Head of Waitrose Bemoans Lack of Choice in Traditional Grocers.

MARK PRICE: Retail is for all year round, not just Christmas | Mail Online

In an unashamed piece of PR spin in today's Daily Mail, Mark Price, head of supermarket giant Waitrose, extols the virtues of supermarkets such as his own.

In a brash swipe at independent grocers of a former age, the CEO states that,

"British food retailers do an incredible job providing great food to the nation. If any of us were to be transported back to the grocery stores of only 20 years ago, I think we would be dismayed at the lack of variety and inspiration."

The claim that independent retailers provided limited a limited range of food products in the past is one often made by apologists for the industrialised food sector. The problem with Mark Price's claim is that the independent grocery stores of 1991 had already been decimated by the scale of the factory-food-supermarket monopoly.

By that time, local wholesale fruit and veg markets had been closed across numerous cities in Britain, pushed out of business by global firms whose purchasing power and market dominance had lead to farmers being forced into punishing deals with the large supermarkets. A similar story befell the locally-sourced meat and fish markets that historically provided for the local, independently-owned retail market.

In the course of the replacement of the local food market with the globalised industrial model, the reality is that customer choice was drastically reduced in several key respects. Apples are a typical example of this decline. There are 6,000 varieties of English apples. Many are extremely localised. Yet, how often at any of the supermarkets do shoppers have a chance to buy an Adam's Pearmain, a Hampshire, a Tallow Pippen or half a dozen Hoary Mornings?

The logic of global supply chains and maximised profits means that children growing up today will almost never eat anything other Coxes, Royal Gala or Bramleys - though they will be exposed to French Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths, and other imports flown in from New Zealand and South Africa.

The narrative that supermarkets have increased choice is true only if we compare the processed packaged food on offer with that available when local independents were on their death bed twenty years ago. A comparison with an earlier age will reveal that choice has been drastically reduced.

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Why 98% of abortions in Britain are now technically illegal.

Christian Medical Comment: Why 98% of abortions in Britain are now technicall...

Whatever your views on abortion, you must read this article by Dr Peter Saunders who makes a (to me) persuasive case that the current law in the UK should be interpreted as showing that 98% of abotions in the UK are in fact in breach of the law.

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Austerity and the Arms Trade

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Funny Money and the Real Economy

As Europeans face daily updates on the fate of their economies and of the Euro, public figures appear to disagree on the detail but agree on the broad framwork of how to respond to the crisis. The assumption from all quarters is that governments must in some way guarantee European currencies - whether through the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, sovereign loans or some other mechanism or combination of strategies.

This approach makes one assumption - rarely challenged - namely that the currency used by the large financial institutions must and should be the same currency used by individual citizens.

An alternative approach is that ordinary ciizens use (or create) their own currencies for peer-to-peer trading, and leave the global finacial institutions to sort out their own mess. The global markets, of course, will never make this happen, as such alternative and micro-currencies necessarily undermine the power of large financial institutions.

Which is, of course, one of their appeals, at least in the real economy whch most of us live in.

 



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Albert Schweitzer on Colonialism, Labour, Race, Freedom, Trade and the Role of the State

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Am currently reading Albert Schweitzer's collection of contemporary reports from his time as a missionary doctor in what at the time was the French colony of Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) from 1912 to 1917. The reports are grouped together in the book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest.

As well as providing insights into tropical disease and medicine, the book later on gives scope for Schweitzer's developing thoughts on the nature of colonialism, particularly as it relates to the issue of labour.

In a chapter entitled "Social Problems in the Forest", written in the summer of 1914, the doctor-philosopher addresses the "labour problem" in the French colony. His observations are worth quoting and reflecting on. They highlight themes that seem very relevant to our world as it lurches from one economic convulsion to another, and as growing numbers of people ask fundamental questions about the economic system we have come to regard as normal.

The doctor introduces the "problem" as it presents itself to the European:

"People imagine in Europe that as many labourers as are wanted can always be found among the savages, and secured for very small wages. The real fact is the very opposite." 

Schweitzer's frequent use of the term "savages" may be jarring to modern readers, but it is worth seeing beyond the crudeness of language to the wider points he is making.

"This [lack of labourers] comes from their laziness, people say; but is the negro really so lazy? Must we go a little deeper into the problem?"

 

After describing the strenuous efforts of native villagers in clearing virgin forest in order to create plantations for bananas and manioc (a root staple) and their ability to row the Ogowe River and its tributaries for up to thirty-six hours without a break, Schweitzer concludes that,

"I can no longer talk ingenuously of the laziness of the negro."

What, then, can explain the apparent difficulties that the white colonists have in obtaining paid labour from the black native population? Schweitzer offers the opinion that,

"The negro, under certain circumstances works well, but - only so long as circumstances require it. The child of nature - here is the answer to the puzzle - is always a casual worker."

European attitudes towards "the African" during the 19th and early 20th centuries ranged from a view of the natives as "uncivilised savages" to a belief that they were "natural" or "free men." This latter view was expressed for instance by fellow Frenchman Paul Gaugin, particularly in his Primitivist phase of painting.  Schweitzer, as have already seen, seems to oscillate between the two views of the Africans as savages and as children of nature.

Continuing with this latter theme, Schweitzer notes that,

  

"In return for very little work, nature supplies the native with nearly everything that he requires for his support in his village. The forest gives him wood, bamboos, raffia leaves. and bast for the building of a hut....He has only to plant some bananas and manioc, to do a little fishing and shooting, in order to have by him all that he really needs, without having to hire himself out as a labourer and to earn regular wages."

The local tribesmen will hire themselves out only to raise money for a specific and particular object - some sugar, tobacco, an axe or a dowry to pay in return for obtaining a wife.

"If he has no definite object in view for which to earn money he stays in his village."

Schweitzer's conclusion from this approach to labour is interesting:

"The negro, then, is not idle, but he is a free man; hence he is always a casual worker."

This casual approach to paid labour - that it is to be engaged in only as necessary to purchase specific items above and beyond the daily necessities of food and shelter - inevitability found itself in conflict with the economic aims of the French colonists, whose primary concern was in felling and exporting the jungle's rich supply of quality hardwoods for transportation and sale to European markets.

"There is, therefore, a serious conflict between the needs of trade and the fact that the child of nature is a free man."

The colonists therefore have to think about how to convince the natives to work for them. The strategy of the State and its commercial allies is summarised thus:

"Create in him as many needs as possible; only so can the utmost possible be got out of him."

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The creation of artificial needs in the indigenous population took two main forms in the early 20th century. The first method was the imposition of "involuntary need" in the form of direct taxation. Every native of French Equatorial Africa aged 14 and above was required to pay a poll tax of five francs a year. 

The second area of artificial need was created by the trader and involved the offering to the natives of goods and commodities that they did not have and could not create within their own local environment. Dr Schweitzer describes seeing the stock offered for sale in a single white-owned shop located in the middle of the jungle. The items ranged from the "useful" such as knives and axes, to shoes, material and tools, to the frivolous or harmful such as alcohol, glasses, tobacco, collars and ties, lace, corsets, gramophones and music boxes. Like today's iPods, the latter were apparently extremely popular. Schweitzer describes the local women who "plague their husbands until they have earned enough to buy one."

In conclusion, Schweitzer advances the view that,

"The child of nature becomes a steady worker only so far as he ceases to be free and becomes unfree."

By hiring labourers and transporting them some distance from their locality, and by holding back half of their wages until the end of a twelve-month employment contract, the plantation owners and loggers attempted to break the ties that the natives had with their local tribes and families, and to bind them in economically with the company. Barracks and labouring settlements  therefore became the dominant model for ensuring a steady supply of local labour in the French colonies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rejecting the idea of compulsory paid labour (followed in several European colonies in Africa), Schweitzer advocates allowing the native population to live in their own villages and equipping them them with skills to create their own local industries for their own use and for trade.

Applying Schweitzer's analysis to the current economic scene, a few immediate thoughts occur. Perhaps I will be able to elaborate on them at a future date. For now, they remain bullet points:

• almost no-where in the current economic turmoil can a single voice be heard that is asking the basic question, "what do people actually need?" There is no distinction made between the creation of goods that are needed and goods that are mere luxuries. In fact, were such a distinction made, it would be regarded as Utopian by the mainstream media and culture. 
• Linked to the above, the assumption is made by politicians of all types that all economic growth is good, however it is promoted. 
• No distinction is made in today's discussion between "work" and "paid jobs". It is assumed that the employer-employee model should be regarded as the only, or at least the primary form of productive employment.
• casual work is seen as second best under the current economic system. This is, in part, because such part-time work does not allow the worker to buy the luxury goods produced by global firms as a means of extracting wealth from the workers. For Schweitzer, by contrast, such casual labour is the essence of economic freedom. 
• There is no serious discussion at the present time about the rights of communities or families to obtain a living directly from the physical land around them, without recourse to private ownership or job dependency. The historic British model of communal local land use has been stripped away through waves of enclosure over the centuries, resulting in a population who are essentially landless. This makes it almost impossible for citizens to use the natural environment in sustainable ways to obtain food and building materials. This has happened so long ago, that most workers have no concept that land (or other productive property) could ever be widely owned by free local communities. This collective loss of consciousness and of imagination has resulted in a narrowing of the perceived options as far as economic survival is concerned. And this loss empowers large corporations at the expense of individuals or local communities.

   

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Libya, The Sahel and Food Insecurity

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"The return to Niger and Chad of migrants from Libya who previously sent money home to help mitigate crop deficit is already pushing some families into further food insecurity, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “These returns have aggravated extreme poverty and hunger which is affecting more than half of Niger's 2.5 million people threatened with food insecurity this year,” said IOM."

Source




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Storm Brewing: Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and America

I'm nervous for Kenya, whose troops have for the last week been pursuing an aggressive intervention into neighbouring Somalia to hunt down Islamic militants from the al-Shabaab group, some of whom are believed to be behind a series of recent kidnappings and murders in the Kenya boarder area.

US forces are supporting the Kenyan incursion, with an American drone attack today killing 44 people and wounding 63 others in southern Somalia. 

US forces have also recently been sent to Uganda by Presidential decree, apparently to help combat the insurgent LRA in the north of the country. It seems that their presence will add support to US anti-terrorist operations in the horn of Africa.

Al-Shabaab will of course fight back, so the fear is for terror attacks in Nairobi and Mombasa as retaliation for the recent incursions.

I can't see it ending well. 

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• Nairobi bomb attacks increase al-Shabaab fears (telegraph.co.uk)
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• U.S. Embassy Warns of Terrorist Attacks in Kenya (onebluestocking.wordpress.com)

Occupy Wall Street

Image by SheepGuardingLlama via Flickr

A small  number of activists have been camped out in New York's Wall Street for six days now, protesting against global corporate capitaism and its fruits.

Here's a short introduction to the occupation. 

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The Other 9-11 Anniversary

This week marks the 40th anniversary of another 9/11 tragedy: the Attica prison rebellion. On September 9, 1971, prisoners took over much of state prison in Attica, New York, to protest conditions at the maximum security prison. Then Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to storm the facility on the morning of September 13. Troopers shot indiscriminately more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition, killing 39 male prisoners and guards. After the shooting stopped, police beat and tortured scores of more prisoners, many of whom were seriously wounded but were initially denied medical care.

Professor Cornell West of Princeton University reflects on the legacy of Attica.

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Financial Crisis: Time to Diversify Currencies?

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The idea of creating, using, or producing currencies other than those officially sanctioned by the state, is gaining momentum.

This from the BBC website today:

Parliament is to debate a call for foreign currencies to be made legal tender in the UK. Such a move would protect savers by allowing them to hold the currency least likely to be devalued, Tory MP Douglas Carswell told the Commons. He said people could then "extricate themselves from the monetary masters that hold them all captive".

Ryan Grant at the Distributist Review goes further, calling on American states to exercise their legal right to mint their own currencies, in response to what Grant sees as the inevitability of the collapse of the US dollar as a credible global currency.   

The root of our system of currency and credit is not based on value, the thing money is supposed to represent, but on debt, its antithesis. .....

Among Grants five solutions to the debt crisis is that the government must 

Allow and promote local currencies based on local assets, namely to have currency which is based on value and not on debt

David Boyle at The New Economics Foundation meanwhile is critical of

The idea that every nation, or even every continent, should have just one currency to serve everybody’s needs is a piece of eighteenth century Whig ideology that we have been stuck with unthinkingly ever since.  The plight of Spain and Greece is evidence of how faulty it is. 

Boyle calls for currencies that are as diverse as human societies.

With the collapse of the Euro a distinct possibility, and calls for the drachma to be reintroduced into Greece's domestic economy, such radical measures may be forced into the mainstream whether we like it our not.

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• Legalise foreign currencies - MP (bbc.co.uk)
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The Police, Notting Hill Carnival and the Permanent 'State of Exception'

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This article is published by Aaron Peters, and openDemocracy.net and re-published here under a Creative Commons licence.

 

The original article can be found here. 

 

“The flames of November 2005 still flicker in everyone’s minds...As an attempted solution, the pressure to ensure that nothing happens, together with police surveillance of the territory, will only intensify.” - Account of the policing fallout after the 2005 riots in France.

What qualifies as a 'successful' Notting Hill Carnival now seems open to debate. This year's carnival with its unusually good weather, high turnout and great food and music meant that, as ever, Europe's largest carnival (the second largest in the world after Rio in Brazil) was a feast of the senses and a day in which Londoners of all ages, creeds, colours - and importantly classes - could mix, share and dance.

Dawn raid ahead of Notting Hill Carnival: PA

Was this, then, a success?

After the London riots some two weeks ago, the media drummed up the possibility of further public disorder. After all, as recently as 2008 there were indeed riots on the streets of Notting Hill in the immediate aftermath of the event. At the previous 2010 Carnival, 230 arrests were made over the two days.

It is clear, then, that the avoidance of major public disorder in excess of that seen since 2008 represented a 'success' for the Metropolitan police, the event organisers and much of the mainstream media. When combined with the usual joy of the event itself, high attendance and the fortune of clement weather, it should come as no surprise that carnival organiser Chris Boothman declared that the event had allowed Londoners to "reclaim the streets".

This is of course not the first 'successful' policing of a major public event this year. There was the 'success' of the Royal Wedding, with its bizarre pre-arrests of dozens of activists, followed by equally ludicrous arrests on the day itself. The policing for the Royal Wedding was all done within the broader context of a Section 60 of the Criminal Justice Act, which was imposed on the City of Westminster, just as we saw a Section 60 imposed for the Notting Hill Carnival. 

A brief clarification of what Section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act actually is. It gives  a police officer of the rank of inspector or above the competence to,

“...request  authorisation for additional search powers on the basis of a reasonable belief that incidents involving serious violence may take place or that people are carrying dangerous instruments or offensive weapons in the area without good reason", such powers relating to,"...pedestrians and vehicles in a specified locality, for a specified period, not exceeding 48 hours at a time.”

In the case of the Royal Wedding, the 'specified locality' of the Section 60 issued was the City of Westminster. For Notting Hill Carnival, the Section 60 was applied to the whole of London - a truly unprecedented step. The application of the section was not applied to a 'specified locality' but rather to a city of eight million residents. Is London, a global metropolis, now considered a 'specific locality' where normal legislation can be temporarily suspended for 48 hours? To what extent, then, is the United Kingdom or England considered a less specific locality?

As with the Royal Wedding, we saw a number of pre-arrests before the carnival. Whereas the Royal Wedding arrests essentially had a pre-crime basis, the arrests before the carnival were more about getting as many people as possible on rather minimal charges, such as possession of cannabis, and then inserting non-attendance to carnival within their bail conditions. A highly expensive process for the taxpayer ensured the non-attendance of around ninety individuals who may or may not have chosen to attend the event. One can only wonder how many pre-crime arrests or targeted charges with bail impositions will accompany the run-up to the Olympics in 2012 or the Queen's forthcoming Diamond Jubilee. My guess is far, far more.

Along with these pre-emptive arrests and the deployment of the Section 60 itself, there was of course the policing of the event on the Saturday and Sunday. How can one really call any event resulting in 274 arrests and 32 hospitalisations peaceful? What was the nature of these arrests? Will the police provide a breakdown of those arrested: their race, age, gender and reasons for their arrest? In light of the unprecedented police numbers on the streets of West London and the issuing of a citywide Section 60 this is the very least the Metropolitan police should be doing.

Anecdotally, I have been informed of several incidents during the carnival involving arrests. The first is that of a man who was stop and searched under a section 60 for blowing a vuvuzela. Before I relate the incident, let's make this clear: the police can stop and search under a section 60 if there has been serious violence or disorder in the vicinity. They can resort to Section(s) 43 or 47 ( sometimes invoked against people taking photographs for example) if there is sufficient grounds to 'suspect' involvement in terrorist activities.

What explanation can account for a person being stop and searched for blowing a musical instrument?  The story is recounted below by a friend who witnessed the events:

“...he was walking up Westbourne Park road with one of the free vuvuzelas they were giving out. A line of police was walking up towards him taking up most of the road. He was blowing on his horn and they deemed it to be too close to them and jumped on him and pulled him over to one side with a cop on each arm holding him in a crucifix position. around 10 cops surrounded him and one of them bruised his girlfriend's arm when she tried to help....they searched him, found nothing but continued to hold him asking for his name, address and date of birth.
"My mate refused to give them and asked why he was being searched: it was under section 60. He asked what violence and they claimed that blowing a horn near them equated to assault and that either way, "you are swearing aren't you, you dickhead!". A long row ensued with them allegedly threatening to nick him several times. Unable to get his name, they found his credit cards started addressing him by that name. He denied they were his so they threatened to nick him for theft! Eventually he gave them his name, DOB and address and they let him go. It took 15-20 minutes though. Officers numbers I caught where KF982, KF119 (Forest Gate). The officer who conducted the search was  a constable Elton from forest gate.”

Another incident involved a man who was arrested because he had given a 'thumbs down' to a passing cohort of police officers from the balcony of his home. As one friend of the arrestee in question recounts:

"...the arrest happened when some police were walking past us - we were on a rooftop. My friend gave them a thumbs down, and they stopped and beckoned him down. He refused to go down but they posted men on the door of the house we were in and said they wouldn't leave until we had gone down.
 "After fifteen minutes or so we went down to talk to them. The officer at the door (A) said my friend had sworn at his colleague (B). This was a lie and we said so - we all knew he had said nothing. It was clear to us they had decided to take offence at the thumbs down and had invented the swearing to justify their over-the-top reaction. Officer B shouted over 'If he denies it just arrest him'. Then Officer A told my friend to go and apologise to Officer B and he would not be arrested. He explained that my friend should be 'humble - very humble' when he apologised, he should address Officer B as 'sir', and he should not deny he had sworn.
"My friend agreed to apologise to Officer B (mostly because his mother was in the house I suspect) but felt the need to be truthful and say he hadn't sworn. For this he was arrested. His mother then went to talk to Officer B to try to clear up the misunderstanding and he threatened her with arrest. The friend was released not long after, having been told he would get a fixed penalty notice."

The same man who had witnessed this event also said, “I had another friend the previous day who had an officer threaten to smash his face in because he laughed at the officer's threats during a stop and search issued under a Section 60".

Over 250 individuals arrested during the carnival, nearly 100 arrested before the event and banned from attending (mostly as part of bail conditions for minor offences), a London-wide 'suspension' of normal legislation with regards to stop and search: Notting Hill Carnival was anything BUT evidence of Londoners 'reclaiming the streets' as Chris Boothman would have it. Instead, it offers yet another example of the insidious nature of how basic civil liberties are being compromised with increasing ease by the London Metropolitan Police. This continued erosion of liberties is equalled only by the passivity of a highly uncritical and uninformed media whose ambitions are to demand that we 'keep calm and carry on' regardless of what occurs.

The 'exceptional' manner in which Notting Hill Carnival was policed shows that the Royal Wedding was anything but an anomaly and that in all probability there is worse to come in the remaining year and 2012. Expect Section 60s to be issued at party conferences this Autumn (where large demonstrations are anticipated) and at any major student or anti-cuts demonstration.

The suspension of 'everyday' legislation is now becoming normal. 'Exceptional' conditions are increasingly viewed as quotidian, something Giorgio Agamben explores in his book 'State of Exception'. We will increasingly see tactics designed to deal with crisis employed during ANY situation of mass public assembly – whether it be a political protest, carnival or sporting event.

As Brett Neilson writes of Agamben's thinking on the matter,

"...this figure of generalized catastrophe under a sky void of transcendental authority...(is) characterized by 'governmental violence that ignores international law externally and produces a permanent state of exception internally, while all the time pretending to uphold the law." 

In light of Cameron's remarks on the recent London riots and 'silly' European human rights legislation, Agamben's views on executive power replacing legislative power in contemporary ‘liberal democracies’ are especially pertinent.

On Twitter, I remarked about all of this being a 'new normal'. A  friend remarked that it was anything but new for young, primarily BME males in London and other major UK cities. I am inclined to agree. Before the confrontational and counter-productive policing practices that have caused so much anger among the urban young become common practice in everyday policing, the public must start holding the police to account, particularly over excessive numbers of arrests, the use of section 60 and stop and search. The mainstream media, political commentariat and the political parties are, as usual, dismissive or unable to see the very real problems of arbitrary authority and the lack of transparency and accountability with the British police.

A section 60 for a whole city under the auspices of policing a public event is an abuse of power. We must ask that it does not happen again.

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Saudi Government Facilitating Child Sex Trafficking

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Cable Viewer

This from Wikileaks. Click link above for full US diplomatic cable from its embassy in Yemen.

ROYG officials and independent experts 
repeatedly express frustration with the lack of Saudi 
cooperation on trafficking-in-persons issues, including 
children smuggled to Saudi Arabia for work and Saudi "sex 
tourists" who frequent underage prostitutes in Yemen.  They 
allege that the Saudi government has significantly stalled 
bilateral efforts to combat trafficking.  Without 
higher-level Saudi commitment, it will continue to be 
difficult for impecunious Yemen to fight this cross-border 
problem alone.

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John Hutton, Russian Gas, Georgia and Wiikileaks

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Confidential US State Department cable 08LONDON2384 , published by Wikileaks, contains the following quote relating to the Russian invasion of Georgia's Abkhazia region in August 2008. 

At a meeting in September 2008 between US Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffery Kupfer and the then British Business Secretary John Hutton, discussion turned to Russia's growing dominance of the European gas market. The discussion is summarised as follows:

Hutton stated that the EU is never going to speak with one voice on

energy security, pointing out that each country has dealt with supply

issues independently. He pointed to the growing European dependence on

Russian gas, and the fact that much of Gazprom's board was former

Federal Security Service (FSB). These factors, Hutton said,

contributed to the EU's feeble response to the Russian invasion of Georgia.

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Police Reality TV Programmes: Low Cost PR?

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The growth in the number of reality TV shows that feature police officers has been noticeable in recent years. At the last count I spotted seven different series on British television - Police, Camera, Action!, Cops with Cameras, Traffic Cops, Police Interceptors, Cops, Road Wars and Sky Cops. A few thoughts:

1. The shows are much cheaper to produce than TV crime dramas. There are no paid actors, no sets, no stunt men, no equipment, props lighting or make up. Fixed costs are a camera, an editing suite and some background admin. 

2. The programmes show no breaches in police regulations. No police officers on these "reality" programmes ever receive bribes, leak information to the press or beat up suspects. Although 400 people have died following police contact in the last ten years, no policeman has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter for such a death in the UK. The shows are, therefore, effective PR for the various forces represented. I don't deny the police the right to present themselves in the best possible light, but it is worth asking what measures the media are taking to present the full range of police reality through television. 

3. Members of the public are routinely filmed over a range of alleged and actual misdemeanours, and then have these acts broadcast to millions. On occasion when members of the public challenge the film crews, the police routinely state that the cameras are operating within the law, since the events filmed are taking police in public, and that there is freedom to film in public. On some occasions, it seems that the camera's role is close to that of incitement. 

4. Members of the public should feel free to film police officers in the course of their duty, as long as they are not interfering with a police officer as s/he carries out their role. It would be quite unacceptable for the police to object to this, in my view.

 

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