#12 | theoccupiedtimes.com | @OccupiedTimes 21MAR2012 BLOCK THE BILL Protesters Rally To Revive THE NHS

NHS staff were joined last Saturday As the crowd advanced police by members of the public and activists officers made repeated attempts to including contingents from Occupy prevent the procession, succeeding only London and Anonymous UK in a in separating protesters, but failing to demonstration over the government’s stop them. Eventually, after turning onto proposed health service reforms. Chancery Lane, the last few protesters Around 200 people gathered outside still advancing were kettled by police the Department of Health building in using force. One man was tripped from Whitehall, where speakers addressed behind while running and another had his the crowd. head smashed into a window. As the crowd grew, only a minimal Officers initially informed the kettled police presence could be seen as demonstrators they would either be people discussed the impending Health arrested under a Section 12 order or and Social Care bill in a subdued could give their personal details and atmosphere. A small group then moved be escorted out - but several activists into the road and sat down with arms demanded clarification as to whether linked, blocking traffic and prompting these were the only two options open more protesters to join in solidarity. to them. Police eventually escorted Within minutes the majority of people them out one-by-one, without who had gathered for the demo - taking information, but past Forward including elderly and disabled people, Intelligence Officers filming the incident. as well as parents with small children Despite the historical importance of - were obstructing the road, chanting the government’s unmandated reforms, defiantly as surgical hats, masks and the small but spirited public defiance gloves were passed around. went totally unreported in the mainstream A proposal was then heard from media, with some commentators the crowd of protesters for mobilisation describing it as a “blackout”. towards the Virgin Healthcare offices. For comment on the NHS Consenting to the proposal, the crowd privatisation see page three. began to move towards Trafalgar Square, bearing placards with calls to keep the health service in the hands of the public. Two blocks ahead, officers from the Territorial Support Group emerged from a side street to block the road, forming the first of what was to be a series of loose kettles broken by protesters. Upon reaching the busy roundabout at Trafalgar Square protesters scattered, some encountering a police unit armed with automatic weapons. These officers, thought to be from the SO6 Diplomatic Protection Group, seemingly stumbled upon the protest by chance, but still decided to leave their vehicle and patrol the area on foot, Wasi Daniju Wasi Daniju weapons in hand. New Battles in Natalia Sanchez-Bell Editorial Higher Education Mark Bergfeld Whose NHS? & Michael Richmond Picking up a copy of Rupert Murdoch’s in on reconstruction and unfair trade the violence on Al Jazeera. Western to unseat kings and powerful elites- Last week more than seven hundred of students have left a mark on the education to students from widening In spite of widespread public outrage, corruption. It doesn’t matter if they’ve jingoistic tabloid newspaper last agreements. After a few photo ops governments consistently sided with just look at Thatcher’s poll bounce students demonstrated in defiance against movement. Arguably it has peeled off participation background has been met nearly every Royal College opposing it and “followed the rules” (a forlorn refrain Wednesday, you could be forgiven for with Sarkozy, the people of Libya autocratic leaders until demonstrators following the Falklands War. Universities Minister David Willetts and a softer outer layer of protesters and with opposition by students and staff alike. a coalition ranging from the Conservative reminiscent of the expenses scandal) and running to a mirror to check that you were quickly forgotten. As Human were literally storming their palaces. But 2012 is not 1929. Bradley his plans to further privatise the University supporters from demonstrating. Importantly, the UCU lecturers Home blog on the right to Leftist activists at registered their interest- the problem is CONTENTS aren’t, in fact, Bill Murray’s character Rights Watch points out, Gaddafi’s The argument that diplomacy worked Manning still sits in a cell, but the that they have such an interest and how PAGES/ sector. The march called by the Education As students held their sit-down they in Further Education and post-1992 the opposite end of the political spectrum 01 Block The Bill in Groundhog Day. Since The Sun system persists in many places. Only “behind the scenes” is unlikely to video he leaked is out and doing Activist Network, ULU and various chanted ‘Who protects the 1%?, the police institutions also voted overwhelmingly who have demanded that the government painfully obvious it is that this affects the 02 Editorial drafted its infamous “45 Minutes the names on the business cards have comfort the people who stepped in the rounds, and war doesn’t look so Students’ Unions across London coincided protects the 1%’. Anyone who had been on for strike action. The government wants drop the Health and Social Care Bill, the direction of legislation. 03 New Battles In Higher Education From Doom” headline to scare the UK been changed. front of riot police and military units to attractive up close and streaming. with the day of walkouts called by the previous student demonstrations could only to drive down costs to make it easier coalition government have adopted the Private healthcare firms and their Whose NHS? / Getting Away With Murder? population into supporting the war in In addition, the past twelve demand change. Anyone can claim to New media technologies can bring National Union of Students. agree: the police are not part of the 99%. for private companies to feed off public novel approach of sticking their fingers in lobbyists have been salivating at the very Notes On The Crisis From Greece 04 Iraq, most of us have come to agree months have highlighted the be a hero “behind the scenes”. activists together across continents 05 Occupy Buffer Zone Under the banner of ‘Willetts must There are arguments amongst education – this is why staff are fighting to their ears and forcing it through regardless. thought of the Health and Social Care bill. Haiti, The Real Canary In The Mine that the war was illegal, instigated hypocrisy of Western foreign policy. While politicians demand austerity and traditional divides. When the go!’ students marched from ULU to the activists. Some believe we should wait until defend their pensions. Motions from both the Labour benches The Private Hospitals Alliance (or H5), 06 Africa’s Hidden Hunger / Life Under Occupation on false terms, and a total failure. In 2011, while preaching the gospel at home, they are still willing to spend eviction order for St. Paul’s was Department for Business, Innovation the next general election and make higher The terrain that students, academics and the few dissenting Liberal Democrats a lobby group launched specifically to 07 Occupy Your Mind Yet here we go again, with a Prime of democracy, Great Britain signed lavishly on their imperial adventures granted and Syrian protesters and Skills, the Ministry responsible for education the number one issue. Others and university workers are fighting on is were voted down by a government majority coincide with this bill to represent the five O8 Quaker’s Epistle Minister utilising a popular tabloid arms deals with Middle Eastern abroad. If history can be a guide, we showed solidarity with a bonfire, it Anarchy Inside Higher Education. believe that we should move on to other very different to that of November and of 314 to 258 and 314 to 260, respectively. largest private hospital firms in the UK, 09 Is International Women’s’ Day Still Worth to engineer consent. In spectacular countries that totalled around 3.3 have reason for concern: When debt revealed a connection deeper than Under pressure from students, a political issues. However, new battles lines December 2010 when the government The only parliamentary recourse left to halt have spoken openly within their industry Celebrating? / Beyond Work PR fashion, David Cameron bluntly billion pounds. Half of that sum came mounted in medieval Europe, the the divisions, something more solid 20,000-strong petition by the UCU and have been drawn. announced that it would treble tuition fees. this privatising bill is in the House of Lords of “opportunities” afforded by this bill for 10 Contagion? Armageddon? Why? asserted that Iran was building a from Saudi Arabia, with its dismal crusades established a fragile alliance than the fighting talk and wheeling his own cabinet, Willetts withdrew the Students already have fewer courses Activists inside of the movement are fighting where David Owen is attempting to force the “public service outsourcing on a massive Revolution or Evolution? missile capable of striking the UK. human rights record, and around 80 between the Church and monarchs, and dealing between our respective Higher Education Bill from the Commons. to choose from and will now be obliged to to build a unified movement which can start government to publish the findings of the scale.” There is even mention of how the Money Talks: Harry Shutt 11 The intention seems clear: while the million pounds worth of weapons went with the promise of unsurpassed tragi-comic leaders. 12 Scare Stories: Scarce Stories However, he is preparing universities for take out huge loans from the government challenging the government at every twist risk register, thought to expose the dangers UK private medical insurance industry 13 The Politics Of Common Sense US and the UK governments claim to the very country now building a riches to be taken in the name of Many citizens are tired of the privatisation in similarly shambolic fashion to meet spiralling costs. These loans and turn, locally as well as nationally. that will come were the bill to be passed. has suffered since the global financial 14 Biofuels Power Stations: Greenwash At that diplomacy is the way forward, nuclear bomb that could threaten the God. The Great Depression led to jingoist rhetoric, the squandering as Andrew Lansley is for our hospitals. have been ‘sold’ to prospective students Local disputes, massive student debt, Outside of parliament, however, the fight crash but that this government’s health Our Expense they simultaneously engage in West. Much of the technology sold - political turmoil in the 1930s, and of public resources for neo-colonial His measures are now being implemented as income-contingent, but in truth they harsh sentencing of student protesters goes on as people who really care about policy will provide a kiss of life to what is 15 The Community Bill Of Rights / For The Sake dangerously militant rhetoric. “All surveillance gear, decoding devices, ultimately became fertile ground for crusades, and the hypocrisy of Of Mother Earth: The Rio+20 Earth Summit without any debate. are government policy-contingent since and the introduction of £9,000 pounds their health service will continue to make a leeching industry. 16 Occupy, Constitutional Law & Social Change options are on the table” as the small arms and telecommunications nationalism and fascism to flourish. political discourse. The field is wide En route, students staged a sit-down the repayment threshold and interest in fees next academic year can provide their voices heard. Multiple actions took For all those who still like to 17 Occupy & The Law: The Trial Continues pressure continues to rise. equipment - have been used in the The oil crisis of the 1970s led to open - not just for domestic reforms protest in front of 10 Downing Street. Their rates can be changed at will and with major focuses for a movement which place this past weekend across the country, characterise the Liberal Democrats “Freemen” Favour Fiction Over Facts The rhetoric of our elected leaders past to suppress domestic dissent. tensions that eventually re-shaped but also in relation to foreign policy. placards read ‘Our education not your retrospective effect. is growing up the hard way. As Rosa including outside the Department of Health as hapless fools and naïve fall guys, 18 The Great Debate is eerily reminiscent of the delusional Egyptian and Bahraini protesters much of the Middle East. Consciously At a time when supposed political business’ and ‘Education for the 99%’. The At a local level, students are already Luxemburg once said: ‘The path to on Saturday and Parliament on Sunday. it is worth bearing in mind that it was Stalwarts Of Occupy hit with Western tear gas will have or not, foreign aggression has always and economic “truths” have been On The Soapbox monologues of General Turgidson, the attacks on higher education are not the only experiencing the disastrous effects revolution is paved with defeats’. An e-petition, a device encouraged a former Lib Dem Speechwriter and 17 Three Dimensions Of Occupy commanding US general in the Cold woken up in hospital to see William been a convenient release valve when exposed as folly, the politics of peace ones students face. Over the last year and a of Willetts’ so-called reforms. At the Importantly, activists are starting by the government to supposedly candidate for Islington Council, Mihir 18 Beyond The Headlines War movie “Dr. Strangelove”. Seated Hague or Hillary Clinton condemning domestic dissatisfaction threatens can be seized anew. half students have suffered other blows at University of East London, the academic to develop the kind of links that have improve their public engagement and Magudia, who until recently handled the 19 Disguising, Mythologising & Protest at a sterile-looking round table in an the hands of the state and the police. year has been shortened by nearly a month the social power to win. At Goldsmiths democratic legitimacy, which demanded public relations for H5. Similarly, Mark On The Soap Box: claude Melville underground command bunker, amid College, students and staff have started the withdrawal of the bill had reached Littlewood was a former chief media 20 3 Dimensions Of Occupy One banner at the march read in order to free their campus up for the US 22 Beyond The Headlines flashing telephones and before a ‘We are all Alfie Meadows’. Alfie is a Olympic team. Under the pretence of the to organise themselves into student and over 174,000 signatures this week. The spokesman for the Liberal Democrats 23 Crossword large map that charts the diminishing Middlesex Philosophy student who was so Olympics, University management has also staff departmental committees which were fact that it has been so casually jettisoned and is now a rabidly Thatcherite director 24 Placard prospects for averting a nuclear crisis, severely beaten by police on the day the privatised all security and catering staff. formed for the N30 strikes. These can now is further proof, as if it were needed, that general of the Institute for Economic Turgidson outlines the choices that government trebled tuition fees that he Students at the University of East be used in defence of the PACE department the political class see the British public as Affairs thinktank. The Lib Dems are not CREDITS remain available to the president: “We had to undergo emergency brain surgery. London are not the only ones subjugated and argue for strikes and occupations. not much more than a nuisance, impeding locked in the boot, they are enthusiastic CONTRIBUTORS/ are rapidly approaching a moment Michael Richmond Ironically, he is the one who faces trial to such a “Shock Doctrine”. At London And the strike by lecturers, civil their efforts to enrich themselves and their back-seat drivers. Judith Shossboeck of truth both for ourselves as human later this month. He is being charged with Metropolitan University, 70% of all courses servants and teachers on March 28 can friends in the private sector. Because, This bill signals the almost complete Emma Fordham beings and for the life of our nation. violent disorder whereas no police officer have already been cut while redundancies provide the necessary social and economic let’s not quibble on this, those with expert financialisation of our public services, the Ragnhild Freng Dale Now, truth is not always a pleasant to date has been held to account for the are being implemented. power that we will need to derail Willetts’ knowledge of the National Health Service completion of a thirty-year, cross-party Danny Nemu thing. But it is necessary now to attack on Alfie. Yesterday, students made it But there are also a number of austerity agenda for education. As one have been in unprecedented consensus project to make sure that this country puts Flaminia Giambalvo Kit Marsters make a choice, to choose between clear that Alfie is not alone. local disputes on the horizon. Queen student said to me on the demonstration: that this bill will lead to a dangerous balance sheets before human beings in Steven Maclean two admittedly regrettable, but Time and time again the police have Mary London UCU has now officially ‘Today we mobilised a couple of hundred fragmentation and de-Nationalistion of the every area of society. Tax-Payers’ money Martin Eiermann nevertheless distinguishable, postwar issued threats to make use of rubber entered a dispute with management over so that we can mobilise the thousands English health service. That means further will yet again be funneled into the pockets Mark Kauri environments: one where you got bullets and water cannon against student departmental restructuring. At Goldsmiths tomorrow’. Spring is coming… drift towards an American-type insurance of directors and shareholders of private Natalia Sanchez-Bell twenty million people killed, and the Dimitris Dalakoglou protesters. Police intimidation, horse College, the announcement to close down Mark Bergfeld is a member of the system which has led to the richest nation companies as services are cut and cherry- Isabeau Doucet other where you got a hundred and charges, kettling and heavy sentencing the PACE department which offers quality Education Activist Network. in the history of this planet having a worse picked by the swooping vultures of Aviva, Jonathan Socrates fifty million people killed.” Bupa, Southern Cross and Care UK (who’ve Houzan Mohamoud Granted, we do not appear to face bankrolled Health Secretary Andrew Nina Power the prospect of nuclear annihilation Lansley’s constituency office.) Michael Reiss Clive Menzies just yet, but the logic of militarism It’s been particularly galling to see Harry Shutt appears to have long outlived the fall Getting Away With Murder? Labour people posing as guardians of the Jeremy Till of the Iron Curtain and the chaos in NHS and looking down their noses at their Dan Hind Iraq and Afghanistan. Faced with a Lib Dem counterparts. Let’s none of us Zenith Milner How Multinational Corporations Can Be Held Accountable Andy volatile, unpredictable and complex forget that New Labour have paved the way Mattia F. Marlow Melanie Strickland situation in the Middle East, our For Human Rights Violations for this bill. It has followed the same path Anindya Bhattacharyya first reaction is to flex our muscles, of Blairite ‘reforms’ fetishising fictitious Phil England threaten military action, and sign If the story of human rights were a book, 2012 might be seen of $15.5 million after threatening to take the oil giant to court. In and unwanted ‘choice’. The UK private Sara Cameron new arms deals with Israel or Saudi- healthcare sector grew hugely during John Cooper as the end of one of its most promising chapters. But first we the case Doe v Unocal, the defendant company agreed in 2004 to Scrapper Duncan Arabia. If we accept the perverse need to go back to the very first page to understand how this provide compensation for their complicity in using forced labour Labour’s time in government so that it now Daniel Jeller logic of military planners and hawkish tale has unfolded so far. when they undertook a gas pipeline project in Burma. amounts to a £5.5billion global industry. Peter Coville politicians, the choice appears to be In 1789, the US Congress passed a law called the “Alien Tort Critics of the Alien Tort Statute argue that it reduces incentive And through Labour’s own complicity Alex Charnley primarily about the timing of war. Is Statute”, which was comprised of only one sentence: “The district for business to invest abroad - but that’s precisely the point. they have crippled any credible platform Media Lens Iran going to attack us (or Israel), or Mark Bergfeld courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for Only someone empty of compassion and driven by greed would for parliamentary opposition leaving the are we going to strike preemptively? Andy Marlow a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of think it justifiable or acceptable to invest in a project that actively government with an easy get-out that they PHOTOGRAPHY/ The prospect of a peaceful solution the United States.” On first glance, this appears to have nothing at all undermines human rights. Besides, the only thing the statute repeatedly sneer across the despatch box: Wasi Daniju seems to be losing ground every day. to do with human rights. But in 1980, some clever lawyers thought disincentivises is unethical investment. If you’re a business and “We’re only finishing what you started.” Ben Cavanna The easy alternative? Don’t otherwise. They noted that the “law of nations” was synonymous you’re going to invest in a way that respects the local environment Wasi Daniju Some of us have always opposed Carmen Valido mobilise the troops. Don’t launch ALL private encroachments into our Brian Leli with “international law”; and they noted that international law and doesn’t exploit the workers, then you have nothing to fear. Ilias Bartolini the fighter jets. Don’t deploy the contains some human rights treaties such as the International Still, this criticism carries weight with businesses and average life expectancy than Cuba and health service. Some of us believe that Juan Manuel Peña warships. If peace through diplomacy Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against governments, many of whom have thrown their weight behind Chile, whilst around 30million of its citizens the profit motive has absolutely no place DESIGN/ seems difficult to achieve, will a war Torture. Finally, they also realised that if these human rights treaties Royal Dutch Petroleum in the current US Supreme Court case are still without healthcare coverage. muddying the waters of our nation’s Tzortzis Rallis make it any easier? Why throw a could be seen as part of the “law of nations”, the Alien Tort Statute of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum. This case might become What’s more there is absolutely no health or education. Lib Dems can delude Lazaros Kakoulidis match into a puddle of petroleum? PRINT RUN/ 2000 Copies could be used to hold individuals and corporations accountable for the ultimate test of the reach of the Alien Tort Statute. The mandate for this. It was never explicitly themselves that they’ve curbed Tory WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO/ Something has changed, however, human rights violations outside the USA. question before the court is a simple one: who can be sued set out in manifestos nor in the coalition enthusiasm, Tories can try to delude us Aldgate Press, E1 7RQ since the spring of 2003. A brief look The first test case was Filártiga v. Peña-Irala in 1980. Peña- under the statute? Worryingly, the Supreme Court seems to agreement and it is widely known that the that they care about the NHS and Labour CONTACT US/ at the comments following Cameron’s Irala had been an Inspector General of Police in Paraguay, and be seriously considering the argument that corporations may British people strongly support a public can barely stand up under the weight of [email protected] assertions reveals a scepticism in 1976 he had tortured and killed a young man named Joelito no longer be held accountable. Such a judgment could create health service. For clues as to how we have their own contradictions. If this bill passes perhaps unexpected in a publication Filártiga. The case never made it TO court in Paraguay, and the a paradoxical position in US law where corporations can come to this point, it is worth turning to it will be a political bloodbath for all Support the like ‘The Sun’. If the spectacular Filártiga family’s lawyer was suspiciously disbarred and imprisoned sue others for breach of their human rights (see the recent the extensive research done by the Social involved but politics should be about the failure of Western “nation-building” after taking the brief. The Center for Constitutional Rights - an Citizens United case, where the Supreme Court found that Investigations blog. They have found that people, not a dance between politicians in Iraq wasn’t sufficient, the events American NGO - took up the case before a US court. It decided to the right to free speech applied to a corporation), but can’t be well over 100 MPs and Lords of all three and media. No one wins from this bill apart in Libya, Bahrain, and now Syria test the waters and invoked the Alien Tort Statute, arguing that the sued themselves. There are even indications that the court is major parties have direct financial interests from faceless chief executives, the rest of have convinced many that violence law allowed the Filártiga family to sue Peña-Irala for violation of questioning the very heart of this law. Namely, whether it can with or have received donations from us will all lose one of the few things left, cannot be stamped out with more the international law prohibition on torture. On appeal, the Filártiga be used to sue someone for atrocities not committed on US private healthcare companies or affiliated despite its flaws, which we can be proud of By donating £1 for your copy you violence. Solidarity with the Syrian businesses as either advisors, consultants, in this country. This political class appear will pay for five copies of our next family won, and a precedent was set: a victim of a human rights soil. Such a finding would rob the Statute of its very purpose, revolutionaries does not imply that shareholders or directors. This list includes hell-bent on making our lives unliveable, issue. Alternatively, donate online: abuse, although not an American citizen, could take the perpetrator but it is sadly very foreseeable. we support arms shipments to rebels of the human rights abuse, although not an American citizen either, Why does a US case matter to an English readership? Because the prime minister, the current health in return we must make the path they’ve www.sponsume.com/project/ or a full-scale Western invasion. to a US court and hold him accountable for his actions. the Alien Tort Statute never was just a US law. Rather, it was a secretary as well as several senior former chosen unprofitable and unworkable. The support-occupied-times Look at Libya: the only benefactors Soon victims began to sue corporations as well as individuals. conduit through which anyone of any nation could seek justice New Labour cabinet ministers. This fight should not stop at the point at which of the NATO campaign are the CEOs legislation is forced through. It is our NHS, © All information in this paper In the case Wiwa v Royal Dutch Petroleum & Shell, for example, against any abuser of any right. To take that away now seems must be acknowledged for what it is: not is free for non-profit distribution of Western corporations now cashing victims of Shell’s actions in the Niger Delta received compensation nothing less than a tragedy. even just conflicts of interest but blatant not theirs. Don’t let them take it from us. Haiti: the Real Canary Dimitris Dalakoglou Notes on the Crisis in the Mine Isabeau Doucet After spending over a year in post-earthquake Haiti, writing A landmark survey by UN-Habitat estimated that the world about the abysmal tent camp living conditions and the often population inhabiting postmodern slums is over a billion and violent evictions of internally displaced quake victims, I states that the “main single cause of increases in poverty and from Greece found myself at a planning meeting in New York for Occupy inequality during 1980s and 1990s was the retreat of the state.” Wall Street in Tompkins Square Park the day before the 10th It’s high time we abandon this lie that’s been peddled n February morning in front of parliament, and “privileged” countries. Admittedly, if anniversary of 9/11. One week later I was huddled with over which says that democracy and neoliberal capitalism can co- 12, 2012, just attacked in the early afternoon, aiming a substantial proportion of Western 500 others in Zuccotti Park that chilly night of September exist symbiotically. The latter is fundamentally antagonistic days before the to disperse the demonstration before Europe’s residents could claim in the 17th, and a month later woke up in a tent with frozen toes and and parasitic to the former and Haiti is a kind of avant- eviction of Occupy the scheduled time of the rally. This recent past that poverty and suffering a full bladder in London’s ostentatious financial district with garde testament to that: decades of neoliberal “structural London, Athens led to full scale clashes all around is something that stays abroad nowhere but Starbucks to relieve myself. adjustment” and neo-imperial intervention have bankrupted was in flames. Athens, as hundreds of thousands and does not reach them, this is no It occurred to me watching Occupy evictions throughout the government by atrophying state institutions and using The majority of tried to make their way to Syntagma longer the case. the US via livestream and seeing the St Paul’s camp get their failure as proof of the need for fire sales to the private over 40 buildings square to protest, whilst those present The Greek case has its own cleared and sanitised, that the connection between tent camp sector. Governance has been outsourced to the United Nations Othat were set ablaze by angry crowds refused to leave despite unprovoked particularity, but is indicative of what evictions in post earthquake Haiti and the Occupy protests is and security to its multilateral peacekeepers in order to were banks, government offices and and extreme police violence. is coming. The local version of Occupy: not as tenuous as it might seem. After all, Haiti is one of the contain “populist and anti-market economy political forces,” branches of commercial chains – but But people in Greece do not the Syntagma Square movement countries in the world where the disparity between the tiny as Wiki-leaked diplomatic cables reveal. not only. Similar scenes were seen resist the new capitalist regime on started in summer 2011, after more ben cavanna elite and the rest of the population most starkly represents After overthrowing their dictator Haitians foiled the U.S. across the country. the streets only. At the moment than a year of an experiment in the 1% versus the 99%. “democracy promotion” plan by voting overwhelmingly for a Why so much anger? That Sunday of writing, several buildings that capitalism. This started in May 2010, True, it was a natural disaster that caused the Caribbean parish priest who promised to resist the economic agenda the Greek parliament was to vote used to house public or state when the Greek government arranged fault lines to rip apart one of the poorest and most densely prescribed by Washington and the IMF. After being ousted Jonathan Socrates for another austerity package which organisations are occupied by anti- for a loan from the International populated cities in the world, but the devastation of the from office for the second time in a US-backed coup d’etat, will, amongst other things, further austerity protesters. Town halls, local Monetary Fund (IMF), the EU and the earthquake was very much the disastrous culmination of Naomi Klein asked Jean-Bertrand Aristide what was behind cut pensions and make it possible to prefectural buildings, the hospital European Central Bank (ECB). The loan decades of reckless man-made economic policies. This his falling out with Washington and he offered her three reduce the minimum monthly salary of Kilkis, the building of the Social was accompanied by a dismantling of Occupy Buffer Zone has included the familiar cocktail of structural adjustment, explanations: “privatisation, privatisation and privatisation.” to €400. The 600-page document was Housing Organisation and the ground- public social provisions and dramatic debt peonage, liberalising of trade protections and tariffs, Though the Occupy movement’s tents were inspired by given to MPs with 24-hour notice with floor of the Ministry of Health are just decrease of wages, combined with Within Nicosia’s Venetian walls, Ledra returned there to demonstrate every slashing agricultural subsidies, and flooding the country Tahrir Square more than the growing world population of those the recommendation to start and end a few of the buildings occupied by over-taxation of people and under- Street, with its chain stores and cafés, is Saturday until, in mid-November, they with heavily subsidised American produce, not to mention who are internally displaced, the encampments did become the parliamentary “discussion” and people who are trying to create the taxation of big business. The Greek in many ways similar to other high streets decided to stay for one night. deliberate political meddling and destabalisation. This forced a political meme whose colourful shabbiness, in the midst of voting before Monday morning, when material infrastructures of a world of example became paradigmatic when around the world. However, something ‘Waking up the next day was such Haitian peasants to abandon rural agriculture in exchange financial districts, symbolises a global demand for economic the European stock markets would solidarity, mutual aid and freedom, the joint IMF/EU/ECB enterprise quite unique is happening here. an incredible feeling,’ says Rahme with for subsistence wage sweatshop jobs in assembly plants justice. They are a visible reminder of what the bursting of the open. The 199 Greek MPs who obeyed in the opposite direction of the social went on to contaminate Portugal As you walk, the shops fade away a smile. ‘We said, ok, we’re going to stay owned by the country’s tiny elite. The mass exodus from the sub-prime mortgage bubble looks like for families across the and voted for the austerity package cannibalism that the government, IMF, and Ireland. The established model and the street narrows with the diagonal here and this is going to be permanent countryside to the over-crowded urban shanties of Port-au- US and elsewhere. In many occupations, the tent camps have slept safely within the walls of their EU and ECB are pushing. that emphasises the wellbeing of encroachment of temporary wire fencing. until we change something.’ Prince meant that living in precariously built and insalubrious become the natural dwellings of the first world urban homeless, guarded villas. That Monday, stock The social struggle in Greece financial institutions at the expense But with all the construction taking place For the activists, the division of dwellings became the rule for the majority of Haitians in the and they’ve taught a generation of protesters what it’s like to be markets around the world reacted raises many questions. First of all, of human health and happiness goes around the island, nothing seems amiss. their island is a domestic manifestation capital, while adherence to seismically resistant building homeless, frozen, sleeping in a park and criminalized for being positively and profits were recorded, why do people rise up and fight? It further and faster than ever before. Its Perhaps you notice a police pavilion to of international capitalism, the local codes was very much the exception. Even before the poor or part of a permanent protest. especially in the banking sector. is because the rapid impoverishment violence is too explicit to be ignored; your right. Perhaps you see the people symptom of a global problem. earthquake two years ago made 1.5 million people homeless, The tent camp eviction, be it from capitalism’s junkyard in Meanwhile, homelessness has seen is felt by almost everyone in the this system kills. The Lancet – a Thanassis Stavrakis coming towards you preparing their ‘There’s no country that has a reality Haitian homes in the capital’s slums were not a huge step up Port-au-Prince, or its lower frontal lobe in Wall Street and the at least a 25% rise in Greece in the country. But even before the crisis, medical journal – recently published recovery, growth, development population. After everyone else has passports. Perhaps you catch sight of the like this: a buffer zone to occupy in this from the frayed tarpaulin under which half a million people City of London’s Square Mile, is what the end of the race to the last few months, and – according to things were not that good; extreme two research articles confirming links or competitiveness of a country’s been squeezed to the limits of human placard above the pavilion bearing the way,’ says Michalis, a twenty-six-year- still take shelter to this day. bottom looks like: 21st century disaster-catalysed primitive Eurostat– 27.7% of Greeks live with inequality, police brutality, and between the new loan-related policies, economy, decrease the value of human existence, the great majority of people lament: ‘Lefkosia: The last divided capital’. old linguist. Down one of the two alleys This isn’t just true of Haiti. In fact for the first time in history accumulation. the risk of poverty. exploitation were already firmly a rapid decay of general health in the life and dignity to degrees that may living in the peripheral Euro-zone The fencing gradually intrudes running perpendicular to Ledra Street the proportion of us living in cities is outnumbering the world’s Yes, as the British government sets its economic policy That same Sunday, 12th of established, prioritising capital and population, and an enormous increase shock even the most fanatic fans of countries are next to join the global some more until Ledra is no longer a which are now filled with tents and rural population, and as Mike Davis puts it in his book Planet on the autopilot of neoliberalism’s holy trinity (privatisation, February 2012, police were waiting in state at the expense of the freedom in suicide rates. neoliberalism. This very same recipe poor and repressed. Very soon the high street but a lane. You are funnelled roofed with tarpaulin, Michalis, against of Slums, this “rapid urban growth in the context of structural deregulation and cuts to social services), it might be worth front of homes of known activists, and and wellbeing for the majority. However, this is not the first of extreme austerity with respect to majority of Western and Northern out into a space where several people a backdrop of barbed wire and broken adjustment, currency devaluation and state retrenchment has looking to Haiti, a country where this was carried out to such a detained them before even reaching However, never before have so time that such a version of extreme wages and social public provisions, Europeans will follow. It is worth are warming their hands around a fire bricks, continues to talk. ‘The Cyprus been an inevitable recipe for the mass production of slums.” At perfection that, as veteran political activist Patrick Elie points out, the rally in Syntagma Square. Police many people been so much and so capitalism has been applied. The combined with generosity to big noting that the main reason for the burning in a metal barrel between two Problem [is] not a head-on clash between precisely the same time as rural populations migrate en masse “Haiti is the most privatised country in the world” and as such we blockaded most roads leading to the rapidly affected by this regime. The majority of global inequalities arising corporations, was first applied to situation, is because that privileged rows of tents and beneath a banner two peoples. [Cyprus is] an island that to urban centers, governments are slashing public spending and ought to listen to it as “it is the canary in the world’s mine. city centre and ordered metro stations slogan “we are the 99%” makes in the last decades are based on so-called developing countries, and part of the world population did not that reads ‘Welcome to Cyprus’ in a was divided to be used as a military base social services, straining city infrastructure and housing for the Isabeau Doucet is a freelance journalist who tweets as @ around central Athens to shut, so absolute sense in Greece today. interventions by the likes of IMF, later to former socialist countries react against that condition, or when it combination of Greek and Turkish. for resource monopolisation happening in jobless and working poor. dizzyshambles demonstrators would not be able to But this proverbial 99% extends World Bank, WTO and collaborative in Europe. Gradually it expanded to did, usually the demand was to reform You ask what is going on. ‘We’re the Middle East.’ He describes a handbook reach the place of the protest. Riot well beyond Greece and gradually governments, which in the name the global West, dismantling slowly the established system towards a occupying the buffer zone,’ comes the reply. for British service personnel stationed police were waiting from the early includes people in Britain and other of so-called post-crisis economic a series of gains achieved through more fair deal. The deal never came, Indeed, without realising, you on the island entitled ‘Why We Are in ‘So far we have tolerated their question can be one of pure economics. whose walls, jaundiced by street revolts, protests and revolutions over because justice does not go together have passed over into no-man’s land, Cyprus’ which provides a particularly presence. We have served them with In a café next to Sevgül’s shop, Raj lamps, know how to pull off a good, the last 150 years. Today the pace of with the predominant economic the buffer zone between the Republic colonial definition of the island: ‘We can conditions. They have not complied. works as a waiter. Born in Saudi Arabia mysterious shadow, Phanos, 20, this dismantling has been stepped up. system. So the question posed as a of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus. And call Cyprus an unsinkable aircraft carrier However, they’ve been very cooperative to Pakistani parents and raised in Dubai, sits in a quiet bar. Like all men his So the reason that occupied slogan in Athens applies very explicitly a space which has become the site of anchored off the shores of the Levant.’ in terms of the work that we need to do he has just graduated with a degree in age, he’s doing his national military squares in Egypt, Spain and Greece to all of us: “if not now, then when, and Occupy Buffer Zone. ‘So within this context,’ continues in that area.’ Hospitality Management. service, although he’s off duty now. were followed by Occupy movements if not us then who” is going to rise up The Occupy camp in Nicosia differs Michalis, ‘you see that [the Cyprus Asked if there are any plans to ‘The hotel industry here is badly When he gets the time, he attends the in the UK or the US is because and overthrow such a system? from every other one around the world in Problem] is one of the many symptoms remove the protesters, Bonnardeaux’s affected because we have no international Occupy camp. ‘The whole movement’s economic and political elites – elected Dimitris Dalakoglou is a Lecturer in that it is taking place not in a jurisdiction of an unhealthy social-economic answer echoes Michalis’ analysis: access,’ he says, referring to a [purpose] is to draw awareness to the like some European governments Anthropology at Sussex University and of a particular state but in UN-controlled paradigm which promotes competition ‘Not at the moment. The reasons for consequence of the Turkish Republic of fact that the problem is not Turkish or unelected like Mubarak of Egypt co-editor of the book ‘Revolt and Crisis no-man’s land. and robbing and dishonesty.’ their protest are essentially the same Northern Cyprus not being recognised by Cypriots [against] Greek Cypriots.’ His – repress people in substantial parts in Greece’, he is member of the collective Following a coup by the ultra- The Occupy activists plan to stay reasons why we are in the country in the any country other than Turkey. ‘Also if you words are considered but spoken with of the world in increasingly similar Occupied London that maintains the nationalist guerrilla group EOKA-B in indefinitely. But one concrete date is first place. They advocate reunification look at the restaurants, on the north side a confidence that belies his youth. ‘It’s ways. This similarity is achieved web-blog ‘From the Greek Streets’. 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and the fixed in their minds: 1 July 2012, when of the island which is what we advocate there is no authority which can open any a joint community. We are one. Cyprus through pushing down the historically territory it gained control of – roughly Cyprus assumes the Presidency of the as well. And they ask for a departure of franchise business.’ is Cyprus. The [Occupy] cause is really more privileged parts of the world the northern third of the island – still Council of the European Union. The UN troops which we would certainly be What hopes does he have for genuine. It’s not politically driven. It’s remains under Turkish occupation today. hope is that they will be able to raise happy to do once the island is reunified.’ reunification? ‘The people from the south just a cry to break the walls apart.’ It is now known that Britain and the awareness of their plight when Europe’s Not all Cypriots share the activists’ come here and those from the north go Jonathan Socrates is a freelance United States encouraged the division eyes are upon them. hope for reunification however. One to the south side. They’re peaceful, they journalist who blogs at http:// of the island. Between the north and the Being in no-man’s land, the reason for the difference seems to be sit together, they talk, they have fun. So jonathansocrates.blogspot.com/ south runs a stretch of UN-controlled protesters are untouchable for both the generational, those with memories of it’s just political issues which are keeping land known as the Green Line, and it is Greek and Turkish Cypriot authorities. It 1974 being reluctant to place trust in the this border alive.’ here that activists from both sides of the is the UN which controls the Green Line. ‘other side’. On the Turkish Cypriot side of The activists in the Occupy camp divide have set up camp. Michalis describes the UN reaction after Ledra Street, after showing your passport are not the only ones striving for The history of the camp can be the group’s first night in the buffer zone: and receiving a visa, you meet Sevgül reunification. In the Ottoman courtyard traced to 15th October, the day of global ‘The UN came in the morning Doktorolu, a shopkeeper. At fifty-one, she of the Büyük Han cultural centre, eight protests inspired, in part, by the Spanish and they were really rude and really remembers the height of the hostilities. Turkish and Greek Cypriots are having indignado movement. aggressive. They were trying to threaten She asks to stop being recorded coffee together. They meet up on the ‘We gathered at Eleftheria Square. It me personally. One guy took me and said, as she tearfully recounts atrocities north side every Saturday in an informal just happened from the sensation going ‘You step one metre this way and that guy perpetrated by EOKA-B. Parallel stories effort to foster inter-communal relations. on all around the world,’ says Rahme, a over there is going to arrest you.’’ of violence and sorrow are remembered ‘I have friends from the Greek side who twenty-seven-year-old Turkish Cypriot However, the UN’s attitude soon and retold by Greek Cypriots in the south. are very active in getting in contact with sociologist and a member of the camp’s changed. ‘[The UN] obviously had decided Throughout the island, large sections of Cypriots from the Turkish side,’ says media team. ‘There, we sat down and that the public rhetoric will be that [they] both communities have been affected too Yiannis Michaelides, 68. ‘They try to find talked, initially about the capitalist have the same aim [as the protesters]. deeply by these events to ever permit people in the same profession on the system and then eventually it led us to Since then they’ve been really polite.’ themselves to consider the possibility of other side to do things together.’ the Cyprus Problem because we have to Michel Bonnardeaux, official a peaceful coexistence. Dusk descends upon the get over this problem first before we can spokesperson for UN Peacekeeping Some have the luxury of viewing divided capital and you’re back on deal with the other issues.’ Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), speaks the Cyprus Problem more pragmatically. the south side. Further along the

tz Thanassis Stavrakis The protesters then marched down with a diplomatic mix of firmness and For those who aren’t burdened by issues Green Line, east of Ledra Street, Wasi Daniju Ledra Street to the buffer zone. They understanding: of identity, security or mistrust, the down disorientating backstreets

04 05 Stefan Africa’s Simanowitz Occupy

Kester Hidden Hunger Your Mind Brewin Following a new report from Save the Children, Stefan short walk away attention of the money men who would price of entry is irrelevant: we go there Simanowitz assesses the state of malnutriton across Africa from St Paul’s patronise and commodify his art. The not for some commodity exchange, Cathedral, from new Tate show will, of course, show but to open ourselves to the possibility “When you arrive in a village, everything prices as their most pressing concern. For Assumpta, who has worked to the stained two of Hirst’s most notorious works: of receiving some greater gift that is may seem normal at first but then you According to Assumpta, tackling tackle malnutrition for nearly two decades, glass bank The Physical Impossibility of Death far beyond the material experience. start to notice things”, explains Kenyan, chronic malnutrition is neither difficult nor the fact that chronic malnutrition can buildings and the in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) Yet artists cannot feed or find Assumpta Ndumi. “It is lunchtime but expensive. “I have seen how encouraging be alleviated with simple interventions streets where - his shark-in-formaldehyde - and shelter through gift alone. And so there is no food on the fire. There are breastfeeding and fortifying basic foods gives her hope, but it also increases her London’s Occupy For The Love of God - a human skull they are required, if they are to remain children in the village but no laughter or with essential minerals or vitamins can frustration when she sees its devastating movementA made its mark, there’s cast in platinum and encrusted with able to be open to the time and space play. These are some signs of chronic have an immediate and dramatic impact on effects. “Last February, an old woman another temple. Just across the river £15,000,000 worth of diamonds. required for more gifts to be given malnutrition.” For Assumpta, Save the children’s health” she says. Back in 2008, arrived at an outreach centre in Wajir, north that divides our city stands the Tate Sharks. Death. Love. God. Money. them, to sell the works they have Children’s nutrition adviser for East Africa, The Lancet medical journal indentified eastern Kenya carrying a listless child” Modern, a veritable place of worship, If Hirst is anything, he is the brash made. Their gifts must, for a time, chronic malnutrition is a problem every an affordable package of thirteen direct Assumpta recalls. “I thought the girl was where the faithful gather to revere Goldman Sachs of the art world. He become commodities, objects in a bit as serious as acute malnutrition, even interventions – including vitamin A and about two years old but the woman, her sacred objects and hear from the has a vast personal fortune of over market economy, available to the if it seldom captures the headlines. “In zinc supplements, iodised salt, and the grandmother, told me she was five. The girl high priests of culture what their £200m, accumulated through an highest bidder. Kenya last year, the acute malnutrition that promotion of healthy behaviour such as - who was very thin and had a cough and tastes should, and should not, be. In alchemy that would leave even the most The question that we might ask followed the drought was widely reported breastfeeding – that were proven to have breathing difficulties – did not survive the one of the vast galleries thousands brash bankers in awe: stock medicine then, as this major retrospective of but even before the rains failed there was an impact on the nutrition and health of night. In the morning we drove them back gather, wander and reflect on huge cabinets, spots of paint, flies, butterflies Hirst’s work opens, is where the gift a hidden hunger and children were dying children and mothers. It is estimated that it to the village. The child’s mother and father installations - all thanks to the and severed cows heads transformed may still remain in his art. Most of because of it” she explains. would cost little more than $10 billion per came out to meet us. I watched from the generous provision of Unilever, the into pieces that sell for millions. what is on show is not his own labour. Through her work, Assumpta has year to implement this package and help car as the grandmother walked towards chemical giant which sponsors the This transubstantiation is, of He sub-contracted out the actual witnessed firsthand the situation faced by protect 90% of the world’s most vulnerable them carrying that small lifeless bundle Turbine Hall series. Other exhibitions course, the mystery that all art holds, making of many of his works - the children in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Darfur, children from hunger. wrapped in a blanket in her arms.” Stories take regular sponsorship - and heavy and highlights the paradox which spot paintings, the spin paintings, and Kenya. “Many families eat just one According to a 2011 FAO report like this are all too common, and highlight branding - from UBS. Barclays has every artist must wrestle with: what the medicine cabinets - to a team of dipped its toe in, and, for £10,000 they create has very little monetary employees. These people worked for meal a day, but it is often the quality rather three quarters of Africa’s malnourished the urgent need for a concerted global Wasi Daniju than the quantity of the food that they eat children live on small farms and 43% of effort to tackle malnutrition. per year, you could also become value, and yet can occasionally become a fixed wage to create production line that leaves them dangerously weak” she agricultural work is carried out by women. a ‘Platinum Patron’ - earning the enormously valuable. The material pieces from stock components that says, pointing to reliance on staples such Key to improving nutrition is therefore right to dine with Tate directors, and costs - vanity works like For The Love now sell for vast sums. Sums which as maize and cassava which have a low improving agriculture among small invitations to exclusive trips abroad to of God aside - are usually low, although they, of course, despite their labour, nutritional value, as well as the lack of holders, sharecroppers and agricultural Sao Paulo, LA or Dubai. the personal labour involved in painting were excluded from sharing. Hirst held fresh fruit and vegetables. labourers, particularly women, by ensuring The Tate may be on the South Bank and training may be costly. Moreover, his own sale of huge numbers of these Steve Hynd But she has also seen how simple, increased access to vital inputs such as Life Under Occupation of the Thames - since time immemorial no artist worth their salt would ever works in 2007, cannily liquidating low-cost interventions can have a significant land, tools, fertilisers and seeds, credit, the more creative and edgy cousin of consider money to be at the heart his ‘gifts’ into hard cash millions the old city on the far shore - but it of their work. No one goes into fine just before the current economic positive impact, transforming lives and agricultural services, markets and water. Speaking recently on BBC 5 Live, Occupied Times editor Michael I hope to get you to open up your European double glazed brian leli preventing unnecessary deaths. According But agriculture alone will not be enough Richmond was debating the Occupy movement when one of his windows and to see the occupation for what it is. doesn’t mean that the money from the art as a career, as a way of making a crisis hit. He has also been accused to ‘A Life Free From Hunger’, a new report where infant and young child feeding opponents shrilly suggested, “no one suffers in this country, we I met with Haney Ameer just a few days ago. Mr. Ameer other side hasn’t seeped through, and, living. Artists pursue a vision, a deeply of continuing his early shop-lifting: Hirst isn’t an artist, but a manufacturer fields. What Zizek is suggesting is by Save the Children, nearly two in five practices are poor, and access to safe have a welfare state”. I felt like I had just run into a brick wall. lives on the outskirts of Mas-ha just outside Qalqiliya in the West opening this April, the man who has personal exploration of the world and stealing many of his ideas from other of objects who has developed a careful that we need to think beyond bankers, children in Africa – 60 million in total – are drinking water and sanitation are limited. This sort of view could only come from someone who has never Bank. Back in 2003, his house was situated on the path of the defined the capitalist approach to art our perception of it. Artists do not artists or craftspeople. With his clout brand. And yet our delight at his doing beyond front-line economics, right to chronically malnourished. The report argues The impact of agriculture on nutrition spent time with the homeless, the destitute or the desperate. proposed separation barrier, 80% of which is built on Palestinian more than any other gets his first mid- create in order to create wealth. And he can get away with it, and copyright this - for the forthcoming exhibition the heart of who we are as individual that malnutrition is the underlying cause of needs to be measured as an indicator The comment oozed a certain complacency that is replicated land. When he refused to leave his house, the Israeli government life retrospective. yet, every artist needs to eat, and to eat the results. Hirst thus comes to us is expected to be vastly popular - subjects. The church used to be the one third of the children’s deaths worldwide of success rather than focussing purely across middle England. I passionately believe that the challenge decided to build the barrier around him. His house is now It didn’t begin this way for Damien they must - all of them - ‘sell out’. as the perfect artist for our times: a reflects on us as branded consumers, place where this process of self- although it may not appear on their death on agricultural production and growth, for us is to help people understand issues that are alien to their surrounded on all four sides by walls, fences and the separation Hirst. The son of an absent mechanic The American writer Lewis Hyde capitalist who exploits labour for vast thus opening up the possibility of analysis occurred; the grand aisles of certificates. Secondary illnesses such as which has been shown to not necessarily existence. Issues that they have not, and possibly never will, barrier. He lives in what looks like a high security prison. father and Citizens’ Advice Bureau has examined this dilemma in his gain, and pulls up the drawbridge just returning Hirst to the place of an artist our modern galleries have now taken diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria rather translate into reductions in malnutrition. personally experience. This is no easy task. On one side of his house is the eight metre high concrete working mother, he shoplifted, failed seminal work The Gift. He makes it as the shit begins to fly. performing social critique. that role for many. than chronic hunger are usually put down as Integrating strategies on health, nutrition I am currently pondering the same conundrum regarding separation barrier which scars the landscape for as far as the miserably at school and was graded clear: artists are only truly engaged Germaine Greer is clear: ‘Damien Personally, I think Hirst’s artistic In our reaction to art we can find the cause of death. and agriculture have been shown to a very different type of occupation. I am living in Jayyus, a eye can see. On the other side of his house there is an illegal ‘E’ in A-Level art. Moving to London he and exhilarated by their work when Hirst is a brand, because the art form vision has become utterly corrupted, a reflection of our true values, and for As well as causing fatalities, chronic produce positive effects. In Mozambique, small farming village in the West Bank which has been living Israeli settlement which is cut off from him by a barbed wire laboured on building sites, eventually it comes to them ‘from elsewhere,’ of the 21st century is marketing. though he cannot necessarily be this reason I hope people go to see malnutrition is having a devastating impact for example, where the Food Security under occupation for over 45 years. Every aspect of life here fence. Flanking each end of his property are locked security gates getting in to Goldsmith’s art college when they receive some inspiration, To develop so strong a brand on so blamed for his own popularity. That is Hirst’s show – for free if they can – and on children’s development. Without the and Nutrition Strategy is overseen by the is controlled, restricted and made unreliable. Whether we are leading to the military road that track the separation barrier. He is where, by curating in disused industrial some gift for them to mould, represent conspicuously threadbare a rationale is a question we need to ask ourselves. become angered and fired up for action necessary protein, vitamins and minerals, Ministry of Agriculture, a significant decline talking about access to water, employment or education, it hemmed into his small plot of land. spaces a series of exhibitions of his and pass on. We might pay to enter an hugely creative - revolutionary even.’ So perhaps this is the best we can by the corrupt moral and economic children’s bodies and brains do not develop in malnutrition has been achieved. can all be taken away at a snap of the fingers. Between 2003 and 2006 he lived here but did not own the and his friends’ work, he gained the exhibition to see works of art, but the She is applying a clever double twist: do if we go to the exhibition: use the vision he presents. Yet I also hope that properly. In Niger, for example, recent But despite some limited successes, I passionately believe that a contributing factor enabling keys to access his own property. For three years he relied on pieces not to be amazed at who he is we allow these works to ask tough World Health Organisation research shows nutrition-focused agricultural interventions this occupation to continue is European and Israeli citizens’ the IDF to let him through the security gate each day. It was not as a visual artist, but to reflect more questions of ourselves too: are we the average two-and-a-half-year-old will are not able to address the underlying inability to imagine what life is really like for Palestinians here. uncommon in those days for friends to throw food parcels over carefully on who we are as observers - people of ‘the gift’? How enraptured be more than eight centimetres shorter causes of malnutrition, such as chronic Part of the reason I am here is to try and tell the stories of those the wall so he could feed his wife and children. and consumers - of that art. are we to brands? To what do we than a well-nourished child, and a 2011 poverty and maternal health. In Rwanda, living under occupation to those who can affect change - you! I sat outside his broken and bruised property in the Indeed, I believe that acts of ascribe beauty and meaning? Michael UNICEF study found that one in three despite efforts to promote balanced diets We face a similar challenge within the Occupy movement. fading evening sun just a few days ago. He explained to me careful self-reflection must be at the Franti once said that ‘the hardest children in Zimbabwe suffers from chronic and the introduction of specific structural Most people cannot feel what it is like to be on the negative end of that he cannot fix any of the broken windows, crumbling heart of the journey of all involved in part in any revolution is the personal malnutrition. Malnourished children often anti-poverty interventions including the our unfair, unequal and deeply discriminatory economic and social walls or holes in the roof as he cannot get a permit from the the Occupy movement now that ‘the revolution,’ and it is in our responses suffer from diminished IQs, and if they provision of school milk and kitchen garden system. When we try to reach out to suburbia and tell them the Israelis to ‘build’ on his own land. beginning has ended’. The physical to what we find at the Tate, as much as survive to adulthood are more likely to projects, rates of malnutrition remain system is falling apart around their ears, they look through their The Israelis offered him a lot of money and a chance to occupation of certain physical places The Royal Exchange, that we will find suffer from heart disease, diabetes and stubbornly high. “The roots of malnutrition double glazed windows and wonder what on earth we are talking rebuild a bigger and better house on more land wherever he has come to a close for a while, but that battle beginning to be won. renal damage, as well as being far less are anchored in poverty and behaviour” about. This means we have no choice; it is time to get personal. wanted in return for his land. He refused. He refused because this is not necessarily a bad thing @kesterbrewin | kesterbrewin.com productive members of society. explained Rwandan health minister Agnes It is in light of this that I want to share a recent experience of a connection to the family home and due to a slightly (see my previous piece on Occupation Despite a significant global reduction Binawahlo this week. “Only sustainable with you, in the hope that I can illustrate the devastating harsher reality: The Palestinians who lived nearby warned as TAZ) because it allows us to think in child deaths, progress on chronic development based on education and effect that the occupation here in the West Bank is having on him that if he sold out to the Israelis he would no longer be about the personal foundations on malnutrition has been painfully slow. economic growth can beat it.” ordinary people’s lives throughout the occupied territories. considered a ‘Palestinian’, he would be isolated. An ironic which we are building once again, While the past twenty years has seen the threat given his circumstances. away from the day-to-day running of a number of deaths from tuberculosis fall When the meeting comes to a close, Haney Ameer walks particular site. 40% globally and deaths from malaria fall us back to the rusted metal gate in the wall, the one small gate In his book on the banking crisis by over 30% in Africa, levels of stunting that provides access to his property to which he now has a key. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Slavoj across the continent have dropped by Unlocking the padlock he looks up at the separation barrier and Zizek encourages this move beyond just 1% over the same period. There are then at the floor. Deep in thought, his body forgets what he is some of the more obvious targets of now growing fears that a combination of doing but his hands are still unlocking the door that they have capitalist protest, and on to deeper trends including rising food prices, climate unlocked everyday for the last six years. levels of action: change, and demographic shifts could Mr Ameer lives in the most unimaginable conditions. ‘The enclosure of the commons reverse even this modest gain. And this is precisely the point: They are unimaginable. The is a process of proletarianisation of In a recent survey, also by Save the Occupy movement now faces the challenge to expose the those who are excluded from their own Children, half of families polled in Nigeria, unimaginable as real. We have to make those who sit in their substance... The present conjecture Pakistan, Peru, India and Bangladesh said double glazed homes understand that there are people across compels us to radicalise it to an they were forced to cut back on food last the UK who are suffering unimaginably because of the gross existential level well beyond Marx’s year. The poll also found that one in six inequalities in our society. Just as most of you dear readers imagination. We need a more radical parents asked their children to skip school will struggle to give two hoots about Haney, so most of notion of the proletarian subject.’[1] in order to work to work to help pay for suburbia will struggle to give two hoots about you. This is our Bankers have been the focus their family’s food. In Nigeria, a quarter challenge - we have to make people care. The challenge is of ire for some time now, but their of all parents surveyed said their children not related to the degree to which people are suffering, but to values and morals are lived out in so sometimes or often go without food for an our ability to enable people to empathise with those who are brian leli tz many others who exist in many other entire day, and 94% pointed to rising food experiencing the suffering.

06 07 The Irreverent Reverend Nemu Is International Women’s

Anarchy Inside Day Still Worth Celebrating? “In those days there was no king in as the most irrational and ridiculous guerrilla gardening, protesting naked Israel: every man did that which was anthropomorphism. My theism, if such I in the streets, and sometimes tor­ Women’s rights have come a long way since the first FG: Has the idea of having to liberate these women contributed right in his own eyes.” - (Jdg 21:25) may be permitted to call it, consists in a ching buildings. None but the quietest International Women’s Day in 1900. Talks of gender to Western intervention in the region? If so, how so? The School of Ideas returns to dust, reverent and soothing contemplation of survived very long. Go in disguise to do equality have come to dominate the agenda of politicians HM: In the case of Afghanistan women were repeatedly and our tents to ashes or landfill, but the all that is beautiful, grand, or mysterious your actions, subvert and slip away, but of all credos leaving many wondering if there is still a used as media propaganda for the war and occupation of seeds of resistance have been planted in the system of the universe.” “give not that which is holy unto the dogs, need for a feminist struggle - especially within Western Afghanistan. However helping women, saving them from in the hearts of the tent-dwellers, who This echoes the sentiments of some neither cast ye your pearls before swine, democratic societies. On the 101st anniversary of violence or liberating them from inferior positions is never ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good sects two thousand years ago, before lest they trample them under their feet, International Women’s Day Flaminia Giambalvo spoke the agenda of these war mongers. One should ask do and Eviction. What will emerge from the Roman church was established. and turn again and rend you”. to Houzan Mohamoud - the Kurdish women’s rights and women need imperialists and foreign intervention to be those seeds, what runners and creepers, Some Gnostics considered the Lord of The fact that a genuine anarchist state anti-war activist and co-founder of the Organisation of liberated and have equality with men? If so what is the task climbers and stingers are sending out the Old Testament as jealous, ignorant, is not forthcoming is not a lament but a Women’s Freedom in Iraq - regarding the relevance of of women themselves in these countries who are fighting shoots beyond the square mile, and what or downright evil. Law and the law-giver point of pride. As Gustav Landauer put it: this event in Britain and the Middle East. for women’s rights? Can women’s rights and equality be are certainly complex: “The state is not something which flowers will bloom in the coming seasons? achieved through war mongering, invasion and occupations? can be destroyed by a revolution, but All sorts of philosophies came “Wherefore I gave them also statutes I really doubt it very much and I think it is very naïve for it is a condition, a certain relationship together on the cathedral steps, that were not good, and judgments anyone to think so. including the unabashedly messianic, whereby they should not live; And I between human beings, a mode of Wasi Daniju FG: The UK and U.S. governments have described the current human behaviour; we destroy it by and each Messiah bore his burden polluted them in their own gifts, in that Iraqi government as a more democratic one and the new contracting different relationships, by bravely. One hung his head and explained they caused to pass through the fire all constitution as an important stepping stone towards a freer behaving differently.” in grave tones how the blocking of his that openeth the womb, that I might make Iraq. Over the past 10 years how has policy towards women - Law ‘n’ order need not be joined at the proposal at the GA left him no choice them desolate, to the end that they might and their social and economic status - changed in Iraq? but to unleash a tidal wave against the know that I am the Lord.” (Eze 20:25) contraction. Order is intrinsic to nature, HM: U.S. and UK have no choice but to say that this current Gnostics (‘those who know’) arising spontaneously in the waves of the eastern seaboard of the US. Iraqi government is “democratic” because it’s their puppet and rejected bishops, or “dry canals” as they sea, in the rhythms of nature. Fibonacci Then there were the more deeply it’s their own creature. The very first steps of this so-called were called, coming together under numbers map out snail shells and galaxies, deluded, revolutionary communists and democracy were Islamic Sharia law and a Shiite-Sunni divide the direction of something described harmonic fractions hum between planets sellers of retro-sounding journals. Indeed in Iraqi society. Having an ethno-sectarian, tribalist and e ond comrades, the world has never seen a as invisible but instantly recognisable. and octaves, chaos maths governs B y religious government in Iraq will only double the suffering of The resurrection in spirit was through coastlines and crystals, birdsong and city genuine communist state, but neither women, causing them to be treated as second class citizens intuitions, dreams and visions. size, rivers, roots, and the rhythms of the has it seen a genuine Father Christmas, in society. Most policies so far have been anti-women; Resurrection in the flesh (the flying- heart. None of this requires coercion. Nina and I still don’t want your dirty red fingers take the recent directive of the so called women’s minister ben cavanna zombie) is a different doctrine. Farmers plant in spring and harvest Power poking around in my stockings. whereby she wanted to impose “modest” clothing on women “From each according to his It is almost impossible to control a in autumn, heedless of the law. When the W rk employees as another step of Islamisation of Iraq. o means, to each according to his needs” group of enthusiasts who take instructions Kremlin enforced a common agricultural FG: Do you believe there are some commonalities between the hat does ‘work’ benefits, endless jobcentre meetings, is the decent way to behave amongst directly from characters in their dreams or policy, millions of the proletariat had issues brought forward by the Occupy movement and those mean today? unpaid placements, anxiety, and the associates, but bring-a-bottle cannot be their wild and wicked imaginations. Gnostic to choose between starving to death facing women’s liberationist organisations around the world? Anyone looking threat of government-sanctioned imposed by jails and standing armies, not sentiments, like “Do not lay down any or cannibalism. There is no evidence HM: I think the whole world including men, women, for work, anyone psychological ‘help’, there is little Quakers’ Epistle in my book anyway, and my book is very workers, children, unemployed, youth and the entire in low-paid or that separates one situation from the old. I also argued with figures closer to my population have been hit hard by the neo-liberal policies non-permanent other. Campaigns against workfare, On March 5th, the OLSX Quaker Meeting conflict, something Quakers today find own persuasions. Baying Christians were brian leli of privatisation and creation of wealth beyond imagination work, or being low wages and precariousness, and for Worship sent a letter to Friends, more challenging. We were delighted to never in short supply, insisting this or for a small elite i.e. one per cent of the population. Women pressured into for security, pensions and a living supporters and occupiers. It brought learn that the Quaker involvement in the that. Go in peace, my brother, forthwith, Flaminia Giambalvo: Do you believe Western governments of course suffer double in these economic crises and they one of the five kinds of workfare that wage, reveal the structural dimension a tear to the eye of one occupier, who Occupy movement has resulted in an Godspeed, and quick as you can. Another W and media have created stereotypes of Middle Eastern women? would be first to lose their jobs, and status. Boycott Workfare identify (Mandatory of labour. This must be our starting suggested that the Quakers are like increased number of enquirers. man of God, who I had not seen during If so what is the purpose of such misrepresentations? FG: IWD is a global celebration of female strength and Work Activity, The Work Programme, point, if we are ever to think beyond wise elders to the stroppy teenagers We observe that Occupy has the entire occupation, came down to pray Houzan Mohamoud: The history of colonialism and achievement. What’s the importance of this event globally? Is Community Action Programme, work under capitalism. of Occupy; they don’t attempt to preach struggled to deal with many of the earnestly, on his knees with Bible in hand, intervention in this region require such stereotypes of an it still relevant in the so called “Western democracies”? Sector-based Work Academies and On one level, everybody knows or instruct their younger comrades, problems caused by the social and to be peeled off the steps by the police. entire population as inferior, uncivilised savages with all HM: IWD is more than ever relevant for women everywhere Work Experience) will have firsthand that the vast majority of people have even though they have long experience economic system which they seek to I was accused of being an anarchist women being submissive, passive recipients of male on this planet. In none of the so-called Western democracies experience of the relentless anxiety to work in order to pay rent and eat; with consensus decision-making and change; alcohol and drug abuse, male by a Christian, and a Christian by an violence. These misrepresentations help the Western have women achieved their full rights, freedoms and generated by an uncertain relation to those able to live off inherited or self- horizontal organisation, because they domination of meetings, homelessness, anarchist. The latter let fly a stream of imperialist powers to keep an upper hand, asserting equalities with men in many spheres. The fight for full equality employment. Ministers recite endless made wealth and/or the money they understand that Occupy needs to find those suffering from mental illnesses venom heated by the word “Reverend” their hegemony and supremacy culturally, economically and and an end to violence, exploitation and suppression of variations of the Thatcherite ‘on yer make from renting property are a tiny its own way. Without judgement, the and other broken people living in a on the spine of a book. I denied believing politically over this region. women still has a long way to go. bike’ attitude, while conveniently minority. Yet the idea that one must Quakers have been sitting quietly beside broken world. We uphold their efforts in flying zombies and any missionary overlooking the fact that in parts of work to “ ‘earn a living’ is taken as us throughout the occupation of St to deal with these problems in good intentions, but he was enraged into a the country (Hull and Stoke-on-Trent, part of the natural order rather than Paul’s Churchyard and have pledged faith and with compassion. Their kind of religious ecstasy. In an effort for example) there are 70-80 people as a social convention”, as Weeks put to continue their support. Given their use of consensus decision making is to find some common ground, I asked chasing every job. If you can’t find it. ‘Work’ in practice is an ideological history as radical activists for peace and close to our Quaker methods, and has what he was into. After a long pause employment, the message goes, the mess: part moral-imperative, part justice, it’s likely that some Quakers will empowered many in the community. to think (if thinking it may be called), fault lies with you: if you’re depressed, religious-overhang, part psychological do more than sit quietly in the future. Occupy is an important forum, and we he leant in and growled “drink” and jobcentres will bypass doctors to refer ‘responsibility’. Its brutal economic “For the past nineteen weeks are grateful for its existence, with all its two other pastimes, one involving the you for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy necessity for the majority of people is Quakers have met on Sunday at 3pm flaws and imperfections. constabulary, both too indecent to print. (CBT). If you don’t look, speak or act something all-too-rarely mentioned. on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral by During the eviction of the St.Paul’s Anarchy, being the free association of the part of a perky jobseeker, there But it is relatively easy to imagine the Occupy London camp for a Meeting site occupiers conducted themselves in a autonomous individuals, is nothing without are TV shows to boss you around and a situation ever-so-slightly tweaked for Worship. Friends of all ages from dignified and peaceful way, testimony to decency. Associations forged in craving reinforce class stereotypes (like The that would be quite different: full London have been welcomed as equals, the progressive nature of the movement. and hatred are not free, and if you define Fairy Jobmother). employment, pushed by several as well as friends visiting from across In contrast, we believe the authorities yourself by what you hate, you are not ben cavanna Work, despite being an governments since World War II the country and the globe. We have of St.Paul’s Cathedral were absent and autonomous of it but dependent upon it. omnipresent imperative, is strangely is now a distant memory (current discovered a remarkable stillness and complicit in the police operation to clear The first western philosopher to rules beyond what I appointed you, and do that jail reduces crime, that prohibition obscure. As Kathi Weeks, author unemployment in the UK stands at depth of worship amidst the clanging of the camp, including the steps to their argue that we would be better off without not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be reduces drug abuse. As Godwin put of 2011’s The Problem with Work: around 3 million); or a guaranteed the bells and the din of the city. building, which were not covered by a government was William Godwin, constrained by it” were not conducive to the it, “laws which are made to restrain Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics basic income where people can For a long time many of us have the eviction order. We are saddened by and his rejection of authority stretched ambitions of empire. Like anarchists of the our vices, irritate and multiply them”. and Postwork Imaginaries puts it, work more if they want to; or even a felt unease about existing financial their choice to stand closer to the City of beyond politics to the heavens. He French, Mexican, Russian, and nearly every Law fractures order. When imposed, “the privitisation of work” means that world where what we understand by systems and the consequences of the London authorities, those who in Jesus’ described his... revolution in history, they were persecuted it is an imposition, laid down by an we often “experience and imagine ‘work’ now has completely vanished. capitalist system we live in. The Occupy time were the moneychangers, and the “...utmost repugnance of as the cement dried on the new order. impostor. Godwin’s daughter, the author the employment relation ... not as Today we find ourselves compelled to movement resonates with our Quaker wealthy 1%. We believe Jesus would understanding for the idea of an Gnostic sects were wiped out, Gnostic of Frankenstein, put the conundrum a social institution but as a unique work longer for ever less, and mass testimonies, and above all shouts that have chosen differently. intelligent Creator and Governor of gospels struck from the canon and burned, succinctly in the mouth of the man-made relationship.” Work, whether we’re unemployment is a structural feature. there is a problem. Now that Occupy has been evicted from the universe, which strikes my mind only to be rediscovered in a cave in the monster who damaged whatever he in it or out of it, is ubiquitous yet Competition for jobs allows ministers, The quick and supportive response outside the stock exchange and St Paul’s, decade of the space rocket, the computer, touched: “You are my creator, but I am oddly personal. The significance of employers and newspapers to draw by so many in our Yearly Meeting, we will continue to meet on the step’s of St the mobile phone, the final solution, the your master. Obey!” recent successful campaigns against ever-deeper divisions between from the Recording Clerk to local Paul’s at 1.00pm for Meeting for Worship nuclear chain reaction, and LSD. According to the father of anarchism, workfare, where pressure from people. What we need now more than Friends, has been amazing. We rejoice every Saturday, to be followed by Meeting Pious and celibate fathers pressed the ideal man has “a certain confidence campaigners led to several companies ever is championed by many groups in the way our sometimes lengthy for Worship for Business at 1.30pm prior dogmas like resurrection “in the flesh”, in the unseen hand that sustains the pulling out of the scheme and others protesting against workfare and Quaker process managed to produce to the Occupy General Assembly. We hope on pain of eternal pain. Rules which had whole. He is glad that there is something suspending their involvement, is a everything the scheme reveals about a Quaker statement about Occupy in in this way to begin to broaden our witness fallen away were replaced, women who greater than himself, in the presence of victory in many ways (though there the de-valuing of human labour - a a timely fashion. Joining with other and will continue to seek new ways to had gained various freedoms were put which he feels his soul penetrated with a is much still to be done of course): combination of resistance against denominations and faiths has been speak our truth to power. back in their place, as befits “the devil’s sacred awe”. That hand organises without the battle against workfare is a battle being reduced to nothing, with a inspiring, and the “Sermon on the Steps” As Quakers we have found it gateway”. The Holy Spirit was bound and compulsion, creates what can sustain against the more general brutal and rethink of the alternatives to work as was a powerful example of this. important to gather like this on the gagged, and the faithful fell in line behind itself, and lets crumble that which is speedy devaluing of human life and such. We need better conditions now, Members of the public who see front lines of change for a more just their pastors as flocks of sheep, and obsolete. It governs gently and disciplines labour. If employment is increasingly but completely different conditions us in worship have joined with us, and equitable world. Friends take so occasionally battering rams. locally, but to feel it you need to pay characterised by low pay, insecurity, in the future, a world where work and also we have been photographed, much action as individuals, but our Later sects with a Gnostic approach, attention. As the father of anarchism lack of pensions, long hours, dull is no longer a form of economic videoed and interviewed many times. worship can and should be brought such as Ranters, Quakers, Levellers, wrote, in one of his most gnostic content, invasive surveillance, and exploitation, the site of depression We see similarities between the Occupy out of our meeting houses and into the Diggers and Anabaptists, embodied moments “truth can scarcely be acquired unemployment (or as the rebranding and false competition, but something movement and early Friends, in that world where it is relevant. As our fellow the full spectrum of anarchist direct in crowded halls and amidst noisy of time would have it, “jobseeking”) one does because one wants to, not both speak their truth to power, and seekers at Occupy would say: Occupy action, refusing to join armies or debates… Truth dwells in contemplation.” Wasi Daniju is characterised by vanishing because one must. both are not afraid to engage in positive the Light! And let the light occupy you.” use titles, ignoring property rights, www.nemusend.co.uk

08 09 Contagion? MONEY TALK$ I t’s all Michael Reiss Armageddon? Why? Occupied Times: Tell us about the meaningful sense; a position which is ‘People before profit’ is a popular slogan situation in Greece – are we seeing a reinforced by an equally monolithic stance from the Left; but those who chant it Asks Dr Michael Reiss of fullreservebanking.com and author as a significant part of their capital, are instantaneously bust. corporate takeover? on the part of both the mass media and seem to have little idea how to bring of ‘What Went Wrong With Economics’. Why are politicians so Any attempt to restart the bank - perhaps under new ownership, Harry Shutt: In Greece, the global academia. 30 years ago, much greater about this change of priorities except by frightened to let any major banks go under? Is there a difference or government ownership - will involve a choice between using financial ‘syndicate’ (including Goldman pluralism was allowed, particularly in public takeover of existing enterprises, About between a bank failure and the failure of any other kind of taxpayer’s money to make up the capital shortfall (which is Sachs and the IMF) is effectively universities. Dissenting voices may which is arguably a discredited model. business? The answer is yes, and the reason the situation is so becoming increasingly difficult for governments to do), or a dictating government policy. I’d argue from time to time be heard, but they A far more effective way of achieving precarious is down to our crazy and unstable monetary system. shrinkage of the money supply by an amount far greater than this is nothing very new; it’s just are never given enough time or space the goal of a responsible corporate the value of the bonds. For example if the capital adequacy become more blatant in the present to make significant impact on public sector would be a) to make a company’s Big companies go bust every now and then, and in the process ratio was 5%, then a default of 10 billion Euros would lead to a crisis. It’s a delusion that Greece, or any consciousness. Consider the performance right to limited liability conditional on the Money some of their smaller suppliers may go bust too. But this reduction in lending ability of the bank, in the region of 200 billion other Western country, is a democracy, of more ‘liberal’ media such as the its accepting public representation cascade of bankruptcies is usually pretty limited. You never Euros (and hence a shrinking money supply). A smaller money in that our governments have long been Guardian or the BBC during the current on the board - whether at national hear of politicians desperately trying to prop-up the company supply makes loans generally harder to repay and increases the in the pockets of the syndicate - or big crisis: despite the manifest disintegration or local community level - and even on the grounds that contagion is going to trash the world likelihood of further defaults, hence the contagion effect. business in some other guise. This of the system, their much-hyped efforts to give the public a right of veto over economy. But with the banks, it’s different. Government bonds are not the only form of capital tied up in structure has no democratic legitimacy, make a critical reappraisal of ‘capitalism’ certain decisions (e.g. executive pay, Most people imagine that money works as a system of the Armageddon scenario - a shrinking money supply necessarily and has demonstrated its willingness invariably reach the conclusion that there redundancies, capital investment); and sup l y ... tokens (either paper or electronic) that get passed from person leads to a reduction in the price of assets in general (deflation), p to subvert any lingering democratic is no viable alternative to the status quo. b) to make any other public subsidy two experts explore the murky world to person as trade is carried out. They imagine that the total including share prices. So a bonds’ default may be the trigger, but tendencies - as when it moved quickly There are, however, signs the internet or privilege to companies - whether amount of money would be constant, were it not for occasional the cascade can be carried on by falling prices of almost any asset. to quash the Papandreou government’s may be breaking down these barriers, private or public - subject to specific of money creation money printing by governments. Indeed money could work this The rules of our current monetary system directly lead to a attempt to put the bail-out package to a particularly as it saps the financial viability conditions designed to ensure that way if governments had chosen such a system – known as ‘full multiplier effect on defaults. This is what makes defaults in the referendum in December, by replacing it of the mainstream corporate media. the incentive does achieve the specific reserve banking’ – but our current monetary system works in a banking sector so different to the collapse of ordinary businesses. with an unelected government led by an OT: Mussolini once defined fascism as end(s) intended in the public interest. surprisingly different way. The Armageddon scenario is a cascade of loan defaults, each one ex-Goldman Sachs technocrat. the merging of corporate interests with OT: Basically ensuring that corporations Under the current system, money has a life cycle - it is leading to ever larger reductions in a bank’s ability to make loans the state - isn’t that what we’ve got now? fulfil their obligations to the public as Revolution continuously being created and destroyed. Money comes into and hence each leading to further reductions in the money supply. HS: It very precisely describes what we’ve well as shareholders? existence when private banks make loans, and money disappears Another way of looking at this issue is to consider the better- Visionary economist Clive got now. However, I personally wouldn’t HS: Yes, but equally it would remove back out of existence when the loans are paid back (OK, I am known phenomena of monetary expansion, where a small increase Menzies Harry Shutt, author consider this constitutes, by itself, an the presumption - currently implicit or Evolution? simplifying here, but this is the gist of it). In order for the total in the value of a bank’s capital leads to a large increase in the adequate definition of Fascism (with due in company law - that maximising amount of money in the economy to be held approximately amount of money a bank is allowed to lend out. All I am doing here of ‘Beyond the respect to Mussolini) as I think Fascism private profit is a public good, which CLIVE MENZIES, WHO’S BEEN activity is controlled by 147 ‘super constant, the rate of new money creation via loans needs to be is pointing out the corollary to this, i.e. a small amount of capital Profits System: also encompasses the promotion of results from requiring company boards INVOLVED IN THE INVESTMENT entities’ on the basis of publicly available approximately the same as the rate of money destruction through loss causes a large amount of money loss. bigotry and sectarianism (whether ethnic to put the interests of shareholders MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY FOR information. 45 of the top 50 are financial loan repayments. If there were a pause, or slowdown, in the rate of If we instead had a monetary system most of think we have Possibilities for or religious). However, there are signs our above all others. It would still allow OVER 30 YEARS, ARGUES THAT companies, many of which are banks. money creation, then there would naturally lead to a decline in the - in which money was indeed simply tokens that got passed from a post-capitalist leaders are resorting to this too. private ownership to operate where MONETARY REFORM IS INEVITABLE In his book, ‘Treasure Islands’, Nicholas total money supply as existing loans were paid back. person to person as trade was carried out (known as full reserve OT: What solutions do you think will no public subsidies or privileges IF WE WANT TO SURVIVE. Shaxson describes how tax havens are A significant contraction in the money supply is a dismal banking), then there would be no default-multiplier-effect, no era’, tells it how lead to permanent and lasting change? are sought (which should suit small The Corporation of London may exploited to hide ownership and add to prospect. A shrinking money supply makes the repayment of loans contagion and no Armageddon scenario. It doesn’t seem too hard a Presumably nothing will happen until businesses). And besides enabling more he sees it to The Ilias bartoliNi be quaffing champagne having evicted banks’ wealth and power. harder and generally creates a bad economic environment, as choice does it? I think it’s time to move to full reserve banking. we root out corruption in politics… rational allocation of resources in the OccupyLSX, but they, and the rest of the CONSEQUENCES OF THE GLOBAL, anyone who lived through the great depression would testify. So Occupied Times. HS: The point about ending (or severely public interest, such a change would 1%, need to recognise the growing threat DEBT-BASED, MONETARY SYSTEM now we need to consider the following question: Is there any reason curtailing) political corruption is crucial. help to remedy another defect of the sources of income) and does not where some countries have enacted of revolution rolling across the globe. The dire consequences of the why banks should suddenly be prevented from making new loans? OT: Whose interests is the EU I think the no.1 priority for Occupy capitalist model: the compulsive need affect entitlement to health-care or the necessary legislation for a citizen’s Jared Diamond’s ‘Collapse’ shows banking and monetary system become Sadly, and frighteningly, the answer is yes. It all boils down to representing here? in the British context should be to of companies to accumulate more and education. It will replace benefits and income - notably Brazil (2004) and Iran past civilisations that collapsed clear as debt accelerates beyond the the rules governing how much money banks are allowed to lend - HS: As for the EU, its democratic demand the full implementation of the more profits as shareholders’ funds, on guarantee that everyone’s basic needs (2010) - and are in process of trying to were ruled by rarified elites which ability to pay. Margrit Kennedy identified the so called ‘Basel accords’. The rule-makers decreed that banks credentials have long been discredited. latest proposals of the Committee on which they are obliged to try to achieve are covered by a non-means-tested mobilise the necessary funds to fully adopted selfish, short term policies major flaws back in 1995 in ‘Interest and should only be allowed to lend out, at most, a fixed multiple of Following the massive rejection of the Standards in Public Life (November a market rate of return. As Marxist weekly payment, as of right – raising implement it. This should suggest for their own ends. Meanwhile their Inflation Free Money’ and discovered, the current value of their capital. The ratio of loans that are made, proposed ‘constitution’ by the voters 2011) on party political funding, which analysis has shown, this not only tends everyone’s levels of dignity and freedom that, if such relatively poor countries people suffered hardship, famine, and during the period from 1968 to 1989 to the value of a bank’s capital is known as the ‘capital adequacy of France and the Netherlands in 2005, goes a long way to substituting state to concentrate wealth and income and allowing people to engage in can contemplate affording it, for repression. Sound familiar? while government income and wages in ratio’. The system is all well and good so long as there are no the European Council simply reframed funds (but at negligible cost to the in fewer hands over time but makes socially useful and creative activities or developed (OECD) countries it should be We all need to understand the Germany rose ‘only’ 400%, the interest sudden changes in the value of those assets… and herein lies it in the form of the Lisbon Treaty - a taxpayer) for private contributions. This inevitable the catastrophic business take entrepreneurial risks they might much easier given the political will to fundamental root cause of economic paid by the government rose 1360%. the problem. Under certain circumstances, assets can lose value document designed by or on behalf of is not because I think the proposals cycle (boom and bust), of which the otherwise avoid. distribute income more rationally. turmoil and other global problems – a Everyone pays for interest – even precipitously. One particularly awkward example is government corporate interests - and implemented are ideal (the upper limit of £10,000 on current crisis is an extreme example. This is an idea that has been around OT: You said recently: “Athens is key part of which is the global banking if they haven’t borrowed any money. bonds. The Basel committee decided that government bonds without referenda in most member states. personal contributions still seems too OT: You are also a big supporter of a for centuries and has been espoused burning today, Rome will be burning and monetary system. Its increasing Kennedy analysed German data from should be valued, for the purpose of assessing capital adequacy, OT: You said once that we are living in high and would leave scope for abuse) citizen’s income. How might this work? by eminent economists and thinkers next week and London next month”. Do dysfunction is provoking growing civil over 20 years ago and found 50% of as if there was zero chance of default. We shall see why this is a totalitarian state - the only difference but it would establish the principle of HS: A citizen’s income is a flat-rate from John Stuart Mill onwards. The you see the protests increasing and is unrest, but a concerted effort to radically prices paid, on average, for goods and dangerous in a moment… between us and North Korea being that the primacy of state funding and thus be benefit paid to all adult citizens or main reason why it’s time has now this just the beginning? reform money and banking could avoid services went to pay off interest and Banks are deemed as bust when their capital adequacy we can say what we like as long as we a huge step in the right direction. qualifying residents designed to be come is that technological change has HS: Yes, there is a possibility that the crisis revolution and consequent bloodshed. compound interest. She also found that falls below the prescribed limits. Currently, Greek government don’t mind being ignored… OT: What other reforms would you sufficient for one person to live on rendered labour increasingly redundant could intensify - either because of renewed THE MECHANICS OF THE GLOBAL this monetary system automatically bonds are held by assorted banks as part of their capital and HS: What I mean is that we are subject like to see? – i.e. in principle equivalent to the and banished the 20th century dream financial collapse or social explosion, or BANKING AND MONETARY SYSTEM transfers wealth from those with too (according to the regulations) valued at 100% of their face value. to a single dominant ideology (neo- Company law amended so as poverty line in the country concerned. of ‘full employment’ - always a fantasy, both. Hence, while as a group we do need Ilias bartoliNi HS: Fractional reserve lending allows little money to those who have more If Greek bonds are defaulted on, then the banks that hold them liberalism) from which no mainstream to make the enterprise sector more It is payable out of general taxation particularly in the developing world - for to inform ourselves of how the financial banks to generate exceptional returns than enough. The poorest 80% of the political party is allowed to deviate in any responsive to the public interest. unconditionally (regardless of other ever. there’s a more detailed discussion system works - something which, as I’ve on capital by lending many times their population paid far more in interest than on my website, Harryshutt.com. written, is made more fiendishly difficult by reserves. In addition, loans are spent and they received in government services, of control and collapse of the economic need an alternative, interest free who don’t have enough. Money created on OT: Has a citizen’s income ever been put the deliberate obfuscation of the banksters paid into the closed loop banking system and what they paid went to the top 10% system is imminent, threatening to take monetary system. We must abandon behalf of the government would be spent into practice successfully before, and if and economists - we also need to be as customer deposits. These deposits of society - with the top 0.01% getting our civilisation with it. all our preconceptions and think from into existence, creating value. Interest so, where? prepared for events spinning further out are reduced by the reserve fraction the lion’s share. As debt is money, the money supply first principles. What is money? It is a would not be payable nor would the HS: To date, no country has of control and consider how Occupy might but are then added to the reserves GROWING MARKETS, GROWING DEBT also expands exponentially, albeit convenient medium of exchange which money need to be repaid. For example, implemented a comprehensive, react. I cannot predict the timing of any against which even more money is The overriding obsession of with occasional credit squeezes which provides many advantages over barter. to fund the construction of a bridge, the unconditional citizen’s income, particular new outbreak of trouble (such lent. The mechanics of this process are politicians and commentators in the precipitate recession or depression – Money in itself has no value. It should money would be created which would go although a number have conditional as another Lehmans-type collapse) – but comprehensively addressed in Murray N West is a return to economic growth - we’ve got that in the pipeline, but on a be a representation of the value of to the workers and suppliers and then programmes such as a negative income what is certain is that the crisis is nowhere Rothbard’s ‘Mystery of Banking’ and the however, few of them understand the much wider and deeper scale than the goods and services between parties to a flow around the economy. tax. However, the pressures for more near resolution, and our rulers remain as 45 minute video, ‘Money as Debt’. consequences of such growth. GDP great depression of 1929. Expansion of transaction. Holding money should not With the abolition of the two equitable and cost-effective income deeply in denial as ever. Central banks are managed for the growth of 3% per annum is considered the money supply beyond that required benefit those who have a surplus unless fundamental flaws of fractional reserve distribution are building - to the point www.harryshutt.com. benefit of banks - which are privately desirable for developed economies. for trade, investment and consumption, it is spent productively in the economy. banking and interest, an honest owned and controlled by narrow This is exponential growth - at 3%, our is inflationary. Double the money supply Interest free money will ensure this and monetary system could be created interests. For example, the US Federal economy would have to double every and over time, irrespective of other avoid exploitation by banking interests. where money reverts to its proper Reserve Board (Fed) is owned by 24 years which means cutting down factors, the price of goods and services We urgently need a national purpose, a medium of exchange. It would banks and so government appointees twice as many trees, extracting finite will double. And of course, the hardest monetary authority to issue and regulate have no inherent value in and of itself to the Fed are typically bankers or resources at double the rate today and hit by inflation are invariably the poor. the money supply, independent of banks but would be spent into existence to their proxies. This model is replicated throwing twice as much away. Clearly So we face conflicting choices. and democratically accountable, but not create infrastructure, provision of public across the globe and, although the this is unsustainable. Either we reduce debt, to avoid being to the government of the day – too much services and private sector economic Bank of England was nationalised in In nature, animals and plants enjoy punished by the markets and to lower temptation to inflate the money supply to activity. By adopting radical monetary 1946, it remains firmly under banking rapid initial growth until maturity but interest costs, or we increase debt to achieve a ‘feel good’ factor in advance of reform we can evolve into a fairer, freer, control and influence. That bankers then growth becomes qualitative. A bail-out weaker countries which threaten an election. Only sufficient money would happier world fit for all - including those have control of the money supply, and child grows rapidly to around the age of the economic stability of the rest. We be created to service the real economy. currently quaffing champagne. our economic system, grants banking 20, when physical growth ceases and could also issue more debt on top of Shortages would be rectified by addition Clive Menzies has run banking and interests influence in politics, media and intellect, wisdom and experience develop this to stimulate growth. However as is to the money supply, surpluses removed finance workshops at TCU and the Bank public institutions. thereafter. Exponential growth in nature is becoming increasingly obvious the debt by way of taxation. of Ideas, and is currently running a In the corporate world, discovering otherwise evident in viruses and disease is already unaffordable - and will become I won’t pretend the transition to critical thinking course on banking and ‘who owns what’ is difficult because such as cancer. Our debt-based monetary more so as interest rates rise. interest and inflation free money would other subjects every Tuesday from 7pm ownership is obscured by nominee and banking system is the cancer at the THE ROAD TO EVOLUTION be simple or painless, but in time it to 9pm at the Green Bar, Level 4, Royal holdings and trusts. However, a recent heart of our civilisation - manifesting If there is no salvation within would rectify many problems. And yes, I Festival Hall until Autumn 2012. You can study in New Scientist analysed over itself in greed, inequality, conflict, the current monetary and economic mean total abolition of interest - because attend on a drop-in basis, but for more

40,000 transnational corporations and suppression of individual freedom, fear paradigm, how can societal breakdown interest will always allow those with more information email : criticalthinking@ Wasi Daniju Wasi Daniju discovered that 40% of their economic and poverty. The current debt spiral is out and revolution be avoided? We clearly money than they need to exploit those clivemenzies.co.uk. Scare Stories: Jeremy Scarce Stories Till The Politics The Ideology of Austerity

Dan Hind We live in an age of austerity. insult with the added policy that for No, that is wrong. the first time students going to private of Common Sense We are continually told that we need universities will have access to student the early months We are at a strikingly similar experts because they argued in favour of to live in an age of austerity. loans, so that taxpayers will effectively of 1776 a pamphlet moment now, on both sides of the the things that rich people wanted. Rich Better. be subsidising and fuelling the private called Common Atlantic and throughout much of the people wanted more freedom to make The difference between these two sector; hardly a money-saving initiative Sense became a world. For centuries two kinds of claim money and they wanted to be called statements is crucial. The first message for the age of austerity. sensation in the have stood in for kings as justifications wealth creators, rather than capitalists is the one that is repeated so often that This is just one example of the way English-speaking for the existing order. On the one hand, or rentiers. Experts were happy to oblige. we have come to believe it. It positions that austerity is used as the cover for colonies of North we were told that market forces were And why not? They got a reputation for austerity as an inevitable, unavoidable, the rolling out of an ideological position America. Its author, the best way of distributing goods in being smart and they became quite rich condition that we passively accept. The (in this case the effective marketisation InTom Paine, called for the end of British society. When that proved too obviously at the same time. latter statement, which is the more of the university sector). Another rule, on the grounds that kings were useless, we were told that only a For thirty years an intimidating mob accurate, begins to suggest that far example is the Free School programme ridiculous and crooked: ‘of more worth minority of specially qualified experts of these experts was quick to dismiss from inevitable, austerity is a condition – an ideological programme if ever is one honest man to society and in could understand the complexity of any suggestion that the common that is imposed on us as a necessary there was one. As the building of new the sight of God, than all the crowned modern society. So, either markets good should take precedence over the evil which will eventually lead us out schools in the public sector is slashed ruffians that ever lived’. should rule or experts should. For desires of the very wealthy. Centre- of the present global instability and on on grounds of austerity, somehow When Common Sense first much of our history, these two cults left politicians like Bill Clinton and Ed to firmer ground. We all have to make money is found to establish a range appeared it was by no means clear that have excluded the majority from active Balls sounded very much like business sacrifices, our political masters tell us of schools which are all but private - the Americans favoured independence. citizenship, every bit as effectively as lobbyists when they talked about how (while conveniently overlooking that except for the fact that the public is Many felt a residual loyalty to crown and the mystique of royalty. the economy worked. Central bankers the packages of austerity are far from paying for them. to the country they or their ancestors Sometimes experts want to regulate like Mervyn King and Ben Bernanke evenly spread, and affect the poor more What we need to learn from had left. Others were frightened that a markets in the public interest, as in the told us that financial innovations were than any other group). these examples – and the many more society without kings would descend New Deal in the United States or the making the financial markets more This latter sense of austerity – that like them – is that austerity is not into anarchy. Perhaps most importantly, post-war Welfare State in Britain. When stable by distributing risk. Credit it is imposed under the guise of extreme inevitable, but is too often imposed for the existing order was familiar. Most they do, the fans of the free market say agencies like Standard and Poor’s necessity – is continuously used as the other political reasons which all too people had grown up with it. As Paine rude things about out-of-touch experts. were convinced that worthless bonds justification for government policies often ramp up social inequality. The noted, ‘a long habit of not thinking But for the most part, the relationship deserved the highest possible rating. throughout the world, with left and right justification for these programmes is a thing wrong, gives it a superficial has been pretty harmonious. Over the By 2007 this alliance of experts and Ilias bartoliNi alike colluding in the policies of cuts. framed by the dominance of the neo- appearance of being right’. last generation or so, experts became free market economics had drowned But scratch the surface, and it is easy to liberal economic model that subscribes out almost all dissenting voices. It see that in many cases the programmes blindly to the twin gods of growth and the veil of logic and so-called objectivity no sustained increase in yields on which was able to decide what was and what to break at last the power of market and America. Unsupervised markets do of austerity are not only unnecessary, market freedom, as if the so-called is a deeply ideological text, which was the initial bargain was based. wasn’t controversial. Support for free of expert and replace it with the power not deliver prosperity. Unsupervised but act as a mask for the playing out of ‘logic of the market’ will lead us out of to have direct political consequences. Constructed scarcities affect every markets was common sense. Almost of freely deliberating citizens? experts cannot be trusted. The inexpert deeply ideological policies. the woods. It continues to amaze that Malthus’ rationalisation in favour of aspect of our lives. We are told that everyone who was allowed to join the In 1776 the beliefs of a few radical public is capable of governing itself Take my field, that of higher the same medicine is being prescribed population restraint brings with it some there is a housing crisis, but everywhere version of public life staged in the major republicans became a new common and of shaping the state in ways that education. The introduction of higher to treat the very illness that the unedifying arguments in relation to we look there are empty properties; media was caught up in the prevailing sense in a matter of months. By July are just and reasonable. There can be fees is ‘explained’ by the fact that we medicine initially caused. the poor. If one attempts to alleviate scarcity here is constructed through the delirium. When the unregulated financial the Continental Congress – a group no principled opposition to the steady can no longer afford to fund Universities Austerity is justified because of a poverty, as was being proposed in the machinations of tenure and ownership. markets collapsed and the Western with about as much representative expansion of popular power. out of the public purse, and so the wider scarcity – of money – and the only contemporaneous Poor Laws, then (he As soon as one understands scarcity world suffered a severe recession, that legitimacy as Occupy Wall Street, by Can we make these obviously true burden should shift to students, who solution proposed is to limit the endless argued) population growth with follow, as a constructed condition and not an should have been the end for the market the way - published its now-famous claims into a new common sense in will eventually benefit. This is the supply of money in order to re-establish which in turn will lead to scarcities. inevitable one, then it makes it possible and the expert alike. Free market Declaration of Independence. The days the months ahead? Can we do to the common sense argument so favoured economic equilibrium. In this sense, Instead, let scarcity regulate poverty, he to creatively intervene in the processes economics leads directly to massive of monarchy in the thirteen colonies market and the expert what Tom Paine by the populist right. The assumption austerity, as an imposed condition, is argues; it is both the origin of poverty that construct a particular scarcity. A public subsidies for irresponsible banks. were numbered. did to the rule of kings? If we learn the is that this new system will save public the bastard child of scarcity. Scarcity and the effective instrument against good example is the Renew Newcastle Experts hadn’t been able to say so, for The pretexts used to keep us right lessons from the occupations, money. However, this is far from the has been used as a scare tactic ever any population growth that might project in New South Wales, Australia, obviously self-interested reasons. from the guts of administration are then yes, we can. truth: buried in an annex of a letter since the invention of neo-classical arise out of the alleviation of poverty. where a team lead by Marcus Westbury But for the moment the market no more or less ridiculous than the Dan Hind’s ‘Common Sense: An Essay from Vince Cable to HEFCE (the higher economics. It was the Reverend This laissez-faire attitude to the poor, have unlocked the empty spaces of the and the expert remain on their thrones, idea that a British king should rule on Liberty’ is published on March 15th. education funding body) is the startling Malthus who first wielded the axe of worrying enough in its own way, is also city through interrupting and playing clinging on to each other for support. Ed admission that the cost next year will scarcity in his Essay on the Principle of a lever for the exploitation of the poor with planning and legal regulations Balls, one of the architects of the current actually rise from £8.9m to £9.1m. Far Population of 1798. Malthus’ argument because, as Malthus recognised, the (which had constructed a scarcity of shambles, is the Shadow Chancellor of from the tripling of fees being part of is straightforward: population grows poverty arising out of scarcity made use), allowing short-term uses to the Exchequer. He has taken to citing the the government’s austerity programme, at geometric rate, food supply at an the working class more willing to take over and revitalise the previously credit rating agencies as authoritative it now, astoundingly, adds extra arithmetic rate; at a certain moment submit to wage labour. The immediate decaying city centre. guides to economic policy; ‘As Standard cost to the exchequer, but we are so (the Malthusian point), population political consequences of Malthus’ In taking apart the various & Poor’s has said, austerity alone is conditioned by the rhetoric of austerity demand will exceed supply; scarcity will essay were very direct. The Poor Laws, constructions of scarcity, one is self-defeating’, he tells us. Standard & that the new fee regime has now been lead to famine; population growth must which he had argued contributed to resisting the scare stories that are Poor’s has said lots of things, as has Ed passively accepted as necessary by therefore be restricted in the face of the ‘carelessness’ among the poor, and a associated with it. But this does not Balls. The same plausible chancers who most people. Insult is heaped upon spectre of scarcity. What we find behind ‘want of frugality’, were repealed under mean that all scarcities are constructed. created the problem are busy deciding the Malthusian spectre of the population There are real limits and resources what to do about it. growth of a rutting proletariat. really are running out as mankind The occupations and demonstrations Is it too much to equate Malthus’ endlessly exploits the biosphere. This of the last year are a sign that all this attack on the poor with this coalition aspect of scarcity is all too often either is about to change. People are meeting government’s attack on the disabled, denied or forgotten, because at heart and discussing matters of shared the homeless, the migrants and it presents a threat to the neoliberal concern and they are finding that they other dispossessed elements of dream of endless growth and demands are quite capable of understanding society? I think not, because in each that we look at alternative paradigms. what has been happening and what case scarcity is being used as the It is here that the occupy movement needs to happen. It is up to us to learn justification and cover for a deeply is so important. What I learn from the from the occupations, and from the ideological programme. occupiers is the resilience and brilliance occupiers. So what do we take from the The only way to escape the apparent of their organisational structures, and occupations and assemblies, if we want hold of scarcity is to understand it not as their overall critique of the structures a naturalised or inevitable condition, but of power. What the occupiers teach us, as a constructed one. The most obvious through their spaces, their behaviour example of constructed scarcity is food: and their critique, is that other forms there is enough food in the world to of social organisation are not only feed the global population, it is just in necessary but also possible. If, as I the wrong place and subjected to the believe, we are moving into an era distortions of the free market. Hunger overseen by issues of scarcity (but not in one part of the world is mirrored with necessarily scary scarcity) rather than appalling waste in another. On top of this, by the false hope of abundance that the intervention of multinationals such as we’ve been promised for too long, then Monsanto has exacerbated food scarcity. we need to rethink our understanding of Using the scar(c)e story that without scarcity and its implications. The Occupy industrialised and genetically modified Movement is a good place to start. food production we face global food Jeremy Till is an architect and scarcity, Monsanto has been allowed to educator, presently Dean of Architecture roll out a form of agricultural monopoly and the Built Environment at the that has not only destroyed local University of Westminster. His work on livelihoods and practices, but done so, as scarcity and creativity is part of a larger Wasi Daniju Wasi Daniju ben cavanna brian leli so clearly shown by Vandana Shiva, with trans-European project funded by HERA. the Community Bill of Rights B IOFUELS POWER Turning Occupation into Lasting Change Melanie Strickland The legal system is part of the ‘system’ the country would not know that originally designed to serve us – they which Occupy London rightly identifies in corporations vote in the City of London have now enslaved us. We need to re- its initial statement as both undemocratic Corporation elections – it is unique in examine the role of the corporation from and unjust. To remedy this, we must the UK for this. its foundations (is it ever a good idea to S TATIONS radically reorient our legal structures There are other valuable rights confer personhood on corporations?) and Zenith Milner everywhere, so that they foster expressed in the CBoR including the right have a mechanism revoking personhood, & Mattia F. GREENWASH AT OUR EXPENSE meaningful human relationships and to affordable and renewable energy, right and for exposing the persons behind the the flourishing of life on this planet. At to determine the future of neighbourhoods corporation, who are generally protected an era of austerity THE REAL COST OF BIOFUELS more emission than all cars, ships and the moment the legal system, taken as and more. The overall effect of these rights by the law for all their acts of impunity. it takes a far- Four independent scientific reports planes combined. It is no coincidence whole, delivers the opposite – it maintains is to genuinely empower communities. The I want to progress the idea of sighted and commissioned by the European Union that Brazil and Indonesia, the highest the status quo, which in turn keeps rights are expressed in the positive. the Community Bill of Rights with responsible showed that biofuels are neither carbon emitters from deforestation, are corporations in power and ensures that By contrast, the third main part of the the support of working groups at government to climate-friendly nor human-friendly: also two of the three top producers of communities are subordinate. CBoR sets out prohibitions on corporate Occupy, and others. We can identify a invest in green they are just friendly to the 1%. biofuels. When peatlands are cleared, The Community Bill of Rights (or legal privileges. The effect of these local London authority which may be energy. Despite If current trends continue, large amounts of methane are released CBoR for short) is an excellent example provisions is to take power away from sympathetic and potentially campaign for the rhetoric, biofuels will generate additional land - an even more potent climate change of a law that genuinely does give power the corporations that are responsible for the adoption of the CBoR. In doing so, we Inhowever, the ‘greenest government requirements of between 0.5 and 1.1 gas than CO2. back to the people and would help foster damaging communities and so these will highlight the democratic deficit, and ever’ is doing quite the opposite. Not million hectares annually. Production is BIOFUELS IN THE UK: those meaningful relationships for people provisions are expressed negatively. more positively, doing this may facilitate only is it dragging its feet on climate mostly concentrated in tropical regions, CORPORATE GREENWASH and planet. CBoRs have been adopted by To illustrate, the first provision in this democratic renewal. Various people have action, it is also squandering taxpayers’ such as Brazil and Indonesia, where After the reckless EU decision to dozens of towns (and a city, Pittsburgh) in section reads: “Corporations and other also expressed an interest in using the money to keep alive a dangerous credible sustainability criteria are not heavily subsidise transport biofuels as the US – they work. They are pioneered business entities which violate the rights CBoR to engage communities during the corporate hoax: biofuels. applied and deforestation is pushing part of the renewable energy strategy, by the Community Environmental Legal secured by this Community Bill of Rights Occupy London walk beginning in May. Biofuels include bioliquid and endangered animals even closer to the UK Government is now planning Defense Fund, a US non-profit law firm. shall not be deemed to be “persons”… nor This would be fantastic and I encourage biomass combustibles derived from extinction (experts expect the orang utan to go further and subsidise a number Cicero said “the more laws, the less possess any other legal rights, privileges, people to get in touch if they would like Wasi Daniju plants and animals. They are sold to the to become extinct by 2018, and there are of biofuel power stations around the justice,” so appropriately the CBoR is only powers, or protections which would to support this initiative. public as a quick fix solution to climate only around 500 Sumatran tigers left). country. They would be using palm oil a few pages long. interfere with the enforcement of rights change - a renewable energy that only When biofuels are grown on imported from Indonesia, Borneo and The CBoR is structured into three main enumerated by this Charter.” releases the same amount of carbon forestlands, indigenous peoples are Malaysia. Governments erroneously parts. The first part sets out the purpose If you’re not familiar with legal that plants had absorbed while growing. often violently displaced. Ten million view palm oil as sustainable, citing the POLLUTION AROUND be. Without the huge subsidies, these of the law – this states: “[citizens]… jargon, this provision may not seem to They have started to be used to power people in Indonesia would be affected RSPO (the Roundtable for Sustainable POWER STATIONS stations are simply not viable. recognise that environmental and be saying much. In fact it is radical. A cars, and now the Government plans as they are dependent on the rainforest. Palm Oil) as proof, but this has been Around power stations, there would So, corporations are doing it again: economic sustainability cannot be achieved corporation is a legal fiction. It exists to subsidise biofuel power stations to With plantations outside forests, widely discredited. Two hundred and also be unhealthy air pollution, including they rip the taxpayer off in order to get if the rights of the municipal majorities as a piece of paper only and yet it has For the Sake of Mother Earth produce electricity. farmers are often forcibly evicted or end fifty groups worldwide have signed the nitrous oxides and tiny particulate incentives and government subsidies are routinely overridden by corporate extensive rights including the protection The Rio+20 Earth Summit Phil England Biofuels may sound all right at first up in forced servitude. ‘Declaration of Greenwashing of Palm matter (PM 10s and PM2.5s), which at the expense of the people and the minorities claiming certain legal powers…” of the European Convention on Human glance, and some are environmentally Increasing demand for farmland oil by the RSPO‘ (available on Google) cause cardiac and respiratory problems, planet. This time they are even winning The second main part sets out Rights. As Professor Conor Gearty friendly; reusing old chip fat, for with biofuel plants raises land prices but the government ignores this. The eczema, and reduce lifespan. These the PR battle. Occupying the biofuels the rights of communities. Some of pointed out in the Occupy Law event We are living through a particularly ugly period in find some good ideas, but most are not really new: example, and perhaps using trimmings and competes with food crops, which demand for palm oil - which is already problems are overrepresented in areas industry means fighting the powerful the most important rights include at Tent City University on 20 February, world history. As Naomi Klein explained in her book other indicators, stop harmful subsidies, civil society from forestry isn’t too bad. But large in turn brings up global food prices. As in many foods, soaps and washing that are already polluted. In Southall, biofuel lobby and pressuring the the right to a locally based economy the most important right in our society “Shock Doctrine”, in late stage capitalism deregulated participation; all said and agreed on a decade or two ago.” scale biofuels are another matter. Palm the 2008 price spike shows, higher food products - is already expanding greatly, GPs were most concerned about any government to remove subsidies for (which would strengthen communities is the right to property, which favours corporations and financers don’t just seek to maximise This is the same failed voluntary approach that came oil, from palm plants (not to be confused prices disproportionately hit the poorest and tracts of rainforest are cleared for further deterioration of air quality that a large scale biofuels and biomass plants, and encourage local job creation); corporations, and corporations use profit at the expense of both people and the planet, they out of the original Earth Summit 20 years ago. That with coconut palms) is the most nations, becoming a threat to global each new plantation. power station would cause. supporting instead true renewables: the right of natural communities and their rights both as a sword and a shield actively exploit disaster. summit produced the UN Framework Convention on popular, as it is cheap for the biofuels food security. UN figures show that the Biomass power stations would SUBSIDISING DESTRUCTION appropriately sited, offshore and onshore ecosystems to exist and flourish – this against communities and the State. They We can see it in the way the partial collapse of Climate Change (UNFCCC) - which has been the basis companies, but not for the environment. number of hungry people has increased be using wood from forests in the These new biofuel power stations wind (remembering that a turbine is in recognition of the fact that healthy use their rights as a sword to defeat the financial system has been used to force national of the UN climate talks ever since - and the Convention Jatropha, which is grown in developing globally from 780 million in 1997 to UK, Scandinavia, South America and would only be viable because of huge looks better than a power station!), human communities are dependent attempts by the community to prevent economies to march in lockstep to the neoliberal drum on Biological Diversity. The Rio+20 agenda in its current countries, uses vast amounts of water. 925 million in 2010, in part because of Canada - where campaigners are government subsidies. These subsidies, tidal and solar power, and imported on healthy non-human communities, them from carrying out harmful activities beat. Cuts to public expenditures and public services open form has nothing to offer except more of the same failed Rapeseed plants and biofuel wheat competing demands from biofuels. already protesting against this use called Renewable Obligation Certificates hydroelectricity. Consumption and and recognises that nature has in the community (as you’ll appreciate if the way for private investors and corporations to profit medicine. The agenda is full of voluntary pledges and plantations compete with other crops Ironically, biofuels have a worse of the forest. Furthermore, the use (ROCS) are massive, to the tune of 39 waste are also problems, and insulation intrinsic value); the right to water for you’ve ever tried to object to that third from services that were previously off-limits to the private empty goals with no means of fulfilling them. for land. Some companies say they will carbon footprint than most fossil fuels. of wood from temperate forest for million pounds per year for just one needs to espand. The government people and ecosystems and the right Tesco on your High Street) and they use sector, such as healthcare and policing. As part of the agenda-drafting process, dozens of use algae to produce electricity, but Not only does their production rely on biomass can have a knock-on effect, proposed plant in Bristol. And guess would do well to look at the pamphlet ‘A to a sustainable food system - both their rights as a shield against the State And we can see it in the way that Klein’s “disaster civil society groups from around the globe have submitted the technology for this is not expected fossil fuels (for fertilisers, pesticides meaning that huge amounts of tropical where the money comes from? From Million Climate Jobs’ to remedy climate in recognition of the fundamental to defeat attempts to regulate them in the capitalism” wants to cash in on the environmental crisis. their ideas and proposals alongside those of national within the next decade. Biomass wood and international transport), but it also rainforest are cleared to feed the our electricity bills. change and unemployment, rather importance of these for survival. The public interest. A good example of this is The market approach - pushed by the likes of BP and governments. Some of these initiatives have been chips are also problematic. drives deforestation, which causes increased demand for wood. At present, however, there is a than clutching at counterproductive right to a sustainable food system also legislation designed to curb greenhouse investment banks - that has failed to solve the problem discussed in the Occupy London working groups focussed Government consultation taking place. violent solutions. Furthermore, it should includes the right to food free from gas emissions. At international, European of climate change is now being pushed as the solution to on Energy, Equity & Environment and Environment Given enough pressure, they may be ascertained why the government genetically modified organisms – there and national level this has been ineffective deforestation and the escalating destruction of the natural & Economics, and we think deserve the serious change their misguided policies. has stopped increasing the flow of are many reasons to support this, just because governments capitulate to world. In UN conference-speak, the privatisation of the consideration of Occupy London as a whole. SUCCESSFUL BIOFUELS Norwegian hydroelectricity. This green one being that any ‘benefits’ of GM corporate demands. Lawyers for the atmosphere is known as carbon trading, the privatisation First, is the proposal to recognise planetary CAMPAIGNS energy, with an excess supply of several would accrue to a corporate few in the corporations, on salaries not much of the world’s forests is known as REDD (“Reducing boundaries. A heavyweight paper in the scientific journal Protesters against biofuels have terrawatthours, should be exploited. form of profit. less than bankers, end up writing the Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation”) “Nature” in 2009 drew together what we know about already campaigned at the local, HOW TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE Other important rights include the legislation which they hand over to civil and the privatisation of everything else known as Earth’s natural systems and how far we can push them. national, European and international Each of us can make a difference by right to free and fair elections, free servants, who more or less end up “payment for ecosystem services”. The paper identified nine boundaries (more may be levels (in and outside of orang utan getting our MP to oppose the subsidies from corporate interference; and the rubber-stamping the draft, which gets An event with tremendous symbolism is now upon identified as our knowledge develops). Three of these suits!), but are fighting against outdated in the current consultation. Plans by right to clean government (including the passed into law. The government then us. The Rio+20 Earth Summit in June has to be seen boundaries have already been exceeded (atmospheric laws, the government’s current the Department of Energy and Climate right to a legislative process free from say that they have ‘consulted’ because as a testimony to the failure of national governments greenhouse gas concentrations, rate of biodiversity loss energy policy, and widespread lack Change to subsidise biofuels can be corporate lobbying and involvement) they canvassed the business community. – captured by corporate interests – to address the and the nitrogen cycle). A group of public interest lawyers of knowledge about the subject even voted out by our MPs, so let’s make – both of these rights are particularly So, the CBoR stating that corporations environmental problems that prompted the first Earth have started a campaign to have these boundaries amongst many environmentalists and sure that biofuel power stations get the apt in light of Occupy London’s focus on will not be recognised as persons if Summit 20 years ago. Climate changing greenhouse gases recognised and respected by international law. decision makers. thumbs down from the government; the undemocratic and unaccountable they violate the rights set out in the are rising at unprecedented, unforeseen rates, and so are Second, is the proposal to make ecocide the fifth Some power stations have been save the planet and save your money! local authority, the Corporation of CBoR is potentially a game changer. To rates of biodiversity loss. international crime against peace. This would make stopped through local campaigns, At present, only 34 MPs have signed London. If it wasn’t for Occupy London, paraphrase George Monbiot in his book The draft declaration for the conference itself CEOs, board members, government ministers and heads including in Southall in West London and an early day motion against the proposed many people across the capital and Captive State – corporations are inventions recognises this failure. It reads: “Unsustainable of banks personally liable for large-scale damage to Newport, South Wales, but others have subsidies, which is a disgraceful number. development has increased the stress on earth’s limited ecosystems such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the received planning permission. In Bristol, Make sure your MP knows that you think natural resources, and on the carrying capacity of production of oil from the Canadian tar sands. city councillors initially refused planning these subsidies must be stopped and ecosystems [...] Food insecurity, climate change and Third, is the proposal to recognise the rights of permission for a power station, but truly renewable energy supported. biodiversity loss have adversely affected developmental nature. This draws on the work of Bolivia - which the company appealed. The final ruling ACT NOW! gains. We are deeply concerned that around 1.4 billion drafted a proposed Universal Declaration of the Rights forced the local council to give planning 1. Write to your MP, saying you want people still live in extreme poverty and one sixth of the of Mother Earth in 2010 - and also on the philosophical permission, against the express wishes subsidies to be removed from biofules world’s population is undernourished, pandemics are tradition of such thinkers as Thomas Berry and the Wild of the public, as under current outdated and given to true renewables omnipresent threats.” Law community, who propose that the Earth (rather planning law, only local environmental 2. Write similiarly to Ed Davey, the The whole thing is such an embarrassment to the than humans or corporations) should be at the centre of factors can be taken into account, not new minister for the Department of global community that it has been reduced to a three- our legal system. This is echoed in the words of Rowan widespread issues. At the Bristol site, Energy and Climate Change. day event where heads of government - such as our own Williams, who said that “the economy is a wholly owned for example, the fate of some local 3. Avoid palm oil in foods, soaps etc. David Cameron - aren’t even expected to turn up. The subsidiary of the environment”, and in the writings slowworms (a rare type of newt) were Writing in to manufacturers also works. draft declaration that world “leaders” are being asked to of progressive thinkers such as Susan George, who considered, but not all the multitude of Your own letters are best of sign up to is just twenty pages long and has virtually no argued that inverting our current priorities so that the animals and people effected by clearing course. For draft letters and further substantive content. environment comes before humans and the economy is rainforest to grow palm plants. So much information of how to help see www. This “Zero Draft”, as it has come to be known in the the great task of our age. for ‘Think globally, act locally!’ These laws lifewithoutpalmoil.org NGO world, was summed up as by a statement of “Zero There are other proposals for an International Court must be changed to stop our country For more information see www. Ambition” that a few organisations published recently for the Environment, and an Ombudsman for Future continuing to condone human rights greenthefilm.com, www.biofuelwatch. to criticize the preparatory work for the summit: “The Generations, for example, which we should also consider violations, violence and ecocide. The org.uk, Friends of the Earth http://www. whole text breathes only the voluntary approach, which supporting. And none of these approaches can take hold biofuels company in Bristol and Portland foe.org/. Additional information on palm countries can accept or just leave. It is all up to nice and unless we focus on the other half of the equation: the is now waiting to see what the outcome oil in household products can be found interesting partnerships, good intentions and promoting capture and effective derailment of the UN process by brian leli Juan Manuel Peña of the current subsidies consultation will at www.saynotopalmoil.com. green consumption. When you read in detail you can corporate and financial interests. Occupy, Constitutional

Law & Social Change Sara Cameron Occupy

In the mid 19th century, Henry Thoreau with the law, when the law is made interest; how legislation and common coined the term ‘civil disobedience’ by politicians and senior judges who law are interpreted in our courts when fighting against the American are, in the majority, from privileged – and whether these decisions are government’s state poll tax - the money and elitist backgrounds which teach for the benefit of society at large or & the La w: from which would be used to enforce maintenance of the status quo? mere ephemeral decisions to fit the the Fugitive Slave Law. He broadly When I attended law school with parochial facts of one particular case. used this concept to denote individual the hope of becoming a barrister to The ‘for what purpose’ and ‘by resistance to civil government in moral fight the injustices and inequities in whom’ points are paramount if we opposition to an unjust state. the UK, I was struck by how many of want to have a system that is ‘just’; The T ial Since the 1840s, civil disobedience my peers had had a private education, these issues have been long debated r has been nurtured and harnessed went to Oxford or Cambridge and by constitutional theorists who through various crucial stages in our generally hadn’t lived a life in which advocate the separation of powers. evolution as a conscious society, left-wing politics played any role. As The doctrine of the separation of John influencing the political thoughts someone who leans to the left, I felt powers was first conceived of by Cooper and actions of historical figures and very isolated during the time I spent at Aristotle and has been gradually Continues movements which have used the notion law school. My peers are the future of explained and perpetuated by ow that the dust has settled upon the public and politicians were attempting to portray Occupy as of civil disobedience. To name but a the legal profession, our future judges the French jurist Montesquieu. latest round of legal action between reprehensible, irresponsible time wasters, it was, perhaps, few, we had the Boston Tea Party, and upholders of the Rule of Law, Montesquieu argued that the three Occupy and those who seek to evict them the usual response by those who feel threatened to any new the suffragette movement, resistance that is to say, ‘a government of laws functions of government (the from the site outside St Paul’s Cathedral, it and challenging idea. Indeed, it is not new. During my 16 to colonial rule in India courtesy of and not of men’ as John Adams so legislature, executive and judiciary) is, perhaps, appropriate to take a moment years as Chair of the League Against Cruel Sports and now Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr’s fight eloquently put it. should vest in distinct bodies so that in time to reflect upon the present position as their President, those who continue to be opposed to the to promote civil rights in the United I would argue that those who excessive power is curtailed through of the law and how it can help or hinder cruel practice of hunting with hounds are periodically labelled States and students protesting the exercise a governmental function have a system of checks and balances by the exercise of public protest. as ‘lefty oiks’, one of the more sanitised insults. It is in fact, war in Vietnam. More recently, other been using their power arbitrarily one on the other. Not surprisingly, NThis article is not meant to be a political consideration of a sign of weakness, both of argument and personality, when acts of civil disobedience have been for quite some time. This is perhaps our courts have ruled that the British the aims and objectives of ‘Occupy’, there are many others any debate descends into insults and infantile and simplistic “Freemen” used to highlight the need to reassess more noticeable now that the raft of constitution features the doctrine (R v who are far more qualified than I am to enter into this arena, labeling, and should consequently be dismissed or even society’s norms in terms of how we post-2001 terrorist legislation has had SoS for the Home Office v ex parte Fire and, in my view, for what it is worth, have positively pushed be taken as flattering, but it is occasionally nice to have it Favour Fiction think about and act on environmental tangible effects on our domestic policing Brigades Union). However, similar to the cause of public debate and appreciation of the issues completely dismantled before a court of law. issues, equality issues, welfare issues, law, from the extension of police the notion that we are ‘free’ beings facing 21st century society into an exciting new dimension. That is what we did in the Occupy hearings. I cannot say corporatism, religion, wealth, property detention to the banning of legitimate during this current era of capitalism – But enough, for now, of that. Where are we with the law post that those with closed minds will not wheel out the old insults, Over Facts Scrapper Duncan and wars in the Middle East. and peaceful protest in the run up to in which we are led to believe that we the Occupy litigation in the High Court just before Christmas and but I can predict with confidence that Occupy now has a wealth So what is the role of civil the Queen’s jubilee and the Olympics, have ‘rights’ and ‘equality’ - I would more recently before one of the most influential courts in the of judicial and legal comment attesting to the integrity and Law is like life. It begins small A common refrain in their disobedience in promoting social and the attack on our national health suggest that the court’s ruling is land, the Master of the Rolls Court earlier this year? authority of the movement. If we achieved nothing else, that and simple and then evolves. The comments on critical blogs is “[the change? Well, it is about making what service in order to serve the interests erroneous. It is right to observe straight away, that whatever the will prove invaluable in the time to come. Carmen valino Darwinian struggles to occupy new woo] makes sense to me!” They could be conceived of as ‘absurd’, of the corporate world. Where is the Parliament holds itself out as preconceptions that some had before this process, the vast But, in my opinion, the hard letter of the law has also been existential spaces and overcome prefer to hear what they like rather normal. No one took the movement equality? Why is our state placing other being sovereign as it is elected by the majority of those supporting and representing the Occupy challenged during these cases. Just what bodies such as the City, challenges create new species. Much than accept anyone else may possibly for woman’s suffrage seriously in interests above the rights of people? voters, but increasingly the courts deal of power over the legislators the government can intervene. This case came out of both the High Court and the Court of Appeal supported by the Church, and other powerful public and private like ecosystems, young jurisdictions know better. Their attempts to muster the early 1900s. Society possessed a The government has interfered with our are treading on parliament’s toes through lobbying campaigns and may be true. However, until we have with the feeling that they had, within the constraints of the bodies can do to frustrate and curtail a citizen’s right of public enjoy relatively simple relationships recruits in Occupy London met with different value system where woman rights; the antithesis of the doctrine of as a result of the need to interpret the more covert ‘wining and dining’ a system of politics which works for law, been given a fair and open hearing. The Judges, like the protest, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly has now, between their constituent parts but sustained deconstructions of their signified passive, quiet creatures the Rule of Law. legislation ‘so far as is possible’ to activities that permeate our system of the majority of the people rather than lawyers, are constrained to work within the confines of the as a result of litigation like this, become one of the most exciting more established legal systems are bizarre and pseudo-religious beliefs. without any say in the man’s world of From a lawyer’s perspective, the reflect the European Convention of government. You simply have to look a dominant few, with natural laws that law and in the case of the Occupy case, much of that law had and developing areas of law in the first part of the 21st century. populated with so many sets of rules, Although this intellectual conflict politics. However... is working within Rule of Law is a vitally important Human Rights (ECHR). The courts also at an MP’s past, present and future are shaped from the bottom up (and been enacted by Parliament, significantly, the Highways Act The law says that, in extreme circumstances, these that experts in one area scarcely was inevitable, they reacted badly to the law the way to push boundaries? constitutional theory and I hope have the power to make declarations employment status to figure this out. not under the guise of ‘democracy’ or back in the early days of the Thatcher government in 1980. important human rights can be curtailed, but the vital and need know the others. Whether it, resorting to personal attacks on There is a belief that progressive Occupy, as a powerful force for social of incompatibility should a piece Occupy makes a strong stand ‘equality’), progressive movements However much some might be frustrated by this, those are continuing legal question is how and at what stage? these evolutionary facts are morally people in Occupy’s legal team and people should always work to promote change, can promote its underlying of legislation not reflect the rights against such incestuous relationships will struggle to use the legal system the rules by which the courts work, they are not courts of Occupy thought that the courts have intervened too good or bad is a philosophical issue. attempts to undermine our efforts progressive values through the principles to society. At the same given to UK citizens under the ECHR between politicians, business and which stands against their core values. morals or political debating chambers. Had they been so, I am drachonianly at the request of the City and, in reality, the Advanced capitalist countries are to mount a viable legal defence. mechanism of the law; working to get time it is crucial that we re-evaluate by virtue of the Human Rights Act power - ‘corporatocracy’. And yet What makes us free is equal access to in no doubt that Occupy would have prevailed. Church. The courts, in effect, gave the applicants everything that routinely perceived as being governed Whilst I was personally unconcerned one’s message into the public media our legal system and the sources 1998. From a different angle, the our legal system is so entrenched in shared resources, without conventions In my view, given all these constraints, I think that the they wanted when all rights, on both sides, could have been by the practitioners of this ancient about puerile descriptions of me as to change the ‘hearts and minds’ of of our unwritten constitution in this executive and powerful people, be this form of governance - ‘written by of society demarcating between courts, the legal system if you will, came out of this well. Do proportionately protected. This is the legal question which will craft. Their specialist knowledge is a “corporate shill”, their campaign those residing in the public sphere. country, such as how our statues they companies and/or individuals them, for them’, as an ideological and different sections of society. not misunderstand me, that is not to say the existing law continue, I predict, to trouble the courts for some time to come. the preserve of the few willing and to dissuade people from signing But how can one deal in and grapple are created, by whom and in whose with vested interests, can hold a great repressive state apparatus - that it Our legal system is failing us, legal should be similarly commended, but the genuine appreciation At the time of writing this, I received a call from my client, financially able to obtain the learning witness statements was altogether is increasingly difficult (although not aid is disappearing, litigants in person shown by Occupy to courts, the judges, the court staff and the Tammy Samede. She wanted to confirm our case conference required. Specialists are a feature of more serious. Without statements impossible, thanks to the European are increasingly becoming a reality of lawyers reflected well not only upon them, but on Occupy, as a upon future Occupy legal approaches. I was happy to confirm all complex societies. we’d have had no evidence. Without Union) for social movements to use court life, creating delays whilst also mature, rational and thoughtful entity. that conference. Tackling the entrenched inequality evidence to rebut the City’s eviction the law to achieve their objectives. being unable to access the justice they Really, that, for me, was the most gratifying feature John Cooper QC is a barrister specialising in human in our society is a task requiring case, OccupyLSX wouldn’t even Take one example which has require because of legalese and court- of the case. Before the trial started in the High Court on rights and criminal law. He was engaged as a legal advisor by all hands on deck. Distinguishing have been granted a trial in the High been a vital issue for Occupy - the etiquette barriers. Our legal system the 19th December last year sections of the media, the Occupy London on day one of the occupation. privatization of public spaces. How is inaccessible to most. Justice is a between methods which help and Court – we’d have been evicted much can public property be owned by confused principle which has led people those which hinder us is a key skill in more swiftly. Whilst OccupyLSX’s a local authority which can then to believe that the legal system is this struggle. indecision on its own longevity didn’t discriminate and exclude those worth something. We try to fight using Enter the Legal Woo Brigade. help develop the common law on who pay taxes? Take the Ministry laws and precedent which have not They’d prefer to be known as protest camps, it bought considerable of Defence – which owns land been decided by the people. There may “Freemen on the land” performing time by taking the actual rules of civil which operates as a firing range. be times when we need to break the “lawful rebellion”, but their creed is litigation seriously. Curiously, the The exclusion of the public must law in the name of morality, to create a counterproductive mix of denying one woo man who penetrated into the be justified; the justification here is social change which we can all abide both most law and the veracity of all appeal process was rubbished by the public safety and national security. by. Above all, right now, we need to lawyers. They erroneously claim that Court of Appeal, which described his What about less clear cut areas such keep focused and remain strong, while law does not evolve, that England case as “simply wrong”. as the snapping up of public space, changing public perception by making is still subject to an ancient contract Bizarrely - and in much contrast from public highways to parks and our message and principles known. called the Magna Carta. Having blinded to Occupy - the Woo Brigade make commons, by private developers themselves to the basic democratic no case for law reform. Accepting who promise luxury shopping malls, principles which have overcome that law has developed does not apartments and other things we just medieval values, the Woo Brigade equate with political submission to don’t need? insist that no modern law has equal the impact of the laws which value Easements, prescriptions, rights force to the Magna Carta. This is an proprietary rights over communities. to roam, human rights arguments obvious nonsense. The medieval Failing to propose changes reveals the and so on exist, but the problem is world was very different from ours, regressive nature of the woo. If only that corporate entities can use human and most the of the Magna Carta is it ended there! Much of the woo preys rights laws as a shield. Take the meaningless today. Conveniently, they on vulnerable people. A particular example of the infamous US Supreme overlook the evils of that bygone age: worry is their promise of a cure for Court case Citizens United. In this the lack of rights for women, serfdom, chronic debts by giving misconceived controversial case the right to freedom politics being controlled by religious legal advice. Faced with increasing of speech prohibited the government supremacists to name but three. exposure, these charlatans have from restricting political expenditures They proselytise for an imaginary fought back with personal slurs on by corporations and unions who version of the law in the same Occupy’s most committed activists, wanted to dish out their wealth to manner as a fundamentalist preacher whilst contributing nothing to the support their political interests. promises an unobtainable heaven, by movement. Ignoring this antisocial Despite the growing power of misinterpreting their preferred texts, behaviour has been a costly mistake. corporate interests in our political refusing fair debates and misreporting Welcoming everyone to Occupy was system and our law, some still argue their numerous failures. Woo forums an early tactical triumph but also a that corporations can be controlled; avoid these awkward truths, preferring hostage to fortune. The time has come Wasi Daniju TZ after all, they are legal fictions and TZ fiction to facing down a critical analysis to expose these reactionaries. of their belief system. blog.scrapperduncan.com DISGUISING, Michael The Great MYTHOLOGISING & PROTEST Richmond I was a little disconcerted on my first simple terms, involved thousands of no central command or control but couple of visits to OccupyLSX by the working men destroying and sabotaging thousands of low level interactions every number of people walking around with the newly invented machines that were hour of every day, online and in real life, Debate their faces entirely covered. There is putting them out of a job. Much the same linked only by a vague set of principles a healthy contingent of Anonymous as the Demoiselle of the Arieges, the and techniques. This is a paradigm the Should Occupy A Single Issue Movement? UK occupiers who wear the iconic Guy Luddites were left in fear for their way of lumbering hierarchies of the last century Fawkes mask from the V for Vendetta life and they fought back in what we can struggle to keep pace with in the same Occupy began in the wake of the financial crash, bank bailouts and austerity film but they can all be seen unmasked see in hindsight were both losing battles. way that the US army has struggled with measures, as a movement opposed to economic injustice. Since then, many at various times- how else are they Where the Luddites interest me is guerrilla warfare (or “insurgencies”) ever other issues have been incorporated into Occupy’s aims and rhetoric. This supposed to have a drink and a smoke? their name. Named after Ned Ludd, a man since Vietnam. edition we ask: should Occupy remain focussed on financial questions, or brian leli There is also Anon, who is a mainstay of who may or may not have existed but For me, the masks of Anonymous should we broaden the debate and take a more holistic approach? the camp, often greeting visitors in the was rumoured to have angrily destroyed say more about the culture that Info tent. To my knowledge Anon’s face is a machine a generation earlier, the name neoliberalism creates than they do about FOR/DANIEL JELLER AGAINST/ PETER COVILLE always covered by his headscarf and his took on a mythical significance. Ned Ludd the people who wear them. The mask signature ski goggles. became General Ludd or King Ludd, the means more than just anonymity, it With a view to the stage Occupy is I’m talking about the big business Even if, say, a reinvigorated Labour I did, as most people do when they personification of the cause, a heroic is strength in numbers. In one of their currently in, my answer is ‘yes’: we interests that own this country. Forget government surfs to power at the meet anyone, judge Anon by his appearance leader who was said to live in Sherwood calling card phrases Anonymous say: should definitely focus on economic the politicians, the politicians are put next election on a tsunami of anger at on first impression. I wondered why he Forest, that old stomping ground of “We are Anonymous, We are legion.” It issues within the movement, but also there to give you the idea you have economic injustice, bringing in higher dressed as he did. I have often in the past another mythical talisman, Robin Hood. answers a human need to sometimes within our society. Vague and all- freedom of choice. You don’t. You taxes on corporations and the wealthy made similar judgements about Muslim It’s like that famous line in The Man be one of many, not just a ‘self.’ In

encompassing goals and debates are have owners, they own you, they own for the benefit of the less well-off, this women who fully cover their faces with the Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the anonymity, people can hope to escape Wasi Daniju less likely to attract people who would everything, they own all the important will only be tinkering with a rotten burqa or leave only their eyes showing with legend becomes fact, print the legend.” the exhausting egoism of our age, be willing to spend their time and energy land, they own and control the system. Such superficial measures will be the niqab. I feel quite strongly that seeing Essentially it didn’t matter who Ned Ludd the atomising force of late capitalism working towards specific ends, and we corporations, they’ve long since bought reversed when the Tories return to power. another person’s eyes and face is quite was or Robin Hood or William Wallace or where the pressure is all on the self and certainly need to reach more people. and paid for the Senate, the Congress, Like George Carlin, we ought to continue fundamental to being able to relate to them even Jesus, it’s what and who they come particularly the self-image. Retreating Whilst it might, at first glance, seem the State houses, the City Halls. They’ve to widen our vision, reminding people that and make a connection. Once I spoke to to represent. At its height the Luddite into the crowd can feel like a relief. a bit odd to attract new members by got the judges in their back pocket, and they have far more to be angry about than Anon, and heard him speak at meetings, Rebellion was engaging more of the But within the theme of disguise limiting our focus, we need to see that they own all the big media companies, economic inequality or cuts to services, it was clear that he was full of personality, British Army than the concurrent War with there also exists a paranoia and most people need a clear understanding so they control just about all of the news which are only the symptoms of far ideas and sharp one-liners, and other Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula. But as suspicion not just within the Occupy of what they are fighting for (and what and information you get to hear...they’ve deeper problems. considerations began to matter less. dozens of the leaders were captured and camps but within all direct action On the they aren’t). The feeling of sharing got you by the balls. (George Carlin) We might add to Carlin’s list of The ubiquity of masks and disguises either executed or sent to penal exile in movements at the moment. I have a few fundamental things with your Anger can be a powerful force in complaints that these “big business at Occupy protests worldwide has made Australia, the movement died out. been accused of being both undercover comrades is a huge motivating factor for politics. It was anger at gross economic interests” – now more powerful than many me think about the wider importance of Enter the rural reprise of the police and also an Evening Standard participating in a social movement. inequality that brought thousands of nation states – are presently enjoying the mythical and the disguise in protest movement and a new mythical reporter! (I don’t know which is worse?) Whilst there are certainly other people onto the global street during virtual impunity to institute a new form of movements historically. When we wear embodiment of anti-capitalist rebellion. But this paranoia is hardly misplaced ben cavanna Soapbox important topics that need to be 2011, and may well bring many more imperialism abroad, displacing indigenous a disguise, even if it’s just make-up or As new threshing machines looked like because we all know very well that Claude Melville says Finsbury Square discussed publicly, financial inequality and out in 2012, as further cuts and peoples form their ancestral lands without some of the clothes we choose to wear, spelling the end for many agricultural they are out to get us, even in harmless injustice is what started the movement austerity measures begin to bite all over any meaningful form of process, creating it’s usually both to hide or alter a part workers they took a leaf out of the environmentalist groups like the one PC should go it alone in the first place. People did not occupy the world. A feeling of gross injustice huge opencast mines or establishing of our own identity as well as sending Luddites’ book and began to destroy the Mark Kennedy disgustingly infiltrated. the White House in Washington (which, transforms passive subjects into active massive soya or palm oil plantations. ‘Our a message out to others. The same is new machinery. The Swing Riots of the The establishment are usually guilty of I joined Occupy to oppose the unjust health problems have become in my opinion, would have been a good citizens and genuine democrats. So companies are getting away with social and probably true in the context of protest. 1830s, as the widespread agricultural the most deceitful disguise and right economic system which caused the entwined with Occupy - or the camps STALWARTS OF and visible place to occupy) but the it may seem obvious that Occupy’s environmental crimes that would never be For example, at the Boston Tea uprising became known, was named now they’re more rattled and paranoid financial crisis of 2008, and the wider at least, if not so much the politics - Emma Stock Exchange and Wall Street in New strategy should follow the people, tolerated at home. The fundamental and Party in 1773 when a group of colonial after the invented figure of Captain than ever. For this Government, and the neoliberal consensus which allowed it and I have huge sympathy for those OCCUPY: ARTHUR Fordham York. Clearly, the vision of an alternative relaying and amplifying this feeling underlying cause of economic inequality, Americans boarded a British ship in the Swing. Adopted as the figurehead of New Labour one before it, ‘protesters’ to manifest. people. But I do not think we are doing economy is the common denominator of anger at inequality. But there is an and many other problems, is that there is middle of the night and threw tonnes of the rebellion, the impressively named are an enemy but as the current system I arrived at St Paul’s on the 15th them any great favours, or ourselves, OCCUPIER AND OT REPORTER EMMA FORDHAM of the Occupy movement. At the same inherent risk of Occupy focusing on no genuine democratic control of society its valuable tea into the Boston Harbour Captain Swing’s signature appeared at increasingly stumbles around like a of October ready to make personal by pretending Occupy can, or should, time, this doesn’t have to limit our focus inequality alone. Any government worth and economy, neither at home and abroad. in protest at a new tax imposed from the bottom of hundreds of letters and dazed prizefighter ready to drop they sacrifices, to stand up to oppressive help them. GETS THE LOW DOWN FROM ANOTHER OF forever, but for the time being we should its expense claims will simply act at the Government no longer acts for the benefit London, these men dressed as Mohawk pamphlets through the South, East and are throwing punches more haphazardly policing if necessary, camp out, work If Finsbury Square is to survive, try to create a much sharper profile, margins to remove the causes of the of the people, despite the charade of Native Americans. Their choice of dress South-East of England threatening that if than ever. How else can you explain hard, and generally do whatever I let’s call it what it now is: an eco- OCCUPY LONDON’S FAMILIAR FACES especially since Occupy will always be anger, as the Coalition government has democracy. Occupy should continue to has gone down in American History. The they failed to stop the haemorrhaging of the City of London Police listing Occupy could to offer some sort of opposition village and homeless shelter, and run measured by what the media and the 99% indeed done, by stripping Fred Goodwin highlight this fact, and bring its wider vision latest interpretations as to why they chose rural manual labour then Swing and his London as a domestic terror threat to this pernicious government in it as such with that specific remit. EM: When did you get involved in Occupy? EM: Was camping in the city a hardship perceive as our goals. of his knighthood, and trimming those to the debate, in an age where vision is a to dress this way are, on the one hand, followers would continue to take matters on the same page as Al Qaeda and the absence of any parliamentary Rather than it being an Occupy London ARTHUR: One week after the OLSX or a joy? There are various historic examples few bonuses which are most visible to scarce commodity in politics. If we do this to conceal their identities to guard them into their own hands. the FARC? Protesters are already an representation of the left. site, let it be independent, liberated camp set up. ARTHUR: A joy, for many reasons. we can learn from. One is the rise the public. The public perception will in the right way, and show clearly that there from the draconian punishments sure to And this is where we can return to ‘other,’ painted as something to be As well as being angry about the from the burden of having to fight EM: What took you there? St Paul’s is a high-energy area; there of the so-called Green movement in then be that the injustice - at least the are alternatives, the public will respond with be meted out on them were the British Anonymous because I see a striking disdained or mocked, but with a sick economic crisis and punishing austerity for economic justice and freed to do ARTHUR: I was following preparations were great people in the camp, it was a European politics, which started as a worst of it - has been removed, and the a much deeper, broader and more resilient authorities to catch up with them. And resemblance between the way that and paranoid establishment anyone measures, I’m passionate about some tangible, achievable good with on Facebook. I wanted to be part of bubbling hub of information with a really movement with specific goals and a anger will subside. anger, which can really change things. on the other hand, to send out a more anyone could sign the name Captain with a different ideology now becomes environmental issues and, especially, the support of the Occupy movement. the earlier Tower Bridge protest but connected, community feeling. Also, clear environmental focus (for example, symbolic message, namely, “we are Swing and their message would take on a threat to be kettled, intimidated and homelessness. I didn’t, however, come If people are passionate about I couldn’t afford to get there. When although I’ve always been poor I’ve never opposing nuclear power plants). In American now,” like the American Indian the might of a wave. And now, anyone beaten into submission. The malign to Occupy to set up an eco-village or to homelessness, environmental issues Occupy London Stock Exchange had absolutely nothing before and that’s this first phase, those groups with the (a bitter irony for the indigenous American can post a comment or hack under the intent of the elite and the police can no home rough sleepers. or camping out, then they can be part happened and settled at St Paul’s I been a valuable experience. most precise goals attracted the most community) and like Britain no longer. name of Anonymous, or set up a camp longer be disguised, because the swarm On one level you could say I did of the Finsbury project, but people watched on Livestream then asked my EM: Of all the issues Occupy aims to followers, and were actually able to There are a couple of fascinating or Tweet under the name of Occupy, or is too adaptable and the networks come for those reasons: I would like who came to Occupy London with a dad to look after my dogs so I could visit address, what are the most important change things. After a few decades of tales of subversive disguise and on the flipside commit violence under of information too fast that today’s to see a society free of homelessness macro perspective or to protest over and see what it was about first hand. for you? participation in mainstream politics, mythmaking in the 19th century. In the banner of Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, activists and “networked individuals” are in harmony with the environment, but economic injustice ought not to be EM: What were you doing before you ARTHUR: Changing the banking however, and adopting the broader the late 1820s and early 1830s in etc. What we’re talking about here are always one step ahead. We are not all to have any chance of achieving these bound to the site. went to St Paul’s? system is at the heart of things but focus essential to attract as many voters southwest France, in the forest region cells, loosely affiliated networks with Anonymous but We are Legion. mammoth goals I believe we must Physical occupations are a tactic, ARTHUR: I was a free range chicken everything people bring up is important. as possible, they sometimes seem to near the Pyrenees, there was a bizarre address the root causes of them. We one that worked superbly for the first farmer until 18 months ago then I had a I’ve learnt about issues I didn’t know lack the original verve, and some even confrontation brewing between the can’t just plug holes in the dam, we few months in providing a platform for crazy awakening, a major life change. I about before that are really important, claim that it is difficult to distinguish the remote peasant villages of the forests need to change the course of the river. outreach and grabbing media attention sold off my stuff and began researching like homelessness. Greens from other parties. and the modernising central authorities What I certainly did not join Occupy to help push issues onto the political everything – religions, history, politics, EM: Tell me three things about the current Another example is the Pirate wanting to systematize what was to the for was to turn a blind eye to the abuse agenda. But once a tactic ceases to be economics... ending up in the Occupy system that you’d most like to change... Party, which succeeded in gaining locals, sacred land. Bands of local men, of fellow activists, abuse I’m afraid to useful, we should cease to use it until camp was part of that journey. ARTHUR: The way we use money publicity and a significant number who became known as the Demoiselles, say I have witnessed both at St Paul’s a time when it becomes useful again. EM: How did you spend your time in – ideally, I’d like to get rid of it. The of followers in a very short time. It dressed up in full drag and formed and now Finsbury Square. Other tactics are available. Occupation the camp? government – in an ideal world, I think we’d faces similar problems to the Occupy into small guerrilla units attacking any I am fully aware that individuals is just the beginning, and should never ARTHUR: Learning and making have one world government and online movement. In Germany, for instance, forest rangers or royal authorities who with substance abuse and mental be seen as the end. myself useful. I made tea, looked after direct democracy. We also need to urgently they are now under pressure to provide encroached onto their land. It is still tents and spent a lot of time chatting sort out environmental issues. And - can solutions to a broad range of social something of a mystery as to why these to members of the public and other I have four? - reduce working hours so problems, just like every other political men turned to transvestism in their hour occupiers, swapping and sharing there aren’t some people bored and jobless party, and the media has already been of need but there are suggestions that knowledge and experiences. I listened while others work 18 hours a day. questioning whether they will be able to the use of such disguise drew heavily to speakers and teachers in Tent City EM: What do you think Occupy has provoke real change. on both folkloric traditions and the University and I talked to Quakers. I achieved so far? Right now, Occupy does not have hedonistic celebrations of the carnival. learnt a lot and fitted together little ARTHUR: We’ve increased awareness to compete for votes. We can see Nevertheless, there’s no doubting that it bits of the jigsaw... it was a complete everywhere, from pubs to boardrooms. this as an opportunity to focus on a emboldened them in their fight as they immersion in education. We’ve given people hope. single important matter, to enlarge the held off a much larger enemy for far EM: Did you expect to stay at the camp EM: What do you think Occupy should movement and to attract people who longer than anyone expected. for four months? do next? are willing to commit themselves to a A working class movement in ARTHUR: Not really. I turned up for a ARTHUR: Carry on with its educational role specific goal, as opposed to those who Britain called the Luddites took a slightly day, spent a month in the same clothes, and encourage better use of public spaces. want change but don’t really know what different approach to the steady march of then went home for a week to get clean EM: Where will you personally go or how to start. If we work hard enough, capitalism. A phenomenon of the towns and pick up some warm clothes so I from here? this is an area we might genuinely be and cities of a rapidly industrialising Carmen valino brian leli ben cavanna could stay for the long haul. ARTHUR: Onwards and upwards! able to influence. early 19th century Britain Luddism, in This leads us on to the second But the 99% slogan is about more Occupy’s slogans did more than dimension of Occupy - its ideological than a bald statement of fact. First, it propagandise about inequality. They aspects. One of the most fascinating is an antagonistic statement: the 99% also instilled a political discipline on elements of Occupy is the way it versus the 1%. At Occupy Wall Street the movement. At the centre of this combined old and new media. The I saw several homemade placards was the confrontational nature of the 3 IMEN ONS slogan. For despite the omnipresence D SI movement took full advantage of bearing statements like “The 1% is my internet technologies and social media enemy”. This naming of an enemy set of inequality under capitalism, it such as emails, Twitter and Facebook. Occupy apart from more general populist remains the system’s dirty little secret. Anindya But it also deployed age-old tactics rhetoric about how “we the people” are We aren’t meant to talk about it. Bhattacharyya such as placards and slogans. People “all in it together”. It explicitly drew a But the act of talking about it OF OCCUPY wrote out demands and polemics battle line - and implicitly pointed to the involved taking on not just the police on pieces of cardboard, and then idea of class struggle. but also ruling class ideology - the he Occupy ended up arrested along with several traveller with the movement, and photographed themselves and posted Second, the 99% slogans had what “policeman in our heads” as the 1968 movement seemed other activists and spent 30 hours in jail. should be taken in that spirit. digital images online. Occupy took on philosophers call a “performative” students once called it (though this to spring out of We were protesting against student debt I want to look at three dimensions the traditional task of speaking truth dimension. Occupiers didn’t just say metaphor can be misleading: ideology nowhere in the in the lobby of a Citibank outlet, and the of the Occupy movement. The first is to power in new and creative ways. something, they also did something. isn’t really “in our heads” but “out autumn of last year. New York Police Department considered the physical dimension - the politics of Of all the various slogans and Occupy Wall Street activists organised there” in the world). Eric Fretz, a New First we saw the this to be trespass. Once I got back to occupying a public space, the repression phrases one striking metaphor stood marches through working class areas York-based socialist, wrote a story that Occupy Wall Street London, I visited the St Paul’s camp on such actions encounter, the history and out: the theme of the 99% versus the chanting “We are the 99%”. This was a illustrated this point. He recounts the camp in New York’s a few occasions to take part in general relevance of such tactics. The second 1%. At a basic level, the slogan was call to arms and an invitation to people story of filmmaker Michael Moore’s Zuccotti Park - which was swiftly assemblies. is the ideological dimension - what T simply a factual description of the to join them. It was also a chant that speech at last year’s union rights renamed Liberty Square in homage to Of course both camps have now Occupy said and meant, in particular world, and of the grotesque inequality raised questions. Demonstrators protests in Wisconsin. Moore pointed Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Here in Britain, been forcibly cleared by the authorities. the focus on capitalism’s systematic of power and wealth. Of course, this typically chanted it over the heads out that just 400 Americans hold we saw a series of Occupy camps set Occupy is at a crossroads, and we are inequality captured by the “We are the inequality has been with us ever since of cops. So were the police part of more wealth than half of all Americans up on October 15th, most notably the presented with the opportunity to step 99%” slogan. The third dimension is the rise of “civilisation” (or class the 99% or not? This was a common combined. But it was only after Occupy Occupy LSX site on the steps of St back and critically assess the past four more speculative - I’m provisionally society, as Marxists call it). But it has question discussed among activists. Wall Street that these statistics Paul’s cathedral in London. months. What follows is an attempt calling it the insurrectionary dimension: accelerated exponentially in recent My answer would be that while received a wider airing. Occupy forced I had the privilege of visiting Occupy at that kind of political analysis. I a distillation and synthesis of the first years, under both the “neoliberal” average police officers are not part of the issue of systematic inequality out Wall Street in October. I was sent to report should stress that it is in no sense an two perspectives. I’ll end with some phase of capitalism and the “austerity” the 1%, they certainly work for the 1% of the radical ghetto onto the agenda on it by the newspaper “Socialist Worker”. “insider account”. It comes rather from brief words on where we are now here Wasi Daniju phase that is now dawning in the wake and do their bidding. They do not and of the mainstream media. That alone is This trip didn’t quite go as planned - I the position of a sympathetic fellow in Britain, and where we could go next. of the 2007 global financial meltdown. never will side with the 99%. an acheivement worth applauding.

Let’s start with the most striking There is also a history of aspect of Occupy: its physical occupations in the workers’ What do these two dimensions solidarity delivered by Occupy activists There are glimpses of this in Britain occupation of space. The mainstream movement, although it has often of Occupy - the physical and the to the recent electricians’ dispute. It’s already. The electricians won their media like to present this as a new received less attention. In 2009, ideological - have in common? An no coincidence that the police went out battle to prevent construction bosses tactic. But such a view involves workers occupied the Visteon factory insurrectionary character, a refusal to of their way to prevent the electricians from imposing new and vastly inferior a certain historical blindness. in north London and forced Ford play by the rules of “normal” society, from marching to join Occupy LSX and contracts upon them. They did this Occupations have a history in working into paying them redundancy money a revelation of the 1%’s power student protesters during their frequent through rank-and-file organisation class and radical movements. The that it had been withholding. Similar combined with a defiance of that skirmishes with the authorities. The 1% and militant tactics, crucially including Occupy camps had immediate factory occupations in the past have power, and a rallying call for others know how dangerous it can be when unofficial strikes that pushed their union antecedents and inspirations in the won notable victories. In 1981, many to join the insurrection. That is the radical movements fuse with workers in into action. We also saw it with the form of Spain’s indignados movement women workers at Lee Jeans in spirit at work both in the physical struggle. We should draw that lesson, too. November 30th strike, which was less and the student occupations of 2010. Greenock occupied their plant and occupation of privatised space and The question for Occupy is how militant but involved far greater numbers I was studying for an MA in saved it from closure. in the ideological focus on questions to harness that insurrectionary of people defying their managers, philosophy at Middlesex University Occupation is a tactic with a about inequality, poverty, and political dimension, and where to take it. The walking out, organising pickets and that year. Management decided to shut history and a pedigree. Of course power under capitalism. answers are far from straightforward. linking up with other workers in the department down and we ended each occupation arises out of unique Occupy is strongest when it seizes History is peppered with inspiring struggle. As I write, that dispute looks up occupying the mansion house in circumstances and has its own unique that insurrectionary spirit and moves examples of radical activism and ideas set to flare up again with another major Trent Park in protest at this move. dynamic. But there are certain general it forward. We see this in Occupy Wall crossing over into mass working class strike scheduled for March 28th. At the time, we considered it to be points that can be elaborated. The first Street’s success in linking up with trade struggle, but there are also too many And the spirit of insurrection is a one-off event. But a few months is that occupation poses an immediate union struggles, anti-racism campaigns examples of failure. The success of spreading. We’ve seen the astonishing later, a wave of student occupations question about public and private and a host of other radical causes. It has that alliance is not something that spectacle of company after company arose in response to tuition fee hikes space. We live our lives surrounded by bound together the 99% and mutually occurs automatically or without dropping out of the government’s noxious and the abolishment of the Education a field of invisible regulations that tell strengthened all those struggles. And conscious intention. workfare scheme in the face of militant Maintenance Allowance. us where we can or must go, and what it has continued to play that role even Moreover, knitting together the protests backed by a tidal wave of public Look back further, and we can we are and aren’t allowed to do there. after the physical dissolution of the physical and ideological insurrections anger and disgust at those who would see other examples of occupations. Occupation makes these regulations of camp at Liberty Square. also involves bridging theory and force the unemployed to work for free. Several universities had occupations bodies in space visible. Anyone involved We can see similar dynamics in practice. Again, this is hard and The government is increasingly under in protest to Israel’s attack on in an occupation rapidly confronts Britain. One of Occupy LSX’s first pledges requires effort. It’s all too easy to lapse siege over its plans to dismantle the Gaza in late 2009. After the Seattle police officers or security guards. The was to support the 30 November public into producing overarching critiques National Health Service. Almost everyone demonstrations in 1999, social centres forces of ‘law and order’ seek to restore sector strike that saw 2.6 million workers of the system while getting lost in the who works to deliver healthcare has walk out against cuts to pensions and minutiae of internal organisation and united against the government and in associated with the anti-capitalist ‘normality’, and are more than willing to Juan Manuel Peña movement were established. They, in use violent means to do so. public services. Another example is the process. This gap needs to be closed: defence of basic NHS principles. The turn, were linked to radical squatting Indeed, the levels of force used Successful activism requires a theory mutinous spirit is spreading, and Occupy movements and aspects of the 1990s by the authorities are shocking. that guides our practice and a practice is a part of it. We can and must mobilise rave scene. Evidently, Occupy had We’ve seen kettles, mass arrests, that informs our theory. the 99% against the 1%. Or as Percy many precursors. truncheons, and police horses. The The overwhelming power of the 1% Bysshe Shelley put it two centuries ago: also needs to be addressed. They have “We are many, they are few.” laws, judges, media, police and armies Anindya Bhattacharyya is a on their side. All we have is numbers and journalist on Socialist Worker. You can

Marcus Boyle organisation. The question is how to build follow him on Twitter at @bat020 and those popular resources into something read his article on Occupy Wall Street at that can effectively challenge the status bit.ly/bat020ows. This article is based student protest on December 9th The violence of the state has slogan: “You can’t evict an idea whose quo. One of Marx’s key insights was on his contribution to a seminar on 2010 deviated from its official route ambivalent effects. On the one hand, time has come.” This points to an about the role of workers. Organising in Occupy earlier this month at the Oxford and occupied Parliament Square. My it was the police repression of Occupy important truth: the symbolic aspect the workplace means organising at the Radical Forum. Other participants friend Alfie Meadows - who had been Wall Street activists that brought of occupation can outlive and outlast point where our labour generates their included Conor Tomás Reed from centrally involved in the Middlesex the camp to the attention of the the transient liberation of a particular profits. It means organising where we are Occupy Wall Street and Tanya Paton philosophy occupation - ended up mainstream media. At least initially the space. Occupation is about more than strongest. Agitating for mass strikes - a from Occupy LSX. getting truncheoned by police and repression was counterproductive from setting up camp in a particular place: generalised insurrection of labour - draws underwent emergency brain surgery. the perspective of the authorities - it it creates a platform to put political the largest amount of people into struggle Of course no police officer has been fuelled solidarity on an unprecedented ideas out into the public sphere. as well as deploying our power most brought to account for this action. scale for the activists involved. effectively against that of the 1%. Instead Alfie has been charged with But on the other hand, one cannot We are currently seeing austerity violent disorder and faces the courts ignore the overwhelming superiority programmes being rolled out by on 26 March. of the state’s ability to use force governments across Europe. This is Again, history is important. When against occupations. Politically, most evident in Greece, which has the police attack an occupation, solidarity can stave off the ending seen wave after wave of strikes and this is not an aberration. The police of an occupation only for a certain demonstrations involving huge numbers force was set up in the 19th century amount of time. Occupations are by of people. Protest is even spilling over partially in order to break up mass nature temporary affairs, as we have into direct workers’ control. Hospitals demonstrations. Police work has seen in both New York and London. and newspapers have been occupied never been limited to solving crimes Activists must carefully balance the by their workforces and organised or catching villains - it has always energy directed inwards to sustain by them rather than by a discredited been about controlling the masses as the occupation against the energy and powerless management. Similar well. The attacks on occupations and directed outwards to garner support processes are underway in Egypt, demonstrations represent a return and solidarity from the wider public. where the movement against Mubarak to the police’s core purpose, not a In New York activists responded to has deepened into more radical struggle Wasi Daniju Carmen valino Marc Fairhurst deviation from it. the eviction of Liberty Square with the over the very nature of society. 1 2 3

Beyond the Headlines: Financial Crises 4 5 an Interview with Media Lens crossword: michael richmond 6 THE MEDIA LENS MEDIA ANALYSIS SERVICE WAS CRITICAL THOUGHT AND COMPASSION. ITS OUTPUT ESTABLISHED IN 2001 BY POLITICAL WRITERS INCLUDES NEWS ANALYSES IN THE FORM OF FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE BUT DAVID CROMWELL AND DAVID EDWARDS. THE MEDIA ALERTS. IN 2007, MEDIA LENS RECEIVED SERVICE AIMS TO RAISE AWARNESS OF THE THE GANDHI FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL PEACE NOW IT’S JUST GETTING SILLY. SYSTEMIC FAILURE OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA TO PRIZE. MARK KAURI SPOKE WITH MEDIA LENS ON 7 REPORT THE WORLD HONESTLY AND ACCURATELY, ITS WORK, PHILOSOPHY AND PERSPECTIVE ON THE Across Down AND TO INCREASE RATIONAL AWARENESS, MEDIA LANDSCAPE... 4. A phrase, coined by Alan Greenspan, 1. After their economy collapsed in to describe a state of hysteria experienced 2001 sparking massive capital flight, 8 OCCUPIED TIMES: For more than a decade, the Media Lens anything, you are now even less likely to see any discussion of by seemingly everyone during the height the people of this country began to hold project has been working to analyse media bias. How, if at the fundamental blockages to sensible action to avert climate of an economic boom. Aberrational community general assemblies, take all, has your perception of mainstream and corporate media chaos; or to see any critical debate about how disastrous Exec Ruin (anagram) (10,10) 6. Those over their own workplaces and run their changed since the start of this project? corporate-led global capitalism is for the planet. bastions of objectivity who assess own social services. (9) 2. A tendency 9 MEDIA LENS: Just to begin with a point of clarification: we Also, as we noted at the start of our most recent alert financial products and institutions (and present throughout the financial sector also sometimes use the expression ‘mainstream’ media but on Iran – just how bad do Western crimes have to be before make their money from said financial whereby people take undue risks, safe in it’s a bit misleading. The dominant news media are corporate corporate news media question propaganda emanating from institutions.) Sub-Prime Mortgages AAA? the knowledge that they will not have to 10 news organisations; they do not represent mainstream Washington, the Pentagon or Downing Street? You would Everyone makes mistakes. (6,6,8) personally face any consequences. Cos interests, if by that we mean the concerns and priorities of the think that after the continuing nightmare inflicted on Iraq and 8. A price worth paying, according to we’ll all bail them out again, won’t we? 11 general population. Afghanistan, that it should be nigh on impossible to target any some. (12) 11. A speculative bubble (5,6) 3. Deluded theory held by George If our perception has changed, it has been a deepening more countries for Western ‘intervention’. But somehow the in the market for this flower led the17th Osborne that a sharp reduction in public awareness of just how entrenched are state-corporate interests journalistic slate is wiped clean yet again, and we are supposed century Dutch Empire’s economy to crash spending would magically be replaced by 12 in determining news agendas. We have observed, for example, to imagine that state objectives are essentially benign and to once the bubble burst. (5) 12. Suddenly private sector growth. Scenic Nontoxic that corporate news coverage of climate change has actually forget about past crimes. Even though we’ve observed this everyone decided this was the biggest Rastafarian Ploy (anagram) (12,6,11) 13 got worse: both in terms of quantity of coverage (which has closely since Media Lens’s inception in 2001 – and, in fact, for problem, nothing related to the private 5. Phrase coined by John Maynard brian leli 14 15 been documented; see our alert) and also the actual content. If many years before - we still find this shocking. sector...funny that. It’s all Greek to me. Keynes to describe the instinctive (9,4,6) 14. Sounds like a lewd act, emotions that fuel human and economic 16 course, there will always be a vital role annually from the licence fee to pay for in fact refers to when the government behaviour, confidence and trust. (6,7) for insightful, specialist reporting and the switch from terrestrial (analogue) boosts economic growth through a rise in 7. Large financial crises often reveal this 17 18 commentary on foreign affairs, the to digital provision of TV channels this public spending or tax cuts. (6,8) kind of fraudulent financial malpractice economy, climate change, human rights year. He proposes that at least some 16. The number of Canadian bank similar to pyramid selling. This financial and so on. But these experts are citizens of this money thereafter ‘should be failures since 1923. In the same period of crisis, however, has shown the entire too, yes? So ‘citizen’ journalism needs to controlled by the population as a whole, time, the U.S has had 17,000. (3) global financial system to resemble one of incorporate these perspectives and work through a system of participatory 17. A mass psychological state whereby these. (5,6) 9. Sounds like something 19 closely with them. The internet offers commissioning.’ He sees this funding a group committed to an ideology (for one does in the bathroom but in essence an excellent means for establishing and 3,000 journalists and researchers at the sake of argument we’ll call the group: means creating money out of nothing and boosting responsible journalism that a basic annual salary of £24,000 ‘to bankers, politicians and media, and the giving it to privately-owned banks in the 20 truly challenges power – something we work full time on matters of interest ideology: neoliberalism) fails to adjust ludicrous hope that they won’t mess it all address in our answer to your related and concern to the general population.’ that ideology to changing events. Acting up again. Agitate Vain Inquest (anagram) question later on. There would undoubtedly be many Icons Nosedive (anagram) (9,10) (12,6) 10. U.S Depression-era OT: What are the potential pitfalls to details to be worked out in practice; but 19. Seminal work of economic history legislation which separated high-street reportage through citizen journalism? Is it seems an idea that is worth exploring. by J.K Galbraith. (3,5,5) 20. Economist, from investment bank functions. Named 21 there a base of journalistic expertise that OT: In Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Hyman ______, who is best known after the Senator and Congressman who cannot be found outside of mainstream Liberal Media, you suggest that a revolution for his extensive works on the nature of sponsored the bill. (5,8,3) 13. Irrational media platforms such as broadsheets and in media towards a more compassionate financial crises and the role accumulated amounts of investment in the nascent broadcasting networks? foundation is in the hands of both the public debt plays in them. (6) 21. Theory internet market led to this inflating in the ML: Essentially there need to be open, and journalists. In what sense can the public named after Russian economist who late 1990s/early 2000s. (6,6) 15. Tent- publicly-supported networks linking help to revolutionise media? believed that capitalist economies cities that sprung up around the United people with the skills and insight to ML: The internet really has broken the operated according to approximately States after the Wall Street Crash. Named comment knowledgeably on current corporate media monopoly on global fifty-year cycles spanning expansion, after the President blamed by many for affairs. ‘Journalistic expertise’ within outreach. You no longer have to be a stagnation and recession. (10,4) the Great Depression. (12) 18. A drop current corporate news organisations all major corporation, or a member of the of this can sink economies, start wars and too often means limiting news frameworks 1%, to instantly communicate with a end political careers. (3,5) to what powerful interests are saying. global audience. More honest, non- There is plenty of expertise outside those corporate voices can now reach a massive constricting frameworks – voices of audience at low cost - a very positive rationality and humanity – that are all too development. If people understood just often marginalised or excluded by current how positive, we suspect they would be news media. So there is no dearth of far less willing to pay for corporate media alternative, non-corporate expertise for and much more willing to support non- OT: The founding philosophy of Media totally dominated by elite state and ranging from silence through to honest journalism to draw upon. corporate alternatives like The Real News Lens stems from concerns of propaganda corporate interests. It is not monolithic: irritation or condescension, and very OT: How can activists hope to ‘occupy’ the Network and Democracy Now! It’s a truly within the media. Has your experience of there are little chinks of light here and occasionally outright abuse (Roger media as part of their drive towards social, historic opportunity. monitoring the media ratified, challenged there that can be exploited for marginal Alton, then editor of the Observer, being economic and environmental justice? We need to work hard to challenge or debunked these founding concerns? gains that may, in themselves, be a notable source). In 2008, we were even ML: We believe that as long as the corporate media, to promote marginal ML: This question really overlaps worthwhile. But we should also be alert threatened with police and legal action internet remains relatively open, there is a improvements. But the real hope lies in with the first one. It’s not so much to the ‘fig leaf’ effect – the regular or by News International after we’d critically tremendous opportunity for activists and public-supported, non-corporate media that we had, or still have, ‘concerns sporadic appearance of a tiny handful appraised The Times’ warmongering journalists not to ‘occupy’ the corporate freed from the structural constraints of propaganda within the media’. The of dissidents who provide the illusion of on Iran (see our media alert on this). media, but to bypass the corporate of elite ownership and control. That corporate media is essentially a system wide-ranging debate. Jonathan Cook, More positively, we have anecdotal media, and to set up networks of honest, may be achievable; it’s up to us. We of propaganda and thought control: formerly a reporter for both the Guardian evidence from media insiders that we responsible journalism supported by the need media driven by an authentic an old and well-established notion, and the Observer, puts it this way: have been a ‘rallying point for dissent’ public. We are inspired by the examples interest in understanding and solving predating even Orwell, but put on a ‘The Guardian, like other in organisations like the BBC and the of Jonathan Cook and Glenn Greenwald, human problems. Currently, we are thorough footing by Edward Herman mainstream media, is heavily invested Observer. There are a surprising number for example. Surely there is scope for stuck with a greed-driven media that ben cavanna and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 classic – both financially and ideologically – in who strongly, if covertly, support what insightful writers like these to be funded actually benefit from obscuring the book, Manufacturing Consent. Talking of supporting the current global order. It we’re doing. to work as independent journalists? causes of, and exacerbating the extent ‘propaganda within the media’ suggests was once able to exclude and now, in the OT: Developments in social media In his book, ‘The Return of the Public’, of, problems. The corporate system, that it might be possible to significantly internet age, must vilify those elements seem to promise the means to bypass a Dan Hind proposes that a new system of including the media, has no interest in weed it out. But the important point is of the left whose ideas risk questioning corporate ‘middleman’ in reportage, such state-sponsored public commissioning of our understanding that Western state- that the corporate media is structurally a system of corporate power and control as through direct citizen journalism. Do journalism should be introduced which would corporate power uses its monopoly in biased towards the channelling and of which the Guardian is a key institution. you believe social media could offer the ‘replace the power of owners and superiors high-tech violence to exploit Third World amplification of ‘news’ that boosts “The paper’s role, like that of its means for communication to subvert or with the power of citizens at crucial points of peoples and resources beneath a veneer the interests of state power and big rightwing cousins, is to limit the imaginative bypass propaganda in the media? decision’. Hind suggests that: of ‘security concerns’ and ‘humanitarian business. Propaganda is an endemic horizons of readers. While there is just ML: Direct citizen journalism does ‘Journalists working to public intervention’. Compassionate feature of a corporate media system enough leftwing debate to make readers have a role, and could have a major commissions can hope to build careers by journalism can only emerge out of that is made up of corporations linked believe their paper is pluralistic, the kind role, to play in subverting or bypassing addressing matters of common concern; media that are not profit-driven and not to even bigger conglomerates with ties of radical perspectives needed to question propaganda. There are strong indications they can specialize, they can develop a beholden to interests overwhelmingly to the arms trade and planet-devouring the very foundations on which the system that social media played an important deep understanding of their subject and motivated by greed. businesses, heavy reliance on corporate of Western dominance rests is either role in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. build stable networks of sources; they OT: What do you believe would be advertising, close ties to powerful unavailable or is ridiculed.” The use of Twitter and Facebook, for will not be subject to simple veto or the properties of a healthy, socially political interests, and so on. OT: How have mainstream and example, enabled people at grassroots more subtle forms of coercion from their beneficial media? OT: Drawing on your findings, in what corporate media platforms responded level to challenge the propaganda of employers; they will be more directly ML: One driven by concern for human sense can we say that the media to your Media Alerts? their own governments and to organise answerable to the audiences they serve.’ and animal suffering, rather than one landscape is ‘occupied’? ML: There has been a variety of resistance to these – typically, Western- As Hind notes, the BBC currently structurally (indeed legally) obliged to ML: The media ‘landscape’ is almost responses tending towards the negative: supported - authoritarian regimes. Of sets aside 3.5% of the £3.4bn raised subordinate people and planet to profit. brian leli Wasi Daniju 1948-2012