Letters
Climate hysteria
Climate hysteria The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well.
Climate is always changing. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age.
For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work (Tsonis et al, 2007) suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th century.
Climate alarmists say that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not surprising, but it says nothing about trends. Given that the evidence strongly implies that anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished.
Polar bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc, etc all depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables, including temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal. Yet, each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe actually occurring are almost zero. This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980s, and global cooling in the 1970s.
Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors other than global warming are more important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.
In view of the above, one may reasonably ask why there is the current alarm, and, in particular, why the astounding upsurge in alarmism of the past four years. When an issue like global warming is around for over 20 years, numerous agendas are developed to exploit the issue. The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear. So too are the interests of bureaucrats, for whom control of CO2 is a dream come true. After all, CO2 is a product of breathing itself. Politicians can see the possibility of taxation that will be cheerfully accepted because it is necessary for ‘saving’ the earth.With all this at stake, one can readily suspect that there might be a sense of urgency provoked by the possibility that warming may have ceased and that the case for such warming being due in significant measure to man is disintegrating. For those committed to the more venal agendas, the need to act soon, before the public appreciates the situation, is real indeed. However, for more serious leaders, the need to courageously resist hysteria is clear. Wasting resources on symbolically fighting ever present climate change is no substitute for prudence. Nor is the assumption that the earth’s climate reached a point of perfection in the middle of the 20th century a sign of intelligence.
Climate hysteria
Climate hysteria
Excluded
A government roundtable to develop “policy on prostitution” was held on February 14, but the English Collective of Prostitutes was excluded. When asked why, home office spokesman Alistair Noble replied that “organisations have been selected to reflect a range of experience and perspectives and to lead to a balanced discussion”.
Can there be a “balanced discussion” without input from the longest running, independent and most outspoken sex worker organisation in the UK? To exclude the ECP from talks on “developing an effective policy on prostitution” is equivalent to excluding the protestors in Tahrir Square from talks on democratic change in Egypt.
Since it was founded in 1975, the ECP has campaigned for decriminalisation so that sex workers’ safety can be central. After the Ipswich murders, we launched the Safety First Coalition, which includes highly respected organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing and Women Against Rape. The work of this coalition, including with MPs and peers (most recently in relation to the Policing and Crime Act) and with the media, ensured that public concern about criminalisation undermining safety was put on the national agenda.
The need for change is urgent. There have been two sets of horrific murders of sex workers in the most recent period and many other women working in the sex industry have lost their lives, but have never hit the headlines. Rape and other violence are widespread. Most sex workers cannot report to the police for fear of arrest, exposure and, if they are immigrants, deportation. When they do, they are arrested for prostitution offences, while their attackers go free. That’s how serial rapists and murderers are enabled and encouraged. Hanna Morris, who is being charged for brothel keeping after reporting a threatened arson attack, is one example of this.
With a network of women in most towns and cities in the UK, we are the first port of call for women who are being raided and prosecuted for working together in the relative safety of premises. Many are losing their homes and savings under proceeds of crime law. Women working on the street speak of being pushed through punitive compulsory rehabilitation schemes which offer no concrete resources to address the poverty, debt, homelessness, domestic violence and drug use acknowledged as the key factors forcing women into prostitution. In towns and cities around the country, increasing numbers of women, mostly mothers, are having to look for sex work to feed families and keep a roof over their head. Women criminalised under the laws find themselves blocked from any other kind of employment - in effect institutionalised in prostitution. These women are our constituency and those whose voices will not be heard if we are excluded.
Aware of this, the president of GMB sex worker branch, Thierry Schaffauser, wrote asking for the ECP to be included, but so far his request has been ignored. Is this a consultation or a cover-up?
Excluded
Excluded
No behaviourist
Contrary to Bob Potter’s imaginings, I am not a behaviourist, do believe that children have a language instinct and am not hostile to Newton or Chomsky. But Newton’s theological writings are another matter - as are Chomsky’s.
No behaviourist
No behaviourist
Real alternative
We need to complete the democratic revolution. Not just the right to vote. Full democracy is the original social democracy. In 1946 Labour minister Stafford Cripps rubbished the idea of workers running industries (as well as operating them) by making up the majority on the boards of nationalised coal and railways. The former owners and shareholders were fully compensated and thus escaped the prospect of having to pay for modernisation and renewal. Rail and coal bosses had their capital freed up to invest more profitably!
So ‘public ownership’ just alienated the workers - state capitalism was no better from their point of view than private capitalism. The compensation measures enriched the already rich and the lack of democratic management put up a barrier between workers and their work. Later privatisation reared its ugly head above the deindustrialised landscape.
We need to advance policies for forms of ownership and control which are neither private capitalist nor state bureaucratic and the cooperative model is perhaps what we seek. ‘One, member, one share, one vote’ is the basic co-op principle. This empowers the poor and does not allow the rich to take over. But in practice capitalist methods of operation have taken root in the big cooperative retail, banking and insurance companies. Years ago retail co-ops paid big dividends to their members - not based on equal sharing, but on how much was spent. Dividend day every six months was eagerly anticipated.
Another cooperative principle is the election of recallable delegates as managers. But this has been replaced by the appointment of bosses with no labour movement background. Meanwhile, co-op workers are mere wage slaves. Yet, by applying real cooperative principles, we could have community co-ops running schools and buses, worker co-ops emptying bins, federations of co-ops providing rail services, and so on.
The strict maintenance of democracy at all levels is the key to achieving a real alternative to capitalism.
Real alternative
Real alternative
Not convinced
Comrade Matthew Caygill is correct to highlight the worrying phenomenon of the pejorative use of the word ‘Jew’ in popular discourse. The left should have no truck with such rhetoric. When a comrade texted me from Manchester to tell me that the spineless Aaron Porter had been angrily barracked for his shoddy, inexcusable record as National Union of Students president, I could not help but smile. Yet if, as comrade Caygill claims, Porter was hounded by racially motivated chants of “You’re a fucking Tory Jew” and “You’re a filthy Tory Jew” then this should be forthrightly and unreservedly condemned.
Having now watched the video comrade Caygill refers to (http://tinyurl.com/5tvjmxu), I did not hear any racial abuse. Indeed, whilst the distortion of the megaphone and the chorus of voices of the crowd make it difficult to properly make out each chant, it strikes me that the chants emanating from the megaphone were part of a fairly standard list drawn up beforehand: “You’re a fucking Tory too”, “Porter out!”, “Scum!”, etc. For what it is worth, Guardian reporter Judy Friedberg does not deem the footage to be conclusive either way, simply introducing the video with: “Here’s the footage. You decide” (http://tinyurl.com/69ymdmf).
The Mule, a non-profit, independent media project, casts further doubt on Porter’s claims of being the victim of anti-Semitic abuse (http://tinyurl.com/5tbv4fp). Its journalists contacted The Sunday Telegraph and established that there were only two sources for the story the paper ran the following day: an (unnamed) photographer and the NUS itself.
What’s more, Aaron Porter’s account of what happened is far from consistent. Whilst the day after the demonstration he tweeted that he “would not back down, and certainly not to racial abuse”, in a recent statement quoted by The Mule he has changed tack, claiming not to have heard anything himself: “I was not certain what was said by those shouting abuse at me. However, I was informed by others present that amongst other things anti-Semitic comments were made.”
Not convinced
Not convinced
Ageism
Let me assure comrade Ian Birchall (February 10), that I am no ageist and that I value the input of comrades who, like himself can certainly equip younger generations of revolutionaries with valuable weapons: experience and knowledge.
Comrade Birchall takes issue with my reference to “even old women and men waving their encouragement to demonstrators”. (‘Keeping up the pressure’, February 3). I had not intended to emphasise the word ‘even’, as comrade Birchall does. I was simply reporting something that struck me as particularly salient when describing the wider support the student movement enjoys.
As Communist Students comrades marched along The Strand with a big banner (‘Fight capitalist austerity! For a mass communist student movement!) I recall them cheering and waving. When I and other comrades raised our fists in salute, they waved again, this time with both hands. It was inspiring as an example of solidarity with the protests and between the generations.
Ageism
Ageism
Advance notice
Ted Talbot responds to Chris Knight’s letter (January 27) with a few proposals of his own (Letters, February 3). Taking inspiration from Sun Tzu in The art of war, Ted Talbot suggests that to get “stuck in” any anarchist action on March 26 should be cloaked in deception, thus avoiding the stupidity of telling your enemy what you intend to do.
However, anyone who was involved in the G20 protests will know that it was exactly by announcing in advance what was going to happen - a convergence on the Bank of England led by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the possibility of hanging bankers - that led to the successful action. Admittedly the kettling operation by the police was not anticipated. Another example of announcing a plan in advance was the occupation of Parliament Square, creating Democracy Village - another success. Tactics have moved on since then, with the development of Sukey, an early warning anti-kettling device for smart phones, first tested on the January 29 student demonstration.
Going back to the main point, I don’t believe Ted Talbot is naive, but there must be an expectation that anarchist groups have already been infiltrated by undercover police officers, such as Mark Kennedy. However, with the type of actions proposed, it would be foolhardy for the police to wade in, as Talbot suggests, following the reaction of the police to the G20 protests and the continuing payouts. Although the media’s success at undercover work is less thorough than the police and exposing those individuals is an easy job, why not give them a step up - the more exposure, the better - including inviting the media to meetings to give them a flavour of potential actions and make them work for us, rather than the media infiltrating meetings to report scare stories?
The only simple way to be successful is to signal your intentions beforehand. How you carry out the action is a question of tactics.
Advance notice
Advance notice
Kurdish camp
After driving for half an hour from Sulaimani, one of the major cities in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, we arrived at Zirgwez village, where the “military and refugee” camp of the Komala faction of Iranian Communist Party (Komala-CPI), is situated. The party is a major force amongst the Kurdish opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran and is the only Kurdish party in Iran that fights for the right of the Kurds to form their own separate state.
A red flag was flying over a surveillance post looking over the front gate of the village. A Peshmarga woman (Kurdish guerrilla fighter) opened the gate for us. This was quite extraordinary, especially since gender inequality in this semi-autonomous region is rife, due to traditional and religious values. She was wearing a Kurdish Peshmarga uniform and was holding an AK47.
Our contact was a leftwing Iranian exiled writer and film director who was living in the camp, but was not an affiliate to the party. After a short while, he came down from the hill and took us to his house. “This is a Peshmarga home, even if you are not Peshmarga. Here you have to live the lifestyle,” he said with a smile, indicating the house was primitive.
The neighbourhood where all the Peshmargas lived was located in the heart of the village (Peshmargas could be seen at the top of those mountains surrounding the camp). Here the roads were primitive, compared to the main road of the village. “All these roads and everything else you see in this camp are built by us,” said our Peshmarga driver. “The area was almost completely destroyed when we came after Operation Anfal [ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in 1988]. People were no longer living here - we reconstructed the entire area.”
Outside the houses, some Peshmargas, men and women, were busy planting trees and building new houses for their recently arrived comrades. “We receive dozens of young people from all over Iran joining our forces every month,” Hassan Rahman Panah, spokesperson and leading figure of the Komala faction, told me.
Hassan Panah said there is a good relationship between themselves and the villagers. Despite the threats to their families from the Iranian secret services.
We visited the party’s medical centre, where portraits of its martyrs, along with those of Marx and Engels, were on the walls. As well as treating their own Peshmargas, the medical centre was open to the people of Zirgwez. It provides medicine and medical treatment free of charge.
The shelves in the party’s large library, as well as Marxist literature, had a diverse range of books by European writers and novelists, and archives from leftwing newspapers. A Peshmarga women in charge of the library explained that students, journalists and writers from Iraqi Kurdistan visit the library to access Farsi sources for their work and studies.
The discipline of the Peshmargas was unbelievable. The main commander, who was accompanying us, explained that, as well as carrying out their daily military routine, other roles include working for the party’s media - ie, the international satellite TV and radio stations broadcasting from this camp to the world: “Anyone joining us not only becomes a Peshmarga: they have to work in other areas too. They learn how to use our computers, and perhaps work in one of our media outlets.”
The TV station was modern with high-tech equipment. In one of the news rooms, ‘Akam’, a 21-year-old Peshmarga, was busy uploading fresh news to the party’s website. He said he had joined the party four months ago. Next to him, a woman wearing the Peshmarga uniform was translating articles from Farsi to Kurdish on her computer for the party newspaper, Peshraw.
The party claims it is not carrying out an armed struggle, but is “forced to carry guns to defend the organisation’s civil and political struggle”. Hassan Panah told me: “We believe in civil and mass struggle, but we have to protect ourselves from the notorious Islamic regime.”
Kurdish camp
Kurdish camp
Limitations
Limitations While we can all sympathise with Dave Vincent, I believe his argument is flawed (‘Should we all join Labour?’, February 10). I always derive wry amusement from people who want to overthrow British imperialism, but for some reason aren’t up to overthrowing the rightwing leadership in the Labour Party.
Those who ignore the bigger picture can argue, like comrade Vincent, that “The Labour right have learnt enough to ensure the left will get nowhere near gaining control.” This would no doubt be true if it was up to the right wing. Fortunately for us there are greater forces at work than the rights who have traditionally controlled Labour. The Labour rights aren’t just clever control-freaks who are able to control the Party and the working class under all conditions. Certain ideological and objective conditions must exist to facilitate this control. Developments are already undermining this.
The point is, as long as British imperialism was able to buy off the working class and protect the middle classes, the chances of defeating the rightwing leadership remained minimal. This was certainly the case when capitalism was on a long-term upswing. Now that capitalism is faced with a permanent decline, bleating on about the impossibility of ousting the right is simply defeatism.
We have now entered the time when capitalist regimes will no longer be able to buy off the working class and protect the middle classes, and all attempts at engineering an economic recovery will come up against the barrier of the global peak in oil production. Economic ‘recovery’ simply means sending oil prices soaring into triple-digit figures, thus precipitating a double-dip recession.
The Labour right has no solutions to this crisis and there are none on the basis of capitalism which would guarantee their dominant influence within the party. The only real question is, what’s the left going to do? There are those who believe that it is necessary to win Labour over to ‘Marxism’, or their version of it. I would argue that what we need to do is to win the Labour Party over to the idea of an ecologically sustainable, democratic socialist society. This can certainly be done without recourse to dogmas, Marxist or otherwise. This does not mean I am entirely dismissive of Marxism, but I am aware of its limitations in explaining the present crisis.
Limitations
Limitations
Fucking lies
In response to Matthew Caygill’s letter (February 10), I’d like to dispel any pretensions anyone holds that anti-Semitic slogans were shouted at Aaron Porter on the Manchester demonstration of January 29.
I was personally present on the demonstration that day, although admittedly not part of the mob that quite rightly chased Porter into my students union building, and felt outraged by what I consider to be the libellous allegations that the Daily Mail, assorted rightwing news sources and now even the student paper of Manchester University have made about the supposed racist nature of the chants. I can see, just as I’m sure that comrade Caygill can as well, how a reactionary tabloid newspaper such as the Daily Mail could take the chant, “Aaron Porter, we know you - you’re a fucking Tory too!”, and turn it into a story to slander people it hates - the same people who desecrated the statue of Churchill and gave the heir to the throne a bit of scare the same day - with a little bit of lying, and I assert that that is exactly what the Daily Mail has done in this instance.
As to the evidence of racism comrade Caygill claims to have found, I’m afraid I couldn’t locate The Guardian video myself, but I have seen the one on YouTube titled, ‘Rebel students target Aaron Porter (NUS president)’. Not once in its 10-minute entirety, which covers the crowd chasing him away from start to finish, could I find any evidence of racist chants.
Admittedly, some of the “You’re a fucking Tory too” chants were muffled and unclear. Yet, given the fact that the crowd was made up predominantly of people from the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Workers Party, Revo and many from the occupation of the University of Manchester whom I know for a fact are violently opposed to racism in all its forms, I myself am more inclined to believe their version of what was said than the Daily Mail’s.
Fucking lies
Fucking lies