Kill King CoalUKWatch.net - 10 Mar 2008Everyone should be concerned that the UK’s energy department wants new coal plants. Gordon Brown must intervene urgently to halt these plans. He must ensure new coal plants are not built on his watch without their carbon captured from the outset. Reserves are hotly debated, but we know that enough oil and gas remain to take global warming close to, if not into, the realm of dangerous climate effects. But coal contains enough carbon to produce a vastly different planet altogether – a more dangerous and desolate planet from the one on which civilisation developed. Our climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic – with detrimental effects on wildlife, the beginning of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland and a progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise. The shifting of climatic zones will lead to the extermination of many animal and plant species, the reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but heavier rains and floods. Stronger storms will be driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms. Coal caused fully half of the fossil fuel increase of carbon dioxide in the air today, and on the long run coal has the potential to be an even greater source of CO2. Due to its dominant role, agreement to phase out coal, except where the CO2 is captured, is 80% of the solution to the global warming crisis. Of course, it is a tall order. Yet it is doable – compare that task with the efforts and sacrifices that went into the second world war. If the west makes a firm commitment to this course, we can begin discussing the problem with developing countries. Given the potential of technology assistance, the growing grasp of the likely effects of climate change, and leverage that global trade gives us, securing the cooperation of developing countries is entirely feasible. Great Britain, the US and Germany have contributed most to fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, on a per-capita basis. This is not an attempt to cast blame. It merely recognises the early industrial development in these countries, and points to our responsibility to lead in finding a solution to global warming. Energy departments, influenced by fossil fuel interests, take it as a God-given fact that we will extract all fossil fuels from the ground and burn them before we move on to other ways of producing usable energy. The public is capable of changing this course dictated by fossil fuel interests, but clear-sighted leadership is needed now if the actions are to be achieved. Can we find a country that will place a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants unless they capture and store the CO2? Unless this happens soon, there is little hope of avoiding the climate tipping points, with all that implies for life on this planet.
Barrier turns village into virtual enclaveElectronic Intifada - 10 Mar 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr rNU’MAN, WEST BANK, 9 March 2008 (IRIN) – “With the Wall’s route like this we can’t go anywhere,” said Yousef al-Darawi, as he drew a map of Israel’s Barrier which blocks Nu’man village off from both East Jerusalem and the West Bank and leaves it a virtual enclave. “All people who want to visit have to be on a list at the checkpoint at the village’s entrance,” he said, including basic service providers. Most of the 170 residents have to enter and exit on foot.
Commemoration and DenialUKWatch.net - 10 Mar 2008In the coming months, the same event will be commemorated by two different groups in starkly contrasting fashions. May 15 sees the 60th anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel. In Britain, the programme of celebrations includes a gala fund-raising dinner at Windsor Castle in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh, a variety show at Wembley Stadium and street parades for Israel in London and Manchester. Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters will be recalling the same event in entirely different tones, and without the benefit of state support or vast sums of money. In meetings, conferences and exhibitions they will seek to remind the world of the Nakba ? catastrophe in Arabic ? that accompanied Israel?s birth in 1948. In 1947 there were 1,293,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews in Palestine. Though Jews made up 32% of the population, the UN partition plan assigned them 55% of the country, including the economically developed citrus growing plains. Israel?s Declaration of Independence was preceded by several months of civil war between Jewish and Palestinian forces, and followed by more months of war between the new state and its Arab neighbours. When the fighting finished in early 1949, the Jewish state had acquired 78% of Palestine. 180,000 Palestinians found themselves a minority within the expanded borders of the Jewish state. 700,000 to 900,000 had been made refugees. In April and May, before the expiry of the British mandate, the cities of Haifa and Jaffa fell to Jewish forces, and more than 100,000 Palestinians fled. To the north, in Galilee, the Haganah – the mainstream Zionist defence force – systematically conquered clusters of villages, emptying them of inhabitants and often levelling them. In June, the Israelis advanced further into territory designated for the Arab state, capturing the towns of Lydda and Ramle where they killed 250 Palestinians and expelled almost all the rest ? 40,000 ? at gunpoint. In 1948, 500 Palestinian towns and villages were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed. More than 70,000 Palestinian houses were demolished. In the Jaffa area, 96% of the villages were totally destroyed. As Jewish forces proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of territories both within and outside the UN-allotted borders of the Jewish state, a British army of 70,000 refused to intervene, despite being charged under the mandate with the protection of the civilian population. At the onset of the conflict, Jews owned 1,159 square kilometers of land (6% of the total). By July 1949, thanks to the Absentee Property laws passed in haste by the new Israeli parliament, they owned more than 20,000 square km. In 1954, more than one third of Israel?s Jewish population lived on absentee property. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property. For many years, Zionists claimed that the Palestinians had left voluntarily at the behest of Arab leaders. That myth has been repeatedly disproved: there?s no evidence of so much as a single broadcast or leaflet telling people to abandon their homes. There is, on the other hand, a great deal of evidence that the Zionists used the war to alter the demographic facts on the ground. On April 6, for example, Ben Gurion told a Zionist meeting: ?We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way?. I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.? The facts of the Nakba are now well documented and beyond serious dispute. Yet Nakba denial remains widespread, and is as vile as denial of any other historic crime. Acknowledgement of the Nakba is resisted because it undermines the moral foundations of the Israeli state. It?s a handicap in the Israelis? global propaganda battle with the Palestinians, and a challenge to their own self-definitions, a truth that simply cannot be assimilated. The Nakba is no mere historical controversy. It?s an unresolved issue. The Palestinian refugee population ? descendants of those driven out in 1948 ? now numbers more than 4 million, one half of whom live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. One million remain stateless, with no form of identification other than a card issued by UNWRA, the United Nations refugee agency. Each year since December 1948, the UN General Assembly has reconfirmed Resolution 194, which enshrines the refugees? right of return. Any peace treaty that leaves these people out would be neither just nor lasting. As if experiencing a Nakba wasn?t enough, the Palestinians are now being threatened with a Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. In a shocking perversion of an historical legacy, the word was used by an Israeli defence minister to describe the punishment that would be meted out to the people of Gaza ? who are there because they were driven there in 1948 – in response to the Qassam rocket attacks. Already, as I write, in the past four days alone, more than 100 Palestinians, including 49 unarmed civilians, among them 25 children, have been killed. Another 250 have been injured. As the furious assault on Gaza continues, Israel?s 60th birthday celebrations look increasingly unpalatable.
Misplaced PrioritiesUKWatch.net - 10 Mar 2008AS Gordon Brown’s “mini-me” Chancellor prepares his budget speech for Wednesday, campaign groups and unions are already issuing their wish-lists, urging Alistair Darling to use his alleged control over the Treasury’s purse strings to deliver social justice and sound investment in Britain’s long-suffering infrastructure. The National Pensioners Convention president is calling for an immediate increase in the state pension, the restoration of the link to earnings and a doubling of the winter fuel allowance – along with Age Concern and Help the Aged. Meanwhile, children’s charity NCH wants to see the “cycle of deprivation” broken with help for poorer families. Britain’s unions have urged Mr Darling to ignore the usual siren-song from the likes of the CBI and pay public servants decent wages while obliging business to shoulder its fair share of taxation. However, the auguries do not look good. On Sunday, we saw the Chancellor again echoing Mr Brown’s desire for a “competitive” rate of corporation tax.
The defence select committee, which has done the number-crunching, called the 52 per cent increase in the cost of Iraq operations to 1.45 billion – and this is after the much-vaunted troop reduction – “surprising,” which merely demonstrates that the art of British understatement is alive and well in Westminster. In Afghanistan, the cost has merely risen by 48 per cent to 1.42 billion – presumably the cost of airlifting out the PR “hero” Prince Harry. MPs voted through the Ministry of Defence’s “spring supplementary estimate” last night, which gave the green light to increase the military budget by these amounts. In doing so, they should pause to consider what better things could have been done. Britain’s workers and pensioners will be anxious to know why the watchwords at home are “competitiveness” and “cost savings,” while it seems that Mr Brown’s original declaration that he would spend “as much as it takes” on Iraq still stands. For such massive sums of cash to be flung into the void without any real hope or expectation that they will improve matters for the Iraqi or Afghan people is little short of obscene from a government that vetoes any progressive policies on the grounds of “affordability.” CND chairwoman Kate Hudson points out that “the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear, with an estimated 655,000 dead in Iraq alone, but the opportunities lost by spending these billions on further destruction rather than on humanitarian reconstruction adds to the long list of tragedies unleashed by Bush’s wars. “The public should be told why billions are being diverted from public services to fighting an unwanted and unnecessary war.”
The Patient StalkersUKWatch.net - 10 Mar 2008This was surely a victory for the people. We have lost, over the past 20 years, all kinds of public services, but next month one is due to expand. After heavy bludgeoning by the government, Britain?s general practitioners have agreed to open their surgeries late into the evening and on Saturday mornings. As Gordon Brown says, the health service is ?too often centred on the needs of the providers rather than those of patients.?(1) Now we will have a service better matched to the pattern of our lives. This, at any rate, is the government?s story, and at first sight it is plausible. The truth, as always, is stranger and more complex. It begins with a bare-faced lie. The government launched its campaign a year ago, with a press release published by the Department of Health. This claimed that a report by the Cabinet Office, published the same day, ?reveals that nine out of ten? people polled ?said they want public services, such as GP surgeries, that are open some evenings and weekends, even if that means they would sometimes be shut during the working week.?(2) This was reported verbatim by the press(3), but it was a complete fabrication. I have read the report(4). It contains no mention of this poll, or anything resembling it. The terms ?surgeries?, ?evening?, ?weekend? and ?working week? do not occur. But on the strength of this fiction, extended opening hours became government policy. It is a bit like the war with Iraq: the decision to go ahead was made before the evidence materialised. Just as the government was publishing its misleading press release, Ipsos Mori was completing the huge poll – of 2.6 million people – that the same department had commissioned. This, surely, would support its fictitious claim. Who would not welcome longer opening hours? To the department?s intense discomfort, Ipsos Mori found that ?the vast majority of patients (84%) say they are satisfied with the hours their GP practice was open during the last six months?(5). Those who must visit GPs most often are the most relaxed about opening hours: only among 18-34 year olds – the healthiest section of the population – does the level of unhappiness rise above 20%(6), and then only by a whisker. But, like the weapons of mass destruction, if the government said the public demand was there, it had to be. On Thursday Gordon Brown insisted that ?people want weekend opening; people want to be able to see their GP in the evenings.?(7) Yes, some people do, but not very many. The Confederation of British Industry was also unhappy with the results. It commissioned another survey, again from Ipsos Mori. This received responses from just 1,014 people – one 2,500th of the department?s sample size. It asked a slightly different question: ?how easy or difficult was it to get an appointment at a time that was convenient to you??. Thirty-one percent said they had found it ?fairly or very difficult?(8). The CBI issued a report claiming that ?a commonly heard complaint is that GP practices are not open at weekends, early in the morning or in the evening ? GP services are not responding to clear signals for change from patients?(9). But it produced no evidence: the survey didn?t ask about opening times. There are plenty of reasons why patients might have found it difficult to get a convenient appointment. But even if the government is using dodgy figures and has misjudged popular support, what?s wrong with longer opening hours? Strange to relate, quite a lot. In some places, where there are large numbers of commuters who travel far to work, it makes sense. But Gordon Brown wants to impose it on surgeries everywhere. This means, in effect, transferring resources from children, the old and the very sick to working people, who need the services least. GPs will have to work shifts, which undermines one of the most important foundations of the NHS: the continuity of care. It is not clear that longer opening times will in reality be much more convenient for working patients: the appointment clerks, specialist nurses, consultants, physiotherapists, dentists, X-ray departments, biochemistry labs, blood sampling services and computer technicians with whom GPs work are not available in the evenings and at weekends(10), so patients might have to come back to complete the consultation. If the government wants a genuine health supermarket, open all hours, it will have to pay much, much more. So why is it so keen on this reform? Because it assists a quite different agenda. To avoid the political firestorm big business rains on any government that stands in its way, Gordon Brown must make constant concessions. What business wants most is the 40% of the economy controlled by the state. He must find clever and camouflaged means of delivering it that do not prompt us to take to the streets. This means waging a public relations war against GPs and the other public sector dinosaurs who impede choice and change. It means a thousand small steps towards privatisation. The government is expanding the number of independent sector treatment centres, even though they turn out to be far less efficient than the NHS and leave the taxpayer with major liabilities(11). It is opening staggeringly expensive polyclinics, operating seven days a week, which will be run by multinational companies(12). It will allow the primary care trust in Birmingham to shut the city?s surgeries and replace them with primary care units franchised to corporations – the promoter of this scheme happily admits to modelling it on McDonalds(13). It is transferring GPs? surgeries to supermarkets (the first was opened by Sainsbury?s last week(14)) and giving high-street chemists responsibility for diagnosing and treating minor ailments, even though they are not qualified to tell the difference between an ordinary cough and lung cancer. No minister can now discuss the NHS without mentioning ?new providers? or ?alternative providers?, which is their code for private companies, or ?choice? and ?reform?, which means privatisation. The CBI has produced a long list of complaints about GPs? failure to ?rise to the challenge? of the market(15). In truth they are among the most efficient workers in the NHS. One of the reasons why their pay has jumped so quickly is that they have responded more effectively than the government expected to the incentives in their new contract (giving the government a further stick with which to beat them). They are way ahead of the hospitals in their use of information technology. But there is money in primary care, which is why they are now in the firing line. GPs say that the government was hoping they would reject its demand for longer opening hours, knowing that the private sector could then step into the breach. None of this serves either the customer or the taxpayer. The irony of Brown?s reforms is that they are wholly centred on the needs of the providers rather than the patients – as long as the providers are corporations. So don?t wait to take to the streets. Little by little, the privatisation of the NHS is happening already, disguised as a crusade for patient power. References: 1. Gordon Brown, 7th January 2008. Speech on the National Health Service.
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page14171.asp 2. Department of Health, 19th March 2007. More family doctor services for deprived areas.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=272142&NewsAr… 3. Eg Sarah Hall, 19th March 2007. Fruit, veg and a trip to the GP as stores are asked to open surgeries. The Guardian. 4. Prime Minister?s Strategy Unit, March 2007. Policy review – Building on progress: Public services. http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/policy_review/documents/building_on_… 5. Department of Health, 2007. The GP Patient Survey 2006/2007: National Report, p58. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/PublishedSurvey/GPpati… 6. ibid, p60. 7. Gordon Brown, quoted by Daniel Martin, 7th March 2008. GPs grudgingly agree to work evenings and weekends at last. Daily Mail. 8. LLM Future Services, 2007. Survey conducted for CBI, May 30th-31st 2007. Sent to me by the CBI. 9. Confederation of British Industry, 18th September 2007. Just What the Patient Ordered: Better GP Services. http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/press.nsf/0363c1f07c6ca12a8025671c00381cc7/f60cebe0663c98d68025734600573f81/$FILE/CBI%20report%20?Just%20what%20the%20patient%20ordered?%20September%202007.pdf 10. Gruffydd Penrhyn Jones, GP, pers comm. 11. Allyson M Pollock and Sylvia Godden, 23rd February 2008. Independent sector treatment centres: evidence so far. British Medical Journal, vol 336, pp421-424. doi:10.1136/bmj.39470.505556.80 12. See British Medical Association, January 2008. Access to GP services in England. http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/Gpaccess. 13. Nick Britten, 4th February 2008. GP surgeries ?could be run by Tesco or Virgin?. Daily Telegraph. 14. Hugh Wilson, 4th March 2008. The Sainsbury?s GPs: checkout, then check-up. The Guardian. 15. See Confederation of British Industry, 18th September 2007, ibid.
Waged London: photographer Larry Herman on his new projectUKWatch.net - 10 Mar 2008Larry Herman was born in New York, and moved to Britain during the Vietnam War. Since then he has lived in Glasgow and Sheffield, but mostly in London. At art school Larry trained as a sculptor. He started taking photographs in his mid-20s and has since produced several books. In the early 1980s he stopped photography to work in steel mills, foundries and on London Underground. He returned to professional photography in 1993. His most recent book, Land, Land, Land! looks at the living conditions for rural African Americans in the US South. What prompted you to start the Waged London project? I always need something to do that I think is important, something with enough scope to occupy me for the several years I take to work on my independent projects. Clearly our period of time is marked by war ? but it is also marked by mass migration. According to the United Nations, today there are more people living in towns and cities than there are living in the countryside. That will have a profound effect in the future. We are living in a world where more and more people have no other means of sustenance than selling their labour. I?m from New York, and when I was a child New York and London used to compete for the title of the biggest city in the world. Now they are mid-ranking cities as other huge cities have grown ? though London is still one of the ?heartland? cities of the world, of course. So millions of people are being economically compelled off the land and towards the cities. They will starve to death unless they accept being forced into selling their labour. I wanted to put that process of people selling their labour in the centre of this project. So I photograph wherever people work. I define that quite widely, but all the photographs in the project will relate to people?s working experiences in some way. What sort of difficulties have you encountered with the project? I had to narrow the project down, so I chose to focus on people who sell their labour by the hour, rather than salaried workers ? though, at one level, that is a false demarcation. Initially the project was called Low Wage London, but I felt that title was too subjective. For instance, I met a family with six low incomes that when combined meant they did OK. In contrast a family with one income of 18 an hour would be really struggling. I have come across difficulties taking pictures of people in work. Managers have a lot to hide and often simply don?t want me around. Getting access can be difficult. I don?t want to put people in any sort of jeopardy with their employer.So I do a lot of photographing from the rear or with people?s faces hidden. I also don?t photograph people without their permission and I deliberately don?t use names or even identify specific workplaces. It?s beyond my comprehension how a person can be ?illegal?. I don?t care whether they?re here with the sanction of the state or not. People have a right to be where they are simply on the basis that that?s where they are. Is the Waged London project partly about bringing the hidden into view? Many migrant workers certainly are hidden from view ? but so, in a way, is everyone who sells their labour. The media keep us all hidden ? most notably during strikes, but also in many other ways and on a daily basis. When images of working people do emerge, they tend to be shown as entertainment, or as victims, or as people who just produce distress and heartache for us all. For example, Africa is full of intense political activity. Millions of people struggle every day to organise a better society that can meet the needs of everyone. All of this is either ignored or reported in a way that portrays people as helpless, as passive victims and nothing more. I am in awe of people?s dignity ? the dignity that comes from an ability to put two feet on the floor every morning, but also from the determination to resist and organise. How do your political convictions fit into your work as a documentary photographer? I am inspired by the world as it is. I see myself as a political person who happens to be a photographer. I define myself politically. Of course, I also have ideals of how the world should be, but my motivation and inspiration come from the reality of the world. As a social documentary photographer, I am recording my the world around me as part of the process of influencing it. I?m very aware that we have all sorts of things that we don?t have to fight for, because other people have fought for them in the past. But we do have to constantly defend those gains. For instance, there is an appalling attack on women?s rights in Britain at the moment ? the growth of porno?culture, and the chipping away at the time limits on abortion. But there is always a level of resistance that provides inspiration and a sense of dignity. If there wasn?t resistance, they wouldn?t need violence to defend the status quo. The real thing, the interesting thing, is to photograph the world in resistance. People refusing to acquiesce, refusing to be passive. I want to move people from being the passive objects of history to being its originators. What do you look for in an image to reflect this political commitment? It?s important not to have anything redundant in the photographs ? everything in the image must contribute to the succinct statement I?m making. In this sense still photography is closer to poetry than to film, because it says something very precise. I also always use captions, sometimes long ones and sometimes very brief ones. They give a context to the image and help prevent it from being used in an abusive way. If I was the only photographer in the world, I would do things differently. But as it is, it is far too easy to photograph people with their dignity down ? it is too easy to photograph degradation. So at one level, I?m using people as metaphors to tell the world what I think of it. When I photograph, say, a cleaner in a hotel, I want that image to ram home what that person is doing in numerous different ways. I also want the image to be aesthetically pleasing. I?m not a news photographer in the sense of simply firing the camera into events. Some news photographers criticise me for being too ?arty? ? but I also get art photographers criticising me for being too ?newsy?! What do you think of the idea that photography should be ?neutral?? I am recording my period of time, but I am not a camera. I don?t see my role as some kind of ?community photographer?. I want to show the reality of people?s lives. This means interpreting and editing the world in a certain way. There is a battle of ideas in our society. Millions of people die for reasons that are eminently solvable. Natural events turn into catastrophes because of the system we live under. So you can rebuild New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina ? but not for the people who lived there, apart from those who will be needed to service the tourists. But people are resisting everywhere ? though not always in a particularly organised way. In that context, it is important to throw your lot in with the people who are resisting. There is immense coverage of the US election, but I hardly ever hear a report that makes sense. People parachute in and observe ? but they don?t relate to the reality in front of them. At best it?s pretentious and at worst downright erroneous. They never, or rather hardly ever, interview ordinary people ? instead they interview themselves. When I was last doing a project in the US I never met anyone who owned a single thing ? yet those are precisely the people who are kept out of the debate. The dominant values are those of the status quo. We are products of society where there are sides. And if you say you?re neutral, then you are in fact taking sides. Class struggle permeates every element of our society. Sometimes it is difficult to see ? but it is there. You sometimes have to fight hard to bring to light ? but it is there. And in the face of class struggle there is no neutrality. You either align yourself with the oppressors of the world, or you take the opposite side. Whenever I?ve been in a situation, I?ve chosen sides ? in Ireland, the Miners? Strike, or wars in southern Africa. And whenever I?ve done that, people have defended me back. ——————————— Waged London will be on show at the Marxism festival of resistance in July this year. For more details about Larry?s work go to www.larryherman.net
Headlines for March 11, 2008Democracy Now - 10 Mar 2008U.S., Poland Lay Ground for Missile Deal, Spitzer Revealed to Be Client of Prostitution Ring, Obama Dismisses V.P. Talk on Joint Ticket, Teen in Clinton ?3 a.m.? Ad Supports Obama, House Panel Subpoenas White House Aides, Oklahoma State Rep.: Gays ?Biggest Threat? to U.S., Israel, Hamas in Ceasefire Talks, 8 U.S. Servicemembers Killed in Iraq, Waxman Calls for New Blackwater Probe, Exhaustive Review Finds No Saddam-bin Laden Ties, Study: Gulf War Illnesses Linked to Chemical Exposure, Rove Speaks to Hostile Crowd in Iowa, Report: Vast Array of Drugs Found in U.S. Water Supply, NSA Spying More Extensive Than Previously Disclosed
Dreaming of a better future in GazaElectronic Intifada - 10 Mar 2008rr r r rr r rr r rr r rr r rr rrr rIsraeli officials said on 3 March that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion. What is happening in Gaza hurts all Palestinians, not just Hamas. Before this assault, the Gaza Strip, with 1.5 million residents, was already like a prison under siege, with dwindling supplies of food, medicine, fuel, clean water and electricity, and growing poverty. Fida Qishta writes from occupied Rafah.
