Wikinews accredited reporter Killing Vector traveled to the G-20 2009 summit protests in London with a group of protesters. This is his personal account.

Friday, April 3, 2009

London – “Protest”, says Ross Saunders, “is basically theatre”.

It’s seven a.m. and I’m on a mini-bus heading east on the M4 motorway from Cardiff toward London. I’m riding with seventeen members of the Cardiff Socialist Party, of which Saunders is branch secretary for the Cardiff West branch; they’re going to participate in a march that’s part of the protests against the G-20 meeting.

Before we boarded the minibus Saunders made a speech outlining the reasons for the march. He said they were “fighting for jobs for young people, fighting for free education, fighting for our share of the wealth, which we create.” His anger is directed at the government’s response to the economic downturn: “Now that the recession is underway, they’ve been trying to shoulder more of the burden onto the people, and onto the young people…they’re expecting us to pay for it.” He compared the protest to the Jarrow March and to the miners’ strikes which were hugely influential in the history of the British labour movement. The people assembled, though, aren’t miners or industrial workers — they’re university students or recent graduates, and the march they’re going to participate in is the Youth Fight For Jobs.

The Socialist Party was formerly part of the Labour Party, which has ruled the United Kingdom since 1997 and remains a member of the Socialist International. On the bus, Saunders and some of his cohorts — they occasionally, especially the older members, address each other as “comrade” — explains their view on how the split with Labour came about. As the Third Way became the dominant voice in the Labour Party, culminating with the replacement of Neil Kinnock with Tony Blair as party leader, the Socialist cadre became increasingly disaffected. “There used to be democratic structures, political meetings” within the party, they say. The branch meetings still exist but “now, they passed a resolution calling for renationalisation of the railways, and they [the party leadership] just ignored it.” They claim that the disaffection with New Labour has caused the party to lose “half its membership” and that people are seeking alternatives. Since the economic crisis began, Cardiff West’s membership has doubled, to 25 members, and the RMT has organized itself as a political movement running candidates in the 2009 EU Parliament election. The right-wing British National Party or BNP is making gains as well, though.

Talk on the bus is mostly political and the news of yesterday’s violence at the G-20 demonstrations, where a bank was stormed by protesters and 87 were arrested, is thick in the air. One member comments on the invasion of a RBS building in which phone lines were cut and furniture was destroyed: “It’s not very constructive but it does make you smile.” Another, reading about developments at the conference which have set France and Germany opposing the UK and the United States, says sardonically, “we’re going to stop all the squabbles — they’re going to unite against us. That’s what happens.” She recounts how, in her native Sweden during the Second World War, a national unity government was formed among all major parties, and Swedish communists were interned in camps, while Nazi-leaning parties were left unmolested.

In London around 11am the march assembles on Camberwell Green. About 250 people are here, from many parts of Britain; I meet marchers from Newcastle, Manchester, Leicester, and especially organized-labor stronghold Sheffield. The sky is grey but the atmosphere is convivial; five members of London’s Metropolitan Police are present, and they’re all smiling. Most marchers are young, some as young as high school age, but a few are older; some teachers, including members of the Lewisham and Sheffield chapters of the National Union of Teachers, are carrying banners in support of their students.

Stewards hand out sheets of paper with the words to call-and-response chants on them. Some are youth-oriented and education-oriented, like the jaunty “Gordon Brown‘s a Tory/He wears a Tory hat/And when he saw our uni fees/He said ‘I’ll double that!'” (sung to the tune of the Lonnie Donegan song “My Old Man’s a Dustman“); but many are standbys of organized labour, including the infamous “workers of the world, unite!“. It also outlines the goals of the protest, as “demands”: “The right to a decent job for all, with a living wage of at least £8 and hour. No to cheap labour apprenticeships! for all apprenticeships to pay at least the minimum wage, with a job guaranteed at the end. No to university fees. support the campaign to defeat fees.” Another steward with a megaphone and a bright red t-shirt talks the assembled protesters through the basics of call-and-response chanting.

Finally the march gets underway, traveling through the London boroughs of Camberwell and Southwark. Along the route of the march more police follow along, escorting and guiding the march and watching it carefully, while a police van with flashing lights clears the route in front of it. On the surface the atmosphere is enthusiastic, but everyone freezes for a second as a siren is heard behind them; it turns out to be a passing ambulance.

Crossing Southwark Bridge, the march enters the City of London, the comparably small but dense area containing London’s financial and economic heart. Although one recipient of the protesters’ anger is the Bank of England, the march does not stop in the City, only passing through the streets by the London Exchange. Tourists on buses and businessmen in pinstripe suits record snippets of the march on their mobile phones as it passes them; as it goes past a branch of HSBC the employees gather at the glass store front and watch nervously. The time in the City is brief; rather than continue into the very centre of London the march turns east and, passing the Tower of London, proceeds into the poor, largely immigrant neighbourhoods of the Tower Hamlets.

The sun has come out, and the spirits of the protesters have remained high. But few people, only occasional faces at windows in the blocks of apartments, are here to see the march and it is in Wapping High Street that I hear my first complaint from the marchers. Peter, a steward, complains that the police have taken the march off its original route and onto back streets where “there’s nobody to protest to”. I ask how he feels about the possibility of violence, noting the incidents the day before, and he replies that it was “justified aggression”. “We don’t condone it but people have only got certain limitations.”

A policeman I ask is very polite but noncommittal about the change in route. “The students are getting the message out”, he says, so there’s no problem. “Everyone’s very well behaved” in his assessment and the atmosphere is “very positive”. Another protestor, a sign-carrying university student from Sheffield, half-heartedly returns the compliment: today, she says, “the police have been surprisingly unridiculous.”

The march pauses just before it enters Cable Street. Here, in 1936, was the site of the Battle of Cable Street, and the march leader, addressing the protesters through her megaphone, marks the moment. She draws a parallel between the British Union of Fascists of the 1930s and the much smaller BNP today, and as the protesters follow the East London street their chant becomes “The BNP tell racist lies/We fight back and organise!”

In Victoria Park — “The People’s Park” as it was sometimes known — the march stops for lunch. The trade unions of East London have organized and paid for a lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries and tea, and, picnic-style, the marchers enjoy their meals as organized labor veterans give brief speeches about industrial actions from a small raised platform.

During the rally I have the opportunity to speak with Neil Cafferky, a Galway-born Londoner and the London organizer of the Youth Fight For Jobs march. I ask him first about why, despite being surrounded by red banners and quotes from Karl Marx, I haven’t once heard the word “communism” used all day. He explains that, while he considers himself a Marxist and a Trotskyist, the word communism has negative connotations that would “act as a barrier” to getting people involved: the Socialist Party wants to avoid the discussion of its position on the USSR and disassociate itself from Stalinism. What the Socialists favor, he says, is “democratic planned production” with “the working class, the youths brought into the heart of decision making.”

On the subject of the police’s re-routing of the march, he says the new route is actually the synthesis of two proposals. Originally the march was to have gone from Camberwell Green to the Houses of Parliament, then across the sites of the 2012 Olympics and finally to the ExCel Centre. The police, meanwhile, wanted there to be no march at all.

The Metropolitan Police had argued that, with only 650 trained traffic officers on the force and most of those providing security at the ExCel Centre itself, there simply wasn’t the manpower available to close main streets, so a route along back streets was necessary if the march was to go ahead at all. Cafferky is sceptical of the police explanation. “It’s all very well having concern for health and safety,” he responds. “Our concern is using planning to block protest.”

He accuses the police and the government of having used legal, bureaucratic and even violent means to block protests. Talking about marches having to defend themselves, he says “if the police set out with the intention of assaulting marches then violence is unavoidable.” He says the police have been known to insert “provocateurs” into marches, which have to be isolated. He also asserts the right of marches to defend themselves when attacked, although this “must be done in a disciplined manner”.

He says he wasn’t present at yesterday’s demonstrations and so can’t comment on the accusations of violence against police. But, he says, there is often provocative behavior on both sides. Rather than reject violence outright, Cafferky argues that there needs to be “clear political understanding of the role of violence” and calls it “counter-productive”.

Demonstration overall, though, he says, is always a useful tool, although “a demonstration is always a means to an end” rather than an end in itself. He mentions other ongoing industrial actions such as the occupation of the Visteon plant in Enfield; 200 fired workers at the factory have been occupying the plant since April 1, and states the solidarity between the youth marchers and the industrial workers.

I also speak briefly with members of the International Bolshevik Tendency, a small group of left-wing activists who have brought some signs to the rally. The Bolsheviks say that, like the Socialists, they’re Trotskyists, but have differences with them on the idea of organization; the International Bolshevik Tendency believes that control of the party representing the working class should be less democratic and instead be in the hands of a team of experts in history and politics. Relations between the two groups are “chilly”, says one.

At 2:30 the march resumes. Rather than proceeding to the ExCel Centre itself, though, it makes its way to a station of London’s Docklands Light Railway; on the way, several of East London’s school-aged youths join the march, and on reaching Canning Town the group is some 300 strong. Proceeding on foot through the borough, the Youth Fight For Jobs reaches the protest site outside the G-20 meeting.

It’s impossible to legally get too close to the conference itself. Police are guarding every approach, and have formed a double cordon between the protest area and the route that motorcades take into and out of the conference venue. Most are un-armed, in the tradition of London police; only a few even carry truncheons. Closer to the building, though, a few machine gun-armed riot police are present, standing out sharply in their black uniforms against the high-visibility yellow vests of the Metropolitan Police. The G-20 conference itself, which started a few hours before the march began, is already winding down, and about a thousand protesters are present.

I see three large groups: the Youth Fight For Jobs avoids going into the center of the protest area, instead staying in their own group at the admonition of the stewards and listening to a series of guest speakers who tell them about current industrial actions and the organization of the Youth Fight’s upcoming rally at UCL. A second group carries the Ogaden National Liberation Front‘s flag and is campaigning for recognition of an autonomous homeland in eastern Ethiopia. Others protesting the Ethiopian government make up the third group; waving old Ethiopian flags, including the Lion of Judah standard of emperor Haile Selassie, they demand that foreign aid to Ethiopia be tied to democratization in that country: “No recovery without democracy”.

A set of abandoned signs tied to bollards indicate that the CND has been here, but has already gone home; they were demanding the abandonment of nuclear weapons. But apart from a handful of individuals with handmade, cardboard signs I see no groups addressing the G-20 meeting itself, other than the Youth Fight For Jobs’ slogans concerning the bailout. But when a motorcade passes, catcalls and jeers are heard.

It’s now 5pm and, after four hours of driving, five hours marching and one hour at the G-20, Cardiff’s Socialists are returning home. I board the bus with them and, navigating slowly through the snarled London traffic, we listen to BBC Radio 4. The news is reporting on the closure of the G-20 conference; while they take time out to mention that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper delayed the traditional group photograph of the G-20’s world leaders because “he was on the loo“, no mention is made of today’s protests. Those listening in the bus are disappointed by the lack of coverage.

Most people on the return trip are tired. Many sleep. Others read the latest issue of The Socialist, the Socialist Party’s newspaper. Mia quietly sings “The Internationale” in Swedish.

Due to the traffic, the journey back to Cardiff will be even longer than the journey to London. Over the objections of a few of its members, the South Welsh participants in the Youth Fight For Jobs stop at a McDonald’s before returning to the M4 and home.

[edit]

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

These are short blurbs about current events in the business world.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Today, English football club Manchester City announced the signing of German midfielder Ilkay Gündogan from Borussia Dortmund for four years. By mutual agreement, the clubs kept the terms of signing undisclosed.

Gündogan came from Schalke 04’s youth system, and made his professional debut aged 15 with Vfl Bochum in 2008–09. Before joining Dortmund in 2011, he made 53 appearances for FC Nurnberg.

After completing the Manchester City move, Gündogan said, “I’m thrilled to have signed for Manchester City[…] When I learned of City’s interest my heart was set on coming here and things have moved very quickly.”

Dortmund’s Sporting Director Michael Zorc thanked Gündogan, saying, “We would like to thank Ilkay Gündogan for five extraordinary years in Dortmund. BVB would like to wish him a speedy recovery and all the best for his future endeavours in Manchester”^{((de))German language: Wir bedanken uns bei Ilkay Gündogan für fünf außergewöhnliche Jahre in Dortmund. Der BVB wünscht ihm eine baldige Genesung und nur das Allerbeste für seine Zukunft in Manchester}.

Gündogan scored four goals in 36 appearances in his debut season for Dortmund when the club won the Bundesliga title as well as DFB-Pokal — the German Cup. Gündogan has played sixteen international matches and scored four goals.

Currently, he has an injured knee and is to miss UEFA Euro 2016. Gündogan joins Manchester City on July 1.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Americans pay twice as much for heart-bypass surgery as the socialized Canadian system, with no difference in outcome, according to today’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine in a study funded by American drug company, Pfizer Inc.. The research found that heart bypass surgery costs an average of $10,373 in Canada, compared with $20,673 in the United States. Even though the costs were double in the United States, the rate of complications and death following bypass surgery was similar.

High administrative costs and overtreatment are usually blamed for the higher cost in the profit-driven U.S. system. Americans spent $5,635 per capita on health care in 2003, while only $3,003 was spent by Canadians. Health spending accounts for almost 15 per cent of gross domestic product in the U.S. and just under 10 per cent in Canada; while at the same time, all Canadian residents are full covered. In addition, the average Canadian lives 2 years longer than the average American.

This is one of the first studies directly comparing the costs of surgery in Canada and the United States and it reinforces the view of Dr. Mark Eisenberg, head of cardiovascular epidemiology at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal; “The conventional wisdom is that health care is much more expensive in the U.S. and the conventional wisdom is right.” by finding that Canada’s socialized system is far more cost efficient than the U.S. model.

The cost of medications used to treat bypass patients were as much as 68 percent greater in the U.S. than in Canada and the cost of a surgical bed was 36 percent greater in the U.S.. In Canada, nursing accounted for 44 percent of the treatment costs, compared with 21 percent in the U.S. and patients stayed longer in hospital following surgery in Canada.

[edit]

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Six of the world’s major polluters, who participated in this week’s Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6 or APPCDC), have launched a multi-million dollar fund to develop clean-energy, but stressed they will be heavily reliant on polluting fossil-fuels for generations to come.

Green groups, labelling the talks a sham, have condemned the climate talks which were held in Sydney, Australia as a “coal and nuclear pact” between the big polluters and fossil-fuel firms. Australian climate change observers have attacked the AP6 outcomes as grossly irresponsible, saying the Federal Government is willing to accept the reality of runaway climate change.

A communique released by the AP6 states: “We recognise that fossil fuels underpin our economies, and will be an enduring reality for our lifetimes and beyond” – the document said. Green groups say the pact has missed a vital opportunity to commit to renewable energy sources. They say the two-day meeting failed to make any serious commitments in combatting global warming.

Combined, the United States, China, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia, account for around half the globe’s greenhouse gases. The six countries set up the summit as an ulterior method of tackling global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol by, they say, focussing on “clean-energy technology.”

Nuclear Power, clean coal technologies, geosequestration and industry-driven environment funds were some of the proposals raised at the summit. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol the six nations have not set any targets to cut greenhouse gases.

Climate change observers have broadly criticised the AP6 as a waste of time. Australian Climate Institute’s Clive Hamilton says the meeting did little to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “I think really this conference is about trying to protect the long-term future of the coal industry,” he said. “If you look at the sort of business people who have a seat at the table at the conference in Sydney, they overwhelmingly represent the polluting industries rather than those that will at some time in the future replace them – the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries.”

CSIRO chief scientist Dr David Brockway says the technology required to reduce greenhouse emissions is not viable for industry.

“It has to be borne in mind that anything we are going to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and intensity from the Australian economy will come at a cost,” he said. “What we are doing at the moment is doing research to try and reduce the size of that additional cost. I would say in a five to 10 year timeframe a number of these technologies will become viable.”

An AP6 communique issued at the end of the conference said reductions in greenhouse gases must be achieved without hindering economic growth – “the partnership aims to mobilise domestic and foreign investment into clean and low-emission technology by fostering the best possible enabling environments,” it states. Some of the world’s big mining and energy firms attended the talks and pledged to improve efficiency.

Green groups, who were left out of the conference, say the talks were aimed at subverting Kyoto – which obligates some 40 developed countries to cut greenhouse emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels during 2008-2012. “Basically, they haven’t agreed to do anything in terms of serious commitment,” said Monash University climate change expert Professor Amanda Lynch. The United States and Australia refuse to sign Kyoto claiming its mandatory greenhouse gas cuts would threaten economic growth.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said, “experience has taught us that seeking arbitrary targets doesn’t result in achieving practical solutions to global climate change.” Mr Howard stressed the importance of maintaining economic growth to alleviate poverty, while cutting greenhouse emissions.

He said the summit had injected “an overdue dose of realism into the debate about climate change. We believe it is possible to tackle issues of greenhouse gas emissions and the challenge of climate change without reducing living standards,” he said. “The world will go on using fossil fuels for many years into the future because it’s more economic to do so. So therefore it’s elementary commonsense that you should try and make the use of fossil fuels more greenhouse gas sensitive, you should try and clean up the use of fossil fuel,” he said.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have dismissed Mr Howard’s comments as misleading and irresponsible. The WWF’s chief executive Greg Bourne said, “in my whole business career, I have never seen a more misleading public statement as that… If the statements made today become a reality, this will lock us in to a four-degree rise in global average temperatures, when two-degrees is considered extremely dangerous,” he said. “There couldn’t be anything more irresponsible than to knowingly embark on a path towards massive increases in emissions and runaway global warming.”

The AP6 nations said in the final communique that the eight public/private partnership taskforces created at the conference, will draw up action plans by the middle of 2006 on issues including renewable energy, power generation, cleaner fossil fuels and coal mining.

Environmentalists said the Sydney pact was doomed to fail because it did not impose targets on its members which comprise nearly half of humanity. The New South Wales Nature Conservation Council said the group’s voluntary approach was a “licence for government and business to do nothing”. “Without any incentives or penalties there is no reason for industry to move away from burning polluting coal and oil,” said the council’s Cate Faehrmann.

The AP6 countries encompass: 49 per cent of world GDP; 48 per cent of the world energy consumption; 48 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions; and 45 per cent of the world’s population.

Many scientists say global warming is melting glaciers, raising sea levels and will cause more intense storms, droughts and floods. Current levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years, research from Antarctic ice cores shows.

Monday, August 21, 2006

A report by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) says rising demand for irrigation to produce food and biofuels will aggravate scarcities of water. “One in three people is enduring one form or another of water scarcity,” states the report compiled by 700 experts.

IWMI warns there has to be a radical transformation in the management of water resources – citing as examples Australia, south-central China, and last year’s devastating drought in India. Report authors claim that the price of water could double or triple over the next two decades. The report, backed by the United Nations and farm research groups, shows that globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and would double again by 2050 – driven mainly by irrigation and demands by agriculture.

Record oil prices and concerns about rapid onset climate change are driving more countries to produce biofuels – from sugarcane, corn or wood – as an alternative to fossil fuel. “If people are growing biofuels and food it will put another new stress,” says David Molden, who led the study at the Sri Lanka-based IWMI. “The big solution is to find ways to grow more food with less water. Basically, more crop per drop,” Molden said. “The number one recommendation… is to look to improve rain-fed systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.”

The report says conquering hunger and coping with an estimated 3 billion more humans by 2050 will result in an 80 percent increase in water use for agriculture. Irrigation absorbs around 74 percent and is likely to surge by 2050.

“We will have to change business as usual in order to deal with growing scarcity,” said Frank Rijsberman, director general of the IWMI, of the report released at the 2006 “World Water Week” conference in Stockholm. Solutions included helping poor countries to grow more food with available fresh water via simple, low-cost measures, a shift from past policies that favoured expensive dams or canals, the report said.

According to Rijsberman, there are two types of shortages: those observed in regions where water is over-exploited, causing a lowering of groundwater levels and rivers to dry up; and those in countries lacking the technical and financial resources to capture water – despite its abundance.

Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of poor water management, he said. “We will not run out of bottled water any time soon, but some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food,” he said.

The report said that a calorie of food took roughly 1 litre of water to produce, with a kilo of grain needing only 500-4,000 litres compared to a kilo of industrially produced meat taking 10,000 litres.

“Without improvements in water productivity the consequences of this will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water prices.” Rijsberman said water scarcity in Africa was caused by a lack of infrastructure to get the water to the people who needed it. “The water is there, the rainfall is there, but the infrastructure isn’t there,” Rijsberman told reporters.

Other recommendations for certain regions include the extension and the improvement of agriculture using rainwater, the introduction of cereal varieties that need less water as well as the development of irrigation systems.

But the priority, Rijsberman stresses, is to change mentalities and often outdated government policies. “Government policies and their approach to water are probably the most urgent that need changing in the short term,” he said.

There is, he says, enough land, water and human capacity to produce enough food for a growing population over the next 50 years, but one of the challenges is to provide enough water for agriculture without damaging the environment. “Agriculture is driving water scarcity and water scarcity is driving environmental degradation and destruction,” he said.

In Australia last week, Rijsberman said he would “not be surprised to see the price of water double or triple over the next two decades.”