The 'In Vitro' World of the 21st Century

Marguerite Finn

Yesterday I received my copy of the New World magazine from the United Nations Association.  The theme of this issue was ‘Can Technology Save the World?’  Initially, I thought the editors would answer the question in the affirmative – there being so many wonderful advancements in science and technology.  One development that was mentioned in New World was the arrival of test tube meat.  Apparently a team of Dutch scientists is very close to producing edible, lab-generated meat – with a product-launch planned for Spring 2013. If this happens, it will be at just the right time because the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that the global demand for meat will double in the next 40 years.  The global population is, after all, heading for nine billion and because of rising standards of living – especially in Asia – more and more people are demanding meat to eat. 

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), livestock already account for 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, 10% of the world’s fresh water supplies and around half of all agricultural land.  So producing meat the way we do now is unsustainable. 

How would we get on with artificial meat – also known as in vitro meat, cultured meat or test tube meat ?    In vitro meat should not be confused with vegetarian foods such as Quorn sausages and other products.  Most meat is animal muscle. The process of developing in vitro meat involves taking muscle cells from an animal and applying a protein that helps the cells to grow into large portions of meat. Once the cells have been obtained, additional animals would not be needed. As of 2012, thirty laboratories around the world have announced that they are working on research into artificial meat. Scientists have to make the product profitable for corporations in order for them to take this emerging technology into consideration and to invest in it.  The challenge will be finding an industrial process, rather than a scientific process to make in vitro meat cheaper than conventional meat.  Assuming that the proper materials are used and conditions remain ideal, two months of in vitro meat production could deliver up to 50,000 tons of meat from ten pork muscle cells.  So, is it a technological challenge worth pursuing?  Will it be enough to stave off food poverty in the coming decades as the world’s population increases relentlessly.

Another technological ‘miracle’ is the fact that on-demand organ transplants have moved a step closer. Scientists have for the first time successfully engineered a synthetic kidney - a break through that could have massive benefits those waiting for donor organs. Scientists led by Harald Ott of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston created the synthetic kidney using an existing bioengineering process that has previously been used in the manufacture of artificial windpipes and in successful human transplants.  Dr Ott is quoted as saying “ In an ideal world, such grafts could be produced on demand from a patients own cells, helping us overcome both the organ shortage and the need for chronic immunosuppression”  (Independent 14 April 2013).

It is estimated that some 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for a donor kidney. The above research will not yield a viable organ for human transplantation for a number of years yet, but the techniques used here are incredibly promising for future research and point to one day reaching the goal of being able to quickly manufacture new organs for those in need, something that could save countless lives.  Greater understanding of genetics and micro-organisms is changing the nature of medicine.

These are just two examples of wonderful developments in science and technology – but are they going to create a better world for its inhabitants?  Not necessarily so.  On issues that require far-reaching compromises, short-term and nationalistic preferences tend to dominate.  For instance, Monsanto’s development of specially coated anti-drought seeds did not really benefit those who needed the benefit most: the small farmers of India.  “It seems increasingly obvious, as the third millennium evolves, that we must adapt to the likelihood that environmental, health, security and resource problems will persist at a threatening level.  Each of these technological developments could be used to magnify the repressive power of governments to create new instruments of harm. For all the euphemistic correctness in ministries of “defence” no security system spurns the construction of offensive capability. Technology itself, in the electronic, nanotechnology and cyber fields, has become an instrument of military power.” (UNA-UK New World, Spring 2013)

In fact, the whole advance of science and technology requires a context of effective regulation and supervision, as well as good government and international co-operation – rather than a complacent feeling that we can do as we like because technology will save the planet.

One thing that will save the planet is some form of population control.  There are just too many of us on this earth and our numbers are increasing to unsustainably.  2013 is predicted to see the biggest baby boom in the UK in 40 years.  Nobody can work out the reason for this but adding an extra generation of consumers to an over-burdened planet does not seem the best way of going about things.  Earlier, I mentioned the countless lives that organ growing would save, but wouldn’t this make the overpopulation even more dire?

Martin Luther King had some wise words to say about population: "Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem."

Up to now, the subject of over-population has been the ‘elephant in the room’ – the subject that no one will discuss but that is changing – and the BBC (Radio 4) has hosted a series of talks and debates on the issue.  It is time to listen and join in.

The New Slave Labour

Who would think that in 2013, the situation of domestic workers would be no better  than in Victorian times? The UN Agency The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has just produced a report entitled Domestic Workers, which is the first of its kind looking in depth at working conditions and the extent of legal protection enjoyed by domestic workers worldwide.  At least 52 million domestic workers worldwide experience poor working conditions and insufficient legal protection, according to the report.

The report also reveals that these domestic workers (a person who is employed in a private household carrying out domestic work such as cleaner, gardener and elderly carer) of whom 83% are female, account for 7.5% of women’s wage employment worldwide - and a far greater share in some regions, particularly Asia, the Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Despite the size of the sector, many domestic workers experience poor working conditions and insufficient legal protection.  Sandra Polaski, ILO deputy Director General, said: “Domestic workers are frequently expected to work longer hours than other workers and in many countries do not have the same rights to weekly rest that are enjoyed by other workers - combined with the lack of rights, the extreme dependency on the employer and the isolated and unprotected nature of domestic work can render them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.”

The ILO report showed that only 10% of all domestic workers are covered by general labour legislation to the same extent as other workers. More than a quarter are completely excluded from national labour organisation.

More than half of all domestic workers have no limitation on their weekly normal hours under national law and approximately 45% have no entitlement to weekly rest periods.  Just over half of all domestic workers are entitled to a minimum wage equivalent to that of other workers.  Lack of legal protection increases domestic workers vulnerability and makes it difficult for them to seek remedies. As a result they are often paid less than workers in comparable occupations and work longer hours.

The report showed that live-in domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation since they are often paid a flat weekly or monthly rate irrespective of hours worked. In practice, that means a domestic worker is available whenever needed.

Sandra Polaski added: “ The large disparities between wages and working conditions of domestic workers compared to other workers in the same country underline the need for action at the national level by governments, employers and workers to improve the working lives of these vulnerable but hardworking individuals.”

The report also showed that between the mid-1990s and 2010, there was an increase of more than 19 million domestic workers worldwide.  Many migrate to other countries to find work.  The ILO suggests it is likely that the figures contained in the report underestimate the true numbers of domestic workers worldwide, which may in reality be tens of millions more.

The figures also exclude child domestic workers below the age of 15 that are not included in the surveys used by the report.  Their number was estimated by the ILO at 7.4 million in 2008. 

The report, published recently by the ILO covered 117 countries and had an employment coverage of 88.7% within those countries.

A little bit of history of this very effective UN agency: The ILO was founded in 1919, in the wake of a destructive war, to pursue a vision based on the premise that universal, lasting peace can be established only if it is based on social justice. The ILO became the specialized agency of the UN in 1946.  It is now the international organisation responsible for drawing up and overseeing international labour standards.

One of the great strengths of the United Nations is its global reach.  No other organisation could conduct such a wide-ranging survey with authority. It is also in a position to put pressure on national governments to make sure that they introduce humane laws to protect workers in their country. 

The position of the British Government on the issue of domestic workers is interesting.  On 12^th December 2012, the Kate Willingham of Anti-Slavery International wrote to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills as follows: “Today, 12 December 2012, is being marked globally as a day of action for ratification of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which has now entered into force following its formal adoption by four countries. On this occasion, we urge you and your colleagues to promote and protect the rights of domestic workers by ratifying the Convention and its accompanying Recommendation, as well as restoring essential protections for migrant domestic workers in the UK.” 

Convention No. 189 is a ground breaking treaty which establishes the first global standards for the estimated 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and girls, who clean, cook, and care for children and the elderly in private households. Despite their contributions to the global economy, domestic workers are vulnerable to a wide range of abuses. These include excessive hours of work with no rest, non-payment of wages, forced confinement, physical and sexual abuse, forced labour and trafficking.  Convention No. 189 provides desperately needed and long overdue protections, including special protections for child domestic workers and migrant domestic workers.

Despite this the UK Government has publically stated in an explanatory memorandum laid before Parliament on 27 April 2012, that whilst the UK supports the principles behind the Domestic Workers Convention, it does not think that ratification of the Convention is appropriate for the UK because of the burdens that implementing the health and safety provisions would impose on UK business and citizens.

This very short-term view will store up future trouble for the UK Border Agency, the Home Office and most of all for thousands of UK domestic workers themselves.

Long on carbon, short on planning

Will the long-awaited energy bill, which is due out this week, mean that the UK finally has an energy policy worth having?

I, for one, would not bet any money on it, having taken due note of Andrew Simms’ article in the Observer: “Every part of our society depends on energy. Yet we don’t have a plan” and the accompanying leader on 21 October.  But there definitely ought to be a sense of urgency in the air – an urgency from the culmination not of months, or even years, but decades of inaction in a country that has taken energy supply for granted due to the geological fortune of North Sea oil and gas.  But this sea-bed fortune has been squandered by a succession of governments. The UK now needs a source of secure and sustainable energy.

Since 2008, two different governments have had the chance to create countless jobs, build a better energy system, ensure Britain has warmer homes in winter and tackle climate change by investing in a “green new deal” but they have failed.  In spite of high prices and climate change targets, there is still a sense in which energy policy is stuck in the mindset that characterised transport and energy policy back in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the market is over-concentrated, with too few, too large self-interested energy companies that regulators cannot or won’t regulate in the public interest. Second, it is precisely because Britain has failed aggressively to diversify its energy supply, that it remains highly vulnerable to changes in the prices of fossil fuels. 

It cannot be exaggerated how much the fate of transport, farming, households and industry is sewn into the fabric of the energy system. The Government talks the need for a “mix” of fossil fuels and renewables to meet our carbon output targets but it is actually cutting the amount of investment in renewables like solar, wind and tide, while writing a blank cheque in subsidy for the nuclear and gas industries.   Chancellor George Osborne is pushing the so-called “dash for gas” above all else, while the Committee on Climate Change (the government’s official advisor) has warned that extensive use of gas is incompatible with carbon targets and therefore should not be government policy.  Focusing on the two most economically and environmentally expensive forms of energy – nuclear and gas – at a time of austerity proves that the government’s thinking on energy supply is shambolic.  Why is the UK so out-of-step with other countries – like Germany - for instance?

Following the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, the German government announced a new energy strategy that is nuclear-free, affordable and sustainable. This strategy is based on:
• A fundamental commitment to energy reduction
• Focussed investment to ensure that renewables and energy storage are fit-for-purpose in the 21st century
• Proven bridging technologies such as combined heat and power (CHP)
• A decentralised power supply tailored to regional/local needs
. 

This decision was underscored by courage, vision and commitment. To quote from its report, Germany’s Energy Turnaround – a collective effort for the future:
“Germany must walk down the path of phasing out nuclear power with the courage to try out the new, with confidence in its own strengths and with a fixed procedure in place for monitoring and guiding the process.…Germany could demonstrate to the international community that phasing out nuclear power is the opportunity for a high-performance economy.” 

In contrast, the UK government’s position on our energy future, and nuclear energy in particular, is short-sighted and cavalier. Its determination to secure a new generation of nuclear power stations is undermining our environmental and economic future by:
• compromising the viability of the renewables sector
• increasing the risk of contamination from low-level radiation emissions and from long-term nuclear waste storage
• making us hostage to higher energy bills under the monopoly of the Big Six providers

Yet there is one drastic difference from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Although Margaret Thatcher warned about climate change, then there was still time to turn on the calamitous ship she was steering. Now it is today that we need to effect root and branch reductions in carbon emissions. We must do it today, and for the next nine or ten years, to have any chance of keeping the temperature within anything like reasonable limits. And those years are exactly the years in which any nuclear renaissance would be belching out carbon dioxide most flatulently, as the pilings are driven, the steel forged, the seas dredged for ballast, the concrete poured, the land mined for uranium and the stations erected by monstrous cranes – all done by fossil fuel. Without a watt of electricity to show for it, and without any marked change of direction at all planned by a feckless government.

Look please again at the first bullet point on which the German strategy is based - a fundamental commitment to energy reduction. Lacking that – and sadly there is no genuine sign of it – the government’s energy bill can only be the stuff of bad dreams.

Up The Creek Without a Paddle - Britain's Nuclear Industry

While reading the local paper last night, I came across a small article nestling close to the fold of a page.  The headline read: A Warning Over Energy Shortfall.  The article went on to say that Britain is facing the rising risk of an energy shortfall within three years.  The energy regulator, Ofgem, said that energy supplies were being hit by the closure of ageing coal, oil-fired and nuclear power stations and being hit at the same time by tough European Union environmental laws. 

The report predicted that the amount of spare capacity in the UK could plunge from the current 14% to just 4% in 2015, leaving the UK at risk of significant shortfalls. This is sobering stuff and brings the crisis home to people in their own living rooms – or wherever they like to read their newspaper.  How can the situation have become so desperate?  Well, first of all it stems from the government’s wilfully blind obsession with nuclear power and its failure to engage with renewable energy in a purposeful way. Secondly, having put most of its eggs in a nuclear basket, it now has to watch as one by one members of the consortia who were to build Britain’s new nuclear power stations are pulling out due to ever rising costs. The government has bent over backwards to accommodate the nuclear industry. At present it is trying to concoct an energy bill that will give aspiring nuclear plant builders big enough returns to overcome their fears.  However, it has promised that this should not involve any public subsidy at all and will be held to this by both the political opposition and the public.  Yet no nuclear power station has ever been built without public subsidy – and everyone knows this, so we’re all in ‘never never’ land, but dare not admit it.

And it is not just the cost of the new nuclear power stations. On 4^th October, the European Commission published the results of its “stress tests” on all nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster, revealing hundreds of defects. Practically all of the 134 nuclear reactors in the European Union – including Sizewell B in Suffolk - need safety improvements at a cost of up to £20 billion, a bill that is likely to be passed on to the consumer in higher electricity prices.  Whoever said that nuclear electricity would be “too cheap to meter”?

Where will all this money go?  I would like to quote a paragraph from “This is Money” on 7^th October 2012, which answers that question  : “A set of negotiations that have the ability to swipe tens of billions out of the public purse and into private coffers. Chinese investors may be about to pick up part of the tab for building some of our new nuclear power stations, but this is not out of the goodness of their hearts. French energy group, EdF, in partnership with British Gas owner Centrica, has been embroiled in long negotiations with the Government over what will effectively be a subsidy to help them cover the huge building costs of these new generators. The Government is worried that unless we get these plants built – and quickly – there is a real chance that the lights will go out.  But some of the numbers now being talked about in terms of price guarantees for the energy giants are astronomical.  The highly regarded Supporters of Nuclear Energy group has calculated that, after building costs have been paid, the firms will coin a cool £4 billion a year in profits.  And these power stations are expected to run for 50 years or so.  That is an awful lot of our money likely to find its way into the pockets of EdF and Centrica.  Certainly the Government’s negotiating position is not strong.  Despite a belief that, should push come to shove, we could throw up a load of gas-fired power stations to cover any gap, there is still a conviction in Whitehall that we will be in severe trouble unless these nuclear plants are built.” 

To go back to the little notice in our local paper – everyone seems to have forgotten that when Tony Blair suddenly changed his mind in 2005 and said we must have more nuclear power, the reason he gave was that unless we did, we could face exactly the shortage that our local paper has suddenly discovered for us – the retirement of ageing coal and nuclear power plants and personnel.   Perhaps the paper has also forgotten that at the time many people with foresight were saying: “Yes – you’d better get on and encourage benign renewables too, because unless you do there will be nothing except carbon profligate gas to replace those ageing stations.”

On the subject of ageing reactors and personnel, a specialist engineer who worked at Hinkley Point nuclear power station for almost thirty years recently slammed the nuclear industry’s approach to safety and predicted that a Fukushima-type disaster in the UK was “almost inevitable”.  Speaking at a rally organised to oppose the construction of a new mega-reactor at the Somerset power station, Peter Smith said “Over the years, I became more and more aware of the dangers and the dark side of nuclear power”.   Smith, who was head of the electrical and instrumentation section at Hinkley before he retired, said he had seen corner-cutting from the design stage onwards. At Hinkley, major safety systems were omitted and others only implemented after accidents.   He concluded that human error makes it impossible for nuclear power to be 100% safe.

Commenting on EdF Energy’s bid to build a new EPR reactor at Hinkley, Smith added: “The nuclear industry suffers from the delusion that nuclear power is safe.” And he raised the issue of the lack of nuclear engineering expertise in the nuclear industry: “The reason there was never a major incident at Hinkley was because there were experts like me who knew the systems inside out. These experts are now retiring or moving to other sectors. If you combine this brain drain with increasing commercial pressures and old reactors being pushed to perform beyond their intended lifespan, you’re creating a recipe for disaster.”

Neither Blair nor Cameron have done anything but try to fiddle a political way around the crisis – and it is left to the local Eastern Daily Press to play the role of Macbeth’s witches and warn us all of doom.

But there is something the government could do – and should have done by now. They could invoke the “war time spirit” and engage people with a vision of helping get Britain through this energy crisis. The government could promote and lead a wholehearted change of attitude towards selfishness and greed – including an end to the squandering of electricity as happens everywhere at present.  This would be a more honest way of going on – instead of acting like Tony Blair and refusing to even consider telling people to do anything that might affect their life-styles (his reported response to a suggestion to ask people to switch to low energy light bulbs!)

Useful links:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2213885/LISA-BUCKINGHAM-Nuclear-deal-likely-leave-toxic-legacy.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9591653/Government-mulls-underwriting-risk-of-new-nuclear-plants.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3fca7f88-0ece-11e2-ba6b-00144feabdc0.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/column-wynn-nuclear-waste-idUSL6E8L455C20121005

A Solution That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Seeing the crowds packed into Trafalgar Square and the Mall to welcome the Olympians and Para-Olympians recently gave me pause for reflection. I had thought that one only saw crowds like that at the Kaaba in Mecca or in the streets of Bombay. For a small country we certainly pack in an awful lot of people. This is a matter of concern for some and something that must not be spoken about for others.  

The Forum for the Future produced a report in 2010 called Growing Pains, about human numbers, which was well covered in the media at the time – yet it did not spark the much-needed national debate and the issues it raised are rarely discussed now.  Population as a discussion topic is off-limits for most UK politicians, in a way that plays into the hands of illiberal and xenophobic organisations.

However, the UK population is projected to grow at its fastest rate since the post-war ‘baby boom’, increasing from 61.4 million now to 70.6 million in 2030. A further 9 million people by then will increase pressures on public services, infrastructures and the natural environment – all requiring long-term planning. Therefore all major public infrastructure bodies and service providers should carry out detailed planning for the impacts of continued population growth. So far there is little sign of that and it will not happen if the political will is not there. Back in 1972, at the first UN Conference on Environment and Human Development in Stockholm, population was a big, controversial topic of debate. If governments had started planning then, we would not be facing the crisis we are now.  So,why the vast silence?  A possible explanation for that is that environmental NGOs and opinion formers are anxious that we concentrate our minds on environmental degredation and over –consumption in the rich world – while ignoring the ultimate cause of both of these pressing problems: over population. Jonathon Porritt worked on the Royal Society’s People and Planet report which came out in April 2012 and it is well worth reading – although it shies away from tackling over-population head on.

The reason for this is the almost universal preconception that “coercion lies at the heart of the population control agenda”.   This stems from the fear of China’s one-child policy being repeated here. But this need not be the case. Deciding voluntarily to limit your family to two children would be another way of dealing with the problem.  Jonathon Porritt says: “A voluntary, rights-based approach is the only way to promote effective family planning. In other words, make family planning and other reproductive health services freely available and fully accessible to everyone – and empowering and encouraging them to use it”.  I heard the Duke of Cambridge say recently that he would like two children and wondered if he and the Duchess of Cambridge were knowingly setting a trend! 

In July this year I attended the “UN Forum 2012 – Bringing the UN to the UK”. This was the largest civil society gathering on the United Nations in the UK this year. It was organised by the United Nations Association (UNA-UK) and was an opportunity for people of all walks of life to come together and discuss some of the most pressing challenges facing the world today – from intractable conflicts to sustainable development.

The Forum was well attended by people of all ages – and yes, it did tackle the issue of over-population in one of its workshops. One of the speakers on the panel was Sara Parkin OBE. She is a Director of The Forum for the Future. She spoke passionately about the need to educate women in the developing world on birth control and access to contraception. She demonstrated that the issue of birth control is linked to population growth, which is inevitable linked to sustainability and climate change – and she referred to the Secretary General of that 1972 Conference, Maurice Strong, who said bluntly back then: “Either we reduce our population voluntarily, or nature will do it for us brutally.”  

As a species we think that we have – or will have - the technology to solve the problems of population growth and climate change. This is an arrogant and foolish pretension. The reality is far more complicated.  Sara Parkin had this to say: “Currently, rich countries are alone in showing a rise in average family size. With a disproportionate impact on the environment, this puts them on fragile ecological, moral and diplomatic territory. A child born in Europe accounts for 11 times more greenhouse gas emissions than one born in Africa; for North America, the figure is 24 times. (These do not include ‘offshore’ emissions embedded in imports.) Ultimately, it is clear that, with increasing pressure on key resources, such as land, food and water, everywhere, planning our family is a personal responsibility, as well as a global dilemma.” She also pointed out that: “The UN has three projections for the global population in 2100: High = 16 billion; Medium  = 10 billion (we are roughly on track for this); Low  = 6 billion .   And that lower projection - of 1 billion people fewer than there are now - is achievable”.

“This is a target that could be met simply by responding to the two hundred plus million couples around the world who say they want contraceptives to help plan their family but can’t get them, and by ensuring new generations get the information and contraceptives they need to plan their future families. There are countries with hugely successful programmes to learn from. Thailand, for example, has achieved lower birth rates without any sort of coercion, as has Iran, a country not often cited as an exemplar of world leadership. Above all we need – in the UK- to talk about the numbers of people and our demography as we plan for the future. Any hopes of ending environmental degradation, meeting the Millennium Development Goals, creating resilient communities and economies, and building trusted governance systems will be dashed unless there are fewer of us in the future than there are now. If we can’t do that by bringing down birth rates thoughtfully and carefully, then we shouldn’t be surprised if rising death rates do it for us. At all levels the crisis is a humanitarian one. The solutions are known, are cheap, and come with many collateral benefits”.

All that may well be so, but the political will to achieve them must be there too – and I leave you with the stark statement of Roger Martin, Chair of Population Matters. Reporting on the Earth Summit, he said: “I had to conclude that governments basically don’t care if the planet collapses under us in 20 years time. Their concerns are to get re-elected by providing short-term growth that unsustainable growth capitalism has persuaded us to demand. This raises the hugely challenging question of the tension between sustainability and democracy. The only solution is to persuade electorates to demand more sustainability and less consumption – easier said than done, when politics and the media are unanimously desperate for growth”.

Links to reports mentioned above:

www.populationmatters.org /

www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/growing-pains

www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/about_us/living_planet_report_2012

Don't Let The Dust Settle

The dust is beginning to settle after the excitement of the Olympics. Concerned groups got their message across to the organisers and sponsors about the human rights of all those contributing to the success of the Games – especially of those in exploitative working conditions in sweat shops around the world making trinkets, trainers and sportswear for the thousands of athletes and millions of fans.

However, there is another human right that I would like to mention and today – August 19^{th :} World Humanitarian Day - is as good day as any to talk about it. There is an element of ‘dust’ – both settling and air borne - in this story too. It is about Depleted Uranium (DU). The UKMinistry of Defence (MoD) describes DU as “a dense heavy metal, almost twice as dense as lead, which has the ability to self-sharpen on impact with armour making it highly suited to use asa kinetic energy anti-armour penetrator.” The MoD loves it goes on to say: “At present, no satisfactory alternative material exists to achieve the level of penetration needed todefeat the most modern battle tanks”. This is not necessarily true. The International Coalition to Ban UraniumWeapons (ICBUW) in their paper entitled “Overstating the case: an analysis of the utility of depleted uranium in kinetic energy penetrators” states that both the US and Germany have been carrying out research on modern tungsten alloys to replace depleted uranium use in anti-tank shells - and that the non-DU system used by Germany is more effective at penetration. Therefore “it is technically possible to design weapon systems that are equally as effective as DU, using alternative materials. All that is required is the political will for change within user states”.

What are the problems with DU weapons? ICBUW’s definition gives a hint: “Depleted uranium weapons are chemically toxic and radioactive weapons designed to pierce armour. Upon hitting their targets, DU penetrators release a fine, radioactive dust which can be inhaled and lodge in the lungs or travel to other parts of the body irradiating surrounding tissues with serious consequences that may not be revealed for years”. Studies have shown that DU can turn cells cancerous, and that it can cause chromosome damage, leukaemia, genomic instability, alpha-particle-induced cell transformation - and DU can also pass on damage to the next generation.

Watch this short film: “When the Dust Settles”

These weapons are known to have been used by the US and UK in the Balkans wars and the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003. There soldiers, civilian populations and the environment were all exposed to toxic residues from these indiscriminate weapons. Because DU weapons cannot distinguish between combatants and civilians, between animals and the environment, they are illegal under International Law. Their radioactive dust contaminates everything it touches.

Much research has been done on the huge increase in foetal damage and cancers in Iraq. As I write, the World Health Organisation, in partnership with the Iraqi Ministry of Health, is carrying out a pilot assessment of congenital birth defects in six Iraqi governorates – including Fallujah. This is long overdue. Significant international concern has been generated over reports from medical staff in cities such as Fallujah and Baghdad of spiralling rates of congenital birth defects. Fallujah, has become particularly notorious and civil society organisations have been arguing that the increases in monstrous birth deformities are linked to environmental contamination from the US-led attacks on the cities in 2004.

What is the position of the UK Government on the use of Depleted Uranium? The Government wishes to keep using DU on the upgraded version of its anti-armour tank rounds –called “Charm3”. On 10^thOctober 2011, the UK’s armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, assured Katy ClarkMP that a review had been carried out into the legality of Charm3 and that the use of this weapon was “permissible on humanitarian and environmental grounds under the Geneva Conventions” – to which the UK is a signatory, having ratified Article 36 – Additional Protocol 1 in 1998. But this turned out not to be the case because the MP asked to see the review and on 26 October Nick Harvey had to admit that no such review had ever taken place and he apologised for misleading parliament. On 31^st October, Mr Harvey ordered a review. On 12 July 2012, he told Parliament that the review was complete and that “Charm3 is capable of being used lawfully by UK Armed Forces in an international armed conflict.” This leaves Britain isolated in its unswerving loyalty to its Charm3.

In 2008, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on DU use – which was supported by a massive 94% of the MEPs. The UN passed a similar resolution in 2010, which was supported by 148 states. Only four states voted against the resolution, of which the UK was one. The US also has a record of voting against resolutions calling for the banning or suspension of DU weapons.

However, this October 2012, the UN General Assembly will vote on a fourth resolution on DU weapons.

The ICBUW and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) have launched an online petition, which calls for the US to stop opposing resolutions against depleted uranium – and is urging supporters to sign-up on line. This October resolution won’t ban DU weapons outright but with good support it will get us closer to that goal. Just four states are arguing against the resolutions: the US, UK, France and Israel. Of these, the US is the largest user of DU weapons.

Please add your signature to this important petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/change-the-us-un-vote-on-depleted-uranium-weapons-this-fall

Random Harvest?

By Marguerite Finn

I wasn’t sure whether to write this column or not – but it is an important story and it should be told. Last week I attended a meeting in Norwich and learned for the first time about the outlawed and persecuted Falun Gong movement in China. So I looked into it some more and found out some very disturbing facts about which we all should be aware. What follows is what I understand to be the case. It has not been possible to obtain the view of the Chinese Embassy here because I did not want to risk the confidentiality and vulnerability of my sources of information.

What is Falun Gong? The short answer is that Falun Gong is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, tolerance, and includes five sets of meditative exercises. In July 1999, the communist regime in China began persecuting people who practiced it – by which time its practitioners numbered about one hundred million.

Falun Gong is quintessentially Chinese – an ancient self-improvement practice whose roots stem from China’s 5000-year-old cultural traditions. It combines the practices of meditation, special techniques of breathing and slow moving qigong exercises and emphasises morality and the cultivation of virtue through its central tenets of Truthfulness, Tolerance and Compassion.

Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to better mental and physical health and, ultimately, spiritual enlightenment. It was first introduced into China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. The practice spread quickly by word of mouth, as people saw the lives of those around them changing for the better. Sickly grandmothers were transformed into the epitome of health. Couples nearing divorce saved their marriage. The impact extended beyond the immediate family circle. Policemen who learned Falun Gong would stop taking bribes and workers would stop stealing from their factories. Members of the Chinese Communist Party started taking it up. The party recognised that better health for the community would mean less drain on the state budget for medicine and health care. It was considered to have a stabilizing influence on society ( http://www.faluninfo.net/).

So what went wrong? When Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar in May 1992, he presented Falun Gong as part of a “centuries-old tradition of cultivation” but he suggested that the purpose of the practice should not primarily be physical health, nor the development of extraordinary powers, but rather it should be to purify one’s heart and attain spiritual salvation. Adherents of Falun Gong were encouraged to abandon negative thoughts, desires and behaviours such as greed, profit, lust, killing,violence, theft, deception, jealousy etc. They also refrained from drinking alcohol, smoking or drug taking, with the aim of refining the body into a higher form. The Chinese Government and the Communist Party took fright at the movement’s popularity and started to portray it as a religious sect or cult with “superstitious” views and saw it as a potential threat, outside of its control.

One day in 1999, some 15,000 Falun Gong practitioners took part in a demonstration to complain about some press reports that were unfavourable to the movement. They quietly sat down on the pavement and surrounded a government compound called Zhongnanhai in the centre of Beijing, which housed the places of residence and work of the Chinese leadership. Premier Zhu Rongji agreed to see a delegation from the protestors and instructed three members of staff to hear their complaints more fully. By 9pm that evening, the protestors had quietly made their way home. They did not shout slogans, carry banners or give out leaflets.The protest had been peaceful and non violent throughout. It is reported that they even collected their litter before they left. Nevertheless, many of them were arrested in the following days and taken to labour camps to be‘re-educated’. This was because one Chinese high-ranking official and former head of the Communist Party, by the name of Jiang Zemin, felt that Premier Zhuhad dealt with the protestors too leniently and he initiated a programme of persecution. Jiang Zemin forced officials at all levels to participate in eradicating Falun Gong.

Thousands of people were imprisoned and tortured for their belief and continue to be so to this day. A special government department called the “610 office” was set up to oversee and co-ordinate the persecution. Using the media and internet, the 610 office organised a propaganda campaign against a “heritical organisation” and the rhetoric in the state-run press escalated to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign,"anti-China" forces – no doubt helped by the fact that the Falun Gong founder, Li Hongzhi, in 1997 applied for asylum in New York and left China for good.

In the years since the suppression campaign began, the Falun Gong adherents have emerged as a prominent voice in the Chinese dissident community, advocating greater human rights and an end to the Communist Party rule. So it seems that the Chinese Government’s bizarre over-reaction brought about the one thing they feared most – political dissent on a large scale.

But, there is an even darker side to this story – and it concerns the harvesting of human organs for use in transplants. Organ transplanting in China is a booming trade. The numbers of organ transplants performed in China – and the speed at which organs become available – has raised international concern about the source of organs. The Chinese Communist Party admits that organs are harvested from executed prisoners – but insist that they have given their consent.

The practice is now so widespread and streamlined that enquirers are promised a transplant within one or two weeks –as opposed to the many months and even years that it takes in Western countries. To be able to do this, they have to have access to a huge stock of living organ “donors”. There is mounting evidence that thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed for their organs, which are sold and transplanted at enormous profit. The perpetrators are officials of the Chinese Communist Party acting in collaboration with surgeons, prison authorities and military officials. The recipients are predominantly those travelling internationally for health care. Strong circumstantial evidence points to adherents of Falun Gong being arrested in their tens of thousands in order to correct their way of thinking. When they are arrested they are given blood tests, ultra scans, and extensive medical tests – the results of which are recorded on a data base. This testing is not to their benefit as most are subsequently tortured for their belief – but blood matching is critical to organ donation.

Since 2006, witnesses have come forward and several international investigations have been carried out – the most widely publicised has been the report entitled “Bloody Harvest” http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ by two Canadian lawyers, David Matas and David Kilgour and another by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Dr Manfred Nowak. Both investigations concluded that somewhere in the range of 40,000 to 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been killed in this way from 2000 to 2006. An international group of doctors, including transplant surgeons, have formed an organisation “Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting” (DAFOH) to protest the practice and promote ethical practices in medicine. (www.dafoh.org). It is important to remind ourselves that, as Human Rights Watch said in a statement: “None of the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners detained, arrested or convicted, have been held in connection with violent actions or threats of violence. Instead, their “crime” is their belief in Falun Gong.”

These innocent victims are being held without trial in labour camps until their blood happens to match that of a prospective organ transplant recipient. The Falun Gong prisoner is then taken away and his organs are removed while he/she is still alive. Their bodies are quickly cremated to cover up the traces of organ removal.

The DAFOH are examining the fact that the distinction between life and death has been redefined, specifically for the benefit of transplantation. They say: “For heart transplantation to succeed, death has had to be redefined as brain death.Transplantation unquestionably pushed the boundaries of what doctors would and would not do and, in turn, society accepted the new definitions. For multiple organ donation to be achieved, something that would have been horrific in another time became not only tolerable but laudable under the new rules. The blunting of our visceral responses and the redefining of ethical boundaries are steps that could lead us, if we are not careful, to the ethicists’ slippery slope and must be recognized as such.”

If you think that the horrific situation in China could never happen here, I would like to mention a small article that I found at the bottom of page 16 in The Guardian on Saturday 28^th July 2012. It said that the: “NHS moots a shake-up of organ transplant rules” and went on to say that the NHS is considering prolonging the lives of people who have no chance of surviving in order to harvest their organs. They are also thinking of making people opt out rather than in to the donor register– meaning that they would presume consent to organ removal unless people have actively opted out. It seems that the Welsh assembly has formally adopted this possibility.

One sentence sent a shiver up my spine. It talked about “New financial rewards for intensive care units for every organ they provide”. This conjured up a vision of market-driven competition between hospitals to reach targets for the number of organs harvested. Ethically, we could be standing on the tip of a very slippery slope.

The subject needs much debate and openness. We may not start persecuting Falun Gong in the UK, but the public needs to be constantly vigilant where the question of medical ethics is concerned. And of course, there is the other ethical question about using transplants to prolong life, when there are already too many of us on this planet – but that is a column for another day!

Some other sites of interest are: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/nine-commentaries-on-the-communist-party-introduction-225078.html

http://www.nla.gov.au/benjamin-perry/the-past-present-and-future-of-falun-gong

http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/cult-that-is-falun-gong.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulun_Gong

The Lake District is being sacrificed to the spin doctors

By Marguerite Finn

Some people get very exercised over “freedom of the press” and hold it up as one of the most important elements of our democracy. Much evidence exists to prove that our press and our media generally are far from being independent and free from bias.

Some of the one-sided coverage of the situation in Syria is one example. How often do we hear of atrocities carried out by government forces with no mention of the death and destruction wrought by the armed opposition? We are never really told if the so-called “friends of Syria” (the foreign governments providing arms and training) want to sustain a people’s revolution or merely to effect a regime change to suit their own agendas.

However, I have an example that is much nearer to home. It comes from our beautiful Lake District. There is strong evidence of on-going collusion between government and the press to present to the public a biased view of the proposed storage of radioactive nuclear waste in the Lake District.

The NGO entitled Radiation Free Lakeland says: “There appears to be a desired and timetabled government narrative being presented to the public, aided and abetted by press collusion” and the NGO has written to Tim Farron MP expressing their concerns about this collusion between the government, the PR companies contracted to the Managing Radioactive Wastes Safely Partnership (MRWS) and the press. Radiation Free Lakeland’s letter to Tim Farron MP also states: “the results of a misleading Ipsos Mori Poll were leaked to Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times on 13^th May. This is a full 9 days before the official announcement in Whitehaven on 22 May. The article was repeated in the Daily Mirror. Other national and local press have taken their cue from this to report: “Cumbrian Residents Support Nuclear Dump”

In contrast, Radiation Free Lakeland sent press releases to the national press about the Cumbria Parish and Town Councils’ opposition to a nuclear dump but nothing of that has ever made it into print.

The Sunday Times on 13^thMay announced quite cheerily that “Britain may have found a final dumping ground for its vast stockpile of nuclear waste: deep under the Lake District. The dump, underneath farmland in west Cumbria, would become a graveyard for thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste built up by the nuclear industry since the 1940s.” This was jumping the gun in an irresponsible way when no such decision had been reached. The Sunday Times further insinuated that the Cumbrian councils had been swayed by “tens of millions of pounds in planning sweetners” and were prepared to support the idea of a dump – provided the incentives were right. This is the sort of malicious reporting that the Murdoch press often to indulges in.

But the future of the Lake District is at stake here and the issues deserve to be reported honestly. There are many fingers in this murky pie. The partnership between the PR companies and Managing Radioactive Wastes Safely (MRWS) is at the heart of discussions. Their aim is to persuade Cumbrians and the rest of us that it will be safe to store highly radioactive waste underground in the Lake District and that there will be no environmental repercussions.

Here’s how they plan to do that: in September 2011, two consultancies, Sedley Place and The Communications Group, were appointed by MRWS to carry out a study on whether the Cumbria and Lake District “brand name” would suffer from negative perceptions if the county were to take part in the Government’s search for a suitable underground repository for higher-activity radioactive waste. Cumbria and the Lake District have strong “brands” which benefit the tourism and food industries, as well as other sectors that trade off the area’s reputation. The study looked at the area as a tourism destination, as a place to live and work, a place to study and learn as well as a place to invest. The study found that Cumbria had a distinctive and valuable “brand” and that there was a potential risk to this brand if any of these categories believed the brand had become tainted or contaminated.

It set out ways in which the damage to the brand could be limited, managed and avoided and recommended putting in place a “phased communications campaign” using a variety of different communication methods. Richard Greenwood, head of policy and researchat Cumbria Tourism was pleased that the study outlined ways to deal with any risk to how the county could be perceived and noted that it would “help direct the thinking of the Partnership” – which suggested to me the willing acceptance of a positive spin being placed on each and every pronouncement to do with the geological disposal of nuclear waste in Cumbria.

How would we feel if the government was planning to bury nuclear waste under the Broads.

Those of us who know and love the Broads would not be very impressed if Broadland District Council appointed a consultancy to spin the advantages and minimise the dangers, in their search for the best spot.

That is what is happening in Cumbria. So much for a free and independent press.

I will end on an ironic note. There is already nuclear waste stored in Cumbria. It is stored above ground at Sellafield. Sellafield used to be called Windscale until there was a disastrous fire there in October 1957. It was the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain’s history. A nuclear reactor designed to produce plutonium for the UK’s nuclear weapons wasn’t making it as quickly as the government wished, so modifications were made beyond the reactor’s original design plan, which led to catastrophic overheating and substantial releases of radioactive contamination. However, in order that the nuclear disaster of Windscale should not give a negative perception to the “brand” of Cumbria and drive away the tourists and businesses, the name of the site was changed to Sellafield. No body mentions Windscale today. Windscale was rated at 5 on the INES scale,compared with Fukushima’s 7, but how many people know that, thanks to the PR consultancies.

Plus ca change . . . . .

Images: Keswick from Charity Shop Tourism; Sellafield in the 1950s

Tax Havens – for Whom?

By Marguerite Finn

On Wednesday 4^th April I attended what promised to be a fascinating event at the Kings Centre in Kings Street, Norwich. A “Tax Injustice Question Time” was organised by Christian Aid. The topic for discussion was how the Government should handle the issue of large scale tax avoidance by multinational companies. The evening started with a presentation on the topic by Helen Collinson, a senior member of Christian Aid’s UK Campaigns Team. Questions from the audience were then put to a panel of politicians comprising the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Conservative MP for Norwich North, Chloe Smith, the Liberal Democrat MP for Norwich South, Simon Wright, and former Norwich Councillor and Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsay.

The campaign “End Tax Haven Secrecy” was very well presented by Helen Collinson. She demonstrated how tax dodging on a massive scale by some unscrupulous multinational companies is depriving poor countries of the revenues that could fund public services such as basic sanitation, good healthcare and the education of children. Christian Aid estimates that tax dodging costs poor countries US$160bn every year. This is what keeps poor countries poor. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – a body that brings together the world’s wealthiest nations – recognises that developing countries are losing more from tax dodging than they receive in aid.

How does this happen? There are a number of reasons why multinational companies are able to dodge paying their taxes, but a key reason is the lack of transparency in the global financial system. This financial secrecy makes it easy for companies to shift money between different parts of their business around the world. Sometimes such transfers are for legitimate reasons but in many cases they are designed to dodge taxes in the country whose resources are exploited, so that the profits may be enjoyed elsewhere.

One common method of tax dodging is for a company to manipulate its profits and revenues through ‘tax havens’ which combine high levels of secrecy with very low or even zero tax rates.

To get an idea of the strength of the tax haven economy, we have to appreciate that more than half of the world trade (on paper) passes through tax havens. In addition, more than half of all banking assets and a third of multinational company investments are routed through tax havens. As recently as 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that the money on the balance sheets of small island tax havens alone amounted to US$18tn – about a third of the world’s entire financial wealth.

Multinational companies use tax havens to hold huge sums of money that would attract tax in other countries.

It works like this:

• a company extracts a resource (say diamonds) in a poor country. It creates a subsidiary company in a tax haven to which it sells the diamonds at cost price so there is no profit to be taxed in the poor country of origin.

• The subsidiary sells the diamonds at a profit to a rich country, but as the tax haven charges little or no tax, the company’s profits are huge.

• The identity of the parent company (that owns both the subsidiary and associated bank accounts in the tax haven) is usually kept secret so that the true extent of profits made and taxes dodged remains hidden.

As Christian Aid says: “An end to tax haven secrecy would make it easier for tax authorities in all countries – including developing countries – to detect where tax dodging is going on and claw back the money they are losing.”

Christian Aid’s campaign “Trace The Tax” proposes specific measures to help end tax haven secrecy:

• A multilateral agreement requiring tax authorities all over the world – including tax havens – to exchange information about the assets of companies and individuals within their jurisdictions, with tax authorities in other countries.

• A new international accounting standard requiring multinational companies to report on their profits made and taxes paid in every country where they have subsidiary companies – including tax havens.

To make these aspirations more concrete – a campaign of letter writing took place in February to UK’s business minister, Norman Lamb calling on him to support new EU transparency laws for oil, mining and forestry companies. There is, however, a danger that because of intense lobbying by oil, mining and forestry industries, some MEP’s might renege on their resolution and water down the transparency laws so as to render them useless for stopping tax dodging. One wonders how Christian Aid’s efforts at lobbying compare with those slippery and wealthy multinational giants? And is that fair or democratic?

Europe is important in this campaign because some of the most notorious tax havens are on European territory, such as Luxembourg, and Switzerland (Geneva and Zug) and Ireland. For example, in Zug the tax rate varies between 15% and 16% as against a corporate tax in USA of 35%. Other ‘off-shore’ tax havens offer taxes as low as 3% or even zero tax – such as in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Britain has a key role to play because at least three of the major tax havens are within her jurisdiction: the Isle of Mann and the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. The City of London itself is considered by many to be a tax haven. Part of Christian Aid’s campaign is to target the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, asking him to take a lead at the forthcoming G20 meeting in Mexico and call for tax havens to be pushed to share tax information with developing countries and to call for multinational companies to report their taxes paid and their profits made on a country by country basis. The Prime Minister should also be asked to support and promote the UN Millennium Development Goals.

This was meaty stuff indeed for the event in the Kings Centre but for some reason it never really took off – the questions were weak and did not seem to hold the two MPs to say what they were prepared to do to bring about an end to tax haven secrecy. Chloe Smith MP suggested that keeping taxes low to encourage multinationals to move part of their business to a tax haven could bring welcome jobs to that country. This was to ignore the real problem of cheating the developing country (whose mineral resources were providing the profit) out of the legitimate taxes due to it. Also the problem is hardly one of the tax havens being poor, as Chloe seemed to be suggesting. Are Switzerland or the Cayman Islands poor and needing welcome jobs? They seem to be doing very nicely by attracting so many big companies to use them by reason of their low taxes – but no one took Chloe up on this.

Paying fair taxes would enable a developing country to overcome its poverty by investing in health, education and clean water for its people and eventually to reduce its dependence on overseas aid.

Photo from article on Amazon Books (who pay no corperation tax) in The Guardian this week; poster highlighting Vodaphone by UK Uncut.

For more information on this vital and urgent topic, go to www.christianaid.org.uk

‘Now the crimson poppy – now the white’

By Marguerite Finn

The ceremonies surrounding Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday have been laid to rest for another year but reverberations linger on in letters and articles in the media. Apparently this year was a record year for the sale of red poppies. It may also be a record year for the number of people questioning the way this country remembers its war dead. Many would say that there has been a shift of emphasis from remembrance of the dead to an emphasis on support of the UK’s armed services – and the iconic red poppy has been compromised by this.

In the week leading up to Remembrance Sunday, a poll commissioned by the Ekklesia Think Tank produced some remarkable results. The poll findings contradict the jingoistic approach taken by Britain’s politicians and the tabloid press. Instead of concentrating on the “glorious” aspect of the soldiers who gave their lives fighting for our freedom and promulgating the belief that war was noble and justified, the majority of people questioned preferred to remember and mourn the totality of war with all its horrors, violence, agony and brutality. In fact, 95 percent of those surveyed said that the main message of Remembrance Sunday should be one of peace and 87 percent agreed that Remembrance Sunday should be about marking the dead on all sides of war and not just the British. An amazing 93 percent also felt that civilians who died in war should be remembered.

Ekklesia’s co-director, Jonathan Bartley, explained: “When Archbishop Robert Runcie remembered the Argentinian dead in a service in St Paul’s Cathedral after the Falklands conflict, he caused a political storm. Now it appears that the overwhelming majority feel that deaths on all sides in war should be remembered.”

Ekklesia says that the time has come for us to update our remembrance traditions and to acknowledge that we cheapen remembrance if we do not recognise the full tragedy of war for everyone – soldiers, civilians, environment and animals – and make an active commitment to peace. This signals a change from the militaristic remembrances of which this year was a good example.

In the years immediately after the First World War, “Victory Balls” were held on the 11^th November to celebrate the successful outcome of the war. These occasions, which commemorated the war with dancing, music and food, attracted much criticism from those who saw militaristic values in such remembrance, rather than a commitment to peace without violence. In 1925, a great victory ball was planned to take place on Armistice Day in the Royal Albert Hall, but it was cancelled and replaced by a service of remembrance instead. The service was arranged by Canon Dick Sheppard, who was later involved in the founding of the Peace Pledge Union. In 1921 the red poppy became the national symbol of remembrance in Britain.

The Peace Pledge Union is the source of the white poppy. White poppies first made their appearance in 1933 when members of the Women’s Co-operative Guild – many of them mothers, sisters, widows and sweethearts of men killed in the First World War – anxiously noted the growing domestic and international tensions. They saw that the so-called ‘war to end all wars’, in which their men fought and died, could be followed by an even worse war. The white poppy was born from their concern and its aim was to spark debate and rally support for resistance to war. Over 300 wars later, the white poppy is still a painful reminder of the world’s failure to prevent war.

The white poppy has not enjoyed a good press. During the 1930s, many women who wore white poppies lost their jobs. In 1986, Margaret Thatcher condemned white poppies in response to an MP’s question. Nevertheless, this year several voices have been raised to suggest that people should be given the choice of wearing a white or red poppy – or both. The white poppy, with the word ‘peace’ at its centre was not designed to be in competition with the Red Poppy. In 1926, members of the No More War Movement suggested that red poppies should have “no more war” inscribed in their centre. The idea was rejected by the British Legion. When a few years later, the Women’s Co-operative Guild created the white poppy, it emphasised their hope for peace, as well as commemorating those who had died in war.

Since their inception, white poppies have caused a mixture of irritation, annoyance and anger amongst those who have interpreted them as a sign of disrespect. However, a crucial difference remains between the red and white poppy. In their refusal to state “no more war” or “peace” red poppies leave space to acknowledge the necessity of war, which white poppies challenge. It would not be right to suggest that red poppies glorify war but combined with the semi-religious language used in remembrance ceremonies, they do suggest the idea that redemption through war is possible. It cannot be denied that the red poppy has taken on both a political and religious meaning. The language of remembrance is full of religious ideology upholding the spiritual justification for war – as in phrases like “the glorious dead” and “they died for God, King and Country”. In some circles there is an obligation amounting almost to political correctness, to wear a red poppy and thereby to imply support for the armed forces whatever they are doing.

This is dangerous in an era of continuing resource wars with new and more sophisticated weapons (eg ‘drones’) threatening to kill more civilians. What is needed in future is a more inclusive remembrance covering opposing sides in a conflict, all the civilians killed and the devastation to the environment through chemical weapons.

The horrors of war should be remembered above all. If, as seems very likely at present with the Middle East – and possibly even Europe – about to go up in flames, then maybe we will not have time to remember the sadness of past wars. We may be too busy coping with present ones. Doesn’t that suggest that, however much red poppies have helped damaged service people, they have not helped to prevent war. Something wrong somewhere.

With acknowledgement to Ekklesia’s report:” Re-imagining Remembrance”

(http:// www.ekklesia.co.uk/research/re-imagining_remembrance

War By Remote Control

By Marguerite Finn

The military-industrial complex is never idle. War is big business and the US is engaged in developing a new and more lethal generation of weapons. The most widely known of these weapons is the drone or ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’ (UAV). These drones enable targeted killings across national borders and the New America Foundation estimates that a third of casualties are civilians. The US deploys armed drones in six countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya and Somalia and these theatres of war afford opportunities to practice the targeting and execution of individuals. The ‘pilots’ of the drones are sitting safely some 7,000 miles away from their assassinated victims. Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur describes how “young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill people remotely using joysticks ----- far removed from the human consequences of their actions ” and asks “how will this generation of fighters value the right to life?” This is a valid question because in pressing a joystick to kill someone thousands of miles away risks an irreversible de-sensitisation of the operator to the violent death of the victim. If there is a danger of being killed oneself – or of one’s children being killed – one’s actions would be more considered and less casual. That is in a sense a more honourable way of fighting – where the risks are equal on either side. There is something obscene about picking off targets from the safety of another continent. Nevertheless, that is the direction in which modern warfare is going.

Drone design and production is a global activity with manufacturers all over the world. The United States and Israel were pioneers of the technology and US manufacturers have a market share of over 60% as at 2006, due to increase by 5-10% up to 2016. Northrop Grumman and General Atomics are the dominant manufacturers in the industry. Israeli and European manufacturers form a second tier with ambitions to acquire US systems because of higher levels of capability. A new and more sophisticated series of drones is in the pipeline. Northrop Grumman together with Lockheed Martin and Boeing are developing an Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicle (UACV) that is capable of making its own decisions about manoeuvring and targeting in battle.

In the UK, the MoD has been using armed US ‘Reaper’ drones in Afghanistan since 2007 and they have recently announced plans to double the number of these drones at a cost of £135 million. Currently they are flown by RAF pilots from the United States, but a new Reaper Squadron is being formed to fly them from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire* .

The MoD has acknowledged the serious legal and moral issues arising from the use of armed drones. On 30 March this year, the MoD issued the Joint Doctrine Note 2/11 : The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft, in which the technological, legal, moral and ethical aspects of drone use are examined. One of the points raised was that if the risk of loss is removed from the decision-makers will they resort to war far sooner than they might have done previously? “One of the contributory factors in controlling and limiting aggressive policy is the risk to one’s own forces. It is essential that, before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) we consider the issue and ensure that by removing some of the horror – that we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely”.

The Joint Doctrine Note quotes General Robert E. Lee after the Battle of Fredericksberg in 1862, who said: “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we might grow too fond of it”. This point goes straight to the heart of the debate. Revelations about UK and US forces illegally torturing and mistreating prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay show how quickly their “controlling humanity” can become eroded under war conditions. As Professor Christopher Coker from the London School of Economics says: “We enter a new century knowing all too well that our ethical imagination is still failing to catch up with the fast expanding realm of our ethical responsibilities. Robots are taking us even further away from the responsibilities we owe our fellow human beings.”

The MoD’s Joint Doctrine Note echoes this worry in some places. Putting itself into the mind of a robotic drone, it observes that “to a robotic system, a school bus and a tank are the same – merely algorithms in a programme”. “It doesn’t have to know why it is engaging a target. There is no recourse to human judgement in an engagement, no sense of higher purpose on which to make decisions, and no ability to imagine (and therefore take responsibility for) repercussions of action taken.” The MoD goes on to say that “The use of unmanned aircraft prevents the potential loss of aircrew lives and is thus in itself morally justified.” Maybe, but what about the question of honour? This ignores the slaughter of innocent civilians by a drone when badly targeted or out of control. At present, the MoD does not publish figures of civilians killed in this way in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This unaccountability is illegal under international law.

The Joint Doctrine Note (JDN) is an unusually frank, official exposé of the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with the use of drones – and it is high time they were discussed in a public forum. We need to know if we are approaching the time when an autonomous flying machine armed with a nuclear device will fly over us making its own decision as to what is a legitimate target. This nightmare scenario is not science fiction. Robots cannot be emotive, cannot hate, cannot care. The robot does not care that the target is human or inanimate, terrorist or freedom fighter, savage or barbarian. Can it be held accountable for war crimes? The pace of technological development is accelerating and the UK must establish a clear policy on what will constitute “acceptable machine behaviour” in future – and time is running out. It is far from certain that there will be time for a debate or for a policy to be developed because the technological genie may be already out of the ethical bottle.

Will the Geneva Convention, the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and the Rules of Engagement (ROE) have to be re-written – and if so, by whom?

*It is time that we – the public – made our views known about the use of drones and UACVs. We can do this by visiting and supporting the new peace camp that has been set up at RAF Waddington – call Helen John for details on 07971- 675776

Acknowledgements to Dave Webb (CND Chair) and Campaign Magazine and to The Joint Doctrine Note (2/11) (DEP2011-1514)