Fair Trade Treasure

My last blog post was about corporate efforts to hide money and dodge tax.  We all know about the Amazons and the Starbucks but there is another avoidance strategy which is about how goods - or more accurately, how the services related to goods are located around the world.  Corporations brand, insure, distribute in house.  By so doing they can then charge themselves for these services which they offer to themselves.  Such 'charges' are made in offices located in 'high tax' countries which are then offset as costs.  When set against profits in a 'low tax' location, such as Luxembourg, this cynical and creative accountancy is yet another means by which companies get to avoid paying their way.

The only winner in this scenario is the corporation.  Some only pay as little as 6% tax through this form of transfer pricing (or mispricing, given that companies can charge themselves what they like for their services to themselves). The original growers or manufacturers get a tiny fraction of the loot and any country with a respectable tax rate, including our own, loses revenue.  The trillions lost through corporate robbery makes current austerity measures a joke. 

So if anyone asks you why you like to buy fair trade you can tell them you are putting money directly into the hands of countries and the communities therein, enabling a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.  Fair traders in this country also pay their taxes and contribute to the social systems and infrastructure that we all benefit from.  Small steps, perhaps, but ones well worth taking. 

If you want to see what fair trade can offer, why not visit the Radish Fair Trading Post?

Britain: Treasure Island or an Animal Farm?

My daughter is currently studying  Animal Farm.  This Orwellian fable seems so much a part of our lives that possibly we tend to take it for granted and be less aware than we should be of its messages.    Certainly our own conversations about the novel have been confined largely to the themes and literary techniques within it; key players within the Russian Revolution, nature of leadership etc. However, it's ability to abide in our own present-day consciousness is not just because it offers us a history lesson in repetitive hegemony but because of the dangers it presents to us of a  revolution led by a corruptible elite. We shouldn't let it escape us  that though  our country isn't in the grip of a brutal dictatorship, a 'Napoleonic' tour-de-force of terror,  in some ways it's much worse than that.  The brutality is covert and secret. The battlelines are drawn over the relationship between wealth and prosperity - and as we will see these can be mutually exclusive terms.

Having attended a presentation by forensic account John Christenson I began reading Nicholas Shaxon's "Treasure Islands".  Now here is a must-read for any lapsing neoliberalist.  It tells the tale of how Britain has spidered itself to the centre of a web of financial shannanigins so complicated that it's doubtful whether many of our current politicians - chancellors included - really know what's going on. 23 tax havens have the Queen's Head on their flags all of which are hell-bent on secreting away the wealth that the rest of us have been farmed to create.

Most of these havens are indeed islands.  There is a good reason for this. 

Shaxon: The ability to sustain an establishment consensus and suppress troublemakers makes islands especially hospitable to offshore finance, reassuring international financiers that local establishments can be trusted not to allow democratic politics to interfere in the business of making money.  This groupthink did not originate in the island havens - these are merely fortified nodes in bigger global power networks led by Britain and other large powers  but they have come to host and protect concentrations of anti-government, kick-the-poor attitudes that originate elsewhere, and allow them to flourish unchecked.

Christensen: The ruling classes realise they don't need to worry about the Democrats coming to power in the US, or Social Democrats coming to power in Germany, or Labour coming to power in Britain.  They realised they didn't need to fight the fight at home.  They already had this flotsam and jetsam of the empire strewn across the globe, with their red post boxes and British ways of life and incredible subservience to the English ruling class.   Happy days.  The city gentlemen had found a way around the threat of democracy.

Shaxon tells us that our determination to deregulate, and allow all manner of corporations and criminals (not necessarily the same thing) to move money out of the building makes us, essentially, one of the largest tax havens in the world. It goes beyond islands. It's like when those (mythical?) explorers went to look for the largest meteor crater in the world and discovered they couldn't see it because they were actually in it.  Well, today the politicians talk about tax havens, and concomitant evasions as if they're  something that's happening apart from us.  In fact they're happening because of us - we're 'it'!  The Treasury's attempts to dig us out of the crater of debt is laughably delusional.  Not only does it not acknowledge our continuing collusion in letting trillions gush in and then out of our offshore jurisdictions, it seems to stands agape wondering why the sums don't add up.  But it knows.  It really does know.  But this financial system is essentially ectopic - it at once uses the establishment to run outside of the establishment which is why politicians and treasuries cannot penetrate the web.  Secrecy is the glue that weaves and holds the silk.  It requires real courage and global co-operation to deal.  Any party that is supportive of politicians who sit on company boards (and some sit on many company boards) is powerless to do anything other than maintain the status quo - as indeed reform in any form would work counter to their own personal interests. 

Europe is making strides to shut down some of these loopholes - no wonder elements of the Tory Party want to get out.  Where would they put their money?  And further: since the crash of 2008 -which was born largely of the same forces of greed and acquisition - they still collude in the same lie that we're all in it together and that the poor should take its share.  Well, why?  Why on earth should the poor and the innocent pay anything? Why should we have to tolerate cuts and austerity and benefit losses when trillions are routinely being stashed away?

The pigs got away with it because they ensured the rest of the animals were kept too busy and too impoverished and too ill-educated and too frightened to ask the right questions and take even the most basic control over their lives.  Even those who knew what was going on were too cynical or too vain and self-interested to take action.  Orwell is as relevant as he's ever been and thank goodness that today there are still some minds prepared to #Occupy themselves with the issues, often doing nothing more than just sitting in front of a bank or a Starbucks and refusing point blank to be taken to the knackers yard.

 

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You can buy the books in this article from Radish our fully tax-paying independent online bookshop by clicking on the titles below:

 

Animal Farm by George Orwell

 

Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson

 

Find out more here: Tax Justic Network 

 



  



The Age of Stupid gone Starkers!!!

I was going to start this post by saying I can't stand David Starkey but actually that would be untrue.  I think he's wrong-headed, arrogant and grossly over-opinionated. I also believe life has dealt its blows and left him  unable to keep the personal out of his occasional 'out of his box' appearances on Question Time or in the painful Jamie's Dream School.  Now that I've covered my back - not wanting to seem too much like a Starkey apologist - I was nevertheless very taken with what he had to say in his recent series The Churchills.  I  really enjoyed this because Starkey articulated a link between layers of historical narrative: John Churchill's  (the Duke of Marlborough) crucial strategic interventions in the 17th Century 'world war' against Louis XIV and how, through his own biography of his ancestor, Winston Churchill was then able to spot a despot when he saw one in Hitler.

One comment Starkey made spoke to our very current situation though.  He has this overriding contempt for the intellectual capacity our current stable of politicians. He curled his lip and sneered that none of them would be capable of creating the volumes of work put out by the latterday Churchill.  He's right.  Our 'leaders' operate in an intellectual vacuum of olympian proportions.  Those that have produced a tome, have eschewed the work of research  in favour of autobiographies; self publications either to cash in on some imagined fandom or to embark upon puny rationalisations of warmongering or failed economic policy. Oh yes, or indulged in Hollyoakian Westminster gossip.

The situation is bad enough given the complexity of the problems facing the world. Time would eventually resolve many of them in the course of ordinary human endeavour, trial and error. However a devastatingly simple polarity is emerging which must be seen against a disturbing ever-decreasing timescale. It is this: how can we continue to grow and expand in the context of depleting resources and increasing toxicities caused by our innate need to - grow and expand?  (Post growth groups will phrase this slightly differently: should we continue to grow...)

However it is presented, this conundrum has been systematically ignored by the Powers That Be.  The neoliberalism espoused by our three main political parties make it an impossible puzzle for them.  Resolution requires introducing and managing limits that is entirely counter to the neoliberalist position.  The social and economic implications of the sheer scale of what needs to be done demands an intellectual magnitude which eludes the current lot.

It seems to have further escaped them that a societal paradigm change is in process.  The web has allowed the development of deeply-rooted, global social and political  networks that are naturally undermining the old hegemonies.  Those who belong to such groups are astounded at the scale of denial and ignorance from those who are meant to lead us.

Only today my twitter feed had Caroline Lucas writing about many of the ideas put forward by contemporary heavyweight thinkers fully grasping the battle ahead.  She repeats the endless frustration with a government some blogger once described as behaving no better than the string quartet on the deck of the Titanic.

Unsurprisingly, however, big business has seen the writing on the wall. Featured in many debates about the manipulation of global food economics and worries over its workplace practices, Walmart, is a case in point.  They aim for zero waste by 2020, have taken thousands of lorries off the road thereby saving tons of C02 emissions.  This has been achieved through forcing manufacturers of various ilks to deal more in concentrates thereby reducing the size of their packaging.  Their recycling vision is also a stunner, hoping to be entirely energy independent by 2030.  Tesco has long ago taken much of its logistics to the train, cleverly labelling their carriages Less CO2 Rail.  (Lesco - geddit?)  The lesson to be learned here is twofold:  that business leaders have no problem whatsoever interpreting the future and acting on it now, but also that this proclivity is writing on the wall for large corporations to continue their stranglehold on food economies as they become leaner and fitter survivors in the future low carbon age.  Can this be said of populations, cultures and countries whose leaders are in the thrall of Stupid?

As we know social and political networks are espousing different leadership models.  Some will work and some will not, nevertheless the issue of 'leadership' per se is working itself into political discourses at many levels . Why?  Because, as Starkey says, we're 'groping'.  Our current leaders are failing to see the challenge ahead of them.  Much like successive governments in the 1920s and 30s which didn't spot a despot in time, the west continues to spew out second-raters who can't get a grip on a blasted future that is hurtling towards us.  There can be no appeasement.  It didn't work then and it won't work now.

That is the Stark naked truth. 

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Marlborough: His Life and Times by Winston Churchill.  Currently unavailable except by special order.  Please email me  at meg@radishweb.co.uk for details.
Limits to Growth by Dennis Meadows and Jorgen Randers
The Courageous State by Richard Murphy
Citizen's Income and Green Economics by Clive Lord (This book uses as its core metaphor the ravaging of Easter Island.  A culture that just couldn't stop until it had no resources left).


The Age of Stupid.  Available from Radish Books £12.50. Phone with card details to: 0113 2694241 

Deep Resistance to Deep Green Resistance

Have had a really interesting fortnight in my head.  I have for some time known about Derrick Jensen  through his books "Endgame" but I innocently happened upon a tweet from Dark Optimism about the film 2010 film End:Civ which features Jensen and the ideas generated by the Deep Green Resistance Movement (DGR). Their underlying philosophy is encapsulated by Lierre Keith:


 "The task of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much personal integrity as possible; it is to dismantle those systems."


End:Civ is a deeply disturbing film about the effects of our continuing and continual destruction of the planet, literally in order to fuel our inexorable industrialisation.  It pulls no punches at the scale of the destruction and at how environmentalists (Bright Greens) are deluding themselves that the world will voluntarily change in order to save the planet.  The only alternative is to "Occupy the Machine" and dismantle it either non-violently (through occupation) or, if necessary, guerrilla warfare.  Jensen wants us to destroy industrial civilisation - and possibly civilisation itself. 


The argument is compelling. The film changes tone two-thirds through as the advocation of violence becomes more strident and the condemnation of sell-out liberal middle-class pacifist idealism emerges. It is this that Jensen also blames for the consistent blasting of the planet: that the Bright Greens have helped to commercialise environmentalism which has allowed sociopathic corporations to keep cashing in thus contributing nothing to halt the decimation.  Finally he suggests that non-violence has never led to change and that such an ideology only pacifies resistance to power and that we must do a great deal more than 'like' a Facebook page or sign an online petition - all further sops to protect the powerful.

What am I to think about this? I  love the planet, but do not advocate violence - gawd I'm not even a proper activist, I just own a bookshop!!  Well, I do what everyone does.  I process according to the interpretative structures I have available and what a journey it has been!

First came the Anonymous, tweet.  A harmless graze along my Twitter feed and there it was: 


"whatever your activism is, keep it local, keep it focused and beware of egotists telling you what to do".

...and then an initially unrelated surf brought me to this very contentious article about the anti-civilsation movement in the Anarchist News . Interestingly it had this in its introduction:

It seems as though new ideologists haven't learned from the mistakes of the past, as we're witnessing the dawn of a new generation of “green-robed priests”.

It went on to say that the anti-civ movement was repeating past (Marxist) mistakes insofar as it was disaffecting other groups and movements by assuming that its premise is correct (when it is just a premise; a position).  Further,  that it was attempting to take control of the argument by the 'fuck patience' imperative, using some sort of emergency critique to force 'act now' scenarios thereby eliminating the opportunity for others to work through the consequences and impact of anti-civ action. 

Then another then...

What sort of coincidence is it that I am also reading "Mercurious" by the splendid Patrick Harpur? More to the question is why is it that a book on the art of Alchemy could speak in any way to this issue and help me process it? 

"Mercurious" has a dual narrative.  It is about the work of a modern alchemist priest (Smith) in the 1950s whose work (Magnum Opus) has been uncovered by a female intellectual/anthropologist, Eileen, who rents the vicarage in the present day.  She is herself a Jungian and interprets Smith's work for us by unfolding the principles of Alchemical Art as it became intertwined with the mythologies and psyches that are part of the human condition. Two relevant things have emerged from it.


Firstly,  human beings indulge in a process of dual classification.  In certain contexts we tend to characterise the world in terms of black/white, bad/good, heaven/hell, above/below, live/die.  This is to oversimplify a little, but the making of myths is all about these dual classifications.  Furthermore, although we are rational beings, in extremis we employ dual classification as part of our persuasively emotive toolkit to generate action. This is presumably because we have less time to think.


An example of how dual classification would work in this latter respect is:  so.. either do this (for this desireable outcome) or that, (the undesireable outcome), will happen.  A straight oppositional either/or. Yet rarely do things work out in the way we expect them to - good or bad. The 'options' are never straightforward. Usually we work things out in media res, as we are doing now whilst in the middle of this context of environmental change.   It is no doubt likely that our civilisation may be coming to an end but it  may also be fair to say that as with all civilisations, this is just a precursor to the next.  There's an alchemical process taking place here and now - a painful transition perhaps, but one which will eventually lead to transformation.   

Secondly, Eileen was also a follower of the famous French anthropologist and structuralist Levi-Strauss.  He understood that humans have a dichotomous relationship with their environment.  We know that we are 'of' nature but we also set ourselves 'apart' from nature. All societies struggle with the transition from Nature to Culture and in his study of tribes (and he produced many works on this, fascinated by our sharing of 'universal' mythologies), he sees that all civilisations  (and the question obviously needs to be begged about what a civilisation is) initially formed through fire (the transformative alchemical agent, by the way).  Fire allowed communities to domesticate, by enabling the process of cooking.  Fire is the driving force behind our ability to make culture - (stealing fire is also a major myth trope).  It is what made power structures in the first place: those owning the fire held the power.

And in the 20/21 century cue the oil companies, media moguls, politicians and oil corporations who have the resources to make our plastics,  our cars and to keep our domestic fires burning.  Interestingly, it would also be the produce of fire - explosives - that would be used by the anti-civ movement.  Then who would have the power, I wonder?  And what will be the 'new fire' once the oil has run out? Who would control it?  Getting  Promethean now.

So where has this go me?  Have I merely  rationalised a difficult message?  Perhaps.  But I do think I've travelled quite far - in my head anyway.   The alembic world is literally being 'cooked' and slowly transformed.  Despite the film, I don't believe the planet is dead or dying.  This is an arrogant 'apart from' assertion.  It has survived warming at orders of magnitude beyond conception long before we had anything to do with it.  

I do believe that civilised life as we know it may die out.   However, it is to me a question of transition. Impatience ruins years of alchemical work and there are many resurrectional (to use another myth) brightnesses  appearing  which gives hope for a future in which we can live in a right relationship with the planet. 

So am going to keep solid with my own local, focused and non-egotistical networks - and others like them in a larger scale, who are , Levi-Strausslike, engaging in the possibility of new structures because they are imagining them.  It's hard to see what sort of world the DGR imagines after the end of civilisation.

Fuck impatience.

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The books referred to in this article are available from the Radishwebstore here:

Endgame Vol 1: (Collapse of Civilisation) by Derrick Jensen

Endgame Vol 2: (Resistance) by Derrick Jensen
Mercurious by Patrick Harpur