But how does it function?

How does it affect us?

Who does it serve?

Can it support radical social change towards free and equal societies living in harmony with nature?

Are humans fated to wind up as pets for hyper-intelligent robot hamsters?

These are -mainly- important questions. However, the dominant view is that technology is apolitical and inevitable, that it represents human progress, making our lives easier, more fulfilling, or just ‘better’. Let’s dig a little deeper.

We are at a unique moment in human history – an ecological precipice, perhaps a social tipping point. Whatever path we take, unravelling technology and the dilemmas it presents will give us a clearer view of the horizon ahead of us.

This book is a brief introduction to the politics and philosophy of technology – a simple guide to how interacts with society and the world around us. We hope you find it useful.

“Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections — and it matters which ones get made and unmade.” Donna J. Haraway

Click here to download a copy for free

Click here to read it online

Click here to buy a hard copy

The post Out Now: TECH, our new book on technology appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Corporate Watch will soon publish a new book: ‘TECH: A Guide to the Politics and Philosophy of Technology’, continuing our long standing focus on technology.

For as long as Corporate Watch has been around we have worked on technology related issues. Back in the ’90s we supported the anti-Genetic Modification movement which had huge successes in opposing corporate controlled genetically modified organisms (GMOs) being forced on an uninformed and unwilling public.

Since then we have continued to report on, and investigate, corporate controlled technologies and their social and environmental impacts. To give just a few examples:

In 2007, we produced investigations into nanotechnologies and nuclear energy.

We published a groundbreaking report in 2008, ‘Technofixes: a critical guide to climate change technologies‘, assessing various proposed technological ‘solutions’ to climate change, as well as critiquing the ‘technofix’ mentality.

In 2013, we documented how Israeli drone technologies used in on attacks on Gaza had affected the people that live there.

We compiled a critical summary of fracking and the technologies used to extract other unconventional fossil fuel such as tar sands in 2014.

In all of this work a common theme of destructive corporate controlled technology rears its ugly head.

But looking a little deeper, what is behind the dominant attitudes towards technology and the role it plays in society? How does it reflect understandings of, and relationships with, the natural world? How does all of this relate to capitalism and the state?

Our soon to be published book ‘TECH’ tackles these questions head on, tying together the technological threads that run across the various campaigns and struggles we have supported over our history. Avoiding the academic style common to writing on the subject, it presents an accessible summary of critical thinking on technology. It looks at the relationships between technology, nature and society, and considers how technological relationships might be shaped in future.

We are at a unique moment in human history – an ecological precipice, perhaps a social tipping point. Whatever path we take, unravelling technology and the dilemmas it presents will give us a clearer view of the horizon ahead of us.

To find out when ‘TECH’ is available and keep informed of what Corporate Watch is working on, click here to sign up to our newsletter.

To receive a copy of the book as soon as it is published, click here to become a ‘Friend of Corporate Watch’ by making a regular donation.

The post Coming Soon: Corporate Watch Guide to Technology appeared first on Corporate Watch.

First, a few words on how Corona has affected Ratlcliffe and his riches. According to the Sunday Times rich list, Ratcliffe was richest person in UK in 2018. He’s now lost this position to James Dyson who managed to increase his already vast fortune by £3.6bn in a year. Ratcliffe dropped to 5th richest after his net worth reduced by £6bn (boo hoo).

As the gravity of the Corona crisis became apparent, perhaps anticipating outrage over societal inequality and greater scrutiny of their enormous wealth, many billionaires are keen to show they are doing their part. Ratcliffe is no exception, using his chemical giant Ineos to set up several hand sanitiser factories in Europe and the US. However, the recent slump in oil prices has hit his part-owned refinery venture, Petroineos, particularly hard.

Now Ratcliffe, notorious for his tax evasion (see below), is seeking an emergency loan of hundreds of millions to rescue it. He has also been criticised for exploiting the government’s furlough scheme for staff at his co-owned The Pig hotel chain. The world’s wealthiest will be watching closely as Corona’s impact on markets, economies and capitalism unfolds. Perhaps increasingly uncomfortably as the call for ‘no more billionaires’ resounds louder than ever.

Jim Ratcifliffe: billionaire boss of INEOS

Jim Ratcliffe (CC: Science History Institute: Wikipedia Commons)

Read a typical biography of Jim Ratcliffe and you will come across the rags to riches story of how a council estate boy from Manchester worked hard and showed a bit of savvy to become the wealthiest man in Britain. It’s the classic tale of capitalist meritocracy: if we all just worked hard enough we too could be billionaires.

In reality, his enormous wealth has been built on a combination of aggressive lobbying, high risk investments, highly polluting industries, tax dodging and union-busting.

INEOS, the chemicals company Ratcliffe owns and controls, has been criticised for causing air and water pollution, dangerous leaks, fires and explosions, as well as creating vast amounts of plastic waste and carbon emissions. It is notorious for its aggressive stance against unions and workers rights and for lobbying against environmental regulations.

It has been leading the charge to open the UK to fracking, though that has currently been stalled by nation-wide campaigns and determined local opposition.

Ratcliffe and INEOS

Ratcliffe is the founder, chairman and majority shareholder of the chemicals giant INEOS, holding 60% of the company’s shares. The Sunday Times newspaper reckons Ratcliffe is the third richest person in the UK, worth £18bn. The vast majority of that is based on the estimated value of his INEOS shares (the paper added another £150 million on top of the INEOS shares for “two superyachts, hotels, and the Swiss football club Lausanne-Sport” and also said he is “building a £6m beach house on the Solent in the New Forest national park”) .

Ratcliffe’s story is also the story of INEOS. He initially worked at Esso before going to the London Business School. He then moved into venture capital, co-founding a company called Inspec to buy up BP’s chemicals division in 1992, renaming the business INEOS six years later.

INEOS grew by borrowing money to buy large chemical and energy companies’ unwanted operations. Ratcliffe then forced through extreme cost cutting measures to improve their financial performance. Between 1998 and 2008, INEOS acquired 22 companies, most notably buying Innovene for $9 billion in 2005. A BP subsidiary, Innovene owned the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland.

In 2014 INEOS announced a £640m investment in shale gas exploration in the UK, intending to use gas extracted through fracking as a raw material for it’s chemicals plants. In 2018 Ineos released plans to create six new oil and gas business units, following its acquisition of Dong Energy’s oil and gas business for $1.05bn and North Sea interests such as BP’s Forties pipeline. Although several high profile investors had pulled out of Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in June 2019 INEOS announced a £1.6 billion investment in a petrochemical complex in the Kingdom

Despite some recent forays into other areas, the overwhelming majority of INEOS’ operations are based on refining and processing chemical products from oil and gas and supplying them to a wide range of markets including fuels, pharmaceuticals, foods, construction and agriculture. The company now employees 21,000 people at 113 sites across the globe.

Ratcliffe controls INEOS through a Luxembourg-registered holding company called INEOS Group Holding SA. The other 40% of INEOS shares are owned, in equal measure, by his long-time lieutenants John Reece and Andrew Currie.

INEOS made a profit of EURO 1.2 billion in 2018, after bringing in revenues of EURO 16.1 billion. The majority – EURO 9 billion – of INEOS’ revenue came from Europe, with another EURO 5 billion from the Americas.

The company paid out EURO 194 million in dividends to Ratcliffe, Reece and Currie in 2018. This is less than previous years, but still a huge amount.

Ratcliffe was knighted in the 2018 Queen’s birthday honours list. Later the same year it was revealed that he was relocating to Monaco for tax purposes (see below). In 2019, to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of the company, Ratcliffe hired someone to design an INEOS coat of arms. Apparently proud of his Machiavellian approach, Ratcliffe decided the Latin motto VENI EMI VICI, ‘I came, I bought, I conquered’, was appropriate.

Environmental pollution and safety

INEOS has an alarming history of serious environmental and safety incidents. Its operations around the world have breached major environmental regulations on numerous occasions and are a huge source carbon emissions, pumping out millions of tonnes of CO2 every year. INEOS plants also emit thousands of tonnes of Nitrogen and Sulphur oxides each year and are a source of other pollutants such as ammonia, benzene and hydrogen cyanide.

Accidents at INEOS plants have included serious explosions, fires and leaks that have hospitalised workers on numerous occasions. Just one INEOS site in Cologne has had a series of serious incidents, including ammonia leaks, explosions and a fire that sent flames and 130 feet into the sky, and took nearly 1,200 fire-fighters to battle, the largest fire fighting operation since the Second World War.

INEOS has had a host environmental and safety issues in the US as well, where it paid nearly £3 million in environmental and workplace penalties and fines from 2003 to 2016. In one incident in 2015 at a plant in Port Lavaca, Texas, a hydrogen cyanide leak resulted in a worker dying [for more information on INEOS’ environmental and safety record see ‘Ineos Chequered Environmental Track Record in Europe’]

Plastic pellet pollution is a regular problem near INEOS facilities, and the company has admitted in the past that its plant was the probable source of local plastic pollution.

As one of the largest plastic producers in Europe, INEOS bears responsibility for an enormous amount of plastic waste. This, combined with it’s expansion into fracking in the UK, led to many accusing the company of greenwash when it bought a famous UK cycling team from Sky. This was seen as especially egregious given the team’s recent plastic waste reduction campaign #passOnPlastic.

INEOS is notable absent from the Plastic Waste Alliance instead choosing to back Operation Clean Sweep, a programme created by plastics industry trade association, PLASTICS over 27 years ago.

Union-busting

Ratcliffe’s earned his union-busting reputation when INEOS became mired in an industrial dispute at Grangemouth in 2008. Workers held a two-day strike in response to INEOS’ plan to change the pension contribution scheme for new employees, which would mean a 6% pay cut.

The strike caused serious disruption to the UK’s oil infrastructure and INEOS was forced to cave in, scrapping the pension changes. The company had been hit hard by the financial crisis in 2008. It was already in serious debt from the Innovene deal and came close to being taken over by the banks it owed money to.

Grangemouth Refinery

Ratcliffe, renowned for his stubbornness and aggressive approach to negotiations, was determined that would not happen again.

Further disputes took place in 2013. INEOS said the refinery was making a loss and proposed a rescue plan involving worsened terms of employment for workers, particularly around pensions. The union, Unite, rejected the move and the dispute was escalated by the suspension of a union official, on controversial charges. However, this time, Ratcliffe was ready.

INEOS had been stockpiling oil reserves since March that year. The union had threatened strikes in response to the official’s suspension, but then called off plans to close the plant despite INEOS walking out of negotiations. Ratcliffe responded by locking the workers out the next day and shutting down the plant himself, threatening to close half of it permanently. Some workers were bought off and the union was eventually forced into accepting significantly-reduced pension plans plus a three year pay freeze.

Many see the Grangemouth disputes as an example of the dominance of neoliberalism, where a billionaire held hundreds of livelihoods to ransom in order undermine organised labour and push through cost cutting measures.

Fracking the UK

INEOS has been at the centre of attempts in the UK to push fracking, a highly controversial and environmentally damaging hydrocarbon extraction process. The company is the majority holder of fracking licences in the country, covering an area of one millions acres, and has clashed with local campaigners and environmental groups on numerous occasions.

The revolving door between industry and government is obviously apparent when it comes to INEOS and fracking. This is illustrated by the case of Patrick Erwin, a former top civil servant in the department of energy and climate change (DECC) and the department for communities and local government (DCLG). In 2013 Erwin was seconded to INEOS and helped the company develop its fracking plans and then secure a huge number of fracking licences across the country. Despite Freedom of Information requests DECC had refused to reveal who the civil servant seconded to INEOS was. It was only discovered when Erwin put it on his linkedin profile after the secondment had ended.

INEOS has been particularly litigious when pushing fracking. In 2017 the company took action against the National Trust at the High Court after the charity’s refusal to allow seismic surveys on its land due to environmental concerns. INEOS’ lawyers forced the Trust’s lawyers to drop their objections.

The company also attempted to overturn the Scottish ban on fracking using a judicial review, claiming compensation for a breach of it’s ‘human rights’. The Court of Session, Scotland’s highest court, ruled against the case by accepting that the government had a ‘preferred policy position’ against fracking rather than a legal ban.

Ineos injunction protest (credit: drillordrop.com)

A widespread anti-fracking campaign in the UK saw several INEOS sites being targeted by protesters, often using tactics intended to hinder operations. In 2017 the high court granted INEOS a sweeping injunction against protesters. The injunction, described by critics as “draconian and anti-democratic”, meant that anyone obstructing the firm’s fracking activities would face prison, a fine, or seizure of their assets. Two aspects of the injunction were later overturned by three Appeal Court judges following a challenge by campaigners. In response to the ruling, Ratcliffe’s deputy and INEOS chief of operations Tom Pickering said: “We respect peaceful protest, but we must stand up to the militants who game the legal system with intimidation and mob rule. We stand for jobs and opportunity. They stand for anarchy in the UK.”

INEOS has also called for the government to relax rules on earthquakes caused by fracking operations, which it described as ‘unworkable’. Ratcliffe called the government’s attitude on the issue “pathetic”, and said the policies risked an “energy crisis” and “irreparable damage” to the economy.

Ratcliffe claims he wants his company to frack to provide cheap energy. But as well as profiting from selling the gas it fracks, INEOS will also use the energy as a feedstock for its chemical operations. INEOS currently imports shale gas from the US using it’s 8 custom built ‘dragon ships’. Producing shale gas in the UK would greatly reduce their costs.

Believer in Britain?

Jim Ratcliffe has been an outspoken supporter of Brexit, saying “We are an island, we are an independent people. We are a very creative nation, hard-working. We can thrive as an independent nation, we don’t need people in Europe telling us how to manage our country. I have no problem with the common market but I don’t think the United States of Europe is a viable concept.”

Many have suspicions that Ratcliffe’s enthusiasm for Brexit is more about trying to avoid EU environmental regulations than patriotism. Documents were obtained showing that shortly before the EU referendum, INEOS lobbied, as part of the Chemistry Growth Partnership, to be exempt from climate change levy (an environmental tax) and to abolish the UK carbon floor price in order to reduce energy costs to the chemicals sector.

Later, in October 2018, INEOS wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy threatening to close its manufacturing plant in Middlesbrough unless it could avoid EU pollution rules.

Earlier this year, Ratcliffe wrote an open letter to the European Commission president attacking expensive EU regulations and “stupid” green taxes, saying that Europe had the “world’s most expensive energy and labour laws that are uninviting for employers”.

INEOS announced its decision to invest £3 billion in a petrochemical plant in Belgium just hours before MPS in the UK voted to reject the Brexit deal.

Ratcliffe’s lobbying efforts have not been confined to the EU. In 2017 INEOS attempted to block the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency’s new restrictions on air and noise pollution at Grangemouth. The proposed new restrictions followed years of complaints, investigations and breaches, including a series of safety lapses that led to oil and gas leaks. Two incidents involving gas leaks led to road closures and school children being kept indoors to avoid exposure.

And for all his professed love for Britain, Ratcliffe isn’t too keen on paying taxes on the island.

Following the UK government’s refusal to reduce INEOS’ tax burden in 2010, Ratcliffe moved the head office to Rolle, Switzerland. This may have saved the company £100m a year in tax payments.

Ratcliffe himself moved back to the UK for tax purposes in 2016, but has attracted further controversy over plans to create a new tax structure and move up to £10 billion to Monacco, a move which has been estimated could deprive the UK Treasury of up to £4 billion in tax.

In summary, Ratcliffe and INEOS are symbols of the neoliberal order: Ratcliffe’s vast wealth, built on hyper-capitalism and extreme cost cutting, being the equivalent of 623,000 years of the minimum wage.

The post Jim Ratcliffe: billionaire boss of INEOS appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Capitalism helped create this crisis: see our article here on a few of the ways this economic system makes and spreads the healthcare crisis and its wider impacts. And as with every crisis, capitalism looks for ways to cash in. Companies like Amazon put workers at risk to pump out deliveries, hedge funds make millions short-selling the stock markets, everyone from banks to landlords push for government handouts even as they lay off staff. Governments take advantage of the panic to ramp up authoritarian powers.

People are organising against this, in their communities and workplaces. Responding to increased isolation, mutual aid groups have sprung up across the UK and the world (see https://covidmutualaid.org/). Fear can turn into anger, not against each other, but against the system that has brought us here. And radical change can happen.

To help us stay informed and think through these important issues, we are using this page to compile some of the most useful and interesting articles, news and resources on coronavirus and capitalism that we come across. If you see some yourselves, tweet @corpwatchuk with the #CoronaCapitalism hashtag or email us at contact[AT]corporatewatch.org. Sign up to our news update emails to receive info straight into your inbox.

In solidarity,
the Corporate Watch crew

Our own articles on Corona Capitalism

6 ways capitalism spreads the corona crisis: industrial agriculture, Big Pharma, healthcare profiteering, work conditions, panic media, lockdown inequality and repression — and the profit system that drives it all.

Riots, resistance and releases — the corona virus and the Prison Industrial Complex: an overview of prison struggles worldwide in the time of corona

Companies cashing in on the crisis — Part 1: featuring Big Pharma; Crispin Odey; Amazon; Deliveroo; Balfour Beatty; Britannia Hotels; Marshall Wace; Richard Branson

Companies cashing in on the crisis — Part 2: featuring airline bailouts, Travelodge, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Wren Kitchens

Other recommended Corona related compilations

Netpol and the Undercover Research Group have a regularly updated blog on the policing of Britain’s #COVIDー19 state of emergency #PolicingTheCoronaState: https://policing-the-corona-state.blog/

The Anarchist Library has a section devoted to documenting and archiving various anarchist and libertarian literature written about the COVID-19 pandemic: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/covid-19

Writing from the web

Obviously the situation with Covid-19 is developing pretty rapidly, but we’ve tried to make sure that the content we’ve chosen will still be worth reading well beyond it’s publication date and some of the older pieces have some great analysis.

• 8 May – On the emergence of a coherent technology based Pandemic Shock Doctrine, with big tech companies and governments conspiring to create a high-tech surveillance future “Humans are biohazards, machines are not.” https://theintercept.com/2020/05/08/andrew-cuomo-eric-schmidt-coronavirus-tech-shock-doctrine/
• 2 June – A global solidarity statement on the four main ways in which mining multinationals are exploiting the pandemic to maximise profits at the expense of people and planet: https://miningwatch.ca/sites/default/files/global_solidarity_statement_on_mining_pandemic_profiteers.pdf
• 12 May – On transformative justice and gender based violence in the context of covid-19: https://freedomnews.org.uk/lessons-from-covid-19-how-transformative-justice-and-mutual-aid-can-help-to-address-harm-in-communities
• 21 May – Some reflections from a group in New Orleans on the importance of interrogating power relations, personal and structural, as part of emancipatory mutual aid: https://roarmag.org/essays/emancipatory-mutual-aid-from-education-to-liberation/
• Spring 2020 – On the specific character of the recent uprisings in the Arab region, their origins in neoliberalism and the Arab Spring and possible effects of Covid-19 on the movements and the regimes they oppose: https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/from-one-arab-spring-to-another
• 18 May – On the use of video calls instead of prison visits during the pandemic in the UK and the implications this has for the future: https://freedomnews.org.uk/virtual-panopticon-prison-video-calls-and-family-support-during-the-pandemic-and-beyond/
• 18 May – On Corona, Degrowth, the need for economic systems resilient to crisis, and slowing production by design not disaster: https://theecologist.org/2020/may/18/case-degrowth-time-pandemic
• 20 April – Some feminist degrowth reflections on COVID-19 and the politics of social reproduction, and a call for “just, sustainable and convivial societies brought about by voluntary change” https://www.degrowth.info/en/2020/04/feminist-degrowth-collaborative-fada-reflections-on-the-covid-19-pandemic-and-the-politics-of-social-reproduction/ longer version here: https://www.degrowth.info/en/feminisms-and-degrowth-alliance-fada/collective-research-notebook/
• 22 May – On the rent strikes and attitude of class war that spread through New York during the 1918 influenza pandemic: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/new-york-rent-strikes-during-the-1918-spanish-influenza/
• 5 April – Some note from Mexico on the current situation and the implications for capitalism. “The increasingly acute contradictions of this mode of production .. will not simply give way to the mechanical or messianic end of capitalism. Because in order to see the end of capitalism, it is essential that there will be a social, antagonistic and revolutionary force ..”: https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/04/05/covid19-will-the-capitalist-system-collapse-some-notes-from-mexico-on-current-events/
• 6 May – Uneven Earth produce a regular series of recommended readings focusing on ” environmental justice, radical municipalism, new politics, political theory, and resources for action and education”. March and April’s readings are a compilation of pieces relating to Corona Virus: http://unevenearth.org/2020/05/march-april-readings/
• 4 April – An examination of the relative capacities of nation-states and decentralised societies in responding to crises such as covid-19  “The State is said by some to be a ‘necessary evil’; it must be made unnecessary.”   https://c4ss.org/content/52761
• 20 April – On the vampric nature of capitalism, the expansion of market discipline and authoritarian control during the crisis: https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/corona-capitalism-and-environmental-crisis/
• 11 May – A post-corona degrowth manifesto from the Netherlands that has gained widespread support, It proposes an end to growth economics, redistribution of wealth, transformation of agriculture, consumption and travel and cancellation of debt:  https://www.degrowth.info/en/2020/05/planning-for-post-corona/
• 15 April – DIY Culture #6, a COVID19 special: “a 34 page online special that has contributions from anarchist transport workers, nurses, care workers, writers, creatives, thinkers and activists. The general thrust, is that we cannot return to ‘normal’ following this pandemic, but that we should have some insurrectionary fun along the way as we eradicate the virus that is capitalism”: https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/04/15/diy-culture-6-covid19-special/

• 10 April – From Crimethink on the longer term implications of the pandemic and government responses to it for radical social change. Briefly considers how this plays out in the terrains of: economy, health, housing, social isolation, ecology and totalitarianism. It then presents three alternative programmes to pursue: the adherents of death, the apostles of survival, and the partisans of life: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-and-after-the-virus-the-perils-ahead
• 11 April – Wouldn’t normally link to a Bloomberg article, but these are strange times and this opinion piece outlines the drastically uneven impact of Corona and how it could result in huge social upheaval: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-11/coronavirus-this-pandemic-will-lead-to-social-revolutions
• 17 March – Economic analysis on how the crisis is revealing the fragility of neoliberalism and the reckoning now faced by western capitalist societies: https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-unexpected-reckoning-coronavirus-and-capitalism
• 9 April – On solidarity and organising in times of lockdown and how the crisis is shifting the political landscape in terms of class consciousness, the commons and redistribution https://roarmag.org/essays/organizing-under-lockdown-online-activism-local-solidarity/
• 1 April – On the origins of the virus in the circuits of capitals and the appropriation of nature driven by rich countries, the inability of capitalist societies to effectively combat and prevent contagions and the socialisation of resources and ecological harmonisation required to do so. “Big picture, we stop treating nature and community, so full of all we need to survive, as just another competitor to be run off by the market”: https://monthlyreview.org/2020/04/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/
• 17 April – Some reflections on the social responses to contagion, the similarities to past plagues, and the possibilities opened up by the ruptures to ‘everyday’ life the corona crisis has created: https://communemag.com/letter-on-a-plague-year/
• February – Some in depth analysis looking not just at how capitalism caused the crisis but how the social-economic spheres interface with the biological, and what kind of deeper lessons might be drawn from the entire experience: “..lessons for an era when the destruction wrought by unending accumulation has extended both upward into the global climatic system and downward into the microbiological substrata of life on Earth”  (note this was written in February and that while the analysis is certainly interesting, we at Corporate Watch are certainly not epidemiologists!) : http://chuangcn.org/2020/02/social-contagion/
• 19 March – On the failure of current economic and political systems, impacts on supply chains, and how the slow down due to corona is not ‘degrowth’ but demonstrates its possibility: https://www.degrowth.info/en/2020/03/a-degrowth-perspective-on-the-coronavirus-crisis/
• 12 March – On the links between captial-led agriculture and corona, and how this is all exacerbated due by neoliberalsim etc: http://unevenearth.org/2020/03/where-did-coronavirus-come-from-and-where-will-it-take-us-an-interview-with-rob-wallace-author-of-big-farms-make-big-flu/?preview=true&_thumbnail_id=4111
• 18 March – On the need to break laws collectively and deliberately to survive and escape: “It is not normalcy we seek, but new worlds.” https://itsgoingdown.org/to-survive-this-crisis-and-the-one-we-left-we-must-break-laws/
• 22 March – Thoughts from New York on learning from previous mutual aid efforts, and how networks can prepare for the coming challenges. How can we organise in conditions of social distancing, and how can we stop the state using isolation measures as tools for political de-mobilisation? : https://roarmag.org/essays/from-mutual-aid-to-dual-power-in-the-state-of-emergency/
• 20 March –  Some more from an ER doctor from the same anti-capitalist space in New York: https://itsgoingdown.org/igdcast-doctor-corona/
• 24 March – On the framing of responsibility during the crisis in the UK https://www.weareplanc.org/blog/responsibilising-corona/
• 17 March – On decentralised social support networks in China: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/social-support-networks-springing-coronavirus-stricken-china/
• 27 March – Some thoughts on systemic change in times of crises:  https://code-rood.org/en/2020/03/27/shaking-the-system/
• 12 March – From Milan on distinguishing between two different disasters, the disaster of the virus itself and the disaster wrought by the ways that the existing order responds and does not respond to the pandemic: https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/03/12/against-the-coronavirus-and-the-opportunism-of-the-state-anarchists-in-italy-report-on-the-spread-of-the-virus-and-the-quarantine/
• 26 March – On the abuse of emergency powers by the Duterte regime in the Philippines https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/03/26/the-philippines-genuine-service-to-the-people-needs-no-emergency-powers/
• 24 March – On the US response to corona virus prioritising capitalists and companies profits ahead of the lives of workers providing vital services https://www.leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-a-death-cult-notdying4wallstreet

The post #CoronaCapitalism appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Doom, despair, denial, depression, IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!

These are common reactions when people learn about the reality of climate change.

Similarly, when people think about capitalism it can seem as though nothing can be done to change it, that it’s too big, too strong, that maybe that’s just the way the world is.

But things change. Worlds end… New ones begin.

Part of what prevents action on these big issues is the way people talk, think and feel about them. Using words and pictures, Worlds End, a new comic published by Corporate Watch, aims to help people understand climate change and capitalism and encourage a different approach, one that builds power to fight them.

The comic tackles some of the most difficult issues relating to the global ecological crises we are faced with. It aims to be understandable and appealing to those new to the politics of climate change, but still fresh and useful to people that have spent a lifetime campaigning on the environment.

Click here to buy a copy.

Click here to download it for free.

Click here to read it online.

Click here to share on Facebook.

A lot of time, thought and effort has gone into the comic and we really want to get it out to as many people as possible. Please send it to any relevant email lists, tell your friends, share it on social media etc.

Get in touch for interviews, articles and workshops based on the comic. We welcome any feedback you might have. Let us know if you would like to write a review and we’ll send you a copy in the post.

Click here to get in touch.

Thanks, hope you enjoy it!

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The post It’s here: Worlds End! appeared first on Corporate Watch.

The idea of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has a lot of support, particularly from those in the fossil fuel industry and governments seeking a quick fix for decarbonising their economies. The Paris Agreement, the latest attempt to tackle climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, relies on it heavily. However, there are problems. CCS has proven extremely difficult to implement at any scale. And more fundamentally, the promise of using a technological solution – a ‘technofix’ – to solve the environment’s problems, serves to postpone the radical societal and economic changes necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet like a zombie, the idea of CCS refuses to die.

CCS in the UK

Carbon Capture and Storage is the process of capturing carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations, and other industrial processes, and burying it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. It is proposed as a technological solution to climate change, allowing the continued use of fossil fuels while preventing the waste emissions from warming the planet. CCS is also, less commonly, used to describe technologies which remove (or ‘scrub’) carbon dioxide directly from ambient air.

There have been several attempts to establish CCS projects in the UK. The latest involves Drax power station in Yorkshire, which currently burns coal and biomass (in the form of wood pellets), and is planning to replace coal with gas.

The previous CCS competition for a £1 billion contract was scrapped in 2015 after the Treasury pulled its pledged funding, with the then-chancellor George Osborne saying it was too costly. It was the second attempt by government to launch CCS in UK. A first competition to kick-start CCS was cancelled in 2011 when Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and National Grid, withdrew from the project at Longanet power station in Scotland, saying £1billion wasn’t sufficient subsidy to make it viable. The government had already spent £68m on the scheme.

At the time it was cancelled, the second competition had two preferred bidders: the White Rose consortium in North Yorkshire, which planned to build a new coal plant with the technology (see our previous article), and Shell’s scheme in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, to fit CCS to an existing gas plant operated by SSE. Estimated costs to consumers rocketed to £8.9bn and, after £100 million of government spending, the project was deemed to no longer be cost effective.

Despite no existing demonstrations of the technology actually working at scale, the government and industry remain hopeful that a new CCS project could be viable. So the zombie lives on, and in October last year the government announced its approach to newly-named carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) in the Clean Growth Strategy. The name itself should set off alarm bells, another example of the continuing inability of governments to accept the fundamental contradiction between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

As part of the strategy, in May 2018 it was revealed that Drax would lead a £400k trial to remove CO2 from one of its four biomass burning units, in partnership with University of Leeds spin-off company C-Capture. Ostensibly, the trial is intended to demonstrate the viability of so called BECCS technology (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which is supposed to act as a Negative Emission Technology (NET – a generic name for technologies designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere). In November 2018, the government also announced a new £20m dedicated fund to help build carbon capture equipment at industrial sites, such as chemicals plants and oil refineries, on top of an existing £100m pot.

A more sceptical, but realistic, interpretation of the Drax trial is that is allows the power station to go on burning highly unsustainable wood pellets, partially sourced from clearcut biodiverse forests in the southern US, while giving the impression that it is going ‘green’. The original move to biomass itself was simply an attempt to stay in business. Forced to accept the non-viability of coal burning (coal power generation is set to be phased out in the UK by 2025 to meet air quality standards), the company moved to biomass, the most lucrative alternative. Drax currently enjoys almost £2m a day in subsidies to burn biomass, paid for by surcharges to energy bills.

Large scale energy generation from biomass is, however, utterly unsustainable and adding CCS to it will do little to change that. In a previous article for Corporate Watch, Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch explained why, due to a fundamental error in it’s representation of the carbon cycle, BECCS could never work, but also why such ‘sci fi’ climate solutions are so prevalent and so dangerous. Even if these kind of solutions have no realistic possibility of being viable, they allow politicians and businesses to give the impression that they are committed to reducing emissions and have strategies to do so. Thus, like the walking dead, new publicly subsidised demonstration projects continue to pop up as others die off.

Technology, Capitalism and Nature

New technologies may be important parts of the process of decarbonisation. But they must complement rather than replace the fundamental changes required to our economies and societies. The enthusiasm for CCS from the governments and institutions around the world is indicative of a much wider problem around technological narratives.

We live in a capitalist world, and technology’s role in our societies is heavily influenced by the thinking and values that come from that. Nature is viewed as something to be controlled and dominated, with technology providing the tools to do this. And while capitalism continues to define the world’s economies, technofixes such as CCS will continue to be supported by those in power.

Corporate Watch’s technofix report, produced in 2008, explains the enduring appeal of technical solutions to social and politically driven ecological problems. It describes how fixating on technologies as solutions ignores the underlying causes of climate change and other ecological crises, treating each of them as separate unrelated issues. It also has a tendency to concentrate power or exacerbate existing inequalities. In order to evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of technologies we need to ask vital questions such as: Who owns the technology? Who gains from the technology? Who loses? How sustainable is the technology? How likely is the technology to be developed, and when?

If we are to avoid the worst, catastrophic, impacts of climate change and ecological collapse we need to view human societies as being part our wider natural environment, not above of separate from it. Until this existential relationship is resolved technofixes such as CCS and BECCS will only deepen the ecological hole we are digging ourselves. Our relationship with nature may sound like an abstract philosophical issue, but it is precisely these kinds of questions that we must collectively answer.

And it’s not as if we are starting from scratch. While they are diverse and not to be idealised, many indigenous cultures have a radically different view of nature from that currently dominating western thought.

The relationship between nature and capitalism was explored further in our A-Z of green capitalism, published in 2016. It provides an introduction to the ideas surrounding green capitalism, as well as the alternatives to it, and explains why, despite its impossibility, the ‘greening’ of capitalism continues to be promoted as a solution to environmental problems.

Of course bringing about a fundamental change in our relationship with nature requires a radical transformation in how our societies are structured and in our attitudes and behaviours. But it also represents an unique opportunity to shift the direction we are moving in, to make a fairer, freer world where humans live in a more harmonious relationship with the rest of life on our planet. The depth and scale of change required is huge, but we have no other option. When it comes to these issues, radicalism is pragmatism. Climate change is only one of a host of interlinked global ecological crises: biodiversity loss, soil degradation, deforestation, and chemical pollutants all also pose grave threats. Relying on unproven technologies such as CCS to address only one of these problems in isolation is a dangerous distraction from the more profound changes required.

We need systemic change, not an endless horde of zombie technofixes.

Corporate Watch is currently working on a project on technology, if you’d like to know more or want to get involved please email contact[at]corporatewatch.org

The post The Zombie Technofix appeared first on Corporate Watch.

Doom, despair, denial, depression, IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!

These are common reactions when people learn about the reality of climate change.

Similarly, sometimes when people think about capitalism it can seem as though nothing can be done to change it, that it’s too big, too strong, that maybe that’s just the way the world is.

But things change, worlds end. New ones begin…

Part of what prevents action on these big issues is the way people tend talk, think and feel about them. Using words and pictures, this new comic aims to help people understand climate change and capitalism and encourage a different approach, one that builds power to fight them.

Corporate Watch will soon publish ‘Worlds End’, dealing with climate change and capitalism and tackling some of the most difficult issues relating to the global ecological crises we are faced with. The comic has been produced so it will be understandable and appealing to those new to the politics of climate change, but still fresh and useful to those that have spent a lifetime campaigning on the environment. It will be published later January 2019, and available from the Corporate Watch website. Let us know if you would like to write a review of the comic and we’ll send you a copy in the post.

The post Coming Soon: WORLDS END! appeared first on Corporate Watch.

As part of Not the Anarchist Bookfair in London, Corporate Watch along with Uneven Earth and Plan C London organised a discussion on technology, ecology and future worlds. The event, named Techno Fantasies and Eco Realities, was attended by about 20 people and included some wide ranging and at times lively discussion around the role of technology and ecology in future worlds. In particular it focused on how we can free our imaginations from the grip of capitalist realism (the idea that capitalism is the only option for organising society), picturing possible future worlds and the role that technology will play in them, while keeping our imagined worlds grounded in social and ecological realities. For example, not forgetting that we are living on a planet with limited natural resources or that we have to consider how to make these imagined futures real.

Participants were invited to read three short pieces ahead of the discussion:

“Fully Automated Green Communism” by Aaron Bastani, “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows” by Aaron Vansintjan and “Pulling the Magic Lever”, by Rut Elliot Blomqvist.

Although initially a tongue in cheek provocation, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) has morphed into a serious proposition of how technology and automation could be used to provide for everyone’s needs and free people from the drudgery of wage labour. Bastani’s piece attempts to counter some of the ecological critiques of the idea, arguing that FALC can be green. Instead of trying to halt the progress of technological development, and reduce energy consumption, Aaron argues that we should ride the technological horse to move beyond scarcity, proposing a kind of accelerationism where technology is rapidly advanced in order to bring about radical social change.

In “Accelerationism.. and Degrowth? The Left’s Strange Bedfellows”, Aaron Vansintjan looks at accelerationist ideas like FALC and compares them to ‘degrowth’, evaluating the similarities and differences between the two frameworks. Degrowth is a movement that has emerged from environmentalism and alternative economics and is focused on theorising and creating non-growth based economies and societies.

Although accelerationism and degrowth are apparently opposed, Vansinjtan finds some shared ideas, including their recognition of the need for deep, systemic change, their calls for democratisation of technology and their rejection of ‘work’ (or at least the idea that work is inherently good). The key differences centre around accelerationism’s focus on reappropriating technology to achieve a resource-unlimited society, versus degrowth’s aim of limiting the development of certain forms of technology and staying within resource constraints. Degrowth also seeks to slow the metabolism of society, whereas accelerationism aims to increase the pace of social change. Ultimately, while supportive of accelerationism’s inspiring vision, Vansinjtan finds it seriously lacking in dealing with ecological critiques.

Rut Elliot Blomqvist examines three different visions of possible future worlds and the role that technology plays in them. ‘Pulling the Magic Lever’ is a reference to how technology is used to answer social or ecological problems without explaining how it will do so: you simply ‘pull the magic lever’ of technology and hey presto, it’s all solved. It’s a running theme in all three of the imagined futures Blomqvist chooses to analyse. The first is in The World We Made, a novel by environmentalist Jonathon Porrit, then The Venus Project, a technology based political proposition, and finally Fully Automated Luxury Communism. In their analysis, Blomqvist uses a World Systems Theory approach to evaluate the ideas, critiquing the story of modernisation by framing it around colonialism.

The World We Made is based on Design Fiction, where fiction inspires possibilities of new designs. It sees the human species in general as the villain responsible for destroying the environment. In the novel’s fantasy scenario, however, humans manage to turn things around and start to use technology and various existing world institutions for the common good. As Elliot points out, this book flags up an important discussion around the idea of the ‘anthropocene’ (a proposed name for a new human-affected geological epoch), which may support the view that the human species in general is the problem, rather than certain humans or, say, a capitalist growth-based economy. They also describe the book’s tendency towards technological optimism: it presents technology as providing the answers, without explaining how, and ignores the socio-cultural-political reasons for current ecological destruction.

The Venus Project is found to be even further along the techno-optimist spectrum and again ignores how its proposed technological utopia might be brought into existence. As well as highlighting its fetishisation of the scientific process, Elliot explains how The Venus Project often engenders conspiracy theories, a number of which are dangerously close to anti-Semitism.

Continuing the trend, FALC is found to involve similar techno-utopianism, where the working classes seize the means of production and use automation to create a world of plenty. Elliot points to a blind spot, as FALC doesn’t consider the limits of post-industrialism beyond the western world. Elliot describes how all three rely heavily on ‘pulling the magic lever’. While they show imagination, they are limited by the fossil-fuelled mentality they seek to criticise.

In our discussion at Not the Anarchist Bookfair, we asked participants to discuss two questions:

• What role does technology play in our ecologically sustainable future, and how do we get there?

and

• How can we move beyond the techno-optimist versus primitivist dichotomy? (I.e. beyond  viewing technology as either the solution to or source of all our problems).

The questions were discussed in pairs, in small groups and then with everyone participating, and led to a broad discussion of the various themes raised. Some key points that came out included:

• The importance of considering the social power necessary to make futures, and how human agency is often missing in visions of techno utopias.
• The need to change who makes technology, how it is produced and the inherent politics of technologies.
• The need to highlight and develop technology’s potential within the ecological movement, including within degrowth discussions.
• The need to positively promote ecological future visions, and how to counter environmentalism’s ‘hair shirt’ image.
• Considering whether we should assume that technologies will inevitably be developed, and so ride the tech bandwagon, or try to intervene and prevent or hinder certain developments.
• Thinking about if/how we can change the basis on which automation takes places and is implemented. E.g. is non-capitalist automation possible, and if so, how could it be made non-capitalist?
• Thinking about ways of bringing ecological and technologically based visions of the future back together.

A number of participants were keen to continue discussions and we are considering further forums to hold related future discussions. Corporate Watch is currently working on a technology project, if you are interested in knowing more or collaborating on future work, please email contact@corporatewatch.org. To get involved with discussions as part of the Plan C Climate cluster contact london@weareplanc.org

(this article was also published on the Plan C blog, here, and Uneven Earth, here)

The post Techno-Fantasies and Eco-Realities appeared first on Corporate Watch.

(by David Whyte)

In the midst of the crisis over British diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia following the Khashoggi murder, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday that he intends to appoint British business leaders as ambassadors in the diplomatic service.

You can see how this might play out. Why bother getting a government representative to deal with the Saudi government when you can get a former BAE Systems executive to grease a few palms? Or send GlaxoSmithKline to China to do the same job.

Hunt’s announcement only reflects a slightly more extreme version of the neo-liberalism now embedded in diplomatic policy. The support from embassies and consulates that corporate citizens – and their employees – can expect significantly exceeds support for ordinary citizens.

Since 2010, the FCO has promised “to equip its staff with the necessary skills to be effective in supporting UK business and investment, as a core part of the job of the Diplomatic Service”. This includes the “tireless” lobbying of foreign governments to award contracts to British firms and using UK government data and intelligence to help UK businesses identify and pursue new opportunities. As part of this role, British corporations are regularly invited to accompany UK Government ministers on diplomatic missions.

This exceptional access to diplomatic resources extends to the highest levels of office. Who could forget the letters from George Osborne when he was Chancellor and the ‘watchdog’ the Financial Services Authority to the US Department of Justice, begging them to drop charges against HSBC in 2012. Or David Cameron’s outburst in defense of GlaxoSmithKline on an official visit to China when the company was under investigation for a crime that led to a $490m fine? Cameron told the Chinese government: “I know that they are a very decent and strong British business.”

Hunt’s proposals aim to short-circuit what happens already. The only difference is that appointing business leaders directly as ambassadors cuts out the need for a government official to play the role of intermediary.

Indeed, the Department for International Trade already has a list of likely candidates for those jobs. It already engages the services of 48 ‘Business Ambassadors’ who are charged with “promoting the UK’s excellence, economy, business environment and its reputation as the international trade and inward investment partner of choice.” The current list of UK Government representatives reads like a rogues gallery of convicted and controversial companies. They include:

• Sir Andrew Witty the chief executive officer (CEO) of GlaxoSmithKline between 2008 and 2017. He was in charge during the company’s involvement in the biggest drug fraud scandal in US history and the corruption scandal in China that David Cameron defended .
• Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith CEO of MITIE Group, Britain’s biggest immigration detention and deportation profiteer who have been questioned for human rights violations at Harmondswoth Immigration Removal Centre, a facility it runs.
• Steve Varley, the Chair of Ernst & Young, at the helm when the company was fined £2.75 million for misconduct last year.
• Will Lawes, Managing Director of investment bank Lazards, the company that was slammed by the UK Public Accounts Committee for advising the government on the share price for Royal Mail’s privatization before pocketing £8.4 million from buying and selling the same (undervalued) shares when they were issued.

Hunts proposal, then, simply streamlines an enduring logic at the heart of foreign policy: use the channels of diplomacy to defend the right of British corporations to commit crime, then appoint the same corporate criminals as British ambassadors.

The post Ambassadors of Corporate Crime appeared first on Corporate Watch.