Zagori UNESCO40 Initiative: a progressive blueprint for regional revitalisation
A campaign in Greece, coordinated by a DiEM25 member, seeks to combine local knowledge and participation, national politics, international expertise and global awareness to enact a model of progressive change at the local level.
Zagori’s bid to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site is an opportunity to employ established principles of cultural and environmental protection, sustainable development and citizens’ active involvement in order to breathe new life into a unique European region that is being abandoned by its inhabitants and the state.
Zagori is a region in northwestern Greece comprised of around 40 villages dispersed in 1,000 sq. km of stunning natural beauty and diversity.
Ecological conditions and historical circumstances have awarded this area unique cultural and environmental characteristics. Situated between the Ionian Sea and the mountainous Balkan hinterland, the Zagori terrain combines mediterranean and alpine features that give rise to biodiverse ecosystems within its gorges, forests and rivers. Lack of centralised administration and the region’s relative isolation and self-sufficiency through the ages have fostered a strong tradition of autonomy and communalism. Meanwhile, the inhabitants’ aptitude for travel and trade have made them open to outside influences.
The area reached its economic and cultural peak when the Balkans were ruled by the Ottoman Turks.
A 1431 treaty with the Sultan granted the Zagorisian League the privileges of administrative independence and self-rule by an elected Council of Elders — one for each village. During the 18th and 19th centuries, local Greeks active in international trade brought to the region Enlightenment ideas, along with remittances and donations that helped erect churches, bridges, watermills and schools for boys and girls. The medicinal properties of the Vikos Gorge flora also spawned a local tradition in herbal medicine, which was practised by the so called Vikos doctors.
Aside from Greeks and Turks, a multitude of different peoples have actively contributed to the cultural wealth of the region.
In the late Middle Ages the Byzantines lost the area to the Serbs, who where in turn displaced by the Ottomans, following sporadic raids by Albanian clans. The placename Zagori itself is of Slavic origin. The present demographic mix also contains Gypsies and Aromanian Vlachs, some of whom still speak a variant of Romanian. The historical depth of the local culture is best exemplified by the Sarakatsani, an indigenous nomadic tribe whose language contains unique archaic Greek elements and whose traditional costumes are adorned with geometric art patterns. The villages of Zagori are noted for their stone and wood architecture, as well as their rich tradition of folk songs and dances that trace their origins in both pagan and Christian festivals.
The region’s decline started a few decades before the advent of the turbulent 20th century. The extreme violence that followed, culminating in the burning of entire villages by the Nazis, followed by the Greek Civil war, led to the virtual abandonment of the area by the 1950’s. Today the population density is less than 4 inhabitants per square kilometer. Urbanisation is steadily progressing while local economic prospects continue to diminish, with the exception of tourism.
The prospect of Zagori’s inclusion in the UNESCO list of only 40 World Heritage Sites recognised by the UN body for both their cultural and natural significance has been widely viewed as an opportunity to highlight and protect the nature and culture of Zagori and hopefully revive its economy.
The Greek government expressed a formal initial interest in 2014 but there has been no follow up since. Recently, the Ministry of Culture has restarted the process. However, it has decided to assign the duty of drafting a full application to a minimum of technocratic experts, ostensibly to raise the area’s profile in order to attract touristic and cultural interest. In the process, it is underestimating and disregarding the contributions of local initiatives and academics that can enrich the application, as well as, more importantly, the input from local productive forces.
The latter include people involved in animal husbandry, sustainable forestry, beekeeping and collection of aromatic and therapeutic herbs. The exclusion of local workers and a wider set of experts means that the UNESCO bid will not take local needs into account, neither can it be structured as an opportunity to plan a comprehensive and far reaching rejuvenation of Zagori in the direction of inclusive and mild sustainable development.
DiEMer Andreas Andreopoulos is a global expert living in Zagori.
He is a member of the UNESCO Task Force and in charge of the METIS Global Awareness Network, a group of like-minded academics cooperating over the past two decades on instigating large scale sustainable development projects focusing on Modern Social Priorities. METIS is an Accredited Observer to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the instigator of EcoVirtuaLands, an initiative in the context of UN Sustainable Development Goals. As the initiator of the Zagori UNESCO40 Initiative, Andreas has been in contact with local stakeholders, both institutional and grassroots, in order to garner ideas and support for the drafting of a holistic and inclusive proposal, to be incorporated into existing UN projects and goals.
The proposal aims to build on the UNESCO pillars of cultural and natural protection to kickstart a comprehensive bottom-up push for the long term economic and social transformation of Zagori that leads to a prosperous and sustainable future for its communities.
This approach can serve as a model for progressive local development on a wider scale.
This campaign, coordinated by a DiEM25 member, seeks to combine tangible benefits for Zagori with the value that can accrue to the movement from the interplay between the local, regional, national, european and global levels to effect positive change on the lives of ordinary people. The world-wide overlapping crises in health, labour, the environment and democracy make the need to focus on models of realistic and sustainable change at the local level more pressing than ever.
Last but not least, such models stand well suited to benefit from the application of ideas in DiEM25’s Postcapitalism pillar, ranging from a commons management of natural resources to technologically sovereign digital platforms.
DiEM25 members are currently discussing possible actions to address the issue discussed in this article. If you’d like to be involved in the Campaign Accelerator project, or if you have knowledge, skills or ideas to contribute on Zagori campaign, join the dedicated thread in our forum and introduce yourself, or get in touch with our team at [email protected].
Photo Source: Georgios Polychron from Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons.
Law and disorder: The case of Julian Assange
What kind of law allows pursuit of charges under the 1917 United States Espionage Act — for which there is no public interest defence — against a journalist who is a foreign national?
The closing argument of the defence in the extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange has been filed. For this and other reasons it is apposite to consider the authority invested in the law before which, in democratic societies, we are ostensibly all equal.
In fact, notwithstanding the familiar claims of objectivity (and as `everybody knows’ in Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric) the reality is somewhat different. Jokes about the law attest to this:
‘One law for the rich…’
‘Everyone has the right to their day in court — if they can pay for it’
‘What’s the difference between a good lawyer and a great one? A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge’
The term ‘legal fiction’ calls into question the relationship between law, objectivity, and truth. On the one hand, law is the essential pillar of a functioning society. On the other, it is replete with anomalies both in conception and execution. To what extent can these perspectives be reconciled? High stakes are attached to this question.
Questioning claims of objectivity in the context of law.
Despite its routinely invoked status of objectivity, there are many grounds on which the law cannot be objective in any overarching sense. Judicial findings can be overturned on appeal (i.e. including in the absence of new evidence). This immediately indicates that the law, in common with other domains and disciplines, is subject to interpretation.
Decision-making can be significantly influenced by unconscious factors. Although this is rarely considered in the legal context, it includes basic factors such as the timing of rest and food breaks. A study of the judicial rulings of Israeli judges in relation to parole boards found that the percentage of favourable rulings decreased “from about 65% to nearly zero within each decision session and return[ed] abruptly to about 65% after a break.” These findings suggest ‘that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables that should have no bearing on legal decisions’. This study provides further evidence “that points to the susceptibility of experienced judges to psychological biases.”
Conflicts of interest also pose challenges to the notion of objectivity in the context of law. In the case of Julian Assange, as DiEM25 and others have highlighted, conflict of interest would clearly seem to be operative. This is because financial links to the British military — including institutions and individuals exposed by WikiLeaks — by the husband of the Westminster chief magistrate who initially presided over the extradition case have been revealed. This chief magistrate refused to recuse herself and retained a supervisory role of oversight even in the face of this manifest conflict of interest.
At another fundamental level is the conception and construction of the law itself (i.e. distinct from, but also in combination with, factors which influence those who practice it). The western philosophical tradition from which liberal law derives is shaped by dichotomies (e.g. objective/subjective, mind/body, intellect/emotion, public/private). Entities which are relational are artificially counterposed as oppositional, the first listed is privileged over the second, and these dualisms are not only gendered but classed and ethnicised as well.
Insistence on ‘objectivity’ obscures and deflects attention from these dichotomies which are far from neutral in the way they operate. This is a legacy which continues to shape the present and it is especially strong in the discipline and profession of law. The role accorded to precedent by and within the context of law is itself a bias towards traditionalist conceptions of law and its practice. It also serves to slow the pace of legal reform in light of changed social conditions and values.
In the case of Julian Assange, the refrain that the law and its processes are ‘objective’ ensures that mounting critique of both the fact of his prosecution and the way in which the proceedings are conducted is not engaged with. It also serves to deflect attention from the fact that there is no precedent — i.e. in a profession which claims to respect it — for prosecution of Assange in the first place.
A further ground for contesting the claimed objectivity of law within liberal societies stems from its elevation of the rights of the ‘individual’. While ostensibly including everyone, the term ‘individual’ was not synonymous with ‘person’ when liberal law was founded in the eighteenth century. Rather, a particular kind of individual served as the prototype for construction of liberal law — namely the white, male, middle class, and marketplace actor.
The subsequent period has seen the attempt of diverse groups of omitted persons (women, people of colour, LBTQIA+ and so on) to access legal rights they were long, and in some cases still, denied. Nor has the legal protection of individual rights been impartial as ongoing assertions about the ‘objectivity’ of the law would have us believe.
‘The man of reason’: issues of gender and the workings of power.
The elevation of reason and rationality within the western liberal tradition at the expense of other human qualities and capacities (such as emotion and empathy) is embedded in the conception and practice of law in western societies and is intrinsically related to gender. It is a matter of historical record that white males have constructed accounts of ‘human’ experience which reflect a masculinist bias. Indeed, “[t]he further back one goes in our history, the more exclusively the evidence is based on white, upper-class, Christian, educated males”.
The liberal universalist pretension that reference to ‘man’ included women has literally been revealed as a conceit. But the high premium placed within law on precedent and on abstracted notions of objectivity, neutrality, rationality, and detachment has obscured their gendered foundations. ‘The man of reason’ and ‘the man of law’ were literal living beings while women and people of colour were long excluded and ‘feminine’ qualities disparaged. This legacy continues to inflect the theory and practice of law at multiple levels and in multiple ways
How does the gendered nature of law relate to the case of Julian Assange, who as a white middle-class male would seem to be advantaged rather than discriminated against because of it? In addition to the myth of the objectivity of law, it is important to engage with another entrenched myth — i.e. that the law is necessarily ‘apolitical’. In the case of Julian Assange, the political stakes are enormous.
Just as objectivity and rationality falsely imply a realm outside human intervention, so does the myth of the law as ‘apolitical’.
Were the law and politics really separate realms, we would not see, as we currently do, the attempt of the outgoing Republican administration to populate the United States Supreme Court with as many hand-picked judicial nominations as possible. This is a particularly flagrant illustration of attempts to politicise the law (which might alternatively be seen as an abuse of legal process rather than a feature of it). The prosecution of whistleblowers shows that neither the law nor its practice are immune to the workings of power. Political factors and considerations cannot be neatly compartmentalised.
Laws within western liberal societies have been and continue to be discriminatory.
They can differentially apply to and impact whole groups of people who lack recourse to the status of `individual’. Indeed, laws specifically designed to apply to some groups and not others (for example with respect to the purchase and consumption of alcohol) have been common. The massive and disproportionate over-representation of people of colour within the US penal system underlines that the gap between law and justice can be dramatic, and that contrary to assumptions of objectivity the law can be far from ‘colour (as well as gender and class) blind’ .
The reasons for such travesties of justice have to do with the operation of power. In the case of Julian Assange, what is on trial is nothing less than our right to know what is done by governments in our name, and our capacity to hold power to account.
In exposing the avalanche of truly chilling activities and practices of governments which purport to be democratic, WikiLeaks has been the conduit by which we learn what we otherwise would not. This ranges from the heinous assassinations by the US military in the Collateral Murder tapes to the quiet economic disenfranchisement of millions of the world’s population by oligarchical corporations. The conviction of Julian Assange would signify a new dystopian landscape in which all investigative journalism risks prosecution, impunity for governments to commit violations in our name, and our inability to contest these because access to information about them is unavailable to us.
In light of the high stakes, Assange’s status as a white male affords him no protection against governments determined to conduct `business as usual’. His prosecution is reliant upon myths about the neutrality and ostensibly apolitical nature of law to uphold the rapacious and unconscionable practices of state and corporate interests.
That the law should be respected and obeyed is an article of faith for ‘law abiding citizens’. The implicit conflation of the law with justice and ethics – such that upholding of the law in all circumstances is the right thing to do – is another dubious principle.
It would surprise few people that particular laws can be (and manifestly have been and remain) unjust.
But the consistent and underlying injunction that laws should be respected works against the ongoing need for vigilance as to which laws are indeed worthy of our respect and which need to be criticised and potentially actively resisted.
Significantly, the phrase ‘law abiding citizens’ itself highlights the need for this distinction, when laws are in place which deny the status of citizen to so many of the world’s population. The now normalised term ‘illegals’ also flies in the face of the fact that it is not illegal to seek asylum. As the title of the book Lethal but Legal strikingly conveys compliance with law is no guarantee of ethical or even life-sustaining behaviour. And as the recently released text Justice on Trial elaborates dubious practices can be deployed with respect to the construction and operation of the `justice’ system itself.
This is clearly the case in relation to the prosecution of Julian Assange. But the frequent (mis)conflating of law with justice and ethics – reinforced by the constant refrain that the law is objective and immune to the workings of politics – undercuts this recognition.
There is no inherent relationship between rationality and morality.
Travesties of justice have to do with the operation of power. But they also extend to the limits and continuing misconceptions of the nature of reason itself. These are misconceptions which stem from ideas of the Enlightenment, which “were based upon an essential misunderstanding – that reason constituted a moral weapon, when… it was little more than a disinterested administrative method.”
Elevation of reason over emotion and other human qualities is a legacy of the dichotomies of liberalism and the liberal law to which it gave rise. But while the capacity to reason is rightly celebrated, it is inherently linked to the ability to rationalise. That is, the human capacity and even proclivity to justify and construct reasons for our actions, including and especially when they are self-serving.
The link between reason, rationality, and power — the rationalising of minority interests on a large scale and the socioeconomic implications — was not accounted for by our Enlightenment forebears. Nor is it acknowledged or even recognised in liberal philosophy and law. This `fundamental error may explain reason’s continuing force, because centuries of Western elites have been obliged to invent a moral direction where none existed’. In the current period the evidence of this is before our eyes. Recourse to law, which claims the mantle of reason, can perpetuate the problem, as is clear in the prosecution — and persecution — of Julian Assange.
The founding of the Belmarsh Tribunal.
The ongoing travesty of the case of Julian Assange has many ripple effects. It is tragedy, comedy, and farce simultaneously. But its implications are seismic and can in no way be minimised or trivialised.The ongoing mistreatment of Julian Assange reveals truly staggering violations of law — as well as of justice. These are well documented, such as in Julian Assange: Three myths destroyed by defence witness statements.
What kind of law allows pursuit of charges under the 1917 United States Espionage Act — for which there is no public interest defence — against a journalist who is a foreign national? The right of the public to know of travesties committed by governments in our name while the perpetrators of such travesties go unpunished counts for naught in this spurious and seismic prosecution.
But it has spawned the founding of a new tribunal, building on the prior forum of a people’s tribunal by which to contest the legitimacy of the laws waged against Assange and the public’s right to know. As the Belmarsh Tribunal now represents and asserts, the law itself is on trial.
Watch the Belmarsh Tribunal here!
Photo Source: Ruptly on YouTube.
Throwing down the gauntlet: Boycott Amazon, the platform feudalist!
“Combatting the anti-democratic wealth acquired by Amazon is the test case of our time.”
The days of immunity and impunity are over. With the popularisation of works such as Shoshana Zuboff’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism‘, the recent Netflix show ‘The Social Dilemma‘ together with the Snowden and Assange revelations — platform capitalism has entered the social lexicon. As the initial shock of the pandemic wears off, the Governmental, societal and Central Bank effect become clearer. Our daily lives have been throttled into the centralised information pipelines and data warehouses that stream our online actions into the hand of already monstrously large digital tech platform monopolists.
However, with this comes a great public understanding and visibility of this fact as people receive more Amazon packs, people interact more online with others through an increasingly censoring tech fiefdoms. Cedric Durand, an economist at Sorbonne in his new book Technofeodalisme places the Digital Age in the larger context of the historical evolution of capitalism to show how the Washington consensus ended up metastasised into the Silicon Valley consensus. A toxic cocktail of ‘Californian ideology’ creatively destroying with monopolies of scale and imposing ‘algorithmic consensus’ with IMF-Style ‘structural reforms’ emphasising ‘flexibilisation’ of work and the outright financialisation of everyday life.
The Progressive International has organised over 200 million members and affiliates while galvanising policymakers to act under the banner of ‘Make Amazon Pay’.
As the pent up frustrations and outright anger grows towards these imposed and unaccountable algorithms and platforms their market incentive to expand and perforates into other markets continues. It’s worth remembering that Peter Thiel once declared, “Capitalism and competition are antagonistic. Competition is for losers.”
This opening salvo from Progressive International is aimed at monopolists who extend the precariat business model, who engage in judicial arbitrage and scoff at paying taxes. But deeper is a fundamental requirement to push-back against an unquenching lust for more power and a greater foothold in the market. Lately the US Tech giants have courted banking, AI medicine, advanced robotics, cloud computing, space exploration to name a few. Umbilically linked to this comes unrivalled political power and, perhaps, the ability to code the future operating system.
The coalition Progressive International has built serves as an ideological town square which encourages the millions of progressives simmering under the artificial air of normalcy during the 2nd European lockdown. Importantly, Varoufakis states that “We need to do what the banker and fascists have done, internationalise.” It is this that the global progressive left needs to rekindle. Human emotions, lived experience and communal benefit — not at the expense of other communities — must reinvigorate and energise the European left and fight the tsunami of financialisation.
Reaching out to the precariat is key to bridging the gap forged by the forces of monopoly capitalism and economic stagnation since 2008.
Yanis Varoufakis beckons that today with unemployment rifling during the pandemic we must listen and care for those viscously thrown by the waist side by political choice. Heeding the lessons from Trump’s rise in 2016 is fundamental to this. We must never leave to the wolves of fascism those that liberals easily disregard as ‘deplorables‘.
Amazon has been described as “best understood not as a retailer but a monopolist empire: a 21st Century East India Company, and no less colonialist in its practices.” Much of today’s corporate swagger resides in essentially pitting Western democracies’ judicial systems against each other and arbitraging the difference. This leveraging of financial power, although nothing novel, positions corporates as power brokers in a ‘buyers market’, able to court politicians with jobs and tax money – in exchange for sweetheart deals.
In the UK as news of the brick-and-mortar Arcadia Empire’s collapses, bringing further gloom to the prospects of the high street, Amazon cements its position as a huge winner of the pandemic with Bezos net worth infamously up by $87 billion in 2020. Varoufakis, in his DiEMTV address states that “Amazon has effectively become the high street” which leads to immense concentration of wealth. Bezos owns more than just the shops, he owns the cobbles in the streets, the benches, the watercooler and the retail space. In this context he earns astronomical money while sleeping.
What is different with the rise and rise of platform capitalism is the inclination towards monopolisation. This leads to accruing a dominating power over people and place, which in turn ushers a techno-feudalism that the over 800,000 pre-pandemic workers know too well. Since then, the monopoly capitalist giant has added over 100,000 new workers to capture the business syphoned from the remaining pandemic crippled retail world.
The global campaign against Amazon on Black Friday hits the monopoly where it hurts as Amazon tries to mirror Chinese “Singles Day” sales numbers. Combatting the anti-democratic wealth acquired by Amazon is the test case of our time. Amazon is semi-visible and has creatively destroyed it’s way into our homes in 24h. But Amazon also hosts almost half of the internet through its most profitable arm – Amazon Web Services.
David Adler describes Amazon, with its vast empire of assets and investments, as an Iceberg hiding a deeper underbelly of activity. Amazon’s operations have become much more visible with the pandemic tunnelling trade through the modern voracious juggernaut of e-commerce. Essentially Amazon uses its huge capital base to overwhelm multiple sectors less visible to the ordinary citizen, such as cargo freight, space contracts, web infrastructure, cloud storage.
We are witnessing the feasting on the edifice of the state, by the international platform monopolists – in a live stream hosted by AWS. Silicon Valley and US Tech giants have been the clear ‘winners’ of the experimental Central Bank policies that have cast a long shadow over the prospects of a vibrant democratic economy.
PI’s campaign against Amazon’s obvious monopoly position is the very spark we have been waiting for to revive popular action.
Furthermore Amazon has deep links with law enforcement entrenching its surveillance capabilities with Ring — the neighbourhood surveillance system partnered with police; not to mention adding to the board Keith Alexander — the ex-NSA man responsible for the bulk mass surveillance in the USA.
At Amazon weaponising surveillance at work against their own ‘associates’ is considered normal and harassing or outright discontinuing work for those deemed showing early signs of unionising activity or considering demanding higher than rock bottom pay.
This has lifted Amazon’s profile in people’s daily lives, and in so doing unveiled the “concealment at scale” which includes regulatory arbitrage of exploiting legal loopholes globally while leveraging their global scale to push down wages, inducing precarity and paying low- tax. During the pandemic, Amazon has made multiple headlines for risking the lives of frontline workers, surveillance and harassment of union-like activity, suppressing worker infections and death rates, and partnerships with law enforcement agencies.
The gangsterism shown by Amazon in dealing with Chris Smalls, by portraying him as a misfit and uneducated oaf they divulged the kind of tactics they are ready to use to achieve their ends. Through the willing blindness of regulators and the adoption of the esoteric market logics by policy makers we have courted these monopolists who trojaned their way into our lives under the guise of ‘innovators’ and ‘entrepreneurs’. With a monopoly position however comes a temptation to push workers towards a global race to the bottom, ultimately in competition with robot work conditions.
All the while Bezos thinks;
“So when it comes to space, I see it as my job – I’m building infrastructure the hard way. I’m using my resources to put in heavy-lifting infrastructure,” he said. “So the next generation of people can have a dynamic, entrepreneurial explosion into space.”
“We have to dramatically lower the cost of access to space.”
Instead of dealing with the enormous imbalances on the ground, Bezos engages in ‘billionaire reality TV’ over who will conquer space first between Musk, Branson and Bezos. He sends tripe platitudes about ‘sending the first woman to the moon‘ on Instagram while managing a business with colossal carbon emissions surpassing over 2/3 of countries around the world despite Amazon’s pledges not to mention the deep imbalances in worker rights.
The voracious appetite for expansionism and juridical arbitrage has left thousands of families teetering in precarity as artfully captured in Ken Loach’s “I’m sorry we missed you”. This pushback against a corporate mechanisation of the race to the bottom is encapsulated by Cameroon philosopher Achille Mbembe as a ‘universal right to breathe’: “A principle that means, unless others everywhere can breathe, my ability to do so is at risk.”
Watch the DiEMTV episode with Yanis Varoufakis
Subscribe to DiEM25’s Youtube Channel to watch more episodes!
Photo Source: The Progressive International on Twitter.
Domestic violence, the silent threat for women during COVID-19
In order to eliminate ‘violence against women’, we must address how power is gendered.
The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993, defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
Even before COVID-19, violence against women was one of the most widespread violations of human rights, with almost 18 percent of women and girls experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner over a 12-month period.
We look at the numbers and we ask ourselves a lot of questions in silent shame, in a state of political displacement and confusion that resolves itself in a generalised helplessness and despondency. With such large and appalling numbers: 243 Million women and girls a year suffer from partner-related violence and domestic abuse, where does my sense of self stand? How does it survive under such a crushingly shared oppression?
This is about violence and power.
In a world where women, girls and feminised bodies are silenced physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially, the numbers of the horrors tell the story of a violence of systemic and oppressive proportions: truly, power is gendered.
“[o]ne husband beating his wife is personal violence, but one million husbands keeping one million wives in ignorance constitutes structural violence”
— Johan Galtung,1969
Violence against women, while it classifies as a human rights issue, is unfortunately not unexplainable nor an anomaly in our societies.
The mutilated bodies of girls, the dead bodies of women, the women incarcerated in oppressive social structures or servitude, the psychologically erased, the migrant girls and women who live in limbos of precariousness in camps and war zones: they are points of failure that no one wants to take responsibility for. Rejected and abjected they become the responsibility of humanitarian aid efforts and dealt within a neoliberal crisis logic. The very real plights of these women and girls become percentages and bargaining chips, effectively dehumanising and erasing them.
Any woman is an intersection of vulnerabilities and precariousness.
On the morning of the 25th of November millions woke up to news of femicide in Italy: on the very day when the world mourns the horror and magnitude of this violence, two women are found dead, killed by their male partners. But the news of these deaths went further than just the facts, the circumstances and the story of violence. The reporters and newscasters were quick to provide answers: crimes of passion and jealousy. The need for journalists to provide answers and motives, and declare them as facts, is aimed at locking the narrative of femicide in individualism.
The woman betrays the male imperative, threatens his place in society, denies him his prerogative and is punished with death: as a victim she is no longer a problem. In the moment of death the woman’s body reveals itself to be a “Dense site for complex histories of oppression,” (Judith Butler) a death that is ritualised and recounted repeatedly, a necessary and inevitable sacrifice to male exceptionality with the purpose of oppressing possible dissent.
The rule of law and tribunals may or may not prove these men’s guilt.
Gender violence often doesn’t make the news –it is in the realm of private terror enshrined in familial structures and cultural customs. As Mona Eltahawy puts it: “The State, the Street, and the Home can all see the power of a feminist revolution… the Trifecta of misogyny.”
States are created as machines that deal with crisis and ruptures that in fact use these moments increasingly as their defining moments. Ordinary and unexceptional moments of violence, of everyday horrors, don’t register, have become unreadable and have rendered the state and its institutional bodies complicit in its unwillingness to take action. After all the state, to all intents and purposes, is a CisMale ‘body’.
“The shift away from violence that is exceptional to understanding violence as something that can be habitual and reoccurring is particularly appropriate to provide insight into gendered forms of violence.”
— A J Innes, B J Steele, 2019
The home becomes the preferred theatre for the performance of these acts of systemic oppression. It is in familial relationships that abuse is perpetrated (13% of global female and trans population).
The home has become the place to which the whole world has retreated during the pandemic, and it has led to a shadow pandemic of domestic violence with up to a 40% increase in reported abuse.
The female body comes back into the public domain only when it has been left for dead and has to find a new place of belonging.
Whose is the dead woman’s body?
It cannot exist in limbo. It has to be accounted for (in fact in various parts of the world and especially in mexico and the US bodies are disappeared, taking erasure to an epidemic level), and in this moment of crisis, between the moment of death and the assertion of culpability, this moment is filled with the reassuring narratives of patriarchy, when the perpetrator is invariably excused for his crime of passion to re-establish his honour.
In a political and economic system that has monopolised all moral and political decisions, the family and the woman’s body become the theatre of patriarchal power.
We at the Taskforce for Feminism, Diversity and Disabilities understand Feminism is about exploring how power works: What woman, child, black body, trans, has not suffered from dismissal, has not been silenced and made irrelevant, marginalised in their very idea of how space is to be occupied (or vacated maybe more accurately). We learn to give way, to make excuses, to hold our tongues, to hide in despair and find consolation in abjection or objectification. We may even hold on to what little privileges we may have, just to survive.
That is why we are launching a campaign at DiEM25 addressing domestic violence in 2021 as part of our ongoing work to raise awareness on the issue.
If gender is relational in that privileging masculine qualities relies on and promotes the devaluation of feminine qualities, would it not be therefore logical to investigate and understand how such a relation of power can be intersected with similar relationships of power? For example race, class, disabilities: these are all places where power exercises its muscle and creates social, economic and political relationships built on similar relational privileges that require devaluation as intrinsic to its persistence.
Structural inequalities need to be rescued from crisis politics.
We need a global understanding of violence, just as a Green New Deal for Europe acknowledges the global perspectives of economy and environment, reading violence against women as an intersection of power relations will also show us the way. Failure to see the inter-relatedness of all kinds of gendered violence serves to perpetuate the cycle and allows power relations to remain hidden and un-scrutinised.
The massive social, economic and political implications of the oppression and erasure of 243 Million women per year cannot be underestimated. Annual costs of intimate partner violence were calculated at $5.8 billion in the United States of America and $1.16 billion in Canada. In Australia, violence against women and children costs an estimated $11.38 billion per year. Domestic violence alone costs approximately $32.9 billion in England and Wales.
The UN campaign #orangetheworld is ongoing till the end of the month.
You can contribute to shaping our campaign by contacting the Taskforce: [email protected].
Photo Source: Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels.
Stand as a candidate for one of our National Collectives
DiEM25 is re-building itself stronger and more effective, to be able to deal with all those who are sacrificing our communities and our planet for profit.
Our members last week passed new measures for the election of our National Collectives, meaning that over the next few months we will re-elect all of our national coordination teams.
The first four teams that will be up for election are those for:
If you are interested in standing for election for our team in one of those countries, please click on the respective link above, read the criteria carefully, and if you meet them please submit your application via the link.
Deadline: December 12
Carpe DiEM,
DiEM25 Coordinating Collective
The Right to Repair: Why you should care about it
The right to repair has been a large part of the contemporary discourse in the 21st Century.
What started as an attempt to fix one’s own motor vehicle, has grown into a movement spanning continents and demographics. It includes those who wish to save money, the environment, or simply yearn for greater autonomy and choice by escaping the power of monopolies. But Right to Repair is something that should be involved in all forms of environmental and technological policy. DiEM25 recognises this and has included the Right to Repair in their Technological Sovereignty policy paper.
The history of the Right to Repair act, and why it matters in Europe.
In 2012 the United States automotive industry was presented with an act voted on by the people in the state of Massachusetts. 86% of voters were in favour of what became known as the Motor Vehicles Owners Right to Repair Act and it was passed into law November of that year. The passing of the law was to ensure that those who owned motor vehicles had access to parts, both 3rd party and Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), along with repair manuals instructing owners on how to repair their vehicles. This also gave the people a greater choice, as they were no longer beholden to using manufacturer specified repair centres and could access a wider range of mechanics and auto electricians if they chose not to complete the work themselves.
The Right to Repair has been a topic of discussion in Europe, with surveys showing 8 out of 10 Europeans are indicating their wish that manufacturers should be beholden to requirements allowing easier repair to digital devices. This was thrust into European parliament recently with a vote passing with aims to increase the lifetime of products.
As Chloé Mikolajczak, campaigner for the Right to Repair states:
“This vote shows that right to repair measures are backed by opinion polls but also by the European Parliament. The European Commission now needs to take this momentum and move forward swiftly in 2021 on an EU-wide repairability score for all electronic devices and repairability rules for computers and smartphones”
The vote was incredibly close, getting over the line secured by only 2 votes. Given that this is of course a win for Europeans, it is by no means an end to the fight. The proposal was met with opposition from liberalists and conservatives on the political and economic right, with common rhetoric surrounding de-regulation. These groups were noted to attempt to dilute the original proposal, something that goes against the 8 out of 10 Europeans wanting strong action to be taken.
DiEM25 is now in a perfect position to mobilise and take this fight, rallied by the cry of the people of Europe, to ensure that this vote is not the end.
The movement must ensure the European Commission is held accountable to the vote that was cast and that adequate, decisive and timely action is taken. As this is a vote with implications across Europe, it is high time for the bureaucratic elite to uphold their end of the deal and make good on the will of the people and parliamentary vote. If successful in its implementation this has the ability to allow freedom, creativity and choice to all Europeans. Creating convenience for individuals and groups, and also stemming the power structures companies have built which have stifled people’s freedom within market structures, including the freedom of autonomy over their personal property.
This vote is clearly a positive step, though companies and manufacturers have a long history throughout the global north of lobbying and loopholing their way through restrictions. DiEM25 must stand firm on their Technological Sovereignty policy and remain in strong standing with the people of Europe to keep the pressure on, preventing the tech-giants from escaping the voice and will of the people.
There is a long history of Technology companies hiding behind Intellectual Property laws, and Copyright acts in an attempt to shield themselves from allowing consumers to repair their products.
Some of the tactics used up to this point from the tech giants include: So-called anti-tinkering policies along with ‘void if opened’ warranty schemes which have taken product owners hostage when it comes to their devices/goods malfunctioning or breaking. By forcing consumers to either purchase a new product from the manufacturer or only use the manufacturers specified repair personnel, these companies have created a technology monopoly that has undermined the competitiveness of the market and removed choice from the people. This coercive power was granted to companies by the World Intellectual Property Organisation with something known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
DiEM25 has a strong policy that supports Right to Repair in Europe which predates the proposal put before parliament. This shows that the vote cast aligns with the aims of DiEM25 and as a movement they will champion the results of this vote for the people of Europe.
DiEM25’s Technological Sovereignty policy section 3.1.4 is cogent in its commitment to ensuring Right to Repair.
This policy will not allow these manufacturers to continue to flaunt IP as a reason for not releasing components onto the market. As it is currently, certain manufacturers that specialise in parts for certain technological goods are locked into binding agreements with large technology device manufacturers, which in turn prevents them from selling these parts to non-manufacturer specific repair businesses or to the general public.
This form of product gatekeeping has negatively affected the job market with many repair workers going out of business and needing to either re-skill or face unemployment. Moreover, it has robbed the consumer of all choice in terms of who repairs their products; products which they own.
This also means any handy or technology savvy person is unable to repair their own devices; again, channelling the public back to the manufacturer to solve their problems. There are also broader implications as failure to disseminate plans and specialised parts into the marketplace has encouraged a market for products to be made illegally with little oversight or regard for construction quality, sustainability, or workers’ rights.
The Technological Sovereignty policy proposed by DiEM25 will not only return the choice to the consumer, by demanding manufacturers release their parts and schematics onto the market. It will also stimulate a return of jobs to the market as repair businesses will again be able to open. This will provide the consumer with greater choice, open a viable market for non-OEM parts, and prevent waste as consumers will not be caught between a rock and a hard place deciding whether to pay the extortionate fee the manufacturer charges to repair or to buy a brand new product.
Planned obsolescence will become a thing of the past.
When it comes to buying brand new products, DiEM25 is addressing this as well. Planned Obsolescence is an old tactic proliferated by goods manufacturers, from cars, to whitegoods, through to smart technologies. This is a form of consumer manipulation, an attempt to ‘trap’ customers into a purchasing cycle every 12-24 months.
Companies achieve this by manufacturing products in such a way that certain componentry within them have a short life cycle. When this short life cycle is compounded on top of an inability to repair one’s own goods or seek a 3rd party who is able to carry out such a repair. Manufacturers are able to quote and charge inconceivably high prices to repair or replace the failed component. Often the quoted cost of repair is so high that it makes more economic sense to the consumer to simply purchase the latest iteration of the device.
This planned obsolescence creates an enormous amount of wastage, waging untold devastation on the environment and resources which are already scarce. Section 3.1.5 of DiEM25’s Technological Sovereignty policy addresses this planned obsolescence tactic by directing companies to make available spare parts, returning these goods to a more modular state. Further, the document states that to be in line with ecological demands the products should be made in a durable manner and technical specifications should be made available along with durability in mind in the construction of the products.
With these parts and technical documents entering the market, again, the humble repair centre will once again be able to operate, stimulating jobs. There will be a potential for manufacturing innovation, particularly in the realm of environmentally ethical parts manufacturing which consumers will be able to access through the market.
It was only a few generations ago when most electricians made the majority of their income through repairing toasters, fans, and other household items. When being a fridge mechanic didn’t mean being pigeonholed into the large industrial refrigerator field. And young children who grew up ‘tinkering’ with their electronic home-goods could have a viable economic future contributing to their societies in such a way. Society can return to that; Europe can return to that.
The days of the throw away economy are thankfully over, consumers don’t want to be so wasteful, they want the fairness and freedom of an open market, void of technocratic monopolies.
The objectives of DiEM25 and the Right to Repair campaigners in Europe and the parliamentarians who support Right to Repair are now able to align. Pressuring the European Commission to enact the will of Europeans by attacking planned obsolescence and enabling a strong Right to Repair policy for the Union. At the current writing of this, the European Commission plans to deliver on vote with new laws in 2021.
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels.
News from Turkey: the Aegean Sea earthquake, maritime boundaries, and domestic violence
The Provisional National Collective in Turkey is pleased to inform DiEM25 members with the fourth issue of a monthly review on Turkey’s social, economic, and cultural state of affairs.
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.”
― Noam Chomsky
The Aegean Sea Earthquake.
On 30 October, Friday a magnitude of 6.9M earthquake struck about 14 km northeast of island Samos causing damages in both Samos and Izmir. Coastal areas of Izmir were damaged by the tsunami that followed. According to Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute’s press release 4321 aftershocks struck the area until 18 November. SAKOM (Disaster Medicine Coordination Center) announced 116 deaths and 1034 injuries. About 15000 people have been left homeless in the middle of a pandemic.
The resignation of the Finance Minister and the ‘bumpy’ road towards the appreciation of the Turkish Lira.
On 7 November, Murat Uysal, Turkey’s Central Bank Governor, was fired after Turkish Lira reached a record low. On 8 November, Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s Minister of Finance and son in law of President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced his resignation via Instagram. The Instagram account and post were deleted shortly after. Ex Deputy PM, Lutfi Elvan was appointed as Finance Minister, while the Former Finance Minister Naci Agbal was appointed as the Central Bank Governor. Both are long time AKP (Justice and Development Party) members. The above major changes, along with the US elections’ effects on the global market and the 19 November Central Bank interest rate hike from 10,25% to 15%, created a ‘bumpy’ path towards the appreciation of Turkish Lira. Consequently, starting from the resignation date of the Former Finance Minister the Turkish Lira gradually rallied to 7,61 on 20 November reaching back to 7,75 on 30 November.
Tensions between EU and Turkey about maritime boundaries.
The government stresses its sovereignty and right on the maritime boundaries and rejects the claims of Greece and the Greek Cyprus who are pushing for sanctions against Turkey. Resolving all outstanding problems in the region through international law, dialogue and negotiations is still valid by both sides.
The majority of EU members have been reluctant so far to take such action, but the relationship between the EU and Turkey is further deteriorating, according to a statement from the EU foreign policy chief on 19 November Good Faith, as one of the general principles of International Law and maybe the most important one, should be reminded in such cases. The EU and Turkey should cooperate on a common goal in the region, that of being against fossil fuels and all sorts of exploitation of the natural resources for the sake of profit.
The COVID-19 chronicles in Turkey.
Having a natural catastrophe during a pandemic is a worst case scenario any government should be ready for. During the Press Conference held by the Izmir Medical Chamber on 17 November at the chamber’s conference hall it was stated that “according to official authorities, İzmir witnessed twice as many coronavirus cases on the 10th day after the earthquake compared to October 30, when the earthquake struck”. This is leading inevitably to the overburdening of the healthcare system’s response at a considerable level.
Turkey is currently going through a period of “mass contagion” as Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca stated on 18 November. The restrictions, starting from 20 November will continue until the end of 2020. The measures include restaurants, cafes, hairdressers and shopping malls operating from 10:00 to 20:00, only takeaway and delivery services for dining and a partial lockdown on weekends. Citizens above the age of 65 can leave their houses between 10:00-13:00 on weekday and weekends, while those who are below the age of 20 can leave their houses only between 13:00 and 16:00 on weekday and weekends. Citizens between the age of 20-65 can leave their houses on weekdays any time while during the weekends they have to obey the lockdown from 24:00 – 10:00 & 20:00- 24:00. This lockdown program has caused a lot of confusion and even mockery on social media.
Despite the above measures the pandemic has reached a record high number of new cases announced. Minister of Health Dr. Koca has accepted that “The Ministry of Health was not reporting the number of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases and was including “patients, not cases” in its daily figures table. Latest numbers published for 29 November by the Ministry of Health show 29281 new cases, 6439 new patients.
These restrictions do not allow children to continue going to school physically and therefore remote classes are taking place. Students are expected to attend classes, via TV and the Internet. According to Feray Aytekin Aydoğan, chairperson of Turkey’s Education Syndicate Eğitim-Sen more than 4 million students across Turkey do not have access to the internet or have reported attending the classes using their parents’ smartphones. The effectiveness of this educational system is questioned, while she supports that “the necessary devices and internet access should be provided by the Ministry of Education”.
The ‘shameful’ numbers of domestic violence against women.
At the Assessment Meeting on combating violence against women and family members, the Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu addressed men said: “Pull yourself together, it is a shame!”
304 women in 2016; 353 women in 2017; 279 women in 2018, while in 2019, 336 women fell victim to violence in Turkey. These are the registered numbers by the police departments. Unfortunately, there are also those whose fate is unknown. As of 20 November this year, 234 women lost their lives in domestic and violence-related murders. The number of domestic violence murders in the first 10 months of last year was 308, while this year the number is stated as 234, which is characterized as a success.
Among the most serious measures is the updating and renewal of the “violence against women and domestic violence case registration form, which is a guide for taking protective and preventive measures for each case specifically”. The laws are sufficient and strong, but there are serious problems on the implementation side. The judicial measures are far from sufficient, the police are reluctant and hesitant, while the media handles these cases as statistical figures. On the other hand, the government is looking for ways to neutralize the Istanbul Convention. Our endeavor is to prevent all these losses, to give women back the place they own.
As the government uses all its means to suppress social opposition, it does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and the decisions of European Court of Human Rights.
According to the Reporters Without Borders’ 2020 World Press Freedom Index , Turkey comes 154th among 180 countries, with Norway leading the list while North Korea comes last. It is quite common for human rights activists, journalists and politicians to be kept behind bars due to some ‘imaginary’ crime.
Two important figures — Selahattin Demirtaş & Osman Kavala — are illegally kept behind bars as a means of taking the whole society hostage.
Selahattin Demirtaş is the former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) the third largest party of the parliament, an opposition party. ARTICLE 19 and Human Rights Watch have stated that Selahattin Demirtaş should be released immediately in accordance with the 2018 decision of the European Court of Human Rights.
Eight MPs of People’s Democratic Party (HDP), starting with the party’s co-chair, who were elected with democratic elections, were arrested in November 2016. These arrests became the peak of political trials and intimidation of the opposition right after the 15 July 2016 Coup Attempt. A Coup Attempt that is full of ambiguities. “The Turkish government has misused detention and criminal proceedings in a campaign of persecution against Demirtaş in particular, including by flouting a European Court of Human Rights’ order to release him and concocting new baseless charges to keep him behind bars” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The second important figure is Osman Kavala, rights advocate and activist. Following the Coup Attempt on 15 July 2016, Anadolu Kültür Executive Board Chairman, human rights defender and businessperson Osman Kavala was taken into custody on 18 October 2017. He faced a trial and was acquitted during the Gezi Park trial in 2013. Turkish opposition figures while expecting to be released found themselves behind bars once more because the court ordered their detention again due to new files filed against them, just like being thrown into Kafka’s ‘the Trial’ novel. HRW (Human Rights Watch) and the ICJ (International Commission of Jurists)
“The decision by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers confirms our submission that political considerations are behind the court orders prolonging Osman Kavala’s detention, and that there has been a concerted official effort to prevent Kavala’s release,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch. Indeed, “Instead of complying with the European Court’s judgment, Turkey has continued to violate Kavala’s human rights.”
According to Human rights lawyer Kerem Altıparmak, the European Court of Human Rights has decided that Turkey is politically motivated in only two files so far. He said that one of them is about rights advocate businessperson Osman Kavala, and the other is about HDP’s former Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş. Altıparmak “The European Court of Human Rights up until today has reached the decision that Turkey is politically motivated for arrests only in two cases: of Kavala and Demirtas. In both court decisions, the phrase “The President’s speech against the accused persons has been of great importance in reaching this decision.” This statement indicates evidence that the judicial process is instructed by legislative powers .
Turkey’s first Kurdish Comic Book, Online Theatre Festival and a Ballet Performance Inspired by the Pandemic.
Turkey’s first Kurdish Comic book, GOG will be published soon thanks to a fundraiser. The name of the comic book is inspired by an old children’s game. As stated on GOG’s official website ‘In addition to foreign comics, GOG includes comics and articles produced by Kurdish artists… We aim to contribute to our children’s literacy, who cannot receive education in their mother language’. The comic book is available in both Kurmanji and Zazaki dialects of Kurdish language.
The 24th Istanbul Theatre Festival will be held this year between 14 November — 1 December. The festival is available both at venues and online. The Istanbul Theatre Festival brings together artists from Turkey and abroad and has been held since 1989. The festival combines classical with contemporary and local with international.
The first woman manager of Ankara Directorate General of Opera and Ballet, which also is the first of its kind in Turkey, renowned soprano Feryal Türkoğlu announced that there is a preparation to stage a ballet inspired by the COVİD-19 era we are going through. The performance is meaningfully named “19!”. It would be interesting to see the pandemic reflected on stage via ballet, wouldn’t it?
The pandemic has made clear the urgency to build a post-capitalist future, now!
The norms created in our society up until today are greatly malfunctioning. The “homo economicus” is rather a “zoon politikon” who should use the pandemic for the incubation of new functioning norms and a green, equal, transparent, democratic normal.
Photo by İstanbul1 DSC volunteer Kürşat Oral.
The 2020 Holberg Debate: ‘Is Global Stability A Pipe Dream?’ with Yanis Varoufakis
At the 2020 Holberg Debate, Amb. John Bolton and Member of the Hellenic Parliament Yanis Varoufakis will discuss current threats to regional and global stability.
The Holberg Debate is an annual event organised by the Holberg Prize. The debate is inspired by Ludvig Holberg’s Enlightenment ideas and aims to explore pressing issues of our time. The Holberg Debate seeks to engage both the university community and the public at large, and we look to invite well known thinkers with a diverse background, including academics, journalists, authors, film makers and activists.
At the 2020 Holberg Debate, we are joined via videolink by Yanis Varoufakis and Ambassador John Bolton (US), former National Security Advisor and US Ambassador to the UN. Moderator for the event is Scott Gates, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo (UiO), as well as Guest Researcher at UiO’s Department of Economics and Research Professor at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
Make sure to tune in to one of the most highly anticipated events of the year!
You can submit questions via Twitter, at any time before or during the event. Tweet your questions with the hashtag #Holberg2020.
Watch it online!
It’s time for arms companies to be kicked out of the classroom
In the rural county of Devon in the UK lies the historic port of Plymouth, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear weapon system. Managing that facility is Babcock International Group PLC, an arms manufacturer listed on the FTSE 250 with a turnover in 2020 of £4.9bn.
What is much less known, however, is that Babcock also runs the education services in Devon, and in many other areas across the UK. After the global financial crisis of 2008-9, with governments around the world adopting austerity policies, cuts to local authorities ran to more than 40% and local education services were tendered out to the private sector. In Devon, it was Babcock who won the bid to run them.
The arms company, which powers conflict and violence across the world, is now one of just twelve accredited education service providers in the UK.
A statement on its website describes its activities as: “…a unique joint venture between Babcock International Group plc and Devon County Council, combining best commercial practice with the values and principles of the public sector service.”
Such a relationship introduces moral hazard where none existed before. “Best commercial practice” — in other words, competition — is not a public service value, and its application in education has severe consequences for the most vulnerable, as will be shown. Private companies in public service also present challenges for accountability and in this case, the presence of the arms trade raises other moral questions around consent.
Yet Babcock is not the only weapons manufacturer providing education to children. Other UK arms companies, like the giant BAE systems that designed Britain’s Trident nuclear submarines, have also found their way into schools recently, giving them teaching materials and, according to The Guardian, “providing a missile simulator for children to play with”. Commenting on the affair, Andrew Smith, spokesman for the Campaign Against Arms Trade said that: “When these companies are promoting themselves to children they are not talking about the deadly impact their weapons are having. [..] Schools [..] should never be used as commercial vehicles for arms companies.”
It is time, as that same spokesman said, for arms companies to be kicked out of the classroom.
An authoritarian approach; an arrangement that resists public scrutiny
There is a real and worrying question of how the culture of the arms trade, of Babcock, influences the education resources they provide.
Consider the following case. Babcock’s ‘responsibilities’ in Devon include attendance monitoring and pupil assessment — tasks to which they apply a hardline authoritarian approach. When a child is absent from school, Babcock threatens their parents with £2,500 fines and up to three months imprisonment, as shown in the letter below:
The letter and others like it created a furore among parents of Devon pupils, and in 2016 a petition was started, calling on Devon County Council to cancel Babcock’s contract when it was due for renewal in 2019. The petition gained few signatures (just over a thousand) and the 2019 renewal went ahead. It is now due to end in 2022.
In 2017, a concerned parent filed a Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council for details of their contract with Babcock. It was refused on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. The parent appealed the decision, blaming the Council for “obfuscatory gatekeeping, time delaying, avoidance tactics”, and although the information was finally disclosed the Council was found in breach of the Freedom of Information Act for the delay. A child’s education is of the highest moral importance and those involved should welcome scrutiny. This is clearly not the case with Babcock’s arrangement in Devon.
Off-rolling: pushing out the weakest to stay competitive
The culture of business, especially the business of building and selling weapons, is entirely misplaced in education. Competition is not how you achieve results, and scoring on the schools league table is not a measure of success.
Yet these are the principles being applied. In 2019, Tes, an online education resource provider, reported on a worrying trend. Increasing numbers of parents of pupils who struggled with school were being “coerced, nudged and persuaded” into homeschooling their children — i.e. removing them from the school roll, where their performance could no longer affect the school’s league table ranking — in a practice that has become known as ‘off-rolling’.
The motivation for this practice is simple: it is “triggered by league table position”, according to a 2019 YouGov report. One secondary school Deputy Head Teacher says in the report: “There could be a temptation to off-roll [a pupil] so they don’t bring the school’s results down… Morally I don’t agree with it.” Off-rolling is unethical; it puts intense strain on parents and is, quite simply, unlawful.
Unsurprisingly, Babcock in Devon provides an illustration of this awful practice in action. The tables below are from official documents from Babcock and Devon County Council.
The statistics speak for themselves; the percentage of schoolchildren in Devon registered for home-schooling (EHE) rose from 1.1% in 2015/16 to 1.9% in 2019/20. This points to an additional 889 children having been ‘off-rolled’ out of Devon’s schools by Babcock.
A vital choice that parents are denied
The last issue has to do with belief and choice. The right to religious freedom is compromised when, for example, you are forced to take part in religious services not of your own religion. The UK is a secular society and such rights are strongly defended, but do they extend further? Everyone pays for defence through taxation in a kind of ‘received consent’, but it is unjust that those who profit from it should be able to come back to take a second slice of the public finance cake. There is no similar ‘received consent’ over the arms trade providing education.
With the tendering out of local education services to the private sector, the arms trade is where the education money is going, beyond the defence budget. And if your child needs an education, you find yourself unwittingly complicit in building a respectable public profile and increasing profits for people who sell guns. There is a saying in market culture ‘there are two sides to every trade’. The arms trade exists for its customers and its shareholders; it is morally unacceptable for parents of schoolchildren to be included as part of its commercial operations.
What happens to the contract between Devon County Council and Babcock in 2022 could be down to public pressure. It is an important test case for whether we, as citizens, as progressives, can get the arms trade out of our schools. Shall we give it a try?
Tony Dale is a retired musician, composer and educationalist. Performances of his music include London’s South Bank Centre and Institute for Contemporary Arts. He has lectured at the Royal Society and consulted for the Roehampton Institute.
DiEM25 members are currently discussing possible actions to address the issue discussed in this article. If you’d like to be involved, or if you have knowledge, skills or ideas to contribute on this, join the dedicated thread in our forum and introduce yourself, or get in touch with the author of this piece directly.
Photo Sources: CDC from Pexels and Wikimedia Commons.