In what may be a shock for those who believe that the digital age has made class struggle so last century, household names from TV and Hollywood are picketing and rallying in support of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on both sides of America. Spirits are running high as rallies bring together writers and performers against the corporate studios that dominate TV, DVD, film and Internet entertainment. Over 1,000 writers - a twelfth of the Writers Guild of America membership – organised by "strike captains" - have been picketing in Los Angeles and New York since last week.
The WGA wants to renegotiate its contract with the Hollywood studios over the amount of money they receive from DVD sales. The big studios have used digital technologies to reduce the payments (called residuals) that writers receive every time a TV show they have written the script for is repeated. They know that the media corporations will not compensate them as new ways of downloading content proliferate. A video explains how studios plan to pay writers the lowest rates possible for DVD and Internet “residuals”. They fear that they will lose a large chunk of their income as television and Internet programmes are being merged.
Films posted on U-tube by the WGA demonstrate an amazing degree of solidarity from top stars who are on the picket lines in support of the screenwriters. In Los Angeles, actor Ray Romano brought bagels, fruit and orange juice for strikers outside Paramount Studios while in New York, Roseanne Barr, Holly Hunter and David Hyde Pierce joined the picket line. Actors like Tim Robbins and David Duchovny who are members of the WGA marched in solidarity. Glenn Close and Robert Redford paid tribute to writers, saying that without them, no story could be told and that actors would not be able to do their jobs.
TV personalities Seth Meyers, Tina Fey and Eva Longoria Parker offered sympathy and food when strkers protested on the "Desperate Housewives" set. On Day 5 of the strike, in New York, Rage Against the Machine singer Tom Morello, a long-time member of the US musicians union, sang a “freedom, fighting, union song” and said that the future of America would be decided “on the sidewalk outside Fox Studios”.
Tomorrow and Friday 500 writers, graphic artists, editors and producers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, also members of the WGA are voting whether to strike against CBS news, thereby joining their screen writer colleagues who are already on strike. Members who work in network and local TV and radio have not had a pay rise since 2004.
Observers have been surprised by the way in which different professionals and workers in of the US entertainment industry have come together to air their grievances and oppose the corporates who control the entertainment industry. Cornell University labour economist Richard Hurd comments: "Even though the topics of the two strikes are different, they're both being driven by the changing nature of the industries and the increased concentration of ownership. The view of the conglomerates is that they have to minimise costs and maximise returns, and the unions feel that they're not getting what they deserve. There are moral principles at stake for both."
One might ask what kind of “morality” is it that makes life impossible for writers who are actually unemployed half the year, due to the casual and fluctuating offers of work, to pay their mortgages and afford health insurance? The answer is to be found on the picket lines across America.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The great unravelling
“Housing market faces big slowdown” reports the Financial Times, while today’s Daily Telegraph main headline is “Fastest rise in food prices for 14 years”. These are not unrelated stories but are further indications of the great unravelling that is occurring in the major capitalist economies and financial system.
In ten years, house prices in Britain have gone through the roof (pardon the pun), rising by 300-400% depending on the region. This unsustainable inflation was fuelled by low interest rates, mortgage loans five, six or more times annual income, a shortage of new affordable home both to buy and rent and, in general, a belief that the sky was the limit. In this dream-like world, vast numbers of people remortgaged against the increased “value” of their property to buy consumer goods and thus keep the global economy ticking over.
This process was an expression at a personal level of what was taking place at macro-economic level. For 30 years, global corporations have borrowed heavily to finance their expansion/mergers/takeovers. In turn, this gave rise to a new global financial system where money could apparently beget even greater sums of money by sheer electronic manipulation. It was as if the Middle Ages alchemist’s promise of turning common metals into gold had at last become possible. The “share” that fell to ordinary people came in the form of credit (meaning debt) to buy more of the goods that the corporations were turning out.
Which brings us to the Daily Telegraph story about food prices. They are increasing at their highest rate for more than a decade, according to official figures released yesterday. Food factories are having to pay 6% more for their raw ingredients than a year ago - the highest annual rate since 1993, says the government’s National Statistics office.
A survey by the website mysupermarket.com, which compares prices across online supermarket chains, found that the three biggest - Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's - are charging their shoppers 12% more on average for a basket of 25 staple goods compared with last year. That equates to an annual increase for most families of about £750. A kilo of peas has gone up from £1.19 to £1.79 at Tesco, a dozen eggs at Sainsbury's has leapt from £1.62 to £2.35, while Asda has increased the price of its orange juice from 73p a litre to 88p. The cost of a pint of milk has reached an all-time high of 33½p and sliced bread costs a record £1.20 in big stores.
Driving food price inflation is climate change – itself a product of unsustainable capitalist growth - combined with rising fuel prices. Global warming has produced a drought in some key crop growing areas, notably in Australia and the United States. Adding to grain shortages is the turning over of crop land from growing for food to production of raw material for ethanol and other biofuels. In addition, whole areas of former farmland in China and India are being given over to manufacturing and service industries, leading to greater pressure on world supply. Fuel costs have soared as the price of oil reaches nearly $100 a barrel. This in turn is a reflection of the falling value of the dollar, in which oil is priced. The dollar’s devaluation is absolutely connected to the fact that the United States has lived on borrowed money for several decades.
The impending collapse of the housing market combined with rampant inflation will devastate millions of lives. Alternatives to the crazed world of the market economy are urgently required. A House of Cards – from fantasy finance to global crash has some viable proposals. Why don’t you check them out?
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
In ten years, house prices in Britain have gone through the roof (pardon the pun), rising by 300-400% depending on the region. This unsustainable inflation was fuelled by low interest rates, mortgage loans five, six or more times annual income, a shortage of new affordable home both to buy and rent and, in general, a belief that the sky was the limit. In this dream-like world, vast numbers of people remortgaged against the increased “value” of their property to buy consumer goods and thus keep the global economy ticking over.
This process was an expression at a personal level of what was taking place at macro-economic level. For 30 years, global corporations have borrowed heavily to finance their expansion/mergers/takeovers. In turn, this gave rise to a new global financial system where money could apparently beget even greater sums of money by sheer electronic manipulation. It was as if the Middle Ages alchemist’s promise of turning common metals into gold had at last become possible. The “share” that fell to ordinary people came in the form of credit (meaning debt) to buy more of the goods that the corporations were turning out.
Which brings us to the Daily Telegraph story about food prices. They are increasing at their highest rate for more than a decade, according to official figures released yesterday. Food factories are having to pay 6% more for their raw ingredients than a year ago - the highest annual rate since 1993, says the government’s National Statistics office.
A survey by the website mysupermarket.com, which compares prices across online supermarket chains, found that the three biggest - Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's - are charging their shoppers 12% more on average for a basket of 25 staple goods compared with last year. That equates to an annual increase for most families of about £750. A kilo of peas has gone up from £1.19 to £1.79 at Tesco, a dozen eggs at Sainsbury's has leapt from £1.62 to £2.35, while Asda has increased the price of its orange juice from 73p a litre to 88p. The cost of a pint of milk has reached an all-time high of 33½p and sliced bread costs a record £1.20 in big stores.
Driving food price inflation is climate change – itself a product of unsustainable capitalist growth - combined with rising fuel prices. Global warming has produced a drought in some key crop growing areas, notably in Australia and the United States. Adding to grain shortages is the turning over of crop land from growing for food to production of raw material for ethanol and other biofuels. In addition, whole areas of former farmland in China and India are being given over to manufacturing and service industries, leading to greater pressure on world supply. Fuel costs have soared as the price of oil reaches nearly $100 a barrel. This in turn is a reflection of the falling value of the dollar, in which oil is priced. The dollar’s devaluation is absolutely connected to the fact that the United States has lived on borrowed money for several decades.
The impending collapse of the housing market combined with rampant inflation will devastate millions of lives. Alternatives to the crazed world of the market economy are urgently required. A House of Cards – from fantasy finance to global crash has some viable proposals. Why don’t you check them out?
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Monday, November 12, 2007
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
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
Friday, November 09, 2007
Police above the law
The refusal of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair to quit over the killing – or, more precisely, execution - of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station in 2005 verifies one thing above all: the capitalist state and its institutions consider themselves above the rest of society and see no reason why they should be made accountable for their actions.
While ordinary workers can get fired on a pretext, or for some minor misdemeanour like stealing some paper clips or discarded materials, the police, MPs, ministers, judges, senior civil servants, MI5 and MI6 spies and the like can and do get away with almost anything. Police can kill innocent people going about their business, cover up their actions, block inquiries, while ministers break election promises, take secret decisions to go to war and authorise the infiltration and destabilisation of legal organisations.
All these actions are sanctioned because they carry the authority of a state that is there to rule over people and maintain the status quo. That, above all, means the perpetuation of private property rights. We’re not talking about people’s houses but the legal right to form companies, employ labour, sell products and services and keep the profits. What is generally known as capitalism. Try taking over a factory or office in defence or jobs and you are doing something illegal which strikes at the heart of private property. And the state will be down like a ton of bricks to restore the owner’s “rights”.
So Blair’s refusal to quit his job is no surprise. After all, no one in the Metropolitan Police has admitted responsibility for the shooting dead of a Brazilian electrician while he sat in a Tube carriage quietly reading his paper. In this sense, the police are above the law. They have a shoot-to-kill policy (nodded through in secret by the toothless, pathetic Metropolitan Police Authority) similar to the one adopted by the British army against Republicans in the north of Ireland.
So long as they think there is a danger to themselves or the public, they can kill someone – and there’s no comeback. The case of Harry Stanley, shot dead in 1999, is typical. He left a pub in Hackney carrying a chair leg in a bag. Someone phoned the police to say he had a weapon. Police arrived and minutes later Stanley was dead. No one was prosecuted. After all, police thought he had a weapon. De Menezes, despite police disinformation in the wake of his death, did not wear bulky clothes that might have concealed a bomb, did not leap over the Tube ticket barrier, behaved calmly and was given no warning before being shot. But Blair did attempt to block an independent inquiry, during which time the police involved wrote up their notes so that they told the same story.
It can only get worse as the state introduces ID cards, a national DNA database, extends the scope of what constitutes a criminal offence, monitors phone calls and e-mails and continues stop-and-search aimed at minority communities. This kind of state is beyond reform. Struggling for a new, democratic state, in which all institutions are subordinate and accountable to popular control, is the best way to remember Jean Charles de Menezes
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
While ordinary workers can get fired on a pretext, or for some minor misdemeanour like stealing some paper clips or discarded materials, the police, MPs, ministers, judges, senior civil servants, MI5 and MI6 spies and the like can and do get away with almost anything. Police can kill innocent people going about their business, cover up their actions, block inquiries, while ministers break election promises, take secret decisions to go to war and authorise the infiltration and destabilisation of legal organisations.
All these actions are sanctioned because they carry the authority of a state that is there to rule over people and maintain the status quo. That, above all, means the perpetuation of private property rights. We’re not talking about people’s houses but the legal right to form companies, employ labour, sell products and services and keep the profits. What is generally known as capitalism. Try taking over a factory or office in defence or jobs and you are doing something illegal which strikes at the heart of private property. And the state will be down like a ton of bricks to restore the owner’s “rights”.
So Blair’s refusal to quit his job is no surprise. After all, no one in the Metropolitan Police has admitted responsibility for the shooting dead of a Brazilian electrician while he sat in a Tube carriage quietly reading his paper. In this sense, the police are above the law. They have a shoot-to-kill policy (nodded through in secret by the toothless, pathetic Metropolitan Police Authority) similar to the one adopted by the British army against Republicans in the north of Ireland.
So long as they think there is a danger to themselves or the public, they can kill someone – and there’s no comeback. The case of Harry Stanley, shot dead in 1999, is typical. He left a pub in Hackney carrying a chair leg in a bag. Someone phoned the police to say he had a weapon. Police arrived and minutes later Stanley was dead. No one was prosecuted. After all, police thought he had a weapon. De Menezes, despite police disinformation in the wake of his death, did not wear bulky clothes that might have concealed a bomb, did not leap over the Tube ticket barrier, behaved calmly and was given no warning before being shot. But Blair did attempt to block an independent inquiry, during which time the police involved wrote up their notes so that they told the same story.
It can only get worse as the state introduces ID cards, a national DNA database, extends the scope of what constitutes a criminal offence, monitors phone calls and e-mails and continues stop-and-search aimed at minority communities. This kind of state is beyond reform. Struggling for a new, democratic state, in which all institutions are subordinate and accountable to popular control, is the best way to remember Jean Charles de Menezes
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Everyone's a 'suspect'
Just in case you thought New Labour’s planned new anti-terror laws were bad enough, pay attention to what the European Union is cooking up. This undemocratic, bureaucratic organisation is bringing forward a raft of measures that add to the growth of a European-wide authoritarian state.
The workings of the EU are obscure but thanks to Statewatch we can just about fathom out what’s going on. In its latest bulletin, the independent monitoring group analyses new terrorism laws planned by the European Commission. These would create three new categories of criminal offence: provocation to commit terrorism, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism. The "provocation" offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a "danger" of such acts being committed. Statewatch warns:
“The wording of this definition is clearly likely to result in the criminalisation of the expression of political views (for example on the situation in Middle East or on certain conflicts within Member States) even if that expression does not in any way include the advocacy of terrorism to support those opinions. It will be enough that the authorities deem that there is a ‘danger’ that this will happen.”
Then there are the plans to fingerprint all children over six for EU passports. The commission would have included even younger children but the idea was rejected because the under-6s don’t yet have fully-identifiable fingerprints! Finally, this week the European Commission announced plans for a PNR (passenger name record) scheme to monitor all travel in and out of the EU. Similar data is already being collected under a EU-US scheme that sailed through without parliamentary approval.
All passengers, including visitors from the USA, will be “profiled” to see if they constitute a “risk”. If they are, they can be refused entry. The "profile" will be updated and held for 13 years. This will involve millions of quite innocent people being kept on record. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a ‘suspect’ without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom. We have already got the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and ID cards and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data of every communication, now we are to have the mandatory logging of all travel in and out of the EU.
“The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism. Yet there is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world".
Bunyan says that the "profiling" of all airline passengers has “no place in a democracy”. He is right. The trouble is that behind the façade of parliamentary democracy, a terrifying authoritarian state is nearing completion. It’s an EU-wide project in which the New Labour government plays the leading role.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
The workings of the EU are obscure but thanks to Statewatch we can just about fathom out what’s going on. In its latest bulletin, the independent monitoring group analyses new terrorism laws planned by the European Commission. These would create three new categories of criminal offence: provocation to commit terrorism, recruitment for terrorism and training for terrorism. The "provocation" offence is extremely broad, as it does not require a direct encouragement to commit terrorist acts but applies to any statements which create a "danger" of such acts being committed. Statewatch warns:
“The wording of this definition is clearly likely to result in the criminalisation of the expression of political views (for example on the situation in Middle East or on certain conflicts within Member States) even if that expression does not in any way include the advocacy of terrorism to support those opinions. It will be enough that the authorities deem that there is a ‘danger’ that this will happen.”
Then there are the plans to fingerprint all children over six for EU passports. The commission would have included even younger children but the idea was rejected because the under-6s don’t yet have fully-identifiable fingerprints! Finally, this week the European Commission announced plans for a PNR (passenger name record) scheme to monitor all travel in and out of the EU. Similar data is already being collected under a EU-US scheme that sailed through without parliamentary approval.
All passengers, including visitors from the USA, will be “profiled” to see if they constitute a “risk”. If they are, they can be refused entry. The "profile" will be updated and held for 13 years. This will involve millions of quite innocent people being kept on record. Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "This is yet another measure that places everyone under surveillance and makes everyone a ‘suspect’ without any meaningful right to know how the data is used, how it is further processed and by whom. We have already got the mandatory taking of fingerprints for passports and ID cards and the mandatory storage of telecommunications data of every communication, now we are to have the mandatory logging of all travel in and out of the EU.
“The underlying rationale for each of the measures is the same - all are needed to tackle terrorism. Yet there is little evidence that the gathering of mountain upon mountain of data on the activities of every person in the EU makes a significant contribution. On the other hand, the use of this data for other purposes, now or in the future, will make the EU the most surveilled place in the world".
Bunyan says that the "profiling" of all airline passengers has “no place in a democracy”. He is right. The trouble is that behind the façade of parliamentary democracy, a terrifying authoritarian state is nearing completion. It’s an EU-wide project in which the New Labour government plays the leading role.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Ten days that shook the world
Ninety years ago today, a remarkable series of events began in Russia that would change the course of the 20th century. The first anti-capitalist, workers’ revolution in history was set in motion. Immediately, the new government offered an armistice, carrying out its pledge to withdraw from the slaughter of the First World War.
At 10am on November 7, 1917, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) of the Petrograd Soviet announced the disbanding of the Provisional Government which had taken power after the overthrow of the Tsar earlier in the year but which had continued the war. The MRC’s proclamation, drawn up by Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party, read:
At 10am on November 7, 1917, the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) of the Petrograd Soviet announced the disbanding of the Provisional Government which had taken power after the overthrow of the Tsar earlier in the year but which had continued the war. The MRC’s proclamation, drawn up by Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party, read:
“The Provisional Government has been deposed. State power has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies - the Revolutionary Military Committee, which heads the Petrograd proletariat and the garrison. The cause for which the people have fought, namely, the immediate offer of a democratic peace, the abolition of landed proprietorship, workers' control over production, and the establishment of Soviet power - this cause has been secured.
Long live the revolution of workers, soldiers and peasants!”
The MRC, under the direction of the Bolshevik leader Trotsky, had carried out an insurrection in Petrograd (now St Petersburg), storming the Winter Palace and arresting the government. The next day, Lenin was elected as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Congress of Soviets which gathered in Petrograd. Soviet power then spread across Russia. Liberal and monarchist forces, “the Whites” immediately went to war against the Bolshevik’s Red Army, backed by capitalist powers around the world, including Britain.
For a period, the revolution flourished despite the deprivations of the civil war. Revolutionaries from around the world flocked to Russia to join an international movement aimed at overthrowing capitalism in each country. But the failure of the 1918-1919 German Revolution and Lenin’s untimely death in January 1924 became key factors in the rise of a reactionary bureaucracy headed by Stalin. Trotsky and the Left Opposition struggled hard for an alternative, democratic socialist course, but were defeated by the end of the 1920s. The subsequent destruction of the Bolshevik Party, the murder of its leaders in show trials and the perversion of its policies and aims were among the greatest crimes of the 20th century.
A superficial reading of the subsequent history of the 1917 revolution – promoted and perpetuated by the capitalist media and right-wing historians like Orlando Figes – frequently lumps together Bolshevism with Stalin’s reign of terror. In this way, they bury the unique achievements of the revolution and the masses and leaders who made it possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is often labelled the “end of communism”.
For a period, the revolution flourished despite the deprivations of the civil war. Revolutionaries from around the world flocked to Russia to join an international movement aimed at overthrowing capitalism in each country. But the failure of the 1918-1919 German Revolution and Lenin’s untimely death in January 1924 became key factors in the rise of a reactionary bureaucracy headed by Stalin. Trotsky and the Left Opposition struggled hard for an alternative, democratic socialist course, but were defeated by the end of the 1920s. The subsequent destruction of the Bolshevik Party, the murder of its leaders in show trials and the perversion of its policies and aims were among the greatest crimes of the 20th century.
A superficial reading of the subsequent history of the 1917 revolution – promoted and perpetuated by the capitalist media and right-wing historians like Orlando Figes – frequently lumps together Bolshevism with Stalin’s reign of terror. In this way, they bury the unique achievements of the revolution and the masses and leaders who made it possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is often labelled the “end of communism”.
But the truth is that Stalinism was counter-revolutionary and essentially anti-communist. Lenin and Trotsky always insisted that socialism could never be built in an isolated way in a single country and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which usurped political power from the masses and created a totalitarian state, is proof of this. Gorbachev’s attempt to restore Soviet democracy and restructure the economy, heroic effort though it was, could not undo decades of backwardness or overcome the resistance of die-hard Stalinists. Their failed coup of August 1991 precipitated the collapse of the USSR later that year.
First under Yeltsin and now under Putin, Russia has reverted to a capitalism where oligarchs, who effectively stole the state assets built up during the 90 years of the USSR, hold sway. Yet while the socialist property relations established by the October Revolution have been legally abolished, the legacy of revolution lives on in other forms.
The courage and audacity of the revolutionary masses, and the ability of the Bolshevik Party to seize the time, have gone down forever as a landmark in history, proving that such a change could be made and that decisive leadership was the key. The decision to withdraw Russia from the conflict, helped to bring World War I to an end and inspired millions around the world. The Red Army’s ability to defeat the Nazi war machine in World War II – which was more significant than the fighting on the Western front - was due to the economic achievements of the revolution. The glasnost period of the 1980s opened up a new understanding of the phenomenal opposition to Stalinism.
Let American Communist John Reed, who set down the first major account of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World, have the last word: “It is fashionable,” he wrote in 1919 “… to speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an ‘adventure’. Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history as the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires… No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism.”
As the global economy lurches into its worst crisis since the Wall Street crash of 1929, against a background of climate chaos and military tensions, new political conditions are emerging. The need for humanity to open a new, non-capitalist chapter in history is as urgent a challenge now as it was for the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
First under Yeltsin and now under Putin, Russia has reverted to a capitalism where oligarchs, who effectively stole the state assets built up during the 90 years of the USSR, hold sway. Yet while the socialist property relations established by the October Revolution have been legally abolished, the legacy of revolution lives on in other forms.
The courage and audacity of the revolutionary masses, and the ability of the Bolshevik Party to seize the time, have gone down forever as a landmark in history, proving that such a change could be made and that decisive leadership was the key. The decision to withdraw Russia from the conflict, helped to bring World War I to an end and inspired millions around the world. The Red Army’s ability to defeat the Nazi war machine in World War II – which was more significant than the fighting on the Western front - was due to the economic achievements of the revolution. The glasnost period of the 1980s opened up a new understanding of the phenomenal opposition to Stalinism.
Let American Communist John Reed, who set down the first major account of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World, have the last word: “It is fashionable,” he wrote in 1919 “… to speak of the Bolshevik insurrection as an ‘adventure’. Adventure it was, and one of the most marvellous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history as the head of the toiling masses, and staking everything on their vast and simple desires… No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism.”
As the global economy lurches into its worst crisis since the Wall Street crash of 1929, against a background of climate chaos and military tensions, new political conditions are emerging. The need for humanity to open a new, non-capitalist chapter in history is as urgent a challenge now as it was for the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
New Labour plays race card
Targeting immigrant workers is becoming the number one priority for governments from Italy, to Switzerland and Britain. In Italy, Romanian and other foreign nationals have had their shanty homes in Rome torn down and been rounded up for deportation after an emergency presidential decree. The fact that the measures contravene EU laws are simply ignored by the authorities. In Britain, New Labour is announcing yet another immigration bill to add to the one already going through Parliament, while new so-called anti-terror measures also included in its legislative programme are directly aimed at the Muslim community in this country.
Playing the racist, nationalist card is a sign that governments have no policies for tackling the issues generated by the movement of people in search of work and a future and instead cynically manipulate public opinion in search of few grubby votes. The way it works is quite simple. New Labour promotes flexible, cheap labour as the basis of a “competitive” economy but turns a blind eye to the social consequences. Local authorities struggle to provide sufficient housing and education for newcomers without additional financial support from central government, which doesn’t even keep proper statistics. Racists then use the tensions that arise to stir up hatred of foreigners in general. So the government brings in another piece of anti-immigrant legislation, stoking up the atmosphere still further.
The tone was set as soon as Gordon Brown took over as prime minister. He pronounced that there would be “British jobs for British workers”, even though this is totally unworkable and is also against EU law. Then at his party’s charade of a conference, Brown used the term British or Britishness over 80 times against a backdrop of Union Jacks. So while the country’s banking system falls apart, Brown’s priority is to bring in a new measure that will require people from outside the EU to pass an English test before being allowed to live and work in Britain.
As Tara Mukherjee, president of the Confederation of Indian Organisations, said it would mean that people from English-speaking countries, which are predominantly white, would have no difficulty in passing the tests, while those from non-English speaking countries, which are predominantly non-white, will be disadvantaged. In other words, it’s a racist bill. Rhian Beynon, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, also attacked the new language test requirements: "It already seems bizarre and discriminatory to non-Europeans, particularly to those from countries where English is spoken, that they should meet an English language requirement to enter, work and settle here while nationals of countries such as Poland and Italy do not."
Connected to the isolation of foreign, non-white nationals is the proposal to extend the time that terror suspects can be detained without charge from 28 days to probably double that. No surprise then that the day before the announcement, up pops Jonathan Evans, the head of the spy agency MI5, to claim that there are hundreds of terror plots under way in Britain. This is part of the softening up process to force the detention plans through Parliament and make the Muslim community even more of a target than it already is. Who need the far-right British National Party when you’ve got New Labour-MI5 running the state?
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Playing the racist, nationalist card is a sign that governments have no policies for tackling the issues generated by the movement of people in search of work and a future and instead cynically manipulate public opinion in search of few grubby votes. The way it works is quite simple. New Labour promotes flexible, cheap labour as the basis of a “competitive” economy but turns a blind eye to the social consequences. Local authorities struggle to provide sufficient housing and education for newcomers without additional financial support from central government, which doesn’t even keep proper statistics. Racists then use the tensions that arise to stir up hatred of foreigners in general. So the government brings in another piece of anti-immigrant legislation, stoking up the atmosphere still further.
The tone was set as soon as Gordon Brown took over as prime minister. He pronounced that there would be “British jobs for British workers”, even though this is totally unworkable and is also against EU law. Then at his party’s charade of a conference, Brown used the term British or Britishness over 80 times against a backdrop of Union Jacks. So while the country’s banking system falls apart, Brown’s priority is to bring in a new measure that will require people from outside the EU to pass an English test before being allowed to live and work in Britain.
As Tara Mukherjee, president of the Confederation of Indian Organisations, said it would mean that people from English-speaking countries, which are predominantly white, would have no difficulty in passing the tests, while those from non-English speaking countries, which are predominantly non-white, will be disadvantaged. In other words, it’s a racist bill. Rhian Beynon, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, also attacked the new language test requirements: "It already seems bizarre and discriminatory to non-Europeans, particularly to those from countries where English is spoken, that they should meet an English language requirement to enter, work and settle here while nationals of countries such as Poland and Italy do not."
Connected to the isolation of foreign, non-white nationals is the proposal to extend the time that terror suspects can be detained without charge from 28 days to probably double that. No surprise then that the day before the announcement, up pops Jonathan Evans, the head of the spy agency MI5, to claim that there are hundreds of terror plots under way in Britain. This is part of the softening up process to force the detention plans through Parliament and make the Muslim community even more of a target than it already is. Who need the far-right British National Party when you’ve got New Labour-MI5 running the state?
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Monday, November 05, 2007
Citigroup's 'assets' bonfire
When the world’s largest bank has to ask its chief executive and chairman to go because up to $11 billion of its assets are actually not worth the paper they are printed on, you know that the global financial crisis has entered deeper into the unknown. Citigroup, whose nominal assets – and nominal is the operative word here - are larger than the annual value of the British economy’s output, parted company with Chuck Prince on a Sunday night of all things. Citigroup’s losses announced relate to just one portion of the bank’s business – the sub-prime housing market. This is a bank which grew its assets – primarily its lending – by an astonishing 48% over the past 21 months. Now questions are being asked the real worth of all these “assets”.
Prince’s departure came hot on the heels of the resignation of Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal, who was in charge of the investment bank as it ran up losses of $8 billion on mortgage-related debt. These gigantic losses stem from the banks’ involvement in what is euphemistically termed the sub-prime market in the United States where people with no income, no jobs and no assets – Ninjas – were encouraged to take out a mortgage on the basis of rising house prices.
Many of these mortgages were sold by unscrupulous and little regulated mortgage brokers, who received handsome commissions for selling expensive and unsuitable products. Then mortgage companies sold the debts on as securities packaged into “collateralised debt obligations” (CDOs). These were then traded around the world as if they totally-secure government bonds and ended up in the hands of Citigroup and Merill Lynch, as well as European banks in Germany, France and the UK (where Barclays is rumoured to be in difficulties).
The trouble is, the bottom has fallen out of the US sub-prime market. There have already been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates by the US Congress's joint economic committee. In Cleveland, Ohio, an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie, one in ten homes in the city is now vacant because of repossessions. The company making the most foreclosures in Cleveland is Deutsche Bank Trust.
While the German bank has loads of properties on its books that no one wants to buy, Citigroup and institutions around the world are left holding worthless CDOs – worthless because they can’t sell them on as the market for CDOs has seized up as part of the credit crunch. Or as Citigroup’s statement said, its securitised mortgage-backed debt obligations "are not subject to valuation based on observable market transactions". Overall, there are over $1 trillion worth of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities outstanding throughout the world.
Just in case you thought the global financial system was in melt-down, you can be reassured by the soothing words of Alistair Darling, the British chancellor. He appeared on radio just after dawn today to tell us that concerns should be kept "in perspective" because British banks had “very strong balance sheets”. Yet the failed Northern Rock bank has already used up £23 billion in government-backed loans – which the state will never get back. Darling added: "We have a strong economy, its momentum will carry us through." That’s alright then, except that the UK economy’s growth is largely founded on an unprecedented rise in house prices combined with easy credit. One million people are estimated to use their credit cards to pay their mortgages. This can’t go on, and Darling knows it. The crisis at Citigroup is the latest twist in the unravelling of financial system rooted in fantasy, whose collapse will take the productive economy down with it. On bonfire night in Britain, bankers are piling up assets for putting on the fire.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Prince’s departure came hot on the heels of the resignation of Merrill Lynch’s Stan O’Neal, who was in charge of the investment bank as it ran up losses of $8 billion on mortgage-related debt. These gigantic losses stem from the banks’ involvement in what is euphemistically termed the sub-prime market in the United States where people with no income, no jobs and no assets – Ninjas – were encouraged to take out a mortgage on the basis of rising house prices.
Many of these mortgages were sold by unscrupulous and little regulated mortgage brokers, who received handsome commissions for selling expensive and unsuitable products. Then mortgage companies sold the debts on as securities packaged into “collateralised debt obligations” (CDOs). These were then traded around the world as if they totally-secure government bonds and ended up in the hands of Citigroup and Merill Lynch, as well as European banks in Germany, France and the UK (where Barclays is rumoured to be in difficulties).
The trouble is, the bottom has fallen out of the US sub-prime market. There have already been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates by the US Congress's joint economic committee. In Cleveland, Ohio, an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie, one in ten homes in the city is now vacant because of repossessions. The company making the most foreclosures in Cleveland is Deutsche Bank Trust.
While the German bank has loads of properties on its books that no one wants to buy, Citigroup and institutions around the world are left holding worthless CDOs – worthless because they can’t sell them on as the market for CDOs has seized up as part of the credit crunch. Or as Citigroup’s statement said, its securitised mortgage-backed debt obligations "are not subject to valuation based on observable market transactions". Overall, there are over $1 trillion worth of sub-prime mortgage-backed securities outstanding throughout the world.
Just in case you thought the global financial system was in melt-down, you can be reassured by the soothing words of Alistair Darling, the British chancellor. He appeared on radio just after dawn today to tell us that concerns should be kept "in perspective" because British banks had “very strong balance sheets”. Yet the failed Northern Rock bank has already used up £23 billion in government-backed loans – which the state will never get back. Darling added: "We have a strong economy, its momentum will carry us through." That’s alright then, except that the UK economy’s growth is largely founded on an unprecedented rise in house prices combined with easy credit. One million people are estimated to use their credit cards to pay their mortgages. This can’t go on, and Darling knows it. The crisis at Citigroup is the latest twist in the unravelling of financial system rooted in fantasy, whose collapse will take the productive economy down with it. On bonfire night in Britain, bankers are piling up assets for putting on the fire.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Friday, November 02, 2007
Energy firms cash in on fuel poverty
As winter looms, many millions of people in Britain are preparing for a winter of shivering cold in badly insulated homes that they can’t afford to heat. And the poorer people are, the more likely they are to be penalised in terms of fuel costs and insulation. Four million UK households live in fuel poverty, says Energywatch, and pre-pay meters are a major contributing factor.
A report from Energywatch shows that customers using pre-pay meters are paying far more for their energy than other customers. More than three million people, normally those on low incomes, pay for their energy in this way. This method of payment is often pushed on people if they have had trouble paying their bills in the past, or have a poor credit record.
A league table published by the National Housing Federation shows that Npower is the worst offender, charging up to £110 per year more to its pre-pay meter customers than to standard credit customers who pay by cheque. The three next worst are Powergen, British Gas and SSE. Massive price rises since 2003 mean that average domestic gas bills have increased by 94% and average electricity bills by 60%. Taken together, these increases mean the average household energy bill broke through the £1,000 barrier in 2006. In 2003 the average was £572.
Another key factor in fuel poverty is badly-insulated homes. But National Energy Action (NEA) the campaign for warmer homes, says the amount the government gives in grant to improve energy efficiency, at £2,700 per household, falls far short of today’s cost for doing the work. Unless people have money to top up the grant, their houses remain uninsulated. But if they had money they wouldn’t qualify for a grant in the first place! An NEA report shows that 75% of households who struggle to afford heating, also live in the worst-insulated houses. Winter deaths amongst the old is higher in the UK than for countries with similar climates and living standards and a key factor affecting this is the poor standard of insulation
And at the other end of the age range, Barnardo's assistant director of policy, Neera Sharma says: "3.8 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty and many of those are living in fuel poverty. It is morally outrageous that in the fifth richest country in the world parents have to decide between 'eating' or 'heating.”
Npower’s German parent company RWE made £1.68bn profit last year. All the energy companies will rake in profits this winter while elderly people die before their time and children go off shivering to school. Bringing energy generation and distribution into co-ownership is an urgent environmental and human rights question. Local democratically-run energy boards could then develop plans that use the most locally-appropriate and environmentally-friendly methods to deliver cheap warmth to all homes, alongside a comprehensive insulation programme.
Penny Cole
AWTW environment editor
A report from Energywatch shows that customers using pre-pay meters are paying far more for their energy than other customers. More than three million people, normally those on low incomes, pay for their energy in this way. This method of payment is often pushed on people if they have had trouble paying their bills in the past, or have a poor credit record.
A league table published by the National Housing Federation shows that Npower is the worst offender, charging up to £110 per year more to its pre-pay meter customers than to standard credit customers who pay by cheque. The three next worst are Powergen, British Gas and SSE. Massive price rises since 2003 mean that average domestic gas bills have increased by 94% and average electricity bills by 60%. Taken together, these increases mean the average household energy bill broke through the £1,000 barrier in 2006. In 2003 the average was £572.
Another key factor in fuel poverty is badly-insulated homes. But National Energy Action (NEA) the campaign for warmer homes, says the amount the government gives in grant to improve energy efficiency, at £2,700 per household, falls far short of today’s cost for doing the work. Unless people have money to top up the grant, their houses remain uninsulated. But if they had money they wouldn’t qualify for a grant in the first place! An NEA report shows that 75% of households who struggle to afford heating, also live in the worst-insulated houses. Winter deaths amongst the old is higher in the UK than for countries with similar climates and living standards and a key factor affecting this is the poor standard of insulation
And at the other end of the age range, Barnardo's assistant director of policy, Neera Sharma says: "3.8 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty and many of those are living in fuel poverty. It is morally outrageous that in the fifth richest country in the world parents have to decide between 'eating' or 'heating.”
Npower’s German parent company RWE made £1.68bn profit last year. All the energy companies will rake in profits this winter while elderly people die before their time and children go off shivering to school. Bringing energy generation and distribution into co-ownership is an urgent environmental and human rights question. Local democratically-run energy boards could then develop plans that use the most locally-appropriate and environmentally-friendly methods to deliver cheap warmth to all homes, alongside a comprehensive insulation programme.
Penny Cole
AWTW environment editor
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Protecting the powerful
Campaigners are surprised and even shocked that the Competition Commission has ignored mounting evidence about how the big four supermarkets crush competitors, force local shops to close and squeeze suppliers dry. But they shouldn’t be, because the commission’s primary function is to protect the oligopoly that exists in food retailing, with Tesco’s 30% share of the market (plus £3bn in annual profits) growing by the day.
The commission chose to ignore an unprecedented level of public interest in the investigation, with over 35,000 people writing to express their concern about supermarkets. The 269-page report, the fourth major investigation into supermarket competition since 1999, said small shops had nothing to fear from Tesco and Sainbury's convenience stores. It claimed there was “no adverse effect on competition” from the arrival of hundreds of Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local stores in neighbourhoods.
It went on to say that small shops “that provide consumers with a strong retail offer will continue to survive and prosper”. Yet statistics show that independent shops are closing at the rate of 2,000 a year and a recent report by the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group estimates that by 2015 “many small shops across the UK will have ceased trading… with few independent businesses taking their place”.
Little surprise then that Tesco’s shares hit an all-time high after the market judged it to have escaped largely unscathed from the investigation. The New Labour government too will be pleased at the commission’s findings. Lord Sainsbury is a major donor to the party while Sir Terence Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, is a government advisor.
Top of those disappointed by the commission’s report were Friends of the Earth. The two year long investigation into the grocery market was a direct result of a campaign it launched by submitting a proposal for a market study to the Office of Fair Trading, which was subsequently referred to the Competition Commission for a full inquiry. Friends of the Earth's food campaigner, Sandra Bell described yesterday’s report as “a totally inadequate response to the growing power of the big four supermarkets”, and added:
“The Competition Commission acknowledges that supermarkets bully their suppliers and reduce consumer choice, but then bizarrely recommends making it easier for them to expand. Unless urgent action is taken to curb the dominance of the big supermarkets Britain looks set to become an out of town chain store nation." Recent Friends of the Earth research highlighted how dairy farmers are struggling to break even and are unable to invest in greener farming, despite increased consumer demand for more environmentally-friendly produce. This coincided with allegations of dairy price fixing by supermarkets.
Friends of the Earth and others want yet more investigations as a way of curbing the power of the supermarkets. But these will be a complete waste of time. Supermarkets are a prime example of how corporate power has grown over the last 30 years. One of the key features of corporate-driven globalisation is the control of each sector of the economy by fewer and fewer firms. No regulator or government is capable of reversing this process, even if they wanted to, which they clearly don’t. Pressure and protest also count for little against the Tescos of this world. The solution does not lie in fruitless appeals to agencies like the Competition Commission but in campaigning for alternative, not-for-profit ways of owning and controlling food and other industries.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
The commission chose to ignore an unprecedented level of public interest in the investigation, with over 35,000 people writing to express their concern about supermarkets. The 269-page report, the fourth major investigation into supermarket competition since 1999, said small shops had nothing to fear from Tesco and Sainbury's convenience stores. It claimed there was “no adverse effect on competition” from the arrival of hundreds of Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local stores in neighbourhoods.
It went on to say that small shops “that provide consumers with a strong retail offer will continue to survive and prosper”. Yet statistics show that independent shops are closing at the rate of 2,000 a year and a recent report by the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group estimates that by 2015 “many small shops across the UK will have ceased trading… with few independent businesses taking their place”.
Little surprise then that Tesco’s shares hit an all-time high after the market judged it to have escaped largely unscathed from the investigation. The New Labour government too will be pleased at the commission’s findings. Lord Sainsbury is a major donor to the party while Sir Terence Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, is a government advisor.
Top of those disappointed by the commission’s report were Friends of the Earth. The two year long investigation into the grocery market was a direct result of a campaign it launched by submitting a proposal for a market study to the Office of Fair Trading, which was subsequently referred to the Competition Commission for a full inquiry. Friends of the Earth's food campaigner, Sandra Bell described yesterday’s report as “a totally inadequate response to the growing power of the big four supermarkets”, and added:
“The Competition Commission acknowledges that supermarkets bully their suppliers and reduce consumer choice, but then bizarrely recommends making it easier for them to expand. Unless urgent action is taken to curb the dominance of the big supermarkets Britain looks set to become an out of town chain store nation." Recent Friends of the Earth research highlighted how dairy farmers are struggling to break even and are unable to invest in greener farming, despite increased consumer demand for more environmentally-friendly produce. This coincided with allegations of dairy price fixing by supermarkets.
Friends of the Earth and others want yet more investigations as a way of curbing the power of the supermarkets. But these will be a complete waste of time. Supermarkets are a prime example of how corporate power has grown over the last 30 years. One of the key features of corporate-driven globalisation is the control of each sector of the economy by fewer and fewer firms. No regulator or government is capable of reversing this process, even if they wanted to, which they clearly don’t. Pressure and protest also count for little against the Tescos of this world. The solution does not lie in fruitless appeals to agencies like the Competition Commission but in campaigning for alternative, not-for-profit ways of owning and controlling food and other industries.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Gold soars: Dollar crashes
The price of gold and other precious metals is fast approaching record levels. The continued weakening of the dollar against other currencies – the lowest ever against the euro, together with spiralling prices for oil and other key commodities point to a deepening crisis for the global economy.
Crude-oil futures have reached a record $93.20 a barrel. Mexico has shut a fifth of its production. In the Middle East tensions involving Iran, the world's second-largest holder of oil reserves, and Iraq, the third-biggest, are building up. US central bank, the Federal Reserve is expected to make a further interest rate cut today, following the first cut in four years on September 18th, to 4.75%, as it attempts to lessen the impact of the deepening recession. Its action risks adding to the already rampant inflation resulting from the period of too-easy credit that ended in the sub-prime mortgage crash.
Investors looking for an inflation-proof home for their money have been turning to gold and other precious metals, thus driving prices to record levels. Though its use as the measure of all paper currencies was ended in 1971, gold continues to be used as a reliable defence against the falling value of paper money. At $798.30 an ounce, yesterday’s speculative price of gold for delivery in December is 24% higher than at the beginning of this year. This is the highest since the 1970s when huge inflation and deep recession produced the all-time record of $830 in 1980.
“The momentum in gold is building as the bleak outlook for the dollar becomes more apparent,” said James Turk, founder of GoldMoney.com, which had $214 million of gold and silver in storage for investors at the end of September. Investment bank Credit Suisse forecasts that the gold price will soar to more than $1,000 per ounce over the next five years as dwindling supply of the precious metal combines with increased demand. New sources are being opened up at a far lower rate than older mines are dying.
The increasing price of gold on global markets has encouraged workers to push for higher wages. Walkouts and strikes have occurred this year at mines in Papua New Guinea, in Tanzania and in Peru, a leading global metals producer. A nationwide strike in Peru is set for next week with 22 of 74 unions in the federation starting action on November 5. Over the weekend, the government set a new wage for union workers of Southern Copper in Peru after negotiating an end to an eight-day strike earlier this month. Meanwhile, union leaders from Barrick Gold’s Pierina mine in Peru and company officials said on Tuesday they reached a deal to raise wages and avert a strike. In the company’s Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania work has been halted due to what it termed an “illegal” strike, and it has fired about half of the mine's work force.
The labour conflicts in the mining industry will add to growing uncertainties in global commodity markets, already destabilised by the banking crisis and concerns over rising food prices.
Gerry Gold
AWTW economics editor
Crude-oil futures have reached a record $93.20 a barrel. Mexico has shut a fifth of its production. In the Middle East tensions involving Iran, the world's second-largest holder of oil reserves, and Iraq, the third-biggest, are building up. US central bank, the Federal Reserve is expected to make a further interest rate cut today, following the first cut in four years on September 18th, to 4.75%, as it attempts to lessen the impact of the deepening recession. Its action risks adding to the already rampant inflation resulting from the period of too-easy credit that ended in the sub-prime mortgage crash.
Investors looking for an inflation-proof home for their money have been turning to gold and other precious metals, thus driving prices to record levels. Though its use as the measure of all paper currencies was ended in 1971, gold continues to be used as a reliable defence against the falling value of paper money. At $798.30 an ounce, yesterday’s speculative price of gold for delivery in December is 24% higher than at the beginning of this year. This is the highest since the 1970s when huge inflation and deep recession produced the all-time record of $830 in 1980.
“The momentum in gold is building as the bleak outlook for the dollar becomes more apparent,” said James Turk, founder of GoldMoney.com, which had $214 million of gold and silver in storage for investors at the end of September. Investment bank Credit Suisse forecasts that the gold price will soar to more than $1,000 per ounce over the next five years as dwindling supply of the precious metal combines with increased demand. New sources are being opened up at a far lower rate than older mines are dying.
The increasing price of gold on global markets has encouraged workers to push for higher wages. Walkouts and strikes have occurred this year at mines in Papua New Guinea, in Tanzania and in Peru, a leading global metals producer. A nationwide strike in Peru is set for next week with 22 of 74 unions in the federation starting action on November 5. Over the weekend, the government set a new wage for union workers of Southern Copper in Peru after negotiating an end to an eight-day strike earlier this month. Meanwhile, union leaders from Barrick Gold’s Pierina mine in Peru and company officials said on Tuesday they reached a deal to raise wages and avert a strike. In the company’s Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania work has been halted due to what it termed an “illegal” strike, and it has fired about half of the mine's work force.
The labour conflicts in the mining industry will add to growing uncertainties in global commodity markets, already destabilised by the banking crisis and concerns over rising food prices.
Gerry Gold
AWTW economics editor
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Saudi Arabia: an inconvenient truth
So, according to a New Labour foreign office minister, Britain and Saudi Arabia’s feudal absolute monarchy should work more closely together on the basis of “shared values”. Kim Howells declined to elaborate whether these might include routine torture, imprisonment without trial, amputations, beheadings, stoning, endemic corruption, discrimination against women and gay people as well as support for those who attack Shia Muslims on the basis that they are not “true believers”. Amnesty International says that at least 124 people have been executed in Saudi so far this year, the majority by beheading.
You can be sure that none of these issues will be raised at Buckingham Palace today when the Saudi entourage dine with the Queen or tomorrow when King Abdullah meets Gordon Brown, the man who declared at his party conference that human rights were “universal”. If he wasn’t such a hypocrite, Brown might have added: “There are, of course, exceptions. Our allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt have special problems in this regard.” But, let’s face it, Brown is like any other Western leader when it comes to turning a blind eye to human rights abuses when it is politically (or economically) inconvenient.
The inconvenience in this case revolves around oil and weapons. Britain’s relationship with the feudal tyranny is a simple one. You sell us the oil and we will give you as many fighter planes and weapons as you want. And if, along the way, companies like BAE have to pay serious bribes to members of the royal family to win a £40bn contract, we will make sure the British police don’t investigate on grounds of “national security”. Only last month Britain and Saudi Arabia announced a deal for the sale of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to the desert kingdom for £4.4bn. Whitehall officials said the potential total value of the contract would be much higher. As always, the contract details are secret.
So the “shared values” Howells talks about are simply a variation on the theme of blood for oil – except in this case it is Saudi blood that is spilled when people try and gain some democratic rights. Apart from John McDonnell – who denounced Howells’ statement – there is a noticeable silence from government benches, which is a further indication of the political degeneration of New Labour into a party of big business that will do anything in the name trade and commerce. It was left to the Liberal Democrats' acting leader Vince Cable to denounce the state visit, while Chris Huhne, a leadership candidate, said: "The accolade of a full state visit is quite wrong. We are feting the reactionary leader of a society that discriminates against women, tortures prisoners, conducts public executions, amputates limbs as a punishment, and bans freedom of expression, assembly and religion. Saudi Arabia's human rights record is atrocious."
But a Foreign Office spokesman said: "Saudi Arabia is one of the UK's most important international partners. King Abdullah's visit will further deepen and broaden that relationship." The message is clear: the greasing of palms will continue. So will the beheadings and the torture. In Downing Street, the hypocrite will continue to prattle on about human rights. Meanwhile, the cries of the victims of the despotic Saudi regime will be drowned out by the sound of British-made fighter planes soaring overhead.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communcations editor
You can be sure that none of these issues will be raised at Buckingham Palace today when the Saudi entourage dine with the Queen or tomorrow when King Abdullah meets Gordon Brown, the man who declared at his party conference that human rights were “universal”. If he wasn’t such a hypocrite, Brown might have added: “There are, of course, exceptions. Our allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt have special problems in this regard.” But, let’s face it, Brown is like any other Western leader when it comes to turning a blind eye to human rights abuses when it is politically (or economically) inconvenient.
The inconvenience in this case revolves around oil and weapons. Britain’s relationship with the feudal tyranny is a simple one. You sell us the oil and we will give you as many fighter planes and weapons as you want. And if, along the way, companies like BAE have to pay serious bribes to members of the royal family to win a £40bn contract, we will make sure the British police don’t investigate on grounds of “national security”. Only last month Britain and Saudi Arabia announced a deal for the sale of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to the desert kingdom for £4.4bn. Whitehall officials said the potential total value of the contract would be much higher. As always, the contract details are secret.
So the “shared values” Howells talks about are simply a variation on the theme of blood for oil – except in this case it is Saudi blood that is spilled when people try and gain some democratic rights. Apart from John McDonnell – who denounced Howells’ statement – there is a noticeable silence from government benches, which is a further indication of the political degeneration of New Labour into a party of big business that will do anything in the name trade and commerce. It was left to the Liberal Democrats' acting leader Vince Cable to denounce the state visit, while Chris Huhne, a leadership candidate, said: "The accolade of a full state visit is quite wrong. We are feting the reactionary leader of a society that discriminates against women, tortures prisoners, conducts public executions, amputates limbs as a punishment, and bans freedom of expression, assembly and religion. Saudi Arabia's human rights record is atrocious."
But a Foreign Office spokesman said: "Saudi Arabia is one of the UK's most important international partners. King Abdullah's visit will further deepen and broaden that relationship." The message is clear: the greasing of palms will continue. So will the beheadings and the torture. In Downing Street, the hypocrite will continue to prattle on about human rights. Meanwhile, the cries of the victims of the despotic Saudi regime will be drowned out by the sound of British-made fighter planes soaring overhead.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communcations editor
Monday, October 29, 2007
Renewables target ditched
On the day scientists announced that the Earth’s ability to soak up carbon emissions has dramatically declined, while at the same time we are seeing an acceleration in the rise of atmospheric carbon levels, it was revealed that the government is about to ditch a commitment to expand renewable energy generation.
A secret government document published by The Guardian makes it plain that New Labour is abandoning European Union agreements to increase renewables to provide 20% of all energy by 2020. As you would expect from this government, this suggestion doesn’t come from a climate scientist but from the Secretary of State for Business, John Hutton. Despite the cries of betrayal by environmental campaigners, the government’s Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, is already trying his Orwellian best to re-write history by saying that the EU target was not specific to the UK.
Providing this amount of renewable energy “costs too much” complains the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (it has forecast that it would cost £4bn a year to achieve 9% of energy being produced from renewable sources). Even if it was going to cost £10bn a year to achieve 20% of energy generated from renewable sources this would only be 1% of the UK’s Gross National Product. One would think this represents a good investment in the future of the planet. Alternatively, the profits from an oil company or two could be expropriated to finance the required investment. Following the privatisation of energy industries this type of planning is now impossible.
Another reason for this change of heart is the government’s fear that providing so much renewable energy will undermine the EU’s carbon trading scheme, which has already been exposed as a fraud and which has no impact on overall levels of carbon emissions. Clearly New Labour’s market state cannot countenance any disruption to new opportunities for profit generation through the trading scheme’s commodification of carbon emissions. The government is quite prepared to change any policy at the drop of a hat to allow global capital to carry on carbon trading rather than trying to save the planet.
While the government is conspiring to set lower targets for renewable energy, a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the efficiency of forests and oceans to absorb carbon has fallen significantly over the last 50 years (as carbon emissions have accelerated with the expansion of global capitalism) and they are no longer able to absorb as much carbon as they previously did. The effect of this is that climate “feedback” mechanisms, which scientist thought were decades away from happening, are already starting to happen.
The Brown government has no answers whatsoever to the climate change crisis because it is locked into the status quo of the market economy. There is now a desperate need to move society beyond this failing system and create new social structures in which we can establish sustainable energy industries, owned and operated by its own workers and the communities they serve. These should be run on a not-for-profit basis, rather than relying on markets fueled by profits. This approach would be part of a plan to solve the eco-crisis we are facing through a planned transition to the use of a range of renewable energy sources for all our needs.
Stuart Barlow
A secret government document published by The Guardian makes it plain that New Labour is abandoning European Union agreements to increase renewables to provide 20% of all energy by 2020. As you would expect from this government, this suggestion doesn’t come from a climate scientist but from the Secretary of State for Business, John Hutton. Despite the cries of betrayal by environmental campaigners, the government’s Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, is already trying his Orwellian best to re-write history by saying that the EU target was not specific to the UK.
Providing this amount of renewable energy “costs too much” complains the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (it has forecast that it would cost £4bn a year to achieve 9% of energy being produced from renewable sources). Even if it was going to cost £10bn a year to achieve 20% of energy generated from renewable sources this would only be 1% of the UK’s Gross National Product. One would think this represents a good investment in the future of the planet. Alternatively, the profits from an oil company or two could be expropriated to finance the required investment. Following the privatisation of energy industries this type of planning is now impossible.
Another reason for this change of heart is the government’s fear that providing so much renewable energy will undermine the EU’s carbon trading scheme, which has already been exposed as a fraud and which has no impact on overall levels of carbon emissions. Clearly New Labour’s market state cannot countenance any disruption to new opportunities for profit generation through the trading scheme’s commodification of carbon emissions. The government is quite prepared to change any policy at the drop of a hat to allow global capital to carry on carbon trading rather than trying to save the planet.
While the government is conspiring to set lower targets for renewable energy, a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that the efficiency of forests and oceans to absorb carbon has fallen significantly over the last 50 years (as carbon emissions have accelerated with the expansion of global capitalism) and they are no longer able to absorb as much carbon as they previously did. The effect of this is that climate “feedback” mechanisms, which scientist thought were decades away from happening, are already starting to happen.
The Brown government has no answers whatsoever to the climate change crisis because it is locked into the status quo of the market economy. There is now a desperate need to move society beyond this failing system and create new social structures in which we can establish sustainable energy industries, owned and operated by its own workers and the communities they serve. These should be run on a not-for-profit basis, rather than relying on markets fueled by profits. This approach would be part of a plan to solve the eco-crisis we are facing through a planned transition to the use of a range of renewable energy sources for all our needs.
Stuart Barlow
Friday, October 26, 2007
Simply not sustainable
Twenty years ago, a commission convened by the United Nations put forward the concept of “sustainable development” as a way that capitalism, growth and protection of the environment could live in perfect harmony. The World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission) called its report Our Common Future. Yesterday the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP) had to admit failure as it painted a bleak picture in an assessment of the two decades since the original report.
The Bruntland Commission, far from offering a way to defend the environment, offered global corporations a green light. They could on growing at a rapacious rate, ripping out resources and burning fossil fuels as long as they could demonstrate they were doing their bit for “sustainability”. Twenty years later the bill has come in. UNEP, in a report prepared by about 390 experts and reviewed by more than 1 000 others across the world, admits: "There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable." The critical findings of the GEO-4 report include:
Atmosphere
A best estimate for this century's rise is expected to be between a further 1.8°C and °C. Ice cores show that the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane are now far outside their ranges of natural variability over the last 500,000 years: the Earth's climate has entered a state unparalleled in recent prehistory. The average temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as rapidly as in the rest of the world. Sea-level rise caused by thermal expansion of water and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets will continue for the foreseeable future.
Pollution
More than 50 000 compounds are used commercially, hundreds more are added annually, and global chemical production is projected to increase by 85% over the next 20 years. Environmental exposure causes almost a quarter of all diseases. More than two million people worldwide are estimated to die prematurely every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution.
Food
Losses in total global farm production, due to insect pests, have been estimated at about 1%. Since 1987 the expansion of cropland has slackened, but land use intensity has increased dramatically. Unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change and biodiversity loss. It affects up to a third of the world's people.
Biodiversity
About 60% of the ecosystem services that have been assessed are degraded or used unsustainably; populations of freshwater vertebrates declined on average by nearly 50% from 1987 to 2003, much faster than terrestrial or marine species. Over half the world's 6,000 languages are endangered, and some believe up to 90% of all languages may not survive this century.
Water
Of the world's major rivers, 10% fail to reach the sea for part of each year because of irrigation demands. In developing countries some 3 million people die annually from water-borne diseases, most of them under-five-year-olds. An estimated 2.6 billion people lack improved sanitation services.
There is absolutely no sign that the warnings contained in the UNEP report, as well as the conclusions on global warming reached by other UN groups, will have any impact on the way business is conducted. The report admits, for example, that while climate change is a "global priority", demanding political will and leadership, it finds "a remarkable lack of urgency", and a "woefully inadequate" global response. GEO-4 even acknowledges that "... some industrial sectors that were unfavourable to the...[Kyoto] Protocol managed successfully to undermine the political will to ratify it”.
Given this muted indictment of corporate power, GEO-4’s call for "fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes” if rapid progress is to be achieved are simply hot air. What the UNEP report inadvertently does is to demonstrate conclusively that sustainability and global capitalism are incompatible. An economic system where nature is exploited as just another source of profit in the name of growth, is the problem and not the solution.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
The Bruntland Commission, far from offering a way to defend the environment, offered global corporations a green light. They could on growing at a rapacious rate, ripping out resources and burning fossil fuels as long as they could demonstrate they were doing their bit for “sustainability”. Twenty years later the bill has come in. UNEP, in a report prepared by about 390 experts and reviewed by more than 1 000 others across the world, admits: "There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable." The critical findings of the GEO-4 report include:
Atmosphere
A best estimate for this century's rise is expected to be between a further 1.8°C and °C. Ice cores show that the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane are now far outside their ranges of natural variability over the last 500,000 years: the Earth's climate has entered a state unparalleled in recent prehistory. The average temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as rapidly as in the rest of the world. Sea-level rise caused by thermal expansion of water and the melting of glaciers and ice sheets will continue for the foreseeable future.
Pollution
More than 50 000 compounds are used commercially, hundreds more are added annually, and global chemical production is projected to increase by 85% over the next 20 years. Environmental exposure causes almost a quarter of all diseases. More than two million people worldwide are estimated to die prematurely every year from indoor and outdoor air pollution.
Food
Losses in total global farm production, due to insect pests, have been estimated at about 1%. Since 1987 the expansion of cropland has slackened, but land use intensity has increased dramatically. Unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change and biodiversity loss. It affects up to a third of the world's people.
Biodiversity
About 60% of the ecosystem services that have been assessed are degraded or used unsustainably; populations of freshwater vertebrates declined on average by nearly 50% from 1987 to 2003, much faster than terrestrial or marine species. Over half the world's 6,000 languages are endangered, and some believe up to 90% of all languages may not survive this century.
Water
Of the world's major rivers, 10% fail to reach the sea for part of each year because of irrigation demands. In developing countries some 3 million people die annually from water-borne diseases, most of them under-five-year-olds. An estimated 2.6 billion people lack improved sanitation services.
There is absolutely no sign that the warnings contained in the UNEP report, as well as the conclusions on global warming reached by other UN groups, will have any impact on the way business is conducted. The report admits, for example, that while climate change is a "global priority", demanding political will and leadership, it finds "a remarkable lack of urgency", and a "woefully inadequate" global response. GEO-4 even acknowledges that "... some industrial sectors that were unfavourable to the...[Kyoto] Protocol managed successfully to undermine the political will to ratify it”.
Given this muted indictment of corporate power, GEO-4’s call for "fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes” if rapid progress is to be achieved are simply hot air. What the UNEP report inadvertently does is to demonstrate conclusively that sustainability and global capitalism are incompatible. An economic system where nature is exploited as just another source of profit in the name of growth, is the problem and not the solution.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Let them eat cake
In the popular imagination, Queen Marie Antoinette is believed to have sparked the French Revolution when she said of the starving poor, “Let them eat cake”. True or not, the price of food is again a dangerous political issue. Warning signs are coming from around the world that food price increases will cause major social unrest in the poorest as well as the richest nations.
Yesterday the Russian government signed an agreement with food producers and retailers to freeze the price of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil until the end of the year. The Kremlin pretended that the controls were a voluntary measure by the food industry, but it is known that “they were told to fix prices voluntarily – or else”, according to observers in Moscow. Putin’s move is clearly an attempt to keep the electorate quiet in advance of December’s elections. Nevertheless, the move shocked many in the ruling oligarchy who have got rich from the free market capitalism introduced after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and who thought price controls were a thing of the past.
But it is not only Russia which is faced with a crisis. Speaking in London yesterday, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf said that rocketing food and energy prices could trigger political upheaval and riots in developing countries. The FAO’s food price index in July stood at its highest level since it was begun in 1990, and is almost 70% higher than in 2000.“If food prices continue to be high, there are risks of riots. If you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food prices, then you have the element of a very serious crisis in the future,” he said.
Food costs account for the bulk of people’s income in the world’s poorest countries, including Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Yemen and Mexico. Diouf estimates that 854 million people around the world are severely malnourished, most of them in Africa and Asia. Soaring prices are also causing hardship in North Korea, where the cost of rice has doubled from this time last year.
But wealthy food producing countries like the UK and Canada are also affected. This week, the leading Canadian economist Jeff Rubin warned that America’s policy of subsidising ethanol has led to a 60% rise in corn prices in the past two years. A bushel of corn now sells at nearly $4. High corn prices are disastrous for poor Latin Americans who use corn for tortillas. Corn is also a major animal feed so its price affects meat prices and derivatives like corn syrup used in processed foods. Nonetheless the Bush administration plans to raise US ethanol production from one billion gallons in 2000 to 35 billion in 2017 and the Canadian government has pledged a $1.5 billion investment over seven years to promote fuels like ethanol.
In Britain, the price of a loaf has gone up from 80p on average to 91p in the last year, while minced beef has increased from £1.08 a pound to £2.21 amidst warnings that the era of cheap food is over. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs admits that food security was becoming a “matter of concern”. The looming food crisis is the clearest indicator that unbridled capitalist globalisation under the free trade system enforced by the WTO and other global bodies is an unmitigated disaster.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
Yesterday the Russian government signed an agreement with food producers and retailers to freeze the price of bread, cheese, milk, eggs and vegetable oil until the end of the year. The Kremlin pretended that the controls were a voluntary measure by the food industry, but it is known that “they were told to fix prices voluntarily – or else”, according to observers in Moscow. Putin’s move is clearly an attempt to keep the electorate quiet in advance of December’s elections. Nevertheless, the move shocked many in the ruling oligarchy who have got rich from the free market capitalism introduced after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 and who thought price controls were a thing of the past.
But it is not only Russia which is faced with a crisis. Speaking in London yesterday, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) chief Jacques Diouf said that rocketing food and energy prices could trigger political upheaval and riots in developing countries. The FAO’s food price index in July stood at its highest level since it was begun in 1990, and is almost 70% higher than in 2000.“If food prices continue to be high, there are risks of riots. If you combine the increase of oil prices and the increase of food prices, then you have the element of a very serious crisis in the future,” he said.
Food costs account for the bulk of people’s income in the world’s poorest countries, including Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Yemen and Mexico. Diouf estimates that 854 million people around the world are severely malnourished, most of them in Africa and Asia. Soaring prices are also causing hardship in North Korea, where the cost of rice has doubled from this time last year.
But wealthy food producing countries like the UK and Canada are also affected. This week, the leading Canadian economist Jeff Rubin warned that America’s policy of subsidising ethanol has led to a 60% rise in corn prices in the past two years. A bushel of corn now sells at nearly $4. High corn prices are disastrous for poor Latin Americans who use corn for tortillas. Corn is also a major animal feed so its price affects meat prices and derivatives like corn syrup used in processed foods. Nonetheless the Bush administration plans to raise US ethanol production from one billion gallons in 2000 to 35 billion in 2017 and the Canadian government has pledged a $1.5 billion investment over seven years to promote fuels like ethanol.
In Britain, the price of a loaf has gone up from 80p on average to 91p in the last year, while minced beef has increased from £1.08 a pound to £2.21 amidst warnings that the era of cheap food is over. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs admits that food security was becoming a “matter of concern”. The looming food crisis is the clearest indicator that unbridled capitalist globalisation under the free trade system enforced by the WTO and other global bodies is an unmitigated disaster.
Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Global push for rice ‘suicide seed’
The seed industry will do whatever it takes to stop farmers saving seeds. The only way it can make big money from seeds is to force farmers to buy from seed companies every year. With rice, one of the world’s most important crops, it is no wonder that there is a relentless push for a hybrid variety that is essentially sterile. Suicide seeds, so to speak. At the heart of this race for hybrid rice are the transnational corporations as well as the Chinese government, according to a new assessment by GRAIN, which promotes sustainable development and agricultural biodiversity based on people’s control of genetic resources and local knowledge.
The seed industry talks of higher yields and big profits for farmers to try and sell hybrid rice. But the situation in the fields is quite the reverse. In 2005, GRAIN released a report documenting the dismal performance of hybrid rice in Asia. The only country that was said to be reaping success from it was China, the birthplace of the hybrid rice “miracle”. But on a return visit, farmers in China confirmed that a wide gap existed between the yield projections made by scientists in the laboratory and farmers’ experiences in the field. Some farmers reported no increase at all in yields and, in areas where there were rises, they were modest and owed much to the liberal use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and steady irrigation. The Chinese peasants GRAIN met said that after three decades of hybrid rice development they were as poor as ever.
In some Asian countries where farmers are still growing hybrid rice, it is often only because of government programmes that heavily subsidise it or, as in the case of China and Burma, that leave farmers no other option. “Yet governments continue unperturbed with their ambitious projects to promote hybrid rice. In Asia and Africa, it is hailed as key to meeting the millennium development goal of food security. Packed within broad co-operation agreements that include oil exploration or agrofuel production, it is also seen as an important component of addressing the impending energy crisis,” says GRAIN. Field trials are also under way in Spain and Italy.
China is at the centre of this emergent transnational rice seed industry. Some of the corporates moving in on rice seeds are well-known transnationals, such as the pesticide and seed giants Bayer, DuPont and Monsanto or the agribusiness titan Charoen Pokphand. GRAIN says: “The Chinese corporations, operating inside and outside China, may be less well known, but they are pursuing the same path as these larger seed corporations, perhaps even more aggressively. Hybrid rice is indeed their entry point on to the stage of the global seed industry, and they have the backing of the Chinese government’s growing international presence to help things along.” Chinese companies and the country’s top public agricultural research system, has deals with Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Madagascar and a number of African countries, including Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Ghana, Egypt and Nigeria.
GRAIN concludes: “The threat that hybrid rice is posing to farmers’ agricultural biodiversity is no longer confined to genetic erosion. Many of the companies involved in this current hybrid rice explosion are also developing GM rice, and are involved in various incidents of contamination. They are taking control of the rapidly changing seed system. This undermines farmers’ livelihoods and food sovereignty, and eats at the very core of sustainable farming.”
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
The seed industry talks of higher yields and big profits for farmers to try and sell hybrid rice. But the situation in the fields is quite the reverse. In 2005, GRAIN released a report documenting the dismal performance of hybrid rice in Asia. The only country that was said to be reaping success from it was China, the birthplace of the hybrid rice “miracle”. But on a return visit, farmers in China confirmed that a wide gap existed between the yield projections made by scientists in the laboratory and farmers’ experiences in the field. Some farmers reported no increase at all in yields and, in areas where there were rises, they were modest and owed much to the liberal use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides and steady irrigation. The Chinese peasants GRAIN met said that after three decades of hybrid rice development they were as poor as ever.
In some Asian countries where farmers are still growing hybrid rice, it is often only because of government programmes that heavily subsidise it or, as in the case of China and Burma, that leave farmers no other option. “Yet governments continue unperturbed with their ambitious projects to promote hybrid rice. In Asia and Africa, it is hailed as key to meeting the millennium development goal of food security. Packed within broad co-operation agreements that include oil exploration or agrofuel production, it is also seen as an important component of addressing the impending energy crisis,” says GRAIN. Field trials are also under way in Spain and Italy.
China is at the centre of this emergent transnational rice seed industry. Some of the corporates moving in on rice seeds are well-known transnationals, such as the pesticide and seed giants Bayer, DuPont and Monsanto or the agribusiness titan Charoen Pokphand. GRAIN says: “The Chinese corporations, operating inside and outside China, may be less well known, but they are pursuing the same path as these larger seed corporations, perhaps even more aggressively. Hybrid rice is indeed their entry point on to the stage of the global seed industry, and they have the backing of the Chinese government’s growing international presence to help things along.” Chinese companies and the country’s top public agricultural research system, has deals with Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Madagascar and a number of African countries, including Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Ghana, Egypt and Nigeria.
GRAIN concludes: “The threat that hybrid rice is posing to farmers’ agricultural biodiversity is no longer confined to genetic erosion. Many of the companies involved in this current hybrid rice explosion are also developing GM rice, and are involved in various incidents of contamination. They are taking control of the rapidly changing seed system. This undermines farmers’ livelihoods and food sovereignty, and eats at the very core of sustainable farming.”
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Free Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
October is Black History month and it should be a time to celebrate the achievements of black heroes during the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. And yet in Haiti, the small country that did more than any other to defeat slavery, a notable human rights campaigner, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, has vanished since August 12. Supporters, and even the UN mission on the island, are concerned that Pierre-Antoine has been kidnapped because of his outspoken criticisms of the occupying forces on the island and their association with the Haitian military.
This Friday campaigners from Global Women’s Strike will gather for the third week running at the foot of the Edith Cavell statue near Trafalgar Square as part of an international series of vigils. They are demanding the return of Pierre-Antoine, who was a leader of the pro-Aristide September 30 Foundation and critic of both U.N. and U.S. involvement in Haiti. He was last seen leaving his Port-au-Prince home shortly before midnight, according to Ronald Saint-Jean, leader of a coalition called the Group Initiative to Save Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Pierre-Antoine is a high-profile member of the ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas Party. He is co-founder of the Fondasyon Trant Septanm, which works with victims of the 1991 and 2004 coups d’etat in Haiti. A trained psychologist, he created organisations to support street children in the country’s capital, Port au Prince, a centre for teenage mothers and Map Vivre, “(“I live”) a programme to help victims of the 1991 coup against Aristide. He had to flee Haiti in 2004 fearing persecution by the former military, supported by the US army.
The case of Lovinsky also highlights the continuing crisis faced by the government of René Preval. It is part and parcel of a destabilisation campaign aimed at overthrowing his democratically elected government. The February 2006 election was an extraordinary victory for the Haitian people in the face of an oppressive occupying UN force which provides a cover for the armed thugs of Guy Philippe who overthrew Aristide. Preval is supported by Aristide, even though he was still the democratically elected president when kidnapped by US forces in the 1991 coup.
Haiti occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of those seeking black and human liberation. It is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. At the time of the French Revolution of 1789, there were 790,000 slaves - one third of the entire African slave trade – working on the plantations of Hispaniola, the island of which Haiti forms a part. A decade before Abolition, a freed slave, Toussaint-Louverture, inspired by the French revolution, led a massive army of blacks to victory over the whites and free coloureds, securing native control over the colony in 1797. He defeated a massive British force, freed the slaves and tried to re-build Haiti's economy, but was eventually kidnapped and imprisoned by French forces.
Ever since that time, Haiti’s inhabitants have been singled out for punishment, by despotic leaders supported from the outside by former colonial masters. As Stephen Lendman writes, “Nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or oppressive dictatorship.” Lendman has exposed how the Haiti Democracy Project (HDP) is “umbilically linked to the US State Department, backed by the corporate media tried to stop Preval from winning the election. It is now engaged in a demonisation and destabilisation campaign to undermine his administration”.
Haiti is presently the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere. Over half its people are unemployed, with many bordering on starvation. Aids is rife, especially amongst pregnant women. Seventy per cent rely on the land for their living. Eighty years ago forests covered nearly 60% of Haiti, now reduced to 2%. During Hurricane Dean last summer, Haiti was excluded from relief flights to the Caribbean because of “civil unrest”.
A World to Win joins with the millions of Haitians in their demand that Lovinsky should be brought home. We also call for the withdrawal of the UN forces from the island. Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune must be released, should he still be in jail. Haiti must not rely on the IMF and the World Bank’s privatisation and “structural adjustment” programmes to rebuild its economy.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
This Friday campaigners from Global Women’s Strike will gather for the third week running at the foot of the Edith Cavell statue near Trafalgar Square as part of an international series of vigils. They are demanding the return of Pierre-Antoine, who was a leader of the pro-Aristide September 30 Foundation and critic of both U.N. and U.S. involvement in Haiti. He was last seen leaving his Port-au-Prince home shortly before midnight, according to Ronald Saint-Jean, leader of a coalition called the Group Initiative to Save Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.
Pierre-Antoine is a high-profile member of the ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas Party. He is co-founder of the Fondasyon Trant Septanm, which works with victims of the 1991 and 2004 coups d’etat in Haiti. A trained psychologist, he created organisations to support street children in the country’s capital, Port au Prince, a centre for teenage mothers and Map Vivre, “(“I live”) a programme to help victims of the 1991 coup against Aristide. He had to flee Haiti in 2004 fearing persecution by the former military, supported by the US army.
The case of Lovinsky also highlights the continuing crisis faced by the government of René Preval. It is part and parcel of a destabilisation campaign aimed at overthrowing his democratically elected government. The February 2006 election was an extraordinary victory for the Haitian people in the face of an oppressive occupying UN force which provides a cover for the armed thugs of Guy Philippe who overthrew Aristide. Preval is supported by Aristide, even though he was still the democratically elected president when kidnapped by US forces in the 1991 coup.
Haiti occupies a unique place in the hearts and minds of those seeking black and human liberation. It is the world's oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. At the time of the French Revolution of 1789, there were 790,000 slaves - one third of the entire African slave trade – working on the plantations of Hispaniola, the island of which Haiti forms a part. A decade before Abolition, a freed slave, Toussaint-Louverture, inspired by the French revolution, led a massive army of blacks to victory over the whites and free coloureds, securing native control over the colony in 1797. He defeated a massive British force, freed the slaves and tried to re-build Haiti's economy, but was eventually kidnapped and imprisoned by French forces.
Ever since that time, Haiti’s inhabitants have been singled out for punishment, by despotic leaders supported from the outside by former colonial masters. As Stephen Lendman writes, “Nothing is ever simple in Haiti, a country that for over 500 years has had very few periods of stability free from the oppressive heel of a foreign occupier or oppressive dictatorship.” Lendman has exposed how the Haiti Democracy Project (HDP) is “umbilically linked to the US State Department, backed by the corporate media tried to stop Preval from winning the election. It is now engaged in a demonisation and destabilisation campaign to undermine his administration”.
Haiti is presently the least developed country in the Western Hemisphere. Over half its people are unemployed, with many bordering on starvation. Aids is rife, especially amongst pregnant women. Seventy per cent rely on the land for their living. Eighty years ago forests covered nearly 60% of Haiti, now reduced to 2%. During Hurricane Dean last summer, Haiti was excluded from relief flights to the Caribbean because of “civil unrest”.
A World to Win joins with the millions of Haitians in their demand that Lovinsky should be brought home. We also call for the withdrawal of the UN forces from the island. Former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune must be released, should he still be in jail. Haiti must not rely on the IMF and the World Bank’s privatisation and “structural adjustment” programmes to rebuild its economy.
Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win
Monday, October 22, 2007
IMF paralysed as crisis grows
The mass of red covering the trading screens of stock markets from Asia to Europe this morning confirms that attempts to wish away the credit crisis by marking up share prices in the last few weeks has come to grief. Adding to the uncertainty was the total failure of the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting in Washington to offer anything but platitudes. The IMF is increasingly seen as an irrelevance, with events far beyond its reach and control.
In today’s Financial Times, Chris Giles comments: “Many of the fund’s most powerful members were angry that the IMF was so feeble just at the time it should be centre stage. The global credit squeeze was, after all, truly transnational, having its roots in the US sub-prime mortgage sector, but its consequences spreading worldwide. The fear, privately expressed by central bankers, is that the credit squeeze is the first of many disorderly episodes that will result from the huge global trade imbalances that have emerged over the past decade. These have kept interest rates artificially low worldwide and encouraged reckless lending.”
At the epicentre of the global economic and financial storm is the United States, where Wall Street fell a dramatic 367 points last Friday amid growing fears that the sub-prime housing market mortgage crisis was far from over and that the economy was heading for recession. Selling on Wall Street started when the building equipment firm Caterpillar cut its profit forecast, blaming the state of the economy, and lower-than-expected earnings from Wachovia, the fourth largest bank in the US. This is against the background of a dollar that is in freefall - the consequence of massive trade and government deficits - and the refusal of countries like China to revalue their currencies.
The IMF was supposed to discuss the dollar’s crisis but failed to do so. It was planning to make proposals about what countries like China and Saudi Arabia could do with their massive dollar holdings and came up with with nothing. David Dodge, the outgoing Canadian central bank governor, was disappointed. “This is precisely the time we need the fund’s ability and skills to deal with global imbalances,” said and warned: “The longer the imbalances go on, the greater risk that we will end with a rather messy denouement.”
This is a banker’s way of talking about a crash and global slump. All the signs point in that direction. The globalisation process was fuelled by credit which has now turned into totals of debt that are impossible to calculate. This debt itself has been sold and resold by banks using fantastically complex derivative packages that hardly anyone understands. In Britain, large parts of economic growth have become utterly dependent on house price inflation, with people remortgaging to buy goods like cars. Others have borrowed up to 10 or more times their income to buy homes at prices way beyond their financial means. People are in some cases reportedly using credit cards to pay their monthly mortgages. A collapse in house prices in Britain is entirely likely as the credit crunch continues to unravel. Meanwhile, at the IMF the US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declared: "Fortunately, the global economy's underlying strengths should limit the negative effects that the turmoil might have on global activity.” So that’s alright then!
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
In today’s Financial Times, Chris Giles comments: “Many of the fund’s most powerful members were angry that the IMF was so feeble just at the time it should be centre stage. The global credit squeeze was, after all, truly transnational, having its roots in the US sub-prime mortgage sector, but its consequences spreading worldwide. The fear, privately expressed by central bankers, is that the credit squeeze is the first of many disorderly episodes that will result from the huge global trade imbalances that have emerged over the past decade. These have kept interest rates artificially low worldwide and encouraged reckless lending.”
At the epicentre of the global economic and financial storm is the United States, where Wall Street fell a dramatic 367 points last Friday amid growing fears that the sub-prime housing market mortgage crisis was far from over and that the economy was heading for recession. Selling on Wall Street started when the building equipment firm Caterpillar cut its profit forecast, blaming the state of the economy, and lower-than-expected earnings from Wachovia, the fourth largest bank in the US. This is against the background of a dollar that is in freefall - the consequence of massive trade and government deficits - and the refusal of countries like China to revalue their currencies.
The IMF was supposed to discuss the dollar’s crisis but failed to do so. It was planning to make proposals about what countries like China and Saudi Arabia could do with their massive dollar holdings and came up with with nothing. David Dodge, the outgoing Canadian central bank governor, was disappointed. “This is precisely the time we need the fund’s ability and skills to deal with global imbalances,” said and warned: “The longer the imbalances go on, the greater risk that we will end with a rather messy denouement.”
This is a banker’s way of talking about a crash and global slump. All the signs point in that direction. The globalisation process was fuelled by credit which has now turned into totals of debt that are impossible to calculate. This debt itself has been sold and resold by banks using fantastically complex derivative packages that hardly anyone understands. In Britain, large parts of economic growth have become utterly dependent on house price inflation, with people remortgaging to buy goods like cars. Others have borrowed up to 10 or more times their income to buy homes at prices way beyond their financial means. People are in some cases reportedly using credit cards to pay their monthly mortgages. A collapse in house prices in Britain is entirely likely as the credit crunch continues to unravel. Meanwhile, at the IMF the US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declared: "Fortunately, the global economy's underlying strengths should limit the negative effects that the turmoil might have on global activity.” So that’s alright then!
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
Friday, October 19, 2007
Empty gestures in the face of climate change
Latest warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show the extent of damage already done to our planet through the excesses of global capitalism. The IPCC have confirmed that it is now very unlikely (which means they are 90% certain) that the rise in average global temperatures can be kept below 20C. If temperatures rise by more than 20C we will hit the threshold when catastrophic climate change starts to kick in, with millions facing the dangers of drought, hunger and flooding. This is the shocking point we have reached and yet the major economic powers continue to squabble about a few targets as if there was plenty of time to play around with.
The IPCC’s warning only highlight New Labour’s puerile gestures of trying to make people think they are doing something when all along their market-state policies promote greater commodification to open up new opportunities for profit at the expense of the environment. This is typified by Gordon Brown’s recent announcement at New Labour’s sad excuse of a conference to “make Britain a world leader in tackling climate change”.
The implications of this support for global capitalism can be seen in the New Economics Foundation’s Chinadependence: The second UK interdependence report, which shows the UK second only to the United States in the consumption of natural resources and goods. Not only does it repeat the well-know fact that if everyone consumed resources at the rate of the United States we would need five planets to support this, it also implies (without using the actual words) that global capitalism’s unrestrained drive for growth is responsible for accelerated climate change.
This is indelibly linked to the corporations moving production to countries like China as they are motivated to cut production costs and increase profits (by extracting greater surplus value from a cheaper workforce). This is driving China’s growth in carbon emissions, although its per capita emissions are still well below those of Europe. But with one coal-fired power station opening each week, China will soon catch up and overtake the rest of the world.
Expert/pundit Jonathon Porritt (chair of the government’s own Sustainability Development Commission) seems happy to criticise Brown and his glove-puppet Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pre-budget statement as “crabby incrementalism”. Darling announced small changes in climate taxes and an “environmental transformation fund”. But what Porritt - a great believer that capitalism can provide a future of wealth, equity and ecological integrity - doesn’t want to acknowledge is that these proposals reflect what’s in the Climate Change Bill – hot air plus smoke and mirrors!
In Running a Temperature: an action plan for the eco-crisis, A World to Win shows that capitalism and climate change are inextricably linked and provides a clear and alternative framework for human existence beyond capitalism. To meet the deadlock we find ourselves in we need to move on in history, from a globalised world capitalist system, to a concept of local stewardship acting in a not-for-profit way in the interests of global society.
Stuart Barlow
The IPCC’s warning only highlight New Labour’s puerile gestures of trying to make people think they are doing something when all along their market-state policies promote greater commodification to open up new opportunities for profit at the expense of the environment. This is typified by Gordon Brown’s recent announcement at New Labour’s sad excuse of a conference to “make Britain a world leader in tackling climate change”.
The implications of this support for global capitalism can be seen in the New Economics Foundation’s Chinadependence: The second UK interdependence report, which shows the UK second only to the United States in the consumption of natural resources and goods. Not only does it repeat the well-know fact that if everyone consumed resources at the rate of the United States we would need five planets to support this, it also implies (without using the actual words) that global capitalism’s unrestrained drive for growth is responsible for accelerated climate change.
This is indelibly linked to the corporations moving production to countries like China as they are motivated to cut production costs and increase profits (by extracting greater surplus value from a cheaper workforce). This is driving China’s growth in carbon emissions, although its per capita emissions are still well below those of Europe. But with one coal-fired power station opening each week, China will soon catch up and overtake the rest of the world.
Expert/pundit Jonathon Porritt (chair of the government’s own Sustainability Development Commission) seems happy to criticise Brown and his glove-puppet Chancellor Alistair Darling’s pre-budget statement as “crabby incrementalism”. Darling announced small changes in climate taxes and an “environmental transformation fund”. But what Porritt - a great believer that capitalism can provide a future of wealth, equity and ecological integrity - doesn’t want to acknowledge is that these proposals reflect what’s in the Climate Change Bill – hot air plus smoke and mirrors!
In Running a Temperature: an action plan for the eco-crisis, A World to Win shows that capitalism and climate change are inextricably linked and provides a clear and alternative framework for human existence beyond capitalism. To meet the deadlock we find ourselves in we need to move on in history, from a globalised world capitalist system, to a concept of local stewardship acting in a not-for-profit way in the interests of global society.
Stuart Barlow
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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
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
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