Vedanta shies away from bad publicity
July 27, 2009
British-listed Miner Vedanta is under the spotlight today. There will be a protest at their AGM this afternoon at 2pm at Lincoln Inn Centre, 18 Lincoln Inn Fields. Bianca Jagger is set to make an appearance.
The issue: Vedanta’s callous approach to tribal people and their livelihoods just so that Vedanta and its Indian billionaire, Anil Aggarwall can set up an open-case bauxite mine.
The actions of British based companies have some unintended consequences.
The rise of the Maoist rebellion in the forgotten eastern half of India is fuelled by the anger and despair of tribal and poor rural people, seeing their livelihoods destroyed as Delhi & Mumbai insist on unbridled free-market industrialisation.
This has been an angry election. Very unlike any Euro election. Then again, this vote has very little to do with Europe.
It’s seems to be about two issues:
(a) public revulsion with hypocritical MPs - anxious to come down hard on benefits claimants by pushing for the Welfare Reform Bill. Basically, it means chasing single mothers and reducing welfare handouts. All the while, MPs were seeking devious ways of playing the property game and gettings tens of thousands of pounds.
(b) the deteriorating economy – yes that thing which was on our TV 24 hours a day when bank after bank was collapsing. People are being driven to vent their anger on MPs playing around with a couple of million quid perhaps in total. Meanwhile, bankers and the wealthy continue to enjoy the public’s generosity in a grotesque bailout of the banks. A million against a trillion.
The three main parties have shown no bravery in speaking the truth and ditching free market capitalism and globalisation. So the public know it’s wrong but see no alternative.
So, the Telegraph and the rest of the media find that a banking crisis is a perfect back drop for the ‘Clean Hands’ or “Anti-politics” campaign.
i.e. destroy the credibility of the political class.
What then takes its place?
It looks like the UKIP agenda is what is in play.
The operative word is ‘agenda’.
No one wants an UKIP administration.
What some powerful quarters would like is to see their agenda become new mainstream thought.
This means ultimately getting the Conservatives and Labour to become even more anti-European and Atlanticist (code for US’s faithful ally).
Add incendiary debate about cutting immigration and you see how ugly this could get – did you see this week’s Newsnight and UKIP’s MEP calling for immigration to be cut back?
Even David Dimblebey had to remark that talk like that was very close to what the BNP was thinking. Then, the BNP (barring an improbable late surge) seem to have been the bogey – a non issue made into the number one preoccupation and making UKIP extremists seen as some sort of cuddly, traditional English gentlemen.
The acceptable side of xenophobia perhaps for Middle England?
The untold story has been the quiet resurgence of the Greens for those who can see through New Labour and see the Greens as the only Left of Centre Party remaining.Greens are in double figures in the latest polls and are looking to double or triple the numbers of their MEPs.
Is it not unusual to see Greens on 11% while New Labour are on 16%?
This is a quiet revolution. Merely the start of a realignment in the politics of this island.
I will develop this theme in the near future.
It is important to realise that what we have been seeing is not a media circus to attack a few unscrupulous MPs (however deserving of our opprobium).
Note how David Cameron has quietly aligned the Euro-Conservatives with hard right elements in Europe. You get the picture.
The last few weeks have been the opening shots of what might become the nasty decade.
Farid Bakht
Parliamentary Candidate for Bethnal Green & Bow
Burma’s Suu Kyi could face jail
May 14, 2009
The military will try the pro democracy leader after an American man, john yettaw, was arrested because he allegedly stayed two days secretly at her house.
A lawyer for Suu kyi, said: “everyone is angry with this wretched American. He is the cause of these problems”. The lawyer said Suu kyi had told 53 year old yettaw to leave.
Whoever he is, it looks like the military are intent on extending Suu Kyi s six year detention which ends on may 27.
They have another convenient excuse to continue to deny Suu kyi her freedom – in detention for 13 out of 19 years
Farid Bakht
What are they afraid of?
April 16, 2009
The police, as the advance guard of the state, have come down hard.
Do we blame Boris or should it be New Labour? Does it matter? Both parties aren’t exactly divided on the issue.
The G20 protests were built up as a violent demonstration. Unknown ‘anarchists’ were rolled out in BBC Radio and other media weeks before to create a sense of fear among people who might have turned up.
Then, the Police were given the task of using brute force to ‘bring order’.
It didn’t seem very different from what I have witnessed in South Asia. In place of the lathi, it’s the truncheon. Same result.
Had people been allowed to protest peacefully, they would have embarrassed the G20 leaders. And why not?
Those same leaders are happy to meet in the seclusion of Davos. If all they want is a photo-op, why not go there instead?
Of course, Gordon “Dirty Tricks” Brown wanted to ’save the world’ and be seen to be doing it.
Unfortunately for him, all that effort seems to have been wasted.
People are more concerned with how Gordon can allegedly hire thugs (with keyboards rather than weapons) to consider writing fanciful stories about affairs among the Tory leadership.
Voters have forgotten the glitz of the G20, though unable to forget the police action given the stream of new pictures and suspensions. And they have seen the seamier side of New Labour.
This is so reminiscent of 1996. Mr. and Mrs Hamilton and David Mellor seem so tame in comparison. N
ew Labour should be very afraid if other people reach this same conclusion about New Labour sleaze and muck-raking. Even Gordon’s scowl resembles that of Nixon!
In comparison, a few thousand protestors clamouring for economic and environmental justice should not have frightened anyone in Government.
Perhaps the Government is afraid we may have rumbelled them about their bailout for bankers, and cuts for the rest of us.
Ah, now I see the point.
We all know about duplicity and incompetence.
So the best thing to do is create confrontation and turn the victim (people) into the criminal, and turn this into a re-run of 1968, to scare @Middle England’
It will not work. Middle England (if it exists) is also getting stuffed as they see their pensions, houses and jobs ebbing away.
We all hope New Labour return to trying to clean up their economic mess and not play with fire. They are on their way out. Could they but make a graceful exit.
Farid Bakht
Jenny Jones, Green Party Home Affairs spokesperson and London Assembly member, has called senior police in the Met “complacent” over their belief their officers behaved professionally at all times during policing of the G20 protests. Jones labelled the aggressive tactics used by police offices to manage G20 demonstrations as a threat to public safety.
There should now be a full independent investigation, not only into the tragic death of Mr Tomlinson and subsequent apparent misinformation by the police, but also into the wider police tactics at the demonstration.
A Tower Hamlets Green Party member who was at the demonstration said “Sadly, the protest was marred by violent and provocative tactics used by the police in their attempts to contain demonstrators. Thousands of demonstrators including pregnant women and young children were ‘kettled’ in to a small area immediately outside the Bank of England with only those who had work ID for the local area or were NUJ members allowed out of the police blockades. Protesters were denied access to food, water and toilets for over 2 hours. A small minority of protesters trying to escape from the enclosure early on were arrested by the police. Furthermore, police on horseback appeared rapidly to prevent protestors advancing down a side street. The use of police on horseback against pedestrian demonstrators is wholly inapprorpiate and stokes up violence and fear in protestors unneccesarily.”
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-04-02-g20.html
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP has described the tactics used by the Metropolitan Police at yesterday’s G20 protests as “disproportionate and provocative.”
Throughout today, reports had been coming in from Greens who had been involved in the protest.
One party member involved said she had “returned shaken and appalled at the policing tactics employed at the G20 protests.”
Like many others, she described the way lines of police officers had kept groups of peaceful demonstrators “penned-in” for hours without access to water or toilets. She said:
“It is only thanks to my NUJ press pass that I managed to (eventually) escape the terrifying crush imposed by aggressive police. By that point I had spent at least two hours rammed in with other peaceful rotesters, bursting for the loo and battling against a resurgence of a phobia of being trapped in tight crowds.”
Another Green Party member involved in the demonstration said: “In thirty-one years of active participation in peaceful street demonstrations I have NEVER before been close to the threat of being trapped by police.”
Darren Johnson AM commented today: “A number of activists have already fed-in similar experiences and I agree that this is completely inappropriate policing tactics. While they need to act swiftly to tackle any violence it is wrong and totally counter-productive to treat the vast majority of wholly peaceful protestors in this way.”
This morning Jenny Jones AM, who had acted as an official observer with the police but who was denied the opportunity to go and observe where she wanted to, was promised a full opportunity to question the Metropolitan Police about their tactics.
Meanwhile Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP was receiving reports from people who had been at the Climate Camp, including the following allegations against the police:
* That no warning was given to the camp that they were about to be contained – so, for example, families with babies and children were not given the opportunity to leave.
* That when the police attacked the camp to take away the sound system and move people on, no warning was given and nobody was given the opportunity to leave of their own accord.
* That when the police entered the camp a second time, people were sitting down with their hands in the air being very passive – but the police dragged, kicked, punched and hit people with shields to move them away from the area and disperse them.
At around 2 o’clock this afternoon (Thursday) an armed police unit reportedly raided a convergence centre on Earl’s Street. The officers, who did not have a search warrant, claimed they were acting under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Caroline Lucas commented: “There seems to be a good deal of evidence that the police used tactics that were inappropriate.
“The law on preventing a breach of the peace should not be used as an excuse to deny people a right to demonstrate in a peaceful and law-abiding manner. And it definitely shouldn’t be used as an excuse for mass detention of demonstrators who, in many cases, just wanted to go home.”
She concluded: “I think the police should provide evidence of the basis on which they are apparently using anti-terrorism legislation to act against peaceful legitimate protesters.”
studentmedic
faridbakht