RADICAL CHIC AT THE G8
Outside the Tokyo summit delegates flown in by wealth Non-Governmental Organisations protested at the minimal progress in debt-relief for poorer nations. Inside journalists and politicians enjoyed expensive freebies while listening to British Prime Minister Tony Blair insist that more must be done to help the poorer nations of the world. Under President James Wolfensohn the World Bank has reinvented itself as a friend of the world poor. Wolfensohn encouraged protestors to demand more action on debt-relief for Third World nations. Ironically, the procedural reason that debt-relief is so slow is that indebted nations have failed to meet the stringent conditions that the World Bank set on poverty reduction. So to punish them for their poverty, they are forced to export their surplus product to the West in the form of debt repayments.
SOLD OUT TO MONDEO MAN?
British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's 60 billion pound road- building programme drew the charge from Guardian columnist Ros Coward that the New Labour government had 'sold out to Mondeo man'. If only it was true that New Labour listened put the interests of motorists first. There are 27 500 000 vehicle licenses in Britain, equivalent to half of the population, and accounting for 86 per cent of all journeys made. Seventy per cent of households own a car. Sadly, the viewpoints of the greater part of the country are likely to be subordinated to the prejudices of the 398 721 Guardian readers, who want to see car journeys reduced, instead. Blair's pollsters have recognised that the government's anti-motorist policies are deeply unpopular, leading to the big road-building handout. However, the Guardian readers' lobby controls the local government offices tasked with road management. Much of the spending will be redirected from the envisioned road enlargement schemes to road reduction schemes.
AIDS CONFERENCE REPORT
The sheer volume of reportage and debate in the media for a while even eclipsed coverage of the traditional South African obsessions with sport, crime and violence, writes Russell Grinker. Controversially President Mbeki initially dared to ask how the disease had come to blight Africa. Drawing links between poverty and the epidemic, he questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and invited a number of so- called AIDS dissidents to sit on his Presidential AIDS panel.
In the face of a wave of criticism that verged on hysteria, Mbeki subsequently avoided questioning the HIV-AIDS link. He did however continue to query statistics on the rate of infection in South Africa. If current reports are to be believed, the situation looks grim. According to a new UN Aids report, about half of all 15 year olds may die of AIDS. Between 20 and 25 per cent of adults are also said to be infected. The implications appear to be fairly radical. The 'population chimney' - the graphic depiction of the population - is likely to show a narrowed base, with women sick or dead before their childbearing years would otherwise end, fewer babies born and up to a third getting AIDS. In reality these figures are questionable, often being based on infection rates among pregnant women who are more susceptible to the virus.
Statistics, which portray a frightening epidemic as totally overwhelming, are unhelpful. And most of the debate, passion, and rhetoric are likely to come to nothing. Government shows few signs of radically increasing expenditure on health and an economic miracle that will make a substantial impact on poverty seems unlikely. In the end - like the never ending crime panic - all the great AIDS debate seems likely to achieve, is a strengthening of the overwhelming atmosphere of helplessness and cynicism which has come to characterise post-apartheid South Africa.
'CONFLICT DIAMONDS'
On Wednesday the International Diamond Manufacturers' Association (IDMA) and the World Federation of Diamond Bourses agreed a plan to boycott 'conflict diamonds'. British Foreign Minister Peter Hain led the campaign to prevent the sale of diamonds from Sierra Leone, Angola and the Congo, on the grounds that the magical stones were stoking the conflicts in those regions.
The myth of Africa's fabulous mineral wealth has captivated Europeans since H. Rider Haggard wrote King Solomon's Mines. It suits the former colonists' prejudices that the continents' resources are to be found scattered on the ground, so hard is it to believe in industrious Africa. Diamonds, like any other valuable product, are not a windfall, but the result of hard work. And as European's imaginatively elevate Africa's mineral resources, they degrade her people to puppets of atavistic greed. As if blinded by the glare of the diamonds, Sierra Leoneans, Congolese and Angolans turn on each other - at least so the myth goes.
In truth it is the white monopoly over African resources that is guaranteed by the ban. Without the backing of the infamous South African firm, De Beers, who control sixty per cent of the 4.5 billion-pound trade the ban could never have been agreed. Now 'conflict diamonds' join the list of third world goods barred from the world market by European monopolists, along with Iraqi Oil and Amazonian timber. Allowed to develop these industries, third world countries could develop the security that would moderate civil conflicts.
'NEW CATHOLIC MONEY'
Sinn Fein election director Tony Catney writes in Fourthwrite, the Journal of the Irish Republican Writers Group about the party's recent electoral successes:
'This coincided with the rise of a monied class, which had previously felt that its interests were best served by remaining politically anonymous, now wanting to assert itself in any new political dispensation. This view I will describe as "new Catholic money". Largely apolitical but nationalistic in its aspirations this section of the electorate found much that was attractive in Sinn Fein's demand for parity of esteem and equality of opportunity.'
Catney warns that Sinn Fein's reinvention as the party of the Nationalist middle classes leaves the republicans 'riding the two horses of working class resistance and Catholic new money'.
Fourthwrite is available from PO Box 31, Belfast BT12 7EE
JUDICIAL ACTIVISM
Britain's Judges are rustling their wigs in anticipation of the greater powers available to them to overrule the legislative assembly in Parliament when the European Convention of Human Rights becomes incorporated into British law. This week Judges struck down the Education Secretary's proposal of performance related pay for teachers, and backed the Observer newspaper in its refusal to hand over documents to the intelligence services. Radical critics of the government, though, are foolish to put their faith in the judges. The establishment has noted that the government's authority is slipping, and sent in the reserves to back them up. Having reduced parliament to a rubber stamp for rule by fiat, the government has undermined its legitimacy. The judges' shallow pretence that they stand up for the rights of the freeborn Englishman is a ploy to further remove political power from the democratic choice of the people. -- James Heartfield
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