Poem of the week: For Aneurin Bevan by Danielle Hope.
Bevan! You should be living at this hour
the NHS has need of you. She is a shell
sapped of spirit, a disoriented hull
a revengeful return of the Mayflower.
Her decks brim with pristine shops and babble,
burble like a jaunty airport mall.
Her cargo strains with episodes, manpower
and medicines, each counted to cut costs.
Below she battles ageing, accidents and old super-bugs
that breed below adverts for tomorrow’s drugs.
Passengers please travel on for health care
you’ll find private dentists, stocks, shares
and lawyers on each turning of the stair.
About the poet
Danielle Hope was born in Lancashire but now lives in London. She has had three collections of poetry, Fairground of Madness, City Fox and The Stone Ship, published by Rockingham Press.
John Rety of Hearing Eye Press and Torriano Meeting House is a former editor of anarchist paper Freedom.
Johnson deputy faces inquiry over alleged financial wrongdoing
· Fresh blow to London mayor’s administration
· Aide had been banned from working as priest
* Matthew Taylor and Dave Hill
* Friday July 4, 2008
Boris Johnson, London mayor, launched an independent inquiry last night into allegations of financial irregularities and inappropriate behaviour against his deputy mayor, Ray Lewis.
The move followed a Guardian investigation and a series of questions tabled by the newspaper on Wednesday.
It became the second blow to Johnson’s administration in the past 10 days after one of his senior advisers, James McGrath, quit for telling an interviewer that African-Caribbean migrants should go home if they did not like London.
Hunt Oil, whose chief executive Ray Hunt has been a major backer of George W. Bush, signed the agreement with the Kurdish government on September 8, 2007 to explore and develop oilfields in the region.
No national law on the division of oil revenues had been passed at the time (and still has not been), and the agreement outraged Iraqi government officials fearful that Baghdad would be cut out of its share of lucrative oil profits by such arrangements and that the country might well break up under centrifugal pressures. At the time Iraq’s oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani, called the deal “illegal.”
It is not unusual for Ethiopia and Somalia to be hit by drought and food shortages, but this year the rise in food costs makes an already disastrous situation worse.
In Ethiopia, the area affected is in the triangle of land in the east and southeast bordering Kenya and Somalia, comprising the Somalia, Oromiya and Amhara regions. According to Reuters, a NASA earth observatory picture taken from space shows the “eastern half of the country withered in drought.”
Around 4.5 million Ethiopians are in need of food aid, with as many as 75,000 children facing acute malnutrition and illness.
Ken Caldwell, international operations director for the charity Save the Children, explained, “Hunger hits children first and hits them hardest. Ethiopian children, who are going hungry because their parents can’t afford to feed them, will be among the first victims of the global food price rises.” …
Lee’s office sought to outlaw industrial stoppages yesterday by an estimated 120,000 of the 511,000 members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), called over both wage demands and in opposition to US beef imports. Lee declared the stoppages were an “illegal and political walkout” and KCTU leaders have been summoned to appear before the Ulsan District Prosecutors Office. If they do not turn up, arrest warrants will be issued.
Hyundai Motors, whose 44,000-strong workforce closed down production lines for two hours at plants in Ulsan, Jeonju and Asan, has announced it is filing a petition for union leaders to be arrested and charged with “obstructing its business”. …
Despite its limited scope, the strike contributed to the general panic in the South Korean corporate elite. The stock market Kopsi index plunged 2.6 percent in trading yesterday, the largest decline in three months and the 18th consecutive day of falls. The stock sell-off has been a response to high oil prices, the government’s lowering of economic growth expectations from 6 percent to 4.7 percent, rising inflation and the fear of political instability.
The Exxon Valdez ruling: the Supreme Court once again defends big business
2 July 2008
On June 25, the next-to-last day of the current term, the United States Supreme Court slashed the punitive damages judgment for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The award was reduced from $2.5 billion to only $507.5 million—an amount equivalent to a few days’ profit for the giant oil company.
Exxon Mobil Corporation paid more than $1 billion to settle state and federal claims for environmental damages. The company went to trial in 1994, however, against a class action suit by over 32,000 individuals and small businesses devastated by the accident, predominantly commercial fishermen, native Alaskans and local landowners, who claimed that Exxon’s reckless conduct caused the accident.
Exxon conceded fault, and the compensatory damages for the class were set at $507.5 million. The trial then proceeded on the issue of punitive damages only.
The evidence showed that on March 23, 1989, the tanker left port carrying 53 million barrels of crude oil from the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Its captain, Joseph Hazlewood, had recently completed an alcohol rehabilitation program. His superiors knew about Hazlewood’s problem, learned that he had relapsed recently, and even drank with him.
Witnesses testified that before leaving port Hazlewood consumed five double-vodka drinks, an amount that would have rendered any non-alcoholic unconscious. When tested by the Coast Guard 11 hours after the accident Hazlewood still had a blood-alcohol level of .061, meaning that during the wreck his level was about three times the legal limit for driving a car.
As the ship approached a well-known reef, Hazlewood set the autopilot, increased speed and turned the ship over to a subordinate unlicensed to perform the maneuver necessary to avoid running aground. The Exxon Valdez hit the reef, spilling crude oil into Prince William Sound. Hazlewood then tried to “rock” the ship free, a procedure that spewed more oil and risked killing the crew.
The result was the largest oil spill in US history: 11 million gallons covering 11,000 square miles, including 1,300 miles of pristine shoreline. The spill devastated the local economy as well as the environment. Estimated losses in the sport fishing industry alone were almost $600 million over the two years following the accident. Within days an estimated 250,000 seabirds perished, along with thousands of otters and seals. Despite billions of dollars in cleanup, the environmental effects of the spill still linger. Much of the oil seeped below the surface of affected beaches, decaying at a rate of about three to four percent per year. Animals that dig in the sand for their food continue to be contaminated.
After hearing this evidence, the jury awarded the 32,000 plaintiffs a total of $5 billion in punitive damages. In 2007 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reduced the amount to $2.5 billion. The Supreme Court decision reduces the award to $507.5 million, effectively fashioning a rule under federal maritime law that limits punitive damages to the amount of compensatory damages awarded, a so-called one-to-one ratio.
The punitive award must be viewed in light of Exxon Mobil’s enormous profits. The jury’s original $5 billion award amounts to less than the company’s profits for 1990 alone.
After Deaths, U.S. Inspects Electric Work Done in Iraq
By JAMES RISEN
Published: July 1, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, a major military contractor, after the electrocutions of several United States service members.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, told Congress of the new inspections while also disclosing that at least 13 Americans had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began. Previously, the Pentagon said that 12 had been electrocuted. In addition to those killed, many more service members have received painful shocks, Army officials say.
The New York Times article does not mention the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by KBR’s deathly electricity. Very probably, numbers will be much bigger than the at least thirteen US American dead now officially admitted.
Archaeologists Find Silos And Administration Center From Early Egyptian City
(July 1, 2008) — A University of Chicago expedition at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt has unearthed a large administration building and silos that provide fresh clues about the emergence of urban life. The discovery provides new information about a little understood aspect of ancient Egypt—the development of cities in a culture that is largely famous for its monumental architecture.
The archaeological work at Tell Edfu was initiated with the permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, headed by Zahi Hawass, under the direction of Nadine Moeller, Assistant Professor at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Work late last year revealed details of seven silos, the largest grain bins found in ancient Egypt as well as an older columned hall that was an administration center.
Long fascinated with temples and monuments such as pyramids, scholars have traditionally spent little time exploring the residential communities of ancient Egypt. Due to intense farming and heavy settlement over the years, much of the record of urban civilization has been lost. So little archaeological evidence remains that some scholars believe Egypt did not have a highly developed urban culture, giving Mesopotamia the distinction of teaching people how to live in cities.
“The traditional view of ancient Egypt has been biased by the fact that most excavation work so far has focused on temples and tombs. The mounds which comprise the remains of Egyptian cities were either ignored, buried under modern towns, or else destroyed by modern agricultural activities.
A additional reason why archaeologists have often focused on temples and tombs is that Egyptian secular buildings, including even pharaoh’s palaces, were mainly built in mud bricks, which do not survive centuries as well as the stones of temples and tombs.
Edfu is one of the very few remaining city mounds that are accessible for scientific study,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute.
“The work at Edfu is important and innovative in that it finally allows us to examine ancient Egypt as an urban society, whose cities and towns housed bureaucrats, craft specialists, priests, and farmers. Nadine Moeller’s discovery of silos and local administrative buildings shows us how these cities actually functioned as places where the agricultural wealth of the Nile valley was mobilized for the state. Grain as currency provided the sinews of power for the pharoahs,” he added.
“Ancient Egyptian administration is mainly known from texts, but the full understanding of the institutions involved and their role within towns and cities has been so far difficult to grasp because of the lack of archaeological evidence with which textual data needs to be combined,” Moeller said.
At Tell Edfu, archaeologists have uncovered what amounts to a downtown area. The community, halfway between the modern cities of Aswan and Luxor, was a provincial capital an important regional center. Tell Edfu is also rare, in that almost 3,000 years of Egyptian history are preserved in the stratigraphy of a single mound.
The administrative building and silos were at the heart of the ancient community. Because grain was a form of currency, the silos functioned as a bank and a food source. The silos’ size indicates the community was apparently a prosperous urban center.
The grain bins are in a large silo courtyard of the 17th Dynasty (1630-1520 B.C.) and consist of at least seven round, mud-brick silos. With a diameter between 5.5 and 6.5 meters, they are the largest examples discovered within a town center.
The team unearthed an earlier building phase for the hall that predated the silos. In that phase, a mud-brick building with 16 wooden columns stood at the site. The pottery and seal impressions found in the hall date it to the early 13th Dynasty (1773-1650 B.C.). The building layout indicates that it may have been part of the governor’s palace, which was typical of provincial towns.
There is no exact parallel for such a columned hall being part of the administrative buildings. Scribes did accounting, opened and sealed containers, and received letters in the column hall. The ostraca, or inscribed pottery shards, list commodities written on them.
The administrative center was used when Egypt’s political unity was lost and a small kingdom developed at Thebes (modern Luxor) and controlled most of Upper Egypt.
“During this period, we can see an increase in connections between the provincial elite, such as the family of the governor, to the royal family at Thebes, who were keen on strengthening bonds through marriage, or by awarding important offices to these people,” Moeller said.
“It is exactly at this period when Edfu seems to have been very prosperous, which can now be confirmed further by archaeological discoveries such as this silo-court, a symbol for the wealth of the town,” she said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago.
JOHN GREEN reviews Diarmuid Jeffrey’s meticulous narrative on the rise of Hitler-supporting chemical cartel IG Farben.
The Anglo-Saxon world has a morbid fascination with all things to do with Hitler and nazism. Analyses or clarifications about how fascism comes about, though, are few and far between.
In his book Hell’s Cartel, Diarmuid Jeffreys attempts to clarify the central role played by the giant chemical conglomerate IG Farben in financially supporting Hitler and fuelling his war machine.
He argues that he is “filling a gap” in the literature on this subject, ignoring the fact that the socialist countries dealt with this in detail. The renowned GDR feature film Council of the Gods provides a vivid account of the role of IG Farben in Hitler’s rise to power, but gets no mention. Jeffreys’s sources are virtually all Western.
At Nuremberg, for the first time in history, not only were chief nazis on trial but also some of the top managers of German industry. This sent shockwaves through the boardrooms of capitalist companies everywhere and raised the question of where culpability begins and ends.
The trial of the IG Farben and Krupp managers was the last of its kind. They ceased abruptly as the cold war against Bolshevism took centre stage and former nazis were transformed into useful allies.
IG Farben was allowed to remain as a holding company, but those formerly under its wing, such as Bosch, Bayer and Hoechst, again became powerful chemical companies on the world stage.
In this book, Jeffreys takes us back to the 1850s to give us a potted history of the German chemical industry. Bayer, for instance, began as a small dye-making company in Engels’s home town of Barmen on the Rhine.
