A Little Bird told me

December 4, 2009 at 9:37 am | In Information Society, free market economy | 3 Comments
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Twitter breaks the Jakarta bombing and provides first-hand accounts on the ground, protesters in Iran get their side of the story out to the world via Facebook and You Tube.

It seems the most up-to-date news is to be found on Twitter, a social networking site. When the standard news services must compete with this sort of immediacy (news presented in 140-characters or less), one begins to worry about the quality of journalism and the future of the media. Journalism is generally perceived to have been deteriorating since the advent of television. (Jurgen Habermas put it somewhere in the mid-nineteenth century.) Movies such as Broadcast News, Wag the Dog and the wonderfully satirical ABC show, Frontline, have explored the commercialization of the media and its attack on the ideal of journalism devoted to accuracy.

The impact of the internet has been blamed for deteriorating social relations, isolation, superficiality and suicide. With no quality control on the information, of course, there remains a great deal of misinformation (intentional or otherwise), a great deal of celebrity and sports commentary and hoaxes which can always find someone who hasn’t seen it before. One movement which seems to be bucking the trend is the Free Software Movement. Its conscious culture of collaboration has led to a number of permutations such as Indymedia and the, now ubiquitous, social networking sites which build on this model of participation.

Indymedia formed in 1999 in response to the ‘Battle for Seattle’, the protests against the World Trade Organisation negotiations. The software was developed in Australia. It was the first internet site which allowed users to post their own content. Its slogan was ‘Don’t hate the media, be the media.’ Later came You Tube (the seeming Internet equivalent of Funniest Home Videos) but which is used by people to share a great deal of content which is important to various social identities thus encouraging diversity. This tool is extremely creative for those who wish to post there own video work, and is even used for mini documentaries.

The use of these sites to post copyrighted content represents a serious challenge to corporate control of information. The idea of a contributing community which freely distributes what they create confronts business control of copyright law.

In recent years, major U.S. and EU copyright industry rightsholder groups, such as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, have sought stronger powers to enforce intellectual property rights across the world by negotiating an agreement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In 2006, Japan and the United States launched the idea of a new plurilateral treaty to help in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy. The aim of the initiative was to negotiate an agreement that enhances international co-operation and contains effective international standards for enforcing intellectual property rights.

These efforts have been underway in a number of international fora, including the World Trade Organization, the World Customs Organization, at the G8 summit, at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement, and at the Intellectual Property Experts’ Group at the Asia Pacific Economic Coalition. The World Copyright Summit in July furthered these negotiations.

The agreement potentially represents attempts to restrict the sharing of information, including music, movies and software. Among the suggested measures is enforcement of such laws without waiting for complaints from rights holders; the seizure and destruction of ‘goods and equipment’ involved in infringement, both internally and at a country’s borders; searches at the request of a single party, and the disclosure of supposed infringers to rights holders.

Groups such as the Australian Digital Alliance are concerned that many of these measures represent an erosion of basic civil liberties, such as the right to a fair hearing. The US-based Free Software Foundation is critical that ACTA-inspired laws may be enforced by people with limited knowledge. Using free software and free formats or even a non-standard piece of hardware, such as a non-iPod music player could conceivably cause trouble for you, especially when going through a signatory country’s customs.

After the conviction of the Pirate Bay creators in Sweden, Nick McDonald from law firm Brown Jacobson, warns that sites like Google, eBay and other sites containing user- generated content may also be criminally liable. Pirate Bay is a well-known Swedish file sharing site, which uses BitTorrent technology to allow its users to share and download content. On 31 January 2008, charges were filed by Swedish prosecutors against four individuals, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundstrom, for ‘promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws’. On 17 April 2009 the four men were convicted and each sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a total of 30 million SEK (3.6 million USD). This draconian enforcement seems completely out of proportion to the activity being conducted and seems to smack of corporate influence.

Given that the vast majority of artists and writers receive such pitiful remuneration for their work, the arguments of megacorporations that free downloading is stealing from the artists themselves seem rather hollow. The only ones making money out of music and other artistic content are large corporations at the expense of the creators of content. The Free Software Movement represents the attempt to break corporate control of computer software and some branches defend the free exchange of content in defiance of copyright law. This movement potentially represents a resistance to the superficiality and immediacy which the internet can create. If Twitter is the future of news reporting, then the Free Software Movement represents a counter direction.

Chemical Chicken

September 28, 2009 at 8:32 am | In environment, free market economy, human rights | 1 Comment
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‘If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.’ Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

The suing of KFC by an Australian family in New South Wales for causing serious injury to their 7 year old daughter opens the whole bucket of chicken for industrial agriculture once again. This is not a localized issue of whether something nasty got into the food because of poor hygiene standards of the local store but goes to the issue of how food is manufactured in our world today.

In October 2005, Monika Samaan, now 11, collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital after eating part of a Twister from Villawood KFC. Her salmonella poisoning developed into acquired spastic quadriplegia, acquired profound intellectual disability and liver dysfunction. She is now confined to a wheel chair.

We all know that eating junk food is bad for us but the fast food chains seem to like to add an extra bullet in the game of dining roulette. In 2003, the Food Safety Information Council estimated that a whopping 5 million Australians are affected by food-poisoning every year and a 2005 report found that approximately 120 people die from food-borne illnesses in Australia every year.

KFC only stopped using partially-hydrogenated oils, one of the worst sources of trans fats which massively increases the risk of heart disease, to fry their chicken when the Centre for Science in the Public Interest took them to court in 2006. Health authorities worldwide recommend that consumption of trans fats be reduced to trace amounts. Baskin and Robbins makes a large Fudge Brownie (‘vanilla soft serve blended with brownie chunks and hot fudge’) which packs two days’ worth of saturated fat (39 grams) and almost a day’s worth of recommended calorie intake (1,900 calories) into a snack.

If that doesn’t put you off, listen to this. In the United States in 1994, health investigators found that contamination of icecream pre-mix occurred because it was transported in tanker trailers that had previously been used to haul liquid eggs contaminated with Salmonella enteritidis. The contamination was not detected until the icecream had been distributed across the nation. Researchers estimated that 224,000 people in many different states contracted gastroenteritis as a result of eating the contaminated icecream. The practice of mass-distribution and transporting food long distances contains extensive risks as well.

The principles of the fast-food restaurants are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society and everyday life. Producing things in similar, standardized ways embodies four principal processes: ‘efficiency’, ‘calculability’ based on quantitative indicators, such as profit, ‘predictability’ as standard products are delivered in predictable ways, and ‘control’ through technology.

These principles seem to be applied so that even routines to ensure food safety and hygiene operate at their most economical and efficient rather than their most effective. KFC’s own internal hygiene review found the Villawood outlet, the subject of the legal action, regularly failed to comply with standards around food cooking, storage temperature and shelf life. In March, the NSW Food Authority dished out a $73,000 fine to two KFC restaurants in Sydney for poor hygiene and QSR Pty Ltd, which operates the outlets, was convicted of 11 charges of breaching food hygiene laws.

Such principles become especially problematic when applied to large-scale agricultural production from which KFC and other fast food chains source their never-ending demand for chicken and beef. The connection between flu viruses, now a source of global epidemics, and the practices of agribusiness have been strengthened by the findings of a report by Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (2009) produced in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

‘Industrial farm animal production is characterized by confining large numbers of animals of the same species in relatively small areas, generally in enclosed facilities that restrict movement. In many cases, the waste produced by the animals is eliminated through liquid systems and stored in open pit lagoons.’ This image of farms surrounded by lakes of excrement is almost enough to put you off your 2-Piece Feed.

One of the report’s damning findings is that the ‘intensive confinement production system’ or factory farming increases antibiotic resistance because of their misuse in the industry. OK we all want clean, healthy animals killed for our gastronomic pleasure. But antibiotics are administered in huge quantities, not just for disease prevention, but also for growth promotion. Tender, juicy breasts of chicken so big that the poor chicken cannot stand up and lies face down in its own excrement.

Reports show that between 17.8 to 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics per year are pumped into these animals. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70% of the antibiotics dispensed in the United States annually are used in farm animals. The practice of adding low levels of antibiotics and growth hormones has become common practice among battery farm operations.

Disease experts are investigating the links between this widespread use of antibiotics in animals and the role of antimicrobial resistance in epidemics. Benign or beneficial bacteria, which normally live in the human digestive tract or on human skin, such as Golden Staph, may pass antimicrobial resistance to harmful bacteria. Golden Staph is an enduring problem in many large Australian hospitals, attacking intravenous lines, catheters and wounds after operations.

The Pew report states ‘While it is difficult to measure what percent of resistant infections in humans are caused by antimicrobial use in agriculture as opposed to other settings, it can be assumed that the wider the use of antimicrobials, the greater the chance for the development of resistance.’

The essentially unregulated use of antibiotics in US industrial farming has serious implications for the incubation of epidemics. Public health experts are studying the correlation between conditions in industrial food animal production and the spread of the influenza virus. Dr. Ann Marie Kimball, at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health says influenza surveillance may be missing the key bridging populations, such as farmers, veterinarians and meat packers. Just as avian influenza (H5N1) and SARS had connections to human contact with animals, reports point to a swine flu epicenter around a huge hog farm in Veracruz.

Industrial food animal production and fast food consumption are intimately linked. These production centres are no longer farms. We must relinquish our bucolic dreams of cows peacefully chewing in lush fields and chickens clucking contently in the farm yard. They have now been replaced by the clamour and bustle of something more like the cross between a science lab and a factory but with more shit, blood and pain. Surprisingly, these images are produced by dispassionate scientists not by animal activists in the street. Monika Samaan is a symbol for everybody on the planet. We are all at risk from this dehumanised factory system.

Business Out, Government In

February 18, 2009 at 11:58 pm | In economic crisis, free market economy | Leave a Comment
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For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935

As the Federal Opposition snarl and gnash their teeth and ardent neoliberals sigh and shake their heads, it seems that the Rudd government is willing to reclaim the role of government as the provider of social investment. The Federal Government’s stimulus package provides long overdue funding to schools and housing, social infrastructure long neglected during the Howard years. As business is unable or unwilling to sustain its social investment with the global economic crisis, in the style of ABC Learning and Rio Tinto, it becomes clear that government has an important role to play in providing this. But not only during crises. Government’s investment in social infrastructure must be ongoing and significant and if business cannot sustain its input during bad economic times then they need to be forced to provide in the good times.

Despite pleas from the government to maintain employment, Rio Tinto abruptly closed its WA mining operations and sacked 2000 workers in spite of WA government money put into the project. Until recently the orthodoxy has been to reduce the size of government to a far smaller percentage of GDP. One argument is that governance functions can be performed by other institutions such as corporations, non-government organizations, and communities. The collapse of ABC childcare and the current Connex debacle seems to demonstrate quite clearly that the private sector has a limited role to play in the provision of public services. This is clearly the role of government. The government is finally showing some leadership in this direction but they must go further.

This package reverses the trend of the last 10 years of transferring government debt to personal debt. The government instead of expecting individuals to carry the burdens of the State is shouldering these responsibilities and ultimately the government has greater resources, particularly if it requires business to make a fair contribution. In 2005 the Senate Economics Committee found that the large current account deficit in 2004-5, which exceeded 7% for the first time, was primarily driven by household debt in housing finance. The household sector made a dramatic move between 2000 and 2005 from saving to borrowing, resulting in a large rise in household debt. In the same period, credit card debt also increased by a similar order of magnitude.

According to associate professor Steve Keen from the University of Western Sydney, Australia’s debt has grown rapidly from less than 80% of gross domestic product (GDP) in the early 1990s to now stand at almost 170% of GDP. Forecasts of rising unemployment and a slowing economy mean an increasing number of Australians will come under pressure due to problems repaying debt. And to top it off, a recent Dun & Bradstreet survey showed that many people expect to increase their level of indebtedness over coming months.

And while Australia’s level of household debt continues to increase, in common with many other nations, Australia has been running down its stock of public assets. The public investment share of GDP has declined quite dramatically from just less than 8 percent in the 1960s to under 4 percent in the 2000s. This reflects the diminishing priority given to government investment into electricity, gas, communications, infrastructure, education and health over recent decades. Numerous empirical studies have demonstrated the shift from productive to unproductive government spending negatively impacting on productive private investment. Productive government spending tends to crowd-in private investment, while unproductive provision of transfer payments for subsides and handouts crowd-out private investment. Thus, Australia-along with the US, UK and others- has insufficiently built a public regime of accumulation for long-term investment.

Government spending in Australia is the third lowest of the 30 OECD countries and our tax collection, as a per centage of GDP, is the eighth lowest in the OECD. Dr Richard Denniss argues if Australian tax rates were equal to the OECD average, tax receipts would increase by about $50 billion dollars per year. We could use that to pay for the government’s stimulus package.

The corporate tax rate has been reduced from 49 per cent in 1987 to 30 per cent in 2001. In 2008, the corporate tax rate was 21st lowest among OECD countries. While lowering the corporate tax rate may not impact on tax revenues, they do little to bolster social infrastructure. For every $1 billion spent on reducing the corporate tax rate, three quarters of it is captured by the wealthiest 20% of citizens.

Speculation and private investment have failed to deliver solid sources of revenue for public investment. As the tide turns in the coming years, we would do well to move away from the ‘masters of the universe’ mentality. It is time to repair the damage of the past years of madness and the government’s stimulus package takes a few small steps in that direction.

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