What lessons can we take from this sad story? One, obviously, is that it’s high time for Congress to take a hard look at the laws governing co-ops. It needs to be made clear that no corporation gets the legal privileges of a co-op unless it truly represents the little guy without any conflicts of interests. While there is nothing wrong per se with co-ops becoming vertically integrated, the law should ensure that the money co-ops make on all their operations goes back directly to their members.
Another lesson is that monopoly begets monopoly. Gary Hanman wasn’t wrong when he told farmers that the increasing concentration of ownership among agribusinesses meant that farmer co-ops had to grow bigger, too. But he didn’t tell them that as their traditional co-ops merged and consolidated into the Goliath that became DFA, they were creating a new oppressor. This dynamic is what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis meant when he referred to “the curse of bigness.” Continue reading
Author Archives: TPNS
Dr Strangelove warned the oil industry about global warming 60 years ago
Four others joined Dunlop at the podium that day, one of whom had made the journey from California – and Hungary before that. The nuclear weapons physicist Edward Teller had, by 1959, become ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, but he retained the embrace of industry and government. Teller’s task that November fourth was to address the crowd on “energy patterns of the future,” and his words carried an unexpected warning:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [….] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [….] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [….] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
Xmas Greetings! Our 2017 Highlights
Dear friends, supporters and colleagues,
An end of year round-up is always interesting – a mixed sense of have made progress yet realising the scale of any given issue is so great that there is always so much further to go..
In 2017, we made progress on existing work and launched some new projects… Below are some links to our 2017 highlights.
Wishing you peace and happiness in 2018.
From everyone at Tipping Point
The World Inequality Report
by Max Lawson, Head of Inequality Policy, Oxfam International
This week saw the launch of the first ‘World Inequality Report’ written by the team at the Paris School of Economics and based on the data collected by over 100 researchers behind the World Incomes Database. The summary is very short and full of fantastic charts, well worth taking a look at. They have pioneered the use of tax data and other sources to recalculate the incomes of those at the top, which are hugely underestimated. They have now done this for enough large countries to make some conclusions about global trends, which is the basis of the report.
Continue reading
The largest transfer of wealth in living memory
Artists’ letter on Trump and Jerusalem
The Guardian reports (10th December) President Macron’s comment that recent US moves on the status of Jerusalem are a threat to peace. They are much more than that.
In recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Donald Trump seeks to achieve through a declaration what Israel has been trying to do for fifty years through force of arms: to erase Palestinians, as a political and cultural presence, from the life of their own city.
The Palestinian people of Jerusalem are already subject to municipal discrimination at every level, and a creeping process of ethnic cleansing. In addition to the continuing policy of house demolitions, in the last fifteen years, at least thirty-five Palestinian public institutions and NGOs in occupied East Jerusalem have been permanently or temporarily closed by the occupying forces. Cultural institutions have been a particular target.
At the same time Israeli authorities and entrepreneurs have spent millions in clearing Palestinian neighbourhoods to create ‘heritage’ projects that promote a myth of mono-ethnic urban identity, said to stretch back 3000 years.
We reject Trump’s collusion with such racist manipulation, and his disregard for international law. We deplore his readiness to crown the Israeli military conquest of East Jerusalem and his indifference to Palestinian rights.
As artists and as citizens, we challenge the ignorance and inhumanity of these policies, and celebrate the resilience of Palestinians living under occupation.
Continue reading
Jeremy Corbyn’s Geneva speech in full
Speaking at the United Nation’s Geneva headquarters today, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party, said:
Thank you Paul for that introduction. And let me give a special thanks to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Your work gives an important platform to marginalised voices for social justice to challenge policy makers and campaign for change.
I welcome pressure both on my party the British Labour Party and on my leadership to put social justice front and centre stage in everything we do. So thank you for inviting me to speak here in this historic setting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva a city that has been a place of refuge and philosophy since the time of Rousseau. The headquarters before the Second World War of the ill-fated League of Nations, which now houses the United Nations.
It’s a particular privilege to be speaking here because the constitution of our party includes a commitment to support the United Nations. A promise “to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all”.
I’d also like to thank my fellow panellists, Arancha Gonzalez and Nikhil Seth, and Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, Shami Chakrabarti, who has accompanied me here. She has been a remarkable campaigner and a great asset to the international movement for human rights.
And lastly let me thank you all for being here today.
I would like to use this opportunity in the run- up to International Human Rights Day to focus on the greatest threats to our common humanity. And why states need to throw their weight behind genuine international co-operation and human rights both individual and collective, social and economic, as well as legal and constitutional at home and abroad if we are to meet and overcome those threats.
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New report on securitisation of aid
- Syria case may be ‘tip of the iceberg’ for fund backing some of world’s worst security forces
- Secretive Conflict, Stability and Security Fund uses £500m of aid money
- Government accused of using loophole to fund discredited consultancy
The controversial cross-government fund behind the British aid project in Syria which has today been suspended amid claims that money was reaching jihadist groups should be shut down, according to campaign group Global Justice Now, which has released a new report on the fund.
The report lifts the lid on one of the British government’s most secretive funds, which is behind military and security projects in around 70 countries including Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iraq and Nigeria. The billion-pound pot, known as the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, spends over £500 million of British aid and is overseen by the National Security Council, chaired by the Prime Minister. Neither the public nor MPs are able to properly scrutinise the fund due to a serious lack of transparency, the report finds.
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A Celebration of Our Greatest 20th Century Prime Minister
Attlee Remembered –the first event in our Attlee Nation project – was a wonderful weekend full of debate and knowledge sharing about the life of Clem Attlee and its resonance for today.
A huge thanks to all our brilliant contributors – especially Attlee biographer Francis Beckett; to our incredibly engaged audiences and our festival team; to our photographers and videographers. And finally, our wonderful partners at Sands Films – Olivier Stockman and Christine Edzard.
Our message for the weekend was simple: in 1945 Attlee had said Yes We Can and by 1951 was able to say said Yes We Did. Discussions about the challenges he faced in post-war Britain and the subsequent domestic achievements of his government were debated in light of today- social need, political urgency and the need for political courage. The nature of good Labour Party leadership from Keir Hardie through to Jeremy Corbyn; Labour Party manifestos 1945 and 2017 were compared as was the power of media barons then and now; and most interestingly, we explored the profound influence upon Attlee’s political development of his time as a social worker. We can truly say that Britain’s greatest 20th century Prime Minister was a social worker first. And finally, in our closing event ‘In Clem’s Own Words’, we all shared in a very moving evening as we were treated to selected readings of Attlee’s own writings – letters, speeches, poems – read by a wonderful line-up of performers. To have a number of Clem Attlee’s family join us for the night made the evening very special indeed.
Here you can enjoy our video playlist of all the live events
and here is our photo gallery .
Until our next Attlee event!
Portcullis House 26 October 11am: Why we must talk about breast cancer & chemicals exposure
BREXIT, BREAST CANCER & CHEMICALS
Join us on Thursday 26th October 11am Portcullis House, Westminster for discussion on breast cancer, toxic chemicals exposure & regulation
Our From Pink to Prevention campaign is hosting this Breast Cancer Prevention Month event with the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations and Alliance for Cancer Prevention .As we come to the end of Breast Cancer Prevention Month, we will be considering the implications of Brexit on breast cancer and exploring the answers with a range of experts and campaigners. Event speakers include Helen Hayes MP; Zarin Hainsworth OBE & Chair NAWO; Helen Lynn From Pink to Prevention; Hilda Palmer Hazards Campaign; Nick Mole Policy Office Pesticide Action Network UK Chair Deborah Burton TPNS/From Pink to Prevention.
In this Breast Cancer PreventionMonth, the real impact of Brexit on breast cancer needs to be understood. Brexit gives us one more lens through which to better understand the scale of the exposures problem, its links to breast cancer and critically, why we need to stay within the EU regulations regime if we are to better protect citizens and workers.
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Oct 7&8 Attlee weekend mini-festival programme and speakers
Attlee Remembered October 7th & 8th at Sands Film Studios, Rotherhithe
Clement Attlee died 50 years ago on 8 October 1967. Attlee Remembered is a weekend of film, discussion and theatre that celebrates the man, his life and the domestic achievements of his 1945-51 Labour Government. Sands Films Studios is in historic Rotherhithe, close to the riverfront from where the Mayflower set sail. A beautiful Georgian building housing its cinema, theatre and extensive local archive, Sands Films is a three minute walk from Rotherhithe overground station, which itself is well served by both underground and overground lines. (More below).
WHY ATTLEE NOW?
Over the past few years we have seen more and more references to Clement Attlee in relation to Jeremy Corbyn and, prior to him, Ed Miliband. This is all to the good, as Attlee has always been eclipsed by Churchill and Attlee is far from being the household name he should be. The wider public (especially younger generations) – in as far as they have heard his name – will have no comprehension of the relevance and timeliness of his story: as a Mayor, as MP, as deputy wartime leader, as Prime Minister and the fact that he remains (despite many attempts to remove him) the longest serving Labour Party leader (1935-55).
Clement Attlee’s government shaped our society for seven decades to come. How do we want the next seven to seventy years shape up? How do we prize and protect the notion of ‘generosity towards the future’ so powerfully embodied in the Attlee administration?
ATTLEE REMEMBERED WEEKEND
Programme: We have a wonderful line-up of contributors for our films, discussions & performance programme. PDF version here.
Contributors biographies (with yet more names TBC).
Booking
Single sessions on Eventbrite.
Films are free (but must be booked), discussions £3, Theatre £5.
Weekend pass to all events £10 and only available by calling the Box Office on 020 7231 2209.
Continue reading
Autumn news & events for your diary
Autumn Newsletter & Save the Date: films, events, campaigns
Dear friends, supporters and colleagues,
We hope your summer has been a good one and provided you with some rest and recreation.
Below is our autumn update – there’s lots going on! We have some new projects underway as well as some key calendar moments around our three ongoing campaigns.
We hope to see you at one of our events!
Best wishes from all at TPNS.
Continue reading
Attlee Remembered
“Charity is a cold grey loveless thing. If a rich man wants to help the poor, he should pay his taxes gladly, not dole out money at a whim”
— Clement Attlee
This is a project developed by TPNS embracing a festival – an Attlee Festival – framed by a wider public awareness campaign we call ‘Attlee Nation’. Intended for all generations, it wants to illustrate how, 70 years ago, politicians did push back powerful vested interests for a caring social democracy as Clement Attlee’s government oversaw the largest and most wide-ranging domestic social reform programme. Despite being in the most difficult of times, his 1945-51 administration borrowed, invested and nationalised in order to lay down the foundation for the welfare state and the NHS; expanding public housing and revitalising core industries. All this delivered a rapid rise in living standards, decreasing inequality and growing prosperity.
“Attlee’s political genius was to give people a sense of hope, a clear route map out of depression, war and austerity towards the social and economic justice they craved. His government rebuilt Britain, and the next government needs the political courage to do the same – including giving working people a voice so we can help build a more equal, more democratic country. We must not miss the chance again.”
— Frances O’Grady, Gen Sec TUC (The Guardian, 26/4/13)
Attlee set the ‘terms of reference’ for progressive domestic policy for the next 70 years. While many older citizens know this history, many others do not. What lessons we can bring forward for today’s ‘austerity’ debate? How do we ensure that the ‘terms of reference’ for the next 70 years are just as ambitious; that they rebuild the legacy by pushing back those economic interests that would ultimately destroy this legacy? How do we prize and protect the notion of ‘generosity to the future’ so powerfully embodied in the Attlee administration?
Attlee was “the twentieth century’s greatest prime minister’’ according to an IPSOS-MORI poll of historians and political scientists (2004)
If you have heard of Churchill, then you should also know about Attlee. And if you don’t know much at all, check the history, and ask why?
Read more on the background and the project here.
Attlee Nation website: attleenation.org
ATTLEE REMEMBERED WEEKEND
Our first Attlee Festival was hosted by Sands Films Studios, Rotherhithe, London. ‘Attlee Remembered’ took place on 7th and 8th October 2017, marking 50 years since Attlee’s death on 7 October 1967.
Programme: We have a wonderful line-up of contributors for our films, discussions & performance programme. PDF version here.
Contributors biographies (with yet more names TBC).
Booking
Single sessions on Eventbrite.
Films are free (but must be booked), discussions £3, Theatre £5.
Weekend pass to all events £10 and only available by calling the Box Office on 020 7231 2209.
Like & Share our new Facebook Page and follow us on Twitter at @attlee_nation.
Venue:
Sands Films
82 St Marychurch Street
London SE16 4HZ
82 St Marychurch Street
London SE16 4HZ
Marking Mandela Day 18 July 2017
Throughout July, Make Apartheid History is promoting the UK Tour of the utterly brilliant one man show AND HERE I AM, directed by Zoe Lafferty, performed by Ahmed Tobasi and based on his life story. On Mandela Day, we will screen a selection of MAH films at the Edinburgh dates 17/18 July.
This outstanding play and performance is part of the Shubbuk Festival and as was deservedly well reviewed by the Guardian.
And this Mandela Day We also join the effort to help raise awareness and funds for MahraJazz Festival – the first-ever Palestinian music festival to take place in Haifa (Palestine) on 24-26 August – 31-2 September. MahraJazz is a non-profit, volunteer based event which aims to reach a wider Palestinian audience as well as through radio broadcasting. Most importantly, it also offers an alternative for international musicians to divert from performing for Apartheid Israel and contributes to the importance of the Palestinian effort to boycott Israel.
Find out more here
https://www.facebook.com/%D9%85%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%B2-MahraJazz-1733078293387662/
And donate here! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mahrajazz-haifa-alternative-jazz-festival#/
MAKE APARTHEID HISTORY –ONCE AND FOR ALL.
To help you understand more about why apartheid applies to Israel, our MAH video page has a number of short films where Palestinians, Israelis and South Africans explain why.
Military tourism in Israel
It was only a matter of time before local entrepreneurs figured out they could channel Israel’s vast experience in war and counterterrorism in this direction. Today, about half a dozen facilities around the country offer tourists the opportunity to learn from Israeli combat officers, in most cases graduates of elite units. (Understanding that they have nothing to sell the locals because military service is compulsory in Israel, these businesses only target tourists.)
At Caliber 3, the two-hour “shooting adventure” – for which the group from Hong Kong has signed up – includes a simulation of a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem marketplace, immediately followed by a stabbing attack, a live demonstration with attack dogs and a sniper tournament. The cost of this basic package is $115 per adult and $85 per child, with discounts available for large groups. Continue reading
Africa subsidises the rest of the world by over $40 billion in one year, according to new research
Global Justice Now press release:
Much more wealth is leaving the world’s most impoverished continent than is entering it, according to new research into total financial flows into and out of Africa. The study finds that African countries receive $161.6 billion in resources such as loans, remittances and aid each year, but lose $203 billion through factors including tax avoidance, debt payments and resource extraction, creating an annual net financial deficit of over $40 billion.
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Spring news – campaigns, films and dates for diary
Dear friends, supporters and colleagues,
Another Spring and another election is underway. History has shown us that when far-right politicians reassure or exploit people’s sense of insecurity with easy-fix populist slogans, it can only end bad, yet we are seeing just this playing out across Europe (east and west) and the USA, despite the warnings from history. The French Presidential result is something to take hope from, though 11 million French voters opted for Le Pen. Macron now has a tough ahead if he is to unite his country.
But in the USA, since the inauguration of Donald Trump, an interesting exercise has been taking place as Bernie Sanders and his supporters hold meetings and go out door to door to speak to Trump voters, alienated by the entire political system. And they’re finding that – at the very least – they thank him for simply engaging and listening.
Continue reading
Celebrating A Visionary Citizen Scientist
RACHEL CARSON DAY 27th MAY
Man has put the vast majority of carcinogens into the environment and he can, if he wishes, eliminate many of them. The most determined effort should be made to eliminate those carcinogens that now contaminate our food, our water supplies, and our atmosphere, because these provide the most dangerous types of contact – minute exposure repeated over and over throughout the years.
Silent Spring 1962
RACHEL CARSON marine biologist, writer and conservationist
In the year 1962, Rachel Carson was not only another breast cancer statistic, but the woman whose writing skills and scientific acumen shocked the world upon publication of ‘Silent Spring’ in which her research findings of irreversible reproductive and genetic damage to aquatic-life forms resulting from the use of pesticides were presented in her signature narrative style. Her attention to smaller aquatic life forms at the bottom of the food-chain revealed the multiplier effect for life forms at higher levels, with major predictable effects for we humans in our position at the top of the chain. The changes being observed and recorded by Carson were an early warning of the future scenario for all life forms. As such they still stand as the first scientifically-based predictions of both real and potential harm to life from manmade chemicals.
Fifty years on and the shocking difference between then and now is that there are many thousands more manmade chemicals being produced and released into the environment than the number developed by the smaller scale post-war chemicals industry of Carson’s time. Many of these are linked to breast cancer risk and right now there is a battle to ensure that post-Brexit UK remains within existing EU chemicals legislation (REACH), which is regarded as the best in the world.
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Vital Call: MPs want post-Brexit UK to keep to EU’s main chemicals law REACH
The UK House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has today published the report of its inquiry on chemicals regulation after the EU referendum, which particularly focussed on the EU’s world-leading REACH system for regulating chemicals. The EAC criticise the UK Government’s lack of openness about its post-Brexit plans, and point out that most respondents want the UK to remain ‘as closely aligned to REACH as possible‘.
The EAC’s main conclusions
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- The chemicals regulation framework established by the EU through REACH is difficult to transpose directly into UK law. Writing EU regulations into UK law could not be done simply by having a line in the “Great Repeal Bill” deeming REACH to apply in the UK. REACH was written from the perspective of participants being within the EU, with much of it also relating to Member State co-operation and mutual obligations, oversight and controls, and freedom of movement of products
The 1917 Balfour Declaration: ‘Settler Colonialism’ 100 years on
From Balfour to the present day: a century of colonialism in Palestine
This year’s November 2nd marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It signifies 100 years of suffering of the Palestinian people and the colonisation of their land.
In 1917 the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a letter to the wealthy British banker and Zionist Lord Rothschild, in which he declared :
“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This short letter had no legal status, but was later incorporated within the terms of Britain’s Mandate for Palestine. Thus it became one of the most significant documents leading eventually to the creation of the state of Israel and the on-going quagmire of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
From the outset the Declaration was controversial, and almost all the opposition came from within the Jewish community itself, because very few Arabs were even aware the existence of such a proposal. The Declaration was seen largely as a means for diverting Jewish immigration from Britain to Palestine. The most prominent British Jewish politician of the day, Sir Edwin Montagu, opposed it vigorously. Later, when the language of the Balfour Declaration was included in the Mandate for Palestine, the House of Lords voted to reject this in a motion passed by 60 to 29, on the ground that the Declaration was opposed to the “wishes of the great majority of the people of Palestine”.
Tipping Point North South 