Climate activists change course

There will be no Camp for Climate Action this year, and leading activists say this is in recognition of the world’s changing economic and political landscape.

After a lengthy meeting of camp activists, a consensus was reached and a statement issued which says:

“The near-collapse of the financial system; droughts in the Amazon, floods in Pakistan; a new government in the UK; a violent programme of unprecedented cuts; food prices rising and real incomes eroding; revolutions across the Middle East… This is all very different from 2005 when the Camp for Climate Action first met to spark radical action on the greatest threat to humanity, climate change.”

Climate Camp mobilisations, as well as the protests by students last year, have shown that there is nothing passive or deferential about young people in Britain. Their actions have put the trade union leaders to shame, exposing them as weak-kneed in the face of injustice.

Visiting the camp over the years, you could chart the deepening of people’s understanding of the source of the climate crisis. Year by year, people moved away from the idea that ordinary human beings and their consumerism are to blame, to a recognition that it is the capitalist economic system of production itself that is the root of the problem.

As the Camp’s statement says: “As the financial crisis unfolded we moved to directly targeting the root cause of airport expansion and coal-fired power stations: our economic system.” The 2009 camp was the high point, with a huge sign at the entrance on London’s Blackheath stating “Capitalism IS crisis”.

But at Blackheath, the question arose – can we overthrow the corporations DIRECTLY by targeting them with protests; or can we only create change that is truly transformative by bringing down the governments and STATES which maintain their rule of the transnationals that have gone about destroying the planet’s eco-systems?

Climate Camp answered that question with more of the same, culminating with the occupation of the RBS bank’s headquarters in Edinburgh. This protest simply did not rise to the political challenge people in Britain were now facing, with the election of a Coalition government hell-bent on imposing the cost of the crisis on the mass of ordinary people.

This is a government that, far from curbing the role of the corporations in response to the climate crisis, is extending their reach. Ministers took part in the Cancun conference’s decision to abandon any attempts to sign a replacement treaty for Kyoto. Privatisation and cost-cutting will drive down standards in the name of profit.

The Climate Camp’s statement continues: “This is a unique opportunity to work together with others to create a more co-ordinated, dynamic and stronger movement against climate change and its root causes. Now is a chance to team up with the anti-cuts and anti-austerity movements and play a crucial role in the revolutionary times ahead. Anything but co-ordinated action is doomed to fail.”

The revolutionary times are, in fact, here and now. The new generation that is leading the revolutionary upsurge in North Africa and the Middle East are driven by the impact of the global crisis, including climate change that has contributed to soaring food prices.

Climate campaigners championed People’s Assemblies during the protests at Copenhagen in 2009 . Hopefully, climate camp activists will now join the movement to establish a network of People’s Assemblies throughout Britain. Then we will not only challenge the power of the state to impose cuts, and the corporations that are wrecking the eco-system, but actually go on to build a sustainable alternative to capitalism’s destructive growth addiction.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

650,000 words later...

In the four years since A World to Win launched its weekday news blog, we have written over 1,000 of them – that is somewhere in the region of 650,000 words! Now the blog team is going on annual holiday.

Our posts have focused on politics and the state, on ecology and economy, tracking the credit crunch (actually, predicting it!) and charting the growing ecological crisis. We’ve used over 1,600 labels (they are all indexed here to help identify the different subjects).

But it hasn’t been all serious stuff. This year’s April Fool blog raised an ironic laugh: “It’s a no-brainer,” said energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband. “The planet is under threat – people are facing actual death as a result of climate change, human society will not be able to survive the disruption and misery – what else can we do but act, and act now.”

Then there was the unofficial communiqué from last year’s G20 in London, which declared: “We will do whatever it takes to rebuild the balance sheets of the banks and to restore people’s confidence in a system that has come off the rails and is unfortunately and mistakenly despised by increasing numbers of our citizens.”

We’ve written about events in Palestine, Lebanon, Thailand, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Kenya, Nigeria and Ogoniland, Sri Lanka and the struggle of the Tamils, about the United States, Greece – and many other countries where people are struggling for their rights.

The team has provoked discussion about youth unemployment, the privatisation of education and the brutality of the youth prison system and urged the decriminalisation of drug use.

AWTW was first out of the blocks analysing the ConDem coalition, recognising it as a government of crisis, with fundamental weaknesses as well as a vicious streak. We have been clear that whilst ideology has a role, it is capitalism’s profound and growing economic crisis that is driving the attacks on public spending.

But we don’t want our readers to be bored while the blog team takes a well-earned rest. So here are three things you could do in the time you normally spend reading the blog:

1. Consider the case for People’s Assemblies. On the website is a new explanation of how these can go beyond resistance and become a focus for struggle for a democratic society based on co-operation and self-determination instead of profit and corporate power.
2. Read the Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions, produced this year. It is a living document that can be continuously updated and amended – so tell us what you think.
3. Think about joining A World to Win.

Being a loyal reader of blogs is one thing, but we need you if we are to grow an organisation that is not just about protest and resistance, but has a positive revolutionary perspective.Without that, neither the political, the economic nor the ecological crises can be stopped in their tracks and turned around.

When we return, you can be sure the analysis of the global crisis and its impact in Britain will be fresher than ever!

Blog editorial team
August 20, 2010

The great biomass grab

Although three-quarters of the world’s biomass has remained beyond grasp of the market economy, corporations are now poised to appropriate and further commodify biological products and processes in every part of the globe - as well as further destroy biodiversity, deplete soil and water and displace marginalised farmers.

Amidst a world food crisis, collapsing ecosystems, financial crisis and climate chaos, new technologies are once again being promoted by international institutions, governments and big business as the “magic bullet” for boosting food produc­tion and saving the planet. They are certain, of course, to have the exact opposite impact on people and planet.

A dramatic new report, Who owns nature?, published by the Canadian-based ETC Group, which has been monitoring corporate power in the industrial life sciences for the past 30 years, outlines the threat. The report indicts government for “stepping aside” and “working hand-in-hand with corporations to reinforce the very institutions and policies that are the root causes of today’s agro-industrial food crisis”.

The 48-page report exposes corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the strategic push to commodify the planet's remaining natural resources. It reveals that:

• From thousands of seed companies and public breeding institutions three decades ago, 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales
• From dozens of pesticide companies three decades ago, 10 now control almost 90% of agrochemical sales worldwide
• From almost 1,000 biotech start-ups 15 years ago, 10 companies now account for three-quarters of industry revenues
• The top 10 pharmaceutical companies control 55% of the global drugs market.

Who Owns Nature? warns that against a background of ecological, economic and financial crises, and with engineering of living organisms at the nano-scale, “industry is setting the stage for a corporate grab that extends to all of nature”. ETC Group's Pat Mooney explains: "About one-quarter of the world's biomass has already been commodified. With extreme genetic engineering, we're seeing new corporate strategies to capture and commodify the three-quarters of the world's biomass that has, until now, remained beyond the market economy."

Advocates of synthetic biology - the creation of designer organisms built from synthetic DNA – are, says the report, promising a “post-petroleum future” where fuels, chemicals, drugs and other high-value products depend on biological manufacturing platforms fuelled by plant sugars. Industrial production will be based on biological feedstocks (agricultural crops, grasses, forest residues, plant oils, algae, etc.) whose sugars are extracted, fermented and converted into high-value products. Synthetic microbes will become "living chemical factories" that require massive quantities of plant biomass. The report concludes:

When the food crisis is defined as food scarcity and hungry people, the market-based prescription is to further liberalise markets and boost agricultural production with heavy doses of new technology. The real disaster is the cor­porate controlled agro-industrial food system. This system has entrenched corporate power while undermining the ability of small-scale producers to pro­duce food for their own communities. No matter how much new technology is employed in the name of boosting food production, the agro-industrial food system is incapable of feeding hungry people. And that’s because hunger and poverty are the consequences of ineq­uitable systems – not food scarcity or inadequate technologies.

However, ETC Group’s Kathy Jo Wetter then goes on to call for “monitoring and oversight of corporations” by the same governments and institutions that the report correctly identifies as joint villains of the piece. This is simply not going to happen, especially as the economic recession will be used to give corporations a green light to do whatever it takes to boost growth and profits. There is no “vacuum in governance”, as the report claims, but an out-of-control global capitalist system and compliant governments. Wresting power out of their hands is the only way to go.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

'Citizens must lead' on climate chaos

The upcoming G8+5 summit in Japan has climate change high on the agenda, apparently. The original eight countries have been widened to an unprecedented extent to include other major economies, no doubt in an attempt to pass the buck or find new reasons for the G8's failure to take action.

For according to a study published yesterday, none of the G8 countries are implementing enough measures to be considered in line with the target to keep the rise in global temperature below 2°C. The "G8 Climate Scorecards", compiled by environmental group WWF and insurance group Allianz, said even the best performers - Britain, France and Germany - had not taken adequate action to back the goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The US, Canada and Russia had simply failed the test altogether. Their joint appeal to the G8 for action was that it made “the best business sense in the long run”.

The same message about making money out of tackling climate change came from business consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers. A new PWC report called on politicians to stop talking and start acting. Richard Gledhill, head of climate change services at PWC, said: "Governments in all major economies must demonstrate their political will to establish a well functioning global carbon market that puts a price on carbon emissions. That will send the right economic signals to investors and consumers to deliver the new technologies and changes in behaviour required to combat global warming." [emphasis added]

The fundamental problem with both reports is that the corporations themselves have driven climate change to its crisis point today. The sharp rise in emissions over the last 30 years coincides precisely with corporate-driven globalisation, with its ravaging of resources and growth mania.

Some people like eminent climate scientist James Hansen are clear about the reasons for inaction. In a 20h anniversary presentation of his 1988 warning to the US Congress he puts it plainly:

“Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming. CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” He added: “If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead.”

But, having shone the spotlight on profit-hungry corporations, Hansen’s chess-board proposal for “blocking” fossil fuel corporations with a carbon tax with 100% of the income to be shared amongst the population lets the guilty parties off the hook. That’s because his application of the scientific method doesn’t stretch to the economy. If it did, he’d soon find that the system behind the dynamic of corporate growth drove the lies about global warming and drives the agenda at the G8 which will once again yield no concrete action.

Citizens must undoubtedly lead, but that leadership must be guided by a conscious understanding of the essence of the crisis: the failing global system of resource-hungry, environmentally-destructive capitalist corporations. What’s so urgently needed is the greatest social change since the dawn of civilisation. The shift to local production that must accompany the reduction in energy consumption needed to limit climate change means eliminating the profit from production, taking all fossil fuels into social ownership and switching from resource exploitation to careful stewardship.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Every little helps

Amidst the kerfuffle of Gordon Brown’s humble pie about his “mistakes” over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, and anxiety to help those who face difficulties as a result of rising prices, we should bear in mind a few home truths about the true relation between New Labour and corporate taxpayers.

Last month, Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, reported a 13% rise in full-year profits to £2.55bn. They have made the most of rising prices and their dominating position in most towns. On top of that, the reality is that while low-income earners face an increase in taxes courtesy of New Labour, Tesco has allegedly avoided paying around £100 million in tax - and there is very little that the government can or will do about it.

The details of Britain’s biggest retailer’s tax avoidance was revealed at the weekend in a special report published by The Guardian in response to a libel writ issued against the newspaper in April. Tesco was angry about star reporters Felicity Lawrence and Ian Griffiths’ discovery of a chain of offshore companies it had set up for tax avoidance purposes.

Tesco’s legal action is a serious matter for the newspaper, which currently faces charges of libel and malicious falsehood. To defend itself, The Guardian had to assemble an expensive team of corporate tax experts, specialist accountants, academics and lawyers, including two QCs, so that they could untangle the complex web of companies set up by Tesco over a period of years. It took them all of four months to work out how the company created a chain of off-shore companies so that it could raise £5 billion over five years through property sales and a leaseback programme of some of its stores.

The paper's editorial provides a graphic description of a secret trail, which would have defied the likes of Sherlock Holmes:

“To follow the cleverest tax avoidance twists and turns is beyond all but a tiny group of experts - usually the very experts who are paid to outwit the Treasury and the evident intention of parliament. [my emphasis] Understanding a really sophisticated scheme - involving offshore structures, including unit trusts, limited partnerships and companies which are liquidated almost as soon as they are established - involves an arduous trawl through the tangled world of Cayman, Jersey and Guernsey brass-plate companies, cross-checked with published company accounts and a minute reading of stock exchange announcements.”

The complexity and secrecy of these transactions is such that “even the Treasury and Revenue, with considerable resources in forensic tax analysis, find it hard to keep track of the sophisticated tax avoidance devices used by modern corporations”. The Guardian noted: “The Treasury has particularly voiced its frustration at the artificial structures used by some companies to avoid SDLT [the Stamp Duty Land Tax which Tesco sought to avoid paying].”

Whatever the outcome of Tesco’s legal threats, one thing is clear. Tax evasion is the name of the game for all the global corporations, who have monopolies in the provision of the essentials for our existence, be it food, clothing or fuel – and vast power over their suppliers. And there is actually nothing that governments or the main political parties can or will do about it because the state has hitched its star to the very same global corporations who are able to ignore the rules of taxation that apply to ordinary people.

And if journalists challenge corporations like Tesco, they find an army of lawyers outside their door delivering writs. In fact, it’s not just The Guardian that's under attack. Tesco in Thailand is suing two columnists from a Bangkok business newspaper, one for £1.6m in libel damages.

And, of course, while Tesco excels at tax evasion activities, they naturally haven’t forgotten the need to screw their labour force. For its new chain of shops in California, Tesco has placed job ads for two senior managers which listed their responsibilities. These included "maintaining union-free status" and "union avoidance activities". As the Tesco slogan has it, “every little helps”.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Big business backing Democrats

Just as in the 1990s, big business in the United States is lining up behind the Democratic Party ahead of next year’s presidential elections. The Republicans under Bush are now so discredited that the corporations are looking for another horse to back. They don’t have to worry. In fact, the Democrats are queuing up to take their money, according to someone who knows all about global corporations and their influence. William Greider wrote one of the first critiques of corporate-driven globalisation in 1998, called One World Ready or Not - the manic logic of global capitalism. His best-selling book demonstrated how corporations moved their production around, seeking out cheaper labour areas and new markets. Now Greider has condemned the Democrats for helping Bush to create a variation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), this time with Peru.

Last week, the Democrat speaker in Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi got 109 Democrats to vote for the Peru trade bill, which was passed with Republican with 116 Democrats and a handful of Republicans voting against. Why did Pelosi push so hard that it divided her party and bringing fierce condemnation from the trade union movement and environmentalists?

Greider cites Steven R.Weisman of the New York Times, who concluded: "Democrats from the prosperous areas of the East and West Coast have become especially responsive, many Democrats say, to the desire of Wall Street and the high technology, health, pharmaceutical and entertainment industries to expand their sales overseas. These industries have also become major Democratic contributors." She did it for the money, is Greider’s conclusion. Writing for The Nation’s blog, he says: “Pelosi chose to stand with the money guys and dismiss the political backlash against globalisation building across the country.”

The “money guys” have never had a problem with the Democrats. NAFTA was established during Bill Clinton’s tenure of the White House, as was the World Trade Organisation. The WTO has become the global enforcer of the market economy to the detriment of workers in every country. NAFTA has created misery for millions of Mexicans working in border areas for US-based global corporations, while an estimated three million manufacturing jobs have disappeared from the United States. In factories largely hidden from view, and agricultural areas close to the US/Mexican border, workers labour in appalling conditions to make commodities and produce food for the American market. NAFTA tore up decades of labour laws established by Mexican workers and the same intensive exploitation is planned in Peru.

As economic and financial conditions deteriorate inside the United States in the wake of the sub-prime housing crisis, credit crunch and a dollar in freefall, the corporations are desperate for new opportunities. Peru is seen as the first step to expanding NAFTA through South and Central America. With the likelihood of another Clinton taking the presidency in 2008, big business is sitting pretty when it comes to tying up the political ends. The social backlash against the banks, mortgage companies - and the Democrats - is only just beginning, however.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Underwater imperialism

The results of melting ice caps may terrify the rest of us but for the oil corporations and their client governments there is a silver lining – the opportunity to drill for deposits previously inaccessible below the permafrost. This summer’s Arctic ice cover was the thinnest ever recorded. Researchers say there could be ice-free Arctic summers by 2040.

The result is an obscene rush by countries to secure rights to new fisheries, transport routes, oil, gas and mineral resources which have become accessible as a result. The US Geological Survey estimates that a quarter of the world's unexploited fossil fuels lie in Arctic areas. In a ludicrous stunt in August the Russian government sent two mini-subs and a group of intrepid explorers to plant a rust-proof titanium flag on the seabed 14,000ft below the North Pole to “claim the territory”. Then they released a video claiming to show the event, which turned out to be a scene from the film Titanic!

"This isn't the 15th Century," said Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay. "You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'” Yet his government is in dispute with the USA over rights in the North-west Passage. Norway and Russia are in dispute over the Barents Sea. Canada and Denmark are competing for ownership of a small island off Greenland, and Denmark is claiming the North Pole for itself.

Down at the other end of the planet, New Labour is joining this underwater imperialism. It emerged this week that the government is planning to claim sovereign rights over a vast area of seabed off Antarctica. The Foreign Office is preparing a submission to the United Nations covering more than a million square kilometres of seabed around Ascension Island, off the British Antarctic Territory, and around the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Britain is actually one of 39 signatories to a 1991 treaty that established Antarctica as a world park, with a 50-year minimum prohibition on mineral exploitation. And Britain is also not beneath a little nationalistic stunt. The British Antarctic Territory, first claimed in 1908 (on what basis it is hard to imagine) is a triangle of land covering 666,000 miles from the south pole. It plans to mark its centenary next year by issuing its own legal tender coin.

Flags, coins – if it wasn’t so dangerous it would be funny as this great little video from Greenpeace shows. But the terrible reality of the economic system that dominates planet earth is that the melting ice is actually seen as a positive benefit, as a new area for profit making. What we need to do is to save the planet not so much from climate change as the social system that is driving a whole series of inter-related crises. Territorial wars, hunger, species extinction, the destruction of habitats and the lives of indigenous people – the list is of threats produced by global capitalism is endless. We need to get shot of them before they get rid of us with their mad cap plans.

Penny Cole
AWTW Environment editor

Business as usual in Burma

This week Amnesty International, Saferworld and other NGOs pointed to a breach of the EU arms embargo on Burma (Myanmar) by the Indian government. Their report demands that the EU “stand by its obligations” and urges the Indian government to stop the transfer of a military helicopter to the dictatorship. Roy Isbister of Saferworld said: “The EU embargo states that no military equipment should be supplied, either directly or indirectly for use in Myanmar – what’s the point in having an arms embargo if it is not going to be implemented or enforced?”

New Labour’s Ian McCartney, the former trade and investment minister and Blair himself have claimed to be in favour of the sanctions. At the same time the British government has backed companies trading in Burma to the tune of £22.9m, despite Blair himself having called for the release of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, held by the junta for over 12 years. She is one of over 1,000 political prisoners in the country. The supply of the helicopter makes a mockery of the arms embargo since the Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) cannot operate without components made in the EU and US. Ninety percent of its parts originate from five countries in the EU, including its hydraulic package, flotation equipment, fuel tanks and internal gearbox, which is made by GKN Westland. India’s defence ministry admits that the country does give military hardware support to Burma, but claims that “the equipment is not offensive”. This is clearly untrue since the ALH is armed with rocket launchers made by Forges de Zebrugge in Belgium and engine, guns and rockets from France. The official also revealed that Burma was helping in the battle against insurgents in India's northeast.

The Burmese junta is currently waging war on the Karen people and other ethnic groups, as well as engaging in cross-border attacks on tens of thousands who have fled to Thailand. In April the Burmese army and its proxy forces positioned artillery and heavy machine guns overlooking the Mae La refugee camp where 45,000 Burmese citizens had sought shelter. The Karen Human Rights Group which campaigns for the Karen people whose state lies in eastern Burma, has documented the continuing ethnic cleansing policies of the Burmese regime, including forced labour, land confiscation and military campaigns and rape carried out by its armed forces. The junta is building a series of dams on the Salween river, which forms a natural border between Burma and Thailand with the support of the World Bank, ignoring heavy criticism.

The reality is that several countries want to exploit Burma’s rich natural resources to fuel their rapid industrial growth. South Korea’s Daewoo International and India’s state oil and gas companies have major stakes in Burma’s Shwe gas project. Large deposits of natural gas were recently discovered off the coast of Arakan State in western Burma. Natural gas exports have now become Burma’s main source of foreign exchange. China, India and Russia are supplying the Burmese military with artillery, jets, helicopters and other hardware, which are being used to crush internal opposition from the Karen National Union (KNU), which has fought the Burmese government for 60 years, as well as terrorise civilians. The European Union and New Labour provide one of the worst regimes in the world with a figleaf of criticism whilst business goes on as usual.

Corinna Lotz, AWTW secretary

Labour – ‘the natural party of business’

This is one of those moments in history when the clouds of confusion begin to lift and it becomes easy to see how the land lies. Blowing away the clouds is John Hutton, the man in charge of the newly created Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. According to Hutton, Tory Leader David Cameron’s alleged weak support for business provides “a major opportunity for Labour” because “we want to be the natural party of business”. It is difficult to imagine a clearer mission statement for the all-new New Labour regime under Gordon Brown. And just in case you are in any doubt, Hutton adds: “This is not a rebranding… It’s a serious attempt to redesign across government how we work with business.”

In a bizarre reversal of historical roles, Hutton contrasted the Tory pledge to extend flexible working rights to all parents of under-18s with the new government’s more cautious approach. “In the whole debate about more employment regulation, you have to be mindful of the costs to British business,” he said. “You’ve got to be very careful and always take into account the impact and burden on business.” Hutton will be working closely with Sir Digby Jones, former Confederation of British Industry director general with a long history of opposing trade unions and their rights. Jones has been made a Lord by Gordon Brown and brought into the government as minister for trade.

And the trade union response? Jack Dromey is deputy general secretary of the Transport & General section of the new 2 million strong union Unite, which is still affiliated to New Labour. Dromey, who is married to deputy leader Harrriet Harman, has written a column in the Financial Times, trade journal of investment bankers and city traders. The union wants private equity takeovers to be included within the scope of Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations which partially protect workers transferred from the public to the private sector. Fat chance! New Chancellor Alistair Darling has already ruled out an immediate clampdown on tax privileges used by the private equity industry, fearing they might have undesirable effects on the “absolutely critical” role of the City.

And then there’s Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, who says that many trade unionists are disillusioned with Labour and fed up with the government's record. "I know that because I am one of them," he told the delegates at the union's annual conference in Brighton. Woodley used his keynote address to launch a demagogic attack on the Blair government. "For the first time in my life I am seeing the sort of social divisions, the sort of wealth gap, here in our own country that I saw in other parts of the world when I was a teenager in the merchant navy.” He added: "Let Tony Blair's government be the last Labour government which let the gap between rich and poor widen. Let it be the last Labour government which boasted about the strength of its anti-union laws. Let it be the last Labour government which blocked social legislation from Europe - yet screamed blue murder if the priority of free competition is questioned.” But Woodley had another, much more disingenuous message. Delegates were told that there was now a chance to develop a "positive new agenda" under Brown's leadership. There is not a shred of evidence in favour of this deceitful argument. What Woodley and other union leaders refuse to accept is that the party founded by the labour movement has been transformed into the party of choice for big business, just as Hutton boasts.

Gerry Gold, economics editor