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 Copwatch: an app to
tackle police brutality

Does religion have a

role in politics?

How we fetishize
indigenous people

TRADE IN
TURMOIL
A CHANCE FOR
JUSTICE?

UK £7.45 | NI 517 January-February 2019

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EDITOR’S LETTER

THIS MONTH’S
TRADE IN THE ERA OF CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
TRUMP AND BREXIT
There was a time when trade was a slow-moving tanker
Dawn Foster is a staff writer
for Tribune and Jacobin
of a topic – what we, at New Internationalist, would call magazines, and a columnist for
a ‘solid development issue’. The Guardian newspaper. She
Not in these times of Brexit turmoil and a Trumpian regularly appears as a political
trade war with China. As we go to press, there is little commentator on the BBC’s
VANESSA BAIRD for the certainty about how events will pan out over the next Newsnight and Sky News.
New Internationalist couple of hours – let alone months.
Co-operative newint.org The themes, and language, being used in relation Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a
to these trade-related crises are extreme and indicative. journalist, broadcaster and
‘Betrayal’, ‘rape’, ‘theft’, ‘cliff-edge’, ‘crash-out’, ‘blood weekly columnist for the i
on the streets’, ‘economic decline’, ‘disaster’, ‘a great newspaper. She has won several
unravelling’, ‘war’… awards, including the Orwell
For this month’s Big Story, I delve into the thicket of Prize and is co-founder of British
global trade – interviewing and consulting experts and Muslims for Secular Democracy.
campaigners from around the world. My aim is not just
to make sense of what’s going on, but also to dig into Daniel Macmillen
what’s missing from the blow-by-blow reporting in the Voskoboynik is an educator,
media; to examine the underlying causes of the current campaigner and author.
crises; the important impacts of the free-trade system His latest book, published
that just aren’t being discussed; and the implications for in September 2018, is The
citizens in countries that aren’t powerful players on the Memory We Could Be (New
world stage. And, in true New Internationalist fashion, Internationalist).
this issue does not stop at reporting what is – but goes
the extra mile to envisage how things could be with a Dilnaz Boga is a journalist
14-point plan on what a better, fairer, more sustainable from Mumbai. She has
trading system might look like. worked for Srinagar-based
Elsewhere in this edition, our Cartoon History takes website Kashmir Dispatch,
us to Haiti and the story of liberation leader Toussaint as well as for the Hindustan
Louverture, and to India, where our columnist reports on Times as chief copy editor on
COVER ARTWORK: PETE REYNOLDS how the #MeToo movement is frightening Indian men. the International Desk.

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 CONTENTS

THE BIG STORY CURRENTS

8 African migrants seek new lives in China
Plus: Borderlines
9 Introducing... Jair Bolsonaro
9 Free and fair elections in Armenia
Plus: Seriously
10 Y’en a marre mobilize in Senegal
11 Tibet’s bid for emoji flag
Plus: Sign of the Times
11 Meet the radical bird watchers
12 Bangkok street sellers live to fry another day
13 The legacy of Somalia’s worst suicide attack
Plus: Reasons to be Cheerful

REGULARS
STEVE MUNDAY

6 Letters
Plus: Why I…

7 Letter from Dhaka

TRADE IN TURMOIL In her first column, Parsa Sanjana Sajid observes
the symbolism of flowers being sold at an historical
intersection in the city.
15 Is trade in turmoil a chance for justice?
Vanessa Baird sets out amid the gathering storm 38 Country Profile: Cuba
clouds.
40 Cartoon History
18 A rustbelt romance The story of Toussaint Louverture, former slave
Are Donald Trump’s tariff wars without reason? and military leader of the Haitian revolution, as told
by ILYA (with Yohann Koshy).
21 Investor Rex
The low-down on ISDS – and other dodgy investor 44 The Debate
privileges. Dawn Foster and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown dispute
whether or not religion should play a role in
23 The dark arts politics.
Brexit boom-time for corporate lobbyists.
51 Temperature Check
24 Open China? From Extinction Rebellion to palm oil, Danny
What China promises, what China does. Chivers outlines the top five climate struggles to
look out for in 2019.
27 Pigs that cross…
Climate-wrecking follies of free trade. 55 Southern Exposure
Self-taught photographer Amarjeet Kumar Singh
29 Winners and losers captures a candid moment during a behrupiya
How the clash of the titans, China and the US, is (impressionist) event in New Delhi.
impacting the Global South.
60 The Interview
32 Just, open and green Soni Sori, an award-winning human rights
This is what a better global trading system might defender, speaks to Dilnaz Boga about fighting for
look like, concludes Vanessa Baird. justice for sexually abused Adivasi women.

35 ACTION and worth reading 72 Hall of Infamy

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s ‘refugee drowner-in-chief’,
is put under the spotlight.

80 The Puzzler
81 Agony Uncle 64 Unlearning despair
In this issue, our in-house ‘Uncle’ answers a In this issue’s Long Read, Daniel Macmillen
dilemma about property inheritance. Voskoboynik explains why and how we must fight
for the world around us – and why ecological
82 What If… thinking is key.
...we reduced carbon emissions to zero by 2025?

OPINION MIXED MEDIA

74 Spotlight
47 View from India Chilean-Argentine director Sebastián Lelio speaks
Nilanjana Bhowmick reacts to the ‘unease’ to Malcom Lewis about writing complex, engaging
expressed by Indian men in today’s #MeToo era. characters and film as a ‘machine for empathy’.
Plus: Polyp & Schlunke’s Big Bad World.
76 Book Reviews
59 View from Africa Can We Feed The World Without Destroying It?
Nanjala Nyabola on Cameroon’s never-ending by Eric Holt-Giménez; Deviation by Luce D’Eramo,
presidential terms. translated by Anne Milano Appel; Tentacle by Rita
Plus: Marc Roberts’ Only Planet. Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas; Voices of the
Windrush Generation by David Matthews.
73 View from America
Mark Engler reflects on the life of Pete Seeger – an 78 Film Reviews
American musician, patriot and dissident. Burning, directed and co-written by Chang-dong
Plus: Kate Evans’ Thoughts from a Broad. Lee; Green Book, directed and co-written by Peter
Farrelly.

FEATURES 79 Music Reviews

25LIVE@25 by Skunk Anansie; Echoes by Farhan.
48 Do we fetishize indigenous people?
Working on a documentary about the Moken ‘Sea
Gypsies’ prompted Julian Sayarer to examine
the West’s obtuse gaze and representation of
IN THE NEXT ISSUE: INTERNATIONALISM
indigenous people.

52 Catching the cops

Aboriginal people are using a new app to record and
report police brutality. Will it help break Australia’s
culture of impunity? Ian Lloyd Neubauer reports.
ONLINE FEATURES newint.org

56 Japan’s firewall against populism 5.12.18 Banning ‘adult content’ won’t make Tumblr
Despite populism being rife everywhere else, better or healthier
Japan has refused to succumb. Are there lessons What does Tumblr’s decision mean for those
to be learned? asks Tina Burrett. who rely on the site as one of the only sexually
permissible online spaces? Jillian York asks.

30.11.18 Canada’s shame: the coerced sterilization

of indigenous women
The shocking eugenicist policies can be seen as
attempted cultural genocide, argues Jaipreet Virdi.

27.11.18 How finance capital ruined London

Husna Rizvi speaks to architectural
photographer Lewis Bush about how powerful
developers are altering the social and political
fabric of the city.
BATCHELDER / ALAMY

23.11.18 Will the UK listen to the UN’s damning

indictment of austerity?
Steve Topple fears not. After all, we’ve been here
before...
LETTERS
SEND US YOUR FEEDBACK
The New Internationalist welcomes your letters, but please note that they might be
edited for space or clarity. Letters should be sent to letters@newint.org or to your
local NI office. Please remember to include a town and country for your address.
Discouragement
In his Editor’s Letter (NI 516)
Dinyar Godrej makes the
unsubstantiated allegation
that charitable organizations
provide coarse $2 blankets
to refugees after disasters. I
have a leaflet sent to me by
UNHCR in which they state
that they provide high-thermal
fleece blankets, warm winter
clothing including thick socks
and shoes, tarpaulins to help
families insulate their shelters,
and stoves suitable for both
heating and cooking. The list of
all useful items is much longer.
The disturbing thing about
his wild allegation is that it
may discourage people from
making donations to such
worthy causes. After all, if
these NGOs are not able to
help these refugees, who will?
ADRIAN P WOLFIN BELLINGEN,
AUSTRALIA
[The point being made was in
relation to the sorry state of
clothing recycling rather than an
attack on aid agencies. The short
piece made clear that plastic, fleece
blankets from China were taking
over. They cost $2.50. – Ed]
Not sharing the world
Reading your article ‘Between
the devil and the deep blue sea’
(NI 516) about the treatment of
Tamil refugees in Britain, I was
reminded of John Lennon’s
line: ‘Imagine all the people
sharing all the world.’ Sadly,
this much-to-be-admired
notion is slipping further and
further from our grasp.
In Australia, the situation is
not much different. Refugees
arriving in makeshift vessels
are either turned away at
gunpoint or incarcerated on
islands such as Manus and
6 NEW INTERNATIONALIST
Nauru. The local people there,
engaged by the Australian
government as prison officers,
unfortunately have little
sympathy and treat the asylum-
seekers badly. Reports filter
back to Australia that there is a
very high instance of self-harm
and suicide. Although children
as young as five are included
in this category, the Australian
government continues to turn
a blind eye. Doctors were
recently dismissed by the
Australian government, who
labelled them as ‘spies’. When
will there be an end to this
cruel treatment of our fellow
human beings?
TREVOR A SCOTT CASTLEMAINE,
AUSTRALIA
Work at it
John F Schumaker’s essay ‘The
personality crisis’ (NI 516) was
fascinating and compelling.
The problems he outlines are
real and well argued, and the
trends he identifies deeply
disturbing.
But I cannot agree that
‘democracy is proving
worthless, and even
counterproductive’. The
alternatives to democracy
are far, far worse. We need
to make democracy more
democratic; register everyone
to vote; inform everyone
about the issues; and, if
necessary, run for office.
Democracy works if we work
at democracy.
Nor do I agree that
young people are especially
disappointing in this
generation. Schumaker
argues that they are ‘the most
conventional and conformist
generation in history’. But
the young have always
confounded the old in new
and unexpected ways, so level of current migration has
perhaps this generation will caused a significant fissure in
confound their elders through social cohesion across Europe,
their conformism? We need to triggering an unwelcome
teach and trust them more. rise in Far-Right political
Schumaker concludes movements.
that ‘we are the people of the The economic argument
apocalypse’. That is only true if for free migration is also
we want it to be so. We still have shaky. Data illustrating
agency, power and knowledge. that immigration improves
BRENDAN KELLY DUBLIN, the UK economy is based
IRELAND on the current profile of
immigration, which is skewed
Fanciful towards working-age EU
migrants. This data cannot
Vanessa Baird’s article ‘What be generalized to a scenario
if people could migrate where full free movement
freely’ (NI 515) unfortunately is permitted, as in such a
provides a fanciful prediction scenario greater migration
of the effects of free migration. would occur from populations
Full free movement whose demographic structure
would undoubtedly trigger and more complex social
massive levels of migration needs would reduce their
(potentially 13 per cent of the economic contribution.
global population, a figure The only solution to the
Baird dismisses as ‘quite a ‘immigration problem’ is to
lot’). Anywhere near this level work to reduce the severe
of migration would cause global inequalities which
severe social problems in drive the widespread desire to
the recipient countries (and migrate.
probably also in the source ROBERT HOSKIN YORKSHIRE,
countries). Even the limited ENGLAND
Why I... walk with Refugee Tales
Refugee Tales is a five-day hike through our countryside
to reclaim it for welcome, not hostility; and to create
connection and understanding over division and fear.
Along the way, established writers and poets tell stories
where they share what they’ve learned from those
who have experienced migration journeys with those
us of who have come to listen. We seek to publicize,
in particular, that people are detained indefinitely in
Britain, and to limit detention to a maximum of 28 days.
If all else fails, at least we can walk alongside.
SAL JENKINSON
Each edition we invite our supporters to share an issue
they are passionate about. To tell us yours, please email
letters@newint.org
LETTER FROM DHAKA

FLOWERS AND FLAMES

A pocket of the city, vibrant with blossoms,
is the site where destiny is always taking
shape, observes Parsa Sanjana Sajid.
The flowers go for 5 or 10 taka (5 to 10 cents)
a piece: red and white roses, tuberose, gar-
lands of marigold, multihued gladioli, lilies
and water lilies, carnations, a smattering
of chrysanthemums and baby’s breath.
Bunches are made up on site, alongside
pre-made bouquets, on the southeast
corner of Shahbag intersection in Dhaka.
The famous flower stalls at this corner
have been in business for decades. ‘Twenty
years,’ each of the three stallholders I spoke
to said when asked how long they had been
around. Some had been there longer and
20 could just be a marker of longevity
rather than actual duration.
Every now and then there are calls to
clear these sidewalks, to make them pedes-
trian friendly, as if a few feet of floral inter-
ruptions are what spoils their walkability.
At Mayer Doa (Mother’s Prayers), Babul
was engrossed in stemming, pruning and
watering his perishable wares. How do they
halt these periodic rumblings for eviction?
‘We have our ways,’ he hazards a reply, not anything qualifies as more than all, then the National Public Library and a line of

ILLUSTRATION: SARAH JOHN

wishing to disclose much. He is there every
day from dawn to receive supplies arriving
from Jessore and Savar, until they close late
in the evening. His brother, who is the pro-
prietor – ‘his senior’ – gets in late, a luxury
a ‘ junior’ doesn’t have.
The cubicle-sized stalls face the
National Museum and on the street in
between, almost every day a public protest,
procession or celebration is in order. As a
public square, it is as likely to see a protest
against government repression as it is to
have government partisans hold rallies
there, and Babul and his colleagues are
everyday witnesses to this cauldron of
politics. But mere passive observers they
are not, often supplying flowers to these
rallies, and also offering repose to tired
protesters should they want a seat, a drink
of water, or a chat. When things get intem-
perate, with teargas and stones lobbed,
others can run for shelter but they can’t,
inhaling both the mood and air of the
moment. Only when one of them is struck
by a bullet, which has happened, are they
rushed to a hospital just across the road.
As an intersection, Shahbag mór
(corner) in Dhaka has seen it all and if
the sidewalk flower vendors by the police
station are witness to that ‘more’. Shahbag,
‘garden of kings’ in Farsi, lives up to its
name – the kings are long gone, and so are
the gardens of lore, but it still plays host
to making, sealing, or usurping the fates
of those clinging to their thrones. Of 17th-
century vintage, the area shed its regal
idyll after the 1947 partition, and has since
been the site of major and minor politi-
cal upheavals connected to Bangladesh’s
history and current affairs. On 13 Novem-
ber 2018, there was a protest here to mark
100 days of the photographer Shahidul
Alam’s incarceration.
Just south of the intersection is Suhra-
wardy Udyan, where Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman made his rousing call for lib-
eration on 7 March 1971, and Dhaka Uni-
versity, where student uprisings fired
up movements to topple regimes and
dictators in pre- and post-independence
Bangladesh. Throughout the 1980s, until
the fall of military dictator HM Ershad
in 1990, the university was one of the
major hubs of resistance to the regime.
Circling the intersection now are two
major hospitals, the National Museum,
bookstores. Stand at Shahbag mór and
do a 360-degree turn and you would
be standing at the historical, com-
mercial, cultural and social crossroads
– literal and figurative – of Dhaka and
Bangladesh.
Rites of fire join rites of flowers as
emblems of sacrifice and regeneration.
Flowers are essential to our rituals of
beginnings and endings, desire, love and
sacrifice, birth, death, remembrance and
atonements. They are feeling incarnate,
fleshed-out offerings of those shape-
less pains and pleasures. Flames and
flowers. Appropriately, in Hindu mythol-
ogy Agni the fire god, emissary between
gods and humans, also lords over the
disha or direction southeast, the blos-
soming corner of Shahbag mór. The
gardens of kings have gone and instead
a more humble but fitting street corner
is their successor, a location which since
the mid-20th century has become associ-
ated more with the usurpation of power
– getting rid of kings – than with being
their playground. O
PARSA SANJANA SAJID IS A WRITER, EDITOR AND
ARTIST LIVING IN DHAKA, BANGLADESH.
CURRENTS
CHINA
THE CHINESE DREAM
Nicknamed ‘Little Africa’,
the prosperous southern city
of Guangzhou is home to
Asia’s largest African migrant
population, who come to China
for business opportunities,
reputable universities and low
living costs.
More than 15,000 Africans,
particularly from Egypt, Mali
and the DRC, are estimated to
live in the city, which forms
part of the Pearl Delta Region
– the largest urban area in
the world in terms of size and
population. Half a million
Africans travel here each
year to buy every imaginable
‘Made in China’ product, from
air conditioners to fake Nike
sneakers.
Dealmakers and dreamers
started arriving in China as
the country liberalized the
There are 15,000 African traders,
students and workers living in
Guangzhou, China.
JOERG BOETHLING / ALAMY
economy in the mid-1990s,
but the number grew in the
2000s as Beijing deepened
its economic relations with
Africa. China overtook the
US as Africa’s largest trading
partner nine years ago, and
in 2018 President Xi Jinping
pledged a further $60 billion
in loans and investments.  of African migrants in the
Masoud, a 32-year-old
medicine student from Niger,
who was one of the 50,000
African students to receive
a Chinese government
scholarship in 2015 to study
abroad, sees China as ‘the new
land of opportunities, where
anything is possible’. Each
year more students arrive in
China from Africa than from
any other region, according to
UNESCO.   full citizenship rights, this,
Xiaobei Lu, the heart of
Guangzhou’s Little Africa,
is home to halal food shops,
bilingual signs, and women
carrying bags on their heads.
Each Sunday mixed families
fill churches and mosques,
as a new generation of Afro-
Chinese children play in the
courtyards. The lives of the
Chinese and Africans are
closely knit, depending on each
other in their daily activities. 
But it is far from plain
sailing for those who have
chosen to set up home here.
Poor social-security benefits,
persistent prejudice and
stricter migration rules
mean that the vast majority
city live under uncertain
conditions, according to
author Adams Bodomo.
‘Africans live mainly at the
fringes of society, often at the
mercy of brutal Guangzhou
security personnel, and have to
fend completely for themselves
and their families,’ he says.  according to Theo Hettema,
And as the Guangzhou
Public Security Bureau
denies African husbands
combined with a recent drop
in the number of foreign visas
being granted, means families
live in fear of being torn apart.
‘Every day before I leave
my house to go to the market,
I spend about 10 minutes
gathering all the documents
that prove that I am legally
resident in China,’ explains
Yugo, from Nigeria, who
BORDERLINES
A Dutch church is holding
non-stop services to prevent
the deportation of an
Armenian refugee family.
Under Dutch law, police
cannot enter a church while
religious ceremonies are
taking place, so Bethel
Church in The Hague
has enlisted hundreds of
reverends from around the
country to help out.
By 7 December, Bethel
had racked up 1,000 hours
of continuous services,
chair of the General Council
of Protestant Ministers.
He adds that hundreds
have come to show
solidarity with Sasun and
Anousche Tamrazyan and
their three children, who
sought sanctuary after the
government appealed and
overturned their asylum
status.
Faith groups all over
the world are an important
source of care for forced
migrants. The Forced
Migration Review (FMR) lists
examples that range from
Baptist churches in India
aiding ethnic Chin refugees
fleeing Myanmar to mosques
sheltering displaced people
in Central African Republic.
Researcher Birgit Neufert
writes in FMR about the
centuries-long tradition of
giving refuge. She describes
how protection initiatives such
as Bethel Church’s challenge
their congregations to
‘forget about their plans and
everyday routines’ and carve
out spaces where people can
sleep, eat and spend time
together.
‘The closed doors of
churches and parsonages
stand in the way of state
power,’ she says. ‘It is
volunteers – church members
and neighbours – and pastors
who keep these doors shut.’

married a Chinese woman
15 years ago. ‘With the way
the current visa system is
structured, they let you know
that this will never be your
home.’
But despite these tough
conditions, Yugo is not ready
to give up on the Chinese
dream.
‘While Europe is rejecting
migrants, China is doing a lot
to help us,’ he says.
CARLOTTA DOTTO
INTRODUCING...
JAIR BOLSONARO
The election to power of the
Far-Right 63-year-old former
army officer has shocked those
who thought that Brazil had
buried the bad old days of
military dictatorship.
Observers say that a tsunami
of memes, hashtags and fake
news stories flooded social
media (over 50 per cent of
Brazilians use WhatsApp)
preceding the poll. The two
most notorious examples
circulating widely among
Bolsonaro supporters were the
false claim that the opposition
Workers’ Party (PST) were
distributing ‘gay kits’ in schools
and that the election machines
were rigged during the first
round of voting. In the end
ILLUSTRATIONS: EMMA PEER
Bolsonaro’s margin of victory
narrowed to 10 per cent over
the PST candidate Fernando
Haddad – a clear victory but
not the predicted landslide.
Bolsonaro and his followers
believe that Brazilian society
is a battleground: conservative
Christians waging war against
a wide variety of miscreants
and social misfits including
indigenous and black people,
environmentalists, feminists,
artists and journalists. Already
the first warning shots are
ringing out – between rounds
of the election some 60 attacks
on journalists were reported
and police raided university
campuses across the country
(falsely) claiming illegal
political activity.
Bolsonaro made crime and
corruption the main talking
points in his attacks on the,
often inept, PST. If toxic words
mean a green light for his
supporters, as with Trump,
then Brazil’s world-leading
murder rate is likely to rise.
But he won’t have it all his
own way. The institutional
structures of Brazil – an
independent judiciary and a
right-leaning assembly but
with the PST still the largest
party – will slow him down.
The Left won 45 per cent
of the vote nationally and
are particularly strong in
the northeast; the landless
MST movement is deeply
embedded in rural areas
and will not be easy to
dislodge. Bolsonaro’s threat
to tear open the Amazon
rainforest will meet with
rigorous international – and
indigenous – opposition. Dark
days ahead, but history has
many twists and turns.
RICHARD SWIFT
ARMENIA
FREE AND FAIR POLL
‘Armenia has a revolutionary
majority inside parliament,’
declared Prime Minister
Nikol Pashinyan as he swept
to a landslide victory in
December’s snap elections.
The one-time political
prisoner saw his My Step
Alliance receive more than
70 per cent of the vote in what
was widely considered to be
Armenia’s first free and fair
elections.
Long-term rulers the
Republican Party were
dramatically wiped out after
failing to reach the five-per-
cent threshold required to
enter parliament.
Pashinyan, 43, came
to prominence when he
spearheaded the country’s
‘Velvet Revolution’ last May.
Weeks of demonstrations,
strikes and roadblocks broke
out after the Republican
leader Serzh Sargsyan was
elected by parliament as
prime minister after serving
10 years as president. The
protests forced his resignation
and catapulted Pashinyan to
power as acting PM.
Political scientist Dr Jenny
Paturyan welcomed the
departure of the Republicans
as a parliamentary force but
raised fears that Pashinyan’s
large mandate could lead to
‘creeping authoritarianism’.
‘That would completely
undermine the effort of
the Velvet Revolution and
result in another 30 years of
disappointment,’ she said.
With a parliamentary
majority, Pashinyan will now
be under pressure to make
good on promises of rooting
out corruption and sparking
an economic revolution.
There may also be closer
ties with the EU, political
analyst Dr Nerses Kopalyan
says, though he expects these
to be bilateral agreements
with specific EU countries to
appease Russian concerns.
Minority groups in
Armenia will be watching
closely. Despite contributing
to the revolution, the LGBTIQ
community continues to face
discrimination and cancelled
a key November conference in
the Armenian capital Yerevan
over fears of attacks.
Pashinyan’s ability to resolve
such social issues and deliver
on his revolutionary promises
will now be put to the test.
JOE NERSSESSIAN
In the News
SERIOUSLY?
Whistle while you work
An intriguing story was
recently shared by Amazon
News, a Twitter account
that collates propaganda
– we mean, ‘positive news’
– about the tech giant:
‘Amazon Flex allowed
this woman to lose 100 lbs
in 18 months by creating a
workout while delivering
packages.’
It referred to Jackie
Crow from Kansas City,
who works for Amazon
Flex: a delivery service
run by ‘independent
contractors’. Her ingenuity?
Transforming the deliveries
into mini workouts to help
lose weight and deal with
her rheumatoid arthritis.
The story is a masterclass
in how to rebrand exploit-
ation: no guaranteed hours,
healthcare benefits or union
rights? Who cares, as long as
you work up a sweat!
On that topic, we
hear that a great benefit
of sweatshops is that
they improve dexterity.
Scavenging for scraps in
a slum? It’s the perfect
cardiovascular workout.
Like platform companies
Uber and Deliveroo,
Amazon’s labour regime
is one where precarity
is renamed freedom.
Meanwhile, the low wages
of Amazon warehouse
workers mean that some
have been reported to
sleep in tents, and CEO Jeff
Bezos is the richest man in
modern history.
CURRENTS
SENEGAL
READY TO VOTE
The youth-led social
movement Y’en a marre
(‘We’ve had enough’) has re-
surfaced to engage Senegalese
citizens ahead of upcoming
presidential elections.
Started in January 2011 by a
group of friends who were fed
up with political inaction, Y’en
a marre acted as a watchdog in
2012 polls, and is credited with
inspiring 300,000 youth to
register to vote.
Its latest campaign Pareel
(‘Be ready’) encourages young
people to acquire voting cards
early and informs them how to
run as candidates themselves,
which now requires 53,000
signatures.
Ruling President Macky
Sall has announced he will
SIGN OF THE TIMES
A woman protests the election victory of Far-Right candidate
Jair Bolsonaro outside the Brazilian embassy in London last
October. The slogan on her belly reads ‘Not him’.
PIERRE ALOZIE
run again in the elections
that are due to take place
on 24 February. The contest
has already been dogged
by controversy, with two
leading opposition politicians,
Karim Wade and Khalifa Sall,
imprisoned on corruption
charges that are seen by many
as politically motivated.
Y’en a marre has always kept
its distance from establishment
parties, but its efforts to inform
Senegal’s youth about their
political system have not been
without difficulties. A partner
of Y’en a marre, the NGO
LEAD Afrique Francophone,
had permission to operate
in Senegal withdrawn by the
government last November
after an inquiry into ‘irregular
financing’, a claim that LEAD
Afrique Francophone strongly
denies. Amnesty International
Senegal is among groups that
have denounced this move as
an assault on political rights
and an attempt to stifle civic
space.
Y’en a marre draws
inspiration from Frantz Fanon,
who writes: ‘Each generation
must out of relative obscurity
discover its mission, fulfil
or betray it.’ The movement
will continue with its efforts
to persuade the young to
use the power of their vote
to hold their representatives
accountable, and has other
plans in the pipeline.
DENISE SOW
TIBET
UP THE FLAGPOLE
Emojis – the icons used in
digital conversations – may
look like simple graphics, but
they are also a medium for
politics.
First, diverse skin tones
were introduced, upending the
idea that white skin was the
assumed default. Then, same-
sex couples joined the emoji
family unit.
Now campaigners want
Tibet, a territory struggling
for independence from China,
represented in the emoji
selection of national flags. A
Tibetan-American activist
is campaigning for Unicode
Consortium – a group who vet
new additions to the lexicon –
to make the addition.
But Unicode is made up BRITAIN
of representatives from
companies like Google and LOOK TO THE SKY
Apple. And campaigners are In a drizzly park on an
nervous that the tech giants overcast day in Newcastle, a
could ignore the bid to curry small group huddles around
favour with China. Matthew See as he gives a
‘The process… is actually lecture about birds.
extremely esoteric and ‘Can you hear that?’ See
complex,’ says Andrew Myors, asks, pointing towards the
a digital specialist who works source of a faint chirruping
with Tibet support groups. ‘If from the trees.
the people at Unicode don’t It’s the sound of long-
want to include the flag for tailed tits: a one-species
political reasons, they may well rebuke to the principles of a
try to fob us off with jargon…’ world governed by ruthless
HUSNA RIZVI Darwinism. Long-tailed
 In the News

tits are tiny and not at all
fearsome. But they are hugely
sociable –constantly flitting
from tree to tree in a ‘noisy,
joyful procession’. They
Reclaim the Hides, a ‘radical
bird-watching tour’ that See
runs in cities across the UK.
Bird-watching has long been
the preserve of a certain
us about the fate of the hen
harrier, displaced from its
moorland habitat by wealthy
landowners who want to
preserve their wilderness for
Is this bird an anarcho-communist?
If a long-tailed tit’s young die, it
will help one of its neighbours raise
theirs instead.
DAVID CHAPMAN / ALAMY

cluster close to reduce their beardy conservatism – but grouse shooting.

collective surface area for
warmth, and if a parent bird’s
young die, that bird will help
one of its neighbours to raise
theirs instead. This makes
long-tailed tits the perfect
demonstration, See tells
us, of the Russian anarcho-
communist Pyotr Kropotkin’s
principle of ‘mutual aid’.
These birds are just one
of the species that star in
look to the sky and you can
learn all sorts of radical
lessons.
See gets us to look at
robins, blackbirds and
wrens – solitary birds who
nevertheless work across
species lines to defend their
territory. He tells us about
swifts, tireless border-flouting
migrants who spend their lives
on the wing. And he warns
‘The same people,’ See tell
us, ‘who govern our land and
write our laws also write our
history.’ It is in their interests
that we see nature as a site of
competition, not co-operation.
The point of Reclaim the
Hides is to help us see it
differently.
TOM WHYMAN
 CURRENTS
PENELOPE BARRITT / ALAMY
THAILAND
FRY ANOTHER DAY
For decades Bangkok’s
technicolor and chaotic Khao
San Road has been serving up
mountains of pad thai, mango
sticky rice and barbecued
scorpion.
At the heart of the market,
which looks like a locale from
Blade Runner, is an army of
vendors – often working long
hours for meagre pay – who
cook and sell the city’s iconic
street food, widely considered
the best in the world.
But now they are fighting to
save their livelihoods.
In August, the Bangkok
Metropolitan Administration
threatened Khao San Road’s
200 sellers with eviction in
the interests of ‘cleanliness,
safety and order’. After a
public outcry, the authorities
backtracked but still stipulated
that business could only be
done from 6pm to midnight,
wiping out daytime trade. coverage of their campaign by A trader blitzes up a fruit smoothie
‘It’s very worrying,’ says local media. Negotiations are on Khao San Road, Bangkok – a
Yada Pornpetrumpa, president
of the Khao San Road Street
ongoing. ‘We will protest and
petition until the authorities
vibrant street market that is
threatened by gentrification.
Vendors’ Association. ‘People listen,’ says Pornpetrumpa. PARKERPHOTOGRAPHY / ALAMY
come here because it is unlike For the time being, Bangkok’s
anywhere else in the city.’ street vendors will live to fry
‘If they try to make it like another day.
every other street in Bangkok, PETER YEUNG
nobody will come,’ agrees
Phinong, who has worked on
Khao San Road for the past 10
years. ‘We’ll lose our work.’
Since 2014, some 17,000
OPEN WINDOW Right to privacy by Elena Ospina (Colombia)
street hawkers have lost their
licences across the city and
there are fears of a wider
attempt to sanitize the capital.
The forces of gentrification
have added to a growing
atmosphere of discontent with
the military government,
which came to power in a
2014 coup, ahead of pivotal
elections in February.
The Khao San Vendors’
Association has fought back
with protests and collective
bargaining with city officials,
and has secured good

SOMALIA
SHOCKWAVES
The exact number has never
been confirmed. It could be
500. It could be 1,000. What is
certain is that the number of
people who died on 14 October
2017 when a car bomb exploded
during rush hour at Zoobe
junction, a busy thoroughfare
in Mogadishu, is staggering.
On the first anniversary last
October, thousands circled
the junction. Political and
religious leaders spoke at the
ceremony; the crowds sang the
national anthem, booed and
hissed when al-Shabaab – the
militant group responsible for
the bombing – was mentioned
in speeches, and they cheered
fervently for the Prime
Minister.
Despite this show of good
will, and the news that one of
the men allegedly responsible
was executed by firing squad
that morning, civilians,
analysts and politicians do
not think security in their
country has improved at all.
‘Mogadishu is burning down,’
as Mohamed Mubarak, the
director of Hiraal Institute, a
security research firm, put it.
National security
apparatuses have been
infiltrated by al-Shabaab at
the highest levels. Militants
dressed in fresh army
uniforms have attacked
WHO KNEW?
Women in Communist
Europe enjoyed a higher
rate of orgasm than their
sisters in the capitalist West,
according to the recently
published Why Women Have
Better Sex Under Socialism.
Author Kristen R Ghodsee
says satisfying trysts were a
knock-on effect of a society
that collectivized domestic
labour, encouraged women’s
independence and furnished
a basic-needs safety net.
checkpoints and training
centres. Leadership within
the defence and security
ministries and intelligence
agency shifts as frequently
as the Indian Ocean tide that
runs along the country’s vast
coastline. At the October
ceremony, as young police
dressed in new sky-blue
Adidas uniforms clasped
hands to form a human
barricade to keep the
enthusiastic crowd from
surging forward, it was
difficult not to worry that one
was not on better-paid duty
with al-Shabaab.
‘I can assure you of the
resilience of Somalis. We
will not stop until we get
to the bottom [of what
happened],’ State Minister
Hamud Abdullahi told New
Internationalist. The Mayor
of Mogadishu, Abdirahman
Osman, spoke about the plan
to double the number of police
within the next six months,
and said that, since the attack,
community policing has been
on the rise.
But constituents across the
country are angry that the
government has not released
conclusive information
confirming exactly what
happened. Mubarak said if he
could ask one question of the
government about the attacks,
he would demand the precise
number of dead, wounded and
missing.
A round of firings and
imprisonments followed the
bombing, but there remain
unanswered questions. Who
within al-Shabaab’s ranks
arranged the attack? What
prompted this organization
to kill countless hundreds of
ordinary people? Where were
the bombs meant to detonate
(reputable narratives have it
they were not intended for
that busy an intersection)? And
when and how did enough
explosives to kill hundreds of
people get to the centre of the
capital?
AMANDA SPERBER
REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
KIDS ON
STRIKE
Thousands of Australian
schoolchildren have staged
classroom walk-outs in
protest against government
climate negligence.
Nearly15,000 students
organized strikes across
30 locations, including
Melbourne and Brisbane in
late November.
Students carried signs
reading ‘procrastinating is
our job not yours’ and ‘I’ve
seen smarter Cabinets at
IKEA’. Activists are getting
younger by the year: the
strike was inspired by
15-year-old Swedish activist
Greta Thunberg who is
refusing to attend Friday
lessons until the advent of
an emissions-free politics.
Thunberg tweeted in
support of her striking peers:
‘Time for bed in Sweden.
But in Australia it’s already
morning… stand strong
Australia. We are with you.’
PLENTY MORE FISH
Commercial fishing has been
banned in the Arctic Ocean for
the next 16 years after the EU
and nine of the major fishing
nations – including Canada,
Russia, China, the US, Japan,
Iceland, Denmark and South
Korea – ratified an agreement
to safeguard an area as large
as the Mediterranean.
In the News
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
It’s a win for environ-
mentalists and for the
scientific community. As
global warming causes the
ice to melt, opening up areas
previously blocked by ice, the
deal will allow researchers to
research Arctic ecosystems
without obstruction by fishing
vessels looking to gain
access.
A FASCIST FLOP
Karmic justice is sweet, but
the declining influence of
fascists is sweeter. Milo
Yiannopolis, the Far-Right
former editor at Breitbart, has
had his attention-seeking
career curtailed since being
banned on Twitter and ‘no-
platformed’ at universities, a
tactic first used in Britain in
the 1970s to stop the rise of
the National Front.
Now, after losing his book
publisher due to comments
he made about paedophilia,
it has recently been revealed
that Yiannopolis is in dire
financial straits – at least two
million dollars in debt.
It’s a win for campaigners,
who warned from the start
about Milo and his ilk – and
shows that banishing white
supremacists from public life
actually works.
HUSNA RIZVI
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 STEVE MUNDAY
THE BIG STORY
TRADE

IS TRADE IN
TURMOIL A CHANCE
FOR JUSTICE?
The global free trade system is being battered like never before.
Can any good come of it, asks Vanessa Baird in the first of an
eight-article exploration?
THE BIG STORY
admit: I’m conflicted.
I
Recently, I was on a march calling for a
people’s vote on the final deal for Britain
to exit the European Union (EU).
There were the usual young people,
with faces painted in the blue and gold of
the EU flag, and the now familiar chants of
‘Bollocks to Brexit’ and ‘EU, we love you’.
The first I was happy to go along
with. The second – well, that was more
troublesome.
I value cultural diversity and the social,
labour, environmental and equality rights
and protections or the peace that have
come with EU membership. I am deter-
mined to fight the dog-whistle racism,
xenophobia, lies, misinformation and
sheer criminality that has underpinned
and surrounded the pro-Brexit campaign.
But I’m also acutely aware of the nega-
tive power of the world’s biggest free trade
bloc. For many around the world, the
experience of globalization and the doc-
trine of free trade upheld and exemplified
by the EU has been far from ‘lovely’.
While trade liberalization was a boon
for big business, able now to chase cheap
labour and exploit newly opened markets,
it has been bad news for many millions of
ordinary citizens around the world.
And the EU, like any big trade bloc, has
used its power to get its way with weaker
parties, especially if they fell for the free-
trade delusion – ‘the more trade the better
for all’ – and failed to protect the basic
needs of their own citizens.
For sure, many people – especially in
East Asia – have benefited from globali-
zation. Living standards have risen with
increased manufacturing and trading
and many have been lifted out of rural
poverty into a new industrial, middle
class of consumers.
But around the world there have been
millions of losers too, who have lost their
jobs and livelihoods when local markets
were flooded with imports from richer
nations, who have found the price of
essential utilities like electricity and
water rocketing when public services
were opened up to rich-world providers.
Often fledgling industries could not
sustain the onslaught. Shockingly, sub-
Saharan Africa is less industrialized
today than it was in the 1980s.1 Unem-
ployment and shrinking opportunity
have produced the so-called ‘migrant
crisis’ out of Africa – a crisis that the
EU has been signally unable to respond
to collectively, fairly, humanely and
appropriately.
Back in 2005 I attended mass protests
against the World Trade Organization
(WTO) during its ministerial meetings
in Hong Kong. I remember one chant in
particular: ‘Junk, junk, junk the WTO!’
Most gathered here were environmental-
ists, leftists, trade justice and social move-
ment activists. Indian and South Korean
farmers joined forces with Filipina
maids, Brazilian environmentalists with
South African miners, Western NGOs
with Bangladeshi garment makers and
trade unionists. All agreed that free trade
was far from free or fair and the WTO,
the multilateral platform for negotiat-
ing these free-trade deals, was not a level
playing field.
A big issue was ‘sovereignty’ – food
sovereignty in particular. Powerful
nations, including the US and those of the
EU, were using a variety of dirty tricks to
subsidize their own farmers and dump
their excess production on poorer coun-
tries in the South, ruining farmers’ lives
and livelihoods. The result was to be seen
in many thousands of farmer suicides.
Well, ‘sovereignty’ has become a key
word today – especially in the agonies of
Brexit. And ‘de-industrialized’ can now
be used to describe many ‘left behind’
parts of the US and Britain.
The privatization of services by
foreign transnationals, like that which
caused riots in Bolivia, is now a concern
of any British person trying to save the
National Health Service from, say, US
private healthcare and medical insurance
vultures.
Rich-world backlash
The issues have finally hit home in the
rich world too. And now, bizarrely, it’s
the president of the United States who
is calling the WTO names. It is a ‘disas-
ter’, he says, and is threatening to take his
country out of the organization that the
US did so much to set up – and which has
served its interests so well for decades.
Today, complaints about globalization,
free trade and its emblematic bodies are
coming from the mouths of the populist
Right, leaving leftists scratching their
heads and wondering what to do.
‘They ate our lunch,’ is how academic
and veteran campaigner Walden Bello
puts it. ‘It was the non-establishment Left
– the Left of social movements – that
began and developed the critique of glo-
balization, neoliberalism and free trade
in the 1990s and the 2000s... The extreme
Right... opportunistically expropriated
 ‘The extreme Right rebranded
themselves as anti-neoliberals, and
now they’re eating our lunch’
our message, rebranded themselves as
anti-neoliberals opposed to the Centre-
Right as well as the Centre-Left, and now
they’re eating our lunch.’ 2
British trade justice campaigner John
Hilary sees it more positively: ‘I think
the debate has been won. Everybody is
now recognizing that untrammelled free
trade causes massive problems. What was
interesting about Trump’s election cam-
paign was that he actually took up the
mantra that we would take to be from the
social movements and said “yeah, it has
been absolutely no good for workers in
America”.’
There are important differences,
though. Donald Trump is not concerned
with giving farmers, workers and con-
sumers in the Global South a fair deal;
he’s not driven in any way by internation-
alist solidarity.
For him it’s purely about putting
‘America First’ and seeing foreigners –
be they Mexican, Chinese, Canadian or
European – as rivals and enemies.
The complex game of negotiat-
ing trade has become a bellicose affair
of Trumpian threats and tweets. His
methods have been described as ‘going
fishing with hand grenades’.
The tariff war the White House started
with China last year threatens to destabi-
lize the entire rules-based global trading
system. Many would agree that the WTO
system is badly in need of reform, but
Trump has set about it with the subtlety
of a wrecking ball.
By refusing to recognize new appoint-
ments to the WTO body that settles
trade disputes between countries, the
US is effectively sabotaging a key func-
tion of the organization. If the problem
is not resolved, the multilateral body
may become paralysed. It’s an existen-
tial crisis.
Centre-Left economist Joseph Stiglitz
has seen the trouble brewing in the global
trading system for some time. He first
wrote Globalization and its Discontents 20
years ago, recently updating it to include
the impact and implications of Trumpian
policies. His question now is: Can globali-
zation be saved?
‘Trump has leveraged some real griev-
ances,’ notes Dani Rodrik, a Harvard
economist and trenchant critic of what
he calls hyper-globalization. But, he also
notes, ‘as Trump’s presidency has already
amply revealed, the inchoate discontent
around globalization can be easily sub-
verted to an altogether different agenda,
more in line with elite interests.’1
The same applies to Brexit. The past
two years have shown no sign that its
most prominent leaders and champions
– people like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-
Mogg, Liam Fox and Nigel Farage – have
any plans or concern for the ‘left behind’
of Britain’s rural shires or post-industrial
urban wastelands, many of whom voted
‘Leave’. On the contrary, elite Brexiteers
are bent on pulling the UK out of the
world’s largest rules-based free-trade bloc
in order to pursue even more free trade,
but without the rules that help protect
citizen health or the jobs of ordinary folk.
Their goal appears to be to turn Britain
into a beachhead for the US’s particular
brand of ‘savage capitalism’, even willing
the ‘shock doctrine’ of a hard Brexit.
Meanwhile, nervousness abounds in
international trade circles. At the opening
of the 2018 G20 summit in Buenos Aires,
WTO chief Roberto Azevedo said: ‘I would
say this is the worst crisis for the whole
multilateral trading system since 1947.’3
The rules are being torn up... Or are
they?
Do the current disruptions, wherever
they come from, present an opportunity
for positive change?
And what are people who care about
global justice to do?
These are just some of the questions
I plan to find answers to on the journey
into the maelstrom of global trade in the
era of Trump and Brexit. O
1 Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade, Princeton, 2018. 2 TNI,
Walden Bello, 25 July 2017, nin.tl/alternatives-trade 3 BBC
News, 30 Nov 2018, nin.tl/WTO-chief-warns-crisis
WHAT IS...?
ACFTA – African Continental Free Trade
Area, framework to create a new 55-nation
single African market for goods and services
to be ratified in 2019.
AFTA – ASEAN Free Trade Area comprising
10 countries: Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand. Vietnam,
Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia.
BIT– Bilateral Investment Treaty, establishing
the terms and conditions for foreign direct
investment by nationals and companies of
one state in another.
CETA – EU-Canada Comprehensive
Economic and Trade Agreement.
CPTPP – Comprehensive and Progressive
Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership,
previously known as TPP and now
also known as TPP11 or TPP-11, being
negotiated between Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico,
New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.
EPAs – Economic Partnership Agreements
between the EU and African, Caribbean and
Pacific countries and regions.
ISDS – Investor-State Dispute Settlement
mechanism, giving investors special rights
to sue states. Has also spawned the ICS
(Investor Court System) and MIC (Multilateral
Investment Court).
Mercosur – Trade bloc of Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Pacific Alliance – Trade bloc formed by
Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
RCEP – Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership, being negotiated between
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea,
India and China and 10 ASEAN countries.
TiSA – Trade in Services Agreement,
proposed international treaty between 23
parties, including the EU and the US.
TRIPs – Trade Related Intellectual Property
Rights, international legal agreement
between all the member nations of the WTO.
TTIP – US-EU Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership, now defunct,
trashed after 20 rounds and much protest.
UNCTAD – United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development.
USMCA – United States, Mexico and Canada
free trade agreement, re-negotiated NAFTA.
WTO – The World Trade Organization,
both a multilateral forum for negotiations
and enforcer of rules-based global trading
system, was set up in 1995 and comprises
164 member states.
 THE BIG STORY

A RUSTBELT
ROMANCE
Enter the ‘new protectionism’ – and Trump’s trade wars.

ou can visit the steel mill town of

Y Gary, Indiana, as a tourist. Rust-

belt Ruin Tours will take you to the
vestiges of Gary Screw & Bolt Factory,
formerly a major employer, for example.
Since 1980 more than six million –
that’s more than a third of all – manu-
facturing jobs in the US have vanished.
Much of this loss is concentrated in the
Midwest.
The received wisdom of globalization
– and its centrepiece, free trade – is that it
produces some winners and some losers
in the short term, but in the longer term
we are all winners. All boats will rise on
the tide of free trade.
Well, it didn’t happen in Gary – which
also happens to be the town where Nobel
prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz
grew up. Every year, for the past five
decades, he has gone back for his school
reunion.
During one such event he detected
in many former schoolmates who had
stayed in the area, ‘a sense of bitterness...
They had a feeling that the system was
unfair, rigged. I saw in my former class-
mates what the statistics had been telling
me for years.’1
Those statistics weren’t just about
jobs. Life expectancy in the US Midwest
had stopped increasing – education and
health services were in decay and crime
STEVE MUNDAY

was up. Recent years have also witnessed

an epidemic of opioid addiction in areas
‘left behind’ by globalization. The paral-
lels with some post-industrial towns in
 ‘When tariffs are used by richer countries
on top of all that they have already got,
they are a way of bullying’
the north of England, such as Sunder-
land and Middlesbrough – where citizens
voted to leave the EU – are striking.
Who was to blame for the misfor-
tune of the ‘left behind’? ‘Immigrants’
said the nationalist Right and its media.
And people in foreign countries who had
‘stolen our jobs’.
The hitherto dry topic of interna-
tional trade leapt into daily conversa-
tion. US journalists reported people in
the Midwest attributing their woes to one
word – ‘NAFTA’. For many Britons, bat-
tered by years of government-imposed
austerity, that word was ‘EU’.
In the most deprived areas, disgrun-
tled Americans and Britons felt they had
lost everything. All they had left was their
sense of national pride, which had been
artfully reignited by patriotic-sounding
politicians and media outlets.
Trump told US voters that China was
out to ‘rape’ the US economy; that Ameri-
can trade negotiators had been ‘snook-
ered’ and had been given a ‘bad deal’.
For Britons it was metropolitan elites in
league with crafty Brussels Eurocrats,
rather than the post-crash politics of aus-
terity, that had cheated them.
Slapping on tariffs
Trump did not tarry. On his first day in
office he used an executive order to with-
draw the US from the Obama-era Trans-
Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.
He set about renegotiating NAFTA, the
controversial North American Free Trade
Agreement with Canada and Mexico, and
US trade deals with other countries.
Then he started a trade war, impos-
ing tariffs on steel and aluminium enter-
ing the US. Aimed primarily at China,
it also directly affected the EU, Canada,
Mexico and South Africa. Steel would be
subjected to a 25-per-cent import levy;
aluminium to 10 per cent. American
steel and aluminium producers cheered;
shares in US Steel and AK Steel rallied.
International trade representative
Robert Lighthizer cited ‘national secu-
rity’ under Section 232 of US law as the
rationale for imposing the tariffs, which
usefully provided exemption from
important trade treaties and review by
the WTO.
The EU retaliated swiftly, putting
several symbols of Americana – includ-
ing Harley-Davidson motorcycles and
Levi jeans – on its tit-for-tat list of
imports to be taxed.
The US administration turned its guns
on China again. Lighthizer commented:
‘Years of talking about these problems with
China has not worked... China’s unprec-
edented and unfair trade practices are a
serious challenge not just to the [US] but to
our allies and partners around the world.’2
China is accused of: not being ‘open’
enough to foreign business; ‘forcing’
technological transfer by making access
to its market contingent on handing over
sensitive technological know-how; ‘steal-
ing’ US intellectual property; giving
special terms to its own state-run compa-
nies; and ‘manipulating’ its currency to
make Chinese goods cheaper. (See ‘Open
China?’ page 24.)
But it’s the trade imbalance between
the two countries that bugs Trump most.
In 2017 China exported $505 billion
worth of goods to the US but imported
only $130 billion worth from it.
At the time of writing, both sides have
imposed tariffs on billions of dollars’
worth of goods. The US has hit $250
billion of Chinese goods with tariffs
since July 2018, and China has retaliated
by imposing duties on $110 billion of US
products including soy, beef and poultry.
China has also filed a complaint with
the WTO against the US for starting ‘the
biggest trade war in economic history’.
Following December talks between
presidents Trump and Xi at the G20
summit in Argentina, the two agreed to
suspend escalating the trade war for 90
days. The US had been threatening to hit
the remaining $267 billion of Chinese
exports with tariffs of between 10 and 25
per cent in January 2019. China agreed it
would buy more agricultural, energy and
industrial goods from the US but did not
specify how much.
Fair protection, unfair
protectionism
But is Donald Trump wrong to try to
protect American jobs and livelihoods?
Trade justice campaigners have
long argued for the right of developing
countries to apply protectionist trade
measures (or ‘trade distortions’ in the
free-trade lingo) to defend local agricul-
ture, fledgling industries or basic services.
‘But when tariffs are used by richer
countries on top of all that they have
already got, they are a way of bullying,’
says Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now.
All major world economies of the 20th
century grew up behind tariffs or state
subsidies to protect domestic employ-
ment or keep basic food items affordable.
Economist Dani Rodrik observes: ‘The
guiding principle that governed until the
1970s was that nations needed the policy
space within which they could manage
their economies and protect their social
contracts.’3
All that changed when free-market
liberalism and economic globalization
became the dominant ideology that
swept the world. The US and its allies
went all out for hyper-globalization.
Governments believed that ‘the market’
had its own wisdom and interfering with
it was wrong. Trade unions were legis-
latively weakened; national companies
became transnational corporations, free
to shift production to parts of the world
where labour was cheaper, and using
their international status to avoid tax on
an industrial scale. Corporations and the
super-rich saw their wealth grow while
others saw equality shrink and wages
stagnate, especially in the US.
The emerging economies that bene-
fited most from globalization were those I
THE BIG STORY
that didn’t go for full-blown, free-market
liberalization but had a more cautious,
selective and protective approach.
China, South Korea and India all
kept parts of their markets closed while
opening other areas to free trade and
foreign investment. They did not ‘let
their enthusiasm for free trade and free
flows of capital get the better of them’, as
Rodrik puts it.
For many years critics have com-
plained that free-trade agreements were
unfair. And they are, says Stiglitz: ‘Unfair
in favour of America and other advanced
countries that had created the system and
shaped its institutions in the second half
of the 20th century.’
‘It was called free trade,’ he writes, ‘but
it was really “managed trade” – managed
for corporate and financial interests...
Under these agreements knowledge
moved freely but short-term capital
moved more freely. Agricultural sub-
sidies for rich farmers were allowed in
developed countries but subsidies to help
the poor developing countries to catch up
were frowned upon.’
The benefits of globalization could
have been shared, he says, but ‘to put
it bluntly, the winners as a group were
selfish.’1
Now the US is not winning as it was
and China is about to knock it off the top
spot as the world’s leading economy.
BIG COVERT
PROTECTIONISTS*
(*by number of protectionist/trade-distorting
interventions between 2008 and October 2018)
1538
1147
822
US GERMANY INDIA
China (414) came below UK (417)
Source: Global Trade Alert, 2018
He promised the jobs were
‘all coming back. They’re all
coming back. Don’t move.
Don’t sell your house’
Are Trump’s tactics working?
In September the President tweeted:
‘Tariffs have put the US in a very strong
bargaining position, with Billions of
Dollars, and Jobs, flowing into our
Country – and yet cost increases have
thus far been almost unnoticeable.’
A few weeks later, it was reported that
duty on steel and aluminium imports had
cost US companies about $545 million in
September alone.
By November, General Motors announ-
ced it would be shedding almost 15,000
jobs and closing four plants in the US.
Tariffs were costing the company $1
billion. Republican Tim Ryan tweeted:
‘I implore President Trump to keep his
word when he came to the Mahoning
Valley last year and promised the jobs
were “all coming back. They’re all coming
back. Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”’
Soy farmers, hard hit by China’s retal-
iatory tariffs, were promised $12 billion
in state aid to offset their losses. But Illi-
nois soy and corn farmer Lynn Rohr-
scheib said she would have to let staff go if
the stand-off with China continued. ‘We
don’t want handouts. We want to trade.
We want to sell the crop.’4
And China’s trade surplus to the US
actually rose by 10 per cent in September
2018, to a record high of $34 billion for
that month, as US manufacturers rushed
to fill their inventories before more tariffs
kicked in. 5
Tariffs are a blunt instrument and
trade is complicated, especially in today’s
world of complex supply chains. ‘No-one
wins in a trade war,’ the saying goes. US
business and even senior advisers in the
White House are worried about Trump’s
tariff war, though he does enjoy consider-
able support for confronting China.
Can his strategy help American
workers? Not likely. Trump’s simplistic
view sets worker against worker, farmer
against farmer, North against South,
when for decades the actual battle lines
have been elsewhere – between worker
and corporate capital.
And that’s where they lie today – even
in the new project that Trump hails as
the great symbol of re-industrializing
America. The Taiwanese electronics cor-
poration Foxconn is to build a massive
facility in rustbelt Wisconsin, encouraged
by a controversial $4-billion package of
tax breaks. But in a recent BBC interview,
a company spokesperson let slip that
what really excited him about the move
to the US was the shift towards robotics
it signified.
Trump’s promise to revive the rust-
belt and bring the jobs home has a strong
emotional appeal to his base, but it is built
on nostalgia. The ‘glory days’ of US man-
ufacturing are over. But there is a silver
lining, perhaps, to Trump’s protectionist
renegotiation of NAFTA.
In the new US, Mexico and Canada
free-trade deal (under the catchy name
of USMCA) there is a labour clause stipu-
lating that workers in Mexico producing
components for the automotive parts
exported to the US must be paid at least
$16 an hour. This is progressive indeed –
unless, of course, a US robot can make it
more cheaply than a Mexican worker.
Another positive surprise in USMCA is
that it does not include the hated Inves-
tor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism
(ISDS) – the topic of the next article.
1 Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents Revisited,
Penguin, 2017. 2 US Trade Office, June, 2018. 3 Dani Rodrik,
Straight Talk on Trade, 2018. 4 New York Times, 19 Nov 2018,
nin.tl/farming-trade-war-fallout 5 South China Morning Post,
12 Oct 2018 nin.tl/China-trade-surplus-hits-record

STEVE MUNDAY
INVESTOR REX
The beast that won’t lie down and die – the ISDS ‘ investor
protection’ racket is still with us, in all but name.
magine your government does not
I want you to die a horrible and prevent-
able death. It has listened to calls for
action and put in place legislation to help
protect you and other citizens.
But those new rules might affect the
profits of a company dishing out the
product that is risking your health. And
that company has special rights – that
you and I do not have – to sue your gov-
ernment for millions, maybe billions, not
only for loss of current revenue, but also
what the company speculates might be its
possible future revenue loss.
Actually, you don’t need to imagine
any of this. It’s the reality:
• In 2014, US tobacco giant Philip Morris
sued Uruguay for $25 million for the
introduction of graphic warnings on
cigarette packages and other control
measures to promote public health.1
• Swedish energy giant Vattenfall filed a
lawsuit for $6 billion after Angela Merkel
announced a phase-out from nuclear
power following the 2011 Fukushima
accident. 2
• TransCanada sued the US for former
President Obama’s decision to reject the
Keystone XL pipeline as part of the US’s
(then) commitment to tackling climate
change. It dropped its whopping $15 billion
lawsuit after Donald Trump reversed the
climate-friendly decision in 2017.3
All these actions and hundreds more
were made possible through ISDS – or
Investor-State Dispute Settlement –
mechanisms that have been written
into about 3,000 trade and investment
agreements since the 1990s. At first gov-
ernments did not realize how bad they
were. Then, from the year 2000 onwards,
corporations wised up and a surge of law-
suits followed.
Energy and fossil-fuel companies
have been the most aggressive users of
these investor powers, under the Energy
Charter Treaty. But many others are in
on the game, including pharmaceutical
giants.
This creates ‘regulatory chill’ – gov-
ernments becoming afraid to pass laws
for the public good that might upset
international corporations.
For speculative high-risk investors,
ISDS can be a kind of insurance policy,
says Cecilia Olivet, a Uruguayan aca-
demic and researcher with the Trans-
National Institute. For example, Spain
is currently being sued for pulling back
from renewable energy subsidies – not
by renewable energy companies but by
hedge funds which invested in them.
Good news
Now, the good news is that public revul-
sion against this affront to natural justice
has borne fruit. The collapse in 2016 of
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between
the EU and US was thanks largely to civil-
society campaigns and Germany decid-
ing to reject the inclusion of ISDS.
Attracting rather less media attention
have been the painstaking activities of
governments, especially in the Global
South, to review their trade agreements
and terminate those that contain the
ISDS mechanism.
South Africa, prompted by some
alarming cases, took the lead. In 2007 the
Italian and Luxembourg investors Piero
Foresti et al lodged a claim against South
Africa for $350 million. Their griev-
ance: a new mining law contained anti-
discrimination rules from the country’s
post-apartheid Black Economic Empow-
erment Act, requiring mining companies
to transfer a portion of their shares to
black investors.4
Mustaqeem De Gama, a trade consult-
ant in South Africa’s mission to the WTO,
was a key player in reviewing the coun-
try’s trade and investment agreements
and devising a better idea.
‘We created a model that other coun-
tries have followed,’ he says. These
countries include Nigeria, Sri Lanka,
Indonesia, India, Ecuador and, most
recently, Tanzania.
‘We didn’t just uproot the system,’
explains the careful and softly spoken
De Gama. A domestic act was created I
THE BIG STORY
to ensure that foreign investors got
fair and non-discriminatory treat-
ment in national courts. There is also
an early warning and dispute-avoidance
mechanism.
Countries are often told, by their more
powerful trading partners, that they
will not get foreign investment unless
they sign up to these investor-protection
clauses.
But research from India, South Africa
and Ecuador shows that this is not the
case. There is no correlation between a
bilateral treaty which includes ISDS and
getting investment.
Another good sign is the growing
acceptance, within the EU at least, that
the system has to be reformed.
Mutant mechanism
The bad news is that the reforms make
little difference. The toxic acronym might
have been dropped and the EU may have
declared the ‘death of ISDS’, but the
mechanism is alive and kicking. 5
‘It has not disappeared,’ says Cecilia
Olivet. It just mutated into the EU’s Inves-
tor Court System (ICS) which is now
embedded in new agreements – CETA,
the Comprehensive Economic and Trade
Agreement recently negotiated between
Canada and the EU, for example; and
MXEU, the ‘modernized’ deal between
Mexico and the EU. Investor protection is
also embedded in a new EU-Japan deal and
in a recent agreement between the EU and
Singapore. The ink had barely dried on this
deal when British vacuum-cleaner tycoon
and Brexiteer nationalist James Dyson
announced that he would be making elec-
tric cars in Singapore, not Britain, after all.
It was a timely, if ironic, move – just before
Britain was due to leave the EU.
To be fair, the ICS is in some ways an
improvement. ‘It is less ad hoc and there
is greater transparency than with ISDS,’
says Olivet. ‘But it is still biased in favour
of corporations.’
A joint investigation undertaken
by a group of European and Canadian
850
THE NUMBER OF KNOWN ISDS CASES
BROUGHT TO DATE.8
The toxic acronym might have been
dropped and the EU may have
declared the ‘death of ISDS’, but the
mechanism is alive and kicking
institutions put the ICS to the test by
looking at what would happen to some of
the most egregious cases under the ISDS
system were they subjected to the ICS
instead.
The report found: ‘Every one of these
controversial disputes could still be
launched and likely prosper under ICS.
There is nothing in the proposed rules
that prevents companies from challeng-
ing government decisions to protect
health and the environment. And there
is nothing to prevent arbitrators from
deciding in their favour, ordering states
to pay billions in taxpayer compensation
for legitimate public policy measures.’6
Even if they win cases against them,
the cost to sued countries can be massive.
Lawyers have a vested interest in bring-
ing cases and corporations have ever
deeper pockets. Some individual corpo-
rations today have wealth exceeding the
GDP of several countries.7
Though the ICS is in its infancy, there
is already recognition at official, politi-
cal and academic levels that it is flawed.
So, enter another variant: the Multilat-
eral Investment Court. (If you have lost
the will to read on – or even live – my
apologies.)
This newcomer is the brainchild of
the EU and Canada. It is much like the
ICS but establishes a permanent body
to decide investment disputes. It would
adjudicate disputes under future and
existing investment treaties and would
replace the Investment Court System
included in the recent EU-level trade and
investment agreements.
Yet again, it does nothing to tackle the
issue of investor powers.
‘The reforms are a response to the
backlash, an effort to legitimize and keep
the system running,’ says Olivet. ‘When
people see the impacts they will see it for
what it is – a rigged system.’
In case you think this is all just another
evil trick of Western capitalism, similar
investor powers have crept into the
China-led Regional Comprehensive Eco-
nomic Partnership (RCEP) – the biggest
and most secretive trade deal being nego-
tiated in the world today.
And they also exist in the Compre-
hensive and Progressive Agreement
for Trans-Pacific Partnership (a resus-
citated version of TPP, also known as
TPP11) between 11 countries, including
Japan, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa,
Canada, Peru and Malaysia. There is talk
of post-Brexit Britain joining too.
Tipping point
There is a solution, however.
Scrap them. Investor protections –
whatever their names – have no place in
trade agreements.
If companies have a grievance they
can always have recourse to the national
court systems like anyone else.
‘ISDS has become a core component
of trade deals and for me the most wor-
rying part. Investment as a whole should
be taken out of trade deals,’ says Nick
Dearden of Global Justice Now, one of the
organizations taking part in a renewed
campaign.
‘Ecuador, Indonesia and others have
ripped up bilateral deals that include
ISDS, saying “we are not doing this any
more”. It feels like a tipping point.’
Former New Internationalist co-editor
and regular contributor Richard Swift,
who has been looking at this topic from
Canada, puts it succinctly: ‘The investor/
state system is a mug’s game and should
be rejected along with any “free trade”
agreement that hosts it.’ O
1 NPR, Goats and Soda, 15 September 2014, nin.tl/Philip-
Morris-sues-Uruguay 2 IEEE, Spectrum, 12 November
2014, nin.tl/Vattenfall-sues-Germany 3 Business Insider, 28
February 2017, nin.tl/Trump-approves-Keystone 4 Labour,
ISDS Platform, November 2015, nin.tl/Piero-Foresti-vs-
South-Africa 5 Global Arbitration News, 17 July 2017,
nin.tl/ISDS-dead-says-EU 6 TNI, 19 April 2016, nin.tl/ICS-
put-to-test 7 Global Justice Now, 17 October 2018, nin.tl/
corporates-richer-than-countries 8 Labour Party (UK), Just
Trading, October 2018.
 t’s not often you get to see it in action:
THE
I a secret video captures an almost comi-
cally sleazy fixer spilling the beans
about the tricks of his trade. His name is
Mark Littlewood and he heads the Insti-
tute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
The run-up to Brexit has been a busy
DARK
time for special-interest lobbying or, to
put it more bluntly, ‘cash for access’. Not
that they call it that, though. The IEA is
officially a ‘thinktank’ and even a ‘charity’
registered with the hard-to-fathom
Charity Commission.
Anyway, one of Greenpeace’s Unearthed
ARTS
videos shows IEA personnel telling an
undercover reporter, posing as a lobbyist
for the US meat industry, about the scale
of access their organization has to offer
its clients. Four members of the House
of Lords in a morning, for example, five
MPs for lunch, then a couple of key min-
istries (for tea, presumably), they outline,
Lobbyists, chlorinated charitably.1
The IEA claims to have no politi-
chicken and tricksy cal position on Brexit, but is, Littlewood
business in the fog of says, ‘unbelievably well connected’ to
Brexit. top Brexiteer politicians, including trade
secretary Liam Fox, environment min-
ister Michael Gove and former foreign
secretary Boris Johnson. Its corporate
clients are the type that want safety leg-
islation watered down, especially the sort
of EU laws that have been hampering, for
example, the import of US chlorinated
chicken or hormone-boosted beef. It can
get stories placed in the media on behalf
of the alcohol industry, has been helping
US gambling interests and counts the fos-
sil-fuel giant BP among its clients. 2
The IEA is coy about where it gets its
money from. But according to a Guardian
STEVE MUNDAY
freedom of information investigation, it
is one of four rightwing British groups,
including Legatum, the Adam Smith
Institute, and Policy Exchange, to have
received $5.6 million from anonymous
donors via US fundraising bodies. The
American Friends of the IEA is reported
to have transferred $1.6 million to the
IEA in the past decade. 3
Brexit is a massive disruption and a
gift for lobbyists and law firms. Thou-
sands of laws are up for a rethink and new
deals have to be struck. The job of design-
ing workable policies has fallen increas-
ingly to private-sector lobbyists, notes
Tamasin Cave, a campaigner with the
transparency website Spinwatch.4
Take the ‘Ideal UK-US Free Trade
Agreement’, a blueprint prepared by
the Initiative for Free Trade (an outfit
founded by Eurosceptic MEP and leader
of Vote Leave, Daniel Hannan) in con-
junction with the Cato Institute, a right-
wing US libertarian thinktank funded
by the Koch family. 5 Also consulted were
the IEA and the Adam Smith Institute, I
Brexit is a massive
disruption and a
gift for lobbyists
and law firms
THE BIG STORY

OPEN
in Britain, and the American Enterprise
Institute, the Competitive Enterprise
Institute and Heritage Foundation in
the US. Researchers enjoyed exceptional
access to ministers in the UK Department
for International Trade and the Depart-
ment for Exiting the European Union.

CHINA?
Presented as a model for future trade
post-Brexit, the plan argues for a deal
that would loosen government controls
on capital and data flows and be ‘more
liberalizing than any other free-trade
agreement in the world’. It would remove
tariffs and throw out the precaution-
ary principle that has guided much EU
regulation on pesticides, chemicals in China is making promises,
cosmetics, GM food, hormones in meat but keeping them may be hard…
and so on. And, a big prize, it would
fully open up the NHS to private foreign
competition.
In the confusion of Brexit, the rising
demand for insider access and informa-
tion has seen many ex-ministers and offi-
cials taking well-paid posts with British
and US lobbying and law firms.
It’s not much more salubrious in Brus-
sels. Talks between the UK and EU are
largely closed to citizen scrutiny. But
corporate lobbyists have been there in
force, with scores of representatives hina will not close its door to the
from the big banks helping negotiators
on both sides of the table, according to
a joint report from a group of civil-soci-
‘C world and will only become more
and more open,’ said Chinese
president Xi Jingping at a trade fair in
ety organizations including Corporate Shanghai in late 2018.
Europe Observatory.6 ‘Protectionism and unilateralism are
The UK financial sector has ‘brought rising. Multilateralism and the free-trade
out the big lobbying guns,’ says the system are under threat,’ he warned,
report. ‘Their lobbying offensive aims managing to avoid the name on every-
to influence a future trade deal between body’s mind.
the two sides that promotes the interests The speech, a few weeks ahead of a
of the financial sector, not just in London planned meeting between Xi and US
but in the EU27 member states as well.’ president Donald Trump, was designed to
If their proposals became reality, the be sweet music to the ears of free-traders.1
report says, they could block a tax on In contrast to a petulant Trump,
transactions, stop attempts to make big launching trade wars like a toddler hurling
banks safer and leave governments open toys out of his playpen, Xi has been
to paying out huge fines awarded by sounding like the grown-up in the room –
investment courts. a supporter of the rules-based multilateral
One thing of which we can be sure – system epitomized by the WTO.
in the fog of Brexit, the dark arts have At the 2017 World Economic Forum in
become that much darker. O Davos, Xi had reflected: ‘There was a time
when China had doubts about economic
1 Greenpeace, Unearthed, 29 July 2018 nin.tl/IEA-access-
hard-Brexit 2 Greenpeace, Unearthed, 30 July 2018 nin.tl/
globalization and was not sure whether
BP-gambling-fund-IEA 3 The Guardian, ‘American donors it should join the World Trade Organiza-
raising millions to fund rightwing thinktanks in UK’, 29
September 2018 4 Unlock Democracy and Spinwatch, tion. But we came to the conclusion that
‘Lobbyists: Brexit’s Biggest Beneficiaries’, August 2018 integration into the global economy is
nin.tl/Lobbyists-Brexit-beneficiaries 5 Cato Institute, Ideal
UK-US Free Trade Agreement, September 2018 nin.tl/ideal- a historical trend. To grow its economy,
free-trade 6 Corporate Europe Observatory, October 2018 China must have the courage to swim in
nin.tl/Brexit-finance-secret-lobby
the vast ocean of the global market.’ 2
Courage ‘to swim in the vast ocean’
has not been wanting in the Chinese

STEVE MUNDAY
leadership. Take the ‘Belt and Road’
– China’s big plan to link 70 countries
by land and sea and the most ambitious
geopolitical initiative of our age – for
example. ‘It is,’ writes China expert
Bruno Maçães, ‘the Chinese plan to
build a new world order replacing the
US-led international system.’ 3
But when it comes to action on
opening up its own market to others,
China is more cautious.
‘China wants to be recognized under
WTO rules as a market economy but is
not behaving like one,’ says Isabel Hilton
of the NGO Chinadialogue.
The West accuses China of ‘non-
market’ strategies, such as using state
subsidies to over-produce steel and alu-
minium; restricting the import of foreign
goods and services, and keeping many
sectors closed off to foreign investment.
Trump’s complaints about Chinese
trade practices have been the loudest
and most undiplomatic – unless you
think ‘rape’ is a diplomatic way of
describing a trade imbalance. But the
underlying complaints are not new. For
years European and US chambers of
commerce have noted ‘administrative’
and other barriers to those wanting to
do business in China.
The Chinese have announced reform,
‘but concrete actions are pretty hard to
spot,’ comments Hilton.
Whether Trump’s efforts will succeed
where others have failed remains to be
seen. China has more to lose in a trade
war with the US simply because its
exports to the Western power far exceed
its imports from it. In a tit-for-tat spat,
the US has more firepower.
A trade war also interferes with
China’s big plans for the future – such as
‘Made in China 2025’. Unveiled in 2015,
this strategic plan aims to lift the coun-
try’s industries – from robotics, aero-
space and new materials to ‘new energy’
vehicles – up the value chain, replac-
ing imports with local products and
building global champions able to take
on the Western giants in cutting-edge
technologies.
Unsurprisingly, the US, which has
long accused China of stealing intel-
lectual property, feels threatened. But,
in a sense, the West let it happen. Suc-
cessive Chinese leaders pressed foreign
business to transfer technology and
expertise, especially in aeronautics,
electronics, cars, high-speed trains and
nuclear energy. In exchange, the Western
companies got a cheap work force and a
developing-world government that was
willing to ignore the environmental costs
of their activities.
China consequently has managed
to develop its own technology compa-
nies – Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, Weibo,
WeChat – on its own terms. And the
country’s 802 million internet users are
mostly inaccessible to the Silicon Valley
giants that dominate the rest of the world
– Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. 2
‘Bringing China down’
Is China really ready to open up? It may
be hard. The more Trump attacks China
the more it confirms that the US is just
trying to bring China down – a view
endorsed by the US-requested arrest
of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive of
China’s smart phone giant, Huawei, in
Canada, for alleged US sanctions busting.
‘Don’t forget this has been the narrative
since 1989,’ observes Isabel Hilton. ‘It’s the
thing that justifies the continued rule of
the party: “China was a great power until
foreigners brought China to its knees. The
Party has restored China to its former
and deserved greatness but the foreigner
is always out to get us.” [So] every hostile
move that the US makes against China
feeds into that story.’
China is much more open to travelling
about the world with its Belt and Road
initiative – exporting its model of devel-
opment in Africa, Latin America, South-
east Asia and beyond.
If successful, Belt and Road will result
in a huge increase in Chinese power,
locking at least a third of the world’s
countries into investment with the eco-
nomic giant. The driver for Belt and Road
is excess capacity in China’s core indus-
tries following the country’s industrial
revolution.
‘The infrastructure companies are
maxed out on pouring concrete at home;
they need new markets,’ says Hilton.
‘They have a very powerful combination
of state, financial and political backing.’
Some on the Left, such as trade expert
and veteran negotiator Yash Tandon,
have welcomed the arrival of China on
the scene in the Global South, pointing
out that it is creating a lot more useful
infrastructure than the US or Europe
ever did in their exploitative quest for
raw materials.
But China’s involvement in Africa,
Latin America and Asia-Pacific is conten-
tious. Nations of the South have become
saddled with debt in exchange for infra-
structure, sometimes of doubtful value.
There are warnings of a new debt crisis I
THE BIG STORY
Unlike the US, China has been
good at getting a lot of what it
wants without firing a shot
in Africa, which received $60 billion
worth of Chinese investment in 2018.
The World Bank now rates 18 African
countries at ‘high risk of debt distress’,
topped by Zambia, Djibouti and Republic
of Congo, all heavily indebted to China.4
The environmental impacts of Belt
and Road are also alarming. China
has made admirable progress toward
renewables, mass-producing cheap solar
and wind technology. But this is not the
model being exported to the developing
world. Rather, China’s traditional indus-
trial capacity is being used to open up
new coal, oil and other climate-wrecking
sources.
US AND CHINA’S TARIFFS
AGAINST EACH OTHER
US IMPORTS FROM CHINA
Tariffs already applied in 2018 Threatened additional tariffs
$250bn
$505bn
2017 total import of goods (most recent annual figure)
CHINESE IMPORTS FROM THE US
Tariffs already applied in 2018
$110bn
$130bn
2017 total import of goods
(most recent annual figure)
Source: BBC News
Meanwhile, China’s trade with and
investment in weaker parties increasingly
spills over into geopolitical demands: last
year Burkina Faso, El Salvador and the
Dominican Republic all broke ties with
Taiwan. Coercive commercial tactics
may be used when dealing with the not-
so-weak, as seen when Britain tried and
failed to pull out of a Chinese contract
to renovate Hinkley Point nuclear power
station or when Argentina tried to end a
contract for a big dam project.
More than trade
The background fear is that increased
hostility between the world’s two biggest
$267bn
CHINA’S
EXPORTS
20% to US
50% to EU
30% Other
powers will lead to military conflict. It
would not be the first time in history that
a trade dispute ended in this way.
‘I don’t believe anyone wants a war,’
says Hilton. ‘The US military doesn’t
and the Chinese certainly don’t.’ Unlike
the US, China, she notes, has been good
at getting a lot of what it wants without
firing a shot.
For the US, a waning economic power,
the sight of China’s physical expansion
into the South China Sea is alarming.
China keeps building new islands on
coral reefs for naval instillations, claim-
ing them as Chinese territory, although
this is not recognized by any other
country.
The US responds with displays of
superior naval hardware and nuclear
capability dotted around the region. The
US is determined not to sell China mili-
tary technology, but Britain is keen to
relax the post-Tiananmen massacre EU
embargo on selling weapons to China,
and recently sold advanced dual-use
radar equipment. A desperate and weak-
ened post-Brexit Britain is likely to ramp
up its arms-trading activities.
One spin-off from US hostility is that
China is now being more ‘friendly’ in
its relations with the EU, Japan and its
regional neighbours. It is also busy nego-
tiating regional trade deals, such as the
Regional Comprehensive Economic Part-
nership (RCEP) (See ‘Winners and losers’
page 29).
The Chinese leadership is ambitious
for sure, but it would be a mistake to
overstate the country’s economic stabil-
ity. Even without a trade war there are
concerns about the economy. China has
a mountain of debt (250 per cent of GDP)
following the 2008 financial crisis, when
it spent billions (12.5 per cent of GDP)
on a fiscal stimulus and big infrastruc-
ture projects – essentially bailing out
the global economy. It now has a slowing
rate of growth and an ageing population.
The leadership admits the situation is
challenging. 5
Who knows what the next move will
be in the elaborate power game as China
pursues great expansion and the US seeks
to contain it. But chances are, China will
be playing its cards close to its chest.
1 The Guardian, 5 Nov 2018, nin.tl/Xi-Jingping-promises
2 Le Monde Diplomatique, October 2018. 3 Bruno Maçães,
Belt and Road: a Chinese World Order, Hurst, 2018.
4 BBC News, 5 Nov 2018, nin.tl/African-debt-to-China
5 CNBC, 19 Sep 2018, nin.tl/China-economic-challenges

PIGS THAT CROSS...
In talks about trade, something vital is omitted: the environment.
e’ve got just 12 years to avert disaster:
W to limit the global temperature rise
to 1.5 degrees as agreed at the Paris
climate summit, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently
announced.
Two things were highlighted that could
help slow the rate of global warming: cut
down on fossil-fuel usage – fast – and
stop eating so much meat.
How both of these relate to interna-
tional trade was graphically illustrated
by British Green Party politician Caro-
line Lucas back in 2004 when she said:
‘Britain imports 240,000 tonnes of pork
and 125,000 tonnes of lamb while export-
ing 195,000 tonnes of pork and 102,000
tonnes of lamb,’ indicating one of the
bewildering follies of the global trading
system.1
Since then the number of dead
animals being shipped around the globe
has grown considerably. In 2017 some 32.7
million tonnes of meat was packed off to
distant lands. The US, Brazil and EU were
the top exporters; China, Japan and the
US the biggest importers. 2
In theory, Britain’s exit from the EU
could lead to UK citizens eating more
home-grown meat – maybe coupled with
a reduction in volume consumed as the
price increases. But that’s not the direc-
tion favoured by the libertarian leaders of
Brexit. Quite the contrary.
They talk of striking bold new trade
deals with distant lands – the US is the
clear favourite, but the old Common-
wealth countries are often mentioned too.
In its communications, the British
Department of Trade plays down the
aspect of distance as it plays up the benefit
of striking trade deals with non-EU coun-
tries. In the media, the topic of Trade
Secretary Liam Fox’s accumulation of air-
miles is a running gag, while ex-foreign
minister Boris Johnson recently came
STEVE MUNDAY
back from a trip to Peru bubbling with
enthusiasm at the prospect of ramping up
trade with the Latin American country
(only 10,138 kilometres away).
The US’s new protectionism could, in
theory, reduce the need for international
freight. But the Sierra Club, a US environ-
mental group, finds Trump’s trade wars
the opposite of eco-friendly. For example,
tariffs on solar panels and electric cars
and bikes from China will make them far
more expensive – reducing uptake. 3
More to the point, Trump is a climate-
change denier with a profound dislike of
environmental regulations, which he sees
as impediments to business.
Losing environmental
protections
Laws passed for the social and environ-
mental good are often described as ‘bar-
riers to trade’.
But, as Caroline Lucas puts it: ‘One I
THE BIG STORY
person’s “hard-won environmental right”
is another person’s “trade barrier”. We are
going to see a real fight now for whether
or not we can defend those hard-won
rights against an incredibly strong pres-
sure to deregulate.’
Early in 2018 Prime Minister Theresa
May gave her assurance that, on Britain’s
exit from the EU, its environmental pro-
tections would simply be transferred into
British law. Protection would even be
improved in some areas with the creation
of a new ‘green watchdog’. Then, in Sep-
tember, the hard-Brexit lobby group the
Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) pub-
lished a warning that if the UK continued
to strengthen its regulatory environment,
it would lead to ‘wealth destruction’ and
‘push people into poverty’. And if the UK
harmonized its regulatory environment
with the EU’s after Brexit, the lobby-
ists insisted, it would make independent
trade deals with countries such as the US,
China and India impossible.
Government assurances to the con-
trary were soon shown to be wanting. In
November, MPs on the UK parliament’s
Environmental Audit Committee saw
gaping holes in the government’s 25-year
plan for a greener future. While two-
thirds of EU legislation could be rolled
over into UK law with just a few technical
changes this March, around a third of all
environmental rules governing air, water,
chemicals and waste disposal cannot. The
government has not committed to replac-
ing this third, meaning polluters could go
unpunished and wildlife will be denied
vital protection post-Brexit.4
Global divorce
Meanwhile, at a global level, there has
long been a deliberate separation of trade
and climate issues.
Climate accords (such as the 2016 Paris
Agreement) have been silent on the issue
of trade. And trade agreements make no
mention of climate. The World Trade
Organization (WTO) states on its website
that it has no ‘specific agreement’ that
deals with environmental issues. This is
becoming increasingly untenable. 5
Trade impacts on climate in a range
of complex ways, far beyond the growing
carbon footprint of transporting goods or
managing complex transnational manu-
facturing and supply chains.6
Free-trade deals further entrench an
export-oriented, industrial model of agri-
culture that is itself a significant contribu-
tor to climate change. A rise in corporate
farms leads to increased pesticide use and
more energy required to push agriculture
into marginal lands.
Policies to support climate-resilient
farming systems, such as allowing grain
reserves to protect farmers from market
volatility or incentives for long-term
investments in adaptation strategies like
agro-ecological practices, are often dis-
couraged by the WTO and free-trade deals
like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Sometimes there are minor environ-
mental benefits: coffee or cocoa tree crops
can, for example, reduce soil erosion. But
often the economic gains come at a high
environmental cost. Kenya’s booming
cut-flower industry (supplying 40 per
cent of the EU and 70 per cent of the UK
market) is causing an alarming decline
in the water level of Lake Naivasha and
there are concerns about pesticide use.7
And, of course, mining and fossil-fuel
extraction – a large part of traded goods
– cause serious environmental damage,
especially in countries such as Peru or
Nigeria where environmental controls
are lax. As we have seen (in ‘Investor
Rex’, page 21) corporations and govern-
ments can use trade and investment rules
to challenge decisions taken to protect
the environment. For example, trade
rules have been used to challenge India’s
popular domestic solar programme.8
Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2014, 99
per cent of UK overseas investment in the
energy sector went not to renewables but
to fossil fuels.9
Outsourcing pollution
Some argue that international trade
enables developing countries to shift to
cleaner technologies. However, free trade
has more commonly let richer coun-
tries export their pollution as produc-
tion plants move to nations with cheaper
labour and lower environmental stand-
ards. You need only look at what has hap-
pened to China’s air quality in the past
20 years. Around 22 per cent of global
CO2 emissions stem from the production
of goods that are, ultimately, consumed
in a different country. While the US and
many European countries have reduced
their domestic emissions over recent
decades, some of this reduction has been
offset by increasing imports from coun-
tries such as China that have a more car-
bon-intensive energy mix.
Traditional inventories do not include
emissions associated with imported
goods; the emissions are put on, say,
AT THE CURRENT RATE,
GLOBAL CO2 EMISSIONS
FROM FREIGHT WILL
QUADRUPLE BY 2050.6
CO 2 CO 2
2,108 8,132
metric metric
tons tons
2010 2050
China’s tally rather than that of Britain
or the US.
So, even though domestic emissions
fell 27 per cent in Britain between 1990
and 2014, if CO2 imports from trade are
considered, this drops to only an 11-per-
cent reduction. Similarly, a 9-per-cent
increase in domestic US emissions since
1990 turns out to be a 17-per-cent increase
when trade is included.10
Caroline Lucas reckons: ‘There needs
to be conversation about where trade
policy and the emissions from it fit into
the whole climate debate. If we could
move to a scenario where we were involv-
ing those emissions automatically as part
of the climate reporting I think it would
raise important questions and put real
pressure on areas like trade policy, which
at the moment can feel entirely divorced
from the climate discussion.’
She adds: ‘What would international
trade look like in a framework that was
serious about the targets that the IPCC set
out? I do think that localizing our econo-
mies, if we were to start that debate again,
would be very timely.’
It sounds like high time we put people
and planet at the heart of trade policy. O
1 Green Party, UK, nin.tl/stopping-the-great-food-swop
2 FAO, World Meat Market Overview 2017, nin.tl/FAO-meat-
trade 3 Sierra Club, 2018, nin.tl/environmental-casualties-
Trump 4 The Independent, 6 November 2018, nin.tl/Brexit-
gap-environment-laws 5 IATP, 6 September 2016,
nin.tl/climate-cost-of-free-trade 6 OECD/International
Transport Forum, 2015, nin.tl/carbon-footprint-global-trade
7 The Ecologist, 13 February 2018, nin.tl/Kenyan-flower-
trade 8 WTO, dispute case DS456, nin.tl/India-solar-cells
9 Labour Party, Just Trading, October 2018 10 Carbonbrief.
org, 5 July 2017, nin.tl/top-CO2-exporters-importers
 STEVE MUNDAY
WINNERS AND
LOSERS
How the Global South is affected by the current
trade turmoil – and old patterns of power.

livier Adopo is a rubber tapper in between China and the US. China is the

O the Grand Lahou forest in the West

African country of Côte D’Ivoire.
His is a skill that has been passed on
through generations – an ‘art’ he says
– that provides him and his commu-
nity with a living. He sells the latex he
collects to a local factory. But these are
worrying times. The price for latex has
fallen by half. The cause? The trade war
largest manufacturer of goods contain-
ing rubber in the world, and a fifth of its
exports go to the US. And this is damp-
ening demand for latex.1
The old African saying ‘When ele-
phants fight it’s the grass that suffers’ has
poignant currency in Côte D’Ivoire today.
Free-trade enthusiasts often say that,
in order to develop and flourish, the I
THE BIG STORY
countries of the South must be more inte-
grated into the global trading system. But
they are already highly integrated: Africa
is far more dependent on overseas trade
than Europe or North America – and not
in a good way.
African countries are largely import-
ers of finished goods and services but
exporters of raw materials, often con-
trolled by big foreign companies. Raw
materials do not generate the profit
margin that goes with ‘value adding’ by
turning commodities into products –
cotton into t-shirts for example. Global
commodity prices are notoriously vola-
tile. Trade between African countries
remains weak and limited. Unfair trade
relations that have disadvantaged African
foreign trade since colonial times prevail.
Imperialism lives, maintains Ugan-
dan-born trade expert Yash Tandon.
He calls the EU’s Economic Partnership
Agreements (EPAs) ‘Europe’s trade war on
Africa’ and writes: ‘I have knowledge and
personal experience (nearly 30 years) of
the way the EU has been pushing EPAs
on African, Caribbean and Pacific coun-
tries. African governments, weakened
by their dependence on so-called “devel-
opment aid”, are often “willing” to sign
these asymmetrical and totally unfair
agreements.’ 2
In order to conclude its free-trade
EPAs with Africa, the EU threatened
sanctions on those countries that did
not sign. At the time of writing, Kenya,
Rwanda and Burundi have signed while
Uganda is on the fence and Nigeria and
Tanzania have refused. 2
Up to three-quarters of Africa’s popu-
lation depends on agriculture for a living.
A foolish or hasty step towards liber-
alization can risk the livelihood of these
people, most of them poor. The EU and
Only 21%
of global trade in goods is between developing countries
Just 3 countries
China, the US and Germany
account for 30% of all global trade in goods
Source: WTO Statistical Review 2018
US have preached the gospel of free trade
but not practised it themselves, paying
their own farmers generous subsidies.
South African trade expert
Mustaqeem De Gama observes: ‘As a
result, African farmers are less able to
compete. This destroys rural livelihoods.
It causes mass patterns of migration and
you know the consequences in terms of
issues of migration, asylum seekers and
so forth.’
But today China, not Europe, is the
biggest player in Africa. Welcomed as
a trading partner at first, the love affair
has begun to turn sour. The Chinese
tend to bring in their own workers rather
than employing local Africans. Their big
infrastructure projects provided work for
Chinese companies but have plunged the
host nations deep into debt (see ‘Open
China?’ page 24). It has turned out that
China is doing what big powers usually
do – acting in its own self-interest.
Latin America
Brazilian farmer Gustavo Lopes is
happy. In 2017 he decided to rip up his
sugar canes and plant soy instead on
his 4,000-hectare farm. His bet paid off
when, a couple of months ago, Chinese
buyers loaded up on South American soy
after Beijing imposed retaliatory tariffs
on US beans. Lopes got a good price for
his soy crop. 3
Brazil’s new government under far-
right leader Jair Bolsonaro is likely to
carry on the policies of Michel Temer’s
previous ‘coup’ government that privi-
leged ranchers and big farmers at the
expense of indigenous people, peasants
and landless people.
In Argentina too, soy farmers are
looking to reap benefits from the US-
China trade war. Researcher and activ-
ist Luciana Ghiotto says that in the past,
US companies and investment were the
most important in the region, but during
the past eight years China has taken that
place. In a January 2018 summit between
Latin American presidents and China’s
leadership, the latter offered millions in
investment to include Latin America in
the ‘New Silk Road’ aka ‘Belt and Road’
(see ‘Open China?’ page 24).
China hoovers up Latin America’s
raw materials – minerals, lithium, gold,
magnesium, copper, oil, gas, soy and so
on. The region’s neoliberal governments
might prefer, ideologically, to do busi-
ness with the US, but China is customer
number one now.
‘We cannot talk about a complemen-
tary relationship with China,’ says Ghiotto.
‘It’s a new imperialism. They work differ-
ently from the US: the US used the CIA to
keep progressive governments away from
power and was very interventionist. China
does not care if the government is fascist
or progressive; what it cares about is that it
needs the oil, the soy and the minerals. So
they create a strategic partnership which
has had a huge role in setting new condi-
tions for our governments.’
Sometimes this leads to weakening
existing relations between Latin Ameri-
can countries. Individual countries are
rushing to sign contracts with China
that are not accessible to public scrutiny.
‘They are even worse in a way,’ com-
ments Ghiotto. China exports capital:
Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina have
made use of Chinese loans during com-
modity price collapses and the terms for
these have been harsh, especially in the
case of Venezuela. And China builds. For
example, in Argentina China is rebuild-
ing a 1,500 kilometre disused railway
line, not for people but for soy.
One response to the current turbu-
lence in global trade is to reboot efforts
for intra-continental trade, including
a possible convergence of two existing
South American trade blocs: Mercosur
and the Pacific Alliance. But Ghiotto
reckons that neither of these two blocs
has genuine concern for human and
environmental rights.
In the next few months, various Latin
American groups campaigning for trade
justice are getting together to form a plat-
form for action. ‘We have been in defen-
sive mode lately. At least we now have
good data, research and information
on the consequences of the [free trade]
model of the past 30 years,’ says Ghiotto.
‘People organizing, gathering info, lob-
bying and campaigning – that’s the only
positive thing I can see right now.’
Asia
Kannaiyan Subramaniam is a small
farmer from Tamil Nadu and a repre-
sentative for the international peasant
movement, La Via Campesina.
He says: ‘I come from India, where
farmers are suffering due to crash-
ing prices, import surges, land grabs,
ever-increasing cost of production and
import-driven crop pattern changes
that put farmers into deeper and deeper
crisis. As a result, more than 300,000
farmers have taken their own lives
 ‘We are against free trade agreements that
stop governments fulfilling their social
obligations to their citizens’
since India committed to WTO policies
of free trade.’4
Today Subramaniam and others are
fighting against a free-trade agreement,
currently being negotiated, that they say
will destroy the country’s dairy sector,
ruin millions of livelihoods, make medi-
cines unaffordable and seriously damage
Indian manufacturing.
The deal is the China-backed Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership
(RCEP), which currently involves the 10
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) countries – including Indone-
sia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei,
Vietnam and Cambodia – and six other
‘dialogue’ nations – Australia, New
Zealand/ Aotearoa, Japan, South Korea,
China and India. If it succeeds, RCEP will
be the world’s largest trading bloc, com-
prising 3.4 billion people. 5
Talks are billed to conclude in 2019. At
the time of writing China is still trying
to get at least 86-per-cent tariff-free
access to the Indian market, while India,
traditionally protectionist, is holding out
for less.
India has a huge population that
depends on domestic agriculture. Sub-
ramaniam elaborates: ‘Among the
several million small and backyard dairy
farmers producing milk, 95 per cent are
women. This is a mass production by
the masses, not by a few big corpora-
tions. The income generated from dairy
is predominantly spent by women for the
welfare of the family.’ Subramaniam’s
own education was thanks to his hard-
working mother, who reared buffaloes
and cows for a living.
India is self-sufficient in milk, with
a vast network of farmers, co-opera-
tives, local companies and individual
milk sellers. ‘But RCEP will probably
wipe out the small and backyard dairy
farmers, and that will be nothing short
of a suicidal step,’ Subramaniam stresses.
‘I’m not being an alarmist here, but I’m
expressing our anguish based on our
country’s experience in the case of edible
oil and pulses.’ Two decades ago, India
started importing edible oil. Some 70 per
cent is now imported and local farmers
are forced out of production.
The Indian backlash to RCEP is
growing and is also coming from the
business community and those fighting
to defend affordable medicine, which
is threatened by intellectual property
clauses in RCEP.
In other Asian countries it may be
harder still to stop governments entering
harmful free-trade agreements. Indo-
nesian economic justice activist Rachmi
Hertanti says her government is rushing
to sign many free-trade deals, including
RCEP, without understanding what’s in
them and without properly disclosing
them to parliament, let alone the public.
‘They don’t look at the social impact,
they don’t even have tools for doing so,’
she says. ‘Decisions are made only on an
import-export cost benefit analysis.’
Indonesia is in a fix – it has two major
exports that are both environmentally
problematic, palm oil and coal. As the
campaign against palm oil – an indus-
try run by large corporations that vio-
lates human, environmental and wildlife
rights – gains momentum in the West,
the Indonesian government is aggres-
sively seeking new markets.
A likely consequence of the current
trade war between the US and China
is that Indonesia will be flooded with
Chinese goods which would have been
bound for the US. Campaigners like Her-
tanti think that the government should
be encouraging Indonesia’s small and
struggling manufacturing sector and its
agriculture. The country now imports
much of its food from Australia, New
Zealand/Aotearoa, Thailand, China and
Vietnam.
‘For us agriculture is the priority. It
is our life. Before you talk about trade
you should first ensure food sovereignty
and have local agriculture substitut-
ing imports. We are against free-trade
agreements that do not recognize human
rights, that stop governments from ful-
filling their social obligations to their
citizens.’
Like it or lump it
And that is the nub of the issue. In the
words of De Gama:
‘We have been saying for a very long
time that at the root of all of this is the
unequal impact of this phenomenon we
call globalization. Some countries win
more than others, and the countries that
are less successful suffer. They have to
accept a predominant paradigm that is
enforced through market forces, which
eats away at the social security safety
nets that national laws provide. It means
that, in the end, you are not able to take
steps to protect the vulnerable in society.
It creates monopoly countries that really
dominate whole areas; it creates rule-
makers and the countries that are less
successful just have to take the rules and
absorb the consequences.’
At the end of last year we saw the
rivalry between the trade giants – China
and the US – spilling out into the meeting
of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
nations (APEC) in Papua New Guinea. As
a result, for the first time since its found-
ing in 1989, APEC was unable to agree
a joint communiqué at the end of the
summit.
What is that African saying about ele-
phants, again? O
1 Al Jazeera, October 2018, nin.tl/Ivory-Coast-latex-US-
China-row 2 Yash Tandon, Trade is War, OR Books, 2018
(revised and updated edition). 3 Reuters, 2018, nin.tl/trade-
war-boosts-Brazilian-soy 4 Via Campesina, 2018,
nin.tl/rcep-disaster-for-Indian-farmers 5 ISEAS, February
2018, nin.tl/RCEP-expectations
THE BIG STORY
JUST, OPEN
AND GREEN
Vanessa Baird concludes with 14 ways –
at least – towards a better global trade.
t is often said these days that the post-
I War, rules-based world order, founded
on liberalism and international
co-operation, is unravelling. Selfish
nationalism, populism and protection-
ism are to blame.
But it can also be said that this process
has been well under way for some time.
The three disgraces of free-market fun-
damentalism, privatization and deregu-
lation have been ripping apart the fabric
of social liberalism for several decades.
The tendencies incarnated by Trump
and Brexit are consequences rather
than revolutions – and certainly not
solutions.
We can respond to the damage being
done by leaping to the defence of the
established order that prevailed before
rightwing populism erupted so rudely
onto the world stage.
Or we can seize the opportunity to
create something better – the current
threats and fractures providing an
opening for change and creativity.
So what might a better global trade
structure look like?
Here is a 14-point stab at the princi-
ples, at least, that could underpin just,
open and green trade:1
1 Trade is for and about people. It should
never be separated from its social
context. Trade should improve people’s
lives and the public good. International
trade agreements should not trump
human rights or the social contract a
government has with its citizens. Gov-
ernments need therefore to have policy
space within trade deals to foster devel-
opment, employment, food security,
access to education and healthcare. Trade
agreements should not block public own-
ership in key areas such as public health,
education and transport.
2 Trade strategy must be subservient
to environment and climate goals and
accords to tackle global warming. That
will include reducing trade and invest-
ment in fossil fuels and encouraging
renewable, climate-saving technologies,
agro-ecological and organic cultivation.
It will involve localization and creation
of domestic and regional markets. Any
trade deal must require all imported
food, goods and services to meet the
same strong domestic safety and envi-
ronmental rules, and comply with inter-
national biodiversity and endangered
species codes.

3 Labour and wage standards that
are strong and enforceable should be
included in trade deals. According to
the International Labour Organization
(ILO), deals with strong labour rights
increase the value of trade more than
those that don’t. 2 A progressive trade
and investment agenda should protect
skilled jobs as well as human, gender and
workers’ rights based on internationally
recognized labour standards. USMCA’s
minimum wage clause is an example to
build upon.
4 Trade rules that drive up the cost of
life-saving medicines by giving pharma-
ceutical companies extended monopo-
lies on drug patents should be scrapped.
The WTO’s agreement on Trade-
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
(TRIPS) gives manufacturers patent- and
price-setting rights that make many
medications inaccessible to the poor –
particularly in developing countries.
5 There must be a transparent, demo-
cratic and accountable negotiating process
without privileged backroom access for
corporate lobbyists and industry asso-
ciations. Currently, the contents of many
trade deals and contracts are opaque and
hidden from public scrutiny. All texts
should be visible – unless there is a very
good reason why not – and parliament
should properly scrutinize and, if nec-
essary, vote down trade deals. Business
lobbying firms should not be able to pass
themselves off as ‘thinktanks’ or charities.
6 The privileging of big corporations in
trade and tax arrangements must end.
The system is skewed massively in their
favour. They hold colossal global market
share – one per cent of exporting firms
accounted for 57 per cent of country
exports on average in 2014. 3 But they can
also make fortunes by locating a com-
pany’s tax base in low-tax jurisdictions.
The fact that US companies generate
more investment income from tiny Lux-
embourg and Bermuda than from large
markets like China and Germany shows
how distorted the system is.
7 Trade alone cannot rid a country or the
world of poverty. It can help lift people
out of poverty; it can also deepen and
create poverty. But the WTO’s abandoned
Doha Round did try to put develop-
ment at the heart of international trade
STEVE MUNDAY
strategy and it’s still possible – under the
WTO’s Enabling Clause – for industrial-
ized nations to operate non-reciprocal
preference schemes for vulnerable coun-
tries.2 These include duty-free and quota-
free access for exports from the world’s
least-developed countries – which should
be encouraged and expanded.
8 Investor rights exercised through the
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)
system or International Court System
(ICS) must be eliminated. They currently
give corporations unlimited power to sue
governments regulating for the public
good.
9 Financial deregulation and the speed
and ease with which capital can cross
borders has been toxically destabiliz-
ing – as the 2008 financial crisis con-
clusively demonstrated. More than half
a century ago, economist John Maynard
Keynes had cautioned: ‘Let finance be
primarily national.’ Capital controls –
anathema to free market fundamental-
ists – are sometimes a necessary tool
in a government’s box, used by Iceland
during the 2008 financial crisis. Even the
IMF has changed its tune on this matter. I
THE BIG STORY
Not all trade is good and more trade is
not necessarily better. Judgement and
moderation should prevail. Some just
should not happen at all
Financial services should be a well-reg-
ulated sector.
10 Stop and reject bullying tactics. Power-
ful parties in trade negotiations – such as
the US, the EU and China – often use coer-
cive tactics to prise open the markets of
weaker partners. In the case of trade deals
with African countries, these tactics have
included threats to withhold develop-
ment aid or investment (see ‘Winners and
losers’, page 29). But a weakened, isolated,
post-Brexit Britain could also be forced to
open its National Health Service to, say,
US commercial interests. Often the use
of trade sanctions – such as US-instigated
sanctions against Iran, Venezuela or Cuba
– are politically motivated to destroy the
economy of an ideological enemy.
11 Cut out the dirty tricks and add rules
against trade cheating. Common tactics
include a complex trick of ‘shifting boxes’,
used predominantly by rich-world coun-
tries, which involves craftily reclassify-
ing products – to your advantage – to
get away with unfair subsidies. Deliber-
ate and systematic accumulation of trade
surpluses can be an unfair practice – one
of which Germany is actually more cul-
pable than China.
12 Trade should encourage innovation
rather than oligopoly. The world needs
to curb the monopolizing power of the
internet titans such as Google, Apple,
Facebook and Amazon (aka GAFA).
Superstar firms crush competition
and deepen global inequality. Regulat-
ing digital super-platforms is essential
for developing countries to gain from
e-commerce. Without this, poorer coun-
tries linking into existing super-plat-
forms will only provide the companies
that run them with more data – strength-
ening them further and facilitating their
market access and domination.
13 Not all trade is good and more trade
is not necessarily better. Judgement and
moderation should prevail. Some just
should not happen at all, like trade in
arms to countries that are serial human
rights violators. Not all investment is
good either. For example, Britain enjoyed
record inward foreign investment in the
past year, but much of it was in the form
of mergers and acquisitions that caused
thousands of job losses.
14 Fair Trade makes up a tiny fraction of
global trade, but is an important model
for trade that is direct, ethical, non-
exploitative, paying producers a fair price
and providing continuity of purchase.
Fair-traded food products, cotton and
handicrafts have scaled up successfully
and may well continue to do so.
Farewell, WTO?
There’s something missing in the above
list – the World Trade Organization.
Even before Donald Trump and his
international trade representative Robert
Lighthizer gave it a kicking at the last
ministerial summit in Argentina in
2017, the power and effectiveness of the
WTO as the custodian of the multilateral
trading system has been waning.
The failure to conclude the Doha
Development Round – meant to put
the needs of developing countries at the
heart of talks – has not helped. Increas-
ingly, major trade negotiations take place
at a regional or bilateral level, outside
the WTO.
But a critical function of the WTO
remains to settle disputes between
member trades. By vetoing the approval
of new judges to the Appellate Body of
the dispute system, Trump and Ligh-
thizer managed to strike a potentially
lethal blow. Unless this issue is resolved,
by the end of 2019 the court will grind
to a halt with just one judge left – calling
into question the ongoing viability of the
WTO itself.
The White House claims that the WTO
is unfair to the US in its trade disputes,
mainly with China. But this is not so, as the
dispute settlement record shows – the US
is the biggest complainant and has won 90
per cent of its cases over the past 20 years.4
Trump’s deep hostility to multilateral-
ism itself was apparent when, at the end
of the 2017 WTO summit, he vetoed a
statement affirming the ‘centrality of the
multilateral trading system’.
There is widespread acceptance within
the WTO that the organization needs
reforming and updating – not least so
that it can keep pace with the digital
revolution, and many new trade issues
thrown up by the data economy, e-com-
merce and power of platforms.
But there is also a determination to
save the multilateral system. ‘What’s the
alternative?’ says South African trade
expert Mustaqeem De Gama. ‘War?’
Canada’s trade minister Jim Carr
recently called a 13-party summit to
forge an alliance of nations that support
a rules-based multilateral trading system
and to discuss how such a system can
be modernized and improved. The EU,
Australia, Japan and South Korea were
among those that attended. Separately,
China and Russia have called for the
WTO to be strengthened.
But is the WTO fit for purpose and
should it be saved? In his book What’s
Wrong with the WTO and How to Fix It,
Rorden Wilkinson, professor of inter-
national political economy at Sussex
University, argues that the WTO system
should be dismantled and rebuilt to
provide equity of opportunity for all. 5
The unfairness in the system, between
countries at different stages of develop-
ment, has existed since its conception.
It reflects the trade requirements of
its principal architect, the US, and was
crafted to fit around existing US com-
mercial methods, legal frameworks,
styles of negotiating and economic ideas.
Throughout the WTO’s history, tactics
have been used, directly or indirectly, to
prevent developing countries from com-
peting in the global marketplace or fully
participating in the negotiating process.
Unequal deals have come about because
competitive negotiating among unequals
is embedded in the machinery of trade
governance.
For Wilkinson, key to reimagin-
ing the WTO is a new declaration of its
aims and objectives that places trade-led
development-for-all, in an environmen-
tally sustainable fashion, at the forefront
of the multilateral trading system – with
particular emphasis on helping those in
most need.
Quiet services
One of many negotiations now taking
place outside the WTO is the Trade in
Services Agreement (TiSA). In the thick
of trade war, the focus has been predomi-
nantly on goods being traded. But the
trade in services (banking and financial,
utilities, communications, insurance,
health and so on) is almost as important.
In some cases – Britain, for example –
services form the larger part of a coun-
try’s exports. The US, while bellowing
about its trade deficit in goods, keeps
quieter about its trade in services – which
is actually in surplus.
Services are set to be the big growth
area, with the TiSA negotiations involving
around 50 countries, including Australia,
Canada, New Zealand/Aotearoa, the
US and the membership of the EU. The
ACTION ON TRADE
INTERNATIONAL
Transnational Institute tni.org
Via Campesina viacampesina.org
Corporate Europe Observatory
corporateeurope.org
SumOfUs sumofus.org
Online social movement resource:
bilaterals.org
AUSTRALIA
AFTINET (Australian Fair Trade and
Investment Network) aftinet.org.au
BRITAIN
Global Justice Now globaljustice.org.uk
War on Want waronwant.org
sectors under discussion include finan-
cial, telecommunications, movement of
persons, shipping, air and postal services,
professional, electronic commerce, public
procurement, environment, energy and
services related to health.
Critics see TiSA as a corporate take-
over that will target public services and
lead to job losses. This view was con-
firmed by WikiLeaks’ exposure of draft
texts under negotiation, showing how
TiSA would seek to eliminate regulation
and national legislation, enabling privati-
zation and serving big business.
The US has most to win from liberal-
izing financial services, information and
communication technology and postal
services. The EU too has its eye on finan-
cial services. Trade unions are leading
resistance because so many people are
employed in the service sector. Whether
in the ports of Canada or the hospitals
of Pakistan, TiSA threatens to take away
thousands of jobs.6
And the EU?
Also missing from the 14-point list is spe-
cific mention of EU reform. Like the WTO,
many agree the EU needs to change, but in
what way? President Emmanuel Macron
of France wants greater integration, fiscal
and even military; a stronger Europe
that can stand up to China and the US
on the world stage. Highly indebted Italy
is pulling in quite the opposite direction,
fighting for more autonomy and setting
an anti-austerity budget that the EU says
is irresponsible and will destabilize the
Eurozone. Italy’s coalition Right-popu-
list government argues that the country
followed EU rules and yet still its debt
Trade Justice Movement (umbrella)
tjm.org.uk
CANADA
Trade Justice Network/Council of
Canadians canadians.org
NEW ZEALAND/AOTEAROA
It’s Our Future itsourfuture.org.nz
US
Global Trade Watch citizen.org
Responsible Trade – Sierra Club
sierraclub.org
FAIR TRADE
Fair Trade Foundation fairtrade.org.uk
Ethical Shop ethicalshop.org
mounted. It can point to Greece – a weak
member of the Eurozone – which suffered
huge job losses and saw 25 per cent of its
economy vanish when forced to comply
with EU-imposed austerity measures fol-
lowing the 2008 financial crash. The self-
harming shambles of Brexit, however, do
not provide an encouraging example for
those who want to leave the Union. Many
say it’s better to stay and reform from
within. University of London econom-
ics professor Costas Lapavitsas disagrees,
saying that meaningful reform is impossi-
ble – the EU’s institutions are fundamen-
tally designed to uphold the interests of
capital against labour.7
Fellow leftists Hilary Wainwright and
Mary Kaldor, however, say that there have
always been contesting visions within
the EU and point to significant victo-
ries for transnational social benefits and
against corporate power. These include
labour rights and other aspects of the EU’s
Social Chapter, which Margaret Thatcher
dubbed ‘socialism by the back door’.8
Equality and anti-discrimination
agreements have pulled many member
states, including the UK, into a far more
progressive place. And the EU stands out
as world leader in tackling data protec-
tion issues and taking on the oligopolistic
excesses of the digital titans.
Michael Holmes, director of the Euro-
pean Institute at Liverpool Hope Uni-
versity, points out that the structures of
the EU make it very difficult to engineer
meaningful reforms, but he is not totally
pessimistic. ‘What is needed at this stage
is the development of a Europe-wide
progressive alliance to create a consen-
sus about how best to democratize the I
WORTH READING
Straight Talk on Trade by Dani Rodrik,
Princeton, 2018
Power, Platforms and the Free Trade
Delusion, UNCTAD Trade and
Development Report 2018, UNCTAD
Globalization and its Discontents Revisited
by Joseph Stiglitz, Penguin, 2017
Backlash: Saving Globalisation from Itself
by Joe Zammit-Lucia and David Boyle,
Radix, 2018
Trade is War by Yash Tandon, OR Books,
revised 2018
Privatized Planet by TJ Coles, New
Internationalist, 2019
Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order by
Bruno Maçães, Hurst 2018
THE BIG STORY
EU and shift its policy priorities away
from the dominant conservative ortho-
doxy, and how to promote broad values
of social solidarity among the peoples of
Europe. It’s a difficult path to travel on,’
he says, ‘but a very necessary one.’ 9
Meanwhile, Caroline Lucas, a fierce
critic of the democratic deficit in the EU
while she was a member of the Euro-
pean Parliament, says that as a result of
campaigning pressure, transparency and
accountability have improved and are
now better than in the UK parliament, of
which she is now a member.
The future is plural
Meanwhile, the world is changing. It has
shifted from being a unipolar world,
with the US in charge, to an increasingly
multipolar one. Not only China and the
EU, but emerging economies like India,
Brazil and South Korea are taking their
place – pushing European countries
down the league table of top economies,
and becoming more assertive in interna-
tional bodies.
There are moves towards strengthen-
ing and creating new regional trade blocs
in Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
A new 55-nation African Continental
Free Trade Area is the most ambitious of
these plans.
Dani Rodrick envisages ‘a pluralist
world economy where nation-states retain
sufficient autonomy to fashion their own
social contracts and develop economic
strategies tailored to their needs’.
Joseph Stiglitz calls for ‘fair globaliza-
tion’ with shared prospects. The rules of
the game have to be rewritten for the 21st
century, he says.
Maybe the era of hyper-globalization
is coming to an end. The growth in global
trade is slowing down, according to the
WTO.10 We have seen regional resistance
to big power bullying: African nations
standing up to the EU’s EPAs and rejec-
tion of ISDS spreading across the Global
South, from South Africa to Ecuador to
Indonesia. In Latin America a progressive
trade justice platform is forming and there
have been significant victories – interna-
tional action got rid of the EU-US TTIP.
We are also seeing signs of growing resist-
ance to China’s ambitions within RCEP,
to TiSA and to a rebooted TransPacific
Partnership (or TPP 11) labelled a ‘ job
killer’.
A multipolar world has to be better, but
balance of power in itself is not enough.
Core values and principles are vital –
and, for that reason, so is the role of social
movements, campaigning across borders
for trade that is shaped, not by raw com-
petiveness, but by ideas of justice and
sustainability.
We need an international mobilization
that is pro-trade, but not enslaved to the
mendacious corporate-driven delusion of
‘free trade’.
And developing trade that is just, open,
green – for people and planet – starts
with a vision.
1 Numerous sources have been helpful in compiling this
section, including: Just Trading, Labour Party; Public
Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, Global Justice Now, TNI, War
on Want, Dani Rodrik, UNCTAD, Joe Zammit-Lucia and
David Boyle, Yash Tandon, and conversations with activists
and experts around the world. 2 Labour Party (UK) Just
Trading, 2018. 3 UNCTAD Trade and Development Report
2018, Power, Platforms and The Free Trade Delusion. 4 New
York Times, 11 Dec 2017, nin.tl/Trump-vs-WTO 5 Rorden
Wilkinson, What’s Wrong with the WTO and How to Fix it,
Polity, 2014. 6 bilaterals.org nin.tl/tisa-bilaterals 7 Costas
Lapavitsas, The Left Case Against the EU, Polity, 2019.
8 Red Pepper, 17 June 2016, nin.tl/EU-can-be-reformed
9 The Guardian, 09 March 2018, nin.tl/EU-reform-not-easy
10 WTO, 27 Sep 2018 nin.tl/wto-downgrades-growth
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 COUNTRY
PROFILE
J
ulio, an entrepreneur in Trinidad – a
touristy, colonial-era city 335 kilome-
tres east of Havana – told me a few
years ago: ‘It’s making me nervous – the
government hasn’t made any changes for
a while.’ Cubans have seen some momen-
tous ones over the past 10 years, but the
familiar pattern is of a long-awaited lurch
forward followed by a crunch into reverse.
All economic-policy decisions take
place against the dark backdrop of the
60-year-old US trade embargo, whose
effect on the general population has, at
times, been severe. The horizon black-
ened almost completely in the 1990s, as US
politicians sought to capitalize on the cata-
strophic loss of trade and financial assis-
tance that the collapse of the Soviet Union
precipitated. During that desperate decade,
known in Cuba as the Special Period, the
government was forced into Chinese-style
reforms. This set in motion a cautious
course of economic liberalization which
Cuba has stuttered along ever since.
The Cuban psyche has long grown
used to a series of false dawns. Following
Fidel Castro’s popular, nationalist revolu-
tion in 1959, which overthrew the thug-
gish dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista,
Cuba rapidly transitioned from corrupt,
CUBA
capitalist playground for the rich to com-
munist one-party state. Cubans soon
became accustomed to both benefits and
restrictions that they continue to enjoy
and detest today. On the one hand, free
education and healthcare, and state sub-
sidies for everything from basic food-
stuffs, housing and public transport to
FLORIDA (US)
Havana Matanzas
Pinar del Rio
Isla de Pinos
CAYMAN ISLANDS
0 100 200
0 100 200 300
elite sports and ballet. On the other hand,
a government with uncontested power,
presiding over a state-run press and a
police state that is intolerant of dissent.
Julio’s hopes, and those of many other
Cubans, were raised in 2010 when Fidel
Castro’s brother, Raúl, then president,
oversaw the next instalment of economic
reforms by expanding the small busi-
ness sector, with a list of hitherto state-
controlled businesses handed over to
individuals. Though Raúl’s reforms were
widely embraced throughout the country,
their effect was more complex.
Loosening the leash on the entrepre-
neurial sector has been great for those
who have the assets and business sense to
harness the spending power of tourists.
Julio can now rent out many more than
just the two rooms he was limited to previ-
ously, and the owners of privately owned
restaurants can seat more than 12 diners,
BAHAMA ISLANDS
Sagua la Grande
Colón
Caíbarién
Cienfuegos
Trinidad Sancti-Spiritus
Camagüey
Banes
Holguín
Manzanillo Baracoa
Guantánamo
HAITI
300 miles
400 500 kilometres JAMAICA

while all sorts of spin-off trades, from
builders to sellers of sunglasses, have bene-
fited. Restrictions of other kinds have been
removed, including, in 2011, the ban on
buying and selling homes and cars, but the
private sector still only accounts for 13 per
cent of the economy. Most Cubans remain
either in state jobs or no formal job at all,
many scraping a living on the all-perva-
sive black market. State wages, which vary
remarkably little between highly qualified
professionals and unskilled labour, remain
insufficient to meet the basic cost of living.
A class divide, though still small by global
standards, has widened as those unable to
cash in on the tourist economy have fallen
further behind.
The US and Cuba finally re-estab-
lished formal diplomatic ties in July 2015
as part of President Obama’s policy of
rapprochement. That paved the way for an
end to the senseless US trade embargo,
AT A GLANCE
LEADER: President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
ECONOMY: GNI per capita figures for Cuba are
meaningless: the economy is not measurable in
the normal way.
Monetary unit: There is a dual-currency
economy, with the Cuban peso and the Cuban
convertible peso both in circulation.
Main exports: Sugar, nickel, tobacco,
biotechnology and medicine, citrus fruits, fish,
coffee and rum.
The largest trading partner is China. The main
imports are petroleum, machinery, electrical
products, vehicles and cereals. Remittances
from relatives in the US play a significant role in
the Cuban economy, estimated at over $3 billion
annually (though the government does not
publish figures).
POPULATION: 11.2 million. Annual population
growth rate 0.1%. People per square kilometre
102 (UK 271).
HEALTH: Infant mortality 4 per 1,000 live
births (Haiti 54, US 6). HIV prevalence rate 0.4%.
Photos, clockwise from top left: A butcher plies his trade in Havana beneath the omnipresent image
of Che Guevara; a woman who charges tourists one US dollar per picture for posing with her outsize
cigars; classic American cars are a commonplace sight on the capital’s streets but less familiar are
initiates of Santeria (an Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion), who must wear white for a year and
cannot be on the street after six o’clock in the evening.
KRIS PANNECOUCKE / PANOS
its objective of regime change having
failed entirely. Fidel Castro’s death in
November 2016 seemed to punctuate
this turning tide but, with Donald Trump
now in the White House, the direction of
travel, if not entirely reversed, is heading
once again down a dark tunnel.
In April 2018, Miguel Diaz-Canel took
over as the new head of state. Having
been groomed for the position for years,
no radical change of leadership style or
policy is expected and, dispite imminent
new laws restricting the freedom of entre-
preneurship, but the slow liberalization of
Cuban society – to which Trump and his
cronies seem oblivious – looks set to con-
tinue. In July, for example, the National
Assembly approved a new draft constitu-
tion  that endorses same-sex marriage,
private ownership and presidential term
limits. Julio remains equivocal. O
MATT NORMAN
Though thwarted by the US blockade, whose
effect on the supply of medicines and equipment
has been devastating, the Cuban health
service (which is free to all) is the envy of most
developing nations.
ENVIRONMENT: Organic agriculture, including
urban farming, has been a priority, if more to
increase efficiency than out of environmental
commitment. The story is similar with recycling
– an economy short on materials is forced to use
whatever it can.
RELIGION: Religious practices were severely
restricted in the early decades of the atheist
revolutionary government in what is a traditionally
Catholic country. Afro-Cuban religion, particularly
Santeria, is at least as popular as Catholicism today.
LANGUAGE: Spanish.
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 0.777, 72nd
of 189 countries (Haiti 0.498, US 0.924).
STAR RATINGS
INCOME DISTRIBUTION | ++++,
Despite a widening gap between the
entrepreneurial class and the rest, a
basic standard of living is guaranteed
for all and mega-rich Cubans simply
don’t exist.
LITERACY | +++++
At 99%, Cuba has one of the highest
literacy rates in the world.
LIFE EXPECTANCY | +++++
80 years (Haiti 63, US 79). Consistently
higher than much wealthier nations,
including the US.
POSITION OF WOMEN | ++++,
Men dominate the top positions in
government but for most quality-of-life
indicators, women score at least as well
as men. There are much lower levels of
objectification of women than in most
Western democracies.
FREEDOM | ++,,,
Social and economic freedoms have
improved somewhat in the past 10
years or so, including greater liberty to
travel outside the country, but political
freedoms remain severely restricted.
SEXUAL MINORITIES | ++++,
Huge strides forward have been
made in the past 30 years. The new
constitution looks set to enshrine gay
marriage in law, while gay venues now
operate openly and successfully.
POLITICS | +++,,
Undemocratic and, at its worst,
repressive, the Cuban government has
nevertheless genuinely championed
the rights of the poor since power was
seized 60 years ago. Basic rights to
health, housing, food and education
are guaranteed, and would be in even
better shape were the US trade embargo
to be lifted. Freedom of expression and
information remain limited (though
personal internet connections are now
permitted) and organizing political
opposition to the government is illegal.
Though economically debilitating, the
US embargo has, ironically, legitimized
the repressive policies of the regime,
providing it with a bullying enemy to
rally against.
+++++Excellent
++++,Good
+++,,Fair
++,,,Poor
+,,,,Appalling
CARTOON HISTORY
Toussaint Louverture
CARTOON HISTORY
Toussaint Louverture
THE DEBATE
YES
DAWN FOSTER
Dawn Foster is a staff writer for
Tribune and Jacobin magazines, and a
columnist for The Guardian newspaper.
She regularly appears as a political
commentator on the BBC’s
Newsnight and Sky News.
SHOULD RELIGION PLAY A
ROLE IN POLITICS?
From religious leaders who take on political roles to the
daily influence of faith on political values, Dawn Foster
and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – two practising believers
– find themselves on opposite sides of the debate.
Illustrations — Kate Copeland
YASMIN: Faith and state should always DAWN: Like Yasmin, I’m a person of
be kept separate. I am a practising Shi’a faith: a very active, practising Catholic – I
Muslim. I pray, go to mosque and feel attend mass a few times a week, meet up
part of a wider global community. My with my parish’s youth group regularly,
faith is in my heart and head – indoors, go on prayer retreats… Catholicism is as
intensely personal. It’s solace; an anti- much a social and theoretical structure
dote to the lies and noise of life outdoors. of my life as my socialism and trade
It makes me strive to be a better person. unionism: it infiltrates and informs every
Millions of believers across faiths and aspect of my life. My belief in equality
lands share those feelings and views. and workers’ rights comes from my faith
Political Islam, in contrast, is aggres- and political beliefs. I can’t extricate the
sive, dominant, ruthless two, nor would I wish
and totally unethical.
Think about Iran and
‘MY BELIEF IN EQUALITY to. Collective action is
key to the success of
Saudi Arabia: the first,
a brutal Shi’a theoc-
COMES FROM MY FAITH campaigns and move-
ments: the Catholics
racy and the second a AND MY POLITICAL for Labour group I
Sunni-Wahhabi pow- belong to within the
erbase which violates BELIEFS. I CAN’T UK Labour Party are
every human right politically diverse –
EXTRICATE THE TWO, NOR
within and outside the
Kingdom. Think about
authoritarian, powerful
WOULD I WISH TO’
with people from the
furthest Right of the
Party to people to the
Catholicism. Secular
states have their bad
– DAWN Left of Momentum, all
diligently eschewing
histories too and some, like China, are our differences to achieve things together.
currently behaving monstrously towards Oscar Romero was canonized this year:
individuals and minorities. But, it seems he initially felt politics and faith must be
to me incontrovertible that the most sin- kept apart. But the killings by military
ister and oppressive states in the world police of innocent people of faith, low-
are those that use God to control the income workers and rebel priests like
minds and actions of their populations. Rutilio Grande led him to use his plat-
Religion does have a place in public life. form to condemn the government and
But when bishops, rabbis, priests and call off the killings. He was assassinated,
mullahs get political roles, they corrupt but has inspired millions, and his death
both good governance and religious and legacy pressurized the US govern-
integrity. ment into changing position in Latin

America somewhat. As religious people,
we cannot stand by when we see injustice,
just to remain impartial. We have to fight
for people who can’t, and for a common
humanity.
YASMIN: I am not as assiduous as you
are, Dawn, and would never consider
my religious self to be my core self. It is
a part of who I am, mainly because I was
born a Shi’a Muslim and my mother –
the person who totally made me into the
person I am – was a devout believer. But
even she could see how religions could
and did stop progressive change; how
religious leaders exploited usual human
terrors and used them to control the
faithful. When I was six she took me out
of our faith-based school in Uganda and
sent me to a multifaith school instead.
I go to mosque intermittently and
find brief comfort being with my own
tribe. But, all too soon, their inwardness
becomes irksome and, at times, vexatious.
Our Islam is open, modern, undogmatic,
yet there is this sense of superiority. This,
you will know, is common to all religions.
You are right to point out the work of
liberationist theologists; many of them
are absolute heroes. But various forms
of Christianity have historically and
in contemporary times calamitously
affected populations in various parts
of the world. Their abuse of power is
worst when it is linked to state authori-
ties. Making people
feel they must procre-
ate, must punish gay
‘THE MOST SINISTER AND
people,
unmarried
must reject
mums…
OPPRESSIVE STATES IN THE
Political leaders then WORLD ARE THOSE THAT
step in and exert
further control. Look at USE GOD TO CONTROL THE
the anti-gay laws across
MINDS AND ACTIONS OF
Africa. The laws against
abortion in so many
THEIR POPULATIONS’
Catholic countries. Do
you not recoil from
such infringements of
– YASMIN
human rights? You say religious people
cannot stand by when they see injustice
but what are we to make of the millions
of religious people who perpetuate and
justify appalling injustices? You clearly
don’t see that and should.
DAWN: I totally agree there are tenden-
cies within religious communities to
become insular and exclusionary: that’s
why ecumenism is so important – fos-
tering outreach within communities
Religion
to other churches and faiths, and with
those locally who subscribe to none.
When religion is fully unmoored from
politics it becomes all the more insular
and more open to abuse: politics plays
a huge part in our lives, and political
policy is essential for a lot of the ideas
central to the main faiths to come to
NO
fruition: charity, togetherness, human
dignity, enabling family life to be eco-
nomically viable, fighting homelessness
and destitution and opposing war and
violence.
These ideas should transcend Left and
Right, and people of all faiths should
hold our politicians to account for failing
to build a dignified and fair society. A lot
of the issues in our financial system run
counter to many teachings in Christian-
ity and Islam, and a wider pool of people
lobbying to fix a broken system, from
campaigners and party members to faith
leaders, strengthens those efforts. Reli-
gious leaders are still respected and their
voices carry weight when they speak for
the oppressed, such as the Archbishop
of Canterbury recently condemning
British government policies that perpet-
uate poverty. Involving religion in public
life and showing faith and politics aren’t
incompatible also pressurizes religious
institutions to be more open and account-
able, breaking the damaging culture of
silence that can let abuse continue.
YASMIN: I agree with
you when you write that
religions can (and should)
foster human connec-
tions and humane values.
People of good faith can
insert these virtues and
sensibilities into politics
and society. Charity, for
example, is one of the
pillars of Islam, as it is YASMIN
in Christianity. And I
know how much is done
by, say, Christian Aid
ALIBHAI-BROWN
or Islamic Relief worldwide. However, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an award-
I fear and loathe the politicization of winning journalist, broadcaster, author
religion and religious collaborators with and weekly columnist for the
political power. Church leaders blessing i newspaper. She is also a co-founder
Donald Trump and cursing his oppo- of the charity British Muslims for
nents as godless dramatically play out Secular Democracy.
the dangers of these unholy alliances.
The worst example is Myanmar, where
a large number of Buddhist monks –
those gentle, self-denying men in saffron
– have backed and participated in hor-
rific, state-sponsored persecutions of the I
THE DEBATE

Rohingya Muslims. Meanwhile women after refusing to leave a sit-in. Religious

and girls, even rape victims, are impris-
oned in some South American states if
they have abortions.
And here in England and Wales, more
faith-based schools are being funded.
These schools may be producing good
exam results, but they are socially con-
servative and focused on their own reli-
gious exceptionalism. Incongruently, in
Northern Ireland, integrated schools are
being encouraged because the people
there know what happens when religious
and political apartheid continue from
generation to generation. I am so glad
we had this exchange. It has helped me
understand why faith means so much
to many of us and pushed me towards
an uncompromising position: states and
faiths must be kept apart.
DAWN: But equally, in the US, many
religious leaders have spoken out against
Trump – a number of nuns and Jesuit
priests were arrested for demonstrating
against his immigration policies recently
leaders have been deeply involved in
anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles, and
[are] often killed themselves when speak-
ing out against repressive regimes.
The demand for faith-based schools
isn’t just down to exam results, but
people wanting to connect with their
own culture: my Catholic school taught
us a lot about the history of oppression,
struggle and the fight for civil rights –
not all schools are chosen by parents
for social conservatism. In Northern
Ireland, especially around housing, the
state’s blindness to religious background
and rush to build integrated communi-
ties without considering safety and cul-
tural history has led to attacks on homes
and households being forced to flee for
their personal safety after police warn-
ings. The state has a duty to consider
how important religion is to so many
people, rather than blindly seeking to
impose secularism on a community
without considering the consequences
and complications. O

YOUR VIEWS ON: AID

WHAT Our readers respond to the debate in the last issue (NI 516)

DO YOU Aid isn’t perfect, but the alternatives are worse

How sad to see Firoze Manji’s black-and-white critique of Western aid to Africa, a
simplistic blaming of the ‘other’ in true populist style. In contrast Pablo Yanguas drew

THINK?
TELL US HERE:
letters@newint.org
We will print a selection of
your views in the next issue.
attention to the role of African elites in perpetuating exploitation. In the West the same
is true: the powerful exploit the powerless.
Yes, government-based aid can be traded to achieve ‘soft’ power or provided to ‘ease
the way’ for a preferred corporate deal. That is not good, but probably slightly better
than simply slipping cash into someone’s offshore bank account.
Aid provided by NGOs does reflect concern for others, whether in the extremes of
emergency relief or actions to strengthen civil society and help give some slight voice
to the powerless. Many ordinary people in the West care, not so much that they want to
open their borders but enough to give their own money and influence their politicians.
The alternative to aid? Simple commercial deals between global players and local
elites? Wait until the exploited rise up together (rather than being pitted against each
other) to challenge the local and global powers that profit? Aid is no panacea, but the
alternatives are worse.
ED DOWNS WEST MERCIA
VIEW FROM
INDIA
Why are Indian men
feeling unsafe?
In October, right after a second wave of
#MeToo had hit Indian newsrooms and
taken down a few top editors and jour-
nalists, a post was doing the rounds. ‘As
long as women who accuse men of sexual
attacks are believed without evidence or
due process, no man is safe,’ it read.
It went on to invoke mothers, daugh-
ters, wives and sisters to rally behind
Indian men to save them from women
who won’t stop saying #MeToo.
‘I am not safe. Your husband isn’t
safe. Your father isn’t safe. Your son
isn’t safe. Your grandson isn’t safe. Your
male friends aren’t safe,’ the post, widely
shared on social media, claimed.
Pitting women against women. Hiding
behind women to safeguard against
being named in India’s second #MeToo
moment, which has seen women, espe-
cially from the media and entertainment
industry, speak out against rich, powerful
and influential male figures.
In India, which topped a global
survey in June for being the most dan-
gerous country for women in terms
of sexual violence, reported cases of
assaults against women rose by 83 per
cent between 2007 and 2016, yet men
are feeling unsafe. But do they actually
know what that means? An allegation or
accusation that can be challenged does
not make you unsafe.
I was seven when I was repeatedly
abused by our family physician, then in
his late eighties. He insisted on examin-
ing me alone in his chamber. My unsus-
pecting parents trusted him; he was old
enough to be my great-grandfather. But
his leering frog-like face, hands all over
my body, kneading my barely-there
chest, still haunts my nightmares. I am
now 42. I am still uncomfortable about
being alone with a doctor. That’s what
unsafe feels like.
I was in my late teens when I was
abused again by a man, at least 10 years
my senior, who called me his ‘little sister’.
I would never forget the shock when I felt
him grab me from behind. I continue to
distrust men who try to ‘sibling’ me.
Then there are the countless times
men pressed up against a 16-year-old me
on the way to college on public trans-
port, co-workers deliberately brushing
past me in work places, cracking lewd
jokes within earshot, commenting on the
tightness or shortness of my clothes – it’s
a miracle I am still out here, and mostly
sane. There are women who haven’t
been able to manage that. They have lost
careers, choosing the safety of home over
the workplace. They have been depressed
and mentally scarred for life. Some have
not been able to keep themselves or their
young daughters safe from more serious
assaults. Remember the gruesome
murder of a Delhi student in 2012? Those
men did not just rape Jyoti Singh but
abused her with a metal rod and threw
her from a moving bus to die. Do you still
feel unsafe?
ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND
Indian men are scared not because
they fear false allegations. There’s no
lasting shame for men in our societies.
They are scared because for the first time
ever they fear repercussions for their
well-thought-out as well as thought-
less actions. They see their entitlement
slipping.
#MeToo has made it clear that Indian
women won’t be scared or shamed into
submission any longer. Social media has
given them a voice, an audience and a sis-
terhood. #HimToo is as inane as #NotAll-
Men. Don’t dump the emotional labour
of protecting your insecurities and fears
on the victims, your mothers, daughters,
sisters.
Feel sorry for yourselves, if you must.
But understand this is how women in
this country have felt for years. For
the first time you feel their fear, their
insecurities.
Welcome to the other half of the sky. O
NILANJANA BHOWMICK IS AN INDEPENDENT
JOURNALIST AND COMMENTATOR ON GENDER AND
DEVELOPMENT. SHE TWEETS @NILANJANAB
FEATURE
Do we fetishize
indigenous people?
Working on a documentary in the Andaman Sea prompted
questions for Julian Sayarer about the way indigenous and
nomadic peoples are represented in the West.
L
ooking perplexed, the executive
producer turned to a translator as
the Moken man leaned on the tiller
of his petrol engine. ‘Why don't you use
sail boats?’ he asked. Somewhat puzzled,
the Moken man provided the obvious
answer: ‘Because petrol is easy.’
The exchange took place on a long-
tail boat, a kabang, off the island of
Surin, Thailand, in waters not far from
Myanmar. Nearby was a beachhead
framed by stilt huts, papaya trees, white
sands and turquoise sea. It was one of the
first days of a film shoot for which I had
been recruited as a writer and observer,
and that moment – the producer’s dis-
appointment – captured perhaps better
than any other the fate of the Moken ‘Sea
Gypsies’, a nomadic people of the Mergui
archipelago, a group of 800 islands in the
Andaman Sea.
The Moken move from island to
island, living from and on their boats.
On the one hand, they, and nomadic or
indigenous peoples like them, have to
contend with modernity; while on the
other, they are expected to act as repre-
sentatives for a traditional way of life, of a
time when things were simpler.
The threats to the Moken’s traditions
read like a roll-call for the perils of glo-
balization. Interest in oil and gas explo-
ration beneath the Andaman Sea is on
the uptick; the lucrative nature of the
resources make maritime borders pre-
cious and contested, so the movements
of these sea nomads – most of them
without citizenship – are prey to harass-
ment by border patrols, particularly by
the Myanmar navy. Real-estate develop-
ers buy up the coastlines while industrial
fishing strips the fish of sea, leaving the
Moken to catch only tourists. An elderly
Moken lady spoke of her early years
as a refugee of the Myanmar civil war
– a series of ethnic conflicts that have
occurred since 1948 – using discarded
oil cans as cooking pots and plastic fer-
tilizer sacks for makeshift clothing. This
is not to mention climate change and the
rising sea levels that lap at Moken villages
around the region.
Conservation laws that might protect
Moken interests, meanwhile, often work
against them. Legislation in 1981 that
made Surin a Thai national park curbed
the Moken right to traditional forestry
methods, and Myanmar developed leg-
islation in the 1990s that likewise disre-
garded the needs of indigenous peoples.
The result, Moken people told me, is
that while industrial trawlers scour the
Andaman Sea, they are restricted from
fishing for a level of catch that would
allow them to trade a small surplus.
Deforestation laws penalize the Moken
for felling trees to build kabang, while
across the region industrial logging
depletes ancient forests.
At the same time as navigating this
turbulence, much of the media and
tourist interest attracted by the Moken
expects them to shun the affordances of
the modern world. Without having ever
asked for such a noble role, and having
had much taken from them that might
have allowed them to fulfil it more com-
fortably, the Moken are expected to serve
as custodians of the traditional soul in
an industrial, digital age. ‘Sea Gypsies
Saw Signs in the Waves’ was the mystic
rendering CBS gave to explanations of
how the Moken of Surin largely survived
unscathed the 2005 Boxing Day tsunami,
an event that helped birth a vast output
of reportage about them which failed to
detail structural threats the Moken are
less equipped to resist, while fetishizing
their supposedly unmediated relation-
ship to the natural world.
Looking at the many cameras
trained on the Moken of Surin while I
was observing the documentary, I was
reminded of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
and his reflections on how this sort of
gaze works. Just as Berger observed that
in the visual arts ‘men act and women
appear’, in today’s world, the Moken
exist primarily to be watched. Nor are
they alone in this role. The BBC’s Human
Planet, in presenting a top-down view
of human life on earth, often shows I
Top right: Crew members celebrate the Thai
festival of Songkran with the Moken.
JULIAN SAYARER
Bottom right: Moken women return to a waiting
boat after foraging for food on the rocky shores of
the Ko Surin National Park, Thailand.
TAYLOR WEIDMAN / LIGHTROCKET / GETTY
FEATURE
indigenous peoples within the ‘noble
savage’ role of a simple mind aligned
with nature.
The result is an industry of images
for audiences who can watch indigenous
wisdom in the evening, stimulating the
mind before going back to work next day.
One can’t help feeling that modern life
in post-industrial society – depersonal-
ized and bureaucratic – uses images of
authentic indigenous life to hold on to
some sense of awe at the human project.
We use them to remind us that life is
meaningful. More affluent audiences leaf
through a glossy National Geographic that
alternates between images of first peoples
and pristine habitats, arranged along-
side glossy advertisements from Cartier
and Land Rover. The two presences fuse
together as if capturing some essential,
priceless sense of what it is to witness life
on earth, where a luxury purchase moves
you closer to original humanity.
If the 2015 buyout of National Geo-
graphic by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century
Fox began some external soul-searching
around this relationship, in 2018 the mag-
azine itself went further, and, on its own
terms, published a front-page editorial
CAPITAL AT RISK. INVESTMENTS ARE LONG TERM AND MAY NOT
BE READILY REALISABLE. ABUNDANCE IS AUTHORISED AND
REGULATED BY THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY (525432).
YOU LOVE:
Being financially
responsible
under the title-come-confession: ‘For
Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist.’
And racist it was, adhering to the
same ostensibly harmless but, in fact,
patronizing notion that the Moken
would out of principle use only wind in
a world run on petrol. Another telling
moment of unease in the documentary
production involved an underwater dive
scene, showcasing the Moken as supreme
freedivers, capable of holding their
breath underwater. As with the use of
petrol, there was some disappointment
from the documentary team when the
diver assumed that he would be making
his life easier by using a snorkel. Inter-
national media attention has been drawn
to the underwater eyesight of Moken
children which tested as superior to that
of European peers – ‘The “sea nomad”
children who see like dolphins’ declares
a BBC headline. Less ‘exotic’ is the fact
that all children, no matter what back-
ground, were shown to have improved
underwater eyesight after spend-
ing some time practising vision tests
underwater.
What all of these depictions
create – however awe-inspired and
YOU HATE:
Socially
irresponsible
companies
Investments for people exactly like you
(although some are slightly taller)
well-meaning – is an image of the
Moken as part of the natural rather than
human world, one which serves subtly
to undermine claims and expectations
that they should have social, economic
and human rights. Seeing them primar-
ily in terms of sail power, or in stories
about the oral histories that provided
them with early-warning signs to spot
a tsunami, makes the Moken tradition
appear mystical, rather than structural;
a question of ethnographic curiosity
rather than of legitimate rights to land,
sea and resources.
I believe the anthropology docu-
mentary I was working on was well-
intentioned, just as the respect of most
audiences is also sincere and deeply held.
But there is a poetry to exotic images that
we should not be seduced by. However
spellbinding it might be to observe the
Moken’s ability to live at one with nature,
to fetishize those characteristics leaves
both us and them vulnerable to what
happens if we overlook the key detail
that, of their greatest threats, most are
human-made. O
JULIAN SAYARER IS A TRAVEL WRITER AND AUTHOR
OF ALL AT SEA – ANOTHER SIDE OF PARADISE.
abundanceinvestment.com
 TEMPERATURE
CHECK
FIVE KEY CLIMATE STRUGGLES TO WATCH IN 2019
California breathing
1 In November 2018, the Indigenous
Environmental Network (IEN) and
their allies succeeded in delaying
California’s proposed ‘Tropical Forest
Standard’. The scheme would allow
polluting businesses in California to
meet part of their carbon-reduction
targets by spending money on tropi-
cal forest preservation projects instead
of actually reducing their emissions.
The carbon benefits of such projects
3 The rebellion goes global
are notoriously hard to prove, and they
can effectively privatize vast swathes of
forest and push indigenous peoples off
their land. The scheme will be up for
a vote again in April 2019 – will IEN’s
Sky Protectors rally enough support to
halt it in its tracks once more?
The jury is out
2 According to the Sabin Center for
Climate Change Law, over 1,000
climate-change cases have now been
filed against governments, corporations
and individuals in 24 countries. Many
of these have important hearing dates
in 2019. Keep an eye out for the young
people taking legal action against their
governments over climate inaction in
the US, Canada, India, Pakistan and the
Netherlands; crab fishers in California
suing oil companies for the impact of
STUART MITCHELL / ALAMY
climate change on their livelihoods;
the results of an appeal in New York’s
climate lawsuit against oil corpora-
tions, with other US cities waiting in
the wings with similar claims; and the
government of Vanuatu exploring how
to sue polluting companies and govern-
ments for climate damages.
The new direct-action network Extinc-
tion Rebellion (XR) burst onto the UK
scene in 2018 with a series of blockades
and protests that mobilized thousands
of (often first-time) activists, caught the
attention of the media and injected a
new sense of energy and urgency into
parts of the climate movement.
However, XR’s spokespeople have
faced criticism both for their strategy of
praising London’s Metropolitan Police
– an institutionally racist organization
responsible for multiple abuses against
marginalized and protest groups –
and for neglecting to put at the heart
of their communications Southern
communities who are most impacted
by climate change; some racial justice
campaigners and frontline Southern
organizers reported feeling actively
excluded by XR’s messaging. A number
of people within XR are pushing the
organizers to change their approach.
Words — Danny Chivers
In 2019, XR is planning to spread
its message and tactics more widely,
with international action dates set for
April and over 100 groups signed up in
around 20 countries (mostly in Europe
and North America). Two questions
remain: will XR’s tactics spread as they
hope, in the style of Occupy? And, if
experienced climate organizers in
other countries pick up the baton, will
its messaging evolve to include wider
justice struggles outside the West?
4 Rainforest protection in Brazil
Jair Bolsonaro’s Far-Right govern-
ment in Brazil has promised to wreak
havoc in the Amazon, threatening the
land rights – and lives – of indigenous
peoples in his effort to tear down the
rainforest for maximum profit. Indig-
enous leaders have pledged to resist
what is, for them, a familiar conflict –
as Luiz Eloy Terena, lawyer for Brazil’s
Association of Indigenous Peoples, told
Amazon Watch: ‘For us indigenous
peoples this election represents a con-
tinuity of our struggle and encourages
us to do what we have always done in
defence of democracy and our rights.’
A crucial question for 2019 is
whether the world will stand with
them. Can Bolsonaro’s election create
a new wave of international support
for these frontline defenders of the
forests and ‘carbon sinks’ that are vital
to a safer climate?
Palm oil out of biofuels
5 The link between palm oil and defor-
estation has been gaining atten-
tion. Less well known is the fact that
more than half of the palm oil that is
imported to the EU goes not into food
but into fuel tanks. The EU Parlia-
ment voted in 2017 to end subsidies
to the most polluting and destructive
biofuel producers, including palm oil,
but the EU Commission has not yet
acted on these instructions. Indus-
try lobbying seems to have stalled
the process (insert greasy palms joke
here) and campaigners fear the legis-
lation will be watered down. It is time
for the Commission to step up to its
responsibilities.
FEATURE

Catching
the cops
A new app that helps Aboriginal people in Australia record police abuse
is the latest intervention in a growing movement that uses filmed evidence
to demand accountability. Ian Lloyd Neubauer reports.

F
ew people in Australia tune into
NITV, a state-funded indigenous
TV channel. On typical days
it receives just 0.1 per cent of ratings
nationally. But on 9 May there was a
sudden spike. NITV had just broadcast a
video clip filmed with a cell phone of a
police car in Perth deliberately mowing
down an Aboriginal teenager and
causing him to have a seizure. His crime?
Someone had reported ‘suspicious activ-
ity’ in the area.
The teenager was treated in hospital
for his injuries, while the police officer
involved has been stood down and is
under internal investigation.
A better-than-usual ending? Only
because a bystander had filmed the inci-
dent and shared it with the right people,
says George Newhouse of the National
Justice Project, a non-profit legal service
in Sydney. ‘We are totally at a loss to
understand how or why this incident
took place. And if it was not on film, I am
not sure you would be seeing the intense
investigation that is currently under way,’
he says.
The incident inspired Newhouse
and his colleagues to create Copwatch,
a new app that empowers people, par-
ticularly young Aboriginals with limited
resources, to protect themselves against
police misconduct.
‘One of the common complaints we
hear from kids is police misleading them
about their rights to film – they do have
the right,’ he says. ‘So we show them how
to film safely, how to de-escalate a situ-
ation and how to protect what they’ve
captured as evidence by saving it to the
Cloud.’
Going global
The power of video evidence used against
police misconduct can be traced back
to 1991 when Rodney King, an African
American, was savagely beaten by Los
Angeles police officers for evading arrest.
Footage of the incident sparked riots
in LA and saw two of the police offic-
ers involved sentenced. King eventually
received a $3.8-million settlement from
the City of Los Angeles.
Today the ease with which bystand-
ers can record videos of police miscon-
duct and share them on social media
has played a key role in the Black Lives
Matter movement.
In 2015, 800 people protested in
McKinney, Texas, after a video was
released showing a police officer pinning
an African-American girl to the ground
with his knees at a pool party.
A year later, protests broke out nation-
wide after footage was posted on Face-
book of a Minnesota police officer fatally
shooting African-American Philando
Castile after he was pulled over in his car.
Copwatch
Illustration — Ian Nixon
The officer who shot Castile was acquit-
ted after a jury found the prosecutor had
not met the burden of evidence for a
conviction. But last December, a North
Charleston police officer was sentenced to
20 years for fatally shooting Walter Scott,
an unarmed African-American man.
Video of the policeman shooting repeat-
edly from the rear, while Scott tried to run
and planting evidence near the body sig-
nificantly influenced the verdict.
Apps that combine video and other
functions to make it easier and safer to
film police first emerged in 2012 in the
US. The first, Mobile Justice, is a free app
created by the American Civil Liberties
Union that allows users to film police cov-
ertly by pushing a button on their smart-
phone’s frame; tapping the screen stops
the filming.
In 2014, Toronto-based author and
entrepreneur Darren Baptiste launched
Cop Watch (no relation to Australia’s
Copwatch), an app that automatically
uploads video footage to YouTube to
prevent police from deleting evidence.
‘I don’t think Cop Watch has been used
in a landmark case in Canada but I know
it’s had an impact. I’ve been investigated
by various police forces because of it,’
Baptiste says. ‘Anyone who installs Cop
Watch or another version in this class
of software has taken a step forward in
defending their rights.’ I
FEATURE
‘We show them how to film safely,
how to de-escalate a situation and how
to protect what they’ve captured as
evidence by saving it to the Cloud’
Racial profiling
It’s no surprise that video interventions
are also becoming important in Australia.
With an imprisonment rate of 2,253 per
100,000 people – 23 per cent higher than
for African Americans in the US – indig-
enous Australians are the most incarcer-
ated people on the planet.
‘Every Aboriginal I know has had
contact with police, and that contact is
mostly enquiries based on suspicion of
criminal activity,’ says Des Jones, chair of
the Murdi Paaki Regional Housing Cor-
poration in New South Wales and Cop-
watch advocate.
‘During the school holidays my grand-
kids were hanging outside some shops
and just because they are Aboriginal,
someone perceived them as a threat and
the police were called. They were ques-
tioned and told to move on; [they were]
lied to, told that they were on private
property,’ he adds.
‘I’ve also been questioned for no
reason and when I ask [the police] why
they are harassing me, they lie and say
they don’t have to respond. And that’s
nothing compared to the other stuff that
goes on – gross human rights violations
on a wholesale level. Go to YouTube and
take a look at the videos.’
In one video uploaded last year, a
police officer is seen throwing two Abo-
riginal women to the ground for swear-
ing at him during a heated exchange.
Jones says the incident is typical. ‘I know
there are some reasonable police on the
force but most of them are indoctrinated
to believe we are all criminals,’ he says.
‘There is no trust between Aboriginals
and the cops – and the gulf is widening.’
In July, Western Australian Police
Commissioner Chris Dawson recognized
the ‘significant role’ police played in
traumatizing Aboriginals in the past. He
also announced body cameras would be
required for all officers in the state.
But when asked to comment on
ongoing police harassment, a Western
Australian Police Force spokesperson
refused to comment, describing the alle-
gations as ‘broad and subjective’. Spokes-
people for the police forces in the states
of Queensland and New South Wales
also refused to comment, but said people
who feel aggrieved by police can file
complaints.
Culture of impunity
In 2015, an enquiry by the Independ-
ent Broad-based Anti-corruption Com-
mission (IBAC) in the state of Victoria
found fewer than 10 per cent of com-
plaints to regional police stations were
upheld. When the allegations involved
police brutality, the figure dropped to
four per cent. A year later, IBAC recom-
mended sweeping reform of the com-
plaints system.
Jeremy King, a lawyer in Melbourne
specializing in police misconduct who
gave evidence at the enquiry, says
nothing has changed. ‘There is a culture
of impunity within the police force in
Victoria and that stems from the com-
plaint system being pretty poor,’ he says.
‘Indigenous Australians have particular
issues and are over-represented in police
misconduct cases, but it’s an issue that
impacts people from all walks of life.’
One of King’s current clients is John,
an elderly disabled white man, who was
dragged out of his home by six police
officers, beaten repeatedly with batons,
and had capsicum spray and a water
hose inflicted upon him as they filmed
with their cell phones, made jokes and
laughed. The police never released their
videos but the incident was captured by a
security camera John had installed in his
home – footage that will be presented as
evidence in court. ‘This case highlights
the power of video footage and how it
can be used as a tool for accountability,’
says King.
Newhouse shared the same message
last month when he launched Copwatch
with Des Jones in the New South Wales
town of Dubbo. There, Aboriginal youths
are stopped and searched on the slightest
suspicion and arrests have increased by
40 per cent under a new hard-line polic-
ing model. But Newhouse also warned
that people who film police need to be
aware of legal pitfalls.
‘We encourage kids to be cautious
about uploading video to social media
because they could be capturing their
friends or family members committing
a crime,’ he says. ‘We teach them not to
upload anything until they’ve spoken
about it with an elder.’
Jones says he has received requests to
come and speak about Copwatch in towns
in distant Western Australia and far north
Queensland where incarceration rates for
Indigenous Australians are off the chart.
‘Copwatch is a response to an underlying
issue that Aboriginal people have faced
since day one,’ he says. ‘But now with this
new technology, we declare zero toler-
ance for unlawful policing in Australia.’ O
IAN LLOYD NEUBAUER IS A SYDNEY-BASED
FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND PHOTOJOURNALIST
WITH A DECADE’S EXPERIENCE OF WORKING AS A
VISITING REPORTER IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA FOR
TIME, AL-JAZEERA, BBC, CNN, THE DIPLOMAT AND
THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW, AMONG
OTHERS.
SOUTHERN
EXPOSURE Highlighting the work of artists and
photographers from the Majority World

Self-taught photographer Amarjeet Kumar Singh captured this moment at a behrupiya (impressionist) event in New Delhi. Behrupiyas impersonate well-
known and identifiable characters to entertain the masses. In this particular photo, an artist dressed as Hanumān – the Hindu god symbolizing strength and
energy – takes a short break during the performance. Behrupiya was once widespread, but is now a more marginal part of Hindu culture. Singh works as a
freelance photographer for DNA, a national broadsheet – a role which he says presents regular opportunities to capture ‘beauty in the ordinary’.
FEATURE
Japan’s firewall
against populism
In a world buffeted by populist tides, Japan
has avoided turbulence. Are there lessons to be
learned? asks political scientist Tina Burrett.
T
his is not another article about
the spread of populism. Rather,
it’s an article about how to avoid
it. As populism infects democracies
across the globe, Japan remains perplex-
ingly immune. What accounts for its
resistance to the virus? The conundrum
is more peculiar given Japan’s almost
three decades of economic malaise, its
ageing population and precarious secu-
rity situation.
Despite North Korean missiles, stag-
nant wages and a growing generation gap,
there has been no significant economic or
cultural backlash against Japan’s politi-
cal status quo. The reason, as Doshisha
University professor Gill Steel explains,
is that ‘the factors pushing populism
elsewhere are less evident in Japan’.
Unemployment and crime are low, while
cultural homogeneity and societal con-
sensus are high. Inequality, while on the
rise, is relatively low compared to the
US and Britain. As a result, there is little
demand for populist alternatives to the
establishment.
Although more often a consequence
of accident than design, Japan’s fire-
wall offers other societies lessons on
combating populism. Of course, other
states cannot simply replicate Japan’s
social norms – and they may not want
to. Japan’s 20th-century experiences with
militarism, war and nuclear attack have
until now deterred public support for
nationalist causes. Furthermore, Japan
is a more collective society than most
other established democracies. Social
solidarity was particularly evident in the
response to the devastating 2011 tsunami.
But Japan’s collectivism also breeds a
less desirable quality: deep suspicion of
diversity. While the country’s cultural
exports like manga, anime and bestselling
video games boast a rainbow of diverse
characters, real Japanese society per-
petuates myths of biological and cultural
uniformity.
Despite having the world’s oldest pop-
ulation, immigration is far lower than in
other industrialized countries. In 2017,
only 1.8 per cent of Japan’s population
were born overseas, compared to 12 per
cent in France, Germany and Britain.
Curbing immigration deprives Japan
of the cultural and economic benefits
brought by greater heterogeneity. But as
Yoshi Funabashi, chair of the Rebuild
Japan Initiative, points out, ‘the absence
of large numbers of immigrants also
reduces the appeal of populism’, which
in Europe feeds on fears of competition
for jobs, wages and public services. Japa-
nese society has its flaws. But in prizing
equality and solidarity over individual-
ism and self-interest, it has avoided the
fragmentation that is often a precursor to
populism.
No backlash
Populism remains a poorly defined
concept. The label has been attached to
leaders as ideologically diverse as Hun-
garian Prime Minster Viktor Orbán
and former Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez. Academic Cas Mudde argues
that populist movements ascribe anti-
establishment positions, while fetishiz-
ing the wisdom of ‘the people’, whose
will is represented by a charismatic,
often autocratic, leader. Populist leaders
connect directly and emotionally with
their followers, while disregarding estab-
lished political procedures. They promise
to protect the people against external
enemies that the current elite has failed
to vanquish. Populists seek to mobilize
ordinary citizens against the existing
elite by challenging the rules of the game.
There is no better example of a leader
successfully defying the norms of politi-
cal conduct than Donald Trump. The US
president rose to power by exploiting a
widespread backlash against economic
and cultural globalization, commonly
perceived as the twin causes of falling
wages and rising crime, and the decline
of America’s manufacturing sector.
But in Japan, almost 30 years of
wage stagnation have not precipitated a
similar backlash. Despite being eclipsed
by China as the world’s second-biggest
economy in 2010, economic insecurity
has not swelled support for populism. As
journalist Ayako Mie argues: ‘Most voters
are relatively happy with the current
system because in their day-to-day lives,
the economy “seems” OK.’ Unemploy-
ment remains low (2.5 per cent in 2017). A
shrinking population means that despite
many Japanese firms moving production
to lower-wage economies overseas, there
are still labour shortages in some domes-
tic sectors.
More importantly, among govern-
ment and business elites there is a
consensus for maintaining close to full
employment. Many of the jobs elimi-
nated in the name of efficiency in more
neoliberal economies survive in Japan.
In Japanese department stores, uni-
formed attendants operate the elevators
and organize queues for them. White-
gloved station managers wait alertly on
the platforms of Tokyo’s busy metro
and overground rail stations, blowing
their whistles once all passengers are
safely packed aboard. At night, they help
drunken salarymen off the last train
and into taxis to make their way home.
Construction workers too old for heavy
lifting warn passing pedestrians and
cyclists of potential trip hazards. These
positions not only provide employment,
but also the glue of self-worth and com-
munalism that binds Japanese society. By
eschewing a race to the bottom, Japanese
corporations enjoy greater public trust
than their US or British counterparts.
The picture, however, is not all
rosy. Underemployment is persistent,
with many Japanese people, especially
women, in temporary or part-time work,
when they would prefer permanent full-
time employment.
Extravagant and colourful wide-eyed Manga
characters may abound in Japan, but social
preferences are for cultural uniformity. Picture
from the Akihabara district, Tokyo.
BATCHELDER / ALAMY
Slow to change
The slow pace of social change also plays
a part. The empowerment of women,
sexual and ethnic minorities – which
fosters support for populism among indi-
viduals losing status in other countries –
has not happened in Japan; in 2015, the
government granted refugee status to
only 27 people.
Japanese policymakers have kept eco-
nomic globalization at bay, using tariffs
and other measures to protect domes-
tic producers, especially in agriculture.
Consumers have been willing to pay
higher prices for imports to maintain
Japan’s trade surplus. Internationally,
there is strong demand for Japanese food,
fashion, cars and cameras. Rising living
standards among Japan’s Asian neigh-
bours provide new markets for Japanese
goods. Japanese voters have little reason
to blame foreigners for their economic I
FEATURE
Grey power on the streets of Tokyo. Self-worth in
Japan is defined by having a place in a collective
enterprise.
PASCAL MANNAERTS / ALAMY
woes. Identity politics centring on class,
religious or ethnic cleavages do not
feature in elections.
Collective national identity, however,
does. In recent years, Japan’s government
has taken a nationalist turn. Prime Min-
ister Abe became one of Japan’s longest-
serving leaders by tapping into voters’
national pride. But by tethering his
nationalist appeals to plans for economic
reform, Abe stole the thunder of popu-
lists such as Shintaro Ishihara, the former
governor of Tokyo, who ran a public cam-
paign to buy the Senkaku Islands, which
China calls the ‘Daioyu’ and claims as its
territory. Abe has undermined the appeal
of regional populists and prevented their
national breakthrough by promoting
his own brand of rightwing patriotism,
while simultaneously protecting public
spending. Austerity measures, which
have been contributing to populism’s
surge in Europe, are not the Japanese
way. Japan has not responded to defla-
tion and economic stagnation by slashing
social welfare spending. Rather, the gov-
ernment has bought political stability by
doubling the social security budget since
1990. Government debt reached a stag-
gering 253 per cent of GDP in 2017. But
few recognize the need for change. As
journalist Ayako Mie says: ‘The Japanese
people are like a frog in a pan of boiling
water. They don’t know they are slowly
dying.’ They may yet take the plunge into
populism’s frigid waters when things get
too hot.
Japan’s mainstream media shuns sen-
sationalism and supports the status quo.
Although more often serving the interests
of the state than those of the people, Japa-
nese journalists’ cosy relations with gov-
ernment figures deprive populists of the
publicity that inflated support for charac-
ters like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.
Japanese media also does not promote a
culture of individualism that measures
human worth in fame and fortune. To
be sure, Japan has a celebrity culture.
But self-worth is defined less by celebrity
and wealth than by having a place in a
collective enterprise and by doing one’s
job well. Affluent Japanese do not flaunt
their money. High inheritance taxes and
comparatively low executive pay make
Japan more egalitarian than many other
advanced economies. The salaries of
Japanese CEOs are a tenth of those paid
by US companies. A sense of personal
humiliation, fanned by populists else-
where to fuel resentment against eco-
nomic elites, is not widespread in Japan.
Reclaiming the nation
The Japanese case suggests that meaning-
ful employment, an emphasis on social
equality and a sense of national pride can
hold back the populist tide. Progressive
politicians often ignore the importance
of national identity to voters, dismissing
such sentiments as anti-cosmopolitan and
potentially prejudicial. When moderates
disregard defining the nation, extrem-
ists fill the vacuum. In part, the Remain
campaign lost Britain’s EU referendum
by basing its appeal primarily on national
interests and not national identity.
The factors that have saved Japan
from populism so far may undermine
its stability in the future. A society sus-
picious of overseas talent, and one that
undervalues women’s economic contri-
butions, will fall further behind in inno-
vation and productivity. The swelling of
public debt to fund the welfare state is
unsustainable. The ruling Liberal Dem-
ocratic Party’s large majority encourages
the government to overstep its constitu-
tional limits. Academics and journalists
opposing the government’s rightwing
interpretation of Japanese national
values face harassment.
Yet left-leaning social movements are
appearing to challenge the establish-
ment’s nationalist framing of Japanese
identity. These groups include Japan’s
#MeToo movement and a new party
aimed at protecting Japan’s commitment
to pacifism, the Constitutional Demo-
cratic Party of Japan. These movements’
aims signal a more genuine form of
populism: to deepen political participa-
tion and define a new collective will of
the people. Should they succeed in their
ambitions, then the rest of the world may
look to Japan, not for lessons on avoiding
populism, but on how to build a progres-
sive populism compatible with inclusive
politics. O
TINA BURRETT IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
POLITICAL SCIENCE AT SOPHIA UNIVERSITY, TOKYO.
VIEW FROM
AFRICA
Here today, here tomorrow
On 6 November 2018, 85-year-old Paul
Biya was sworn in for his seventh term
as president of Cameroon, extending his
36-year rule. It is remarkable, more so
considering that up to 60 per cent of the
population is below the age of 25. It means
that the vast majority of Cameroonians
have never known a president other than
Biya and have never lived through a truly
free and fair election, where anyone other
than Biya could win.
The question of longevity in office
has been a focus for political organiz-
ing in many parts of the world since the
1990s, when one-party regimes fell apart
– unable to sustain themselves after the
Cold War. Many of the long-serving
leaders of that era owed their survival to
client relationships with the US and the
Soviet Union. When the superpowers no
longer needed them, there was finally
enough space for democracy to take root.
Only a handful of countries in Africa and
Asia have resisted this transition, and the
case of Paul Biya highlights why.
In crude terms, Cameroon was a sec-
ond-tier state that was more interesting
to secondary Western powers – namely
France – than it was to either the US or
the Soviets. Indeed, Biya owes much of
his survival in power to a longstanding
relationship with various French admin-
istrations. As such, despite the cloud of
violence surrounding this latest election,
France’s president Emmanuel Macron
was one of a handful of leaders who con-
gratulated Biya on his election victory in
a letter (which Biya published on his Face-
book page) that the Élysée claimed was
supposed to remain private.
Nor have other nations made any tan-
gible moves to distance themselves from
Biya. Despite the mounting domestic
resistance to his regime, particularly in the
Anglophone region of the country, Biya
travels the world freely. He frequents the
InterContinental hotel in Geneva, where
Cameroonians allege he spends more time
than in Yaoundé. He regularly attends
African Union Heads of State meetings and
recently turned a three-day Africa-China
summit in Beijing into a two-week trip.
When a president has been in power
for 36 years in a country where elections
should nominally change the leadership,
it’s logical to ask, ‘Why aren’t the locals
resisting?’ But in Cameroon, regional and
international institutions do their best
to nullify any local resistance. The army
and the police have a nominal monopoly
on the use of force and a relatively limit-
less access to weapons, training and other
tools. And because the arms trade remains
one of the least regulated industries in the
world, after a while the only recourse left
for those who resist is armed conflict, if
the central state is unwilling to negotiate.
Thus, in 2015, citizens in the Anglo-
phone region of Cameroon began a
peaceful campaign to protest poor access
to government services. That protest was
met by violence from the army and the
state, and has since morphed into a full
rebellion. A secessionist campaign has
been brutally countered by state violence
and collective punishment of civilians.
ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND
But this information is broadly kept out
of the mainstream media by restricting
access to the restive regions. By control-
ling how information about Cameroon is
created and disseminated, Biya manages
to shield the country from scrutiny,
leaving Cameroonians to resist his regime
by themselves.
Never-ending presidential terms
are a hot topic right now in Africa, with
the youngest population in the world,
and in Cameroon, with a gap between
an 85-year-old president and a popula-
tion with an average age of 18.5, it looks
particularly absurd. Biya’s Cameroon
highlights that change is not just about
sheer demographic numbers but power,
violence and political institutions. Lon-
gevity is also a chance to ask important
questions about the international systems
that connect and sustain regimes around
the world. O
NANJALA NYABOLA IS A POLITICAL ANALYST BASED
IN NAIROBI, KENYA. SHE IS THE AUTHOR OF DIGITAL
DEMOCRACY, ANALOGUE POLITICS: HOW THE
INTERNET ERA IS TRANSFORMING KENYA (ZED BOOKS).
THE INTERVIEW

Illustration — Olivier Kugler

Soni Sori
For her work to get justice for survivors of rape by security forces and
the police, Soni Sori received the 2018 Front Line Defenders Award for
Human Rights Defenders at Risk. She talks to Dilnaz Boga about why
the state wants to erase Adivasi identity.

S
oni Sori describes herself as ‘ just a
small teacher’ from the Bastar dis-
trict of Chhattisgarh, one of India’s
most mineral-rich states. But, in reality,
she organizes Adivasi (indigenous)
women to speak out against the sexual
violence and assaults they have endured
at the hands of the local police and the
central government’s security forces
stationed there to fight what the govern-
ment refers to as ‘leftwing extremism’.
Sori has gone public about her own
experiences of sexual torture when she
was jailed.
DB: What do Adivasi people think about
their situation?
SS: The questions that I always get asked
first by Adivasis is: why are we getting
beaten up by the police? Why do they
barge into our homes and take our sup-
plies, eat our chicken, rice and lentils,
and beat us up like animals? We never
asked the government for electricity,
water supply, roads or schools. We are
happy with our jal, jangal, jameen [water,
forests and land]. We treat the police and
the Naxalites [Maoists] alike... If they ask
for water, we won’t refuse. So how are we
wrong? The police ask us why we go to
the Naxal committee meetings... there’s
a problem even when we don’t go. When
women go to fill water from the tankers,
placing their containers waiting in line,
the forces patrolling the area fling [away]
the vessels, saying, ‘This water belongs to
our government and not yours. You cannot
have it.’ Why such treatment?
Perhaps we Adivasis cannot do any-
thing since we are not educated, we have
no wealth and cars; perhaps that’s why
the government is biased against us,
people say to me. But then I tell them
that this land, forest and water is yours
and they want it, that’s why they beat
you. You need to fight this injustice.
If someone is raping you, you need to
talk about it. When I talk to them, these
women feel encouraged. Then they say
they will fight.
Even though there’s no concept of
mangalsutra [a necklace worn by a Hindu
woman that identifies her as married] in
the Adivasi communities, some girls in
our community have started wearing it,
thinking that would spare them from the
police and paramilitary’s lust for unmar-
ried virgin girls. But even that has not
helped them. They still face humiliation
and abuse.
How do the men react to this violence?
If the police see them, they will either
be killed in an encounter [extrajudicial
killing], jailed or forcibly made to ‘sur-
render’ for being a Maoist. That’s why
they run or hide upon spotting the police.
If they had someone to lead them, they
would unite and resist.
They have a language barrier. They
don’t understand the constitution and
law, and don’t know how to invoke their
rights. The Chhattisgarh government
boasts of having made education acces-
sible to all, but that’s a lie. There’s no
education in the villages. If that were to
happen, it would be very problematic for
the government. I
THE INTERVIEW
‘The aim is to impart such an education to
young people that they start hating their own
forest habitat and demand development like
everyone else. We want development too, but
not the kind that destroys forests’
What other problems do Adivasis face?
Elders in the community oppose the cel-
ebrations of Hindu festivals. They are
the old guardians of Adivasis and our
way of living with the integral role of jal,
jangal and jameen in our lives. We worship
mother nature. We feel that these fes-
tivals are imports from an alien culture
brought in by those who went ‘outside’.
Cultural appropriation is on the rise and
our identity and survival are at stake. The
elders disapprove of fireworks during
Diwali [Hindu festival of light] and worry
about the damage they cause to our land,
forests and natural habitat. They oppose
anything that is premised on a material-
ist way of life, which is not ours. About
Raksha Bandhan [Hindu festival where
a sister binds a thread on her brother’s
wrist to symbolize their bond], they say
that our relations are bound by heart and
not by a piece of thread.
But the new generation is a little dis-
connected from the ethical framework
of the Adivasi community. Some of them
view the elders’ insistence on the Adivasi
way of life as puritanical or backward.
Also, the government takes Adivasi chil-
dren away from jungles to educate them.
What they are teaching them in those
schools is just propaganda in favour of
‘vikas’ [development]. So the children
come back home and demand vikas, not
knowing what it really is. ‘Development’
has destroyed our jal, jangal and jameen
– what kind of development is that? This
is how Adivasi thinking is being tacitly
influenced by the state. This, too, is our
battleground.
For example, if a father is being sent
to jail, his son will be scared of going
to court. The reason given is that it will
hamper his studies. However, the boy
who lives in the village witnesses daily
atrocities and feels the injustice meted
out to his people, so will always stand up
for his father. But if you bring the same
boy to the city and educate him there, he
will refuse to go to court for his father
and instead feel embarrassed. All this is
being done to divide us so that we forsake
our land for the state to exploit.
Do you think the state exploits this
difference in thinking between
children who grow up away from the
forest and those who reside with their
families?
Yes. I recall visiting a residential school
called Eklavya for boys and girls who
come from far-flung areas in Kati-
kalyan. It is deep in the forest and has
been declared a Naxal zone by the
state. This pretext was used to shift the
kids to a city. I surveyed the school and
found that there were only two toilets
for 300 kids and there was no bound-
ary wall for safety around the building.
Girls studying up to the twelfth grade
[the last school year] would have to go
into the forest for defecation. There was
no privacy even to bathe. The state has
deliberately created such unbearable
conditions so that the children ask to be
shifted.
I told the children that first they
should demand more toilets and a bound-
ary wall. I told them that if they don’t
fight for the right things, then Bastar (a
district state of Chhattisgarh) will not
survive, nor will the places where their
parents live. We will all be wiped out. We
are educating children so that they carry
forward our struggles in a better way,
and not so that they turn their backs on
us. Later, they protested against being
shifted to an urban area. But the authori-
ties shifted them anyway. This is how
they manipulate and transform Adivasis’
thinking at the school level.
What do you think is the aim of this
exercise?
The aim is to impart such an education to
young people that they start hating their
own forest habitat and demand vikas like
everyone else. We want development
too, but not the kind that destroys forests
and communities to make space for big
buildings. This is what is being fed to
the young children these days... that the
forests where their parents live should
be cleared and new infrastructure built,
where they will get jobs. That is why we
want to open separate schools for them.
You mentioned the state wants to
clear the forests. What is happening to
Bastar’s forests?
In Bailadila region, the National Mineral
Development Corporation operates a
mine. The forests and even the mines
belong to us but our situation is no better
than beggars in our own land. People
don’t get any jobs and don’t have access to
basic healthcare. Now they regret giving
their land to the corporation. When
they resist, there are killings to clear the
people off the land. In the name of fight-
ing Naxalites, the state is eliminating Adi-
vasis. There is a political economy that
has taken shape around this – the politi-
cians want to fill their coffers at the cost of
the people who are the ultimate victims
of a false war against the Naxalites. We
have to keep fighting. If we choose to be
mute spectators, it would be the victory
of evil and injustice. O
DILNAZ BOGA IS A JOURNALIST FROM MUMBAI.
SHE HAS WORKED FOR SRINAGAR-BASED WEBSITE
KASHMIR DISPATCH AS WELL AS FOR THE
HINDUSTAN TIMES AS CHIEF COPY EDITOR ON THE
INTERNATIONAL DESK.
THE LONG READ
 Ecology

Illustration — Nick Hayes

Unlearning despair
Climate change is the salient symptom of a human world unwilling – or
unable – to protect its own life. In this lyrical essay, Daniel Macmillen
Voskoboynik explains why learning to think ecologically will be a
precious and indispensable tool for our times – and how our fight against
catastrophic collapse can ultimately win a more beautiful world.

W
e are made of memory. In our
mother’s womb, cells weave
replicas of our parents’ bodies:
a heart, a brain, a knotwork of veins, a
shelter of skin. The first breath we take,
like those that will follow it, pulls parti-
cles of the past into our chest: strands of
oxygen and carbon that have travelled
through the lungs and leaves of centuries.
We are born into a universe we will
belong to, into a planet formed by billions
of years, into an ancestry drawn by gen-
erations. Fortune finds us our family. As
our umbilical cord is cut, we are bound
to less-visible cords that tie us to cultures,
traditions and societies.
We start the uncertain journey of life.
We grow. Our biological memory, the
encoded stories of our genes, unfurls.
We acquire names for the world around
us. We attempt to express our internal
world through language, a memory of
words and grammar. We begin walking,
on an earth that holds the remains of our
ancestors.
With time, we build identities with the
mortar of our childhood memories. We
interact with fellow humans, who share
virtually all of our genetic memory,
exploring and exhibiting the remaining
fraction that makes us who we are.
Rituals, songs, books and conversa-
tions subtly hand us the lessons of yes-
terday. The gaze we hold, the dreams
we dream and the opinions we form are
shaped by our surroundings.
As we age, new selves graft over the
old. Memory, the tide of remember-
ing and forgetting, retains and releases,
defining us. And so we live our lives, car-
rying our unprecedented story.
p
Nature is the memory of the Earth.
Behind every forest, every valley, every
body of water, is a hidden history, a
patient effort of time. Landscapes are
carved by wind and water. Trees and
plants are sculpted by the hands of alti-
tude, precipitation and sunlight.
Time flows, and in its currents, exist-
ence leaves its mark. Trees etch rings,
faces trace wrinkles, sediments fold
layers, and whales archive journeys in the
baleen bristles of their jaws.
Life passes itself on. Like seeds, our
own societies disperse their memory.
Farmers rely on our memory of agron-
omy to nourish life from soil. Educators
and elders transmit human memory
through stories, told and written. Lawyers
interpret and apply juridical memory.
Doctors examine patients, drawing
lessons from our history of healing.
Scholars devote lakes of ink to docu-
menting and explaining our evolving
memory. Historians reconstruct the past,
the imprint of human endeavour. Astron-
omers turn their telescopes to the skies,
watching the delayed memory of stars
arrive from light years away. Geologists
trace the movement of mountains over
millennia. Archaeologists brush away the
sediments of time. The present releases
memory, and journalists rush to record
the latest events.
Together, in our own ways, we recall
and rewrite the memory of human
survival.
p
We all are because others are. Born of
love, we begin as delicate beings in need
of care. Our parents, our grandparents,
and our communities are the immediate
forces that bring us into this world. Yet we
are also the descendants of unknown pre-
decessors, both human and non-human.
The Earth is only habitable for humans
because of the minuscule organisms that
breathed oxygen into our atmosphere
millions of years ago. Our own life form
today is the result of a persistent transi-
tion from cells into bacteria, from organ-
isms into diverse species. The elements
that compose us originate in the stars.
We are small strokes on the vast canvas
of time. The earth that sustains us is over
four and a half billion years old. In com-
parison, our life as a species begins only
200,000 years ago. If the history of our
planet were to be made into a two-hour
film, human beings would only feature
in the final second.1 But that final fragile
second holds an infinite sea of stories. I
THE LONG READ

We all are because others are. Born of love, we

begin as delicate beings in need of care. Our
parents, our grandparents, and our communities
are the immediate forces that bring us into this
world. Yet we are also the descendants of unknown
predecessors, both human and non-human

Stories of loves and longings, of joys and
sadnesses, of wishes and wonders. Stories
about the creation and protection of life,
and stories of its eradication.
p
Human beings cannot live without for-
getting. Inhibiting memory is a bodily
function. But, unlike our minds, the
wider world does not forget.
The living memory of our planet nar-
rates its nature. Wherever we look, every
sphere of life – our atmosphere, our
biosphere, our hydrosphere, our litho-
sphere, our cryosphere – is marked by
destruction.
Over recent centuries, a portion of
humanity has radically disrupted the
cycles of the planet’s waters, soils and
thermal balance. As a result, we have
entered an age of ending, where we are
extinguishing the conditions necessary
for our own survival.
We are dismantling our own existen-
tial stage, setting in train a slow-motion
genocide where crimes against humanity
are obscured by their frequency. In doing
so, we are wrecking our human heritage,
shredding safety nets, and condemning
the world’s most vulnerable to fates that
defy transcription.
Seas are heating, rising and acidify-
ing. Poles of ice are melting, experiencing
the highest rates of warming on earth.
Ice sheets are increasingly losing mass.
Glaciers, the water towers of valleys, are
retreating. Our oceans, which hold most
of the Earth’s living space, are an exhi-
bition of extinctions. The Great Barrier
Reef, the planet’s largest living structure,
is in terminal decline, disintegrating in
warming waters. Entire marine ecosys-
tems are disappearing, with 90 per cent
of the world’s fisheries collapsing or fully
exploited. 2
Our forests have been razed and
despoiled. Half of the global tree pop-
ulation has been decimated, with 15
billion trees cut annually. 3 Entire moun-
tains have been gutted, as mines stretch
deeper scars into the earth. Our inten-
sive systems of agriculture have simi-
larly carved destruction into the roots of
the land.
We are simply removing life faster
than it creates itself. Every year, our
relentless withdrawal of natural resources
significantly surpasses the Earth’s ability
to regenerate those resources. Our deg-
radation and erosion of lands overtakes
their ability to form and replenish fertile
soil. Our production of waste outpaces
the planet’s ability to safely absorb that
waste. We are overdrafting aquifers, over-
grazing pastures, overcultivating soils,
and overloading our atmosphere.
The pace of extraction shows little sign
of ebbing. We are instead accelerating
trends, hastening fertilizer consumption,
water use, forest clearance and marine
animal capture.
Our world’s wealth is its diversity, but
our assault on our own home is driving
widespread extinction. The imposition of
devastating development models has laid
waste to thousands of cultures and ways
of being. A human language becomes
extinct at the rate of one per fortnight.4
Cornered by deforestation, pollution
and poaching, 100 species are being
lost a day. The global population of fish,
birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians
declined by 58 per cent between 1970 and
2012. 5 In the next 30 years, 90 per cent
of all marine species may be lost. By that
time, there could be more plastic in our
oceans than fish. Current rates of species
extinction are hundreds of times greater
than the geological norm, implying
what scientists have called a ‘frightening
assault on the foundations of human
civilization’.6
Pollution has hidden the stars, poi-
soned our waters and ravished the lungs
of our children. It has turned commu-
nities into cancer villages, city residents
into smog refugees, and billions of people
into the living proof of a sanitary emer-
gency. Around 92 per cent of the world’s
population is exposed to levels of air pol-
lution above the World Health Organi-
zation’s guideline levels.7 Half of New
Delhi’s schoolchildren have permanent
lung damage. 8 In 2015, pollution was
responsible for over 2.5 million deaths in
India alone.9
Scientists note our breach of plan-
etary boundaries, the key biophysical
guardrails which allow for safe human
life. We have already crossed, or are set to
cross, a whole range of these limits: ocean
acidification, biological diversity loss,
the disruption of nitrogen and phospho-
rus cycles, disappearance of fresh water,
changes in land cover, growing pollution
from synthetic chemicals, ozone deple-
tion, toxic chemical pollution, and the
loading of atmospheric aerosols.
Today, we are seeing record rates of
fossil-fuel burning, accompanied by sig-
nificant rises in emissions. Our seas, skies,
lands and winds are all in flux. Virtually
every continent, region and country is
indicating record or near-record levels of
heat. Fires, ferocious storms, torrential
rains and droughts are occurring with
increasing frequency and intensity.
Of the hottest 17 years on record,
16 have occurred since 2000. In the
past 40 years, the percentage of our
planet affected by drought has doubled.
Since 1970, the number of extreme
weather events occurring every year has
quadrupled.10
Weather records are being obliterated,

but even the notion of a record makes
little sense today. Under current trends
and scenarios, the ‘new normal’ may be a
world where the barrier of expectation is
always pushed further back, a horizon of
pain in constant retreat.
Most governments, particularly the
world’s richest, are failing to meet their
own meagre pledges for action. The
majority of global institutions find them-
selves with their backs to reality.
And the unrelenting pressures our
environments are subjected to mirror
those that pervade in human societies,
defined by acute poverties, inequalities
and avoidable deprivations. Through the
atmospheric violence we have unleashed,
we risk even further reinforcing these
injustices. Ours is a world fertile for
suffering.
p
These sorrowful realities, the silent sig-
natures of centuries, are monuments to
a crisis that evades its diagnosis. Climate
change, rather than a root problem, is
the salient symptom of a human world
unwilling or unable to protect its own life.
Our ecological predicament is not an
anomaly, a small setback on our tread-
mill of progress. It is not a mere outcome
of an absence of leadership, education, or
technology.
Rather, it is a civilizational crisis. A
crisis of our dominant thinking, which
has for too long neglected what is needed
to sustain existence; and a crisis of our
economic model, which roots develop-
ment in destruction.
Considering these discomfiting reali-
ties is not easy. Perhaps the prime imped-
iment to understanding climate change is
fear. A fear of pain. A fear of grief. A fear
of implication and guilt. A fear of chal-
lenging our precious presumptions, and
overturning our worldviews. A fear of
failure, of absent progress. A fear of losing
comforts. A fear of violating the innocent
dream that the world will be okay.
These fatal fears pull us towards
apathy, towards denial, towards desola-
tion, towards false hope. We avoid the
topic. We adjust ourselves to its magni-
tude, building a psychology of faith. We
question the credibility of evidence, for
its inferences are incredible. We nourish
beliefs in happy endings, in imminent
solutions, in technical fixes, in painless
paths to safety. We rush impressions
and opinions. Thinking it is beyond us,
we turn to apocalyptic dejection, often
another shape of indifference.
And so, forced by fear, the topic of
climate change sinks into silence. It gains
the status of death, tainted by triviality
and taboo.
The first step to overcoming fear is
acknowledging its presence. By admitting
our fears we can start to transcend them
and redirect their force, overpowering the
impotence climate change creates in us.
Our fear is compounded by our eco-
logical illiteracy. Our societies rarely,
if ever, devote attention to examining
the genesis, or stakes, of environmental
problems. Disoriented, we struggle to
read our surrounding realities, to unpack
blaring news stories, or find the relevance
in intangible alarm.
p
The world around us is astoundingly
complex. Contemplating the infinite
intricacy of the natural world, botanist
Frank Egler observed that ‘ecosystems
are not only more complex than we think
but more complex than we can think’.
Reality escapes our simplify-
ing control, defying explanation and
measure. The world knows more than
we do. Our fragile formulae and deli-
cate strands of insight will always be out-
weighed by our endless ignorance.
Climate change is particularly vul-
nerable to the temptations of certainty.
When we talk about planetary problems
it becomes easy to confuse the big picture
with the only picture. It becomes tempt-
ing to reach for sweeping explanations
and swift diagnoses: that human nature
is to blame; that not enough people know
about climate change; that its implication
won’t be too grave; that human beings
will always learn to adapt.
It becomes intuitive to forget who we
mean by ‘we’. Although climate change
binds our fates as human beings, not eve-
ryone is equally responsible for it, and
not everyone is equally affected.
It also becomes attractive to seek all
the answers in one worldview. Depending
on our inclination, we may see particu-
lar promise in science, or technology, or
politics. But climate change is a wicked
problem, resistant to single solutions,
its roots woven into economies, cul-
tures, livelihoods and habits. It traverses
every sector of society and every level of
human relations. Every perspective, from
law to agronomy, medicine to oceanogra-
phy, is relevant in addressing it.
Many different voices must be heard
Ecology
– from anthropology to astrobiology,
physics to economics, hydrology to
history. Not only published scholars, but
also the world’s thinkers without diplo-
mas, its scientists without laboratories.
There are other reasons why we need
this chorus of backgrounds. For too long,
the dominant conversation on climate
change has included only a tiny range
of people, namely a handful of policy-
makers and valuable scientific sources.
This selectivity sidelines the contribu-
tions of popular, personal, local and
indigenous knowledges, which will be
vital if we are to attain any plausible
climate safety. To tackle arguably the
deepest problem we have ever faced, we
are going to need to pull together our col-
lective wisdom, in its plurality of lenses
and expressions.
This exclusion not only robs us of
insights, but helps to misrepresent the
gravity of the problem. Rarely are the
protagonists of pain, those most vulnera-
ble to climate violence, near the spotlight
of attention. Without their voices and
visions, the story of our environmental
reality is evacuated of urgency.
Over decades, the story of climate
change has been predominantly encoded
in the language of data, diagrams and
jargon. It has been poorly illustrated
through the narrow iconography of polar
bears, collapsing glaciers and stylized
temperature graphs. Its relevance has
been defused through acronyms, abstract
numbers and tired metaphors.
Our own imaginations suffer as a result,
struggling to comprehend the emotional
density of our unfolding disaster.
p
The framing of environmental danger
is often associated with the future. But
our ecological crisis is not an abstrac-
tion we may hand to our grandchildren.
It is not an advertisement, a warning, or
a hypothesis. It is contemporary, shatter-
ingly and definitively so.
The trends are terrifying and every
day we rush further into uncharted ter-
ritory. There are sadnesses we won’t be
able to avoid. But what seems certain is
that human action over the next years
will determine whether we will face grave
loss or catastrophic collapse. Learn-
ing to think ecologically is a precious
and indispensable tool for our times. As
José Lutzenberger noted: ‘Ecology is the
science of the symphony of life, it is the
science of survival.’ I
THE LONG READ
It is our responsibility to equip our-
selves for these defining years. The
fight to tackle climate change is a fight
to determine the fatality of the future.
A fight over the vindication of life. It
will require much of us: to unlearn our
despair and learn our possibilities. But
through its rigours, we can win a more
beautiful world. We can live and create
the desired memory of tomorrow.
What then must we do?
‘Ecology without social justice is little more
than gardening’ – Enrique Viale
‘We are not drowning; we are fighting’
– slogan of the Pacific Warriors
‘The standard of justice depends on the
equality of power to compel’ – Thucydides
As these quotes show, our problem lies
not in the absence of alternative visions,
but the absence of meaningful action. Yet
the magnitude of the action necessary
can leave us stranded in impotence.
Many of us stumble at the very first
question: what can I do? But our failure
to find an answer lies partly in our ques-
tion: there is not much that individuals
working alone can do. But together, as
participants in society, there is a lot we
can do.
For too long, the onus of tackling
climate change was loaded on the backs
of individuals. Campaigns, textbooks
and documentary films called on us to
act in our own lives. We were told that
by changing our consumer habits, by
recycling, by changing our lightbulbs,
by shortening our showers, by eating
less meat, we could shortcut our way to
climate safety.
This approach is certainly important
in encouraging personal responsibil-
ity. Individual footprints are not incon-
sequential. Every burst of fossil-fuel
electricity, every litre of fuel consumed,
every flight taken, becomes an equivalent
mass of gas in the atmosphere.
But this focus on individual actions
can blind us to the structural causes of
problems and to the factors that restrict
personal behaviour. Careless narratives
of blame and shame can also be immo-
bilizing, discouraging people who are
already exhausted and demoralized by
our broader culture.
As journalist Martin Lukacs writes:
‘Neoliberalism… tells you that you should
not merely feel guilt and shame if you
can’t secure a good job, are deep in debt,
and are too stressed or overworked for
time with friends. You are now also
responsible for bearing the burden of
potential ecological collapse.’
Ultimately, this is a story which con-
fuses people, telling us that a gargantuan
civilizational crisis is soluble through
simple personal choices. The only hope of
securing the bold transformation required
by climate violence lies in collective
responses, for we are intimately depend-
ent on each other’s actions for survival.
Seas, seeds, rivers, emissions, soils
and forests do not obey the carvings of
borders. What does the national inter-
est represent when storms barrel across
continents? Wind currents will deposit
the air pollution of one province into
the lungs of another province’s citi-
zens. The actions of the world’s largest
state have the potential singlehandedly
to deplete the global carbon budget and
radically alter the trajectory of climate
violence. The absent boundaries of our
environments force us into solidarity.
As the US National Academy of Sci-
ences reflected in a report in the 1970s:
‘The resources of all countries should be
regarded as part of an interdependent
habitat rather than merely as possible
sources of supply…’ 11
Climate violence surpasses our own
experiences and personal loyalties. It
urges us to converge at all levels: local,
municipal, national, regional, interna-
tional. Balance is essential. If we focus
too much on the global, we miss the par-
ticular. If we latch ourselves to the local,
we lose the breadth of our problem. The
poet Rumi spoke of living like a drawing
compass, one leg rooted in the religion of
birth, the other spinning across nations.
p
What decisions do we take to push the
world into a better direction? The world
is like a turbulent and unpredictable
sea, riven by countless connections. Any
action or intervention will have antici-
pated and unanticipated ripples.
This map of political reality is at odds
with many conventional pictures. Politi-
cal actors talk of engineering change,
viewing the world as a pliable machine or
a geopolitical chessboard. Social change
deploys the language of military strategy:
campaigns, frontlines and tactics.
And when expectations of change
fail to materialize, we ask: why did this
auspicious government fail? Why did this
progressive initiative collapse? Why does
the promise of change rarely become its
fulfilment?
To understand political failure means
ridding ourselves of the illusion of politi-
cal control. Policy design is not choreog-
raphy but the opening of possibilities. As
activist Saul Alinsky wrote, ‘there are no
rules for revolution any more than there
are rules for love or rules for happiness’.
How do we unlock the change we want
to see? Do we encourage individual behav-
ioural change or strong social move-
ments? Do we pursue legislative endgames
and bold electoral campaigns, or do we
support mass revolution? Do we work
within the existing system, or do we exit
the system to create new spaces? All these
questions, and their associated answers,
reflect competing theories of change, dif-
ferent ways in which people understand
how transformation can come about.
There are many legitimate approaches,
but understanding the obstacles we face
is central. Huge profits have been made
from the establishment and endurance
of the status quo. A lot of people have a
lot to lose from the solutions to climate
change. These are often called vested
interests: individuals or groups who have
strong reasons to protect their money
and power against attempts to tackle the
ecological crisis. From Saudi Arabia to
Sudan, countries draw significant wealth
and power from controlling energy.
Any glance at a list of the world’s most
valuable companies will see a swathe of
fossil-fuel and utility companies. For
such interests, action to address climate
change represents a massive surrender
of power and wealth.
Our innocent intuitions may lead us
to hope that these powers may come to
terms with the challenge and act accord-
ingly. From a young age, fairy tales feed
us faith that the bullies will lose. But poli-
tics is about strength, about the hydrau-
lics of new powers displacing old ones.
Can we unfurl a transition of sufficient
velocity to really change the world? Can
we assemble enough power, in enough
time, to stop catastrophic climate vio-
lence, to enable communities to face the
coming furies, to ensure that we do not
become a divided world of fortresses?
To set in motion the tectonic shift in
power needed to tackle climate violence,
we will need to array forces like never
before. The case for transformational
change will have to gain mainstream

Politics is about strength, about the hydraulics
of new powers displacing old ones. Can we
assemble enough power, in enough time, to
stop catastrophic climate violence, to enable
communities to face the coming furies?
relevance and public support. Our per-
vasive high-carbon economic infrastruc-
ture, predicated on the use of fossil fuels,
must be remodelled at a pace unseen in
human history. Our nature-gorging econ-
omies, and the worship of indiscriminate
growth that drives them, will have to be
boldly questioned. The abysmal injustices
and inequalities that foster vulnerability
will have to be addressed through com-
prehensive reparations, healing, educa-
tion and economic programmes.
To shake up the inertia of the status
quo, we will have to organize, mobilize
broad bases, popularize visions and make
what is currently marginal into the new
common sense. We must be tactically
innovative. Too often, social change is
conceived through the prism of our old
system and its existing institutions. We
need to be both defensive and future-
oriented, resisting the undesirable while
rebuilding the new.
The repertoire of our tactics should
be broad. We should build electoral
alternatives that will ignite people’s
imaginations. Creative mass protest and
nonviolent disobedience can escalate
activities, shift parameters, create defin-
ing moments and unlock change.
We need to channel efforts into strate-
gies that transform possibilities, realize
alternatives and build widespread
support for economic transformation.
It is an enormous task, but it is far from
impossible.
First, as political scientists Erica Che-
noweth and Maria Stephan document,
the historical evidence shows that suc-
cessful social transformation relies on
the sustained participation of a strong
minority – around 3.5 per cent of a popu-
lation – to obtain success.
Second, when we think strategically,
we realize there is ample low-hanging
fruit around us. Many of the richest states
can decrease their material intensity
and electricity use significantly without
drastic changes.12 Even simple changes
with lower levels of resistance, such as
collapsing the emissions of refrigeration
systems, could have significant impacts.
Even relatively minor efforts in rich
countries could substantially subdue the
drivers of climate change. If 10 per cent
of the global population, which is respon-
sible for half of all emissions, reduce their
footprint to that of the average EU citizen,
we would see a 30-per-cent decrease in
global carbon-dioxide emissions.13 Huge
emissions reductions could potentially
be triggered simply through removing
handouts to polluting industries.14
Introducing progressive taxes on sin-
gle-use plastic, deposit reward and return
schemes, ensuring minimum standards
for the durability of products, issuing
compulsory requirements for recycled
materials: all of these offer places to start.
p
Just as our crises cannot be understood
in isolation, they cannot be solved in iso-
lation. Common threads bind together
environmental destruction, inequality,
racial exclusion, poor health, violence,
patriarchy and poverty.
On Christmas Eve in 1967 crowds filled
the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,
Georgia. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr
addressed the congregation:
‘Now let me suggest first that if we are
to have peace on earth, our loyalties
must become ecumenical rather than
sectional. Our loyalties must transcend
our race, our tribe, our class, and our
nation; and this means we must develop
a world perspective… It really boils down
to this: that all life is interrelated. We
are all caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied into a single garment
Ecology
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly. We are made to
live together because of the interrelated
structure of reality…’
Yet despite these connections, our soci-
eties are cordoned into tidy silos. Cen-
turies of thinking have bequeathed us
with a worldview of separations. People
are split into rigid academic disciplines,
occupations and roles, and are divided by
jargon. Our political movements hand us
a split menu of single-issue campaigns.
We cannot afford to maintain this
piecemeal and single-issue framework
any longer; we need to initiate conver-
sations, between botanists and builders,
architects and artisans, regarding how we
can build the common ground of trans-
formation. We need to turn incompatible
visions into overlapping aspirations. We
need to come up with strategies that focus
on suturing the separations, bigotries and
privileges that preclude co-operation. As
anthropologist Xochil Leyva reminds us,
collaboration fundamentally means ‘co-
labour’, working together.
With compassion, courage and humil-
ity, we can attempt to find understand-
ing. We can thread solidarities where
they have been crushed through divi-
sion, insularity and hostility. We can join
efforts, learn across disciplines, braid
unlikely affinities, pool resources and
bridge our divides.
In Canada, the Leap Project convened
First Nations leaders, trades unions, envi-
ronmentalists, migrant-rights activists
and campaigners from a range of back-
grounds to start building a common
agenda. The results of that process were
released as the Leap Manifesto, a bold
vision of a world defined by care for the
Earth and each other, a world where no
one is disposable. Viewing the climate
crisis as an opportunity to build a new I
THE LONG READ
economy, it puts forward solutions that
will save money, improve neighbour-
hoods, address historical injustice,
support public health and weave a more
equal economy. The Leap is just one
of many projects working to assemble
broader coalitions.
The challenge exposes the limits of
reason. Solidarity cannot be arranged.
The poet Yehuda Amichai described
these deficiencies in a poem titled ‘The
Place Where We Are Right’:
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
p
Communication is key. For many people,
climate change as it is traditionally
framed makes us feel we are irrelevant;
we are anaesthetized to the conditions
of our changing climate. In other cases,
it produces confusion when people want
clarity above all. Research has shown that,
for many, attention fades when simple
solutions dissolve into complexity.15
Climate change’s abstract framing, its
distant victims and its intricacy present
cognitive obstacles. In many societies,
environmental issues are perceived as
elitist, luxury issues. Ecology has been
understood and ridiculed as the defence
of birds and flowers.
As the linguist George Lakoff has doc-
umented, verbal and visual frames imbue
the way we think and imagine. Meta-
phors are pairs of glasses. The environ-
mental debate is defined by the language
of measurement and accountancy: costs,
tonnes, digits of destruction.
So how should we talk about our eco-
logical crisis? The evidence is mixed.
Narratives soaked only in fear and
alarm are rarely useful. Despondency
lends itself to disconnection, more likely
to alienate us than to motivate us. But
optimistic messages can make it seem
like the risks are less great or our predica-
ment not so urgent.
To reach all sorts of people we need all
sorts of tools and metaphors. Following
Arjun Appadurai’s recommendations, we
need to speak more in the language of
possibility (aspirations, dreams), and less
in the language of probabilities (costs,
benefits, risks).
We can use other vocabularies,
especially those monopolized by the
dominant ideology. We can frame envi-
ronmental safety as liberty, and all
threats to our land, water, air and bodies
as threats to our freedom.
We should also work to connect issues
with the daily, mundane struggles of well-
being that all people face. The Azeri jour-
nalist Khadjia Ismayilova once observed
in her analysis of state repression: ‘The
government will fail in these attempts to
silence everyone, as there is a truth-tell-
ing machine in every house – the empty
refrigerator.’
There are truth-telling machines in
all our daily frustrations. Our conversa-
tions on ecological alternatives need to
speak to these, addressing the needs of
everyday life: piped water, impermeable
roofs, the heat of homes, rent payments,
waiting times in hospitals, bus fares, the
quality of care facilities, the length of
commuting times, the safety of streets,
the tedium of jobs, time poverty and the
price of culture. We will be aware of our
success when ecology is deemed synony-
mous with housing, water, healthcare,
fulfilment, and wellbeing.
Ultimately, our success in expressing
the scope of climate violence will lie in
our ability to understand each other’s
aspirations, sufferings and possibilities.
Can we propose a viable alternative to
dissatisfaction?
p
We are not building a new world from
scratch. From Zagreb to Beirut, Val-
paraíso to Jackson, Missisippi, the lumi-
nous seeds of possibility are everywhere.
Landless workers are reviving degraded
farmland through agroforestry. Farmers
are replenishing seed banks, living
libraries of plant genes, to safeguard
disappearing crops and weave new traits
into crops. Dozens of cities are combin-
ing adaptation to climate change with
more equitable urban policies.16 Anony-
mous leaders and unpatented innovators
are leading silent revolutions, hidden in
plain sight.
While the news parades the victories
of despair, behind the coverage, count-
less existing alternatives are being forged.
This is a world of co-operatives, farmers’
markets, sharing clubs, communal net-
works, community energy schemes, soli-
darity kitchens, transition towns, repair
cafés, co-operative housing, alternative
currencies and community land trusts.
Cities, towns and rural villages are filled
with ethical banks, credit unions, eco-
logical farms, popular libraries, kitchens
turning food waste into tasty meals, and
orchards nourished through diverted
organic scraps.
The world over, social movements have
overcome staggering odds. From con-
fronting homophobia to denouncing the
entrenched culture of sexual violence,
silenced issues have been transformed
into dominant conversations within years.
Thousands of extractive projects have
been defeated by communities. Dozens of
countries and communities have outlawed
fossil-fuel extraction, or declared them-
selves off-limits from mining.
The global divestment movement has
pushed thousands of institutions to with-
draw their finances from fossil fuels. Bold
energy transitions, even in the heart-
lands of fossil fuels, are under way. DONG
Energy used to be Denmark’s largest oil
and gas company; today, it has successfully
sold all its fossil-fuel assets, transitioning
into the world’s largest renewable energy
company. Social movements in countries
highly dependent on fossil-fuel revenues
are demanding and gradually achieving
bold transitions away from oil and coal.17
Thousands of cities and municipali-
ties are pushing bold commitments on
emissions reductions. Over 1,000 laws on
climate change are now in place around
the world. Court cases on climate change
are exploding, with citizens suing states,
utilities and oil corporations. Since 2012,
the number of cities in China publish-
ing daily air-quality data has tripled.
Thousands of factories have been pushed
to disclose their pollution. From New
Zealand/Aotearoa to India, struggles to
give legal standing to rivers and forests
are increasing recognition of the rights of
nature. The International Criminal Court
has recently expanded its remit, suggest-
ing possibilities for prosecutions relating
to environmental crimes.
And on the frontlines of our ecologi-
cal crisis, repression breeds resistance.
There are few things mightier than the
power of pain. Mothers and fathers fight
against the pollution of their children’s
bodies. Communities resist industrial
dumping and poisoning. The residents of
Andalgalá, Ain Salah, Cajamarca, Imider,

Owino Uhuru, among so many others,
are all symbols of resistance to models of
development that corrode nature and the
lives of its inhabitants.
p quote, see Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R Ehrlich, and Rodolfo Dirzo,
The notion of cataclysmic collapse is
alluring. But that kind of perspective
obscures incremental gains and draws
us into impotence. We are not helpless.
What human beings decide to do in the
next few years will shape human destiny.
The actions of the coming decades will
shape the next few thousand years.
Although our power in an enormous uni-
verse may feel small, we should remem-
ber that complex systems, in physics and
biology, have the property of emergence.
The smallest entities can generate unex-
pected changes in larger entities. Simple
objects can give rise to complex patterns.
New configurations can emerge as old
constraints break.
We will not prevent everything. But
our actions can keep the worst-case sce-
narios in the realm of nightmares. We
have a treasure trove of traditions, tested
techniques, ancient ideas and rich phi-
losophies that can guide us. People have
spent millennia understanding our
CAPITAL AT RISK. INVESTMENTS ARE LONG TERM AND MAY NOT
BE READILY REALISABLE. ABUNDANCE IS AUTHORISED AND
REGULATED BY THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY (525432).
YOU WANT:
To create
a nest egg
climate, the ecosystems that sustain us,
and how we can thrive among them.
Ecology at its heart is a love for all
beings, a living acknowledgement of all
that allows us to be: our solar system, and
its unique capacity to shield our planet
from threats; the precious swirling rock
that is our Earth, and its exceptional
atmosphere which allows for the gifts of
breath and nourishment; the efforts of
ecosystems, fellow beings and ancestors
that have brought us here. We exploit
what we ignore and devalue. But we live
and fight for what we love.
Climate change then represents the
memory we could be, the possibility of
pain or prosperity. It is up to us to evict the
certainties of suffering and craft a world
that resembles the dignity of its people. O
DANIEL MACMILLEN VOSKOBOYNIK IS AN
EDUCATOR, CAMPAIGNER AND AUTHOR.
THIS IS AN EDITED EXTRACT FROM THE MEMORY WE
COULD BE, PUBLISHED BY NEW INTERNATIONALIST
(£9.99) SEPTEMBER 2018. TO ORDER A PRINT OR
DIGITAL COPY FOR £7.99 FROM OUR ETHICAL SHOP,
GO TO NIN.TL/MEMORY OR CALL +44 (0)1420 525544.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BOOKSHOPS WORLDWIDE.
1 Christophe Bonneuil & Jean-Baptiste Fressoz,
The Shock of the Anthropocene, Verso 2017, p 5.
2 Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations,
The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, FAO, 2016. 3 TW
Crowther et al, ‘Mapping tree density at a global scale’, Nature,
Vol 525, No 7568, 2015.
YOU DON’T WANT:
To create pollution
ISAs for people exactly like you
(although some drink flat whites)
Ecology
4 New Internationalist, 473, June 2014, p 20.
5 WWF, Living Planet Report, 2016, nin.tl/WWF2016 6 Stuart
L Pimm et al, ‘The biodiversity of species and their rates of
extinction, distribution and protection,’ Science, Volume
344, Number 6187, 2014. Researchers agree that the rate of
extinction of species is many times the pre-human rate. The
range of estimates is between 1,000 and 10,000 times. For the
‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction
signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume
114, Issue 30, 2017. 7 World Health Organization, Ambient
air pollution: A global assessment of exposure and burden
of disease, p 33. 8 Gardiner Harris, ‘Holding your breath in
India’, New York Times, 29 May 2015. 9 Philip J Landrigan,
et al, ‘The Lancet Commission on pollution and health’, The
Lancet, Vol 391, No 10119, 2017. 10 The Economist, ‘Weather-
related disasters are increasing’, 29 Aug 2017. 11 Cited in
Jack Heinemann, ‘The Seed Vault Flooding Is Only the Start
of Our Problems’, Boston Review, 26 May 2017. 12 See Paul
Hawken, Drawdown, Penguin, 2017; Lars-Arvid Brischke et al,
Energy sufficiency in private households enabled by adequate
appliances, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, 2015. 13 See Kevin
Anderson, cited in Terry Macalister, ‘Westerners urged to
reduce carbon footprint’, Climate News Network, 21 Jan 2017.
14 Ivetta Gerasimchuk et al, Zombie Energy, IISD, Feb 2017.
15 Tom W Smith, Jibun Kim & Jaesok Son, ‘Public Attitudes
toward Climate Change and Other Environmental Nos across
Countries’, International Journal of Sociology, Vol 47, No 1,
2017. See also the work of psychologist John Krosnick.
16 India Bourke, ‘Here are 16 cities tackling inequality through
climate action schemes’, CityMetric, 28 Sep 2017. 17 Truls
Gulowsen, ‘In Norway, A Growing Movement Builds an Oil-Free
Future’, The Leap Blog, 27 Apr 2017.
abundanceinvestment.com
 HALL OF
INFAMY
MATTEO SALVINI
JOB: Interior Minister and Deputy Prime
Minister of Italy
REPUTATION: Refugee Drowner-in-Chief
Matteo Salvini sure is an ambitious guy.
Not everyone sets themselves the task of
‘saving’ European values (even civiliza-
tion) from the barbarian hoards storming
across the Mediterranean. Kudos also for
his courage in standing up to the Brussels
Bunker (EU headquarters) whose weak-
kneed humanitarian policies are under-
mining said values.
Salvini is playing a long game – he is
just 45 years old and started small with
few obvious missteps to become Italy’s
most influential politician. These days
his ambitions go beyond Italian borders
as he and his buddy Jean-Marie Le Pen
position themselves as leaders of Europe’s
Far-Right neo-nationalist movement.
They are making common cause with
xenophobic autocrats in Eastern Europe
(Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Andrzej Duda
in Poland). Salvini is bluntly optimistic,
stating: ‘Changing Europe is a big goal but
it is at our fingertips’, and is making noises
about running to be Chair of the Euro-
pean Commission.
ALEX MATEO / ALAMY
Salvini, son of a Milanese business
executive, cut his political teeth first as a
grassroots youth activist. He then became
an MEP with the Lombardy-based North-
ern League, whose main plank champi-
oned the ‘productive’ north against the
‘lazy welfare-ridden’ Italian south. As his
status grew, Salvini managed to shift the
orientation of the flagging League from
a disgruntled regional party to the ‘Lega’
– a generic rightwing populist force
attracting votes from all Italians. Now,
‘the zeros’ (Salvini’s favourite insult) are
no longer from Sicily, Regio Calabria
and Naples but are desperate migrants
seeking the relative safety of Europe. He
kicked off his barbed-wire immigration
policy with the impossible promise that
he would expel 500,000 migrants. Next,
all mosques would be shut down. Despite
dramatically falling migrant numbers,
his Steve Bannon-inspired cry of ‘Italians
First’ continues to draw crowds of the
disaffected.
Once he became leader of the Lega,
Salvini got his chance in the 2018 elec-
tions at a point when Italians across the
political spectrum were frustrated beyond
measure with the country’s traditional
political elite and mainstream parties. The
populist Five Star Movement (M5S) fin-
ished first with almost a third of the vote,
but the Lega managed a respectable 17.69
per cent – becoming the leading force on
the Italian Right. Salvini lured the M5S
and their hapless leader Luigi di Maio into
a governmental alliance and grabbed the
key Interior Ministry job as well as the
Deputy Prime Minister position. Since
then it’s been all Salvini. While the M5S
try desperately to find room for their
Citizen’s Income (an inadequate Univer-
sal Basic Income) in the debt-restricted
Italian budget, [Salvini] is all national-
ist – posturing against immigrants and
Brussels bureaucrats which costs nothing.
It’s hard to see what the two parties have
in common (aside from anti-EU rheto-
ric), with Salvini promising pro-business
tax cuts and di Maio desperate to extend
promised social support to the precari-
ous M5S base of unemployed youth and
disenfranchised Southerners. According
to veteran Italian sociologist Domenico
De Masi: ‘The Lega will eat them up. The
most Right-leaning voters will switch to
Salvini. Those of the Left will tend to flee.’
Salvini is an adept user of social media
– moving from demonizing refugees,
Roma people and political opponents to
letting people know what’s for his dinner
or how his love life is going. This ‘selfie
politics’ of artificial intimacy is based
on 3.4 million Facebook followers and
900,000 on both Twitter and Instagram.
When he very publicly split up with his
journalist girlfriend, one follower com-
forted him: ‘Your true woman is Italy,
she will be faithful and grateful!’ Indeed,
Italians have shown a high tolerance for
self-absorbed Far-Right politicians dating
back to Mussolini and more recently the
annoying Silvio Berlusconi (possibly the
model for Donald Trump and Benjamin
Netanyahu). If European values include
democracy, equality and tolerance,
Salvini is dead set on undermining not
protecting them. O
LOW CUNNING: Salvini is an expert
at being all things to all Italians, moving
effortlessly from crisp white shirts and tailored
blue suits when mixing with the media or
corporate high-flyers, to jeans and green
sneakers when strutting the popular stage.
SENSE OF HUMOUR: Crude and
hypocritical. Salvini once brought an
inflatable sex doll to a political rally to
represent a woman opponent. At the same
time he makes admiring remarks about
Vladimir Putin for ‘promoting traditional
family values’ in Russia.
Sources: The Guardian; Wikipedia; Il Manifesto; Politico;
euractiv.com; Foreign Policy; Euronews; Time; Jacobin; New
York Times; The Telegraph; openmigration.org
VIEW FROM York’s Hudson River – singing from a
ship called The Clearwater.
‘Some music helps you understand

AMERICA your troubles,’ Seeger said, ‘and some

music helps you do something about
your troubles.’ The musician gained
unexpected fame in 1950 when his group,
Patriot, Dissident The Weavers, recorded a rendition of

ILLUSTRATION: KATE COPELAND

Five years ago, in January 2014, the US
lost a great patriot, musician and inter-
nationalist when Pete Seeger died at the
age of 94. In a time of resurgent and
reactionary nationalism, I found myself
reflecting on the five-string banjo picker’s
example of how a deep love of country
could be married to a thoroughgoing
progressivism.
Some lives have the ability to capture
the spirit of rapidly changing times,
tracing the unsteady contours of political
life. Pete Seeger had such a life.
Seeger joined Woody Guthrie to sing
union songs on picket lines during the
labour boom of the 1940s. He was red-
baited and called before the House Un-
American Activities Committee during
the heyday of McCarthyism in the 1950s.
In the 1960s he helped to make ‘We Shall
Overcome’ the great anthem of the civil
rights movement; he then joined anti-
war protests singing: ‘Support our boys
in Vietnam: bring ‘em home, bring ‘em
home.’
Starting in the 1970s, before modern
environmentalism had even taken shape,
Seeger led a successful effort to clean New
‘Goodnight Irene’ which became a radio
sensation. But the blacklist soon stifled
his commercial career, keeping him off
network television for 17 years.
Seeger, who was suspicious of celeb-
rity anyway, responded by performing
in schools, at camps and with marchers
at demonstrations. He always contended
that he’d rather have people join in song
than listen idly to professionals. ‘Partici-
pation,’ he stated, ‘is what’s going to save
the human race.’
The folk revival of the 1960s adopted
Seeger’s inclusive ethos as its guiding
principle. It also adopted his vast cata-
logue of tunes, which plumbed musical
traditions from New England to
Oklahoma.
Yet while Seeger rooted himself in this
rich heritage, he also extended his politi-
cal and musical solidarity across borders.
In 1963, when air travel was both difficult
and expensive, he travelled around the
globe to document and share the folk
songs of other cultures.
Throughout, he saw a common and
liberating power. ‘When one person
taps out a beat,’ he wrote, ‘or when three
people discover a harmony they never
knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a
chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few
feet higher, then they also know there is
hope for the world.’
Even as later presidents praised him
– Bill Clinton awarded the musician a
prestigious Kennedy Center Honor and
Seeger played at Barack Obama’s 2009
inauguration – he continued speaking
out against his country’s military inter-
ventions in Central America, Iraq and
beyond.
If there’s a vision of US patriotism
that is redeemable, it must surely draw
on Seeger’s insistence that it encompass
both ardent dissent and robust inter-
nationalism. Of those who had once
branded him as un-American for these
beliefs, Springsteen put it best: ‘You out-
lasted the bastards!’ O
MARK ENGLER IS AN AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST
WHO COVERS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, GLOBALIZATION
AND ELECTORAL POLITICS. HE CAN BE REACHED VIA
DEMOCRACYUPRISING.COM
MIXED MEDIA

SPOTLIGHT
SEBASTIÁN LELIO

‘My characters are not me, and they are
different to me. I look for a way to connect
to what I’m not, to what the audience is not’
ebastián Lelio, one of the leading
S figures of contemporary Chilean
cinema, makes films about love and
compassion – and the limits of our love
and compassion. About who is loved, and
accepted, and who is deigned not worthy,
and excluded.
He has a personal warmth, friendli-
ness and a winning smile. ‘Film’, he tells
me, ‘is a machine for empathy’ and his
films deeply immerse us in a life and
experience. Usually it’s a woman who is,
in some way, an outsider.
In his Oscar-winning A Fantastic
Woman, Marina, a transgender singer in
Santiago, Chile, stands up to intimida-
tion, both from the family of her lover,
who has just died, and from the police.
His latest film Disobedience has Ronit, the
daughter of a north London rabbi who
had cut off contact with her after discov-
ering she was in a lesbian relationship,
make an unwelcome return to the com-
munity for his funeral.
Lelio was born in 1974 in Mendoza,
Argentina, to a Chilean mother and an
Argentinian father. At the age of two, he
and his ballet-dancer mother moved to
Chile. This was the year that Argentina
suffered a military coup and three years
into the dictatorship of Augusto Pino-
chet in Chile. Young Sebastián and his
mother lived a nomadic life in a succes-
sion of cities. Did this give him a sense
of rootlessness? Did the military regime
instil a sense of social or political exclu-
sion? I ask.
But he resists any personal or auto-
biographical angle on his films. ‘It is,’ he
says, ‘hard to track back, and I can only
explain my motivations. I know what I
am trying to do. My characters are not
me, and they are different to me. I look
for a way to connect to what I’m not, to
what the audience is not. So that we dis-
cover, so that we learn.’
After first studying journalism for
one year, he went to the Chilean Film
School. In 2003, he released CERO (Zero),
a documentary based on unedited mate-
rial from the 9/11 attacks on New York in
2001, co-directing with Carlos Fuentes.
There followed two seasons directing
Mi mundo privado (My private life), a TV
documentary series which followed the
lives of Chilean families from diverse
socioeconomic backgrounds. In 2005 his
first full-length feature, Sagrada Familia
(Holy Family), scooped 28 prizes on the
film festival circuit.
Lelio works hard to ground his char-
acters in time and place with specific
beliefs and attitudes. He’d known little,
for example, about the lives of transgen-
der people or Orthodox Jews in England.
He met Daniela Vega, who plays Marina
in A Fantastic Woman, when working
on an idea about the devastation when
someone you love suddenly dies. She was
then working as a hair stylist, became an
adviser on the film, then its main charac-
ter. Disobedience came about after Rachel
Weisz, who plays Ronit, asked Lelio to
read Naomi Alderman’s novel.
Both as writer and director, the way
Lelio takes us inside his characters is
exceptional. It is, he says, about com-
municating beyond words and conscious
awareness, through image, movement
– and music. ‘Music is ingrained in me,
Words — Malcolm Lewis
and I love music in films – singing and
dancing. The power of music is so strong.’
In Gloria, which was his first film
released in Europe and the US, Gloria is
always singing along to pop songs – it’s
her passion that reveals her outlook and
her feelings. Marina’s singing of Handel’s
‘Ombra mai fu’ at the end of A Fantastic
Woman is an awe-inspiring public eulogy,
but confirms too her resilience, compo-
sure and profound gratitude for her life
with Orlando.
Lelio’s handling of intimacy in rela-
tionships is instructive. When, in Disobe-
dience, Ronit and Esti make love, it’s their
rapture, their passion that enthrals us.
‘It’s about intimate connection,’ he says,
‘to get into their skins, to feel as they do.’
‘There are no illegitimate people,’
Lelio continues. ‘And it’s not simply that
people are good or bad. Film multiplies
our life experience. And life is complex.
People are not set in stone. In the film,
and sitting in the cinema. What they
think and feel can change. The protago-
nists have to figure out how to survive or
move on. Like them, I want the spectator
to evaluate what is happening.’
It works. A Fantastic Woman had
a massive impact in Chile, not least
through winning Chile’s first Academy
Award. And on 12 September, Chile’s
Congress passed The Gender Identity
Law, based on a bill held up for nearly
six years, allowing trans people aged 14
and over to change their names and legal
gender in official documents. O
DISOBEDIENCE WAS RELEASED BY CURZON IN THE
UK ON 30 NOVEMBER 2018.
MIXED MEDIA

BOOKS
Can We Feed the World Deviation
Without Destroying It?
by Luce D’Eramo, translated by Anne Milano Appel
by Eric Holt-Giménez (Pushkin Press, ISBN 9781782273882)
(Polity, ISBN 9781509522019) pushkinpress.com
politybooks.com +++,,
+++++

feed that projected 10 billion about. At its heart is the nar-

In this splendid primer on
food politics, Eric Holt-Gimé-
nez, Executive Director of
Food First, addresses the ques-
tion posed in his title. Almost
a third of humanity suffer
from hunger or malnutrition
and, on current projections,
the world’s population is set
to hit 10 billion by 2050. Thus,
we are told, we have to double
global food production by that
date to feed our ever-growing
numbers.
In robust, no-nonsense
fashion the author takes issue
with the pronouncements
and assumptions of agribusi-
ness and politicians alike. He
argues that the root problem
is not scarcity of food – we
already produce enough to
– instead it lies in the waste-
ful, wrongheaded and ulti-
mately planet-wrecking way
we produce and consume our
food. Pursuing the chimera
of ‘enough food’ is a fool’s
errand. Indeed, the drive to
produce more, through indus-
trial mono-cropping, gene
modification and intensive use
of fertilizers and pesticides is,
in Holt-Giménez’s view, pre-
cisely the approach that will
result in global catastrophe.
As he pithily says, ‘Overshoot
of the earth’s human car-
rying capacity is driven by
capitalism.’
Because we are asking the
wrong question, we are reach-
ing the wrong conclusion.
Rather than asking how we
can constantly produce more
food, we should be question-
ing who produces, how they
produce and to what ends. A
system that condemns mil-
lions to grinding poverty
and hunger is not correctable
by technological tinkering.
Holt-Giménez’s conclusion –
daunting or rousing depend-
ing on your viewpoint – is that
we can end hunger and envi-
ronmental destruction only
through radical political and
economic transformation. We
can feed the world – by chang-
ing everything. PW
The cover blurb of this auto-
biographical novel will tell
you that it concerns an ideal-
istic young fascist, Lucie, who
leaves Italy in 1944 to volun-
teer at a Nazi labour camp,
intending to disprove the
lies she has heard about what
is happening in Germany.
Unable to deny the horrific
truth, however, she soon
disowns her previous identity
and joins a group of deportees
being sent to Dachau concen-
tration camp, from where she
escapes, only to be paralysed
when a wall collapses on her
as she tries to rescue bomb
survivors.
Such a summary, however,
only scratches the surface
of what Deviation is really
rator’s rebellion against her
bourgeois upbringing and
her struggle to live an authen-
tic life according to her own
rules, while trying (often
unsuccessfully) to distance
herself from the disdain,
self-importance and compla-
cency she associates with her
parents’ social class.
The novel was written in
stages, between 1953 and 1977,
added to as and when memo-
ries resurfaced or the author/
narrator felt able to chal-
lenge or reassess what she
had already written, with the
disconcerting result that the
book turns into a critical anal-
ysis of itself. The reader must
join Luce in re-evaluating
everything as she sheds layer
after layer of false memories
to finally expose herself –
now writing as a middle-aged
woman – for who she is and
who she was.
The narration is sometimes
rambling, and Luce herself
is hard to warm to. Yet her
willingness to undergo what is,
in effect, her own brutal char-
acter assassination redeems
her – in this reader’s eyes, at
least. JL
 MIXED MEDIA

Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird

Words: Peter Whittaker, Jo Lateu

Tentacle Voices of the

Windrush Generation
by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas
(And Other Stories, ISBN 9781911508342) by David Matthews
andotherstories.org (Blink Publishing, ISBN 9781788701341)
++++, blinkpublishing.co.uk
++++,

Indiana’s characters live dual were threatened with depor-

No-one could accuse Domini-
can author Rita Indiana of
playing it safe. Her incandes-
cent novel is a wild mash-up
of science fiction, ecological
meltdown, gender politics,
art world machinations and
Yoruba ceremony. Throw in
elements of colonialism and
slavery, time travel and hard-
boiled thriller and you have
the makings of a shambolic
mess. Remarkably, Indiana
makes it work and Tentacle is
a huge adrenalin rush of fluid-
ity and possibility.
The book is set in Santo
Domingo a decade or so in
the future, in the aftermath of
a massive seaquake – caused
by human folly – which has
wiped out most marine life.
lives in which their high-tech
online personas are in stark
contrast to their hardscrab-
ble lives in the degraded
wasteland of the real. Acilde
Figueroa, a maid and aspiring
chef, is drawn into a labyrin-
thine plot to save the ocean, in
which she must change both
sex and identity and jump-
start an alternative timeline
in which different, better deci-
sions are made. In this she is
aided by a Cuban doctor of
dubious morality, a rare and
valuable sea anemone, and
various devotees of the Sante-
ria faith.
Tentacle leaves the reader
with a flashbulb image of a
post-apocalypse future in
which a life full of dance, art,
politics and sex is not only
possible but absolutely nec-
essary, and human destiny is
determined not by what you
begin as but what you choose
to be. This is a life-affirm-
ing book in which the fizz of
the storytelling compounds
and amplifies the urgency of
the political and ecological
message. PW
On 22 June 1948 the HMT
Empire Windrush docked at
Tilbury. She was carrying
802 migrants from the Car-
ibbean, responding to a call
from Britain for people to
come and fill labour shortages
in a war-ravaged economy.
These West Indians and the
thousands who followed them
in the next two decades – col-
lectively known as The Win-
drush Generation – took up
essential jobs in the NHS,
transport, manufacturing and
the Civil Service. In 2018 they
became the focus of a politi-
cal scandal when it emerged
that, as a result of the ‘hostile
environment policy’ insti-
gated by then-Home Secre-
tary Theresa May, thousands
tation or deprived of state
benefits or vital medical treat-
ment because they supposedly
lacked the correct paperwork.
Much has been written
about the Windrush Gen-
eration, from the racism
and hardships they faced
on arrival to the iniquity of
their treatment by the British
state. In his important and
timely oral history, Voices
of the Windrush Genera-
tion, journalist David Mat-
thews sets out to give us ‘the
real story told by the people
themselves’ and, in this, his
book is an unqualified success.
Here we have the individual
and unmediated voices and
experiences – Nicey and
Jenny from Jamaica, Allyson
Williams from Trinidad,
Enid Rodie from Guyana and
numerous others. They speak
of their childhood or young
adult lives in the Caribbean
and the sorrows and joys they
encountered as they forged
new lives in Britain. In his
documentation of a genera-
tion more often talked about
than listened to, Matthews has
provided an invaluable socio-
political and cultural resource
that deserves the widest pos-
sible readership. PW
MIXED MEDIA
FILM
Burning
directed and co-written by Chang-dong Lee
148 minutes
+++++
Jongsu delivers parcels. He
lives in a run-down family
smallholding in earshot of the
propaganda broadcasts from
the border with North Korea.
He wants to write but apart
from petitioning for leniency
for his father, who’s in jail, on
trial for assaulting a neighbour,
he writes nothing. He seems
friendless, lives alone, with a
cow. It’s a not a great life.
But then, randomly, Haemi
comes along. She says she
knows him – they’re from
the same village, and she
tells the story of how he once
rescued her from a well. He
says he doesn’t remember
her. She’s done some acting,
mimes peeling and eating a
tangerine. She’s good. She’s as
lively as he is stolid. She wants
to live, to travel, discover the
world. And she has a cat –
could Jongsu feed it while she’s
on a trip to Kenya? She shows
him her place, and seduces
him. Body and soul.
A few weeks later, at the
airport on her return, she
rings Jongsu for a lift. When
he gets there, she’s with a
smooth, confident, amused
guy – Ben. They’re now an
item...
Taking off from a very
short Murakami story,
Burning is a well-drawn social
parable, a love story that turns
into a noir thriller. It’s about
class, about longing for a dif-
ferent life, about attachment
and indifference, about the
random and the predictable.
It’s cumulative, seductive, and
burns into your memory. ML
Green Book
directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly
130 minutes
++++,
The Green Book was a segre-
gation-era guide to the south-
ern US for African Americans.
The film is about Don Shirley,
a great Jamaican-born pianist
and composer, on a 1962 tour
of the South with an Italian-
American driver, Tony Val-
lelonga. (It’s co-written by his
son Nick Vallelonga.) Director
Farrelly is known for ‘gross-
out’ comedies (There’s Some-
thing About Mary) but this is
in a lower key. Like his com-
edies, this too is a role-rever-
sal mainstream movie, but
with a serious point – African
Americans suffered abuse and
indignities that people outside
the southern states of the US
had little idea of.
Tony, or Tony Lip as he’s
known, knows his way around
his Chicago patch; he’s good
with people, and he can look
after himself. But he’s down on
his luck, has lost his job, and
needs money. Don Shirley
needs a driver. It’s a familiar
story: a growing relationship
between very different per-
sonalities, thrown together in
difficult circumstances, and
who both change for the
better.
The highly educated, multi-
lingual but cloistered Don
tries fried chicken, and learns
about Aretha Franklin and
Little Richard. But he has to
prepare for concerts in closets,
is barred from ‘whites only’
toilets, and can’t eat in a hotel
dining room where he’s about
to play. He cultivates Tony’s
sensitivity in letters that stun
his wife, and Tony leaves
behind his prejudices.
Green Book is a classic
liberal film, with great perfor-
mances, a vivid period feel,
superb soundtrack, and, not
least, great warmth and com-
passion. ML
 MIXED MEDIA

MUSIC
Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
Words: Malcolm Lewis, Louise Gray

25LIVE@25 Echoes
by Skunk Anansie by Farhan
(Republic of Music, 2CDs, 3LPs and 2MCs) (Farhan Music CD and digital)
skunkanansie.com twitter.com/faroutakhtar
++++, +,,,,

In the early 1990s, as the bands
of the Britpop era were setting
out their respective shingles,
there were a few bands that
truly made one’s hair stand on
end. One of them was Skunk
Anansie, the London-based
quartet led by the extraordi-
nary Skin. If heavy rock ever
had its own version of Grace
Jones, now with added text-
book of cultural theory, it was
in the compelling figure of
this shaven-headed Amazon
and her songs about racism,
religion and power. In actual
fact, Skunk Anansie had very
few, if any, links with Britpop,
or, for that matter, Britrock.
There was always an alter-
native ferocity, a wayward
energy about Skin and her
cohort that was closer to PJ
Harvey than anyone else.
Although Skunk Anansie
split up in 2001 after three
albums (more were to follow
after a reformation in 2009),
the band soon earned an
unparalleled reputation for
its stage appearances, and
it’s these that 25LIVE@25,
released to celebrate a quarter
of a century since the band’s
formation, convey so well.
The double CD contains 25
songs, all recorded live and
edited into the semblance of
a single performance. The
thing rocks. ‘Intellectual-
ize My Blackness’ and ‘Little
Baby Swastikkka’ stand out as
being as cogent and relevant
as they were in 1995. Even
more so – the first song like a
lost Frantz Fanon manifesto
wrapped up in riffs of Deep
Purple; the second taking
on new acute meanings in
these dark times. Skunk
Anansie does have its quieter
moments, but this album
might be read as raw power.
As one of its songs from 1996
has it: ‘Yes, It’s Fucking Politi-
cal.’ LG
Slightly angsty songs recorded
in Milan with a big-name
producer and a middle-of-
the-road rock band. Farhan
Akhtar’s debut album, Echoes
is a competent mush of an
album that is characterized by
such a sonic placelessness as to
make it quite interesting.
Farhan – his stage name
– is a household name in his
native India. An actor, a Bol-
lywood star, a TV presenter, a
screenwriter, Farhan has now
added ear-candy to his consid-
erable resumé. Echoes is well
described: it echoes with the
strummy guitar, riffs, atmos-
pheres of a thousand soft-rock
albums. This is not to say that
Farhan, being Indian, should be
making albums that shiver with
sitars: he can record whatever
he wishes, however he wishes.
But in musical terms, this
album is international mashed
potato. Its lyrics are written by a
random cliché generator which
couples ‘fire’ with ‘burned’ and
‘fella’ with ‘umbrella’ (although
the original context for this last
pairing – Irving Berlin’s song
for the 1948 Fred Astaire/Judy
Garland vehicle, Easter Parade
– is not acknowledged). Echoes
is, perhaps, the most homog-
enized album I have ever come
across.
Which is a pity, because
there is some important stuff
going on here. ‘Why Couldn’t
It Be Me?’ is a response to the
Taliban massacre of school-
children in Peshawar in 2014.
Offstage, he’s the leader of Men
Against Rape and Discrimina-
tion (MARD – the Hindi word
for ‘man’) and an activist who
promotes gender equality. If
Echoes is a reflection of male
sensitivity, that’s marvellous;
but everything on the album
is too studied – right down to
the naughty f-word in one its
songs and (oh, excruciation)
exhortations such as ‘Frankie,
on guitar!’ LG
 THE The crossword prize is a voucher for our online shop to the equivalent of £20/$30. Only the
winner will be notified. Send your entries by 15 February to: New Internationalist Puzzle

PUZZLER Page, The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK; or email a scan to:
puzzlepage@newint.org Winner for 235: D. Holderness, Goole, East Yorkshire, England.

CROSSWORD 236 by Axe 12 Part of the Suez Canal’s reservoir of

CRYPTIC ACROSS
5 Vehicle Italians have impounded
going to a Greek island (6)
7 City in Uttar Pradesh, an old city,
tracks the space station crash (8)
9 Port on the R Uruguay where Sudan
pay for wreckage (8)
10 Haul through screw to connect (4,2)
11 Scope of the First Sea Lord’s power
peaks in Antarctica? (9,5)
magnificent ale (5,6,4)
CRYPTIC DOWN
1 Not completely free of
15 Mathematicians in this American IT contamination, a Kosovan stays
assembly (14) here (8)
18 Punk mom returned to the Big 2 Zane novel set in Florida’s borders
Apple... (6) and a town in Italy (6)
19 ...river district – could be Upper or 3 Almost stole lake’s store of
Lower (4,4) pancakes (8)
20 British soldiers put on shades as 4 Australasian originally from parts
cover (8) and places uninteresting – Adelaide,
21 Chap’s regular rapid eye movements normally (6)
penetrate French city (6) 6 In bits, groan and cheer for a Kolkata
suburb (13)
7 Prepares articles in English and
French on numbers that evacuated
the volcano (5,2,6)
8 Odd timing, nuke going off as
countries joined together? (6,7)
13 Cheque some say is passé – or
avant-garde? (8)
14 Part of Ireland to dabble in steroid
sampling (8)
16 Odyssey ended here for poor Thai,
over California (6)
17 Cover that’s tested at home is
promoted (6)
QUICK ACROSS
5 Aegean island named after the son
of Daedalus (6)
7 Uttar Pradesh city, home to
the Hindu pilgrimage centre of
Vindhyachal (8)
9 Port on the Uruguay river, facing
Argentina’s Colon (8)
10 Connect electrically (4,2)
11 3,000m peaks, the northern section
of the Transantarctic mountains
discovered by Ross in 1841 (9,5)
12 Heavily saline body of water linked
to the Suez Canal (5,6,4)
15 Those skilled in the science of
numbers (14)
18 Nickname for New York City first
used by Washington Irving... (6)
19 ...and part of Manhattan between
Fifth Avenue and the ocean (4,4)
20 British soldiers (historically) (8)
21 Chief city of Champagne-Ardenne
and coronation place of most French
kings (6)
QUICK DOWN
1 Former Serbian capital, now just of
Kosovo (8)
2 Town in Emilia-Romagna which
gives its name to richly coloured
pottery (6)
3 French pancake parlour (8)
4 Inhabitant of part of one of
Australasia’s largest islands (6)
6 Kolkata suburb, originally French
and only handed over to India in
1950 (13)
7 Washington state volcano which lost
almost 400m of height after the 1980
eruption (5,2,6)
8 European federation of countries,
of its current constituent parts since
1920 (6,7)
13 Middle European: socially
unconventional person (8)
14 Historic province of Ireland centred
on Dublin (8)
16 Island home to Odysseus
(anglicized) (6)
17 Protect; have covered (6)
SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 235
ACROSS: 5 Bamako, 7 Arapahos,
9 Kiribati, 10 Ibadan, 11 South
America, 13 Masala, 15 Maquis,
18 Niagara Falls, 21 Mercia,
22 Manassas, 23 Gaillard, 24 Bhopal.
DOWN: 1 Damietta, 2 Douala,
3 Pacifism, 4 Jalapa, 6 Arizonan,
7 Aviles, 8 Oman, 12 Kielbasa,
14 Alabaman, 16 Quaestor, 17 Talmud,
18 Nacala, 19 Annaba, 20 Jena.

ASSOCIATION Solutions here are alluded to by ‘association’ words or phrases, eg

ICE as a solution could have association words like ‘melting (ICE)’
or ‘(ICE) skating’, so the association words in each clue could appear
WORDSEARCH 82 Find the 25 European
rivers hidden here.

WORDS 3 in a phrase before or after the solution word.

ACROSS DOWN
7 Smoking; potato 1 Comment; wire (6)
(6) 2 Deep; sheep (4)
8 Faith; of the sick (6) 3 District; at law (8)
9 Ship; gay (7) 4 Coconut; away (3)
10 Sainted; Sally (4) 5 Sands of the;
11 Baker's; dirty (5) desert (8)
13 John Quincy; ale 6 Real; elbow (6)
(5) 12 Ferdinand von;
14 Trigger; hunting (5) Led (8)
15 Latter-day; patron 13 Riotous; lines (8)
(5) 14 Long; wire (6)
17 Snake; the bullet (4) 16 Hidden; show (6)
18 Isle; green (7) 19 Emperor of; when
21 Television; battle in (4)
(6) 20 Wood; one's trade
22 Dido's; one's (3)
passing (6)

SOLUTION TO ASSOCIATION WORDS 2

ACROSS: 5 Drawn, 6 Twins, 8 Pavement,
9 Spin, 10 Shops, 12 Sells, 13 Boils, 15
Sheds, 17 Taxi, 18 Diamonds, 20 Shame,
21 Pound.
DOWN: 1 Hate, 2 Angels, 3 Status, 4 Dissolve,
5 Deals, 7 Swims, 11 Original, 13 Brass, 14
Sudden, 15 Stamps, 16 Sided, 19 Opus.
SOLUTION TO WORDSEARCH 81: The 16 British prime
ministers were: Asquith, Baldwin, Balfour, Blair, Brown,
Cameron, Churchill, Disraeli, Eden, Gladstone, Heath,
Major, May, Pitt, Thatcher, Wilson. Eagle-eyed puzzlers will
have spotted that Attlee was also in there, but missing a ‘t’!
 AGONY
UNCLE
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. Seems like
we’re all in need of a New Internationalist perspective.
Enter stage: Agony Uncle.
Dear Agony Uncle,
I have recently learned that
an aunt has left me a small
cottage in her will. I have
always been skint, live com-
munally and squatted for a
few years in my youth. So far
I have been of the firm belief
that property is theft and the
idea of an unearned inherit-
ance is anathema. But now I
am wavering... Please help.
Vidya
Dear Vidya,
When the French anarchist
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as-
serted that property is theft
(or rather that property is
synonymous with robbery) in
1840, he had in mind the great
set of historical forces at work
in Europe since the Middle
Ages: enclosure. The God-
given common land, owned
collectively by the peasantry,
was violently seized by the
King and the landowner. (As
the Marxist feminist Sylvia
Federici has argued, the witch
trials of Europe and North
America played an important
role in this, dividing the peas-
antry against each other along
gender-based lines, break-
ing their solidarity). In other
words, privately owned land
was originally stolen in order
to make it privately owned.
Proudhon wanted the gov-
ernment to recognize there
was a contradiction between
the rights of equality and
property rights. He was not
issuing a moral decree for how
individuals should live their
lives under capitalism.
As New Internationalist’s
Agony Uncle, I often get ques-
tions that relate to what you
might call ‘lifestyle politics’:
the idea that our personal
(anti-)consumerism is the most
salient of political categories.
‘Should I buy this?’ ‘Should
I go here?’ ‘Should I accept
that?’… I’m glad you’ve lived a
life of bohemian virtues – it
is one that prefigures another,
better world – but please don’t
feel bad about wavering: you
are not a monk! Politics is
about relating to other people,
not obsessing over our bank you could make it a safe space
balance. And everyone, even for recently arrived refu-
an anarchist, is entitled to a gees or people who just want
room of their own. a short break but can’t afford
The question is through holidays. Rather than treat
which political or economic this gift like the plague, trans-
form will you ‘own’ this form it into an opportunity
house? There are alternative for social good.
options to private property: Property isn’t a toxin that
you could institute a housing infects our bodies. But it is
co-operative, living with other used to enforce an unjust
people who need a roof over social order. Think of the
their heads too and sharing housing crises in most major
ownership rights; you could cities across the world – engi-
keep a room for yourself and neered by the financialization
give the others to the local of homes into investments.
school, a small trade union or Property also creates a class of
social movement who would people who become structur-
make benefit of a place to ally selfish: when Thatcher sold
teach, learn and fraternize; off Britain’s council homes, she
knew she would be consolidat-
ing a class of new Tory voters
for a generation. And, as the
economist Thomas Piketty
has demonstrated, intergen-
erational wealth transfers in
the form of assets are a huge
bastion of inequality. I say,
in this wretched world, take
advantage of your aunt’s gift.
Collectivize the ownership of
the house: clean it up, repaint
the walls, and speak to the
community to discuss what
to do with it – in democratic
spirit. If you want it to, it can
ILLUSTRATION: EMMA PEER
and will belong to those who
need it. Remember, Crosby,
Stills and Nash in their lambent
ode of 1970 didn’t sing about
‘my house’, but ‘our house’. O
PLEASE EMAIL YOUR DILEMMAS TO
ADVICE@NEWINT.ORG
 WHAT IF…
...WE REDUCED CARBON
EMISSIONS TO ZERO BY 2025?
Hazel Healy sketches out a radical scenario
ILLUSTRATION: ANDY CARTER
In October 2018 the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued
a stark warning: enact urgent measures
to limit global warming within the next
12 years or irrevocably deplete the eco-
systems that sustain human life on Earth.
By way of remedy, the IPCC has pro-
posed reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) and
other greenhouse gases to ‘net zero’* by
2050. Yet in December, news landed that
after a period of levelling out, carbon
emissions were set to rise steeply in 2018.
Perhaps a more vertiginous transi-
tion would help focus the mind of world
leaders: what if we aimed to cut abso-
lute carbon emissions to zero by 2025?
No-one knows if it’s possible – let alone at
this rate – but it’s instructive to imagine
how such a scenario would play out.
Assuming the world pumped out
about 42 billion tonnes (or ‘gigatonnes/
Gts’) of CO2 in 2018, we would have to
cut out 6Gt every year – roughly equiva-
lent to the entire US emissions in 2009
– to hit zero by 2025. There are only
two ways to go about this: ramping up
clean energy generation via renewable
power, while simultaneously massively
reducing the energy we use.
Under a zero-carbon scenario, the fos-
sil-fuelled energy sector, which generates
around 80 per cent of emissions, would
be phased out fast: coal, oil, gas (including
fracking) – the lot. Meanwhile, all heating
and transport would have to be weaned off
carbon-based fuels on to clean electricity.
With the tight timescale ruling out new
nuclear reactors, the entire world’s pro-
ductive effort would be channelled into a
logistical feat unknown in human history:
building new solar, tidal, wind and hydro
generation while modifying electricity
grids; and a monumental efficiency drive
in homes and businesses. Zero Carbon
Britain suggests building 130,000 100-
metre tall wind turbines to power the UK
(in an area over twice the size of Wales),
while Zero Carbon Australia proposes 12
concentrating solar plants over 2,760km 2
(an area the size of Kangaroo Island).
By 2025, renewables – currently sup-
plying 10 per cent of global energy con-
sumption – won’t come close to meeting
current demand. So, our zero-carbon
scenario requires the global elite (the 20
per cent of global citizens who account
for 70 per cent of emissions) to cut the
quickest and deepest. Setting aside
climate justice, concentrating on US
citizens who average 16.4 tonnes CO2 per
person, would bring us closer to zero a
lot quicker than the people of Niger, who
clock up under 0.1 tonne.
In the rich world in particular, zero
carbon would usher in a period of huge
social change. Energy would be stringently
rationed, dedicated to survival and essen-
tial activities; we’d go to bed early and rise
with the sun. Expect massive disruption in
the way food is grown, processed and dis-
tributed – more turnips, fewer mangoes on
the menu in the UK for starters. Globally,
there would be much-reduced private car
use, virtually no aviation, haulage or ship-
ping – spelling a dramatic end to material
globalization as we know it.
But energy lock-down wouldn’t last
forever. After a few turbulent decades,
leading energy and climate scientist
Kevin Anderson suggests that by 2040
renewables might be generating up to
50 per cent of present-day energy use.
Reforestation and habitat restoration will
steadily suck carbon out of the atmos-
phere. Regenerative economies powered
by sunlight, as Kate Haworth puts it, will
improve wellbeing for everyone – local-
ized, healthier and familiar.
But how to enact change on this scale?
To avoid a totalitarian, ‘eco-fascist’ dysto-
pia, a zero-carbon plan would need to be
contingent on total buy-in, perhaps trig-
gered by a sooner-than-expected suite of
apocalyptic impacts such as the collapse
of pollinating insects, or severe typhoons.
A global governance system based
on subsidiarity (think a more radical
and democratized EU) would allow each
country to find their own path to zero with
a slew of policies: carbon taxes, tradeable
citizen rations – maybe a basic universal
income – held together, suggests Andrew
Simms from the Rapid Transition Alli-
ance, by ‘a social contract built on princi-
ples of fairness and equal access’.
This emergency-style scenario helps
us to see the scale of the change that’s
needed. And as extreme as carbon cold-
turkey may sound, it beats our current
trajectory to a 3-degree Celsius planet.
As Anderson puts it: ‘I just want the
status quo – the same world, with a stable
climate. What’s so radical about that?’ O
* The concept of ‘net zero’ controversially includes so-called
‘negative emissions’ such as taking carbon dioxide from the
air and locking it into underground sinks and reservoirs.
 In print and online:

SEPTEMBER 2018 OCTOBER 2018 NOVEMBER 2018 DECEMBER 2018

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Abdulali draws on three decades of
grappling with the issue personally and
professionally, and what we – women,
men, politicians, teachers, writers, sex
workers, feminist, victims and families –
think about rape and what we say.

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