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May 28, 2006

Big business cut down to size: pressure is growing for corporations to mend their ways

BRIGHT B. SIMONS, MAY 27, 2006

Images of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the founder and former CEO respectively of the defunct energy trading giant Enron, being led away from the courthouse after their conviction May 25 in a groundbreaking trial, brought it home to us all how much the sand beneath the feet of corporations is shifting.

The Enron Building
©2005 Hong Eun-taek

The idea of the modern corporate giant probably dates back over a century to U.S. Steel, which formed through a merger of Andrew Carnegie's steel holdings and the operations of the Federal Steel Company to became the first conglomerate to cross the $1 billion mark in terms of capitalization.

Since then giant corporations have trod the earth as the third member of the social trinity, bridging the government and the people, and often enduring all the slings and arrows those two are capable of hurling during moments of confrontation within the body politic, while slowly amassing their own projectiles to assert territorial dominance.

The early history of U.S. Steel could hardly have portended anything but conformity to this pattern. Having defeated a strike in the very year it was formed, it had barely a decade of respite before the government, armed with a brand new weapon, antitrust legislation, descended with the wrath of Zeus and began strenuous attempts to break up the corporation over fears of monopoly. U.S. Steel survived this, but just barely. Big business was put on serious notice, and it has been on notice ever since.

In succeeding decades, the battle lines between government, corporations, and civil society continued to shift and every now and then brought the three competing behemoths close to an apocalyptic showdown. In those countries that went the Marxist route, the outcome of the struggle seemed moot. But since the vast majority of countries chose not to, the stage was set for a sustained debate about the role of a counterbalancing force to government and organized society. Frequently called upon to clarify its loyalties, big business navigated the tricky ground of self-interest with occasional brilliance and much orchestrated good luck.

Notwithstanding their shrewd ability to intertwine themselves so effectively with capitalist society that any call for their suppression sounded like a plea for self-amputation, corporations tripped too often than could be deemed safe considering their position.

The memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's factory master, detail the complicity of German corporations in the Nazi genocidal wartime effort. But a more curious and altogether weirder fact is the cooperation between American household names in the automotive industry such as Ford and General Motors and their German counterparts leading to the formation of still extant major players such as Opel during the early years of the Third Reich. Fascinatingly, until the United States itself entered the war some American conglomerates were all too happy to benefit from the Nazi's motorization program, one that was ultimately founded on repressive practices such as forced labor. This, despite the fact that it was clear American finance was funding the Nazi war machine against America's allies in Europe. Historians Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita Kugler, and Nicholas Sevis have extensively documented the dastardly arrangements underpinning that shameful big money conspiracy.

Such seeming abject moral insensitivity of corporations has been in evidence even in situations where corporations have not been the direct cause of human suffering. The chemical accident at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in which thousands perished in 1984, as well as reports in the last decade that Nike turned a blind eye to child labor in the factories of some of its foreign subcontractors are all cases in point. The underlying theme is that businesses have shown no willingness to mitigate the plight of its unintended or indirect victims.

However, the narrative has evolved somewhat. Whereas once it had been a case of moral competition between the three primary stakeholders in the social polity, these days the accusation is more often one of the government colluding with business to undermine the interests of the citizenry. Of course, we include small and some medium scale businesses in the category of "citizenry." Thus, the charge is essentially the same whether the case is one of big retail firms driving away from city centers small convenience stores or HMOs in the United States giving short shrift to low income patients. Government is deemed to be in cahoots with big business.

There are instances, however, when the situation is much more overt. Such as the recent episode involving Google doing the Chinese government's bidding to censor its services to mainland China as part of a comprehensive undertaking to undercut its Chinese rival, Baidu. Or Nestlé's supposed collusion with African state bureaucracies to promote the use of formula milk at the expense of breastfeeding.

What was always puzzling about the standard narrative of anti-corporatism, however, was how the attitude of begrudging business any real sense of social power could ever be reconciled with the insistence that it assume more responsibility even for events over which its direct control is limited.

On the one hand, how can we berate companies for riding roughshod over the wishes and sensitivities of local people and yet condemn Google for choosing to comply with local legislation? After all, local companies in China readily abide by government regulations. Why should Google be treated differently if it wishes to operate in China? Should the same society that condemns the slow pace at which the professional environment is changing for women in Africa also have the conviction to denounce Nestlé for catering to a trend in which more working mothers in West Africa choose to prioritize career over motherhood?

It seems as if when we asked corporations to become good citizens we had not prepared ourselves well enough for the implication, which is that like all citizens, good or bad, they can only join the rest of us in collective decision taking to determine what values we as a society wish to exhort. If it is the wish of international civil society to champion the cause of free speech in China then it should begin by making that firm and clear avowal first and foremost to the Chinese government, rather than yelp and yap from the sidelines at minor players like Google.

Perhaps in recognition of such sentiments the art of monitoring the deeds of corporations is fast evolving into a new level of sophistication.

We are in a new age of citizen activism. Empowered by the Internet and dissolving national boundaries, activists are organizing into powerful fronts and diversifying the means of struggle. Cold-war-era tactics that were seriously constrained by ideology have unraveled and made way for a new approach based simultaneously on localization and globalization. Even more striking, citizen activists no longer walk about shouting themselves hoarse. They conduct sharp, focused investigations that reveal what direct actions can precipitate immediate effects.

However, their tactics differ from '80s-style commando dissent, as favored by organizations like Greenpeace. Lobbying has been scaled up in terms of method of delivery, orientation, and punch. No longer are elected representatives approached with ''special pleas'' to curtail undesired conduct on the part of business; skilled maneuvering allows these representatives to be served with carefully worded ultimatums backed by electoral realities. Furthermore, the participants are not drawn exclusively from the ranks of the usual suspect, liberal-progressive movements. Shareholder activists in Europe for instance are being joined by pro-business conservative politicians such as Dr. Christoph Blocher, head of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and one of the leading intellectual proponents of democratic capitalism.

Indeed the growing mainstreaming of the new activism is driving the ''old ways'' to a rapid obsolescence. When animal rights activists sent seemingly threatening letters to non-institutional owners of stock in GlaxoSmithKline this month, their approach was condemned by no less a person than the sitting prime minister of Britain. A few years ago, such widespread denunciation most definitely would have been unforthcoming. The animal rights movement in the United Kingdom was once so powerful and dreaded, for the tactics it adopted, that when it begun targeting Huntingdon Life Sciences in 1999 the animal testing firm nearly went bankrupt. Oracle hurriedly unloaded its stock in the company while Barclays was forced to sever financial links. Their steam apparently has run out.

As the new activism finds its roots, we are curious to know what causes it will choose to adopt and how the fusion of localization and globalization will yield results. But already there have been developments that may be direct offshoots of this novel way of scrutinizing business.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church has voted to disinvest all its stock in Caterpillar, the American manufacturer of construction equipment, accusing it of supplying wreckers to Israel used in the destruction of Palestinian homes. This is despite the Church's own Ethical Investment Advisory Group's position that the decision has no roots in business morality, since Caterpillar can not reasonably be expected to regulate the uses to which its machinery, even if custom-made, are put.

Coca-Cola has been banned or is in the process of being banned from twenty campuses in the United Kingdom and the United States; and 130 other campuses across the globe are gearing up to follow suit. This follows an international campaign launched by the Colombian National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL, its Spanish acronym), which claims Coca-Cola is complicit in the killing of union executives in Colombia. Coca-Cola dismisses the charge arguing that official investigations have not indicted anyone remotely connected with the company.

And rumors are swirling around the more clued-in blogs that activists may soon begin targeting L'Oréal because Nestlé owns a 26-percent stake in the cosmetics company. Nestlé is the United Kingdom's most boycotted company.

So, it is amply evident that the new approach of targeted action, while less noisy and therefore less headline grabbing, can be very effective and direct.

What is yet to be made clear is whether it is any more productive than the old boisterous, barrier-crashing, tear-gas-defying version.

In the wider scheme of things, while paying due attention to the immediacy of particular events or issues, we ought perhaps to be cautious when we set out on activities that demonize the very essence of large-scale enterprise. After all, the record of corporations in delivering results in our collective efforts to surmount some of the gravest and most intractable challenges facing humanity has been consistently better than either government or civil society. One can easily think of Samsung of Korea or Tata of India as corporate dynasties whose unrelenting entrepreneurialism has led to miraculous national prosperity in recent times. There are many other enterprises whose growth is a tribute to genuine material progress, and often enough improvements in social standards in the vicinities of their operations, rather than a testimony to greed.

Also, we sometimes exaggerate some of the worst sins of corporations. After persistent inquiry, it has now been established that the Union Carbide disaster was caused by sabotage and not by criminal corporate negligence. In a recent BBC debate between Eric Schlosser, avowed fast-food critic, and Steve Easterbrook, chief executive of McDonald's U.K., it emerged that despite widespread charges that McDonald's encouraged cruelty to animals, no evidence has actually been found, beyond general discomfort about herding and slaughtering animals that can only be dispelled by the onset of a vegetarian society. In fact, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (the United Kingdom's chief animal welfare agency) actually presented an award to McDonald's recently in recognition of the company's efforts to improve upon the quality of its meat delivery systems.

So, just as we allow government to reform itself from within, with only steady but restrained pressure from the populace, so should we also allow business room for internal re-evaluation and regeneration. This is evident in the growth of a new business franchise: the development and selling of corporate social responsibility packages. This may not itself amount to a genuine watershed in business-society relations (read Christian Aid's critical report, "Behind the mask. The real face of corporate social responsibility.") but at least it does imply a clear recognition on the part of the corporate world that the rules of the game are changing.

Last time I heard, according to accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers, the new industry was worth several hundreds of millions of dollars and growing. Bet that didn't surprise you: business after all will always be business.

Posted by bhola at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2006

Stolen for steel: Tata takes tribal lands in India

NITYANAND JAYARAMAN, SPECIAL TO CORPWATCH, MAY 24, 2006

Enlarge cartoon

Jug-ger-naut n [Hindi Jagannath, lit., lord of the world, title of Vishnu] 1: a massive inexorable force or object that crushes whatever is in its path.
-Webster’s Dictionary

Every year the festival of the Lord Jagannath swells the beach town of Puri, about 300 miles west of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). The climax is a procession where hundreds of men pull giant statues of Hindu gods mounted on three 45-foot chariots through the streets. Once started, the momentum of their 16 enormous wheels makes the chariots difficult to stop. Orissa’s chief minister, UK-born Naveen Patnaik is an ardent devotee of Lord Jagannath, and a passionate advocate of free-market industrialization.

On New Year’s Eve, he visited a temple in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, and prayed that nothing should bar the way of a different juggernaut: the state’s industrialization.

Barely two days later, an agitated band of tribal villagers did just that. Hundreds of Ho men, women, and children from the Kalinganagar Industrial Estate about 100 miles from Puri arrived at the site of Tata Steel’s proposed 6 million ton a year steel plant. They demanded that work stop until those already evicted by this and other projects in the area were adequately rehabilitated. Police retribution was swift and bloody: 37 injured and 13 dead, including 8 men, 3 women one 13-year old boy – all tribal – and one policeman.

Condemned as one of post-independence India’s worst incidents of state excess against indigenous peoples, the events of January 2 also trashed the image of Tata Steel and threatened its plans to help boost India’s projected annual steel consumption of 100 million tons by 2020. Tata Steel spokesperson Sanjay Choudhry downplayed violence as “A stray incident [that] should not derail a good thing.”

That “good thing,” according to Choudhry, is not only the Orissa plant, but India’s industrialization. With a 6.8 percent growth rate over 10 years, the Indian economy has posted impressive GDP expansion. GDP growth during 2003-2005 has hovered between 7 and 8 percent, thanks to industrial investments and increased manufacturing activity.

However, India’s claim to being the 4th largest economy is dulled by its low rank – around 127 of 177 countries – in the Human Development Index. The 53rd round of the National Sample Survey recently reported that the percentage of India’s rural poor increased from 35 percent in 1991 to 38.5 in 1997. While there is consensus regarding India’s poor performance in social and economic development indices, many, particularly those who work among the poor, are opposed to the government’s aggressive push to industrialize, even while agriculture – the largest rural employer – is neglected.

Tata Steel, one of the country’s largest firms has been in the forefront of India’s industrialization and an engine of growth. It is part of Tata Group, a prestigious, family-owned Indian multinational with 2005 revenues of $17.8 billion, the equivalent of about 2.8 per cent of India's GDP. The company’s website claims that the Tata Group employs about 215,000 people, operates in 40 countries, and markets to 140 nations. About 66 percent of its equity is held by two family-run philanthropic trusts. One of them, the Dorabji Tata Trust is the largest grantmaker to NGOs in the country, surpassing even the mega-funder Ford Foundation. Ratan Tata, the chair of Tata Sons – the holding company – sits on the Ford Foundation’s board.

But those struggling for tribal rights in Kalinganagar and elsewhere remain unimpressed by the company’s size or philanthropic image. “Tatas are responsible for the slaughter of the Adivasis [indigenous people] in Kalinganagar. They knew the situation was tense and still insisted on going ahead with the construction using police force,” says Rajinder Sarangi, an activist with the indigenous people’s movement for land-rights in the Kalinganagar area.

Sarangi is quick to point out that the movement became an anti-Tata fight only after October 2004, when it became clear to local villagers that the government and industries were reneging on promises to rehabilitate displaced families. “The fight was against any take-over of land, not against any one company,” he says. “But Tata’s sought to overcome people’s will with police force.”

Within 24 hours of the killings, tribal youth armed with bows and arrows had blocked off the Daitari-Paradip Expressway used by trucks to transport iron ore and coal, and processed metals from local mines and Kalingangar industries to the port town of Paradip. Villagers took an oath over the cremation pyres of their martyrs to “not yield an inch of land to industries,” and to continue the blockade until their demands were met: an end to displacement, punishment of the guilty, compensation for the dead and injured, and rehabilitation of those already displaced.

The government had imposed an April 20 deadline for ending the blockade. “But it will be difficult, very difficult to break the movement,” says Sudhir Patnaik an activist and editor of Oriya fortnightly Samadrishti,. Well-organized tribal people are maintaining a round-the-clock vigil on their rock and log barricades, says Patnaik, and hundreds more can pour in at the first sign of trouble.

Wise to the World

Not so long ago, the gently rolling lands where the steel plant is planned had thick stands of forest interspersed with marginal farmland. When big industry first came in the early 1990s, it was welcomed. But soon the cultural, environmental, and economic costs became apparent. Stone quarries have eaten into hillocks, replaced forests, and devastated what little agriculture there was. Families that had lived for generations in a village were asked for deeds establishing their legal claims. “Those without title deeds were forgotten. More than 500 families have just vanished without a trace. They are probably in cities pulling rickshaws or living in the margins,” says Patnaik.

The Ho joined the large ranks of India’s indigenous and other marginalized peoples pushed aside in the name of economic growth. Though tribal people comprise only 8 percent of the population, they constitute at least 40 percent of those ousted from their homes to make way for industries, mines, and dams. Another 20 percent are dalits or “untouchables” occupying the lowest rung of the Hindu caste hierarchy.

The Ho have a history of resistance and remember with pride that in 1821, their warriors had successfully beaten back the British. Their October 2004 declaration not to yield more land to industries continued that legacy. Several times in subsequent months, local villagers collectively thwarted eviction attempts. In May 2005, Kalinganagar villagers braved a baton attack by the police and blocked the construction of a boundary wall by Maharashtra Seamless, another steel company that has been allotted land in Kalinganagar Industrial Estate. Before fleeing into surrounding forests, they knocked the teeth out of the local administrator who ordered the baton charge.

Tata Steel entered the fray in 2004 after the government handed it more than 2000 acres of “disputed” land for a steel plant. “The government said they will take care of everything. We were to pay [the Government] 335,000 rupees ($7,600) per acre, and they would do the rehabilitation,” says Choudhry. “The problem that the people have is largely with the government. They are okay with us. Negotiations have been ongoing on the matter of the rehabilitation package. We got a sense that most people are willing and will take the package.”

But local tribal groups distrusted not only the government, but Tata as well. As recently as November 30, 2005, Visthapan Virodhi Jan Manch (People’s Forum Against Displacement) issued an ultimatum that the Tata Steel and Maharashtra Seamless projects would not be allowed to proceed until the issue of rehabilitation was settled.

“If they’re a tribal friendly company, why should they come here despite knowing that the locals didn’t want to yield any more land,” asks Sarangi. According to him, Tata Steel had three meetings with the chief minister on December 26, 27, and 29. After the January 2 deaths, legislators sought details of these meetings to no avail. “Even these questions that were raised in the State Assembly have not been answered,” said Sangri.

Tata turns the blame squarely on the government. “The government had told us that work should commence and directed us to build the boundary wall. They were not expecting major trouble. Some cops were there,” Choudhry said.

In fact, some 300 armed riot police had been deployed, with another platoon ready to protect the top government brass present to oversee the boundary wall construction.

The tribals also came prepared for both negotiations and conflict; the men carried traditional bows and arrows, and staves. When the meeting broke down and the restive crowd moved in to prevent the construction, police opened fire with rubber bullets and lobbed teargas shells. In the melee, one policeman was hacked to death.

“After this, the men in uniform and gears ran amok, the officials present doing nothing to restrain them. They were baying for blood, seeking revenge, using the death of a colleague as an alibi. The people, frightened out of their wits, ran, as the police shot unrestrainedly from behind,” according to a fact-finding report by the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (Orissa). Five corpses returned after post-mortem were mutilated; enraged family members of the deceased said one woman’s breast was ripped off, and a young boy’s genitals mutilated, and all of them had their palms chopped off.

Tata’s senior management quickly distance itself. Tata Sons Director Jamshed J. Irani wrote to Financial Express that “No officer of Tata Steel was present, nor was there any other involvement from the company, which resulted in police firing.”

But Tata was unwilling to abandon the project. “We are not in a hurry,” said Choudhry. “The trauma is fresh. It was a tragic accident. We need to look forward and we’ll continue talking to them,” he adds. “We have a long history of working with tribal people.”

Business As Usual?

That history may be more impediment than advantage. A series of incidents has tarnished Tata’s image with tribal groups.

In the 1920s and 1930s, when it was still called Tata Iron and Steel Company, TISC’s largely tribal workers fought pitched battles with the European or Parsi management. Work conditions and the right to organize were important rallying issues, and over the years, the company developed a reputation for union-busting, often by violent means.

In 2000, TISCO allegedly bulldozed a spring that was the only source of water for women from Agaria Tola and neighboring hamlets on the periphery of Tata’s coal mines in Eastern India.

Currently, in the Sukhinda Valley, not far from Kalinganagar, Tata Steel and several smaller companies operate chromite mines. According to Choudhry, Tata’s presence in Sukhinda testifies to the company’s contribution to the local economy and its tribal-friendly credentials.

Sukhinda, though, was singled out as a highly polluted area by the comptroller auditor general, and locals at Kalinganagar shudder at the thought of a Sukhinda-like existence.

“For forty years, we have seen people queuing up to work the mines with 100 grams of rice and one potato. This is not development, but destitution,” says Sarangi, who was part of a cycle rally along with Sukhinda tribals in the immediate aftermath of the Kalinganagar killings.

The Domsala River and 30 streams that run through the valley are contaminated with dangerous levels of hexavalent chromium leaching from overburden dumps. Made famous by Hollywood’s story of Erin Brokovich, hexavalent chromium causes irritation of the respiratory tract, nasal septum ulcers, and irritant dermatitis rhinitis, bronchospasm, and pneumonia.

One study funded by the Norwegian Government under the Orissa Environment Program found that almost 25 percent of people living less than 1 km from the sites suffered pollution-induced diseases.

Tata’s attempts to expand its extractive business in Orissa have repeatedly met with opposition from indigenous peoples. About a decade ago, protests forced Tatas to withdraw from UAIL -- a joint venture with Norsk Hydro, and Alcoa–to mine bauxite in the neighboring Rayagada district. In 2000, three tribal youth were shot dead during a peaceful rally near the proposed mine site. [See “Norsk Hydro: Global Compact Violator” http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=620 ]

Between 1995 and 2000, the company struggled to set up a steel plant in Gopalpur-on-Sea, a coastal town in Orissa. Tata’s clout is such that the then prime minister laid the foundation stone. “The project was to displace 20,000 people from 25 villages. Two villages were forcefully displaced. However, the project finally failed because the government was unable to come through with basic infrastructure such as water, rail link, etc” says Prafulla Samantara, an environmental and tribal rights activist with Lok Shakti Abhiyan, an Orissa-based voluntary organisation. The Gopalpur project was abandoned only after bloodshed. In August 1997, after police opened fire at a protest rally in Sindhigaon, two women were crushed to death in the ensuing pandemonium.

In the late 1990s, a Tata Group proposal to convert large portions of Lake Chilika – a brackish water wetland of international prominence – into an aquaculture farm hit rough weather. This project too was quickly shelved after protests by the 120,000 fisherfolk who depended on the lake for a livelihood.

Tata’s Choudhry insists that his company is a good corporate citizen. “We seriously believe that industrialisation – responsible industrialisation -- is the best way to bring better quality of life for these people.”

In the case of Gopalpur, Tata states that nearly 10,000 people who were evicted to make way for the proposed steel plant are now accommodated in a state-of-the-art rehabilitation colony, complete with electricity, medical facilities and a technical training institute to retrain community members and facilitate their shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Before more people could be evicted, the proposal was shelved due to public opposition.

Samantara puts the number of people evicted and rehabilitated at around 5000. “In their original place, the people farmed, sharecropped and lived off khevda (a fragrant wild flower used as a base by the perfume industry). They were not rich, but were making do. Now, they have been kicked off their land, and rehabilitated perhaps, but with no industry and no agriculture, they have electric lines but no money to pay the bills,” he says.

While critics deprecate Tata’s claims to responsibility as PR posturing, Tata admits that its social commitment is tempered by the realities of globalisation. The executive director of Tata Sons, R. Gopalakrishnan, posed the dilemma in an interview with a British magazine: “How to be an international company and, at the same time, maintain its soul.”

Best ask how to stop a juggernaut.

Posted by bhola at 06:57 AM | Comments (0)

Rather than face up to climate change and do what can be done, humanity may opt to let it happen

JOHN GRAY, NEW STATESMAN, LONDON, MAY 29, 2006

All shades of opinion are in denial about the magnitude of the environmental challenge facing us. Our need to be comfortable may be stronger than our will to survive, argues John Gray

During the present century, human beings are likely to experience a change in the planetary environment unlike any in history. Climate change is irreversible, and accelerating fast. No one, apart from a few cranks speaking on behalf of the Bush administration, doubts that global warming is a side effect of human activity. Accumulating scientific evidence suggests strongly that climate change is happening on a larger scale and more quickly than was suspected even a couple of years ago. Observable processes such as the melting of the Antarctic ice cap point to rising sea levels that will wipe out much of the world's arable land and flood many coastal cities. The face of the planet is changing before our eyes.

The message of science is clear: humans will soon find themselves in a world different from any they have ever lived in. Altering our way of life to cope with these conditions will be phenomenally difficult - if it can be done at all. Yet all sections of opinion are in denial regarding the scale of the shift and the magnitude of the challenge it poses. Mainstream politicians and green activists differ on many points; but they all believe that climate change can be halted or rendered innocuous, if only we adopt the right policies. They are at one in rejecting the fact that runaway climate change is a result of the toxic mix of rapidly growing human numbers with worldwide industrialisation. Across the whole political spectrum there is a refusal to face up to this reality. This is nowhere clearer than among the Greens, who persist in a delusional faith that sustainable development and renewable energy can save the day.

In this consensus of denial, there are some who tell us not to worry. So-called "sceptical environmentalists" suggest that the scientific consensus is not to be trusted, and counsel inaction until the damage done by climate change is undeniable. That is the view of Nigel Lawson, who recently advised a business-as-usual strategy. Preparing for climate change is costly and troublesome, the former chancellor said, and we should alter our way of life only when the evidence is incontestable. The trouble with this view is that climate change is not doom-mongering speculation: it is already happening, and it is foolish to shut one's eyes and hope it will go away. If it takes the abrupt and radical form that many scientists believe is now likely, it will have disastrous effects on the lives of millions - possibly billions - of people.

Under the leadership of David Cameron, Lawson's own party is not so complacent, but it, too, is in denial. Cameron talks lightly of "green growth", and has demonstrated the seriousness of his environmental commitment by riding a bicycle and installing a wind turbine on the roof of his house. The underlying assumption of his approach is that the crisis can be tackled without doing anything difficult or unpopular. The facts tell a different story. Wind power is not terribly efficient, and certainly cannot replace fossil fuels as the source of most of our energy. Even if combined with other types of renewable power such as solar and geothermal and implemented together with rigorous policies of energy conservation, the output of the hideous windfarms springing up across the country could not meet the rising demand for energy that goes with current patterns of economic growth.

Nor would a large-scale shift to renewable energy in Britain have any perceptible impact on global warming, which is far more affected by emissions originating in China, India and the United States. It might be argued that Britain should do what it can to reduce emissions regardless of the behaviour of other countries; but there is only one existing technology that can provide energy on the scale Britain needs while reducing its production of greenhouse gases, and that is nuclear power - which is highly unpopular. Images of Chernobyl and its aftermath are potent antidotes to rational thought, even if all they tell us is how horribly unsafe nuclear technology was in Soviet times. We live in a culture in which personal emotional comfort counts for more than any objective assessment of risks and consequences, and public attitudes to nuclear power reflect this. As a type of psychotherapy for shopped-out consumers troubled by occasional pangs of environmental guilt, renewable energy may be quite effective. As an appropriate response to environmental crisis it is a non-starter.

It may be too much to ask from electorates that they confront unpalatable environmental realities. This month Tony Blair declared that nuclear power was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry, he suggested that the replacement of nuclear power stations - in conjunction with "a big push on renewables and a step change on energy efficiency" - must be considered as part of Britain's long-term energy strategy. Blair is to be congratulated on attempting to thrust the real energy options we face into the forefront of public debate. His intervention comes near the end of his political career, however, and, given his disastrous role in the Iraq war, nothing that he says on any controversial issue will be taken seriously - even if, as in this case, it deserves to be.

In speaking out in support of nuclear power Blair runs up against the feel-good mentality: most people want to believe that the environmental crisis can be solved by policies which involve no risk - to them or anyone else. Green thinking encourages this mentality. For example, the Kyoto treaty may have symbolic value in acknowledging the anthropogenic origins of global warming, but it hardly deserves the iconic status it is given by the green lobby. None of the big three producers of greenhouse gases has signed up to it, and even if it were fully implemented it would do very little to alter the climate shift that is already under way. Above all, such a treaty cannot halt the stampede to industrialisation that is the human cause of global warming.

Global warming as we know it today is a by-product of the industrial revolution. The temperature of the planet has been rising since roughly 1800, when the use of fossil fuels began on a large scale. Industrialisation and fossil-fuel use are different sides of the same process, and it is the rising demand for energy that is fuelling global warming. Our present industrial civilisation began with coal, and it may well end there. Oil gained in importance in energy use throughout the 20th century, but as light crude oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, industrial societies are beginning to look to other fossil fuels which are still abundant - notably coal and tar sands. If the oil price remains high over the coming years, market processes will make these other fuels economically viable, and many economists think this will solve our problems. They have failed to factor in the increase in global warming that such a shift will entail. There are new technologies that can make coal cleaner, and we would be well advised to develop them further if we want to limit its environmental risks; but a global shift from conventional energy sources to coal and tar sands is bound to increase greenhouse gases. While shifting to other fossil fuels may make economic sense, there is nothing in the operation of the price mechanism that registers costs to the planet as a whole.

Green activists say they want a new global economic system in which fossil fuels play a much smaller part and damage to the planet is fully accounted for, but here again we are in the realm of denial. The type of energy-intensive industrial economy that is being adopted in India and China is clearly unsustainable. At the same time there is not the remotest prospect that the rush to industrialisation will be abandoned. The ruling elites of China are well aware of the hideous damage that their breakneck industrial growth has done to the country's fragile natural environment - far more so than the western investors who gush on about the Chinese economic miracle. China's rulers also know they cannot risk slowing economic expansion. Even with the one-child policy and rapid ageing, China's population will continue to grow for the next 50 years, and the hundreds of millions who are moving from rural areas to towns will need jobs, housing and transport. If enormous social upheaval and political instability are to be avoided, economic expansion must continue whatever the environmental consequences. The same is true in India, and throughout the poor countries of the world.

Worldwide industrialisation has an overwhelming momentum that cannot be stopped by political means. Part of this momentum undoubtedly comes from continuing population growth, but any mention of growing human numbers is now taboo in environmental debate. In the affluent west, religious fundamentalists, neoliberal missionaries for free markets, development economists and the few remaining Marxists are as one in denouncing the idea that there can be too many people. Curiously, this view has not been adopted in poor countries. China, Egypt, Iran, India and many other developing countries have population policies. In per-capita use of resources, it is the richest countries that are most overpopulated, and this is often used to suggest that it is distribution of resources rather than the global human population that really matters. The inequalities are real and troubling. Even so, no redistribution of resources could enable the earth to sustain over the long term the human numbers projected for the second half of the present century, or even those that exist today.

The present human population of more than six billion people is supported by a type of industrialised farming that relies on rapidly depleting supplies of petroleum. Contrary to the romantics among greens who look back with nostalgia to an imaginary peasant culture of harmony with nature, farming has always been, ecologically, a highly disruptive human activity, and this remains true today. It is mainly the expansion of agriculture, not industry, which is destroying the Amazon rainforest; but agriculture everywhere is critically dependent on oil-based fertilisers. The green revolution was at bottom a process whereby food was extracted from petroleum. A human population of roughly nine billion - the UN estimate for the world in 2050 - would be even more dependent on fossil fuels, with all the harmful effects on global climate.

In a century or so, human numbers may decline as falling fertility spreads throughout the world. In the meantime there is a bottleneck, and governments are scrambling to secure control of the world's remaining reserves of oil and natural gas. The resource war that is being fought for oil in the Gulf is likely to be one of many in the coming century, and will be accompanied by conflicts over fresh water. Population growth, resource war and climate change are intertwined. Without a smaller human population there can be no solution to the environmental crisis, and one way or another human numbers are sure to fall. Greens shy away from these facts, and insist that climate change and conflict over natural resources can be avoided by adopting a low-tech lifestyle. But organic farms and windmills cannot stop the destruction of the natural world, or support the present human population.

Rather than flirting with the fantasy of a low-tech society we need to focus on high-tech solutions to environmental crisis. Technology cannot change the human condition. It cannot repeal the laws of thermodynamics, or make human beings less prone to folly or illusion than they have always been. It cannot even deflect the current wave of climate change, which will go on for centuries whatever we do now. What technology can do is help us cope with the abrupt alteration in the planetary environment that human activity has triggered - a process of adjustment that is sure to be forbiddingly difficult. We cannot stop climate change. If we make the most of technologies that limit the need for fossil fuels we can avoid accelerating it.

James Lovelock has argued that we need to move away from traditional modes of farming to the production of synthetic foods, and it seems to me that, here as elsewhere, he points a way forward. Lovelock is best known for his support of nuclear power - a view I have shared since 1993, when I endorsed it in my book Beyond the New Right. Despite Chernobyl, the risks of nuclear energy to human beings have been greatly exaggerated. Just as important, nuclear power is vastly less harmful to the non-human environment than fossil-fuel extraction. For this reason alone, green activists should support it. Yet they remain deeply hostile to high-tech solutions, and part of the reason may be their well-founded suspicion of the idea that humans can master nature by means of technology.

In the past, high technology has been linked with Promethean philosophies that seek to subject the natural environment to human will. This was the philosophy that produced ecological catastrophe in the former Soviet Union and in China during the Maoist era - and which, in a different ideological guise, is continuing the destruction of the environment in those countries. In western countries, the Promethean view is to be found mainly on the right, among neoliberal boosters of the free market and Bushite deniers of climate change. Given this background, it is hardly surprising that green movements should reject technical fixes, but by doing so they have become part of the problem rather than its solution.

Today, high technology offers the only way the human ecological footprint on the planet can be reduced. Nuclear power has risks, not least of terrorist attack; but it is vastly less harmful to the planetary equilibrium than the continued reliance on fossil fuels that is the realistic alternative. The environmental dangers of genetically modified crops are as yet unknown, so it is right to resist their use at present; but it is not difficult to envisage a time when they could be less destructive of the natural world than the further expansion of petroleum-based intensive agriculture. Far from rejecting these new technologies, we should be developing and improving them - not in order to further our domination of nature, which has always been an illusion, but as ways of retreating from our hugely overextended position in the planetary system. Green movements look to political solutions to the environmental crisis. For them, its source is in a defective economic system and in abuse of corporate power. However, the planetary rebalancing that is under way cannot be prevented by any transformation of human society, however revolutionary. Adapting to the situation requires political decisions, but there is no political solution to the problems we face. The human species has overshot the planet's resources, and it will have to use all its technological ingenuity if it is to avoid catastrophe.

It may be that the shift in habits of thinking that is needed is beyond human powers. We owe our evolutionary success partly to our capacity for denial. Blind hope has often been more useful than a rational estimate of danger in promoting human survival. Today the tendency to shut out from conscious thought the dangers we face has itself become dangerous, but it is a tendency that is encouraged in a culture which prizes emotional comfort over everything else. In the worst-case scenarios that are now looking increasingly realistic, the result could be a change in the way we live that has no precedent in human experience.

Abrupt climate change seems an apocalyptic prospect, and rather than face up to it and do what can be done to mitigate its effects, humanity may well opt to let it run its course. It is only in human terms that climate change can be viewed as apocalyptic, however. In the life of the planet, it is normal. A dramatic climate shift took place 55 million years ago, at the start of the Eocene era, in which most of the species that then existed became extinct. The planet revived and became the richly diverse biosphere human beings are at present destroying. The environmental change that the world is undergoing is another such shift. Much biodiversity will be lost, but the earth will renew itself. Life will continue and will thrive - whether or not humans are around to see it.

Posted by bhola at 06:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2006

Where the dream of harnessing the sun's power could come true

JAMES RANDERSON, SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT, THE GUARDIAN, LONDON, MAY 24, 2006

· International reactor project gets go-ahead
· Commercial usage not guaranteed, say critics

The reaction chamber of Jet at Culham, Oxfordshire. Photograph: AFP

There is a deafening, unearthly howl as if a jumbo jet was firing up its engines in the Albert Hall. On the screen in the control room a ghostly pinkish glow whips round the edges of the inside of the nuclear reactor. At its core it is 10 times hotter than the centre of the sun.

This, according to some physicists, is the solution to the energy crisis - a future with cheap, reliable, safe and nearly waste-free power. Today, after years of false starts and political wrangling dating from the cold war, they will get their chance to make that dream a reality. A €10bn (£7bn) project, called Iter, to build a prototype nuclear fusion reactor will be signed off in Brussels by the EU, Japan, China, South Korea, India and the US.

The prospect of virtually limitless energy is not merely science fiction. The haunting, screaming growl of matter being smashed together at unimaginably high speed is a daily occurrence at Jet in Oxfordshire, an existing experimental fusion reactor. Jet is by far the biggest of the world's 28 fusion reactors. It is the work of scientists here that has paved the way for the much bigger Iter, which, once the project is ratified in December, will be built in Cadarache in southern France.

Its advocates say nuclear fusion is the most promising long-term solution to the energy crisis, offering the possibility of abundant power from cheap fuel with no greenhouse gases and low levels of radioactive waste. But critics say the government is gambling huge sums of money - 44% of the UK's research and development budget for energy - on a long shot with no guarantee of ever producing useful energy.

Last week Tony Blair backed conventional nuclear power, saying in a speech to business leaders that not replacing Britain's ageing nuclear power stations would be "a serious dereliction of our duty to the future of this country".

He argued that only nuclear energy could prevent a huge hike in CO2 emissions once the current nuclear stations were decommissioned.

But while the debate over the future of conventional nuclear power continues, many physicists argue that fusion is the future. "Fusion works - it powers the sun and stars," said Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, head of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. "In the second part of the century I'm optimistic it will indeed be a major part of the world energy portfolio."

Unlike nuclear fission, which tears atomic nuclei apart to release energy, fusion involves squeezing the nuclei of two hydrogen atoms together. This process releases a helium nucleus and a neutron plus huge quantities of energy. The hydrogen fuel is part heavy hydrogen or deuterium, which can be easily extracted from water, and part super-heavy hydrogen or tritium, which can be made from lithium, a reasonably abundant metal.

The energy produced is truly colossal. The lithium in just one laptop battery and the heavy hydrogen from half a bath of water could provide enough energy for the average European for 30 years.

One of fusion's big advantages over fission is safety. Firstly, there is no chance of a runaway meltdown as happened at Chernobyl. If you stop applying the fuel or switch off the magnetic jacket that keeps the fuel in the reactor, the reaction just stops.

"It is very difficult to keep it running. It is like keeping honey on the back of a spoon," said Mathias Brix, a physicist at Jet. Also, the quantities of fuel involved are much smaller than in fission reactors. Jet contains less than a gram of fuel, while Chernobyl had 250 tonnes. Lastly, the fuel and waste from the reactor is much less radioactive. But although physicists think they understand fusion, harnessing it has proved extremely difficult. Research first began in the 1950s with claims that fusion would provide reliable power by the end of the century but even now scientists admit that a commercial application is at least 40 years away. The problem is getting two nuclei close enough to fuse and then controlling the reaction. This means putting in huge amounts of energy at the start to convert less than a gram of the fusion fuel into a super-hot gas or plasma. Hydrogen nuclei flying around at high speed in the plasma can then come close enough together to fuse.

In 1991 Jet was the first fusion reactor to do this using a mixture of deuterium and tritium. It proved that fusion reactors could work, but was not a viable energy option because it only pumped out about 70% of the energy required to start the process off. "The purpose of these experiments is not really to produce energy but to learn how to control the hot gas," said Sir Chris. Iter will be 10 times the volume of Jet and produce 10 times the energy needed to get the reaction started. "It's the step where we will demonstrate scientifically and technically that fusion energy is a viable energy source," said Akko Mass, one of the Iter scientists. But with so many broken promises some involved in the project doubt it will yield commercial energy any time soon. Iter scientist John How described the billed 40-year timescale as "very, very, very ambitious". He suspects it will be nearer to a century.

Footnotes

Iter (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)
€10bn project to build the next generation experimental fusion reactor with 10 times the volume of Jet. Due to be built at Cadarache in France.

Nuclear fusion
Process in which deuterium and tritium are combined to produce helium, a neutron and huge amounts of energy.

Jet (Joint European Torus)
Experimental fusion reactor built in 1983 at Culham, near Oxford. It was the first fusion reactor in the world to use fusion fuel (in 1991).

Deuterium or heavy hydrogen
Conventional hydrogen is made up of a proton nucleus with an electron spinning around it. The nucleus of a heavy hydrogen atom contains a proton and a neutron.

Tritium or super-heavy hydrogen
Its nucleus contain a proton and two neutrons. It is moderately radioactive and can be manufactured from the metal lithium.

Magnetic jacket
The reaction occurs within a doughnut-shaped chamber surrounded by an electromagnetic jacket. Invented in Russia in the 1960s, it stops sub-atomic particles within the plasma.

Plasma
Fourth state of matter apart from solid, liquid and gas. When superheated, a gas becomes a plasma. Examples include lightning.

Special Report
The nuclear industry

Useful links
British Energy
Department of Trade and Industry
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Greenpeace
Come Clean WMD awareness programme
UK Atomic Energy Authority
National Radiological Protection Board
Friends of the Earth
World Nuclear Transport Institute

Posted by bhola at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)

Victory for Pallone as House passes toxic right-to-know amendment

OMB WATCH, MAY 23, 2006

Amid contentious debate over its version of the Interior Appropriations Bill, the House of Representatives took an important stand for the environment and the public's right to know about toxic pollution. Last Thursday, the House voted to accept the Pallone-Solis Toxic Right-To-Know amendment that shuts down plans by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce reporting of toxic pollution under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program.

By a vote of 231 to 187, the House passed the Pallone-Solis amendment. Forty-eight Republicans voted with 182 Democrats and one Independent in support of the amendment, while 15 Democrats voted with 172 Republicans against it.

"Lawmakers have sent a clear message to the EPA that they and their constituents value the public’s right to know about toxic pollution," stated Sean Moulton, director of federal information policy for OMB Watch. "The EPA's attempts to rollback reporting on toxic pollution are unacceptable to so many Americans and their representatives have expressed that with their vote."

OMB Watch, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and a multitude of organizations and individuals around the country worked in recent weeks to generate support for the amendment, including public health officials, state agencies, emergency responders, workers, environmentalists, and ordinary citizens.

"By rejecting EPA's proposed rollbacks, the House recognized that our right-to-know about toxic pollution is fundamental and must not be eroded," said U.S. PIRG staff attorney Alex Fidis. "The question now is whether EPA will listen to the House and the 113,000 public comments submitted in opposition to the agency's imprudent rollbacks."

A May 17 letter to members of the House from 196 organizations expressed support for the Pallone-Solis Toxic Right-To-Know Amendment, explaining that "[t]he EPA's changes would make it more difficult for citizens to track toxic pollution in their neighborhoods and take steps to reduce the impact on their family's health." Among the national organizations signing the letter were the American Nurses Association, AFL-CIO, American Lung Association, Natural Resources Defense Council, American Public Health Association, and Sierra Club.

In 1986, Congress created the TRI in response to the chemical disaster at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India that killed thousands. For nearly 20 years, the TRI has been an essential tool in alerting communities, workers, first responders, and public health officials to the presence of toxic chemicals and has provided critical assistance in dealing with highly hazardous situations. The TRI, for instance, played a critical role in identifying toxic chemicals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Last October, the EPA proposed to allow companies to: (1) release ten times more toxic chemicals before detailed reporting is required; (2) withhold information on the disposal of Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins (PBTs), like lead and mercury; and (3) report every other year, instead of annually. The Pallone-Solis Toxic Right-to-Know Amendment prevents the EPA from making any of these three changes, by barring the agency from spending any more money on the changes.

Posted by bhola at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

Inherent rules of corporate behavior: based on Jerry Mander's ideas from In the Absence of the Sacred

JEFF MILCHEN

In his 1991 book, In the Absence of the Sacred, Jerry Mander outlined what he called, 11 "Inherent Rules of Corporate Behavior." He aimed to help readers understand that publicly-traded corporations are best understood as machines programmed to accomplish specific results and that corporate behavior was largely independent of the individual morality of its officers and directors. His insights have never been more timely, as they illustrate the severe limitations of promoting "corporate responsibility" and illustrate the essential truth that corporations must be redefined and subordinated to democracy, not merely regulated or pleaded with to do the right thing.

The rules don't distinguish between publicly-traded and privately-owned corporations. To a degree, privately-held companies can be guided by individual standards of morality, but competition eventually will pressure all but community-serving or small niche businesses toward similar behavior.

Taken together, these rules make a compelling case that the most destructive corporate impacts on our society and environment are inevitable under the form and power that we currently permit corporations to assume. Primary among the rules are:

The Profit Imperative

Because maximizing return to shareholders is legally required of corporate officers, profit must be the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. Profit necessarily takes precedence over community well-being, worker safety, public health, peace, environmental preservation, and national security.

The primacy of profit over ethics may have moderately destructive impacts, as with Enron's manipulation of electricity markets to maximize profit on the backs of California citizens. In other instances, it can mean hundreds, or even thousands of innocent people dying. A few years ago Ford and Firestone executives concealed known danger to keep selling a product combination they knew was killing many of their customers. Their decision stemmed from a cost-benefit analysis which indicated that settling lawsuits resulting from fatal accidents was less costly than a recall -- the correct decision from an objective view.

If you were to knowingly withhold such information when selling your personal vehicle, you could be convicted of manslaughter in the event of a fatality; yet those executives will never see the inside of a prison cell -- they effectively enjoy corporate immunity.

The latest such case to make national news is Merck Inc., witholding evidence that the cholestorol reducing drug Vioxx may have caused up to 55,000 deaths when used as directed.

When atrocities like these emerge, it's natural to be outraged at the executives in charge, but we should work past our visceral response and recognize the executives really are parts in the corporate machine.

Consider that the much-publicized financial fraud cases have occurred in the most highly scrutinized and regulated realm of corporate behavior. What might be unearthed if we adequately staffed and funded investigations into other areas where the profit imperative has more serious consequences, such as violations of workplace safety or compliance with laws to keep our drinking water and air free of toxins?

Amorality (Not Immorality)

Corporations are artificial creations, shielded from obligations of personal morality and responsibility by their design. As a result, decisions that may be antithetical to community interests, workers' welfare, or public and environmental health are made without risk of personal liability. Furthermore, having no real commitment to a particular locale, corporations can relocate easily to escape taxes, unionized employees, and environmental protection laws.

In light of growing public awareness, more corporations are seeking to veil their amorality and appear altruistic. This practice of "greenwashing" is intended to coax more people to buy their products, services or stock. But when benefits do not accrue, altruistic poses soon are dropped. For example, when Exxon Corporation executives realized that their spending to mitigate damage to Alaskan shores after the Valdez oil spill was not swaying public opinion enough to benefit the company's bottom line, they dropped the pretense of ethical behavior and stopped the cleanup.

By understanding the combined effect of the profit imperative and institutional amorality, we realize that we can best prevent future harm by focusing on restoring citizen control over corporations systemically, not tackling one offender or harm at a time.

The Growth Imperative

Corporations live or die by whether they grow -- for a publicly-traded corporation, there is no such thing as "big enough." The growth imperative fuels the corporate drive to continually pursue new resources and markets around the world. As natural resources are depleted, new frontiers continually are sought and more of the world's few remaining pristine places are targeted for commercial exploitation.

Corporate planners relentlessly lure "less-developed societies" into the global corporate economy to tap new sources of consumers and cheap labor while institutions like the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund supplement those enticements with coercive power.

Corporations constantly generate PR touting global corporatization (misleadingly promoted as "free trade") as the best way to raise living standards and offers hopr to the poor. But this story often is contradicted by global economic data, which demonstrate that corporate colonialism -- the siphoning of profit from the country or region of production -- is having a debilitating impact on many developing countries.

Quantification

Corporations require subjective values to be translated into objective quantities that are easily tallied on balance sheets. Forests, for example, are valued only in terms of "board feet." Their immense value in sustaining life or providing clean water and spiritual nourishment goes uncounted. This carries over to government institutions that are heavily influenced by industry. Hence the U.S. Forest Service considers trees worth thousands of dollars to timber companies to be economically worthless unless they are cut down.

Such accounting without human values allows corporate cost/benefit analyses to be the measuring stick for many public health policies. The resulting policy of "risk-assessment" inflicts sickness and death from preventable pollution or unnecessary toxic pesticides to avoid the "excessive" costs of healthier alternatives.

Corporate political powers succeeded in pushing Congress to effectively abandon the Precautionary Principle (addressing or preventing probable health hazards proactively, rather than waiting for definitive scientific proof of public harm) when it repealed the Delaney Amendment in 1996. Delaney simply required that our food be free of proven carcinogens.

Exploitation & Homogenization

Corporate profit depends not only on minimizing employee compensation but also on shifting costs created by business onto society as a whole, commonly called externalization. We all foot the bill for such externalized costs of pollution, illness, health care, public infrastructure to support corporate expansion, and much more.

Corporate employees often are dehumanized--seen as replaceable parts in a machine. For managers in the corporate workplace, personal morality must not interfere with profit-based decisionmaking, though these decisions often carry deep personal, community, or environmental consequences. A CEO who resists moving a factory overseas to evade environmental regulations or refuses to cut workers' pay soon will be replaced if these actions result in an unexploited opportunity for profit.

Corporations have a tremendous stake in fostering homogeneous consumers and conformity. Consumption accelerates as more people believe that certain commodities bring material satisfaction. Inner satisfaction, self-sufficiency, and contentment in nature are subversive to corporate goals. As transnational chains increasingly dominate commerce, native societies are pressured to give up their traditional ways and join the corporate global culture--uniqueness is gradually vanquished.

Lack of Limitations

Our country's founders and many subsequent generations recognized the danger in allowing corporations to grow in size and power. Corporations initially were given a limited lifespan, barred from engaging in any activity not expressly permitted, and relegated to a narrow range of permissible actions. Corporations were deemed appropriate tools to serve a public benefit through engaging in commerce but were fully subordinate to democracy and prohibited from legally attempting to influence elections, education, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

But it's easy to forget lessons not learned through personal experience. For more than a century, we have permitted corporations to elude democratic control and escape our limitations on their lifespan, size, and activities. We have yielded to them immense power to weaken citizen sovereignty over business and to shape our laws and government.

As a result of vast political power, the majority of harms caused by corporations are perfectly legal, rendering even rigorous enforcement of the laws governing corporate actions inadequate. Banishing corporations from political participation is a necessary first step to reclaiming our democracy.

We must abandon the absurd notion that corporations can reform themselves. Such notions deceive and distract us from our fundamental work. This does not mean we should fail to support the efforts of those working to improve corporate actions from within; but merely asking for greater "corporate responsibility" makes little more sense than asking a bulldozer to act responsibly.

Even Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly--a long-time "corporate responsibility" advocate--now writes "it won't be enough to rely on voluntary initiatives, codes of conduct, enlightened leadership...we must change the fundamental governing framework for all corporations in law.

It is We the People who must be responsible, as we have not been for over 100 years, and relegate corporations to their proper role - a tool for serving the public interest. Only by disillusioning ourselves can we hope to see the roots of our problems and recognize our responsibility: to restore our authority over corporations as citizens and re-program the machine.

Posted by bhola at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Fast: striking with a potent weapon

DEEPTI PRYIA MEHROTRA, DECCAN HERALD

Is non-violence a tactic, or a philosophy? Is a hungerstrike, for that matter, a mere political stratagem, or does it have deeper ethico-philosophical implications?

When Narmada Bachao Andolan’s Medha Patkar broke her 21-day hungerstrike, a journalist asked her whether “pressure tactics” like indefinite fasts should be used to influence decisions. She replied that her hungerstrike came at the end of a long struggle in which all democratic channels had been exhausted, adding, “It was a moral appeal. Just as Gandhi showed this path to gain freedom, in today’s context it is a struggle for people’s lives and livelihoods and their right to development benefits without getting destroyed in the process. It is a kind of freedom struggle.”

Sharmila Irom, a Manipuri poet, has been on hungerstrike for the past five years. Speaking recently from her bare bed in a prison cell, she intoned, “It is my bounden duty...I will not eat until the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act is repealed...” (She has been thrown into jail on the charge of attempted suicide, and is being force fed.)

While the media’s attention was more on the Narmada activists, an equally determined group of people - the 39 survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy - camped recently at the pavement off Jantar Mantar in New Delhi for a month seeking justice.

Six of them went on a hungerstrike, which was called off only after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to look into their demands.

Non violent route

Increasingly, several activists and groups are again adopting non-violent Gandhian ways to get their voices heard. Both the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Bhopal gas tragedy survivors’ movement deserve credit for sustaining people’s struggles for basic survival and democratic rights for over two decades now.

Unlike the militants or even the Naxalites, several Dalit and women’s struggles, ecological and artisans’ movements, slumdwellers and factory workers’ agitations have chosen the non-violent route towards genuine democracy.

Of course, the Indian State has often reacted as the British did, and sometimes worse: browbeating, arrests, brutal crackdowns, refusal to negotiate, even threatening to label a hungerstrike as a crime (“attempt to suicide”).

But contemporary grassroots leadership in India has drawn world attention to the power of non-violent struggle. However, most people hold fairly confused ideas about the very meaning of non-violence.

Is non-violence a tactic, or a philosophy? Is a hungerstrike, for that matter, a mere political stratagem, or does it have deeper ethico-philosophical implications?

When Gandhi spoke of non-violence as a powerful, active force and a weapon of the strong, he was referring to its capacity to change people’s hearts. Clearly, he conceived of ahimsa (non-violence) as a way of life, not just a handy tactic. Non-violent struggles are directed against wrong - not the wrongdoer. The workings of ahimsa are largely invisible precisely because they work through the heart and in the inner being. Thus, while a non-violent campaign might be widely noticed, how exactly it works might not be so apparent.

The only tool

Today, dozens of public fasts are a routine occurrence in India, but most attract little attention. Be it Delhi councillors against sealing shops, or Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for construction of the Narmada dam, these hungerstrikes failed to strike a chord with the public.

The long endurance and commitment of the Narmada and Bhopal activists, on the other hand, inspired widespread sympathy for their cause.

Gene Sharp, contemporary proponent of strategic non-violence, considers non-violence the only weapon that can be used effectively even against violent dictatorships.

Nafisa Bee, 48, a survivor of Bhopal gas tragedy, sees it as the only way to the future: “My son has TB, husband cannot work, I have chest pain and burning eyes since the night of the tragedy. All these years we have been drinking poisoned water, and did not know it, until it was tested one year ago. I walked 800 km to Delhi to protest, because if we do not protest, our children - and grandchildren - will have to keep drinking this poisoned water.”

Nafisa, along with 38 other people, was arrested at the dharna site one day, detained and then released. Nafisa and three other women suffered injuries due to police brutality. But she rejoined the dharna, undeterred.

She would sing “Sar par hai kafan, haath mein talvar” (a shroud on our heads, a sword in our hands).

The recent victories of the Bhopal and NBA people might be partial ... and fragile. But these are precious victories.

Posted by bhola at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2006

Going nuclear: A new generation of reactors is suddenly likely. But at what cost? And what will happen to the waste?

COLE MORETON, THE INDEPENDENT, MAY 21, 2006

In a pool of cold water in west Cumbria sit hundreds of metal flasks, silently oozing heat. Each contains enriched uranium removed from the reactors of nuclear power stations after use. It remains highly radioactive. Exposure to the contents of one flask would be followed quickly by death.

There are 2,000 cubic metres of high-radiation nuclear waste in Britain, some kept in cooling pools near reactors but most stored at Sellafield. A terrorist attack here would be a disaster to dwarf the meltdown at Chernobyl two decades ago, says the campaign group Greenpeace. Two million people could die.

Some people say this deadly waste should be fired into space. Others say bury it deep underground and wait tens of thousands of years for its radioactive strength to decay. But the people who matter, the ones who stop it from leaking and killing people, are waiting for the Government to tell them what to do.

Or they were, before the rules changed. The Prime Minister surprised the nuclear industry last week by saying that its form of energy - underfunded for years, feared by many - was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". Suddenly it is assumed that a new generation of reactors will be built to replace the existing ones that are being prepared for shutdown. There now seems no need to wait for the energy review due to be published in July. Nuclear enthusiasts are glowing with pleasure.

But more power means more waste. Even if none of the expected 10 new power stations is built, this country will still produce enough highly radioactive nuclear waste to fill 14 Olympic swimming pools.

"For 50 years the UK has been creating radioactive waste without any clear idea of what to do with it," says Professor Gordon MacKerron, chair of the expert Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, which will also report in July. "Whether we like it or not, waste exists and we have to deal with it."

Only now the problem is even more pressing. Mr Blair can hardly declare a new nuclear dawn without saying where the waste will go. Investors - along with many of his own MPs and even ministers - wait to be convinced.

Two-thirds of the existing fuel is being kept in steel-lined, concrete-encased cooling pools until it can be treated. This means pouring it with molten glass into steel containers to cool and solidify. These canisters are kept in concrete storehouses. They have higher radiation levels than the old reactor parts and nuclear sludge that make up what is called intermediate-level waste. It is still very dangerous, so robotic arms pour on concrete and seal it in vaults. There will be 350,000 cubic metres of this stuff (or 116 swimming pools) even if all but one of the existing power stations are closed down by 2023 as expected and no more built.

Then there are the 75,000 cubic metres of uranium which potentially could be used in another reactor. And 4,300 cubic metres of plutonium sitting in storage waiting to be recycled. Or blown up. Or stolen and used to construct devastating bombs.

The solution is to bury it all half a mile underground, according to Professor MacKerron's committee. This is already being done in Finland, where they are building a pressurised water reactor that is likely to be a model for the new ones in Britain. Canisters will be transported to tunnels deep underground and buried even deeper in holes filled with clay.

But building such a subterranean site would take years, not least because of planning permission. Would you like it where you live? And that is also the problem with the new power stations. Sizewell B, the last to be built, was held up by planning inquiries lasting six years. The companies that will compete for permission to build its successors responded to Mr Blair's words by pleading with the Government to cut the red tape. Nobody will want to invest unless they are sure the project can be finished on time, they said. And the precedents are terrible. "The UK has never built a nuclear power station on schedule or within budget," says Walt Patterson, associate fellow in energy and the environment at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The cost of the first is estimated at £2bn and it will take 10 years to put up even if the builders work like the clappers and the Government finds a way to ignore all those pesky protests and legal challenges. To build 10 will take at least two decades. But critics say that blows a hole in Mr Blair's argument for having them. The severe energy shortage that Britain is facing will occur in the next 10 to 15 years. Environmentalists say spending the same billions on the speedier (and cheaper) harnessing of renewable sources such as wind would be better.

The problem Mr Blair set out for the Confederation of British Industry last Tuesday is that North Sea gas is dwindling and supplies from elsewhere are pricey and unstable. The nation is also falling way behind on its targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. "These facts put the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewable and a step change on energy efficiency, engaging both business and consumers, back on the agenda with a vengeance," the Prime Minister said.

Keith Parker heard the news on his car radio. "I was surprised," says the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, which represents the groups involved in building and maintaining reactors, "but there is nothing we can do about it until we see the fine detail."

Ten more will produce only 10 per cent more waste, he says. But how would the man from the NIA feel if all Britain's nuclear doings were buried near his house? "Clapham Common is the nearest green field," he says, smiling uneasily. "I don't think I would have too much concern." Not too much? "You always have some concern about any large industrial facility being built near you. I might have concern about the effect on property prices." That is disingenuous. "I don't think I'd have a concern about safety."

Nuclear power stations work by splitting the atoms of enriched uranium. If the atoms split slowly, in a controlled chain reaction, you have a powerful source of energy. If they split quickly you have a bomb. Twenty years ago the reaction inside the Soviet power plant at Chernobyl was allowed to race out of control, creating the worst nuclear disaster in history. It is now estimated to have caused 100,000 deaths. British land is still contaminated and children here have cancer as a result of the fallout. Elena was five years old and lived close to the reactor. She remembers the clouds darkening, the wind blowing and a few drops of rain beginning to fall. "It was only later we found out that the rain was radioactive." So was the water in the river where they played, and the mushrooms they liked to eat from the forest. Both she and her sister spent their teenage years fighting brain cancer that nearly killed them. These days she campaigns against nuclear energy with Greenpeace. "Chernobyl poisoned my youth."

Such a tragedy "just couldn't happen here", says Keith Parker of the NIA. "The design at Chernobyl would not have been licensed." Modern systems shut themselves down if there is a problem. Still, it is hard to shake off Elena's story on the drive south, down to the coast.

There the sky is on fire, the sunset apocalyptic. The wind is racing in from the sea over a wide expanse of sandy, grassy shingle, clacking ropes against the masts of a few beached boats. The scattered huts and low clapboard homes that seem to perch on the shore waiting to be swept away could be on a remote spit in New England, but Dungeness is in Kent, beyond the marshes. France is out there somewhere, through the sea mist.

Turn to face the west and the scene changes in a breathtaking way. Behind the silhouette of the old lighthouse looms a sight as alien and shocking as a spacecraft: a huge grey-green shadow of a building bigger than several tower blocks. Pipes crawl over its surface; clouds of steam leak through the walls. As the darkness deepens this windowless building begins to glow with pulses of golden light. Now you notice the noise: a perpetual high-pitched metallic whine, and also the sound of air under pressure like the jets of an airliner preparing to taxi.

"Sometimes," says Joe Thomas, a fisherman who grew up here, "it sounds like a kettle boiling." Dungeness B, the second plant on the site, has been supplying the National Grid with electricity since 1983. British Energy announced last year that its life would be extended to 2018. This was greeted as good news by locals, not least because the plant provides 550 full-time jobs.

People living within a mile of it have have been issued with potassium iodate pills to take in the case of a nuclear emergency, but Louisa Whenday of the Dungeness Residents' Association says: "Most people aren't worried [about safety] because you wouldn't move here if you were." She told the BBC: "I find it no threat at all. The greatest fear for us is terrorism but even that would take something really big, much bigger than an aeroplane or a bomb. To be honest, everyone is so used to seeing it that they'd miss it. I think it's really quite gorgeous, especially at night when it's lit up. It looks like a ship at sea."

Signs warn that "the wildlife of the shingle is extremely rare and easily damaged". There are 600 plants growing among the pebbles, including sea kale and lichens on dwarf blackthorn "only found at Dungeness".

Roger Higman of Friends of the Earth says: "The English Channel is washing away the peninsula the power station sits on. It was a stupid site for a power station in the first place."

The eerie, isolated atmosphere is part of what made it attractive to the late film director Derek Jarman. Visitors can walk from his tiny cottage right up to the concrete perimeter fence of the power station, where the only warning is "please take your rubbish home with you".

The visitor centre was shut after the 9/11 attacks. From the beach it is too easy to imagine a jet coming low over the Channel. Then Dungeness would not be a refuge from the horrors of city life; it would be hell on earth. Friends of the Earth say a direct hit from a jumbo would cause a disaster 40 times worse than Chernobyl.

Nuclear power stations were designed to withstand such an accident even before 11 September, protested Keith Parker back at the NIA in London. "The studies that have been done show that the jet would vaporise. In terms of physical damage to the reactor there would be very little. And there would not be the release of radiation."

Whatever Mr Blair says, it will take time to overcome the legacy of safety scares and sci-fi thrillers, overspends and environmental fears. "It's not going to happen unless we have public support," says Mr Parker. "But if you put the proposition 'Would you support nuclear as part of a mix, with renewables?' then 60 per cent of people say yes."

The residents of Dungeness would, it seems. But to stand in the half-light looking up at the vast power plant is to remember that for many people the nuclear debate is settled in the pit of the stomach. So which do you instinctively fear more: global warming or radiation poisoning? Either way, from here on the shingle the future looks, and feels, quite frightening.

How a nuclear power station works

1. The reactor core produces heat. It contains hundreds of fuel rods, metal tubes filled with ceramic pellets. Inside each of these is uranium enriched for high concentrations of the atom U-235. The atoms split, throwing off neutrons at 10,000 miles per second, creating a chain reaction.

2. Control rods slow down the reaction. They are made of cadmium or boron and are lowered into the reactor core to absorb some of the neutrons being released, reducing the heat to the required levels. This process is also moderated by water.

3. The water is pressurised. It is pumped in a closed loop around the system at a very high pressure so that it will not boil even at 300C. It cools the core and helps to slow the nuclear reaction.

4. The flowing water carries heat from the core to the steam generator. If the Government approves 10 new power stations, as expected, they are likely to be pressurised water reactors like this. The only one in the UK at present is Sizewell B.

5. The steam generator works like a kettle. The water heated by the core is pumped through it in a pipe. This heats up water being pumped at a lower pressure around a second circuit, which turns to steam.

6. Thick concrete encases the system. This is to prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. If something goes wrong modern power stations are designed to shut themselves down.

7. Turbines are driven by the steam. This is then cooled by yet more pipes and condenses before going back round the system. The industry says its low carbon emissions make nuclear a green option. Environmentalists say wind farms produce less CO2 and no radioactive waste.

8. The transformer turns energy from the turbine into electricity.

This can be sent on to the National Grid. Nuclear power stations generate about 20 per cent of the UK's electricity. If no new reactors are built then the output will fall dramatically, as all but one of the sites in operation close by 2023.

In a pool of cold water in west Cumbria sit hundreds of metal flasks, silently oozing heat. Each contains enriched uranium removed from the reactors of nuclear power stations after use. It remains highly radioactive. Exposure to the contents of one flask would be followed quickly by death.

There are 2,000 cubic metres of high-radiation nuclear waste in Britain, some kept in cooling pools near reactors but most stored at Sellafield. A terrorist attack here would be a disaster to dwarf the meltdown at Chernobyl two decades ago, says the campaign group Greenpeace. Two million people could die.

Some people say this deadly waste should be fired into space. Others say bury it deep underground and wait tens of thousands of years for its radioactive strength to decay. But the people who matter, the ones who stop it from leaking and killing people, are waiting for the Government to tell them what to do.

Or they were, before the rules changed. The Prime Minister surprised the nuclear industry last week by saying that its form of energy - underfunded for years, feared by many - was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". Suddenly it is assumed that a new generation of reactors will be built to replace the existing ones that are being prepared for shutdown. There now seems no need to wait for the energy review due to be published in July. Nuclear enthusiasts are glowing with pleasure.

But more power means more waste. Even if none of the expected 10 new power stations is built, this country will still produce enough highly radioactive nuclear waste to fill 14 Olympic swimming pools.

"For 50 years the UK has been creating radioactive waste without any clear idea of what to do with it," says Professor Gordon MacKerron, chair of the expert Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, which will also report in July. "Whether we like it or not, waste exists and we have to deal with it."

Only now the problem is even more pressing. Mr Blair can hardly declare a new nuclear dawn without saying where the waste will go. Investors - along with many of his own MPs and even ministers - wait to be convinced.

Two-thirds of the existing fuel is being kept in steel-lined, concrete-encased cooling pools until it can be treated. This means pouring it with molten glass into steel containers to cool and solidify. These canisters are kept in concrete storehouses. They have higher radiation levels than the old reactor parts and nuclear sludge that make up what is called intermediate-level waste. It is still very dangerous, so robotic arms pour on concrete and seal it in vaults. There will be 350,000 cubic metres of this stuff (or 116 swimming pools) even if all but one of the existing power stations are closed down by 2023 as expected and no more built.

Then there are the 75,000 cubic metres of uranium which potentially could be used in another reactor. And 4,300 cubic metres of plutonium sitting in storage waiting to be recycled. Or blown up. Or stolen and used to construct devastating bombs.

The solution is to bury it all half a mile underground, according to Professor MacKerron's committee. This is already being done in Finland, where they are building a pressurised water reactor that is likely to be a model for the new ones in Britain. Canisters will be transported to tunnels deep underground and buried even deeper in holes filled with clay.

But building such a subterranean site would take years, not least because of planning permission. Would you like it where you live? And that is also the problem with the new power stations. Sizewell B, the last to be built, was held up by planning inquiries lasting six years. The companies that will compete for permission to build its successors responded to Mr Blair's words by pleading with the Government to cut the red tape. Nobody will want to invest unless they are sure the project can be finished on time, they said. And the precedents are terrible. "The UK has never built a nuclear power station on schedule or within budget," says Walt Patterson, associate fellow in energy and the environment at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The cost of the first is estimated at £2bn and it will take 10 years to put up even if the builders work like the clappers and the Government finds a way to ignore all those pesky protests and legal challenges. To build 10 will take at least two decades. But critics say that blows a hole in Mr Blair's argument for having them. The severe energy shortage that Britain is facing will occur in the next 10 to 15 years. Environmentalists say spending the same billions on the speedier (and cheaper) harnessing of renewable sources such as wind would be better.

The problem Mr Blair set out for the Confederation of British Industry last Tuesday is that North Sea gas is dwindling and supplies from elsewhere are pricey and unstable. The nation is also falling way behind on its targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. "These facts put the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewable and a step change on energy efficiency, engaging both business and consumers, back on the agenda with a vengeance," the Prime Minister said.

Keith Parker heard the news on his car radio. "I was surprised," says the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, which represents the groups involved in building and maintaining reactors, "but there is nothing we can do about it until we see the fine detail."

Ten more will produce only 10 per cent more waste, he says. But how would the man from the NIA feel if all Britain's nuclear doings were buried near his house? "Clapham Common is the nearest green field," he says, smiling uneasily. "I don't think I would have too much concern." Not too much? "You always have some concern about any large industrial facility being built near you. I might have concern about the effect on property prices." That is disingenuous. "I don't think I'd have a concern about safety."

Nuclear power stations work by splitting the atoms of enriched uranium. If the atoms split slowly, in a controlled chain reaction, you have a powerful source of energy. If they split quickly you have a bomb. Twenty years ago the reaction inside the Soviet power plant at Chernobyl was allowed to race out of control, creating the worst nuclear disaster in history. It is now estimated to have caused 100,000 deaths. British land is still contaminated and children here have cancer as a result of the fallout. Elena was five years old and lived close to the reactor. She remembers the clouds darkening, the wind blowing and a few drops of rain beginning to fall. "It was only later we found out that the rain was radioactive." So was the water in the river where they played, and the mushrooms they liked to eat from the forest. Both she and her sister spent their teenage years fighting brain cancer that nearly killed them. These days she campaigns against nuclear energy with Greenpeace. "Chernobyl poisoned my youth."

Such a tragedy "just couldn't happen here", says Keith Parker of the NIA. "The design at Chernobyl would not have been licensed." Modern systems shut themselves down if there is a problem. Still, it is hard to shake off Elena's story on the drive south, down to the coast.

There the sky is on fire, the sunset apocalyptic. The wind is racing in from the sea over a wide expanse of sandy, grassy shingle, clacking ropes against the masts of a few beached boats. The scattered huts and low clapboard homes that seem to perch on the shore waiting to be swept away could be on a remote spit in New England, but Dungeness is in Kent, beyond the marshes. France is out there somewhere, through the sea mist.

Turn to face the west and the scene changes in a breathtaking way. Behind the silhouette of the old lighthouse looms a sight as alien and shocking as a spacecraft: a huge grey-green shadow of a building bigger than several tower blocks. Pipes crawl over its surface; clouds of steam leak through the walls. As the darkness deepens this windowless building begins to glow with pulses of golden light. Now you notice the noise: a perpetual high-pitched metallic whine, and also the sound of air under pressure like the jets of an airliner preparing to taxi.

"Sometimes," says Joe Thomas, a fisherman who grew up here, "it sounds like a kettle boiling." Dungeness B, the second plant on the site, has been supplying the National Grid with electricity since 1983. British Energy announced last year that its life would be extended to 2018. This was greeted as good news by locals, not least because the plant provides 550 full-time jobs.

People living within a mile of it have have been issued with potassium iodate pills to take in the case of a nuclear emergency, but Louisa Whenday of the Dungeness Residents' Association says: "Most people aren't worried [about safety] because you wouldn't move here if you were." She told the BBC: "I find it no threat at all. The greatest fear for us is terrorism but even that would take something really big, much bigger than an aeroplane or a bomb. To be honest, everyone is so used to seeing it that they'd miss it. I think it's really quite gorgeous, especially at night when it's lit up. It looks like a ship at sea."

Signs warn that "the wildlife of the shingle is extremely rare and easily damaged". There are 600 plants growing among the pebbles, including sea kale and lichens on dwarf blackthorn "only found at Dungeness".

Roger Higman of Friends of the Earth says: "The English Channel is washing away the peninsula the power station sits on. It was a stupid site for a power station in the first place."

The eerie, isolated atmosphere is part of what made it attractive to the late film director Derek Jarman. Visitors can walk from his tiny cottage right up to the concrete perimeter fence of the power station, where the only warning is "please take your rubbish home with you".

The visitor centre was shut after the 9/11 attacks. From the beach it is too easy to imagine a jet coming low over the Channel. Then Dungeness would not be a refuge from the horrors of city life; it would be hell on earth. Friends of the Earth say a direct hit from a jumbo would cause a disaster 40 times worse than Chernobyl.

Nuclear power stations were designed to withstand such an accident even before 11 September, protested Keith Parker back at the NIA in London. "The studies that have been done show that the jet would vaporise. In terms of physical damage to the reactor there would be very little. And there would not be the release of radiation."

Whatever Mr Blair says, it will take time to overcome the legacy of safety scares and sci-fi thrillers, overspends and environmental fears. "It's not going to happen unless we have public support," says Mr Parker. "But if you put the proposition 'Would you support nuclear as part of a mix, with renewables?' then 60 per cent of people say yes."

The residents of Dungeness would, it seems. But to stand in the half-light looking up at the vast power plant is to remember that for many people the nuclear debate is settled in the pit of the stomach. So which do you instinctively fear more: global warming or radiation poisoning? Either way, from here on the shingle the future looks, and feels, quite frightening.

How a nuclear power station works

1. The reactor core produces heat. It contains hundreds of fuel rods, metal tubes filled with ceramic pellets. Inside each of these is uranium enriched for high concentrations of the atom U-235. The atoms split, throwing off neutrons at 10,000 miles per second, creating a chain reaction.

2. Control rods slow down the reaction. They are made of cadmium or boron and are lowered into the reactor core to absorb some of the neutrons being released, reducing the heat to the required levels. This process is also moderated by water.

3. The water is pressurised. It is pumped in a closed loop around the system at a very high pressure so that it will not boil even at 300C. It cools the core and helps to slow the nuclear reaction.

4. The flowing water carries heat from the core to the steam generator. If the Government approves 10 new power stations, as expected, they are likely to be pressurised water reactors like this. The only one in the UK at present is Sizewell B.

5. The steam generator works like a kettle. The water heated by the core is pumped through it in a pipe. This heats up water being pumped at a lower pressure around a second circuit, which turns to steam.

6. Thick concrete encases the system. This is to prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. If something goes wrong modern power stations are designed to shut themselves down.

7. Turbines are driven by the steam. This is then cooled by yet more pipes and condenses before going back round the system. The industry says its low carbon emissions make nuclear a green option. Environmentalists say wind farms produce less CO2 and no radioactive waste.

8. The transformer turns energy from the turbine into electricity.

This can be sent on to the National Grid. Nuclear power stations generate about 20 per cent of the UK's electricity. If no new reactors are built then the output will fall dramatically, as all but one of the sites in operation close by 2023.

Posted by bhola at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

Power to people

THE DECCAN HERALD

Even as the anti-quota stir fire threatens to spread , it is time the nation woke up to the reality of another silent struggle for justice that has been going on for decades, writes K S Narayanan

Noorji Phadvi from Nandurbar district is now nearing 60. For more than two decades he has been associated with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and has been participating in hungerstrikes, dharna and protest marches. But he is yet to be compensated for his 60 acres, which the Narmada Control Authority acquired for the Sardar Sarovar Project.

Champa Devi Shukla and her family of three sons, two daughthers and her husband, lived peacefully at their Risaldar Colony, a few meters away from Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Until that fateful night of December 2, 1984, when poisonous fumes leaked from the factory killing her two sons and later her husband.

For the last two decades, a determined Champa Devi has not only fought for her family and other victims of the Bhopal tragedy, but her struggle also raises several issues as India opens its vast economy and resources to multinationals.

Soon after she passed the class XII exams with flying colours, Unnati, 17, took five crisp hundred rupee notes from her father Shekar Krishnamurthy to treat her kid brother Ujwal, 13, with ice-creams, chocolates and movie. The two children went to Upahaar Cinema in New Delhi to watch J P Dutta’s Border but they never returned home alive.

Both Unnati and Ujwal were among the 59 people who had died of asphyxia after a fire broke out in the cinema theatre on June 13, 1997.

What do Noorji Phadvi of Nandurbar, Champa Devi Shukla of Bhopal and Shekhar Krishnmurthy of New Delhi have in common?

Victims of state

They are all victims of the state. Fighting against corrupt politicians, inefficient bureaucracy, greedy businessmen, a lethargic criminal justice system, these and many more like them are fast losing all hopes of seeing justice done in their life time.

Even as thousands of affected people throng New Delhi crying for justice, they are viewed either as ‘news’ or ‘nuisance’ value. Because development-related displacement, safety issues and man-made tragedies remain a ‘non-middle class’ issue. It does not raise the ire of the middle class or the ‘beautiful people’ enough for them to come out on the streets and march with the affected.

Points out Enakshi Ganguly Thukral, a long time researcher on the Narmada agitation, “Space for all peoples’ movements is shrinking. All that you can do is sit and scream. Violence against such movements is being supported by the state.” Asks Ganguly, how would people feel if their own apartments were taken over by force or money power.

Even though there was greater mobilisation for an issue like Jessica Lall murder case, there is little sympathy for the peoples’ movement.

So how are these movements sustained? D L Sheth of Centre for Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, argues, “They are not pressure groups unlike the minorities or OBCs so their influence is limited to immediate localities.”

Mohan Guruswamy, advisor to former Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha, and founder of Centre for Policy Alternative, says, “The issue is not the dam per se. It is about rehabilitation. Everybody understands that all this is being done for a greater common good. But if the state is unable to provide compensation I am left with no options but to protest.”

Guruswamy also questions the nature of compensation and the manner in which they are fixed. “The compensation is fixed randomly. Often there is no compensation of land, livelihood and emotional ties with the land.”

Raising her voice along with other womenfolk, Kamla Yadav from Bhadwani in Madhya Pradesh says that cash compensation is only creating havoc in the lives of the oustees. “Men buy two-wheelers and spend the rest of the money on alcohol. They often end up in hospital with fractures as they do not know how to drive.”

Thanking Medha Patkar for keeping the movement peaceful, Guruswamy has a word of caution: “Naxalites are spreading their tentacles in central India and it is only a matter of time before they influence the non-violent struggle to turn violent. Thus there is a big onus on state governments and the central government to deliver fast on relief and rehabilitation.”

Prof Pratap Bhanu Mehta of Centre for Policy Research, calls for constructive participation between government and people’s movement to find livelihood for the Narmada oustees as land is scarce.

The Narmada movement has also had its share of success. Says JNU Prof Surender Singh Jhodka, “This movement raised fundamental questions about issues of development, rule of law, and rights of the citizens?

After leading the movement for more than three decades, Patkar feels, “The state is not only mismanaging resources but is also abdicating responsibility,” adding, “Our fight is not over yet. The challenge is deeper, larger and bigger.”

Industrial disaster

Like the Narmada movement, the Bhopal gas victims also threw up fundamental questions on the models of development that India needs to adopt. “We want a toxic free India. But by allowing foreign MNCs to set up factories and shops here, the government is not helping the cause,” says Satyanath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Information and Action.

People’s movement is more about assertion of their fundamental right to life and liberty. And wherever and whenever their basic rights are infringed, such movements will raise and grow against their oppressors.

Posted by bhola at 01:00 AM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2006

Barcelona's model of integrity shows right is might

DAVID CONN, THE GUARDIAN, WEDNESDAY MAY 17, 2006

Ronaldinho, of Barcelona and Brazil

In the summer of 1999, after Manchester United fans had beaten off the attempt by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB to take over their club, London's Birkbeck College hosted a conference on how to restore heart and soul to a game becoming ravenously commercialised. In the flush of victory Andy Walsh, a United supporters' group leader, talked fervently about "rolling back the plc" at Old Trafford. Brian Lomax, a Northampton Town supporter, explained how disaffected Cobblers fans had formed a pioneering supporters' trust, bought a small stake in the club and elected a director to the board.

Article continues
In the front row were four well turned out men, including a little chap with a neat side parting, Joan Laporta. They were from Elefant Blau (Blue Elephant), a group lobbying for more supporter democracy at FC Barcelona, which was then tumbling from greatness under its president, Josep Lluís Núñez.

The Catalans' presence inspired a movement here to show that supporter owned football clubs are not Utopian visions conjured up over a beer in the Gorse Hill pub in Stretford or the Butcher's Arms in Northampton. Almost all British football clubs began as members' organisations and here was Barcelona, one of the world's greats, still owned by its 100,000 fan-members.

The Elefant Blau campaign had rounded on a "Barça 2000" commercial redevelopment planned around the Camp Nou, scorning it as tat - "a kind of Disneyland park," Laporta said - and a selling out of the club's proud traditions and values. Theirs is a history with which many British fans are now familiar; Barça became a Catalan rallying point, first against the Spanish dictator General Primo de Rivera in the 1920s, then throughout the rule of General Franco, whose fascist troops bombed Barça's social club in 1938 and murdered the club's president, Josep Sunol. FC Barcelona proclaimed itself "more than a club", becoming a focal point for a region and for sporting and democratic values.

By 2003 the UK Government had backed the progressive idea of supporter ownership and established Supporters Direct to help fans form trusts, yet it has never given the organisation any funding or had the gumption to introduce reforms to big business football which might help fans gain a stake. The current chief executive, Philip French, talks spiritedly about trust-run clubs becoming "community hubs" but first he must secure money simply to keep the organisation going. Still 140 supporters trusts have formed, and, particularly after ITV Digital's collapse in 2002, Supporters Direct's threadbare staff, led by Lomax, toured the country helping fans form trusts. At Lincoln, Chesterfield, Exeter, York and elsewhere, trusts took clubs over minutes from the knacker's yard of insolvency.

In the Premier League and Championship, however, the financial value of clubs has blocked supporter ownership. When Roman Abramovich resolved to drop some of his unholy oil fortune into a football club, he found that Barcelona and Real Madrid are member clubs and cannot be bought. All our great names, by contrast, are limited companies and are available.

In Barcelona Laporta had an avenue for his protest. He stood for election against Núñez's successor, Joan Gaspart, promising a renaissance through reinvigoration of the membership and David Beckham in midfield. He won.

Since then Laporta, a lawyer, has not always conformed to an idealised view of how a fan might behave in the halls of football power. His approach has been relentlessly commercial, seeking to turn around £100m debts by signing major stars. The fans missed out on Becks so, poor souls, had to make do with Ronaldinho. Barça are not shy of the language many fans here detest: of the club as a brand, the membership an opportunity to sell merchandise.

Some United campaigners who met Laporta in London feel let down because he lent no support to their anti-Glazer campaign. The plc was dissolved not by fans but by the Glazer takeover, and Walsh and many fellow disenchanted United fans turned away to form their own democratically run club, FC United, which had a storming first season at the base of the football pyramid.

Some say that, as Barça are part of the G14 group of elite clubs and hungrily claim their imbalanced share of the domestic Spanish TV deal, they are setting no example for a more collective, sporting way to run football.

Yet that is a harsh view. Barcelona make money and are obsessively ambitious but they still take the field in Paris tonight embodying a more inspirational identity for a football club than being a private company owned by businessmen or an oligarch's toy.

"The fans truly own this club," Ferran Seriano, one of the club's vicepresidents, says. "They control its destiny and can decide how it will be managed. This is totally different from Arsenal [two-thirds owned by ITV, businessmen Danny Fiszman and David Dein, and Lady Nina and Sir Charles Bracewell-Smith] or Chelsea, owned by one guy who could one day withdraw his investment."

Laporta and his new board have turned the club round by capitalising on playing success, including two La Liga championships orchestrated by Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o, Deco and the rest. The membership has grown from 106,000 to 142,000. While the club does work hard to turn that loyalty into cash, democracy is real. The need for the board to be accountable and stay popular with the fans means that season tickets are affordable compared with other major clubs, with the cheapest €101 (£69), enough to make the holder of a seat at Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium weep into his credit card statement.

"It is a challenge to remain memberowned and compete against the richest clubs," Seriano said. "For example, we run other sports, like handball and basketball - which make a loss - because our constitution states we must promote all sport in Barcelona.

"But we do compete, with pride in who we are, our history and values. Our supporters would feel alienated if we had a structure like Arsenal or Chelsea."

Of the famous, remarkable absence of advertising across the team shirt, Seriano said that the club's fans voted in 2003 to allow it, given the scale of the debt, but as the finances improved the club never took the plunge. Barça have decided they will not, anyway, accept sponsorship from a gambling company, as Spurs did this week, and are considering instead carrying a humanitarian message on their shirts next season. It is difficult to picture the Glazers mulling over the same idea.

Tonight the players Laporta signed may bring more glory but, whatever happens, next spring he must stand for re-election. That democracy maintains Barça's status as a sporting beacon, a people's club: if supporters do not approve of the people running it, they can vote them out. Imagine that at Old Trafford.

The Camp Nou way

142,000 Barcelona members or socios

4 Major shareholders in Arsenal

£69 Cheapest adult season ticket at the Camp Nou (Barcelona)

£885 Cheapest at the Emirates Stadium (Arsenal)

£579 Most expensive adult season ticket at the Camp Nou

£1,825 Most expensive at the Emirates Stadium

£84m Barça's income in 2002-03, before Joan Laporta took over

£163m Barça's income in 2005-6

2 Maximum number of four-year terms a Barça president may serve

Posted by bhola at 07:27 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2006

They did it their way - so they have no one to blame but themselves: Bush and Blair are trying to offset the unpopularity of their chosen war by appealing to a verdict of history we will never hear

GARY YOUNGE, THE GUARDIAN, LONDON, MAY 15, 2006

THE INTERNET WEEKLY

If democracy is supposed to represent the will of the people, then there is either something wrong with the democracies or something wrong with the people on both sides of the Atlantic. Less than two years ago George Bush was re-elected president of the United States. His pitch: "Stick with me, I have not done a thing wrong." His promise: "I will do more of the same." Six months later Tony Blair went to the polls with a similar message.

Both were elected. Both have since been as good their word. With the exception of Dick Cheney's poor marksmanship and John Prescott's priapism there have been no real surprises since then.

Yet both now find themselves wallowing at dismal levels of public support. Blair has the lowest approval rating of any Labour premier on record - dipping below Harold Wilson in 1968 during the post-devaluation crisis. Bush similarly keeps plumbing new depths - currently standing at just over half the level Clinton enjoyed in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal. If there were an election tomorrow, both would struggle.

On the domestic front, the route by which they got to this point and the time they have to recover differ. Blair has strayed too far from the core interests of the party he represents. Bush has stuck too closely to his. Bush must stay and face the music until January 2009, and no one knows who will replace him; Blair could go at any moment, and his heir apparent lives next door and is champing at the bit.

But both move into the twilight of their political careers with colleagues and commentators looking over their shoulders at potential successors, like social climbers at a cocktail party. From now on they are not fighting for their political lives - their days on that score are literally numbered, even if in Blair's case we are not sure quite what the number is - but for their political obituaries. In the time that remains, they are focused not on legislation but legacy.

The trouble is that the issue on which those legacies will be judged is the one where they have given themselves the least room for political manoeuvre and over which they now have the least day-to-day control: Iraq.

STEVE BELL, THE GUARDIAN, LONDON

According to a morgue report, last month sectarian fighting claimed 1,100 Iraqi lives in Baghdad alone. Meanwhile, the death toll of US soldiers has risen to roughly three a day - back to the higher levels of last year. According to a Pew poll in March, half of Americans favour immediate troop withdrawal and less than a third approve of the way Bush is handling the war. In the UK, a Newsnight poll showed 60% believed that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

Both Bush and Blair staked their reputations on this war. They made their pledges to tough it out the hallmark of their leadership style. Yet the premises on which they entered it were false and the conduct of it remains flawed. Militarily, they are unable to move forward; politically, they are incapable of turning back. They are desperate for everyone to change the subject and yet are stuck with the subject they themselves chose.

"The diplomatic historian traces foreign affairs as if domestic affairs were offstage disturbances," writes Walter Karp in The Politics of War. "The historian of domestic politics treats the explosions of war as if they were offstage disturbances. Were that true, we would have to believe that presidents who faced a mounting sea of troubles at home have none the less conducted their foreign policy without the slightest regard for those troubles - that individual presidents were divided into watertight compartments, one labelled 'domestic' and the other 'foreign'."

The relationship between this foreign misadventure and these domestic mishaps is contextual rather than causal. Iraq has become a signifier for leaders who do not listen, politicians who mislead, and political priorities that are out of kilter with the public need. These are sentiments that transfer easily to gas prices and Hurricane Katrina in the US as much as to school reform and ID cards in Britain. The war "is like a fog that just envelops the entire political atmosphere", Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report told the Los Angeles Times. According to a CBS poll in April, almost two-thirds of Americans think Bush describes things in Iraq as better than they are. In the Newsnight poll, 52% of Britons said their opinion of Blair has gone down as a result of the war. More Americans rank the war as the most important issue facing the country than those who prioritise the economy, immigration and terrorism put together. But that is still only 27%.

STEVE BELL, THE GUARDIAN, LONDON

These statistics are not coming from the same place. These two leaders sold different wars to different electorates. The Bush administration used the terrorist attacks in New York as the pretext for this war; terrorists used this war as the pretext for attacking London. The Bush administration responded to the attacks with a policy of pre-emptive strikes and regime change in which WMD were central but not crucial. In his post-9/11 speech, Blair promised to "reorder this world around us" but evoked Congo and Kyoto, not Iraq or Iran. Finally, most Americans supported the war until last year; bar a brief period at the outset, most Britons never did.

But, for all these differences, what the war exposed both in the UK and the US were democratic deficits that failed to check or balance the bellicose machismo of either man. In Britain the dislocation between public will and foreign policy was blatant. Somehow an issue of war and peace that raged through the country was marginalised in parliament and erased from the cabinet. In the US the public barely got a look in. A supine press and spineless Democrats ensured that no alternative arguments or strategies would emerge until it was too late. The people are not fickle but their democracies are dysfunctional.

As a result, both leaders got precisely what they wanted. Unchecked by political opposition at home, unfettered by international law abroad, unpersuaded by argument at home and abroad, like Sinatra they did it their way. And so, since they have no one else to blame and find themselves out of credit at the goodwill bank of public opinion, they reach for the arbiter of last resort: history.

Not the history that has passed. Not the history of Kenya or Vietnam which taught us that the suppression of a colonised people can only be sustained through barbarism. Certainly not the history in which Winston Churchill advocated gassing the Kurds and the US continued to support Saddam Hussein as an ally after the Halabja massacres.

THE HOLLYWOOD LIBERAL

In their desire for legacy, they seek not the history that records the past but a history of the future: an abstract verdict that we cannot argue with for the simple reason that it hasn't been made yet.

"History will prove the decision we made to be the right decision," said Bush in 2003.

"If we are wrong," argued Blair, "we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive."

Rebutted by the past and rejected in the present, their only hope is the future imperfect. Only when we are all dead will the genius of this war finally become clear.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

Posted by bhola at 08:24 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

Medha's mistake: Social activism has become irrelevant in a society governed by a class that is so corrupt, criminal and callous that it needs nothing less than a cultural revolution

OUTLOOK INDIA, OPINION, APRIL 26, 2006

After all their labour and toil to highlight legitimate grievances what do people like Medha achieve? They end up seeking redressal from a bunch of corrupt and unresponsive politicians. Why not form a new political party, electorally defeat the corrupt leaders, and assume power to redress grievances? RAJINDER PURI

"Dr Manmohan Singh is a clean, decent, competent leader! For God’s sake give him a chance!" How often have we heard this? But his government does not deliver. It cannot deliver. Not the world’s best leader can deliver unless supported by an adequate po