All entries for Friday 09 October 2009

October 09, 2009

Dissident Warwick Issue 7

Welcome to issue 7 of Dissident Warwick. Here you’ll find all the articles from the paper version, alongside footnotes and sources. Feel free to comment on the articles, but please keep discussion relevant and respectful.

The Morality of Mercenaries – by Barnaby Pace

Warwick Activism – by Beth Smith, Sami Wannell and Megan Fortune

Review: The Whisperers – by Beth Smith

Fuck Batman – by Chris Rossdale

Bonkers for Bolivia – by Jehanzeb A Khan

Fast, Effective Relief from Pain – by Chris Zacharia

The Truth is Out There?: An Examination of Political Conspiracy Theories – by Duncan Tucker

Maize, Ministries, and Hunger: How the World Bank Starved Malawi – by Kat Hobbs

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind – by Aidan Barlow

Students and Capitalism – by Lev Lev Taylor

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:28 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

The Morality of Mercenaries

by Barnaby Pace

A part of my daily routine is now that I switch on my laptop in the morning and spend an hour or two reading stories on dodgy arms dealers, big bribing corporations and innumerable states with inferiority complexes that cause them to buy lots of phallic-shaped weapons. Despite the wealth of strange stories that sometimes seem more suited to the world of a John Le Carré novel than a trade magazine report (the Arctic Sea hijacking for example), the twitter updates of a US reporter called Jeremy Scahill regularly outdo them all. For many years now Scahill, along with a few others, have worked tirelessly to expose the insanity of the modern mercenary business.

Mercenaries, often referred to as Private Military Security Contractors (PSMCs) or sometimes just ‘contractors’ have become inseparable from many modern conflicts. The role of PSMCs varies from the Halliburton employees who do laundry and catering for many military bases to the construction companies like Jacobs (which Warwick uses) who build the military bases from which the US military garrisons the globe and fights its wars. PSMCs go as far as the Blackwater mercenaries who engage in front-line combat duties and sometimes command regular troops or contractors who perform intelligence work, even interrogations.

States can find many cosy advantages in using mercenaries; the public back home can be easily misinformed about the scale of the conflict, the death of a contractor isn’t big news whereas a soldier’s death is, the state does not take the risk of caring for injured veterans and the military can hire and fire mercenaries easily. As much as anything, the idea of mercenaries fitted neatly into the neoconservative wet dream of the well conducted, risk outsourced, privatised war.

Of course there is no such thing as a well conducted war. War brings to the surface all the worst in humankind’s behaviour; cruelty, suffering and death are always the outcome, with nearly everyone involved a victim of some kind. However, as obscene as it might sound to those at end of a gun, there are rules in war. Certain international treaties govern weapons that should not be used (such as landmines, biological and chemical weapons). The rules of engagement determine when force can be used and the Geneva Conventions govern the treatment of civilians and prisoners of war. Although these rules and laws are a fig leaf over the inherent violence of war, on a pragmatic level they make some difference to the end result with the worst extremes at least being publicly recognised as wrong. There are of course many examples in history where such rules are ignored, not least in recent years with the US and above all the Bush (Jr.) regime frequently violating rules, especially with regards to the Geneva Conventions. The breaking of these rules should clearly be addressed at the most powerful level; the Bushs, Cheneys and Rumsfelds of this world should not be above the law, but violations of such rules can also often occur at the whim of the lowest ranking soldier.

Within warfare the soldier is granted absolute authority through the potential to inflict violence; as the saying goes, power corrupts, and in the case of 18 year-old boys given this power, abuses are frequent. But possibly more dangerous than the power-fuelled abuses are those motivated by factors other than mere power: those motivated by ideology or greed. It is in the very nature of the mercenary that they are motivated by money, sometimes out of necessity rather than greed, but they also inherently lack the assumed motivation that an army acts in the interests of the state.

This summer there have been numerous sad stories of mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. This brings us back to Jeremy Scahill and his fascinating twitter account. Scahill this summer has unveiled even more of the complex story of Blackwater (now rebranded Xe, pronounced ‘Zee’), probably the largest private military force of its kind in the world. Blackwater came into the public eye after the unprovoked Nisour Square killings of seventeen Iraqi civilians. In that case the US Department of Justice has alleged that Blackwater forces “fired at innocent Iraqis not because they actually believed that they were in imminent danger of serious bodily injury and actually believed that they had no alternative to the use of deadly force, but rather that they fired at innocent Iraqi civilians because of their hostility toward Iraqis and their grave indifference to the harm that their actions would cause,”. Blackwater has been accused of helping set up a secret CIA assassination programme, of smuggling arms into Iraq in sacks of dog food, and of setting up a wife-swapping ring within the company. Further to this the owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, is accused of seeing himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe, and that the company “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”; the company even went as far as using Knights of the Templar names as call signs for their operations. These allegations have been made under oath by former Blackwater employees. Contractors from other companies were involved in torture at Abu Ghraib and other atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the best attempts of the Iraqi government to ban Blackwater from the country they still operate with virtual immunity. Even whilst this article was being written, Pakistani police found stashes of illegal weapons in the offices of the mercenary company Inter-Risk. Meanwhile the UK (which has a sizeable mercenary market) is choosing to allow mercenary companies to regulate themselves.

The conclusions to draw from this sorry episode are many. Warfare is always going to cause pain, death and destruction, but where the use of force is no longer even wielded by a supposedly democratic state but on a for-profit basis as exemplified by arms companies and mercenaries, then even the fig leaf of the rules of war will continue to be blown away. There are two clear alternative paths to the current one being pursued. The first is that warfare is brought back under the full control of the state; arms companies are nationalised, mercenary activities banned and the privatisation of war reversed. The other alternative is simple; that violence is recognised as a negative force that will always lead to pain, death and destruction, just as power corrupts all in time, and that we recognise that peace is the only true answer.

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:21 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

Warwick Activism

by Megan Fortune, Sami Wannell and Beth Smith

Young

I didn’t know what to expect when I started uni last year. I had seen enough films and heard enough of my dad’s moans to assume that at University I would find a hotbed of political struggle from uneducated ‘lazy lefty students’, but this was not the case. I became aware of the anarchist group through chatting to a random guy at a RAG social who asked me to come along to a bring-and-share dinner the anarchists were holding. Having never met an anarchist before I had no idea what to expect from the evening, but I decided to be brave and went along. Never before had I been around people who cared and followed the same things as I did, and from then on I was hooked on activism.

Warwick activists are split into many groups and interest points and I won’t sit here and pretend to know them all. The main people I met through the year were the anarchists, People and Planet people, members of political parties from Tories to Socialists, and all sorts of groups with more specific focuses. Through these factions and individuals I got involved in a variety of actions. These ranged from handing out leaflets at a football match against the eco-vandalism committed by E.ON, to lying in the rain being trodden on by giant fruit in an attempt to highlight the plight of Honduran workers under Fruit of the Loom. It went on to the feat I am most proud of: our sit-in in solidarity with the victims of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is, in my opinion, the act we should have most satisfaction in, as it not only brought many different campaigning groups together but also brought the problem to the attention of many who would not normally be involved in politics.

Medium

I arrived at Warwick on the look out for activism and was pleased to discover just how much was going on. I first got involved with the anarchist group, (having found out rather at random that such a group exists) but have since become involved in many other groups as well. There are many different and varied groups at Warwick – a big shout out in particular goes to WASS (Warwick Anti-Sexism Society) and Weapons out of Warwick (part of People and Planet) – but many people are in a number of groups and so there is a strong sense of an activist community. This helps us stay focused and enthusiastic, but also manifests in the form of many bring-and-share parties.

During my time at Warwick a couple of actions in particular have stood out. As mentioned by the other contributors, being a part of last year’s sit-in for Gaza was inspiring and invigorating. It felt amazing to claim a space in which to show solidarity and to educate ourselves. I also felt myself gain confidence through my involvement – for example by facilitating meetings, talking to the press etc. I was also involved in the action at Faslane nuclear submarine base a couple of years ago. It was very empowering for me to take direct action as part of a well-prepared and well-supported group. However, the bulk of activism at Warwick involves small and unglamorous actions such as leafleting each careers service event in which arms companies take part. These actions are just as important and can be really satisfying too.

It’s easy to get involved with activism at Warwick and societies are really open for whatever level of involvement you want to have.

Old

We used to be known as “Red Warwick” in the 60s and 70s, because us Warwick students used to go through protest after rent-strike after occupation. But I’ll be wholly honest. I got involved with “activism” (whatever that means) at Warwick when I arrived in 2005 because of pretty people. Two whole sexes of them! I mean, there had been definite political ideas in my mind before, but it’s something I’d always been discouraged from talking about. There were your standard “student” post-90s activist groups: socialists, anti-*badthing*ists, single-issue folk like environmentalists and human-rightistas, what have you. The people I ended up with first were all very lovely, very polite and very proper. Even when I found my home with our friendly neighbourhood anarchists, the group normally viewed as rabble-rousers, we were all pretty smiley and informal. This vision got shaken a teensy bit when someone decided that we go up to Faslane to blockade a road outside the military base. We decided to be very prepared, organising non-violent direct action workshops, numerous planning lists, and more “what if this went wrong” situations than you could shake a stick at. We even got trained by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (I’m not joking). Many court cases and many many months later, the feeling really had changed amongst a few of us… if I weren’t me, I’d probably use the phrase “paradigm shift”. We were a lot less intimidated by authority for one – breaking the law and “getting away with it” gives you a bit of a new outlook.

The anti-arms trade campaign really kicked off after that, along with a shift more towards disrupting over passively informing. Trying to halt talks by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (triggering a love of doing everything “in waves”), dressing up as Death to go into careers fairs, that sorta thing. When we heard about how some other universities had started occupying lecture rooms in solidarity with those affected by the December/Jan escalation of violence towards Palestine, we had the confidence to do something. So we did.

Now I’m all old and establishment-y, so it’s up to all the new whippersnappers to rabble-rouse now. I may stand at the sidelines and make tea. Or teach you how to find your inner clown…

For more information -

On Student Union societies and campaigns – http://www.warwicksu.com/societies/and http://www.warwicksu.com/haveyoursay/campaigns/

On Warwick Anarchists – facebook search ‘Warwick Anarchists’ or email e.a.smith.2@warwick.ac.uk

On Dissident Warwick – facebook search ‘Dissident Warwick’ or email dissidentwarwick@googlemail.com

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:18 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

Review: The Whisperers

by Beth Smith

The Whisperers, Orlando Figes, (Penguin Books, 2007)

The Whisperers, by Orlando Figes, is a book about the lives of ordinary individuals and families in Soviet Russia, concentrating particularly on life under Stalin. What is striking about this book is its emphasis on individual stories rather than on using an abstract, top-down approach to history. Figes focuses how families and relationships were affected in the period. Children lied about their parents’ details on official forms, families were split due to arrests, husbands and wives kept their histories hidden from each other, and from their children. Whilst the book does contain a wealth of information about the policies of the Stalinist regime, its criteria for their evaluation is firmly tied to people’s experience, enabling it to put forward a grounded and human critique of the period.

One recurring theme in the book is, inevitably, fear. Figes gives an excellent account of the culture of fear experienced by many Soviet citizens. At the same time, Figes acknowledges that not all waves of oppression affected all families. He cites a joke popular during the Terror in which, when officials knock at the door of a flat to arrest an inhabitant, the inhabitant replies that ‘You’ve got the wrong door, the Communists live upstairs’. This joke suggests that some saw this wave of oppression in terms of Party infighting.

The book also gives an impression of the often arbitrary nature of oppression. Figes describes the pressure that officials felt to fill ‘kulak’ quotas, regardless of the objective situation. He cites the explanation of one official to a ‘kulak’ family; ‘I have received an order… to find 17 kulak families for deportation. I formed a Committee of the Poor and we sat through the night to choose the families. There is no one in the village who is rich enough to qualify, and not many old people, so we simply chose the 17 families. You were chosen… Please don’t take it personally. What else could I do?’

Some may question why such a book is important. Many of the horrors of Stalin’s regime are widely known and well-documented and to criticise his practices is hardly radical or particularly controversial. However, it is important to read this book, and others like it, for a number of reasons. Firstly, strangely perhaps, I believe such an account of history shows that change is possible. Many people feel apathetic or sceptical about the possibility of changing the ideals upon which the world is run and this is often due to their assumptions about human nature. However, whilst human nature is too complex a topic to engage with here, the fervour with which many believed the Soviet ideology suggests that people’s behaviours and ideas can change; they were just changed in the wrong way, and to the wrong thing.

Secondly, for myself at least, to read the stories of individuals oppressed by Stalin’s totalitarian regime motivates me to act in a way that facts and figures often do not. The reason for this emotional reaction is (at least in part) due to the third, and most important, reason for this book: its reinforcement of anti-authoritarian ideas. Whilst an anti-authoritarian conclusion will seem obvious to many, it has broader implications than may be expected. The messages of this book suggest the dangers of holding to predetermined – almost holy – ends, to the disregard of all else; particularly an awareness of the corrupting effects of power. What strikes me as I read is the insanity and danger of societies in which individuals wield so much power over others. We should be suspicious therefore, of power-relations based in hierarchy and unaccountability. Whilst such relations of course vary in extremity, they include the practices of patriarchy, racism, and homophobia, employer-employee workplace relations and dictatorships (elected or not) across the globe. This principle must also extend to those on the left who believe that socialism/ communism can be created by a minority, and using hierarchical structures. The horrors of totalitarianism and the effects they have on human life should motivate us to fight for a world in which people can control their own lives and cannot control the lives of others. In such a world, but also in our world today, collective action is necessary to prevent elite groups from taking this control from others.

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Bonkers for Bolivia

by Jehanzeb A Khan

The ‘New Left’ of Latin America receives considerable public attention, and rightfully so; it reflects a breaking away from the ideological stranglehold of the age old regional nexus of big business, church and military (for further information watch Zorro).But too often the complexities of this movement are overshadowed and simplified under the grand antics of certain leaders in the movement. I am of course speaking of the big red himself ; Chavez. With public attention focused on him little homage is given to the complex differences of his allies in the continent, in particular; Bolivia.

On a surface level there are many similarities between Chavez and Morales’s governments. They both brandish a ‘21st century socialism’ involved with heavy social expenditure, limited nationalisation of key industries and calls for Latin American sovereignty, consolidated through constitutional amendments. In fact they both even have distinctive styles of dressing; Chavez with his bright red shirt (forming an easy bulls eye for US aerial raids) and Morales with his grandmum sweater. But there are core differences that result in very different political landscapes in the two countries.

Political life in Venezuela has never had sufficient community level organization with the two main parties the AD and COPEI having played catch with political power for twenty years. Hence Chavez managed to develop and maintain a tight hold on the reins of the peoples movement when he set up the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) and absorbed many of the other fractionalized groups of the left. Bolivia though is a very different case where there is widespread grass roots organization across all sections of the working population, providing several vehicles for the peoples movement. Such groups were especially active in the lead up to Morales presidency, starting with the famous Cochabamba protests of 2000 where workers, indigenous peasants and students united to bite bullets for four months of successful resistance to the privatization of water resources in the province. Similar struggles took place in the attempted exploitation of natural gas reserves by MNCs and attempted eradication of the coca crop(which plays an important role in the culture of indigenous communities) as part of the US led ‘War on Drugs’.

It is these groups that continue to play a pivotal role in Morales’s power base and his consideration of this is reflected in areas of his domestic policy. For instance his constitutional reform package establishes the economy as a mix between market, state and communitarian; with cooperatives widespread in some key industries such as mining. Furthermore it contains provisions for giving indigenous Amymara groups(the majority ethnicity) autonomous regions where they can write their own statutes, allowing them to manage resources and commence their traditional forms of community justice. This is also reflected, albeit symbolically, by the fact that he continues to retain presidency of the coca growers union; the Cocalero. A contrast is present here with Chavezs extensions of the states powers, such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) condemned monitoring of union elections.

While it is true that worker-employer relations have still not been altered in any fundamental way, credit must still be given to Morales for having moved forward the peoples movement in the face of a national bourgeoisie attempting to virtually secede in Santa Cruz, rapidly dropping prices for key exports and Washington huffing and puffing at the back door. And as new areas of class conflict rise to prominence in the public consciousness prospects of progress down this path in time to come do seem sunny, given the resilience and unity displayed by the working people of Bolivia. Leaving Morales to either ride the tiger or…get eaten by it?

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:10 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

Fast, Effective Relief from Pain?

by Chris Zacharia

One day I happened to be studying for a particular essay for my course here at Warwick when the familiar dull pangs of a headache began thumping at my temples. Trying to think when you have a headache is painful and self-defeating, like digging a hole with your bare hands. So, I did what everyone does, will do and will tell others to do – I reached up to my shelf and plucked out a packet of aspirin. In a few moments the pills had popped out of their foil, like apples falling from a tree, and I had quickly prepared the obligatory glass of water beside them. I swallowed both tablets at once and, just to be consistent, gulped down the glass of water whole. Since science has not yet developed pills that work instantly, I took a break from my assignment until the paracetamol kicked in, and during this barren spell I sat contemplating my actions. Why did I reach so mechanically for the pharmaceuticals when I first felt the headache?

Scientific developments usually mean big business, and medicine is no exception. The cost of developing a new drug and launching it to the market costs an average of $1.7bn (£1.04bn); private firms would never risk such large sums unless they knew that there was some serious money to be made. And, as the case of U.S. pharmaceuticals giant Monsanto shows, there’s no limit to potential profit if you’re willing to be unscrupulous about your methods. In the U.S., drug companies spend $19bn a year on promotions. Advertisements for drugs such as Ibuprofen litter our television screens, bathroom shelves brim with a veritable rainbow of medicines, and corporations such as Pfizer, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline have revenues stretching into the tens of billions. Most importantly, the citizens of most developed nations are impeccably trained when it comes to taking their medicines – they know their Nurofen from their Nytol, their Benylin from their Beechams.

There’s no doubt that modern medicine offers huge benefits to societies worldwide, and that the rise in average life expectancy is in no small part due to these developments. What I want to attack here specifically is the mindset behind the taking of the aspirin. Take the situation I described earlier – my contracting of a headache, which was most probably down to too many hours spent staring at the laptop screen. My headache was my brain telling me that it couldn’t handle the strain of concentrating on the screen, and that it was doing me harm. But instead of actually taking this into account, I fulfilled instead the well-drilled action of mindlessly taking some aspirin. Rather than cease an activity that was doing me harm, I quashed my body’s ineffective complaints so that I could continue the harmful action. After all, when we are ill, we are told – often by concerned members of our families and friendship circles – to ‘take some medicine’. The implicit message here is that the origin of discomfort lies with the human, not with the lifestyle. What is implicitly admitted is that the lifestyle is too powerful to change, and in its place the body must yield instead. In fact, the truth is that the lifestyle is the cause of the headache, and yet we are discouraged from protecting ourselves from such harmful ways and instead given a quick, easy and convenient solution in the form of the tablet. Why are our lifestyles being put behind, instead of before, productivity & convenience?

As people base their lives around wealth accumulation for faceless profiteers, their complex emotional needs are rarely satisfied and are more often than not entirely ignored. These needs are left out of important agendas entirely and those who do attempt to delve into their subconscious are depicted as New Age spiritual types or religious fools. The system of wealth accumulation, by squeezing every ounce of productivity from every worker, like battery-farm hens, essentially leaves the individual no choice but to resort to quick-fix convenience solutions that often harm the protagonist in the long-term and benefit the deceivers who propagate such problems. Few of those who work 40 hours or more a week for minimum wage or thereabouts will have the energy or time to cook a nutritious and fulfilling meal; often, profitable ready-meals and frozen foods are necessary to free up precious leisure time, at the expense of personal wellbeing. It is the same with the aspirin example I gave earlier. It is just one of many that shows just how far convenience is embedded within our thoughts and everyday actions. The capitalist world sells us, through the national con-game of advertising, a hollow lifestyle of shortcuts and vice, which we are loath to reject since we need all the free time we can get. Convenience, I believe, is the trusty sword by the side of capitalism, invaluable whenever the system faces challenges. Changing the system must involve forcing production to fall in line with the needs of human beings, rather than the other way around – and only then can the insipid culture of convenience, and the resulting mega-profits, be put to rest.

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:08 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

The Truth is Out There? An Examination of Political Conspiracy Theories

by Duncan Tucker

Amid the furore about healthcare this summer, Barack Obama faced wild accusations from right-wing “birthers” claiming that he is a Kenyan-born Muslim, sent to bring socialism to the United States. These unsubstantiated allegations demonstrate not only the growing desperation of the conservative right, but also America’s age-old love for conspiracy theories. Conspiracies have become increasingly popular in the internet age; Google lists over ten million results for conspiracy theories, while in 2006 a national survey revealed that a remarkable 36% of Americans believe that their own government was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.[1] The popularity of such theories may be attributed in part to human nature. It is only natural for people to question authority and invent narratives in order to make sense of complex or distressing events. Additionally, conspiracy theories play a sensationalist role. They have become just another form of entertainment, capable of selling newspapers and satisfying the public’s appetite for gossip and scandal. Yet there is a risk that such theories trivialise and over-simplify important political issues. An examination of the historical circumstances behind major political conspiracy theories can reveal why they remain so persistent, and whether they deserve such attention.

Conspiracy theories crop up routinely throughout history, but it was not until the 1960s that they began to gain widespread popularity and media attention. The US public was losing faith in the government after Lyndon Johnson’s lies over the Vietnam War were exposed, and this distrust was intensified when the Watergate scandal revealed the extent of Richard Nixon’s illegal activities and his inept attempts at a cover-up. Amid the growing sense of disillusionment there developed a political climate ripe for conspiracy theories.

Perhaps the best known of conspiracy theories arose after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Rumours persist to this day of CIA/Soviet/Cuban/Mafia involvement; additional shooters on the infamous grassy knoll; and Lee Harvey Oswald’s tantalising claim that he was “just a patsy”, moments before he too was gunned down. The huge weight of evidence against the Warren Commission’s official account – that Oswald was a deranged lone assassin – led to an official reinvestigation in 1979, which ruled that there was ‘a probable conspiracy’, but failed to identify any specifics of the plot.[2] The Kennedy assassination also helped to popularise conspiracy theories for a new generation, thanks to the release of Oliver Stone’s controversial thriller ‘JFK’ in 1991. The film reignited public interest in the case, led to the declassification of thousands of documents, and helped to firmly establish conspiracy theories in contemporary popular culture.

Such theories have maintained popularity and a degree of credibility in part because the US government was behind operations as sinister and unlikely as those detailed in many alleged conspiracies. Under the guidance of director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI ran a secret and illegal counter-intelligence programme (COINTELPRO) to repress political dissent, from the 1950s through to the 70s. Hoover targeted high-profile African-American leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X through means such as blackmail, infiltration, violent intimidation and murder. The CIA was involved in even more bizarre operations, such as the mysterious “MKULTRA” programme, which seems as absurd and far-fetched as even the wildest conspiracy theory. During the 1950s and 60s the CIA spent years experimenting with mind-control through hypnosis and the administration of drugs such as LSD. They sought to create a “Manchurian candidate” who could “perform an involuntarily act of attempted assassination against a prominent foreign politician or if necessary, against an American official.”[3] However, in 1973 all files related to the project were conveniently destroyed before they could be made public to an official investigation.

Many conspiracy theorists have asserted that 9/11 was an inside job, or “False Flag” operation, to create a pretext for the War on Terror and justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. While most people refuse to believe that the US government would sanction the murder of its own citizens, this would not be an entirely unprecedented action. In 1962 the CIA proposed “Operation Northwoods”, a plan that involved clandestine operatives carrying out terrorist attacks against the American public, including bombings in Florida and Washington. Cuba’s communist government would then be blamed, providing a convenient pretext for another US invasion and the removal of Fidel Castro. Although Kennedy ultimately abandoned the plan, Northwoods remains an intriguing precedent, revealing that False Flag operations were not necessarily beyond the realms of government policy. With government agencies actively working against progressive social movements, and contemplating the murder of their own citizens and politicians, it is no surprise that conspiracy theories were met with increasing public acceptance in America during the Cold War.

Yet in regard to 9/11, it seems unlikely that the US government could have flawlessly planned and carried out attacks of such magnitude in complete secrecy. It is more plausible that the government may have known about the attacks in advance, but failed to prevent them either deliberately or through sheer criminal negligence. Indeed, there is ample evidence of a government conspiracy after 9/11, to cover up the mistakes of the Bush administration and the security agencies who ignored numerous warnings in the months prior to the attacks.[4] The 9/11 Truth Movement has campaigned tirelessly for a reinvestigation of the attacks, yet could their efforts be misguided? Although the official accounts of events such as 9/11 may often be misleading, Noam Chomsky argues that inordinate focus on conspiracy theories distracts attention from more serious state crimes: “One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis.”[5] Instead of poring over every aspect of the tragedy, the Truth Movement would perhaps have been more constructive in redirecting its attention towards Bush’s exploitation of the attacks; highlighting and campaigning against his repression of civil liberties, abuses of executive power, and imperialist foreign policy.

Conspiracy theories now emerge after almost every high profile news event, and it is unsurprising that they have flourished online. The internet provides a cheap and easy means of reaching a potentially huge worldwide audience, and can be an excellent resource for independent research. Yet most conspiracy sites are notoriously unreliable, frequently taking quotes out of context and making tenuous connections between half-truths and lies to create new interpretations. Internet films like ‘Loose Change’ and ‘Zeitgeist’ are riddled with errors, omissions and distorted or even invented facts. It is essential for conspiracy theorists to treat such sources with caution. Those truly dedicated to uncovering the truth must be willing to consider alternative perspectives and read debunking arguments as well. Unequivocally accepting such theories is just as naive and close-minded as refusing to consider them in the first place.

Although frequently ridiculed and labeled as “conspiracy nuts” by the mainstream media, conspiracy theorists can still play an important role in investigating stories that the corporate media often ignores. Conspiracy theories should not be immediately dismissed out of hand, and despite their flaws can often reveal lies or inconsistencies in official accounts which might otherwise go unnoticed. Events such as Watergate illustrated the importance of holding official sources of information to account, and not blindly accepting what we are told by anyone. While the whole truth is often elusive, an objective examination of major news events can help create a conscious, critical discourse and prevent an Orwellian rewriting of history.

[1] Scripps Howard poll (2006) http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_1475.cfm

[2] James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, ‘The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X’ (2003) p.51

[3] CIA memorandum (1954) http://ww.tenntimes.org/stories/mind-control/mind-00f-05.htm

[4] 9/11: The Conspiracy Files (BBC Documentary, 2007)

[5] Noam Chomsky (2006) http://www.radicalreaction.com/blog/chomsky/index.html

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:07 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem

Maize, Ministries, and Hunger: How the World Bank Starved Malawi

by Kat Hobbs

“The City man cometh to no pain

When rural grounds receive no rain”

Dambudzo Marechera, ‘Throne of Bayonets’[1]

It is February 2002. Across southern Africa, droughts and floods have ripped apart the maize fields, destroying farmland and crops. In Malawi, locked in the South-East between Mozambique and Tanzania, more than seven million people are starving²; two thirds of the people are without food, eating pumpkin leaves, maize husks and the bark of banana trees to survive. The government grain stocks are empty, and the Famine Early Warning Systems have failed to predict the 400,000 tonne deficit. The international community is dragging its feet, spatting with the government over corruption allegations and policy advice; aid was suspended in November 2001, with the US diverting $6 million and the EU not only suspending aid but demanding a refund of 15 million euros. The government warehouses are empty, and the question which is held over the heads of the hungry is: where did the grain go?

The argument between the internationals and the government is a roll-call of power in the developing world. The EU, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank are but a few involved in the creation of this disaster. The World Food Programme and other NGOs are issuing a call to arms while the diplomatic finger-pointing continues; meanwhile parents are selling their children to feed the rest of the family³. To find the roots of the crisis, you have to rewind- back to the beginning of Malawi’s ‘development’ programme, when the World Bank and IMF began their roadmap to create prosperity. The grand plans rested on one key move, the darling of neo-liberal economists; the euphemistic ‘Structural Adjustment’ programmes.

When colonialism ended in Malawi in 1964, the country was enormously underdeveloped. Given the unstable climate (droughts are frequent, although one third of the country is covered by a freshwater lake, so irrigation is far from impossible) and endemic poverty- even now the UN Development Programme lists them 164th of 177 countries on the Human Development Index⁴- Malawi seemed desperately in need. The IMF and World Bank offered the Malawian government (at the time, an out-and-out dictatorship under “His Excellency the Life President Ngwazi Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda”) enormous loans. And as the country progressed in fits and starts, the need for money remained; the cyclic nature of debt in the developing world is well recorded. Malawi was soon aid dependant- and the banks could attach whatever conditions they wanted to the loans, effectively using them to set government policy.

Money hadn’t always come with conditions attached. During the Cold War, America and the USSR poured money into Africa, to win allegiance in their respective fights against the scourge of communism and the scourge of capitalism. Malawi, bordering on Mozambique which in 1977 took up Marxist-Leninist doctrine⁵, was flooded with unconditional aid, propping up the vicious Banda regime. The aim was to ensure they avoided becoming a link in the feared ‘Domino effect’: American money would flow as long as the free market and not the socialists ruled in Malawi. By 1992, the people were rioting and Banda’s regime was looking increasingly shaky; accused of murdering cabinet colleagues among other unsavoury acts, Western aid was suspended until good governance conditions could be implemented. Malawi became a multi-party democracy in 1994, but the real power still lay elsewhere; by 1995, 97% of Malawi’s government expenditure was supplied by US aid⁶. And it came with rules.

The IMF and World Bank ‘advised’ the government to privatise everything it could lay hands on, keeping faith in the saving grace of the markets. Privatisation, removal of trade tariffs, no minimum pricing for farmers; in order to develop, Malawi was to be opened up to foreign markets and private investors. The aid money which ran the country depended on it. The crowning glory was the ‘commercialisation’ of ADMARC, the government department which bought up grain and kept it in reserve, and the scrapping of the fertilizer subsidies and ‘starter packs’ of seeds which the government had been distributing to the poorest of the poor. In 1998, a loan was agreed to ‘help’ the government privatise not only ADMARC, but the telecommunications networks and the energy sector⁷. But ADMARC, ignoring the advice, continued to buy grain, keeping the maize price stable for farmers. Clearly they needed to be reminded of their priorities. So in 2000, the World Bank doled out another $28.9 million to the Malawian government to push through the “Privatisation and Utility Reform Project”[8]. This involved the closure of 400 of the 530 country-wide ADMARC markets which had given people not only the agricultural inputs they needed to grow food, but the access to markets that rural sellers needed in order to then sell their maize. It also resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs; the gaping hole in the economy it left was supposed to be filled by private investors and companies. The seeds of the famine had been sown. Private investors failed to appear, put off by the lack of infrastructure- roads, communication, power, all were lacking; the very sectors the Bank had instructed the government to pull out of. As agriculture collapsed, the hunger increased.

Meanwhile, the IMF had been keeping a strict eye on the macroeconomics of the country. When the first loan was arranged in 1998, the government agreed to eliminate price support operations for maize by ADMARC and prepare it to operate on a strictly commercial basis. In case of a harvest failure, it instead created a National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) to handle the strategic grain reserve in place of ADMARC. But the NFRA began to behave just as ADMARC had done, stabilising prices for poor farmers by buying up grain. The IMF was stern; in their own words, “NFRA was likely to become a burden on the budget, as with ADMARC before it”[9]. There was also, they pointed out, the small matter of a $300 million loan the IMF had advised the government to take out from a South African bank that needed to be paid back. By the end of 1999, NFRA had 167,00 metric tons of grain stored. The Banks demanded its sale, waving the loan papers; the government obeyed. The grain reserve was sold to neighbouring states such as Kenya, or released onto the domestic market, causing the price to begin to fluctuate dangerously.

And then disaster struck: the rains failed. The government, having been told to sell off the grain reserve, had nothing to offer; international donors, including the World Bank and the IMF, expressed shock and horror at the unfolding crisis. Where, they asked, was the grain reserve? They turned on the government that they had funded and advised, accusing it of corruption and irresponsibility. Aid would be withheld until the grain could be accounted for. Between October 2001 and March 2002 the price of maize shot up by 400%. At the same time, in spring 2002 and even when the resulting famine led to the death of approximately one thousand people, the IMF suspended $47 million in assistance on the grounds of ‘inadequate implementation of its reform programs’. As the famine set in and worsened into 2002, Malawi was still spending 20% of its national budget on debt repayment to Western creditors: more than was spent on health, education and agriculture combined¹⁰. Crippled by famine and debt, the country was sliding into destitution.

And then Malawi dared to do something which has been virtually unheard of in sub-Saharan Africa, dependant as that region is on the goodwill of powerful development companies. In 2005 the government decided to defy the World Bank and the free market advice that had brought them to the brink of ruin. They re-introduced fertilizer subsidies and starter packs, and began supporting the farmers that comprise 70% of the population. In the words of Celia Dugger in the New York Times, “Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.”[11]

Malawi still has a long way to go before it will be food secure; the unstable climate of the region, combined with a lack of diversity in farming practice, leave it vulnerable to sudden shocks. However, in the two years following the re-introduction of the subsidy, Malawi went from a beggar nation reliant on foreign aid to a net producer: by 2007 it was selling more food to the World Food Programme than any other southern African country, and exporting thousands of tons of grain to neighbours such as Zimbabwe.[12] Refusing to bow before the power of the free market, Malawi has begun a long, slow road to independance.

But across the rest of Africa, the patterns are repeating themselves; Nigeria, for example, is once again on the brink of food riots. Except this time the problem is not a lack of food; the country has plenty. The culprit is the 19% value added tax which the IMF pressured Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja to implement, with foodstuffs included. The tax was added even though food costs rose more then 75 per cent in the previous five years¹³. The Niger government, under instruction from the IMF and European Union, at first refused to distribute free food to those most in need; such actions would “depress the market prices” that benefited wholesalers and speculators¹⁴. Meanwhile thousands are starving while sitting in front of stocked shops; they simply cannot afford the food. The World Bank and the other international institutions and governments whose protectionist policies at home effectively bar Africa from competing in world markets continue their hypocrisy in insisting on African trade liberalisation, opening the continent to the powerful multinational corporations who benefit from the cheap labour and rich natural resources. The ideology of free market economics recognises no value in the life, liberty and dignity of thousands; only the dancing numbers that mark profit and loss hold power. As the climate hots up and the weather across the globe grows more and more unpredictable, droughts and famine will only become more common. If we do not act now to place people before ideology, and life before profit, then countless more will stand where thousands of Nigerians are standing today, on the wrong side of fatly stocked shop windows with empty pockets and empty stomachs. No matter the theoretical elegance of free markets; they can create only inequality, and one outcome. In the eloquent call to arms of the Zimbabwean poet Dambudzo Marechera:

“Huger in the belly

Rose to the Brain.

Its bright eyes clenched

In anger to smite with white-hot steel

The reinforced glass between my want

And your plenty.”[15]

[1] ‘Throne of Bayonets’, Mindblast, Dambudzo Marechera, Harare Modern Writers, 1984

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1985765.stm

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1844748.stm

[4] http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_MWI.html

[5] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/2120437.stm

[6] http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Foreign-Aid-The-post-cold-war-world.html

[7] http://www.worldbankcampaigneurope.org/IMG/pdf/Testimony_Collins_Magalasi.pdf

[8] http://www.worldbankcampaigneurope.org/IMG/pdf/Testimony_Collins_Magalasi.pdf

[9] http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/malawi.htm

[10] http://www.justfocus.org.nz/tag/privatisation/

[11] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

[12] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

[13] http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268756/market_famines.html

[14] http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/other_comments/268756/market_famines.html

[15] From ‘The Coin of Moonshine’, Mindblast, Dambudzo Marechera, Harare Modern Writers, 1984

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:06 | Comments (3) | Close comments | Report a problem

The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

by Aidan Barlow

It was a warm and blissful summer’s day on the Isle of Wight, and workers at the Vestas factory, which specialises in wind turbine production, arrive to work. They had, on the face of it, every reason to be happy and contented workers. Vestas boasts ‘it is important all our employees… enjoy a high level of well being’. Vestas also claims to be ‘the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions’ [i].So the benevolent capitalist employer not only cared for well being, but could surely bestow ‘plenty of work’[ii] for its truly happy workers to engage in. What could possibly go wrong to shatter this harmonious illusion?

The bliss was shattered by Vestas, who planned to sack 625 workers at the Isle of Wight plant, describing how there was ‘no market’ for the products being made. This absurdity, at a time when demand for green energy is essential, exposes the capitalist system and its inherent contradictions. The environmental imperative to construct wind turbines and the desperate need to save the planet mean nothing when short-term profits of the capitalists are threatened.

The reaction of the workers was not to sit back and accept the reasons for redundancies. They clearly understood the importance of keeping their jobs, as Vestas is one of the largest single employers on the island. They were not prepared to tolerate the harsh reality of unemployment, which has spread throughout the world, leaving millions of workers in desperation. Instead, the workers called upon the government to nationalise the plant, and to do so, employed the tactic of occupation.

Occupation has a colourful history within workers struggle, and once more today, workers are learning the lessons of its effectiveness. They are seeing the power of their direct action, as workers in Russia did during 1917, Italy in 1920, and also in America by the CIO union in the car industry during the 1930s.[iii] It proved the potential of occupation as a method for workers’ demonstrating their own collective power. In more modern times, there was a spate of occupations which emanated from France and Belgium following from the events of 1968.[iv] In Britain, there was a spate of industrial sit ins through the 1970s.[v]

The occupations are all the more relevant when we see the increase in the use of this tactic recently. By no means is Vestas an isolated incident. At the end of 2008, workers at the Prisme factory in Dundee were made redundant, and chose to take direct action to fight back. Consequent to their action, they were able to establish a worker’s co-operative at the plant. Similarly, Visteon workers occupied their workplaces, winning major concessions from their former employers with increased redundancy pay. It certainly shows how direct action gets results. However a question remains as to whether the current examples during recession truly represent workers becoming radicalised.

I feel the radicalism of workers has been and is being demonstrated by the fact that these struggles are taking place independent of recognised trade unions. Workers themselves are taking the direct action initiative. Furthermore, radicalism of workers was also demonstrated at Vestas where Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes was jeered for not supporting the workers action. This is no surprise, as workers are not interested in hearing spurious liberal rhetoric. Liberals do not understand the shaking impulse of our time, or how the heart beat quickens with the bravery and courage of direct action. One Vestas worker described how the ‘occupation made me feel alive’.[vi] It is this legacy of struggle that is bequeathed to us from Spartacus; it is a spirit that resides within us from struggles such as the peasants’ revolt, the French Revolution and Peterloo.

The Vestas workers are showing how radicalised people can become amidst a capitalist crisis. Prior to the event, little prospect of such militant action seemed imagineable, but workers united together, and brought together the whole community to support the direct action. They faced tough battles against the capitalist legal system, scurrilous police tactics [vii] and manipulative Vestas media relations. Their action presents us all with a stark choice, to accept the path of neo-liberal capitalism as it meanders through the desolate wasteland it has created, or to resist.

Resistance is spreading, and the action at Vestas demonstrates that workers’ hearts can be moved to stand up to resist capitalist desolation, and instead move into a future based on human need. Indeed, this year saw occupations across university campuses following Israeli aggression against Gaza, and universities such as SOAS have also seen occupations against redundancy and deportations. Furthermore, it is not just universities that have used occupations; there are countless other examples of people using the method. For example, people have taken the action to defend much-loved primary schools from closure, such as at Wyndford[viii] and also at Lewisham, and workers at Thomas Cook have also taken similar measures in Dublin. People are employing the method to resist capitalist cuts to services, at a time when they are most needed.

Therefore in conclusion, the struggle at Vestas very much proves that the neo-liberal agenda can be resisted and challenged. Vestas can be a revitalising beacon to inspire many future struggles. The action has united workers, and acts as a light to future struggles. It teaches us a valuable lesson, that when there are problems in the world; we must be prepared to engage with them, and not leave the problems to those who have failed. History is within our hands, and from the collective thoughts, words and actions, we can create a better world to bequeath to future generations.

[i] www.vestas.com

[ii] Robert Tressell: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, quoting the conservatives pledge for ‘plenty of work’.

[iii] (http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/07/20/british-factory-occupations-1970s).

[iv] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1968/france/1-students.htm)

[v] http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/07/20/british-factory-occupations-1970s

[vi] http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18635

[vii] Green party position. http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/22-07-2009-police-tactics-at-Vestas-occupation.html

[viii] http://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/2009/06/30/wyndford-primary-school-reoccupied/

Christopher Rossdale : 09 Oct 2009 10:05 | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem