Tent city outside St. Paul's Cathedral is doing more to energise people's thinking than any number of sermons. The crowds who wander around the tents or sit on the cathedral steps to listen to the speakers taking turns with the microphone are not just being told to oppose capitalism. Along with the cups of tea and meals for the homeless the occupiers are hosting good causes generously.
The atmosphere in the camp is friendly and intelligent and there is a "University Tent" for anyone seeking to go intellectually upmarket. The posters are large-scale and everywhere - THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE BRANDED, THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY IS ALL ABOUT, REAL DEMOCRACY NOW - are just a few. But there is also a large sign asking for the microphone not to be used, or any loud noises while services and ceremonies at St. Paul's are going on.
One large tent has made many aware for the first time of the free Kurds and their opposition to the Turks. "Didn't know about this before - it's really bad," said one City worker wandering through the camp. A poster called for the freeing from prison of dissident Abdullah Ocalam, held there since 1999, and another alleged that the Turks had dropped napalm and cluster missiles on young members of the PKK resistance army in October, killing 33 of them
Viva, the organisation trying to stop the brutalities of factory farmed animals, also had its place. "Torture Victim! This duckling could be caged, tortured and killed just for a delicacy. Dont't buy Foie-Gras Free Britain now!"
The London Catholic Workers, who have been campaigning for Julian Assange as well as for the release of Bradley Manning, held in isolation without trial for releasing secret files in the US, have a daily presence at the camp.
Anyone with a cause to fight can go along to the protest camp and find a home for their posters and speeches. It is fuller and livelier at night as workers return from their day jobs to come back to their tents, though many are there all day.
The camp is not as large as it usually looks on press pictures, occuping only about one-third of the space in front of St. Paul's The real shock comes on trying to enter St. Paul's and finding that, unlike tent city, you cannot get in unless you have a handy £34 ready for a family ticket, the cheapest way to enter. "But it's free if you come to a service," says the man at the ticket office. The campers thought Christ would have chosen to stay with them rather than among the chandeliers and rich furnishings and tinkling of money in the cathedral and, in the end, the church leaders supported them rather than their rich patrons in the City.
That is why there were resignations by the senior St. Paul's churchmen and support eventually from the Bishop of London, Dr.Richard Chartres and sympathetic backing from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr.Rowan Williams, and plans to remove the campers by force shelved.
One of the campers was having a discussion with two men in smart suits and ties standing on the pavement, both bank workers nearby in the City. "Communism doesn't work and capitalism doesn't work either," said one of them. So what does work?
"Nothing. It's down to the people at the top and they don't change."
Occupy London in tent city claims not to have leaders and to be demonstrating what real democracy looks like, rather as the German Greens did 30 years ago. Time will tell how much success they have.
ends
Friday, 11 November 2011
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Our Inheritance.
The mixture of conjecture about the causes of this week's riots reflects a general bewilderment. Poverty and unemployment did not explain why clothes with designer labels should have been such a prime target for the shopbreakers. They were seized to be worn, not just sold, to ensure the wearer a top place in the gang.
Was that why I had bought a pair of designer spectacles which looked no better than a cheap pair - just to ensure my place in the consumer society? The money would have kept a poor family going for weeks.
Then I remembered the words of the great Scottish writer, William McIlvanney, seven years into Thatcherism. They carried a warning.
"The effects of the present Conservative government will be felt for generations to come. It isn't merely the damage to the present that breaks the heart - the wasted years, the ejection of the aged, the demeaning of the young. It is the incalculable damage to the future - the loss of belief in society, the anti-social tendencies encouraged, the lesson branded on thousands of minds that you are alone and your society doesn't care. We will live with the effects of this for years to come. Government changes lives," he told a Scottish National Party conference (he was not an SNP member.)
"I say this particularly to those people who are understandably, at the present time, battening the hatches and looking to the protection of their families. I will do what has to be done, they say. Whatever the rules of the game, I'll play it. My kids are there and I want the best for them....To those people I would say: where will your children live? The planet Mars? They will live here. They will live in the society your blindfolded view of things has helped to create.....
"They will inherit the streets of the inner cities. They will inherit membership of a generation the largest part of which has been systematically deprived of its most basic rights: to work, to feel a sense of belonging, to try to live a fulfilling life. That will be some inheritance. If you care for your children, care for the society they will have to live in."
It turns out he was right. That was the message we were giving our children then - forget idealism, go for the money. New Labour carried on the message - loads of money was the important thing. His words hit home with his audience and many cried.
Now we have our inheritance.
ends.
Was that why I had bought a pair of designer spectacles which looked no better than a cheap pair - just to ensure my place in the consumer society? The money would have kept a poor family going for weeks.
Then I remembered the words of the great Scottish writer, William McIlvanney, seven years into Thatcherism. They carried a warning.
"The effects of the present Conservative government will be felt for generations to come. It isn't merely the damage to the present that breaks the heart - the wasted years, the ejection of the aged, the demeaning of the young. It is the incalculable damage to the future - the loss of belief in society, the anti-social tendencies encouraged, the lesson branded on thousands of minds that you are alone and your society doesn't care. We will live with the effects of this for years to come. Government changes lives," he told a Scottish National Party conference (he was not an SNP member.)
"I say this particularly to those people who are understandably, at the present time, battening the hatches and looking to the protection of their families. I will do what has to be done, they say. Whatever the rules of the game, I'll play it. My kids are there and I want the best for them....To those people I would say: where will your children live? The planet Mars? They will live here. They will live in the society your blindfolded view of things has helped to create.....
"They will inherit the streets of the inner cities. They will inherit membership of a generation the largest part of which has been systematically deprived of its most basic rights: to work, to feel a sense of belonging, to try to live a fulfilling life. That will be some inheritance. If you care for your children, care for the society they will have to live in."
It turns out he was right. That was the message we were giving our children then - forget idealism, go for the money. New Labour carried on the message - loads of money was the important thing. His words hit home with his audience and many cried.
Now we have our inheritance.
ends.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
private lives
"One can usually adopt a fairly effective cover story by pretending to be someone to another branch of the same department. We find that time and time again we can obtain detailed information over the telephone from government departments that really should not be divulged to anyone at all, let alone a voice over the phone. But it does happen. This approach, by the way, works especially well with local authorities.
"Criminal records are also reasonably easy. And there are middle-men readily available for most departments. We would then assign them to the investigation. By a combination of bluff, knowledge of the department's workings and, sometimes, the old pal's act, they can get to work. And invariably this succeeds."
Excerpts from a memo by a Guardian reporter, Peter Harvey, after he had managed to get an inquiry agent into his confidence. The agent proved his skills by a quick phone call from the Gay Hussar restaurant in London where Harvey was giving him lunch. He then gave Harvey personal details he had discovered about him in only a few minutes.
He did the same with the editor, Alastair Hetherington, producing confidential information about his tax returns. And then the Guardian believed him and carried a front-page story. It produced a shocked reaction from Ted Heath then Prime Minister, and questions in the House. The police came looking in the newspaper office for clues about the source, which the paper refused to give. But they found it. The agent, Ian Withers, had sent in an invoice for payment. The result was that he was arrested and sent to prison. Peter Harvey won the Journalist of the Year award.
In spite of the plethora of demands which followed for criminal action against illegal surveillance - Heath set up a committee on privacy which recommended this - the blagging and bugging increased over the years, not by the press, but by private interests. The number of inquiry agents, some former police officers, expanded.
It has culminated, not as it might have in press campaigns to reveal the illegality of the spying, but in the Murdoch newspapers letting reporters use inquiry agents to get information for their stories. This is what happened to Gordon Brown whose bank account, legal files and family medical records were illegally plundered over what has been estimated as 10 years. This implies a deliberate Press action against him - which succeeded.
New privacy laws which will be brought in might work this time.
It is not only private inquiry agents who do the snooping. So do the security services. The question in David Leigh's book on the plot against the Prime Minister Harold Wilson,who was succeeded by Edward Heath asked "Was a British Prime Minister hounded out of office by bogus element inside MI5 and the CIA who sought to discredit him as a Soviet agent?"
And there is also Menwith Hill, the American's international listening post on the Yorkshire moors, with its permanent group of protesters outside,from which no email or phone call is safe.
Add to all that the digital revolution and privacy may be a thing of the past, whatever laws are brought in. We will all then be living in a small village with open windows.
ends
"Criminal records are also reasonably easy. And there are middle-men readily available for most departments. We would then assign them to the investigation. By a combination of bluff, knowledge of the department's workings and, sometimes, the old pal's act, they can get to work. And invariably this succeeds."
Excerpts from a memo by a Guardian reporter, Peter Harvey, after he had managed to get an inquiry agent into his confidence. The agent proved his skills by a quick phone call from the Gay Hussar restaurant in London where Harvey was giving him lunch. He then gave Harvey personal details he had discovered about him in only a few minutes.
He did the same with the editor, Alastair Hetherington, producing confidential information about his tax returns. And then the Guardian believed him and carried a front-page story. It produced a shocked reaction from Ted Heath then Prime Minister, and questions in the House. The police came looking in the newspaper office for clues about the source, which the paper refused to give. But they found it. The agent, Ian Withers, had sent in an invoice for payment. The result was that he was arrested and sent to prison. Peter Harvey won the Journalist of the Year award.
In spite of the plethora of demands which followed for criminal action against illegal surveillance - Heath set up a committee on privacy which recommended this - the blagging and bugging increased over the years, not by the press, but by private interests. The number of inquiry agents, some former police officers, expanded.
It has culminated, not as it might have in press campaigns to reveal the illegality of the spying, but in the Murdoch newspapers letting reporters use inquiry agents to get information for their stories. This is what happened to Gordon Brown whose bank account, legal files and family medical records were illegally plundered over what has been estimated as 10 years. This implies a deliberate Press action against him - which succeeded.
New privacy laws which will be brought in might work this time.
It is not only private inquiry agents who do the snooping. So do the security services. The question in David Leigh's book on the plot against the Prime Minister Harold Wilson,who was succeeded by Edward Heath asked "Was a British Prime Minister hounded out of office by bogus element inside MI5 and the CIA who sought to discredit him as a Soviet agent?"
And there is also Menwith Hill, the American's international listening post on the Yorkshire moors, with its permanent group of protesters outside,from which no email or phone call is safe.
Add to all that the digital revolution and privacy may be a thing of the past, whatever laws are brought in. We will all then be living in a small village with open windows.
ends
Monday, 11 July 2011
Freedom to disclose
There is a fear that too much press freedom may now be taken away in this country to prevent disasters like Rupert Murdoch's staff illegally hacking into phones, bringing subsequent demands for an independent inquiry and new regulations.
But how much press freedom is there now? The competitiveness of London journalism,both in-house and among the Fleet Street pack, ensures that many stories get into print and on air as well as online which otherwise would not. (One exception is the BBC news, whose editors seem to think that carrying the same leading news headline for 12 hours and more can be called "news".)
Other stories never see the light of day unless some tame MP can be persuaded to raise the subject in the privileged atmosphere of the House of Commons, freed from the libel laws.
Otherwise, the laws remain supreme along with possible contempt of court actions and breaking of national security codes. Superinjunctions have been taken out, stopping newspapers not only from printing the stories, but investigating them. At one time, a police demand that a story should be stopped could be met with the reply from a night news editor, "Sorry, the presses are already running." I don't know whether anyone has tried this with a superinjunction, but the consequences would be fearsome.
The book about our security services, "Spycatcher" was successfully banned from coverage in British newspapers in 1986. We had to rely on copies brought over by friends from the States if we wanted to read it. In America, the libel laws are less strict, but the newspapers fewer and less competitive,making our national newspaper coverage a more lively scene. It is impossible, looking at the general financial results, to see why anyone would want to found or buy a newspaper to make money. They are far more likely to make a hefty loss. The reason they are sought after therefore, is power. Lord Northcliffe knew all about this, long before Rupert Murdoch managed to acquire power and some profit - though it would have brought more cash if invested elsewhere.
Revelations which can avoid successfully the limitations of the libel laws need good investigative journalists and too often investigations are avoided because they would cost too much. It might mean the best reporters being lost to a newsroom for months and, as with foreign coverage, the decision as to whether to go ahead with an investigation is often made on the basis of whether it is worth spending the money.
One where it was decided it was not worth it was at the Guardian in the early 'eighties, when a book was offered for coverage by the publishers, Andre Deutsch. It had been written by a New York lawyer, Joseph Borkin, a prosecutor at the postwar Nuremberg trials who had been shocked by what he considered to be too-lenient sentences handed out to the leaders of the chemical cartel I.G. Farben and was determined to put the record straight.
For not only had the three companies in the cartel - Bayer, Hoescht and BASF, still the world's leading chemical companies -funded the Nazi party and produced for it the synthetic oil and rubber they needed for the war. They had operated out of their own concentration camp near Auschwitz in Poland, using slave labour and prisoners of war who were worked, beaten, threatened and killed in conditions of unimaginable suffering. Those who could work no longer were either killed or sent back to Auschwitz to be gassed. The poison gas, Zyklon B, used to exterminate camp inmates, was also a product of the I.G. Farben empire.
The book was read and the story written by an experienced journalist, then handed to the lawyer. His opinion was firm. "You cannot carry this. The libel damages would be huge, more than the paper could afford. Imagine this being discussed at one of their board meetings."
The book was dropped, to the dismay of one or two of the older hands on the paper, still strongly in the tradition of its founder, C.P. Scott and his dictum "Facts are sacred, comment is free." I have always kept near me the copy of the book.
I.G. Farben was disbanded after the war but the three companies which formed it are still operating internationally. Bayer have U.K. headquarters at Newbury, Berkshire, BASF at Bradford in Yorkshire, and Hoescht merged with the French companhy Rhone-Poulenc S.A. in 1999.
Bayer, the inventor of aspirin as well as heroin at the end of the 19th century (all three have historic and distinguished scientific records, with Nobel prizewinners) claims it produces "Science for a Better Life" and offers competitions for its workers to produce ideas for a low carbon, greener environment. It supports local charities. Bayer have been asked for a comment on the CBG, but with no response so far.
After directors and executives had served the sentences handed out at Nuremberg for slavery, looting and mass murder, they returned. Fritz ter Meer, the senior scientist, became chairman of the supervisory board of Bayer and after his death, the company had wreaths placed annually on his grave.
There is still little public knowledge about this here. But in Germany a protest group was formed by people living near the Bayer plant in the Rhineland. The CBG (Coalition against Bayer dangers) seek compensation for the I.G. Farben Monowitz camp survivors - which was paid out by Bayer - and organising meetings for them to describe their experiences, they are also strong in pursuit of the company's scientific products. Philipp Mimkes, a founder of CBG, which now has a distinguished board of scientists and academics advisers, says "The Allies
needed Bayer after the war for the products it needed in the Cold War and the public and the politicians whitewashed them."
But they are now under fire internationally from various quarters. Baye pesticides have been linked to the decline of bees and birds, there have been protests and compensation paid about GM maize and rice, and stories about risks from the Mirena contraceptives and a heart drug.
CBG were taken to court by Bayer in the 1990's, but the case was unsuccessful after taking over five years. They have made contact with a supporting group in Pittsburgh and went over there last summer to join a crowded meeting. "There have been dozens of accidents in worker safety, pesticides poisoning and pharmaceuticals," says Mimkes. "But it is difficult to get support abroad." In Germany, they have had support from the Green party. They have 1000 members, of varying ages and occupations, mainly in the Rhineland area. Why do they not campaign against Hoescht and BASF also? Mimke says it is a matter of time and resources and Bayer, as their neighbour, is the main concern.
The account of how much I.G. Farben was involved, not only in the separate action of setting up their own concentration camp at Monowitz and the thousands killed there, but in actually helping the Nazis to power, giving money and open support, (having ridded I.G. Farben of its Jewish members) is told in chilling detail in "Hell's Cartel" a book by the journalist and columnist for Al Jazeera, Diarmuid Jeffreys, published by Bloomsbury in 2008 and in the US in the same year.
It is minutely and painstakingly researched - a work that took three years - and started by Jeffreys after he was working on a book on aspirin and started to follow Bayer's later history.
As well as the upsetting account of life in the Momowitz camp, the way in which the cartel was able to assist and keep the controlling political group in power and support it towards war is the most compelling part of the book. But now we are back to Mr. Murdoch again.
ends
But how much press freedom is there now? The competitiveness of London journalism,both in-house and among the Fleet Street pack, ensures that many stories get into print and on air as well as online which otherwise would not. (One exception is the BBC news, whose editors seem to think that carrying the same leading news headline for 12 hours and more can be called "news".)
Other stories never see the light of day unless some tame MP can be persuaded to raise the subject in the privileged atmosphere of the House of Commons, freed from the libel laws.
Otherwise, the laws remain supreme along with possible contempt of court actions and breaking of national security codes. Superinjunctions have been taken out, stopping newspapers not only from printing the stories, but investigating them. At one time, a police demand that a story should be stopped could be met with the reply from a night news editor, "Sorry, the presses are already running." I don't know whether anyone has tried this with a superinjunction, but the consequences would be fearsome.
The book about our security services, "Spycatcher" was successfully banned from coverage in British newspapers in 1986. We had to rely on copies brought over by friends from the States if we wanted to read it. In America, the libel laws are less strict, but the newspapers fewer and less competitive,making our national newspaper coverage a more lively scene. It is impossible, looking at the general financial results, to see why anyone would want to found or buy a newspaper to make money. They are far more likely to make a hefty loss. The reason they are sought after therefore, is power. Lord Northcliffe knew all about this, long before Rupert Murdoch managed to acquire power and some profit - though it would have brought more cash if invested elsewhere.
Revelations which can avoid successfully the limitations of the libel laws need good investigative journalists and too often investigations are avoided because they would cost too much. It might mean the best reporters being lost to a newsroom for months and, as with foreign coverage, the decision as to whether to go ahead with an investigation is often made on the basis of whether it is worth spending the money.
One where it was decided it was not worth it was at the Guardian in the early 'eighties, when a book was offered for coverage by the publishers, Andre Deutsch. It had been written by a New York lawyer, Joseph Borkin, a prosecutor at the postwar Nuremberg trials who had been shocked by what he considered to be too-lenient sentences handed out to the leaders of the chemical cartel I.G. Farben and was determined to put the record straight.
For not only had the three companies in the cartel - Bayer, Hoescht and BASF, still the world's leading chemical companies -funded the Nazi party and produced for it the synthetic oil and rubber they needed for the war. They had operated out of their own concentration camp near Auschwitz in Poland, using slave labour and prisoners of war who were worked, beaten, threatened and killed in conditions of unimaginable suffering. Those who could work no longer were either killed or sent back to Auschwitz to be gassed. The poison gas, Zyklon B, used to exterminate camp inmates, was also a product of the I.G. Farben empire.
The book was read and the story written by an experienced journalist, then handed to the lawyer. His opinion was firm. "You cannot carry this. The libel damages would be huge, more than the paper could afford. Imagine this being discussed at one of their board meetings."
The book was dropped, to the dismay of one or two of the older hands on the paper, still strongly in the tradition of its founder, C.P. Scott and his dictum "Facts are sacred, comment is free." I have always kept near me the copy of the book.
I.G. Farben was disbanded after the war but the three companies which formed it are still operating internationally. Bayer have U.K. headquarters at Newbury, Berkshire, BASF at Bradford in Yorkshire, and Hoescht merged with the French companhy Rhone-Poulenc S.A. in 1999.
Bayer, the inventor of aspirin as well as heroin at the end of the 19th century (all three have historic and distinguished scientific records, with Nobel prizewinners) claims it produces "Science for a Better Life" and offers competitions for its workers to produce ideas for a low carbon, greener environment. It supports local charities. Bayer have been asked for a comment on the CBG, but with no response so far.
After directors and executives had served the sentences handed out at Nuremberg for slavery, looting and mass murder, they returned. Fritz ter Meer, the senior scientist, became chairman of the supervisory board of Bayer and after his death, the company had wreaths placed annually on his grave.
There is still little public knowledge about this here. But in Germany a protest group was formed by people living near the Bayer plant in the Rhineland. The CBG (Coalition against Bayer dangers) seek compensation for the I.G. Farben Monowitz camp survivors - which was paid out by Bayer - and organising meetings for them to describe their experiences, they are also strong in pursuit of the company's scientific products. Philipp Mimkes, a founder of CBG, which now has a distinguished board of scientists and academics advisers, says "The Allies
needed Bayer after the war for the products it needed in the Cold War and the public and the politicians whitewashed them."
But they are now under fire internationally from various quarters. Baye pesticides have been linked to the decline of bees and birds, there have been protests and compensation paid about GM maize and rice, and stories about risks from the Mirena contraceptives and a heart drug.
CBG were taken to court by Bayer in the 1990's, but the case was unsuccessful after taking over five years. They have made contact with a supporting group in Pittsburgh and went over there last summer to join a crowded meeting. "There have been dozens of accidents in worker safety, pesticides poisoning and pharmaceuticals," says Mimkes. "But it is difficult to get support abroad." In Germany, they have had support from the Green party. They have 1000 members, of varying ages and occupations, mainly in the Rhineland area. Why do they not campaign against Hoescht and BASF also? Mimke says it is a matter of time and resources and Bayer, as their neighbour, is the main concern.
The account of how much I.G. Farben was involved, not only in the separate action of setting up their own concentration camp at Monowitz and the thousands killed there, but in actually helping the Nazis to power, giving money and open support, (having ridded I.G. Farben of its Jewish members) is told in chilling detail in "Hell's Cartel" a book by the journalist and columnist for Al Jazeera, Diarmuid Jeffreys, published by Bloomsbury in 2008 and in the US in the same year.
It is minutely and painstakingly researched - a work that took three years - and started by Jeffreys after he was working on a book on aspirin and started to follow Bayer's later history.
As well as the upsetting account of life in the Momowitz camp, the way in which the cartel was able to assist and keep the controlling political group in power and support it towards war is the most compelling part of the book. But now we are back to Mr. Murdoch again.
ends
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