Nick Griffin discovers even he might not be 'whiter than white' after all...

"Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad." William R. Alger

Earlier this year, in a rather bizarre but somehow apt twist of fate, a journalist at the Sunday Express disclosed Nick Griffin, wannabe saviour of ‘all that which is authentically British’, had a great-grandfather who was a traveller between 1868 and 1874.

Unsurprisingly, travellers are not well loved by Nick Griffin or his BNP pals; he recently said of them, “We have to bear in mind that the gypsy community is notorious for its extremely high rate of criminality and antisocial behaviour.”, “Everyone in Romania and eastern Europe knows this and it is one reason why their governments are so keen to encourage them to come over here.” Indeed, Germany’s National Socialists didn’t like them either and were very effective in annihilating half-a-million Sinti and Roma travellers, many of those who were ‘lucky’ enough not to die became human guinea-pigs in macabre experiments.






















However, as with many of the BNP’s claims, Griffin’s is not supported by actual facts, or in this case, statistical evidence; the Equality and Human Rights Commission has stated that the presence of travellers does not impact on local crime figures either negatively or positively. Griffin is therefore left with a claim which, like many favoured by ignorant racists, carries a 'truth-value' only because it has been endlessly and witlessly repeated. As Lenin famously said, “A lie told often enough becomes truth.”

So the only rather unfortunate truth Griffin is stuck with is that he and most of his own party would like to see the back of travellers who would choose to live in a similar way to that of his own great-grandfather.

Anti-BNP demonstration at the BBC













Pictures by oral historian Verusca Calabria

max keiser face-off with corporate funded flunky on banking crisis

This will be 16 minutes of your life well spent: a decent account from Max Keiser concerning the continuing government backed corporate rip-off (aka the banking crisis). It's not a well chaired debate, but please stick with it!

the Story of a Dutch Letterbox which Could Cost Bolivia a Fortune

"Bilateral Investment Treaties represent the codification of a new hierarchy which places private commercial needs above the protection of the public interest, blurring – seriously, and perhaps fatally – the boundaries between public and private interests". Susan Leubuscher [1]

Demonstration in Amsterdam's World Trade Centre, home to Telecom Italia N.V.


The Netherlands has long been established as a place to do business and as more and more companies are finding out, all you need ‘to do’ business there is little more than a letterbox. So what are the advantages of owning a letterbox in the Netherlands? The answer is simple: it helps corporations to avoid paying taxes elsewhere [2] and enables them to take advantage of the corporate-friendly Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) the Netherlands has with other countries.

The Netherlands is home to about 20,000 of these letterbox companies and this number is rising, on average, by 5 every day [3]. One such company taking advantage of this corporate-friendly environment is Euro Telecom Italia N.V. (ETI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia SpA. ETI has no substantial commercial presence in the Netherlands, nor staff [4], but is currently attempting to take Bolivia to the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an arbitration tribunal at the World Bank, using the BIT the Netherlands signed with Bolivia in 1995. Indeed, the BIT between the Netherlands and Boliva contains some harsh conditions not usually seen in BITs: the term ‘investments’ has a very wide interpretation and the BIT also applies to investments made even before it was signed into force – to name just two of its draconian conditions [5].

ETI has requested arbitration because the government of Evo Morales suggested that ETI, which holds a controlling share of Bolivia’s largest telecommunications company ENTEL, has been providing a poor service to Bolivians, has not been reinvesting enough in its telecommunications infrastructure, and at the same time been pulling out millions of dollars of profits out of the country [6]. The Bolivian government set up a commission to begin a review of ETI’s performance, demanded the payment of back-taxes, and attempted to negotiate with ETI a buy back of what used to be a public telecommunications company (this deal included a compensation package for ETI) [7]. ETI reacted furiously and claimed that, by undertaking a review of its performance and attempting to negotiate the renationalisation of ENTEL, Bolivia had “destroyed” ETI’s investments and its earning potential, therefore making it cheaper for Bolivia to renationalise ENTEL [8]. A rather paradoxical statement considering ENTEL continues to operate at a profit and is continuing to advertise new products and services in Bolivia [9]. Instead of completing negotiations with Bolivia, ETI opted for a much safer bet, lodging a request for arbitration with the ICSID at the World Bank.

ICSID is known for being business-friendly, indeed, in 36% of the cases it has presided over, it has awarded in favour of corporations demanding compensation be paid (often the compensation package includes an allowance for ‘lost future profits’). Another 34% result in out of court settlements being paid [10]. In It is not possible for countries to lodge complaints against corporations at ICSID, regardless of how poorly a corporation has behaved within its borders. Seemingly profits are more important than the rights of people to determine how they think how their society should be organised. As Yves L. Fortier QC, ironically a chairman on a board at ICSID, succinctly puts it “Commercial arbitration exists for one purpose only: to serve the commercial man” [11]. ICSID effectively replaces national sovereignty with a corporate friendly, supranational justice system which is answerable to no higher court. Indeed, the influence of ICSID is much larger than the cases mentioned above; just the threat of arbitration is enough to chill a nation’s reform programme [12].

Signing of the ICSID Convention (1966)

On May 2, 2007, the government of Evo Morales, well aware of the unfairness of the ICSID officially denounced and gave notice that Bolivia was withdrawing from the ICSID convention of 1966 [13], the first country ever to do so. The ICSID convention, however, states that six month notice period applies to any withdrawal. ETI lodged its complaint with ICSID on October 12 and ICSID responded on October 29 (just a few days before the notice period was due to expire) stating it was willing to review the case, Bolivia then unsuccessfully appealed (there is some confusion, when other articles in the ICSID convention are taken into account, as to whether the notice period is or is not required). Unfortunately, because ICSID’s decision making processes are rather long winded, a decision will likely be made sometime between July 2009 and March 2010, and that’s just over the jurisdiction [14]. However, if Bolivia refuses, as it doing at the moment, to recognise ICSID then it could be tried in absentia and the case could progress extremely rapidly [15].

Protest outside the Dutch Finance Ministry (The Hague 2008)

In response to ETI’s action 863 citizens groups from 59 countries sent a petition to World Bank President Robert Zoellick and 15 Dutch organisations made an appeal to the Dutch Government. In their appeal the NGOs asked the Dutch government to support Bolivia and investigate corporate abuse of the investment treaty the Netherlands has with Bolivia. The Ministry for Trade reacted predictably, washing its hands of any involvement in the case, saying “This concerns a dispute between a Dutch investor and Bolivia. The Dutch state is not a party in this and has no opinion about the merits of the case and the legal basis on which the company has submitted the dispute”[16]. What the Ministry doesn’t mention in its response is that the Netherlands receives a considerable income in the form of taxation on capital transfers flowing through letterbox companies and similar financial institutions. In 2006 gross transactions involving these entities amounted to €4.6 trillion, this is more than 9 times the Dutch GDP [17]. There is also a large tax and consultancy sector supporting these financial institutions and it is estimated that this sector employs 2,500 people and the Dutch government receives approximately €1.2 billion in tax revenue every year (plus €0.5 billion in office and management costs). Robert Zoelick, highlighting the undemocratic nature of ICSID and the World Bank, didn’t bother to respond to the concerns of the NGO community. The Italian telecoms giant, meanwhile, can be confident that the tribunal will rule in its favour, Robert Sills, counsel for ETI said, “[...] ETI is confident that the tribunal will determine that it in fact has jurisdiction and proceeed to decide the case” [18]. Given ICSID’s history of ruling in favour of corporations, this confidence is well warranted.

CEO spoke to Rocio Rocabado, a resident of La Paz, Bolivia’s administrative capital. Barely audible because of a crackling telephone line, she told CEO that she was happy with what Evo Morales has been doing, “He’s recovering the natural resources (gas) and strategic resources (water, electricity, telecommunications), he’s trying to provide universal health and education for everyone and I’m happy about his efforts to recover ENTEL.” CEO asked her what happened after ETI took over ENTEL in 1995, “Prices went up immediately. ENTEL failed in its investment commitments for rural areas and it’s also avoiding taxes”, “Even now, many people in rural areas still don’t have telephones, perhaps it’s just not profitable?”, she wondered.

Today, the European Union is aggressively pursuing a new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs), under the aegis of its ‘Global Europe’ project, including an FTA with the Andean Community of Nations, which includes Bolivia. The EU claims that this FTA, which includes further market opening and other privileges for EU service corporations, will bring more wealth and create new jobs. In the light of the Bolivia’s experiences with Telecom Italia and Bechtel, these promises sound very hollow indeed.

Demonstration in Amsterdam's World Trade Centre, home to Telecom Italia N.V.


Key Facts and Figures [19]

Number of Bilateral Investment Treaties in 1989 385
Number of Bilateral Investment Treaties in 2006 > 2,500
Number of known investor-state lawsuits as of 2006 25,520
Proportion of cases filed since 2002 > 2/3
Number of cases currently pending at the ICSID 109
Number of cases in which investor revenues exceeded GDP of the country 721
Percentage of cases pending and concluded against “middle-income developing countries” 74%
Percentage of cases pending and concluded against “low-income developing countries” 19%
Percentage of cases pending and concluded against G8 countries 1.4%
Percentage of cases relating to services (water, electricity, telecommunications, and waste management) 42%
Percentage of cases relating to oil, gas and mining 29%

Bechtel vs. Bolivia [22]

US multinational Bechtel was forced out of Bolivia in 2000 after its Bolivian subsidiary Aguas del Tunari raised water prices by more than 50%, sparking off three general strikes and angry street protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third largest city. In an attempt to protect Bechtel’s contract the Bolivian government declared martial law and began arresting protest leaders in their homes in the middle of the night.

The company went to the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes claiming $25 million in damages and $25 million in lost profits using the bilateral investment treaty Boliva has with the Netherlands. It, however, settled for a token amount in 2006.

Oscar Olivera, one of the protest leaders said, “Multinational corporations want to turn everything into a market. For indigenous people water is not a commodity, it is a common good. For Bolivia this retreat by Bechtel means that the rights of the people are undeniable.”


Endnotes

[1] Leubuscher, S., The Privatisation of Justice: International Arbitration and the Redefinition of the State, June 2003.
[2] van Dijk, M., Weyzig, F., Murphy, R., The Netherlands: A Tax haven?, SOMO, 2006, p. 3.
[3] van Dijk, M., Weyzig, F., Murphy, R., The Global Problem of Tax Havens: The Case of the Netherlands (SOMO Tax Briefing Paper), SOMO, January 2007, p. 2.
[4] Based on Euro Telecom Italia records lodged on the Dutch Trade Register at Kamer van Koophandel and an interview with a Telecom Italia employee based at the address of Euro Telecom Italia, she told CEO “We don’t need to have employees here to have a company here.”
[5] Kavaljit, S, Why Investments Matters: The Political Economy of International Investments, FERN, Cornerhouse, CRBM, and Madhyam Books, 2007, p.94.
[6] CADTM, CIADI/Telecom Italia: ¡hands off Bolivia, 7 December 2007, p.1.
[7] CADTM, CIADI/Telecom Italia: ¡hands off Bolivia, 7 December 2007, p.1.
[8] CADTM, CIADI/Telecom Italia: ¡hands off Bolivia, 7 December 2007, p.1.
[9] Interview with Bolivian government spokeperson on February 5, 2008.
[10] CADTM, CIADI/Telecom Italia: ¡hands off Bolivia, 7 December 2007, p.15.
[11] Fortier, Y., “New Trends in Governing Law: The New, New Lex Mercatoria, or, Back to the Future”, ICSID Review, 2001, p.10-19.
[12] Anderson, S., Grusky, S., Challenging Corporate Investor Rule: How the World Bank’s Investment Court, Free Trade Agreements, and Bilateral Investment Treaties have Unleashed a New Era of Corporate Power and What to Do About It, Food & Water Watch and the Institute for Policy Studies, April 2007, p.Sec1:1, “Canada even repealed an environmental health regulation in the face of one threatened lawsuit by a U.S. corporation.”
[13] Ziegler, C., From the presentation: How We Got to Where We Are -- the World Bank’s First 50 Years.
[14] Interview with Luke Peterson of International Institute of Sustainable Development February 6, 2008.
[15] Interview with a Bolivian government spokesperson February 6, 2008.
[16] Dutch Trade Minister’s response to parliamentary questions submitted by the Dutch Socialist Party.
[17] Interview with Michiel van Dijk of SOMO.nl, author of, The Netherlands: A Tax Haven?, SOMO, November 2006 (interview was concerned with obtaining updated numbers contained within the report).
[18] Investment Treaty News, International Institute for Sustainable Development, January 17, 2008.
[19] Anderson, S., Grusky, S., Challenging Corporate Investor Rule: How the World Bank’s Investment Court, Free Trade Agreements, and Bilateral Investment Treaties have Unleashed a New Era of Corporate Power and What to Do About It, Food & Water Watch and the Institute for Policy Studies, April 2007, p. ix.
[20] There are many unknown cases, as some arbitration bodies keep cases secret.
[21] For example, in 2005, Royal Dutch Shell’s earnings were 62 times the GDP of Nicaragua.
[22] Environmental News Service, BOLIVIA: Bechtel Drops $50 Million Claim to Settle Bolivian Water Dispute, January 19, 2006.

international demonstrations as Berlusconi rachets up attacks on Italy's independent media (a view from London)

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." (summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression in 'The Friends of Voltaire' by Evelyn Beatrice Hall)

Silvio Berlusco has his dita in many a pizza; he’s an entrepreneur, real estate magnate, insurance tycoon, songwriter, media monopolist and il capo di tutti capi of the Italian Republic - he’s also the republic’s richest man.

Berlusconi’s control of Italy’s media is well known; his company Mediaset owns three of the largest television networks and in his role as Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri he also has considerable influence over the state’s own public service broadcaster Radio Televisione Italiana (RAI). One of Italy’s leading newspapers Corriere della Sera recently accused Mediaset and RAI executives of behaving like “amateurs” for acting like obsequious servants of Berlusconi. Indeed, Berlusconi has a long, and well documented, history of threatening press freedom and attenuating the independence of the nation’s media.

However, recently he has been a little bolder in his attacks as he recently launched defamation suits against the centre-left la Repubblica and the Italian Communist Party’s official newspaper l’Unità. This move marks an audacious and dramatic change in Berlusconi’s usual approach which is to attempt to portray himself as an innocent victim of left-wing and judicial conspiracies and character assassinations.

In a recent article Index on Censorship states that this is not the only thing Berlusconi has done: there have been moves towards supplanting directors at RAI; requests to encourage business owners not to spend advertising revenue a la Reppublica; and refusals of channels to broadcast a trailer of Erik Gandini’s movie Videocracy on the basis that it is overly “critical of the government” (the documentary looks at how Berlusconi’s media empire has altered Italy’s media landscape during the past three decades).

Berlusconi’s aggressive tactics have resulted in tens of thousands of Italians taking to the streets to rail against the his bid to reign in Italy’s independent media. The organisation Reporters without Borders, a Paris-based NGO which advocates media independence, said the case constitutes a “conflict of interest” as the head of the government is attempting to have “direct influence” and to “choose programs” to be aired. Italians and supporters of press freedom also gathered outside the BBC’s World Service headquarters on Aldwych in solidarity with the demonstrations in Italy.

Undoubtedly, Berlusconi has intensified his aggressive strategy towards critical media outlets because of a seemingly never ending stream of accusations, revelations, and the publication of embarrassing photographs, all concerning his involvement with escorts, frequenting with minors, womanising - all this on top of a very acrimonious and public divorce.

London demonstration

Very Italian demonstrators with Very Italian sunglasses

Putting signs on your back is popular amongst Italian demonstrators

Actor Marco Gambino

a Review: David Hare’s The Power of Yes (Opening Night) @ NationalTheatre

“Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more expensive goods, houses and mechanical products, pushing them... until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to the bankruptcy of the banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will lead eventually to communism.” Karl Marx (1818-83)

David Hare, well known for grappling with political issues in his plays: Stuff Happens, and The Vertical Hour dealt with the war in Iraq; The Permanent Way with rail privatisation and mismanagement; and Gethsemane with the misadventures of New Labour, now turns his critical faculties and play-writing acumen to the recent economic meltdown in The Power of Yes.

Admittedly, in this case, he had his work cut out: firstly, as he readily admits in an interview with the Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, he does not understand the intricacies and details of global finance; secondly, how on earth do you produce a play about global finance which is understandable to the layman and, at the same time, make it compelling and entertaining theatre. These, to be sure, are no mean feats.

Hare, without a doubt, manages to pull it off. A period of intensive study (he claims to have read “around 40 or 50 books”), meetings with big players in finance (his reputation as a world-class playwright got him access to the hedge fund manager turned political activist George Soros), and the ongoing assistance of Masa Serdarevic at the Financial Times, all helped him to create a remarkable production which is a withering indictment of the financial system, the bankers, and the political classes, who all helped to bring about the collapse.

The audience were gripped from the moment Anthony Calf (who plays a troubled and angry David Hare trying to make sense of all the absurdity he is faced with) stepped onto the totally bare stage, the use of props has been kept to a minimum. Perhaps in stripping the stage space to a bare minimum (you can even see the lighting rigs to the left and right of the stage) Hare is trying to show us that this is what he has attempted to do with his subject matter: strip it back and reveal it to us in all its inglorious nakedness. The bare concreteness of the Lyttelton Theatre is a perfect backdrop, the play would not suit a gaudy Shaftesbury Avenue theatre at all.

One couldn’t help wondering when looking at the predominantly white, middle-class audience how people in it had been and were being affected by the economic crisis. Indeed it seems Hare is aware of this himself as Tom Huish an advisor from the Citizens Advice Bureau, played by Jeff Rawle, tells Hare that he advises people to ‘prioritise the payment of their council tax bills as you can go to prison for not paying it. Also the collection of council tax has been privatised and the private firms are much worse than state collectors’ and ‘Don’t let bailiffs in the door, not even if they tell you they need to go to the toilet, they’re lying.’ Advice for naive middle-classes not used to the horrors of having to work out which bills to pay and which to leave, what to do on hearing a dreaded bailiff's knock at the door. It is clear this advice is meant for the audience as well as Tom Huish’s Advice Bureau clients.

However, this production isn’t just taking aim at the financial system, Hare also has the theatre itself in his sights, “... I’m also implicitly questioning the way theatres work. Large institutions have become arthritic in the way they programme and in their reliance on what Ken Campbell memorably called ‘brochure theatre’”. Hare wants more experimental and political theatre and, hell, so do I! In the hubris of post-modernity and in the credit fuelled, carefree headiness of the bubble years we lost our way, we lost our moral compass and unfortunately with it our political theatre. Not only does our financial system need a good shake up, so does Theatre Land.

Anyone coming to see The Power of Yes expecting a banker bashing blowout will be undoubtedly disappointed, though Hare does level some pretty damning criticisms at various parties who, to varying degrees, can be considered culpable. To mention just a few: Gordon Brown who was quite happy to accept 27% of his tax revenues coming from the city in a payoff involving the reciprocal non-regulation of the financial markets, the rating agencies who provided its paying clients with the AAA ratings they desired, and bankers and investment bankers for over-leveraging and focusing only on their own risk without taking any notice of the existential systemic risks i.e. a liquidity crisis.

What Hare is doing with this play is highlighting the unique nature of this crash, arguing, “I’m trying to break through the protective attitudes of the bankers, who argue that it was a recession just like any other, that we have to reconstitute the system as it was and that there is no need to question or examine the very basis of capitalism. It was Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, who admitted that ‘the whole intellectual framework has collapsed.’ That’s what I’m trying to explore.”

Indeed, it is for no small reason the free-market theories of Ayn Rand and the justification from massive state support of the banking industry post-collapse provided by John Maynard Keynes are juxtaposed in the play’s programme. Rand provides the free-market fundamentalism and the theoretical justifications for the financial industry and its regulators to behave as they did, as Hare's character in the play has it pointed out to him: ‘the bankers will never say sorry; they don’t think they did anything wrong; they were acting within the ‘rules of the game’’. It’s certainly telling that one of Rand’s books is entitled ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’ which now, more than ever, looks like a withered anachronism. George Soros concurs, in the final scene as he eats dinner with Hare in a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan, saying, "It is not business as usual, but the end of an era."

WAR. what is it good for? absolutely nothing...

Sorry, Mr. Springsteen, love the lyrics, but what you say about war doesn't quite stand up to the laser-guided fact that war is actually very good for one thing: getting through recessions.

Here's a smart little graph courtesy of The New York Times which shows that although US shipments in non-military durable goods have plummeted 19% from 2000 monthly averages, shipments in military durable goods have risen a mind-boggling 123% in the same period. The divergence is especially marked in the June 2008 to June 2009 period.



Military durable goods now account for 8% (as opposed to 3% in 2000) of all shipments of US durable goods.

In the short term this is great for the US economy but the Department of Defense's appetite for military equipment has begun to dry up as the war in Iraq begins to wind down, and this creates a problem; right now the US does not need more pressure on its already strained industrial base. Unfortunately, this situation might cause the idea to spring into the minds of US leaders and their business buddies that the best course of action could be to maintain production levels and start off-loading the excess onto the international arms market instead. That the dollar is weak at the moment certainly helps its export position relative to European arms exporters (Germany, France, The Netherlands and the UK) which are all suffering from relatively high currencies vis-à-vis the dollar. This could be a good opportunity for the US to maintain its own industrial output at the expense of some of Europe's share of the arms market.

As far as the US is concerned I guess you could call it one of those free market 'win/win' situations, but like virtually all free market miracle solutions you can be sure they'll also be some losers too... unfortunately it's very likely their voices will be drowned out by the rat-tat-tat of small arms fire and the thudding of bombs.

A slippery situation...

murdoch catechised on his own television station!

Of course he wasn't, silly!

Shamefully sycophantic interviewer lamely confronts Rupert Murdoch about the Murdoch owned UK daily newspaper The News of the World which is currently causing a national scandal because it has been accused of of hacking the mobile phones of a large number of celebrities. The transcript of the relevant part of the interview follows:

Fox Anchor: “Mr Chairman sir, thanks very much for joining us. We appreciate it.”

Rupert Murdoch: “Fine, good afternoon.”

Fox Anchor: “The story that’s really buzzing all around the country and certainly here in New York is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain used…”

Rupert Murdoch: “I’m not talking about that issue at all today. Sorry.”

Fox Anchor: “Okay. No worries Mr Chairman, that’s fine with me.”

Rupert Murdoch: "I'm too far removed right out here. I'm sorry." [He's actually being interviewed from Sun Valley, Idaho which is hardly far removed from civilisation.]

Fox Anchor: "That's alright sir." [When was the last time you heard someone who has never been knighted called 'sir' during an interview?]

Here's the link to the original exchange. Though I warn you, watching this clip may provoke an onset of extreme cringing and serious injury may result.

'Nuff said...