G8 | ukwatch.net

Amid mounting food crisis, governments fear revolution of the hungry

tim — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:30:27 +0000

Last week’s meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Group of Seven were convened in the shadow of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. While Wall Street’s turmoil and the deepening credit crunch dominated discussions, leaders of the global financial institutions were forced to take note of the growing global food emergency, warning of the threat of widespread hunger and already emerging political instability.

The seven major capitalist powers in the G-7—the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada—made virtually no mention of the global food crisis, referring in only one brief reference to the risk of “high oil and commodity prices.” Instead, they focused on the stability of the financial markets, promising measures to shore up investor confidence.

The IMF and World Bank, however, felt compelled to acknowledge the emerging worldwide catastrophe, in part because while these agencies are instruments of the main imperialist powers, they must posture as responsive to the needs of all countries. It would be too revealing for them to focus exclusively on the fate of major finance houses, while ignoring the fact that hundreds of millions across the planet are being threatened with starvation.

More decisive, however, is the realization that this crisis confronting the most impoverished countries and poorest sections of the world’s population is threatening to unleash a revolution of the hungry that could topple governments across large parts of the world.

Even as the IMF and World Bank were meeting, the government of Haiti was forced out in a no-confidence vote passed in response to several days of demonstrations and protests against rising food prices and hunger that swept all the country’s major cities. Clashes between protesters and United Nations occupation troops left at least five people dead and scores wounded and saw crowds attempt to storm the presidential palace.

Food prices in Haiti had risen on average by 40 percent in less than a year, with the cost of staples such as rice doubling.

The same essential story has been repeated in country after country, from Africa to the Middle East, south Asia and Latin America.

In Bangladesh, on Saturday, some 20,000 textile workers took to the streets to denounce soaring food prices and demand higher wages. The price of rice in the country has doubled over the past year, threatening the workers, who earn a monthly salary of just $25, with hunger. Scores were injured in clashes with police, who used gunfire in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

In Egypt, protests by workers over food prices rocked the textile center of Mahalla al-Kobra, north of Cairo, for two days last week, with two people shot dead by security forces. Hundreds were arrested, and the government sent plainclothes police into the factories to force workers to work. Food prices in Egypt have risen by 40 percent in the past year.

Unions and shopkeepers staged a two-day general strike in the West African nation of Burkina Faso last week to protest high prices. The strikers demanded a “significant and effective” cut in the price of rice and other stables.

Several hundred demonstrators marched on parliament in Phnom Penh, Cambodia April 6 to protest food price hikes. The cost of a kilogram of rice has risen to $1 in a country where the average income is barely 50 cents a day. Police armed with cattle prods broke up the protest.

Earlier this month, in the Ivory Coast, thousands marched on the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, chanting “we are hungry” and “life is too expensive, you are going to kill us.” The country has seen food prices soar by between 30 percent and 60 percent from one week to the next. Police broke up the protest with tear gas and batons, injuring over a dozen people.

Similar demonstrations, strikes and clashes have taken place in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Yemen, Ethiopia, and throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa.

With terrifying rapidity, hundreds of millions of people all over the planet have been confronted with the inability to obtain the basic necessities of life. The global capitalist market is dictating intolerable conditions for masses of people on every continent, provoking a worldwide eruption of class struggle.

It is the concern that this struggle will spin out of control that found expression in the statements of concern issued by the IMF and World Bank leaders together with finance ministers and central bank chiefs gathered in Washington.

“If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries, including Africa, but not only Africa, will be terrible. Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will suffer from malnutrition, with consequences all of their lives,” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund managing director, told an April 12 press conference in Washington.

He warned that governments “will see what they have done totally destroyed and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed also.” Strauss-Kahn added: “So it’s not only a humanitarian question. It is not only an economic question. It is also a democratic question. Those kind of questions sometimes end into war.”

“In just two months,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in an opening speech to the meeting of finance ministers, “rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come.

“In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice,” he said, holding up such a bag, “now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family.”

He added that wheat prices had increased by 120 percent, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread.

“If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries … will be terrible,” said Zoellick.

The “international community will also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told international finance and trade officials at a UN meeting following the weekend talks in Washington.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler offered among the bleakest prognoses for the continuing crisis. “We are heading for a very long period of rioting, conflicts (and) waves of uncontrollable regional instability marked by the despair of the most vulnerable populations,” he told the French daily Liberation Monday.

He pointed out that, even before the present crisis, hunger claimed the life of a child under the age of 10 every 5 seconds, and 854 million people in the world were seriously undernourished. What was now posed, Ziegler warned, is “an imminent massacre.”

While finance ministers from the US and Europe indicated agreement that the crisis was severe, there was no indication that the major capitalist powers have any plan to mount the kind of effort needed to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe.

The White House announced Monday that it is releasing $200 million in emergency food aid in response to a World Bank appeal for funding to make up for the shortfall in food assistance caused by soaring prices. The amount—roughly what the US spends in half a day on its war to conquer Iraq—is less than a drop in the bucket in the face of the looming global catastrophe.

In the end, the crisis is a product of the capitalist market itself. It is not a matter of too many mouths to feed or too little food to supply human needs. Food is available, but the market has driven prices to a level out of reach for a growing portion of humanity in the most oppressed countries, and at the same effectively slashing the living standards of workers in the more advanced capitalist world.

This process is driven by a number of factors, including climatic ones, such as the impact of a draught in Australia on wheat production and a flood in Bangladesh on rice. There is also the rise in demand, particularly from growing middle class layers in India and China.

But more fundamental is the effect of speculation in food as a commodity—like oil and precious metals. It has become a haven for financial investors fleeing from paper assets tainted by subprime mortgages and other toxic credit products. The influx of buyers drives prices and makes food unaffordable for the world’s poor.

“Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices,” Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon told the media. “It’s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.”

Speculation in food as a commodity has been sharply accelerated by the decline in the value of the dollar, soaring oil prices and the promotion of biofuel production in the US and elsewhere. This attempt to generate a new investment “bubble,” based on the fraud that somehow turning corn into ethanol represents a “green” alternative to fossil fuels, has driven up the price not only of corn, but other grains, while diverting a major share of food production into a more profitable venture.

Subsidized by the US government, American farmers have diverted fully 30 percent of corn production into the ethanol scheme, driving up the cost of other, more expensive, grains that are being bought as substitutes for animal feed.

“When a biofuel policy is launched in the United States, thanks to subsidies of $6 billion, of bio-fuels that drains 138 million tons of corn from the market, the foundation is laid for a crime against humanity to satisfy one’s own thirst for fuel,” the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Liberation.

This assessment was repeated by India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, who declared, “When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels.”

US officials dismissed the charges, insisting that biofuel production was only one factor among many and indicating that there is no plan to change Washington’s policy.

Country after country has been left vulnerable to the global commodity price surge by “free market” policies implemented at the demands of Washington and the international financial agencies such as the IMF and World Bank over the past quarter century.

The closer integration of the economies of the oppressed countries into the world market has been accompanied by their increasing concentration on specialized export crops, while tariff barriers have been demolished, opening the way to subsidized agricultural staples from the more advanced countries capturing local markets.

Now, attempts by individual national governments to remedy the problem within their own borders—often taking the form of commodity producers erecting barriers on exports—have served to exacerbate the crisis internationally, driving food prices even higher, while triggering protests by farmers in countries stretching from India to Argentina. According to a recent World Bank survey, at least 58 countries have implemented at least some form of food-trade protectionism.

What is emerging in the crisis over food prices is a tumultuous manifestation of a breakdown of the global capitalist order. The catastrophe facing billions of people around the globe cannot be resolved within the confines of a system based on private profit and the nation state.

The revolutionary implications of this crisis are beginning to dawn on elements within the ruling establishment itself. In an article published Monday, the influential US magazine Time noted: “The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War… And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world.”

Five Fingers Beat 16,000 G8 Cops

eddie — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:40:25 +0000

From 6-8 June 2007, for over 44 hours, every road into and out of the enormous ‘Red Zone’ surrounding the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm was blockaded. According to the Financial Times on the opening day, the blockades had ‘tipped the G8 summit into logistical chaos’. The mobilisation to Heiligendamm was the return of the alter-globalisation movement. Ben Trott analyses how the event turned out to be such a success? What are its implications? And what next?

For almost two years, groups, organisations and individuals on the left in Germany and beyond have been preparing for this year’s G8 summit. Trade unionists, the anti-nuclear and environmental movement, peace and anti-war coalitions, student groups, anti-fascists, self-organised groups of migrants, anti-racist campaigners, the youth wings of political parties and the networks of the autonomous and radical left have – not always harmoniously – been working together to produce the successful scenes of mobilisation that were witnessed on the streets of Rostock and the roads and fields around Heiligendamm earlier this month.

Two lessons at least were learnt from the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles. Firstly, three parallel and only very slightly overlapping mobilisations (Make Poverty History, G8 Alternatives, and Dissent!) failed to pool resources, coordinate or look for commonality. In contrast, the basis of the mobilisation to Heiligendamm was the construction of a common ‘choreography of resistance’. This ensured events did not compete against one another, and that cooperation – where possible – was maximised. Secondly, there was a determination to ensure that the process of legitimation of the G8 – set in motion by Bono and others, and reaching its climax in Gleneagles – was halted and reversed. The aim was to demonstrate that the G8 is illegitimate full stop. To borrow Bob Geldof’s words after the 2005 summit: ‘mission accomplished.’

On Saturday 2 June, 80,000 people demonstrated through the streets of Rostock in the biggest demonstration the city had ever seen. Under the banner of ‘Another World Is Possible’, they declared the G8 an institution without legitimacy. The demonstration’s largest bloc, with around 8,000 participants, was the Interventionist Left’s ‘Make Capitalism History’. It was both these blocs, which came under attack from police; and from which militant actions of the so-called ‘black-bloc’ are said to have taken place. Debates around the nature and activity of the bloc certainly rocked the coalition over the following days. Ultimately, however, the coalition proved itself strong enough to withstand the question of ‘militancy’. All in all, the demonstration provided a clear rejection of both the political and democratic legitimacy of the G8, as well as containing a clear anti-capitalist presence.

The next day, thousands participated in a day of action on global agriculture, demanding food sovereignty, an end to the genetic modification of food and rejecting the patenting of seeds. Many took part in international networking events on the issues of resistance to racist police violence worldwide, the connections between the issues of precarious working and living conditions and migration, and more.

On 4 June, over 15,000 people took part in decentralised actions around Rostock on the issue of migration (in front of a Lidl supermarket, responsible for the exploitation of migrant labour; in front of the so-called ‘Sunflower Houses’ of mostly Vietnamese guest-workers, attacked in 1992 by neo-Nazis; and in front of a government building responsible for processing asylum applications) before taking part in a demonstration ‘For Global Freedom of Movement and Equal Rights for Everyone’. The day of action organised by both anti-racist activists and self-organised groups of refugees and migrants, came under heavy police repression. The demonstration was banned from the city centre and the police did all they could – (unsuccessfully) – to provoke an escalation which could be used to justify further repression.

On 5 June, thousands took part in the day of action against militarism, war, torture and the global ‘state of exception’ – the suspension of legal rights and freedoms, e.g. that of Habeas Corpus, across the planet. Hundreds gathered at Rostock Laage military airport to ‘greet’ George W. Bush as Air Force One landed.

And then came Wednesday 6 June, the opening day of the summit, the day on which blockades – both mass and decentralised, pre-advertised and spontaneous – would try to shut down the summit itself. The extent of the success of these blockades surprised everyone – not least those who had spent almost a year and a half mobilising for them.

Bloc(k) Parties

One of the most prominent elements of the counter-mobilisation was the Block G8 campaign for mass blockades of the access roads to Heiligendamm. This campaign was made up of over 120 different organisations, groups and networks: from church organisations, trade union youth groups, the anti-nuclear waste transport (CASTOR) movement, over groups from the radical and autonomous left, the youth wings of political parties (both the Greens and the socialist Linkspartei), to anti-fascist organisations and non-violent direct action groups.

The composition of the coalition was, for many, surprising. Most of the groups had never cooperated before and those who had, had not always had good experiences. Nevertheless, the campaign based itself on the notion that cooperation was essential for the blockades to be successful. Moreover, and more interestingly, there was a feeling that as groups moved away from the comfort zones of their traditional action; new forms of action and new commonalities could be produced, despite and beyond obvious differences.

After many months of discussion, the following action concept was developed: a practical rejection of the legitimacy of the G8 could only be achieved through real – rather than merely symbolic – blockades of the summit. The aim was not to stop the heads of state from reaching their destination (everyone knew they would be flown in by helicopter), but to cut the G8 summit off from its infrastructure of thousands of service providers, caterers, translators, journalists and so on. Our first objective was to reach our blockade points: two of three key roads leading to Heiligendamm. We would not engage in an escalation with the police, or allow ourselves to be provoked. At the same time, we would do all that we could to prevent anyone from being injured. Once we reached the blockade points, we would not leave again voluntarily.

In order to ensure the success of the blockades, hundreds of action trainings and information events were organised across Germany and beyond. Thousands were trained in the techniques which would be required: from how to build an ‘affinity group’ (a group of 5-10 people, prepared to act together and look out for one another during an action); through to methods for getting through police lines; to how to resist an eviction and deal with minor injuries. The action concept was published on the campaign’s website, translated into numerous languages, integrated into a PowerPoint presentation, and distributed via various publications. The media were invited to observe – and on one occasion, partake in – some of the action trainings, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung (perhaps an equivalent of the UK’s Guardian) reproduced one of the trainings in an online multimedia presentation.

Block Around the Clock

One of the Block G8 blockades would be made up of people based in the camp near Reddelich, the other by those in Rostock. From Reddelich, the blockaders would be able to reach their desired blockade point by foot. Rostock, however, was too far to be able to rely on people moving on foot alone. So the people from this camp were transported by bus, car, bike and train to a pre-announced destination. On arrival, the crowd of around 4000 began to move along the road in the direction of their secret destination. As soon as the front of the demonstration met the first line of police, the so-called ‘Five-Finger-Tactic’ came into play. Rather than trying to push through the line of police in front of it, the first of the five ‘fingers’ left the road and went out into the field to the right of it, attempting to move around the line of police, stretching their resources as far as possible. The line of police retreated to try and remain in front of the first finger, which was making its way rapidly across the field. As it did so, the remaining four fingers moved forward with it. Once the line of police stopped, the second finger moved again out of the road and into the field, this time to the left. Again, the police were forced to retreat and to spread themselves out over a greater distance. This process repeated itself, with the fingers alternately moving off the road to the right and then the left. As planned, all five fingers (and the 4000 people within them) were able to either move around the lines of police, or else flow through them once they had been forced to spread themselves out so far that large gaps emerged.

Whilst the 6000 plus Reddelich blockaders were able to reach their desired blockading point relatively unhindered by the police – blockading not only their chosen road, but also the railway line which ran alongside (the only one in and out of the ‘Red Zone’) – those coming from Rostock were forced to brave pepper spray, batons and the police’s water canons (some of which had mixed pepper spray into the water) in order to finally – and successfully – reach their destination.

In both instances, as soon as the blockaders reached their desired points, the police appeared to concede defeat. In neither situation were the police well equipped enough to evict either 4000 – 6000 people from the street, nor to ensure that the crowds – which had already proven themselves very determined – would not immediately return. Securing kilometres of road running alongside open fields, or arresting and transporting up to 10000 people was obviously out of the question. At the same time, the social breadth of the blockades (which expanded across church groups, trade unions and political parties), along with the public support of prominent politicians, media and civil society personalities in Germany and other countries also ensured that the deployment of extreme levels of violence against the blockades would have been politically very difficult. This was exacerbated by the fact that repression in advance of the summit (with simultaneous ‘anti-terror’ raids on over 40 offices, social centres and private homes supposedly connected to the mobilisation, along with huge restrictions on the freedom to demonstrate) had been met with heavy criticism. On the day of the raids, over 6000 people demonstrated in Berlin and 4000 in Hamburg alone. The media were tremendously critical, as were a number of prominent politicians on both the left and right. For a while, it appeared that attac Germany (who, incidentally, never signed up as official supporters of Block G8, although some of their leadership and local groups did) would distance themselves from the blockades, following the events of the previous Saturday. Thanks to both the mood of the organisation’s grassroots, who were already present on the camps and geared up for blockading – and a couple of isolated voices higher up in the organisation – this never came to fruition. Had this been the case, the police may have responded very differently.

Another likely reason for success was that police resources were massively over-stretched. Thousands were demonstrating, again, at Rostock Laage military airport. Others had begun to take down the 12-kilometre fence around the ‘Red Zone’. Small, decentralised actions – from passive sit-ins to burning barricades – were taking place in dozens of other locations all around the area. And nobody knew what to expect next. An attempted eviction of either or both of the Block G8 mass blockades would have swallowed enormous amounts of resources, and the police were almost certainly unsure when they would – perhaps more urgently – be needed elsewhere.

The outcome on the first day of the G8 summit was that many delegates were told not to go to Heiligendamm, but to make their way to their hotels and remain indoors. Some never even made it to Heiligendamm while those who did often faced long delays. Others were forced to fly into the ‘Red Zone’ by helicopter at huge expense. Journalists resorted to travel by boat. Some reports suggest that only four journalists made it to the opening ceremony. If the Financial Times report that the summit was chaos, then I believe them.

And now?

The political consequences of the very successful mobilisation around this year’s G8 summit – both on the ‘internal’ movement level, and on the level of global political economy – remain unclear. How can it be that both the movement, and the G8 leaders themselves (claiming to have found commonality in difficult times, as well as having supposedly made progress on both climate change and commitments to poverty alleviation) are proclaiming: ‘We are winning’? How long will the coalitions formed by the movement in the run up to the summit hold out? How will – if at all – those mobilised to take part in the blockades remain involved in movements and struggles? And how far will the different groups that united as the Block G8 coalition continue to experiment with new forms of political practice, outside of their traditional comfort zones?

A few conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, the differences between the various groups, which took part in Block G8 are far less important than the commonalities. This was demonstrated and played itself out in practice. Secondly, the whole of the left needs to recognise that whilst it now needs to enter into a process of critical (self-) reflection, exploring both the victories and the problematics, which arose during the summit, the mobilisation was a greater success than any of us could have imagined. It is a success that everyone played a role in creating, and the fallout from which (in terms of debts incurred, repression and so on) needs to be dealt with collectively. But moreover, it should be recognised that none of us are the same as we were before the summit. The days of action in Rostock and around Heiligendamm were much more than an expression of ‘Unity in Diversity’, they represented a ‘becoming-other’, together. Through coordination, cooperation and the constant search for commonality, we became a more genuine ‘movement of movements’ – more than just the sum of our parts.

And thirdly and finally, we need to recognise that only two years ago, 300,000 people demonstrated in Edinburgh, largely to welcome the G8 summit and its supposed efforts to make poverty history. This year, 80,000 demonstrated their opposition to the G8 as an institution, and well over 15,000 took part in actively blockading the summit. Another world is not just possible. It is already here. We saw it in Heiligendamm. The alter-globalisation movement can once again be seen as a serious social actor, able to influence the direction of global events and politics.

To be sure, it is unlikely that the vast majority of those who took part in the blockades and other events will become involved within organised political structures – be those of the radical-left, of non-violent action groups, of political parties, or of organisations such as attic. In many ways, this limits the ability of those in attendance to be able to act in a coordinated, organised fashion, maximising their agency. But such organisational forms have only ever been a very small element of what social movements are all about. Far more important are the affective connections, which were formed over those 44 hours on the streets, those late nights of action planning, and those often-painful coalition meetings. These are connections, which have the potential to last in the long term.

Foucault once said that a barricade only has two sides. Everyone who was in Heiligendamm will forever know on which side it is that they stand…or sit.

Footnote

Ben Trott is active in the Berlin-based group FelS, part of the Block G8 campaign and the Interventionist Left

A slide show, with music and photos against the G8 summit can be found on Avanti’s website: http://www.avanti-projekt.de/images/G8-Slide/index.html (Avanti – Project for an undogmatic left, are one of the groups involved with the Interventionist Left)

The Block G8 campaign still has enormous debts. Please Donate!

Account Name: Block G8

Bank Name: GLS Gemeinschaftsbank

Account Number: 400 8700 801

Sort Code (BLZ): 430 609 67

IBAN: DE38 4306 0967 4008 7008 01

BIC: GENODEM1GLS

Who are the Interventionist Left?

I Want a Helicopter

Tim Holmes — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:51:56 +0000

Here’s something they sneaked out this week with hardly anyone noticing – the Americans have announced a “military aid package” of sixty billion dollars for their allies in the Middle East. Or, to be grammatically correct, sixty billion, that’s sixty thousand million bastard dollars!!!

How can they spend that? Have Prada moved into tanks? Maybe they now buy these things at fashion shows, where a commentator gasps: “Ooh, my, my!” as down the catwalk comes this exhilarating design for the very latest satellite-guided armour-penetrating missile modelled here by Kate Moss, designed, of course, by Stella McCartney, and “sure to be this summer’s big bold hit when it comes to melting the Hizbollah”.

This is $250 for every living American, $10 for everyone on the planet. Are they taking each weapon out individually for a meal at the Ivy? And $13bn of this is for Saudi Arabia. Because if there’s one family on this earth in need of financial aid, it’s the Saudi royal family. Who’s getting the rest – the Bee Gees? Anyway, why do the Saudis need military aid at all? Their favourite weapon seems to be the stone. I suppose now if a woman commits adultery or speaks out of turn she’ll be battered to death with a bloody great ruby instead.

To get all this in perspective, after the G8 summit two years ago in Scotland, after the Make Poverty History march and concerts, a beaming Tony Blair announced a record-breaking global amount of aid of fifty billion dollars. This time they seem to be a bit more modest. No one came galloping out of the White House joyfully to explain that, after a whole week of negotiating, they’ve come up with more laser-guided firebombs than ever.

But they shouldn’t be so modest. Because a sign of how hard it is to come up with such sums can be seen from this year’s G8 summit, when they admitted that instead of the $50bn they promised in Scotland, it was back to $25bn after all. So all those balloons, celebrations, smiley press conferences and declarations of a new start for Africa, were about the entire western world donating to an entire impoverished continent less than half of what one country has quietly coughed up in weapons for the Saudis, Egypt and Israel.

They do it quietly because how many people would agree with these priorities? On Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, when Chris Tarrant asks: “What would you do with the money if you won a million pounds?”, very few people say: “I’d buy some cluster bombs.” How many people, if they were taken on a tour of the Middle East, through Gaza and the wreckage of Iraq and the slums of Cairo, would say: “I know what this place needs above all else – $60bn-worth of deadly weapons.”

How many people would support a charity record called “Death Aid”, or a night of TV comedy called “Smiles for Missiles”, in which Vernon Kay wandered through Angola grimacing: “This village hasn’t had a landmine for over a month. Please, please, please, send your donation so they too can know what it’s like to watch someone explode”, followed by a special edition of A Question of Sport.

One of the reasons given for the difficulty in providing aid to Africa is their leaders are corrupt, so there’s every chance they’ll swipe the money. So luckily, when it comes to Saudi Arabia they can rely on that country’s rulers, who would never fiddle a billion dollars from British Aerospace or do illegal deals with, to pick someone at random, Jonathan Aitken.

Maybe the complaint about corruption has been misunderstood and the Africans aren’t doing enough of it. So the White House gets reports that say: “Some ministers in Malawi go a whole month with barely a single prostitute being procured by the arms companies – how can we possibly do business with such people?” And half this generous gift, $30bn-worth of arms, is being given to Israel. Surely the problem here is where will they put them all? They’ll be like parents at Christmas when an over-generous grandparent delivers sacks full of presents, and you have to have a clearout of all the old stuff to make room. So if you want a cheap battleship, nip down to a charity shop in Hebron and you’ll be able to pick one up for a score.

But more weapons is the answer to everything. For example, a US defence report on global warming has concluded it could lead to global instability and mass migration, proving the necessity of acquiring more weapons to deal with this.

If anyone from the Pentagon visits Moss Side or Peckham, they’ll announce: “Hey, these places are in bad shape. So we’ve given everyone under 25 a pistol, a sword and a tank.” If someone from the Pentagon ever worked as a chef, he’d taste the sauce and say: “Hmm, it needs something – basil, perhaps, or a sprinkle of fennel? I know, it needs a Stealth bomber.”

How does anyone get to see the world from the point of view of the Pentagon? Who would look around a world in which 5,000children a day die for lack of clean water and decide that can wait, but the weapons can’t?

But the biggest mystery is the official reason given for handing over this fortune to Egypt and Saudi Arabia – that, according to Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the United Nations, it’s because “Saudi Arabia and others are not doing all they can to help us in Iraq”. So they’re rewarded like that. Well, I’ve done bugger all to help America in Iraq. Can I have a helicopter?

Profiting From Pollution - the G8 and Climate Change

Alex Doherty — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:23:26 +0000

Tackling climate change is likely to be at the top of the agenda at this month’s G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. But the emissions trading schemes promoted by G8 countries are deferring genuine climate action, while generating massive profits for the largest polluters. Kevin Smith investigates

The hegemony of the G8 in international forums such as the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change means that global climate policy is being chosen for its compatibility with the existing economic system rather than its effectiveness in reducing emissions.

Carbon trading is central to this approach. It turns the earth’s carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought or sold in a global market.This use of market forces to address environmental problems takes two forms. First, governments allocate permits to big industrial polluters who then trade these ‘rights to pollute’. Second, surplus carbon credits are generated from carbon offset projects that claim to reduce or avoid emissions in other locations, usually in Southern countries.These credits may be purchased to top up any shortfall in permits. Under the Kyoto Protocol, such offset projects are carried out in the South through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), or in Northern countries through Joint Implementation (JI).

The market is growing enormously.A World Bank report valued it at US$21.5 billion for the first three quarters of 2006, up 94 per cent on its value of $11.1 billion in 2005.

Gleneagles onwards

Despite the hype, the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland produced little in the way of concrete action in dealing with climate change.The final communiqué made limp resolutions to ‘promote’ better practice on climate change, with no mention at all of reducing the rate of extraction and consumption of fossil fuels. Blair was widely praised, however, for bringing the heads of state of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa to the negotiating table, and it was with these countries that the G8 plus 5 Climate Dialogue was launched.The dialogue brings senior legislators together with international business leaders, civil society representatives and opinion leaders to discuss a post 2012 climate change agreement, with the aim of agreeing a consensus statement at the G8 2008 Japan summit.

The dialogue has a heavy bias towards trading schemes as the best way of dealing with climate change, with one of its four working groups dedicated specifically to developing market mechanisms. Furthermore, the G8 plus 5 summit has mandated the World Bank to facilitate the creation of a framework for climate change management, clean energy and sustainable development.This is in spite of the fact that the World Bank is part of the climate problem rather than the solution: since the UN climate convention was signed at Rio earth summit in 1992, the Bank Information Centre calculates that the World Bank has single-handedly financed over $25 billion in fossil fuel based projects. In response to the G8 mandate, the World Bank produced a report called Clean Energy and Development:Towards an Investment Framework, an updated version of which was presented at the G8 plus 5 meeting in Mexico in October 2006.

The report promoted carbon trading as the main means of financing the development of clean technology.

The Bank’s promotion of emissions trading through the G8 plus 5 creates a clear conflict of interest in that it is also the largest public broker of carbon purchases, with over $1 billion in its carbon credit portfolio. It generates a great deal of revenue for itself through receiving a percentage commission on all the carbon credits it purchases to administer through its Prototype Carbon Fund.Through its influence in political processes like the G8 plus 5, it has actively lobbied to make the CDM a more attractive proposition for investors and less effective in terms of actually reducing emissions.

The G8 plus 5 met again in February 2007 in Washington, at a meeting spearheaded by five US senators who have introduced a congressional bill that would allow US companies to certify emissions reductions, which may be traded on the international market to other nations. Keynote speakers included German chancellor Angela Merkel as well as Nicholas Stern, whose influential Stern Review on climate change has been promoted as providing the economic rationale for the global carbon market, and Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank.

It is not yet clear what targets there are for dealing with climate change at the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, but the majority of governments, industry and international financial institutions are keen to see the groundwork laid for an international emissions trading framework to extend beyond the 2012 Kyoto commitment period that will include the other greenhouse gases and other emissions-producing sectors, such as the airline industry.

Carbon trading won’t work

The G8 and free-market environmentalists have been at the forefront of championing a rosy narrative of ‘win-win’ scenarios in which the quest to maximise corporate profits can go hand in hand with addressing the climate crisis. But this is largely an act of faith, as there is no evidence that climate change can be tackled while maintaining an economic growth pattern based on the ever-increasing extraction and consumption of fossil fuels. Carbon trading encourages the industries most dependent on coal, oil and gas to delay shifting away from fossil fuels. There is little incentive for expensive plans for long-term structural change if you can get by in the short term by buying cheap permits-pollution rights from operations that can reduce their emissions.Yet for G8 countries seeking to demonstrate their commitment to climate action, these inherent problems of emissions trading are swept aside in favour of a system that sustains the economic dominance of the most powerful industrialised nations.

The G8 nations and emissions trading

France, Germany, Italy & UK

Since the start of 2005, France, Germany, Italy and the UK have been participating in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS), the biggest experiment yet in carbon trading, and the harbinger of the global market that will begin in 2008. The EU-ETS works on a ‘cap and trade’ basis. The amount of permissible carbon pollution is divided up between industrial locations (called ‘installations’ in the scheme) across Europe – this is the ‘cap’ part. If any installation goes over its limit, it must purchase the equivalent amount of permits on the market, and conversely, if an installation is under its limit, it can sell its shortfall on the market – this is the ‘trade’ part.

The first phase of the scheme has been a disaster. Under sustained corporate lobbying, almost all EU governments made huge overallocations of permits to industry in the first phase. In 2005, the first year of trading, the relevant industries across Europe emitted 66 million tonnes less than the cap that had been allocated. This meant that the cap was effectively meaningless as it had not forced any net emissions reductions. A preliminary analysis of the 2006 data shows that 93 per cent of the 10,000 installations covered by the ETS emitted less than their allotted quota.

These over-allocations have resulted in windfall profits for the biggest polluters who, in successfully exaggerating their need for emissions allowances, received enormous amounts of permits that they could then profitably sell on. The companies also made money by passing on the nominal ‘market costs’ of these free permits to consumers. The German environment minister has claimed that the four biggest European power producers – Eon, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW – have profited from this to the tune of Ř6 billion and Ř8 billion. With the second phase of the EUETS due to start in 2008, the evidence suggests that lessons haven’t been learnt. A working paper released in November 2006 by German researchers said that of the 25 second-phase national allocation plans submitted for EU approval, 18 were too generous, and many of the new caps were set above 2005 emissions levels.

Japan

As the most energy-efficient country in the industrialised world, Japan is struggling to meet its Kyoto commitment to below 6 per cent of 1990 levels (current levels are 8 per cent higher than 1990). Consequently, Japan is heavily committed to using emissions trading to make up the shortfall. The Japanese government set aside 5.4 billion yen (US$45.9 million) in its 2006 budget to purchase carbon credits from abroad, and has approved some 41 predominantly CDM projects, in countries such as Malaysia, India, South Korea, Indonesia, China and Vietnam, with even greater numbers of such projects in the pipeline. In addition, Japan is one of the biggest investors in the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund, with eight out of the 17 corporate investors being Japanese corporations, as well as the government’s own Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

Canada

Canada’s conservative government has been making disgruntled noises about its Kyoto commitment of reducing its emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels. Environment minister Rona Ambrose has stated this target is ‘impossible’, that the EU trading scheme was a failure, and that the CDM was little more than a recipe for corruption and wasted money. The conservative administration has not delivered on promised funding for the CDM executive board, the international body that oversees and approves CDM projects, and it has underfunded the Canadian office for administering CDM and JI schemes to the point of its near irrelevance.

Russia

The collapse of Russia’s economy during the 1990s has seen a slump in emissions, at one point reaching 40 per cent below 1990 levels. This has resulted in Russia having a huge supply of surplus carbon credits that it can sell on to other countries when the global emissions market opens for business in 2008. But these have been achieved by external circumstances rather than by the country having implemented any sort of energy efficiency or renewable energy measures, an example of how emissions trading can be profitably exploited with no sustainable action to tackle climate change. Not surprisingly, Russia has been enthusiastic about its opportunities to profit from emissions trading, with one World Bank estimate suggesting that it could profit by $11 billion under Kyoto.

USA

George Bush famously refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, so the US is not taking part in emissions trading in order to meet any domestic compliance targets at the national level. Yet several private initiatives, including the Chicago Climate Exchange, are trading in offset credits. With the recent Democrat takeover of Congress the US attitude to emissions trading looks set to change. Ten US corporations, including DuPont and General Electric, have joined with green groups to form the US Climate Action Partnership to urge Bush and Congress to create a carbon market for the US. At the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, chief executives of European and US power and industrial companies said that the US needs to lead the way in setting up a global carbon emissions trading regime.

Kevin Smith is researcher at Carbon Trade Watch, co-author of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: the G8, Climate Change and Free Market Environmentalism and contributor to G8 Club Governance.

The Emperor of Africa

Tim Holmes — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:33:09 +0000

The disease that afflicts all British governments is an inability to let go. Unable to accept the end of empire, they cling to past glories. However much they speak of modernity and democracy, they cannot help managing other people’s lives, preserving foreigners – often at gunpoint – from the mistakes they would make if they were allowed to govern themselves.

I was going to call this an imperial delusion, but the United Kingdom has been remarkably successful at defending its powers. Our government has retained a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Its membership of the G8 is unchallenged. Most importantly, it has preserved its unwarranted share of the vote on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it has no intention of giving this up.

In advance of the IMF’s spring meeting (which has just concluded in Washington) France and the United Kingdom rejected any political reform(1). It is true that the fund’s proposals are feeble. It is true that even after far more ambitious reforms the IMF would remain the wrong body, constitutionally destined to fail. But this is not why our government is holding out. It is resisting change because it wants to preserve its imperial rank.

The United Kingdom, with 1% of the world’s population, has 5% of the IMF’s votes(2). Sub-Saharan Africa, with 12% of the population, has 4.6%(3). The UK’s share equals that of China and India put together. It is 5 times as big as Argentina’s, 19 times Bangladesh’s, 35 times Kenya’s, 124 times bigger than Malawi’s(4). The G7 nations – the UK, US, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy – together possess 45% of the vote. The other 177 members are left to squabble over the remains.

Even these numbers tell only half the story. The five countries with the biggest quotas – the US, UK,

Japan, Germany and France – are each allowed to appoint their own executive director to the IMF’s board(5). The rest must submit their candidates for election. Because poor nations don’t know what’s good for them, they are assigned to the tutelage of richer ones. The votes of the English-speaking Caribbean countries are given to Canada. Mongolia is represented by Australia, Kazakhstan by Belgium(6). The reason the UK and France are resisting even the most timid reforms is that these would tip them below the threshold for automatic election: like the other countries they would be represented on the board as part of a bloc.

Power is distributed like this because the IMF is a plutocracy. A country’s vote represents its “quota”, which is a function of its gross domestic product. In theory the quota reflects countries’ financial contributions to the fund. This is no longer the case, as the IMF receives much of its income from loan repayments from poorer nations. But the old formula has resisted 60 years of complaints.

The result is that the governments which are never made subject to the IMF’s strictures control it, while those whose countries have been reduced to an IMF franchise have no say in the way it runs. The fund’s allocation of votes is a perfect inversion of democracy.

A new report by ActionAid gives us a glimpse of how this unfair distribution of power affects the poor(7). After years of protests by poor countries and their supporters in the rich world, the IMF and the World Bank at last permitted them to provide healthcare and education without charge. The rich nations also promised, in 2000, to ensure that by 2015 every child on earth would have primary education(8). It looked like a great victory for the global justice movement. But the IMF is ensuring that the promise won’t be met. It has, in effect, forbidden the poorest nations to hire sufficient teachers.

No one disputes that public sector wage rises can contribute to inflation. No one denies that governments have to exercise some degree of restraint. But the paternalists who run the IMF – who are fixated on creating safe havens for foreign capital – cannot help micromanaging the economies of the poor nations, without reference to the needs of the people who live there. The limits they have imposed on the public sector pay bill ensure that schooling can’t be improved.

ActionAid studied three very poor countries with major education problems: Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. After they abolished user fees (and when the civil war ended in Sierra Leone), vast numbers of pupils enrolled. But a combination of the rich nations’ failure to provide the foreign aid they had promised and the restrictions imposed by the IMF has prevented these countries from meeting the new demand. As a result, the pupil to teacher ratio in Sierra Leone is 57:1; in Malawi 72:1 and in Mozambique 74:1. That’s the average: in rural areas it can be much higher. Many of the teachers are untrained; many give up because they cannot survive on their wages. In Malawi, for example, the goods required for the most basic level of subsistence cost $107 a month. A trained teacher receives $55(9).

So crowds of pupils strain to hear a scarcely-literate teacher somewhere in the middle distance seeking to instruct them without books, chalk, paper or pens. We should not be surprised to discover that 40% of children fail to complete primary school in Sierra Leone and Mozambique, and 70% in Malawi. Most of the drop-outs are girls.

As a result, these countries are stuck in a vicious circle of misery. Until education improves, GDP remains low. Until GDP rises, there’s little money for education. As one of the agencies charged with rescuing countries from poverty, the IMF should be seeking to break this circle. But the conditions it attaches to its loans keep these countries in their place. In Malawi the IMF sets the ceiling for public sector wages directly; in Sierra Leone and Mozambique the broader macroeconomic rules it imposes have the same effect. ActionAid argues that its fiscal targets are outdated and unnecessary: all these countries have now achieved sufficient stability to start raising teachers’ pay.

But in no case did the IMF consult either the public or the state’s own ministry of education before laying down the law. The amount of money a teacher in rural Malawi is paid is decided by the men in Horse Guards Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Except for the district commissioners in pith helmets, little has changed since the country was called Nyasaland.

Last year Tony Blair acknowledged that the IMF “must become more representative of emerging economic powers and give greater voice to developing countries.”(10) But he just can’t let go. The proposed reforms do nothing to democratise the IMF; by linking the quota to purchasing power parity rather than raw GDP, they simply turn it into a more sophisticated plutocracy. But they would have the effect of very slightly empowering some middle-income countries while taking a few votes away from some of the rich ones. Even that is too much for the Emperor of Africa. If the British government wants to help the poor, it must first give up its power to tell them how to live. Until that happens, everything the prime minister says about “partnership” and “solidarity”(11) with the world’s oppressed is humbug.

References:

1. Larry Elliott, 13th April 2007. UK opposes plan for developing nations to have more say at IMF. The Guardian.

2. International Monetary Fund, 2007. IMF Members’ Quotas and Voting Power, and IMF Board of Governors

http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm

3.David Woodward, New Economics Foundation, February 2007. IMF Voting Reform: Need, Opportunity and Options. Paper for the G24 Technical Meeting, 12 March 2007. http://www.g24.org/wood0307.pdf

4. International Monetary Fund, ibid.

5. David Woodward, ibid.

6. International Monetary Fund, ibid.

7. Akanksha A. Marphatia et al, April 2007. Confronting the Contradictions: The IMF, wage bill caps and

the case for teachers. ActionAid. http://www.actionaid.org/assets/pdf/1%20%20CONFRONTING%20THE%20CONTRADICTIONS%20E-VERSION.pdf

8. The UN Millennium Development Goals, 2000. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

9. ActionAid, ibid.

10. Tony Blair, 26th May 2006. Foreign Policy Speech 3. http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page9549.asp

11. Tony Blair, 8th July 2005. Statement on the final day of the G8 Summit.

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page7877.asp

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