bankruptcy, Gordon Brown has promised to do something(17). But, in line with the recommendations by the Phillips Review of party funding, he proposes to cap donations at 50,000. Witness the democratisation of British politics: even the ordinary millionaire can now participate. Why should one person be allowed to give the equivalent of 1388 Labour Party membership fees? Brown?s formula would preserve Labour?s funding link with the trades unions – and the super-rich. I don?t mind how it is done; whether, as both the Phillips review and the Power Inquiry recommend(18,19), the state gives more, or whether the cap is set at 100 and parties must rely on a host of tiny individual gifts. (Who cares if they have less cash with which to bamboozle us?) Just get the big money out of politics. References: 1. Kevin Maguire, 13th April 2002. The drug tycoons at the centre of the controversy. The Guardian. 2. Simon Bowers, 5th April 2006. Norton pays NHS pounds 13.5m over price fixing. The Guardian. 3. Jane Merrick, Ian Drury, 11th January 2008. Hain on the rack over secret donors. The Daily Mail. 4. Michael Gillard, 28th September 2000. Apartheid Supporter Who Is a 100,000 Backer of Labour. The Daily Express. 5. In the Back, 1st October 1999. The Kaye catalogue. Private Eye, no 986. 6. In the Back, 24th December 1999. Take the money and run ? Private Eye, no 992. 7. No author, March 2000. Another South African Makes Good in the UK. Noseweek, South Africa, no 29. 8. Michael Gillard, ibid. 9. Martin Shipton, 12th January 2008. ?It?s inevitable Peter Hain will have to resign?. Western Mail. 10. Michael Gillard, ibid. 11. Quoted in Eye Told You So, April 2002. Private Eye, Issue 1052. 12. Michael Gillard, ibid. 13. I phoned the company with which he is now associated, Trevi Health Ventures, on February 1st and was told that Mr Kaye is ?not available?. When I asked what this meant, they put down the phone. I tried again and the same thing happened. 14. See Michael Gillard, ibid. 15. I calculated this from the Electoral Commission?s Register of donations to political parties, viewed 1st February 2008. The accounts for 2007 are not quite complete. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regdpoliticalpar… 16. Four City donors – Nigel Doughty, Sir Ronald Cohen, Jon Aisbitt and William Bollinger – have given a total of 2.25m over 2006 and 2007. 17. Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor, 6th November 2007. Homes and funds at heart of Queen?s speech, but plans for troops may take centre stage. The Guardian. 18. Sir Hayden Phillips, March 2007. Strengthening Democracy: Fair and Sustainable Funding of Political Parties. http://www.partyfundingreview.gov.uk/files/strengthening_democracy.pdf 19. Isobel White, 14th March 2006. Power to the People: the report of Power, an Independent Inquiry into Britain?s Democracy. http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/notes/snpc-03948.pdf

Britain: Rising Fuel Prices Blight Millions
2 Feb 2008
There are many ways in which poverty affects people?s quality of life. One of these is the ability to keep warm. The recent hike in oil and gas prices has seen a sharp increase in what is termed fuel poverty in the UK. The consumer group Energywatch estimates that about 4.4 million are now affected by fuel poverty, amounting to one in six people in Britain. People are deemed to live in fuel poverty when they need to spend more than 10 percent of their income to heat and light their house. However, this rough definition is only part of a more complex situation that also involves a number of deprivations. These include poor housing stock with bad insulation and inefficient heating systems, rising fuel prices and low incomes. Fuel poverty therefore provides a good indication for the general level of poverty in society. Based on the figures of Ofgem, which regulates electricity and gas markets in the UK, the last time fuel poverty levels were as high was in 1999, a period affected by broad world economic turmoil. Figures then fell until about 2005, but started to rise in the following years. For many, fuel poverty is a question of life and death. The sick, the disabled and older people on low incomes are especially affected. Every year, tens of thousands die because they cannot afford to adequately heat their homes. Some 93 percent of these so-called ?excess? winter deaths occur among those over the age of 65. Last winter, there were an estimated 23,900 such deaths. Fuel poverty cannot be regarded separately from the general rise in poverty. The recent turbulence on the world markets following the US credit crunch crisis is leading to a further increase in attacks on the living conditions of millions, as the major corporations and banks seek to offset their losses onto the backs of the working class. In addition, many small and medium-sized companies are facing severe difficulties, if not being driven to the wall. This will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of workers, increasing poverty in general and fuel poverty in particular. This general trend can be seen in the pricing policies of the six corporations that dominate the energy markets in Britain. The latest rise in fuel poverty is directly linked to a hike in prices by these major energy suppliers. Three have raised their prices significantly this year. British Gas, the UK?s biggest power provider, announced increases in gas and electricity bills of 15 percent. Npower raised its electricity prices by 12.7 percent and gas by 17.2 percent, and EDF Energy put up its electricity tariffs by 7.9 percent and gas bills by 12.9 percent. E.On, Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy are expected to follow soon. These increases will inflate household energy bills by well over 100 a year, pushing the average yearly cost to more than 1,000. It is estimated that each 1 percent increase in energy bills sends 40,000 more households into fuel poverty. At the same time, the energy companies are making massive profits. There are many indications that the recent price hikes are nothing but a shameless attempt by these corporations to line their pockets. They seek to justify the consumer price hikes by pointing to a rise in wholesale costs for oil and gas on the world markets. While the energy companies claim they are simply passing on these extra costs to the customer, at best this is only half the truth. According to consumer groups, the current rises faced by domestic customers are far above the increased wholesale costs faced by these corporations. British energy suppliers are holding the working class to ransom. For example, EDF claimed that ?wholesale gas prices had risen 117 percent since February last year, with electricity up 90 percent over the same time,? whereas Ofgem put these figures at 31 percent for gas and 40 percent for electricity. Research sponsored jointly by UNISON, the public service trade union, and the National Right to Fuel Campaign found that the average household prices charged to customers had increased by 2.3 billion more than the costs of producing and selling the electricity and gas that was supplied. In other European countries, such as Germany and France, price rises have been on a far lower level, even falling in some cases. Consumer groups are demanding the government order a Competition Commission investigation into whether there has been ?tacit collusion? by the power suppliers that dominate the UK market. Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, told BBC News 24 that the entire energy market should be reviewed by the Competition Commission. ?The price rises we?ve seen are not justified,? he said, adding, ?There?ll be more, but sadly the market is not working well and that?s leading to consumers paying much, much more than they need to.? Following a meeting between Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, and Ofgem last week, a spokesman said the chancellor was ?not minded? to call for an inquiry after ?he had been reassured the market was working properly.? This response reflects the contemptuous attitude of the government to the problem of fuel poverty. In 2001, the government announced a target to eradicate fuel poverty for all vulnerable and low-income households by 2010 and all other households by 2016. But in practice, it was adding to the problem by raising VAT (value-added tax) on consumer bills. A research commissioned by the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes?a group of 700 industry bodies concerned with domestic energy efficiency?pointed out that electricity prices surged by 39 percent and gas prices by 61 percent between 2003 and 2006. The eradication of fuel poverty and poverty as a whole is only possible through ending the domination of society by the transnational corporations, including the energy companies. The economy must be organised not for the profit of a few but to meet the needs of all; bringing the utility companies under the democratic control of the working class to guarantee that every household receives the basic necessities of heat and light.

Democracy Now: Our Prerogative
2 Feb 2008
New Labour governments long ago abandoned the early promise of an ?ethical? foreign policy, but it is not forgotten by the public. An ICM opinion poll a year ago found that they believe overwhelmingly in the elements of an ?ethical? foreign policy, and that they want it to be democratic. People were adamant that parliament as a whole ? not the prime minister, his ministers and cronies ? should decide international policies. There was a huge majority against arms sales to countries that violate human rights; another wanted the UK to press hard within the EU for trading practices that are fairer to developing countries. Two thirds wanted Britain to be more independent of the US, even if that meant being critical in public. What?s happened in that year to meet what people want? Not much. Gordon Brown is essentially following the policies of his predecessor. So the UK continues to be actively engaged in the occupation of Iraq, colludes in Bush?s unwavering support for Israel and fails with EU allies to create a new approach to Iran. And while the government refuses to withdraw from Iraq and hold an inquiry, there is no prospect of regaining respect and influence for good in the global South. It is vital that the royal prerogative, which gives Brown and his ministers the power to act independently of parliament, is reformed so that the people?s representatives in parliament can share fully in making foreign policies on war, treaties, development aid and trade, and so begin the process of making Britain?s role in world affairs subject to popular opinion. But MPs are as much responsible for the undemocratic nature of foreign policy as governments. They are rarely prepared to challenge government, do not demand the resources they would need to do so, and fail even to devote to the task the two under-used resources that they possess ? namely, themselves and their time. We have been working at Democratic Audit to analyse parliament?s failure to exert oversight or influence. We found that MPs are too ready to accept that they are incapable of influencing policy on major issues or even keeping the broad sweep of policy under scrutiny. We also found that the idea that they are good at the detail of policy and can have influence at this level is illusory. In the last parliamentary session, the military high command and a growing majority of the public wanted the government to withdraw from Iraq, but still some 90 British troops there and in Afghanistan were killed and about 120 injured. The government agreed the new EU reform treaty while contemptuously refusing to engage in any dialogue with parliament about its objectives or negotiating position. The foreign affairs committee failed to get the government to end its silence over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the light of mounting evidence about the indiscriminate Israeli use of cluster munitions. We had hoped, however, that we would be able to point to ?successes? at a more detailed level. We found just two issues where MPs did make a difference. First, the foreign affairs committee mounted a tenacious campaign to persuade the government to abandon its use of cluster munitions and to reverse its refusal to back an international ban on their use. The committee?s MPs won a partial success, encouraging the government to back the treaty to outlaw their use and end the use by British forces of ?dumb? cluster munitions. However, there are as yet no plans to work to outlaw ?smart? cluster munitions: they remain in service with the UK armed forces, and there is plenty of doubt about their ability to disarm themselves. Second, in the case of Britain?s complicity in the ?extraordinary rendition? by the CIA, MPs failed to make the government ?come clean? on its collusion in the US?s illegal policies. The most that can be said is that they made government ministers uncomfortably aware that they were at least under scrutiny. In both these cases, pressure groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch played a significant part in informing MPs and their committees and keeping up the pressure. Here, at least, people who are concerned to ensure that Britain plays an ethical role in foreign affairs, and does not spread death, injury and misery through its own actions can join in exerting pressure on Gordon Brown and his government.

Flight Fight
1 Feb 2008
It is the best of times and the worst of times to be a climate change activist. The topic is more potent than it has ever been, yet political action on climate change still limps far behind the science, and the science itself fails to keep up with what is actually happening to our climate. Nowhere is this inertia more evident than in the attitude of the government and the public to flying. From international hubs to tiny airfields, airports are expanding across the UK. The government is currently holding a consultation on the expansion of Heathrow, where a proposed third runway could see the number of planes rise from 473,000 to more than 720,000 a year. Almost every major hub is pressing for more flights, extra runways and new terminals, while, at the other end of the scale, even tiny airfields like Lydd in the Kent marshes have their sights set on growth. But equally remarkable is the scale and variety of protest against these airport expansions. Virtually every project is being opposed, by campaigns both locally and nationally. ?Climate change and noise are the two factors driving the campaigners. What initially gets residents campaigning is the noise, the sheer number of planes going overhead. But for most of the large environmental groups climate change is the key factor,? says John Stewart, chair of the national umbrella body Airport Watch. ?Local and national are brought together. Government can?t be serious about climate change and continue with an aggressive programme of airport expansion.? Campaigns have sprung up against a background of perceived failure in government climate policy towards aviation expansion. In December 2003, the government white paper, The Future of Air Transport gave the go ahead for a massive programme of airport building at Heathrow, Stansted, Newcastle, Bristol and many other sites to facilitate the growth of what it sees as an economically crucial industry. In this rush to expand, the looming issue of climate change has been virtually ignored, as have the persistent local complaints about aircraft noise and the destruction of countryside. Airport expansion campaigners say that the current 6-7 per cent share of UK greenhouse gas emissions caused by flying will grow rapidly in the coming decades. According to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, even if the aviation industry grew at only half the rate it did in 2004, by 2050 the industry would consume between half and all of the UK carbon budget necessary to prevent ?dangerous? climate change. And because the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released at such a high altitude, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that the climate changing effect of flying is around two to four times greater than if the carbon dioxide produced were emitted on the ground. Far from doing their bit to avoid climate change, airports and airlines are being allowed to trample over the efforts of the rest of society. Coming together Airport Watch, founded in 2000, reflects the scope of opposition arranged against airport expansion. It loosely links together major international environmental bodies, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, with conservation groups like the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the National Trust. Also joining the movement have been wildlife organisations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, local anti-noise campaigns, the World Development Movement and more radical direct action groups like Plane Stupid and Rising Tide, to name a few. Co-operation between groups with very different initial concerns has in many places led to major success, not least because by working together groups can neutralise the most regular criticisms levelled at them. Noise campaigners who have also taken on board messages about the melting ice caps are harder to dismiss as ?nimbys?, whereas a green group allied to the local parish council is better placed to resist ?tree-hugging? stereotypes. In August 2007, the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow attracted international attention, helped by the Independent newspaper who revealed that BAA were seeking an injunction to not only keep groups like Plane Stupid away from the airport and large parts of the London transport network, but also to restrict members of the National Trust, the RSPB and the Woodland Trust because of their affiliation to Airport Watch. By building such a wide coalition against Heathrow, it has become harder for the airports to portray opposition as a radical fringe. Not only are different groups uniting at an organisational level, but residents? campaigns are being increasingly influenced by the tactics of the direct action environmental groups. ?Local residents have politely and obediently responded to planning applications, written to their councillors or MP, written to government ministers ? and all the other polite middle class things to do … and been fobbed off time and time again,? says Sarah Clayton of Airport Watch. ?They are becoming frustrated, and increasingly realise that some form of direct action is the only way to actually get the powers-that-be to sit up and take notice. Middle England ladies in pearls and twin sets are becoming, cautiously, quite interested in direct action out of desperation and despair at the conventional democratic process. Climate Camp was a remarkable success in many ways.? Divide and rule Yet there still remains a split between the concerns of residents and those of the environmental groups, and this can allow airports to divide and rule campaigns against them. In 2006, the Duchy of Lancaster proposed a 3million plan to expand the capacity of Tatenhill, a former second world war airfield near Burton-on-Trent, to accommodate 20,000 more flights a year on top of the current 30,000. During a planning inquiry in November last year into the development, the local opposition ? Tatenhill Action Group ? dropped its challenge after the Duchy agreed to noise restrictions, limited operating hours and restrictions on jets. Friends of the Earth was left alone, still opposing the expansion on climate change grounds. ?The place where you have the most success is where all parties play all cards regarding local and national issues,? explains Chris Crean, the Midlands regional campaigner for Friends of the Earth, who continues to fight Tatenhill?s expansion, ?and equally where they are aware of how the application fits into planning policies, be they local, regional, or national.? Integration of the climate change argument is increasingly important in any campaign, as it continues to move up the political agenda. Pat Mathewson, of Airport Concern Exeter, argues that, ?In Exeter there was a consensus not to use the climate change argument; to keep it local; to focus on noise; to sound as if we were not against the airport as such; asking for sympathy for those under the flight path and so on. I think in retrospect this was a mistake. I did, personally, use climate change in my personal arguments to the local councillors.? The potential of the anti-expansion coalitions is plain to see. Combining a wider green agenda with stiff local defiance, many campaigners see parallels with the opposition to road building schemes in the 1990s. Yet without clear expansion flashpoints, environmental groups may lose their newfound allies and be unable to carry the momentum against airports into the wider movement against climate change. Just as the composition of anti-expansion groups is complex and changing, so are their methods. Direct action has proved to be the most successful in attracting media attention, with the Camp for Climate Action last August making headlines and the blockade of a Manchester airport security check-in by Plane Stupid and Manchester Climate Action in October also receiving widespread media attention. Direct action pros and cons ?Other forms of protest simply don?t work anymore,? claims Robbie Gillett, an activist for Plane Stupid. ?Marching from A to B and passively listening to a speaker at a rally will not be enough to stop climate change. At best these can help people get involved. But at worst, they can leave people feeling disempowered.? ?For example, the action last October at Manchester airport involving seven people locking on and blockading the domestic flight departure lounge got more media attention than the march in December with 5,000 people in London.? Yet the media coverage of direct action is very often tinged with alarmism in the shadow of 9/11, with the Sun, for example, running headlines such as ?Activists plot Heathrow hell? when the climate campers assembled last summer. Some activists, although by no means a majority, have warned that high-profile national direct action risks scaring off more ?moderate? support for local campaigns. ?The legal controversy around the [climate] camp was useful, but generally direct action is a distraction and can damage our support amongst more moderate people,? says Jeremy Birch of Bristol Friends of the Earth, which is currently campaigning to prevent a doubling of passengers at Bristol International Airport. However, as long as public opinion increasingly demands action on climate change, and aviation protesters can demonstrate they have a broad base of support, then direct action will become an increasingly powerful tool for those who feel powerless using traditional channels of protest. It looks set to overtake marching and petitioning as a tactic to gain the media?s attention over aviation expansion, especially as a small group of direct activists are far better able to deliver an ?on message? argument to the press. Gary Dwyer, part of the media team for the Camp for Climate Action, says: ?Imagine if those 1,500 people at the camp had signed a card to their MP and tell me what you think would?ve happened.? ?Direct action opens doors, it ramps up pressure, it beckons the spotlight over. But it?s more than just aggressive lobbying; it empowers those who take part. They go away enthused and fired up, feeling like they can be heard and that they do have the right to directly affect things that affect them. Once tasted, you keep going back for more.? The resort to direct action is partly a result of the lack of success campaigners have had convincing local politicians to stand up to central government policy. But there have been a few victories. In November 2006, Uttlesford district council rejected a planning application from BAA to allow a big increase in flights at Stansted, after it was bombarded with objections from local communities. Although a new runway is still a possibility, Ruth Kelly has indicated that the expansion of Heathrow, not Stansted, will be the government?s priority, and is now the focus of the battle against airport growth in the south east. A public consultation into the building of a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow is due to be completed on 27 February, but campaigners say that often ?consultations? are far more ornamental than real. ?Feedback? is sprinkled over essentially unchanged plans. More likely to trip up the government are EU pollution limits, due to come into force in 2010, which John Stewart says are already exceeded in parts of London under flight paths. The idea touted by the government that better plane and car cleanliness will by 2020 have reduced pollution to European standards, despite a new runway, is utterly implausible, he says. The influence of the state-backed expansion juggernaut means that local politicians are often no more willing to listen to the arguments against airport growth than the government. Campaigners from Airport Concern Exeter claimed that certain councillors had conflicts of interest that ?bordered on corruption?, citing that the leader of East Devon district council, who will receive Exeter airport?s planning application, councillor Sara Randall Johnson, is also the head of PR for budget airline Flybe. Changing government policy Even if they are willing to oppose expansion plans, the difficulty that local authorities face is that after a planning or public inquiry into an airport?s application for expansion, the final decision is made by one or more departments of central government. Power over airport expansion is centralised, and therefore the ultimate aim of most major groups remains policy change from the government. ?The number one aim is to get government policy to change,? concludes Sarah Clayton. ?Government is the first target, as well as the EU. Airlines just do what they are allowed to, to make money. Government can control the future projections, future expansion or not, and so on. So a primary aim is getting the aviation white paper modified, so it is in line with UK climate change policy. Ministers at the Department of Transport are dimly aware that there is a massive inconsistency in policy, and at some stage something has to give.? There was minimal change to the aviation white paper when it was reviewed in 2006, and proposals to include aviation into the European Union?s emissions trading scheme by 2011 have been repeatedly attacked as inadequate by Friends of the Earth Europe. Nonetheless, the lack of any current international framework on aviation has not prevented governments from taking unilateral action on domestic flights. As part of France?s recent ?grenelle de l?environnement?, President Sarkozy announced taxes on domestic flights where the same route has a TGV connection, for example from Paris to Lyon or Paris to Bordeaux. Governments may be unwilling to act to stem the explosion in aviation and airport building, but ultimately only they hold the power to do so. Campaigners will have most success if they manage to combine broad-based, localised opposition with the desperate need for urgent policy changes to avert climate change via creative and inclusive direct action initiatives. More information: www.airportwatch.org.uk www.stopheathrowexpansion.com 1

London’s OutRage! Leader Blocks Pakistani Strongman’s Limo
1 Feb 2008
Britain’s best-known gay activist, Peter Tatchell, confronted Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf this past weekend when the dictator arrived in London on the last leg of his European tour, blocking the general’s car with his body repeatedly to protest "the suppression of democracy and human rights" by the military strongman. Tatchell, who this year marks the 40th anniversary of his start as an activist, undertook the protest against Musharraf even though he is still suffering the physical after-effects of the severe beating he received last year in Moscow when a crowd of fascist thugs, egged on by the police, violently broke up an attempted Gay Pride demonstration in front of Moscow’s City Hall that Tatchell had gone to Russia to support (see this reporter’s May 31-Jun. 5, 2007 article, "The Agony of Moscow Pride"). "I’ve still got cognition and physical cordination problems, loss of vision, and memory holes" as a result of the Moscow beating, Tatchell, head of the militant UK queer rights group OutRage!, told Gay City News by telephone from London. He added, "First my doctors told me I’d be alright in a month, then they said three months, and now they’re telling me these problems may never go away." The ambush of Musharraf happened outside London’s Hilton Hotel Park Lane on January 25, as the Pakistani president’s motorcade drew close to the hotel, where he was scheduled to speak. "To avert police attention, I stood inconspicuously at a bus stop reading a newspaper, waiting for Musharraf’s motorcade to arrive," said Tatchell. "When the police motorcycle escorts drew level, I ran out into Park Lane and straight in front of the president’s car. It screeched to a halt. I unfurled a placard protesting against Musharraf’s massacre of civilians in occupied Baluchistan. The placard read: ‘Stop Pakistan Massacre of Baluch people.’" Tatchell got his message across to the Pakistani dictator. "Musharraf could clearly see the placard, and he did not look pleased," he said. "His driver tried to back up and drive around me, but I ran in front of the limousine again, forcing it to halt once more. I could see Musharraf shouting something at his driver. Perhaps he feared that I was an assassin or a suicide bomber." Then, said Tatchell, "The limo reversed again and tried to swerve past me. I blocked it for the third time. Musharraf and his colleagues looked very agitated. Eventually, police motorcycle escorts ran over and dragged me away from the bonnet of Musharraf’s vehicle." Pulled across the road by police, Tatchell was pinned against a railing. He was soon released by police, allowing him to join the main anti-Musharraf demonstration outside the Hilton, organized by lawyers protesting the arrest of their colleagues and of Supreme Court judges in Pakistan. This is not the first time Tatchell has personally confronted a dictator. He became a national hero in Britain when, on October 30, 1999, he and three other OutRage! activists ambushed Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe’s car in a London street and attempted to perform a citizen’s arrest of him on charges of crimes in violation of United Nations human rights conventions. Tatchell opened the car door, seized Mugabe, and then summoned police. Mugabe was not taken into custody; instead all four OutRage! activists were arrested and Tatchell was charged with assault. Mugabe is a ruthless tyrant who has used violence and imprisonment against political opponents. He is also a notorious anti-gay demagogue — he has said that gays and lesbians "are worse than pigs and dogs" — who criminalized homosexuality and authorized his political gangs to engage in street lynchings of gay Zimbabweans. Tatchell tried again twice to perform a citizen’s arrest on Mugabe — first in Belgium in 2001, when he was beaten unconscious by the dictator’s bodyguards, causing him serious permanent damage to one eye; and then again in Paris in 2003, when Tatchell was arrested by the French police. As The Independent, a British daily, noted in a recent profile of Tatchell, he "was once perhaps the most execrated man in British politics. He was — to restrict ourselves to quotations from just one newspaper, the Daily Mail — ‘loony,’ ‘scabrous,’ ‘repellent,’ ‘repulsive,’ ‘sour,’ ‘humourless,’ ‘obnoxious,’ and a ‘homosexual terrorist.’" These epithets came after Tatchell led protests that disrupted church services led by the homophobic archbishop of Canterbury and threatened to out both Church of England bishops and conservative homosexual members of Parliament who voted against gay rights legislation. But since his attempts to arrest Mugabe, "Tatchell has variously been called ‘a national hero’ (the Sunday Times), ‘a civil rights campaigner we can all applaud’ (Sunday Telegraph), and ‘Heroic… an example to us all’ (Daily Mail)," The Independent noted. As Tatchell marked his fourth decade of militant human rights activism with the Musharraf protest, Gay City News asked prominent British gays to assess his contribution. "Sometimes infuriating, often imbued with a great theatrically, Peter’s work has helped keep moving forward the cause of gay emancipation enormously," according to Joe Galliano, editor of Gay Times, the glossy monthly magazine that is the largest British gay publication. Galliano added, "Peter is one of the very few campaigners to make the intellectual leap that gay rights can only properly come through better respect of human rights for all." Brian Whitaker, author of "Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East" and a senior editor at The Guardian, a British daily that regularly publishes Tatchell’s commentaries on gay and human rights, told Gay City News, "Peter is a sort of one-man Great British Institution, even though he came from Australia — if he didn’t exist he’d have to be invented." Whitaker went on to say, "I don’t always agree with him and sometimes he goes a bit over the top, but he’s courageous and absolutely sincere in what he does and many people admire him for that. One thing troubles me a bit — he’s such an effective campaigner that other gay people tend to let him get on with it and don’t become involved in activism themselves. They can send ten quid to OutRage!, then carry on partying with a clear conscience." The son of a lathe worker, Tatchell began his political activity when, as a Melbourne, Australia high school student in 1967, he organized a campaign on behalf of the indigenous Aboriginal population, who faced severe discrimination at the time. Although his fellow students recognized that he was gay, he proved popular with them. Tatchell was elected student body president, or "head boy." The next year, Tatchell joined the movement against Australia’s involvement as a US ally in Viet Nam, and led campaigns urging other young men to refuse to be drafted. In August 1971 he emigrated to Britain to escape conscription. Five days after arriving in London, he attended a meeting of the recently organized Gay Liberation Front, and within a month he began organizing its campaigns. In 1987, he was a founder of the UK AIDS Vigil pressure group and two years later started the London chapter of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or ACT UP. In May 1990, he attended the founding meeting of OutRage!, formed in response to police inaction after the queer-bashing murder of actor Michael Boothe. Gay journalists and writers Simon Watney, Keith Alcorn, and Chris Woods initiated the group to wage a provocative campaign of direct action and civil disobedience for gay rights. Tatchell in time became OutRage!‘s leader. "Peter Tatchell has been a huge and towering figure in British gay politics for the last quarter of a century," Neil McKenna, an openly gay journalist and historian, told Gay City News from London. McKenna, who authored the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed 2005 revisionist biography, "The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde," which detailed the gay playwright’s little-known work as a pioneer activist for homosexual emancipation, said, "Peter has worked selflessly to bring about change, making many memorable protests. He has lived on the poverty line for three decades and has to rely on a network of support to feed himself and clothe himself. He is unique, extraordinary, principled, dedicated, and should be classified as a living national treasure, warts and all. "My first encounter with him was when I was a cub reporter attending a Church of England General Synod which was debating the rights and wrongs of homosexuality," McKenna recalled. "Peter stood up in the public gallery circling the Synod and proceeded to denounce them. I wrote at the time that he stood up ‘like an Old Testament prophet’ and that image has stayed with me over the years. Peter Tatchell says things and does things which lots of people don’t always want to hear." Tatchell has also been a pioneer in catalyzing international solidarity for oppressed LGBT people outside the West. In 1973, Tatchell was arrested in East Germany when he went there to help local activists stage what he says was the first public gay protest in a Communist country. In the 1980s, he traveled to Thailand to support the first wave of gay and AIDS activists in that country, and to El Salvador to highlight the violent attacks on that country’s gays and lesbians amidst a bloody civil war, during which the US gave aid to the right-wing patrons of the authoritarian regime’s death squads. He’s traveled to Malawi to protest the semi-slave labor of children on British-owned tea estates; to New Guinea to protest the Indonesian massacre of indigenous peoples in West Papua; to Latvia for banned 2006 Gay Pride observances that were violently attacked by religious extremists (see this reporter’s Jul. 27-Aug. 1, 2006 article "The Siege of Riga," a link to which appears in the web version of this article); and to Memphis to confront boxer Mike Tyson after the pugilist gay-baited heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis. "I am often asked a question on who is my hero, whom I want to be like and I can answer for sure that Peter Tatchell is my hero, he is my ideal in fighting for LGBT rights in the world," said Nicolai Alexeyev, the courageous young Russian lawyer who has been the principal organizer of Moscow Pride. And Alexeyev went on to say, "When I just started my activist work in Russia in 2005, it was Peter who was an inspiration to me. I tried to build our work here in Russia on the principles of his work in the UK. I think he is one of the most outstanding human rights and LGBT activits in the contemporary world, who is courageous and smart at the same time. I am extremely thankful to destiny that I got acquainted with Peter. He is a person of very high standing who is totally devoted to human rights and equality for everyone." One of Tatchell’s most attention-getting protests came at the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, where he held up a sign that read, "Charles Can Marry Twice, Gays Can’t Marry Once!" Tatchell’s flair for attracting media attention to his causes, which draws charges he’s a publicity hound, includes writing a constant stream of articles for both the mainstream and gay press. In 2002 he launched the Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund to support his campaigning work around the world. "Peter is a world leader when it comes to LGBT human rights activism," UK Gay News editor Andy Harley told Gay City News, adding that "last year when he was seriously assaulted during Moscow Gay Pride, the first group who condemned the attack, and expressed support and good wishes for a speedy recovery, were exiled Ahwazi Arabs, a persecuted ethnic minority in Iran. They described Peter Tatchell as ‘an icon in human rights.’ This speaks volumes, coming from a Muslim group that has been supported by Peter." French black civil rights leader, scholar, and author Louis-Georges Tin, who is also the founder of the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) — celebrated in over 50 countries last year — told Gay City News from Paris, "Peter Tatchell invented a new mode for gay activism, flamboyant and pragmatic at the same time, offensive and full of humor. As the apostle of this new genre of protests, he has sacrificed nearly everything — his private life, his material comfort, his physical security — to defend human rights in England and the entire world. When will he be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize he deserves?" Ex-pat British author Christopher Hitchens, a Vanity Fair columnist, told this reporter, "Peter Tatchell has made an exemplary effort, in his life and in his writing, to give expression to a consistent and international ethic of human rights and human dignity." And Sir Elton John recently said of Tatchell, "He’s incredibly brave… doing good work in a world where most people are too timid. He keeps sticking at it." Peter, we salute you!    

Are We Surprised?
1 Feb 2008
Grammar Schools and faith schools increase social exclusion. Official, according to research by Hallam University and the National Centre for Social Research, and accepted by the government. The question wasn’t worth asking – though the answer is certainly worth having. It vindicates what we always knew: social exclusion is the raison d’etre of grammar schools and faith schools. Parents choose either because they don’t want their children learning and living in the same milieux as poor children in general, black boys and white boys in particular. Grammar schools and faith schools provide a de-contamination zone for the children of parents who are buying their children’s escape from their neighbours. These parents are the beneficiaries of the cosmopolitanism that is re-invigorating British cities and the inequalities that are simultaneously endangering them. These are the parents whose fretful contemplation of the school habitat found an echo first in Thatcherism’s contempt for equality and then in New Labour’s unseemly legitimisation of the class contempt that lay behind it. Blairism compounded the felony by endorsing faith schools as the best way to fix kids. If the Christian schools’ ambition and discipline attracted secular parents and the endorsement of the political elite, non-Christian faiths quite reasonably demanded equal access to state support. The effect has been to accelerate the elitism that has sabotaged the comprehensive system, and to stall the secularism that has separated popular culture from establishment Anglicanism. All of this is so very English. More universal, however, is the phenomena of schools as the site of white boys’ failure. The latest Rowntree research confirms that white boys constitute a bloc of resistance to the joys of school. The Daily Telegraph mobilises their recidivism for another agenda: its comprehensive, co-operation and course work wot done it! Boys thrive on structure and competition. The Telegraph might have added that boys are inherently undisciplined and a bit of beating and buggery never did them any harm. In the pre-comprehensive era the “failure” of white boys was the intended purpose of selection: poor white boys were “educated” for their fate of horny-handed toil. In the post-selection era their failure was only exposed by the effect of feminism on schooling – the abolition in the much-maligned 1970s of the bans and proscriptions on girls’ entry into the skills and professions reserved for boys. Girls’ relative failure was represented as the evolutionary failure of their gender. Boys’ failure is now being hailed as a function of class. But boys doing badly is often another way of boys behaving badly, and doing badly is, for thousands of boys, only a way of doing masculinity. That’s their contribution to the tragedy of exclusion and elitism that is polarising access to education.

Alastair Campbell: making a mockery of the memory of Hugh Cudlipp
31 Jan 2008
After a cynical betrayal of the idealism which every journalist should strive for, Alastair Campbell finally tripped himself up in the mire of his own double-speak. His utter contempt for the journalists of tomorrow and the challenges they face was underlined by his choice of title for the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture, “The media: a case of growth in scale, alas, not in stature”. (28.1.2008). At the heart of Campbell?s reheated diatribe was his assertion that he and Tony Blair went the extra mile to improve the reporting of politics but it was rebuffed by the “relentless negativity” of political journalists who “culturally and collectively present an utterly one side view of political debate”. Instead of trying to inspire the numerous media students in the audience at the London College of Communication (there were so many they filled an overfill hall), Campbell traduced the profession which gave him his own career break: “I don?t think there are many journalists left who take their responsibilities seriously?My experience on the political side of the fence has meant that any idealism I had for journalism has been extinguished to zero”. After his lecture, Campbell tossed aside a few ineffectual questions but when asked to justify the leaking of ministerial announcements in order to gain advance publicity, he did momentarily let his guard down. Yes, he admitted, as Tony Blair?s press secretary, he had continued to brief journalists once the official lobby briefings had finished but his aim had been to have an input into any speculation. “I think a legitimate communications function (for New Labour) was to try to create a framework in which a major speech or political development would land”. Here we got the briefest acknowledgement of Campbell?s modus operandi and, as so often in the past, he skated over what he meant by the “techniques” which he said the Blair government had developed, first in opposition and then in office in order to secure favourable headlines. Yet it was these self same “techniques” which accelerated the decline in the standards of news reporting, which Campbell blames on journalists while conveniently disregarding his own culpability. Against each of the ills which Campbell identified, there was an alternative explanation and instead of journalists being the perpetual target, an accusing finger could have been pointed just as firmly at the control freakery of the Downing Street press office. Take for example his condemnation of “every exclusive which is not an exclusive”. It was Campbell?s practice of providing exclusive stories and access to favoured journalists which did so much to heighten the amount of political speculation. Correspondents who had been left out of the loop retaliated with speculative and often negative stories, so desperate were they to challenge New Labour?s attempts at agenda setting. When castigating broadcasters for failing to differentiate between speed and accuracy, Campbell omitted to mention that most of the stories which Downing Street supplied on an exclusive and off-the-record basis were supplied to newspapers rather than to television or radio and in such circumstances it was hardly surprising that news bulletins found it difficult to catch up. Likewise with his assertion that it was “a devotion to impact which is unravelling standards” along with a failure to make greater use of the initiatives which the government had taken by instituting on-the-record lobby briefings and Blair?s televised news conferences. But again Campbell told only half the story. While defending the need for New Labour?s “media handling plans” he did not own up to the fact that when trailing government decisions in advance of ministerial announcements it was his policy to help only selected news outlets and other news organisations would be purposely excluded, again an approach that was hardly like to drive up editorial standards. Here was Campbell, himself a winner of the Hugh Cudlipp award for student journalists, refusing to offer even a hint of an apology for his abject failure to at least defend the best practices of journalism by ensuring equal access for all journalists. Perhaps it was no surprise that among his many boasts he did not repeat the line from his diaries, The Blair Years, about not minding if journalists were fearful of falling out his favour because he “wanted to undermine them, divide and rule”. Lady Cudlipp congratulated Campbell on what she believed was the greatest speech which had ever been delivered as a Cudlipp lecture but I could not help thinking that the former editor of the Daily Herald and News Chronicle columnist would have turned in his grave at the thought that a former prize winner had been allowed to make a mockery of journalistic ideals.

A proliferation of detainment camps for foreigners
31 Jan 2008
Clair Rodier is president of the Migreurop Network and a member of the commission of enquiry into Europe’s detention centres, from Malta to Lampedusa. E.R. What is your opinion of European immigration policy? Claire Rodier: Since the end of the 1990s, two of the most scandalous consequences of the European Union’s immigration policy have been the increasing number of tragedies on Europe’s doorstep, where thousands of people have been dying, by drowning, while crossing the desert, or gunned down by the border police, as was the case in Morocco in 2005, when the Ceuta and Melilla events occurred – and the administrative confinement of immigrants. Whereas nothing justifies Europe’s decision to selectively close its borders and to privilege “useful” immigration – i.e. immigration that answers to the labour needs of member states – to the detriment, notably, of family reunification, although that is a factor for successful integration – over the past ten years the greatest effort has been made in realising the repressive side of this policy. Thus, since the year 2000, and in the name of combating illegal immigration, a programme of negotiating agreements for re-entry has been pursued by the EU and its neighbours. The goal is to be able to send undocumented immigrants who are arrested in the tenty-seven EU member states back to neighbouring countries without any administrative formalities. Since 2004, “European community charter flights” have been organized to reduce the cost of deportations. The planned EU directive frames the modalities for deporting illegal immigrants in the form of minimum standards. In EU bureaucratic language, “minimum standards” means downgrading to the lowest common denominator. E.R. For example? Claire Rodier: No provision is made for people who are traditionally considered to be “vulnerable” – pregnant women, minors with their parents, the victims of torture or of the slave trade – or for foreigners who have family members in Europe. The spouse of a French national who is expelled from the country (something that happens every day) will have to wait five years to see his or her family in France again! Confinement for up to 18 months can be ordered from the moment that a foreigner who is the object of a deportation measure is considered to be likely to take flight or to be a threat to public safety. No definition of what is meant by a “threat to public safety” is provided to limit its use. As for “likely to take flight,” it is probable that it will always be considered to exist. Consequently, a proliferation of detainment camps for foreigners is what we can expect in Europe. E.R. In reality, beyond this directive, it’s the whole concept of immigration that you reject, isn’t it? Claire Rodier: Since the Migreurop Network was set up in 2002, we have endeavoured to condemn both national and European concepts that use the detention and confinement to house arrest of foreigners and asylum-seekers as a key tool for so-called policies to control immigrant flow in the European Union. The detention of immigrants does not so much serve the proclaimed concern to make expulsion procedures more efficient as it serves to send a message to public opinion. With its similarity to prison, the camp for foreigners promotes the association that foreigners = criminals, which, in turn, serves notably to justify the criminalisation of illegal residence and the toughening of laws relating to foreigners. The “strong message” being sent to potential immigrants is a reminder of how precarious their situation is. Based on the examples noted in immigrant camps in Malta, Italy, and Spain … it seems impossible to guarantee respect for fundamental rights, beginning with the right to move freely, in these places of detention. All of the situations that we have identified are characterised by more or less systematic, and more or less inevitable, violations of fundamental rights, when these violations do not result from an express policy. These fundamental rights include the right to asylum, the right to respect for privacy and for family life, the right not to be subjected to degrading or inhuman treatment, and also the specific rights owed to minors. The situation in these camps must not become the European standard. This interview was conducted in French for the French daily L’Humanit, and is translated by Gene Zbikowski. L’Humanit also recently carried the following brief comment on the immigration policies of the European Union and its member states, this time written by “A.R.” It was also translated by Gene Zbikowski. The European Union Encourages the Detention of Immigrants. The member states of the European Union have widely varying policies regarding undocumented immigrants. Some detain them systematically while others do not, some limit detention to 32 days, while others have unlimited detention. Last November the humanitarian organization Mdecins du monde visited Malta and published a damning report on the fate of immigrants in the island’s detention centers, where the authorities systematically detain them until their identity is established and their demand for asylum has been examined. Malta represents the extreme among the immigration policies adopted by the different European governments, as it applies a detention policy whose upper limit is 18 months. Most immigrants are detained for practically a year in conditions which the non-governmental organization described as “deplorable.” Mdecins du monde condemned the over-population and lack of privacy, hygiene and activity in the Maltese detention centers. The case of Malta alone should plead in favor of forbidding the confinement of immigrants on the sole grounds of their status, a practice which various associations have condemned as “a policy of managing immigration flow.” Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Spain – all of which are Mediterranean countries – practice a similar policy of systematic confinement in conditions which the non-governmental organizations regularly condemn. In general, the legal period of detention for undocumented immigrants varies from one country to another. It is limited to 32 days in France, 40 in Spain, 60 in Italy, three months in Greece, while there is no maximum limit in Sweden or Great-Britain. “These differences are no reason to support the directive, which will establish detention as a ‘norm’ and will make countries whose maximum period of detention is lower appear to be lenient,” a representative of the European Association for the Defense of Human Rights insisted. As to forbidding entry to a country, a measure which the planned directive also provides for, it already exists in Poland, Germany and Spain. Even more insidiously, the European Union is at the same time encouraging the creation of detention camps outside its borders. Such camps already exist in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Turkey, Moldavia, and the Ukraine.

Man of Straw
29 Jan 2008
If anything epitomises the vacuous posturing which disfigures modern politics, it is successive governments’ policies on criminal justice – or to give it the tabloid treatment, “law’n‘order.” Analysis and reason go straight out the window, in favour of “toughness.” This, however, is the brittle toughness of the school bully. It doesn’t matter how many times the government’s own figures show crime to be falling, it doesn’t matter how many times the people who actually know anything about the issue explain that prison does not prevent crime, as far as both new Labour and the Tories are concerned, there is only one priority – appeasing right-wing media proprietors and their fearful “middle England” constituency. New Labour has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences since it came to power in 1997 and judges have found themselves increasingly restricted on sentencing. As a result, Britain’s prisons are currently groaning under the weight of an incredible 81,000 people. But the capitalist media still screams that Britain’s justice system is “soft” on criminals and prison numbers continue to soar. Such nonsense informed the misnamed Justice Secretary Jack Straw last December, when he announced that the government would deal with the problem of our groaning jails by, er, building more of them. With predictably headline-chasing machismo, he declared that these PFI-financed monstrosities – to cost at least 1.2 billion – would henceforth be known as “Titan” prisons. Gosh, how impressive. But even this misconceived policy appeared to be in doubt yesterday. Straw popped up on BBC radio to talk about a damning report from the chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers, who insisted that a building programme should not supersede reoffending schemes, reform of women’s jails, probation and mental health. “We haven’t got planning permission for these places. We are not definitely going ahead with them,” admitted Mr Straw, just hours before the Prime Minister, with the decisiveness that has marked his tenure, told MPs that they would go ahead – after a “consultation.” This does not inspire confidence in the government’s ability to formulate sensible policy. “Do we really want to go down the Californian route, where the prison budget is greater than the higher education budget?” asks Howard League director Frances Crook and it is a key question for the future shape of government policy. Sensible policymakers would listen to Ms Owers, probation officers and reformers like Ms Crook. They would also try to flesh out Tony Blair’s soundbite on being “tough on the causes of crime” – poverty and despair. But, with all three main parties wedded to the idea of increased private-sector involvement in our public services, the future looks bleak. If it becomes profitable to lock people up, then big business will lobby for even more “tough” sentencing policies and, if this coincides with the neoliberal government’s need for more control over their citizens, then that is what they will be given. It is vital that socialists and trade unionists campaign for a genuine display of toughness from a Labour government – the sort of toughness that can stand up to the likes of the Daily Mail and its billionaire handlers.

Treating people like cattle
29 Jan 2008
The abusive conditions in which live farm animals are transported has rightly provoked immense outrage. But the inhuman conditions in which prisoners are transported around the country merits no outcry at all. Why the double standards? Prisoners, many of them on remand, who later will be found innocent of any crime, are packed into claustrophobic sweatbox prison vans. Victims describe the experience as dehumanising. Some say they felt like sheep in slaughterhouse pens or like slaves on the Atlantic crossing. These prison transit vehicles are run by private companies such as Serco%20and%20GSL. They operate under contract on behalf of the prison service. Inside many of these Home Office-approved human cattle trucks, each prisoner is locked in a tiny coffin-like cubicle measuring about 34in by 24in, with a 10in square clear plastic window. The cubicles have a height of around five feet, which means that most detainees are unable to stand up. They have to remain seated on a small hard metal seat with no seatbelts. Every time the prison van swerves and brakes, they get shaken around. There is no protection from serious injury or death in the event of a traffic accident. Many prisoners spend long hours in these vans as they are transported, sometimes hundreds of miles, between courts and prisons. They usually get no fresh air or exercise, no food or water and no toilet facilities. They are expected to piss and shit in their cubicles. No one expects five-star prison vans, but a minimum standard of basic decency – like toilet facilities, water and food on long journeys – seems a reasonable expectation of a civilised society. Even children and teenagers have been subjected to these depraved Victorian asylum-like conditions. Baroness Anelay of St Johns expressed to the House of Lords “significant concerns that we have about the conditions and treatment of children during transportation from both court to custody and between establishments. The conditions in which the children are transported are often very poor. Young people report spending lengthy periods in what are only, after all, sweatboxes, without access to food and water or regular toilet breaks.” Following an inspection of Onley young offender institution last year, the report of the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, stated: “It is deplorable to find, as we did, that some young people were not only reduced to urinating in the escort vehicle, but also had to clean it out on arrival”. Retired midwife and peace campaigner Olivia Agate told the Guardian how she spent five hours in a prison van: “During the journey, a woman shouted out that she was going to be sick but the staff ignored her … We could hear the poor girl retching but the van carried on. When we got to Durham, the smell was awful.” I think we can all imagine the effect that transportation in these barbaric conditions has on people who are physically ill, traumatised, mentally unstable or claustrophobic – especially the many thousands of people who are innocent victims of wrongful arrests or convictions. Moreover, even if the people in transit are guilty of crimes, this is no excuse for the Home Office and prison service, in our name, to stoop to the level of criminals and degrade their fellow human beings in this way. Peter Simon, a black activist, was arrested following a protest in support families and young people last month. He has firsthand experience of how Serco treats prisoners in transit. This is part of his account of what he alleges happened to him: “The attendant gestured toward the opening of the chamber and mumbled, ‘crouch in’ while directing me to step upwards into the little booth … (He) began battering his shoulder hard against the door of my cubicle from the outside, compressing me further within, ramming again … I was now beginning to feel like a black-skinned slave tight-packed (as of old, albeit in a different variation of the hell) out of some kind of sadistic lust for human degradation and profit … My mouth was drying up even more and a slow panic was beginning to ensue. My chest was getting tighter … my heart rate had risen to just over 95 bpm and getting to 100 and I was floundering … the sickness churned again in my stomach. I suffered a cramp attack in the left leg. But I could not in any way stretch to alleviate the agony, and I found myself groaning out in despair. I called out to the attendant to let him know I was ill. He lifted his head but remained seated. The lack of ventilation (too). I was feeling so light-headed, tight-packed and boxed. I gasped, lost consciousness.” These are symptomatic of the wider abuses of the prison service, which Juliet Lyon, Director the Prison Reform Trust, discussed when I interviewed her for my Talking With Tatchell online TV series. You can watch the interview here. The fact that abuses are endemic in the whole prison system is no excuse to ignore, downplay or accept the abuses in the transportation system. The humiliation and degradation of the prison van system happens with the knowledge of the home secretary Jacqui Smith and the director of the prison service, Phil Wheatley. They are aware of the squalid conditions, yet they continue to license companies like Serco and GSL which perpetrate this abuse. These state-sanctioned human rights abuses are a criminal enterprise. The home secretary, director of prison service and the heads of GSL and Serco should, in my opinion, be prosecuted and put behind bars. It is this kind of government-authorised inhumanity that has driven me and thousands of other people to leave the Labour party we once loved and served. It is now a party that all too often panders to the lynch mob mentality and authorises the brutalisation of other human beings in order to grab a few more tainted law and order votes. Shame on Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith. New Labour. New abuses.

For more and more women, booze offers the only escape
28 Jan 2008
Why do women drink themselves to death? Twice as many do, compared to 15 years ago. They vomit alone in their bathrooms, throwing up their self-disgust. In 1991, 7.2 women aged 35-54 per 100,000 died of alcohol-related diseases; today it is 14.8. Some will die of cirrhosis of the liver, or of the drugs they take when they are drunk. Some will die in alcohol-related accidents and some of despair – they will simply kill themselves. The question is, why are more women becoming alcoholics today? As a recovering alcoholic, I know why I tried to drink myself to death. I was lonely and angry, and I felt worthless. I started drinking when I was 13, a middle-class teenager from the most suburban of suburbs, who came home from school for a quick nip of vodka from an old blue mug. Alcohol was a lover who changed my feelings – I became less angry, and less lonely. Then he swallowed me back, and took everything. By the time that I knew I was an alcoholic, it seemed too late to do anything about it. I washed up in AA at 27, with everything broken. Nobody knows exactly what causes alcoholism. I believe it is genetic, but triggered by trauma. A person born with an inbred disposition to alcoholism may never develop it if they grow up in a healthy and stable environment. All the recovering alcoholics I know say the same thing – they felt different, even as children. They didn’t feel safe. Alcoholism has little to do with alcohol, just as bulimia has nothing to do with food; it is a disease of the soul, a system of self-harming thought, which the alcoholic treats with alcohol. The drinking is merely the final, fatal symptom. And what matters for binge-drinking girls is this – not everyone who drinks heavily will develop alcoholism. But to develop alcoholism you have to drink heavily. You have to put the hours in at the pub. The modern childhood is a kindergarten for alcoholics. All the external criteria are in place to ease the maybe-baby alcoholic into full-blown unto-the-gates-of-hell drunk. Alcohol has never been so cheap. The supermarkets and the happy hours and the clubs can’t stuff it down our throats cheaply enough or fast enough or long enough; some supermarkets sell it at less than cost, to draw the shoppers in. They don’t treat it as a dangerous drug, but as a commodity that is great for business. The more units they sell, the more alcoholics there will be. And the more alcoholics there are, the more units they will sell. Sainsbury’s is now selling cider, the drink of choice for 13-year-olds, for 26 pence a pint. There are wonderful new ways to make young women feel worthless. Sparkling advertisements and whispering editorials encourage them to aspire to an ever-receding fantasy. You can never be beautiful or thin enough for the fashion magazines of 2008. You can never be sexy enough for MTV, or pornography. You can never be famous enough for Heat. The message is clear and simple and lucrative – be someone else. And that is the tiny voice inside every alcoholic’s head. But now it is a shriek from a billboard, and young women respond with bulimia and anorexia and compulsive eating and chronic debt – and booze. If Cinderella were rewritten for the 21st century, the prince would say: “Have your pubic hair waxed off. And starve down to size zero. Perhaps some breast implants? Don’t you feel like a better woman now, Cinders?” Alcoholism is a disease of unreality, and of fantasy. That is why so few recover – you cannot see the gutter to crawl out. The alcoholic lies to herself on a daily basis. And when society lies too – be Britney Spears! Be Posh Spice! You too can be thin and happy! – more will fall. Alcoholism used to be called a “family disease”, in which every family member played a part. The alcoholic was the bad child, the mother or father the caretaker or abuser, the sibling the good child. Now it has become a social disease, and there are “bad children” everywhere. And how do we respond to this burgeoning mental illness in young women? We treat it with a disgust that will send the alcoholic spiralling ever downwards, or as a comedy, which is almost worse. We watch Britney Spears shaving her hair off and running around Los Angeles, half-dressed or strapped to a stretcher, and wait for her to die. We watch Amy Winehouse crawling on the ground towards her front door. We mouth “Isn’t it terrible?” with a terrible smile and what we really think is, What is the end of the story? Will Princess Britney, the most Googled woman on the planet, be buried in a pink coffin with a Disney Channel logo, before the credits roll? Will Amy pay for her talent with her life, and be immortalised in death, Janis Joplin part two? Denial is the best friend of alcoholism – and now we all collude. These women are punching themselves in the face, and dying, not dancing, in the streets. And that’s entertainment. As for what’s really going on inside her – who cares?

Population growth is a threat. But it pales against the greed of the rich
28 Jan 2008
I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief(1). So why, like most environmentalists, won?t I mention the p-word? According to its most vociferous proponents (Paul and Anne Erlich), population is ?our number one environmental problem?(2). But most greens will not discuss it. Is this sensitivity or is it cowardice? Perhaps a bit of both. Population growth has always been politically charged, and always the fault of someone else. Seldom has the complaint been heard that ?people like us are breeding too fast.? For the prosperous clergyman Thomas Malthus, writing in 1798, the problem arose from the fecklessness of the labouring classes(3). Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, eugenicists warned that white people would be outbred. In rich nations in the 1970s the issue was overemphasised, as it is the one environmental problem for which poor nations are largely to blame. But the question still needs to be answered. Is population really our number one environmental problem? The Optimum Population Trust cites some shocking figures, produced by the UN. They show that if the global population keeps growing at current rates, it will reach 134 trillion by 2300(4). This is plainly ridiculous: no one expects it to happen. In 2005, the UN estimated that the world?s population will more or less stabilise in 2200 at 10 billion(5). But a paper published in Nature last week suggests that that there is an 88% chance that global population growth will end during this century(6). In other words, if we accept the UN?s projection, the global population will grow by roughly 50% and then stop. This means it will become 50% harder to stop runaway climate change, 50% harder to feed the world, 50% harder to prevent the overuse of resources. But compare this rate of increase to the rate of economic growth. Many economists predict that, occasional recessions notwithstanding, the global economy will grow by about 3% a year this century. Governments will do all they can to prove them right. A steady growth rate of 3% means a doubling of economic activity every 23 years. By 2100, in other words, global consumption will increase by roughly 1600%. As the equations produced by Professor Roderick Smith of Imperial College have shown, this means that in the 21st Century we will have used 16 times as many economic resources as human beings have consumed since we came down from the trees(7). So economic growth this century could be 32 times as big an environmental issue as population growth. And, if governments, banks and businesses have their way, it never stops. By 2115, the cumulative total rises to 3200%, by 2138 to 6400%. As resources are finite, this is of course impossible, but it is not hard to see that rising economic activity – not human numbers – is the immediate and overwhelming threat. Those who emphasise the dangers of population growth maintain that times have changed: they are not concerned only with population growth in the poor world, but primarily with growth in the rich world, where people consume much more. The Optimum Population Trust (OPT) maintains that the ?global environmental impact of an inhabitant of Bangladesh ? will increase by a factor of 16 if he or she emigrates to the USA?(8). This is surely not quite true, as recent immigrants tend to be poorer than the native population, but the general point stands: population growth in the rich world, largely driven by immigration, is more environmentally damaging than population growth in the poor world. In the US and the UK, their ecological impact has become another stick with which immigrants can be beaten. But growth rates in the US and UK are atypical; even the OPT concedes that by 2050, ?the population of the most developed countries is expected to remain almost unchanged, at 1.2 billion?(9). The population of the EU-25 (the first 25 nations to join the Union) is likely to decline by 7 million(10). This, I accept, is of little consolation to people in the UK, where the government now expects numbers to rise from 61 million to 77 million by 2051(11). Eighty per cent of the growth here, according to the OPT, is the direct or indirect result of immigration (recent arrivals tend to produce more children)(12). Migrationwatch UK claims that immigrants bear much of the responsibility for Britain?s housing crisis. A graph on its website suggests that without them the rate of housebuilding in England between 1997 and 2004 would have exceeded new households by 30-40,000 a year(13). Is this true? According to the Office of National Statistics, average net immigration to the UK between 1997 and 2004 was 153,000(14). Let us (generously) assume that 90% of these people settled in England, and that their household size corresponded to the average for 2004, of 2.3(15). This would mean that new immigrants formed 60,000 households a year. The Barker Review, commissioned by the Treasury, shows that in 2002 (the nearest available year), 138,000 houses were built in England, while over the 10 years to 2000, average household formation was 196,000(16). This rough calculation suggests that Migrationwatch is exaggerating, but that immigration is still an important contributor to housing pressure. But even total population growth in England is responsible for only about 35% of the demand for homes(17). Most of the rest is the result of the diminishing size of households. Surely there is one respect in which the growing human population constitutes the primary threat? The amount of food the world eats bears a direct relationship to the number of mouths. After years of glut, the storerooms are suddenly empty and grain prices are rocketing. How will another three billion be fed? Even here, however, population growth is not the most immediate issue: another sector is expanding much faster. The UN?s Food and Agriculture Organisation expects that global meat production will double by 2050 (growing, in other words, at two and a half times the rate of human numbers)(18). The supply of meat has already tripled since 1980: farm animals now take up 70% of all agricultural land (19) and eat one third of the world?s grain(20). In the rich nations we consume three times as much meat and four times as much milk per capita as the people of the poor world(21). While human population growth is one of the factors that could contribute to a global food deficit, it is not the most urgent. None of this means that we should forget about it. Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it: universal sex education, universal access to contraceptives, better schooling and opportunities for poor women. Stabilising or even reducing the human population would ameliorate almost all environmental impacts. But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich. References: 1. A WFP official, speaking at the World Economic Forum, cited by Gillian Tett and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, 26th January 2008. Food supplies too scarce to meet relief needs. The Financial Times. 2. Paul and Anne Ehrlich, 1990. The Population Explosion. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1990. 3. Thomas Malthus, 1798. Essay on the Principle of Population. 4. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Too many people: Earth?s population problem http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html 5. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2005. World Population Prospects. The 2004 Revision. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf. 6. Wolfgang Lutz, Warren Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov, 20th January 2008. The coming acceleration of global population ageing. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature06516 7. Roderick A Smith, 29th May 2007. Lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering. Carpe Diem: The dangers of risk aversion. See Appendix 1. Reprinted in Civil Engineering Surveyor, October 2007. 8. Optimum Population Trust, 30th May 2006. Mass migration damaging the planet. Press release. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.release30May06.htm 9. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Too many people: Earth?s population problem http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html 10. ibid. 11. BBC Online, 23rd October 2007. Population ?to hit 65m by 2016?. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7057765.stm 12. Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Migration: UK. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migration.uk.html 13. Migrationwatch UK, 13th June 2006. Briefing paper 7.7: The impact of immigration on housing demand. http://migration-watchuk.org/Briefingpapers/housing/7_7_NoLimits.asp 14. ONS, cited by Optimum Population Trust, 2007. Migration: UK. http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.more.migration.uk.html 15. Kate Barker, March 2004. Final report of Delivering stability: securing our future housing needs. Chart 1.3, p16. http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/E/3/barker_review_report_494.pdf 16. Kate Barker, ibid, p16. 17. Population trends for England can be found here: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Expodata/Spreadsheets/D9537.xls. As only some years are given, I took the average growth rate over 1991-2001, divided it by 2.3 and then expressed it as a percentage of total housing demand in 2000. 18. UNFAO, 2006. Livestock?s Long Shadow, pxx. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf 19. ibid, pxxi. 20. ibid, p12. 21. ibid, Table 1.5, p15.

Blair’s Pro Bono Work in Rwanda
27 Jan 2008
With surprisingly little fanfare, globalisation’s golden boy Tony Blair has, (in an act of good faith not in any way, I’m sure, intended to draw some attention away from his much-critised appointment at J P Morgan), offered his ‘advisory services’, free of charge, to the government of Rwanda. Claiming to be impressed by the ?progress? Rwanda has made after years of civil war, Blair is just the latest in a long line of consultants dispatched by both Britain and the international community to offer their expertise in the ?development? of Southern countries. Unfortunately, since the 1980s, ?development? has come to mean one thing, and one thing only: neoliberalism. This primarily encompasses the rolling back of public services and the shrinking of social safety nets, mass privatisations, the ‘freeing’ of trade, and union busting. It inevitably favours western and corporate economic interests, (as it opens markets, creates investment-friendly incentives such as tax breaks and lax environmental and labour legislation, leaves lucrative previously state-owned businesses for sale, and ensures access to cheap labour) and there is one major hitch: it’s not working. Since neoliberal globalisation was put into action, the income gap between the rich and the poor has more than doubled, both between countries and within countries, including our own, and according to the UN, considerably more people are living in absolute poverty. It inevitably hits the poor hardest, with measures such as water privatisation, a favourite of neoliberal enthusiasts, raising rates by up to 80%, leaving many households unable to pay, and being disconnected; the infamous ‘IMF riots’ are products of this system. This due to a program instituted in the name of poverty reduction. Despite mountains of evidence against its effectiveness, and even the World Bank agreeing the ideas need a facelift, neoliberalism, in its various forms, is the only development discourse officially taken seriously. It is the one championed by the World Bank, the IMF and their Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (successors of the notorious Structural Adjustment programs), and the one taken up by most government aid agencies. Alternatives rarely, if ever, get a look in. What’s more, even though the policies being introduced have major effects on people’s lives, and often drastically change the texture of the country, they are not chosen by the people living there ? they are implemented in top-down fashion, often with little or no discussion, in a way not entirely compatible with more ‘traditional’ notions of democracy. Aware that there is much resistance in the developing world to privatisation programs, international aid is often spent on elaborate ‘public relations’ programs, such as music videos and roadshows, designed to ‘educate’ populations about their benefits. The use of ‘experts’ to advise governments on how best to implement these reforms, often a condition of accepting aid packages, plays a huge role in legitimising them, and in ensuring that alternatives are not properly considered. Billions of dollars of public money every year is spent on professional development consultants ? the British Department for International Development spent 2,319,380 in October 2007 alone. They will have been trained (and paid) to promote the neoliberal discourse. Whilst abroad, they are imbued with the power, authority and money of the Bretton Woods institutions. Their presence inevitably sustains the idea that ‘West knows best,’ and confirms the concept of ‘development’ as a technical, one-size-fits-all process, dependent on outside professionals, and with no room for alternative approaches. In this context, and especially in light of his pro-globalisation efforts embodied in the Commission for Africa, Tony Blair’s offer of ‘advice’ to Rwanda should be viewed warily. While arguably well-meaning, the practice he is joining is highly problematic, and the recruitment of such a high-profile consultant will only serve to legitimise it further.

Report Reveals UK Youth Abandoned by Education System
27 Jan 2008
The Bow Group, a Conservative Party think tank, published a report on May 25 entitled Invisible Children. Using the government?s own statistics, albeit selectively, it paints a devastating picture of a whole generation of young people being abandoned by the current educational system. The report states that up to 100,000 children and young people are losing out on an education. It indicts the Labour government for failing some of the poorest and most deprived young people in the country. The benchmark that schools in England and Wales use to measure success is how many pupils pass five GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with grades A to C. In 2006, 59 percent obtained five good GCSEs, 14 percent more than in 1997. The report states that this has been achieved at the expense of less-able students. Almost a quarter (129,700) of all pupils taking GCSEs do not gain any grade above a C. Whilst the number of pupils not gaining GCSEs has declined from 45,000 in 1996-1967 to 29,800 in 2006, this is misleading since many pupils are being kept out of the ?no qualifications? statistics by achieving a single grade. The reports then add to this the number of those who do not turn up for exams, which is estimated at 70,000. A closer look at this phenomenon, it continues, reveals that 43 percent ?of pupils do not reach the expected level in reading, writing and mathematics when they leave primary school. The knock-on effect is that pupils are permanently playing catch-up.? Between Key Stage 2 (age 7-11) and Key Stage 3 (age 11-14), 84,100 pupils make no progress or fall backwards in English?38,100 in math and 145,000 in science. Almost a fifth of 14-year-old boys have the reading age of a seven-year-old. This is in spite of various initiatives and strategies such as the literacy and numeracy hours in both primary and secondary schools, and numerous initiatives spent to combat truancy. The number of unauthorised absences has risen by 189,749 since 1997. These include persistent truants, which make up 60.9 percent of all truancies. A substantial number of those who have ?disappeared? from school are those who have been permanently excluded and who are not accounted for in the alternative education provision of a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). The numbers of those attending PRUs have dramatically increased ?from 3,860 in 1997 to 7,080 in 2006.? Of these, only 56 percent are entered for a GCSE. Britain ranks 37th out of 40 in a league table of major industrial nations of 17-year-olds staying in full-time education. But of particular concern to the Bow group are the numbers of pupils not in education, employment or training (NEET) at 16, which is currently one in six. A large proportion of these engage in crime or use of illegal drugs. The figures produced are indeed an indictment of the Blair government?s education policy. But the Bow Group?s use of them is cynical. Its aim in focusing on the plight of vulnerable young people under Labour is to advance alternative proposals for education and training that will only worsen the situation. The strongest condemnation within the report focuses on the money ?wasted??e.g., on areas such as PRUs (currently 263.3 million)?and the fact that young people are dropping out because they are ?uninspired by what they see as an overly academic curriculum, or a curriculum that does not engage with what they want to do, or the way they want to learn.? The authors of the report claim that the primary aim of the research is the setting up of a national database to track what happens to young people of school age. This has been planned by the current government since 2002. However, their proposals to address the massive underachievement that exists is the implementation of a weeding-out process, through streaming and setting?by ability?(which already takes place at 40 percent of secondary schools) at an earlier age so that those children can be identified for vocational courses and ?hands-on learning.? Current practice allows young people from 14 to opt for a vocational route of which three days are spent in school studying core subjects and two days on placement. The main thrust of the report is ?to raise the status and quality of practical learning in schools.? This is to be achieved not by giving schools more money to build the facilities necessary to carry this out, but by creating in every local authority ?Enterprise Portals? run by small businesses?in return for an exemption on business rates. One would normally expect a strong rebuttal of such a report by the Labour Party. Yet, even as a departing Prime Minister Blair boasts that education is one of the success stories of his administration, no reply has been made. This is because the drive by the Tories for greater selection, channeling those deemed unsuitable for academic courses through setting and streaming and encouraging private investment, are policies Labour is in full agreement with and does not want to publicly reject. The government is currently encouraging all schools to either become privately run academies (run by industrial or Christian organisations), or trusts, or to move to foundation status, which takes the school out of local authority control. Some of these will be able to establish their own admission policies; some will use selection. Labour?s silence on the Bow report also suggests that, as so often in the past, it is already planning to adopt policies initially pioneered by the Tories. This time, what is at stake is the final reestablishment of a two-tier system, similar in all essentials to the old grammar schools and secondary moderns where, from at least the age of 14, academic education would be denied to millions of children.

Our model dictator
27 Jan 2008
In my film Death of a Nation, there is a sequence filmed on board an Australian aircraft flying over the island of Timor. A party is in progress, and two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. “This is an historically unique moment,” says one of them, “that is truly uniquely historical.” This was Gareth Evans, Australia’s then foreign minister. The other man was Ali Alatas, the principal mouthpiece of the Indonesian dictator General Suharto, who died yesterday. The year was 1989, and the two were making a grotesquely symbolic flight to celebrate the signing of a treaty that would allow Australia and the international oil and gas companies to exploit the seabed off East Timor, then illegally and viciously occupied by Suharto. The prize, according to Evans, was “zillions of dollars”. Beneath them lay a land of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides. Filming clandestinely in East Timor, I would walk into the scrub, and there were the crosses. They littered the earth and crowded the eye. In 1993, the foreign affairs committee of Australia’s parliament reported that “at least 200,000” had died under Indonesia’s occupation: almost a third of the population. Yet East Timor’s horror, foretold and nurtured by the US, Britain and Australia, was a sequel. “No single American action in the period after 1945,” wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, “was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre.” He was referring to Suharto’s seizure of power in 1965-6, which caused the violent deaths of up to a million people. To understand the significance of Suharto is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it. Suharto was our model mass murderer – “our” is used here advisedly. “One of our very best and most valuable friends,” Thatcher called him. For three decades the south-east Asian department of the Foreign Office worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suharto’s gestapo, known as Kopassus, who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica “riot control” vehicles. A Foreign Office speciality was smearing witnesses to the bombing of East Timorese villages by British-supplied Hawk aircraft – until Robin Cook was forced to admit it was true. Almost a billion pounds in export credit guarantees financed the sale of the Hawks, paid for by the British taxpayer while the arms industry reaped the profit. Only the Australians were more obsequious. “We know your people love you,” the prime minister Bob Hawke told the dictator to his face. His successor, Paul Keating, regarded the tyrant as a father figure. Paul Kelly, a prominent Murdoch retainer, led a group of major newspaper editors to Jakarta, to fawn before the mass murderer even though they all knew his grisly record. Here lies a clue as to why Suharto, unlike Saddam Hussein, died not on the gallows but surrounded by the finest medical team his secret billions could buy. Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s, describes the terror of Suharto’s takeover in 1965-6 as “the model operation” for the US-backed coup that got rid of Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. “The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders,” he wrote, “[just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965.” The US embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a “zap list” of Indonesian Communist party members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. Roland Challis, BBC south-east Asia correspondent at the time, told me how the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter. “British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust,” he said. “I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time … There was a deal, you see.” The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called “the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia”. In November 1967 the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens, US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suharto’s US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesia’s bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on “a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened”. Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a “model pupil”. Shortly before the death of Alan Clark, who under Thatcher was the minister responsible for supplying Suharto with most of his weapons, I interviewed him, and asked: “Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering?” “No, not in the slightest,” he replied. “It never entered my head.” “I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and are seriously concerned with the way animals are killed.” “Yeah?” “Doesn’t that concern extend to humans?” “Curiously not.”

Don’t Look, Don’t Find
26 Jan 2008
It is a typical news day: another car bomb has gone off, leaving 80 Iraqi civilians dead. Another 136 are injured. More bad news from Iraq. The mainst