The Thirty Third Blog Of Trig - The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition 2012

A friend who has gotten into journalism work recommended me to enter a competition hosted by The Guardian the other day. He himself entered the competition in recent years and was one of the selected few to get published and win an all-expenses paid trip abroad to cover a story. I was interested and jumped to the website to have a look (http://www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition), to read that entrants had to write 650-1000 words on one of 16 specified humanitarian themes or issues in the world. At the top of the page, the sponsorship money from Barclays Bank and GlaxoSmithKline advertised their brands proudly, bringing to my attention a disconcerting but not unfamiliar sense of hypocrisy.

To further emphasise the cause of my attention to these sponsors I will first list the themes available to entrants, which are: Filling the skills gap in African health care systems; Giving birth - the most dangerous thing an African woman can do?; Poverty and HIV: a lethal combination?; The legacy of HIV: the people left behind; How can financial inclusion improve the lives of poor people?; Why does it take images of starving children for the world to act?; Is education the greatest weapon for change in the developing world?; A human right to choose?; The contraception conundrum; After emergencies, how can communities move from short-term disaster relief to long-term recovery?; What steps need to be taken to end extreme poverty and reach economic security?; Advancing women's rights in fragile states; How are people in the global South responding to climate change?; Malnutrition: The Hidden Crisis; The vital role of healthworkers in reducing child mortality; Growing the future: how can farming attract more young people?

Now: Barclays. I have a fairly negative opinion of banks, for their indiscriminate investments into global corporations responsible for everything from oil spills, to high-tech weaponry, dangerous chemicals and by-products, sweat shops employing children at slave wages, planned product obsolescence, fraudulent financial activities and tax dodging, money laundering, funding of mass-murderers, but also for the very fraudulent structure of the banking system itself, the basic reality of the creation of money and its' intrinsic value, all the way through its' life until it hits the peoples' pockets to end up back in another bank, and as a result of all this and more, for their encouraging of the upper extreme of the 'capitalist' way of thought, in direct contradiction with the ideals that inspire charity and humanitarian activism.

The day after I was shown the competition I found an article shared on Facebook entitled, "Barclays accepts shame award for its role in causing hunger across the world".
This article, by the 'World Development Movement', an anti-poverty campaigning organisation, described how two of their campaigners (picture above courtesy of 'World Development Movement') went to Canary Wharf to present an award for Barclays Capital’s 'irresponsible corporate behaviour as the UK’s lead player in food speculation'. The site goes on to say:

The World Development Movement estimates that Barclays made up to £189 million from speculating on food in 2011. The bank is the biggest UK player in commodity markets, and claims to be in the global top three. Massive influxes of speculative money in food markets have been driving sharp price spikes, sending the cost of food soaring beyond the reach of the world’s poorest people."

"Barclays is making millions by speculating on food, but speculation is driving prices up, squeezing household budgets here in the UK and pushing millions into hunger and poverty worldwide. Not a penny of this speculative money is invested in improving agriculture, and it benefits no-one except a few wealthy investment bankers. Food is a basic human right, not just an asset class, and we need tough controls to prevent banks like Barclays pushing its price beyond the reach of millions of people."

I stick 'Barclays crimes' into Google and see what comes up. There's a lot. One of the first results is from 'Burma Campaign UK' . They say the following:

"Barclays Bank has agreed to pay a $298m (£190m) fine for breaking US sanctions against several dictatorships. The bank had been charged with breaking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act between 1995 and 2006. The countries involved were Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan."

"Have Barclays helped arm a dictatorship (Burma) which uses rape, torture and slave labour, and stands accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity?"

So Barclays Bank gives The Guardian a few £Million for sponsorship of their 'International Development Journalism Competition', and what does that do? It creates the false image that Barclays is an ethical, considerate organisation that cares about the people of the world and wants what's best for everyone. This is the opposite of the truth. Bear in mind also that I have only slightly touched on two tiny aspects of Barclays' £1.5Trillion asset empire (note: £1.5 Trillion is what 1 million people on £40k a year earn in just under 40 years; if all of Barclays' 146,100 employees earned £40k a year it would take them 256 years to earn that much, saving every penny - #simplemath).

As a final note, the aforementioned WDM explains how Barclays' "£1.5 billion investment banking bonus pool could pay for school meals for two years for the 23 million primary age children who attend school hungry across Africa." - but Barclays really does care. It says so on their website.

Let's have a brief look at GlaxoSmithKline. As with the banking system, I have a lot of negative impressions of the pharmaceutical industry, or as the theorists call it, 'Big Pharma'.

Typing 'GlaxoSmithKline crimes' into Google quickly yields such distressing headlines as, "GlaxoSmithKline fined over vaccine tests that killed 14 babies."

Just below that an article from 'The New York Times'  states, "The British drug company GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday that it had agreed to pay $3 billion to settle United States government civil and criminal investigations into its sales practices for numerous drugs."

The website 'Natural News' goes on to say that, "after being exposed for illegally marketing drugs, paying off doctors to promote dangerous drugs, and manipulating scientific data to get dangerous drugs approved, GSK has essentially been pardoned by the US government in exchange for $3 billion."

The website 'Corporate Watch' tells us that, "GlaxoSmithKline owns dozens of chemical plants all over the world. The chemical plant they own in Ulverston is marked by it’s carcinogenic emissions and repeated violations of environmental regulations."

The list goes on and on. In 2011 the company raked in approximately £43Billion in revenue.

I tried to convince myself to enter the competition, but I couldn't do it unless it was on my terms, so I decided to scrap the themes and write a brief critical piece on the hypocrisy of an 'International Development Journalism' competition sponsored by such organisations as Barclays and GlaxoSmithKline, and this is that piece. Took me about an hour.

This is the 'Thirty Third Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Eighteenth Blog Of Trig - Reflections on Gaddafi

Today, the television that mounts the ceiling at work playing Sky News all day long stirred me more than usual and made me want to write something. Across the bottom of the screen, the permanent Sky headline, 'BREAKING NEWS', ever present, reporting stories which they showed yesterday, and the day before that, and last week, and last month. 'Michael Jackson's murder trial - BREAKING NEWS!' 'Dale Farm Eviction - BREAKING NEWS!' 'Siege of Sirte - BREAKING NEWS!' Anything that the controllers at Sky decide to repeat all day every day: 'BREAKING NEWS!' For once, maybe they actually had some.

Reports started coming through that Colonel Gaddafi had been captured and injured outside his home town of Sirte, by the men that the elusive entity known as 'NATO' has been arming, training and supporting, dubbed in the usual acronym fashion, the NTC, or 'National Transitional Council', but the men on the television don't look like any kind of council representatives to me. Sky showed extended live footage of soldiers gathered round the camera, pushing for the front spot, occasionally firing their (presumably US/UK taxpayer funded) weapons off into the air, showing peace signs, chanting and singing. In the background was the bruised and battered city of Sirte, with not a single Libyan woman or child in sight.

"VICTORY! VICTORY!" they shout, "VICTORY!" The non-NTC people of Libya are nowhere to be seen. They are irrelevant to Sky News.

"VICTORY!" Sky gratuitously shows the NTC firing anti-aircraft weapons and rockets (presumably US/UK taxpayer funded) off towards unseen targets. The non-NTC people of Libya are nowhere to be seen.

"VICTORY!" Sky shows the victorious NTC soldiers, mostly without uniform, firing their (presumably US/UK taxpayer funded) weapons into the air while they maintain their dance for the cameras.

"VICTORY!" The non-NTC people of Libya are nowhere to be seen. The victims of this war are nowhere to be seen. The hospitals are nowhere to be seen. The corpses are nowhere to be seen. The African prisoners, tortured by NATO propaganda, are nowhere to be seen.

"VICTORY!"

The news is updated to say that Gaddafi is actually dead. The celebrations increase, but they feel animated, not quite right. Sky shows a shaky video of a bloodied face, reminiscent of Gaddafi's, being pulled about in front of the camera, for all the world to see. A dead man, a bloodied corpse, loved by many, hated by many, a man with family, being thrown about on live television, in front of the entire world. I am reminded of 'Karma Police'..."this is what you'll get, when you mess with us."

The NTC soldiers fight for their place in the camera's eye, but the people of Libya are nowhere to be seen. Their homes are behind the soldiers, smashed, bullet-ridden, looted. The houses still stand, but their occupants are gone;the familes are gone. Where? Sky does not care. Its cameras do not deviate from the soldiers, who dance in the eye of Sky like marionettes. Marionettes with guns and live ammunition. Marionettes with rockets and missiles. "VICTORY!"

I did not feel the animated victory portrayed by Sky. I felt sad.

My early impressions of Gaddafi were formed by my memories of stories of the 'Lockerbie bombing' and the occasional related news story. An old girlfriend met him once many years ago after winning a beauty competition, and I remember thinking, 'why would you want to meet that guy?' When the western media began their tirade of propaganda against him I got caught up in it initially, but then I started to see leaks in the news stories, such as the Russians denying that he had bombed his people like BBC-Sky told us. They said they had seen no evidence on satellite footage, which they had been monitoring.

I decided to a bit of research on Libya and Gaddafi, and quickly found out about the hugely successful housing and educational programs that the BBC-Sky don't tell us. I found out about his desert irrigation and farming projects. I found out that Libya HAD-had the highest living standards in Africa thanks to him - no longer perhaps. I found out that Gaddafi had supported revolutionaries in their battle against oppressive US-led regimes across Africa. I also found out that he had been trying to convince the African and Arab nations to refuse US dollars for their oil and only accept gold. Wow...dangerous position to take.

VICTORY! GADDAFI IS DEAD! VICTORY! HIS BLOODIED FACE PLASTERED ACROSS THE NEWS; BREAKING NEWS! VICTORY! BLOOD AND DEATH FOR ALL TO SEE! VICTORY!

...where are the people of Libya? Where are the families? Where are the children? Where are the Gaddafi supporters? Are they all bad? Will we see all their bloodied faces on Sky News? Will we see them being beaten and tortured by the new, heavily armed owners of their country? Will the country with the highest living standards in Africa ever see free education and healthcare again? Or will the women be raped at gunpoint by the armed mercenaries our government armed and financed in this war, while we plunder the natural resources and keep the bullet-supply coming.

VICTORY! BLOOD AND DEATH AND VICTORY!

This is 'The Eighteenth Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Sixteenth Blog Of Trig - Dragons

I have a business idea I'm thinking of taking to the 'Dragon's Den'. I'm going to start up a business which looks after people's money. Me and my colleagues are going to pay ourselves the highest wages in the world, give ourselves enormous bonuses, and invest this money in shares of big companies whose bosses will also pay themselves the highest wages in the world.

When the money dries up I will borrow more from those who can afford to lend it to me and pretend that I am actually selling something called a 'bond', which is a pretty looking IOU note. I will sell lots of these IOU notes to cover my wages and bonuses and the 'losses' I make when the investments don't cover all the outgoings. I will buy and sell these 'bonds of debt' with other people in my business and charge extra for the privilege. I will pay people massive wages to hide these debts until they are like an elephant hiding in a single bed.

When my debt (your debt) gets to the point of bankruptcy I will speak to the 'government' and tell them that if they don't give me billions of pounds, RIGHT NOW, that the elderly won't be able to withdraw their pensions, businesses won't be able to pay their employees, and the entire country will collapse into chaos. Of course my money isn't held in my bank. It's in offshore tax-free havens safe from the disaster in my business, so my money (your money) is fine.

The government doesn't want to just print up money because they don't like inflation, which is the value of money going down, so they borrow it. Like me, they pretend that they are selling something, a 'bond'; an IOU note. They sell these bonds with minimum investment amounts, like £50,000, £100,000, £500,000, so I'm afraid this counts you out. But me and my wealthy friends can afford that with a month's wages. The government takes all this money that me and my friends lend them and then gives it back to me so I can continue paying myself enormous wages and bonuses, and give your grandparents the meagre pension they worked their entire life for.

Now the government owes a shitload of money, and they can only just about afford the interest on the debts they have, so they sell off your public services to private investors (me) to help them cover it all.

Now I own the services you rely on to live, I own the bank that holds all your money, I own the bonds that your government 'sold' me so that they could bail me out. I have multi-million pound mansions, private jets and yachts, pilots and captains, bodyguards and butlers, chauffeurs and champagne and cocaine, and absolutely no blame.

I now take a percentage profit from every single service you rely on, the services your parents and grandparents and ancestors worked and fought for, and for all this, you are indebted to me.

Your country is mine and your debt is to me and you will all continue to work for me until this debt is paid off, which will never happen.

So, what do you think of my business idea?

This is 'The Sixteenth Blog Of Trig', signing off.

The Eleventh Blog Of Trig - Footsteps on the Moon

I walk out of class on Wednesday the 20^th July, after what I consider to be the best lesson I have taught so far, and find that while I have been teaching, the people of Barcelona have converged in the streets to protest the ‘financial crisis’; the greatest theft in the history of mankind. I can't go home as I intended. I have to join the procession. 

I march through the streets looking around me with a smile. After a while I try to take some photos but my phone is dead, so I sit down for a coffee and plug it into my laptop. This is where I write from now. I don’t know how many people are marching past me now as I write this, but the street has been flowing full of people since well before I sat down. As with the London protests, I can not see the beginning or the end of the procession of people. I can only see the flow, which is steady and unceasing, reminding me of the rivers that washed through the streets during the heavy rainfall this week.

The noise of whistles fills the air like the screech of a football stadium, but this is different. These whistles have purpose. They are blown to the rhythm of the chanting that accompanies them. They synchronise with the drums that beat out the indignation of the Spanish people, of Earth’s people, at having their lives spat on with such disregard by those with power. A banner waves a giant hand with it’s middle finger clearly raised. The Spanish and Catalan people chant words which I recognise from Youtube videos: they sing, “They don’t, they don’t, they don’t rep-re-sent us! They don’t, they don’t, they don’t rep-re-sent us!” They speak of the politicians, and they are right, they don’t.

After twenty minutes or so I am half way through my small 4 Euro(!) coffee, and a largely built man in plain clothes with an earpiece hovers around me. It is obvious he is undercover police, wondering what I am doing on my laptop in the middle of this rabble of smiling 'terrorists', typing away so frantically. He isn’t very inconspicuous. The crowds start to thin out and I consider packing up and moving off after them, but then a new wave floods through the area and the chanting is renewed. Then, slowly, the streets return to their usual shopper + tourist bustle. Behind the protesters heavily armoured police vans crawl slowly and menacingly. Their drivers have balaclavas on…time for me to leave my coffee and catch up with the people.

By the time I catch up with the crowds they have been stopped outside Estacio De Franca (where I type now) by rows of heavily armoured, handgun-armed police. For a hundred metres in front of the barricade the protesters all sit down in the middle of the street. A car up front with a megaphone shouts messages to the crowd and they cheer and whistle in approval. I move up to the front and check out the riot police. A pretty girl walks up their lines smiling at them and offering her lollipop. They shake their heads without a word. I get the feeling many of them would love to take her up on her offer, and would jump at the chance in any other circumstances. What a sad world. I am reminded of the soldiers in world war 1 ceasing fire to play football and exchange presents on Christmas day, before going back to their lines to kill each other.

Fuck the police. I want the police to chant that with us, “FUCK THE POLICE”, and join the people, as people they themselves are.

I have been desperately trying to charge my phone off of my laptop at every safe opportunity I get to sit down, plug it in and type, but it is not easy. I move into the station and see seats. I am very aware of how I appear. There are security men walking round the station with sniffer dogs, eyeing me suspiciously as I sit down, get my laptop out, plug it into my mobile phone, and start typing frantically. I wonder if they are thinking, “is this some kind of hacker here to tap into our station and cause havoc? Is he setting bombs to go off? What is he doing?” I get my notes out, stick my pen in my mouth and get on with what I am doing. When I think my phone is charged enough to take some photos I’ll move back to my notepad and go back out, but for now this is perfect. I can still hear the crowds outside. I can still hear the lady with the megaphone talking in Spanish about how we have all been ripped off. I wish I could speak Spanish so I could tell them my angle on it all; ‘the biggest ‘Ponzi scheme’ in the world’; 'the biggest theft in the history of the world'; 'the biggest load of bullshit believed by the biggest number of people in the world, ever'. The protests are here to show people where they might find truth.

I check the clock and it is 21.34. Suddenly the crowd outside erupts into applause and cheering. I feel I am missing out, but I must wait a little longer so I have enough battery to take some photos. I feel a little bit uncomfortable, knowing that I have lots of work to do, but there is always time. It’s amazing what little sleep you can survive on when you need to, and I have plenty of experience of that, more than I can remember. I check my phone but it still doesn’t look very charged. Time to give it a try. I’ll be back soon.

My mobile works long enough to get some video footage of the riot police and some shots of the protesters, and then it's time for me to go home, cook dinner, maybe get some work done, and then to bed for some much needed sleep. As I walk back along the route that I took with the protesters earlier, I see that the signs they taped to the buildings on their way down are already gone. The banks seemed to have had men at the ready with soap and water to remove the graffiti daubed on their walls and windows. The physical evidence of the protest has been erased in the blink of an eye, but the footprints find no disturbance in my memory, or the memory of those who witnessed it, participated in it. Soap and water cannot remove this. These footprints remain, like a trail through a dark forest, reminding us that others have come this way before, smiling and fearless, passing through unscathed to look back and find the path behind them a little bit more defined, a little more pronounced, and as more and more people tread the path, encouraged by those brave feet that have cleared the way, the wider it becomes. As it widens it accommodates and encourages more travellers. They look down the path, venture down it, reassured by the parties of brave smiling people returning from hacking their way through the forest of the unknown, uncovering the path of truth as they go.


This is "The Eleventh Blog Of Trig", signing off.


(P.S. My phone and laptop got stolen a few days later, with all the pictures and footage of the event...)