Ninety-Nine magazine - February 2023

Issue 25 - February 2023

Monopoly capitalism

Extreme corporate power on a planet in crisis

Also in this issue

What big oil owes the world

Resisting the tech giants

Posters of the Mozambican Revolution

Challenging the power of the

ISSUE 25: February 2023

03 Campaign news

06 Global news

08 The problem with monopoly capitalism

11 Global Justice Now supporters

12 Digital colonisation

14 What big oil owes the world

16 Posters of the Mozambican Revolution

19 Reviews

Challenging the excessive power of corporations has always been central to Global Justice Now. In fact, the history of the modern corporation goes back several hundred years, its origins associated with the plunder and brutality of empire. Today, in the age of the modern global economy, ever more powerful corporations have again become the central vehicle for extraction and exploitation.

Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now

Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.

Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now

66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS

020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk

Editor: Jonathan Stevenson

Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.org

Cover image: Daisy Pearson

Printed on 100% recycled paper.

Get Ninety-Nine delivered to your door three times a year when you become a member of Global Justice Now. Go to globaljustice.org.uk/join

Of course, there’s a particular problem when corporations are allowed to control the basics we all need to live a dignified life – products like food and medicines – as Niall Glynn explains on page 8. There’s a problem when corporations are able to knowingly pollute the planet and destroy the environment, leaving others to pay for the cost of these actions in their lives and livelihoods, as Daniel Willis writes on page 14. And there’s a problem when corporations can monopolise technologies central to public debate and discussion, to our working and social lives, as Parminder Jeet Singh explains on page 12.

But this isn’t simply a problem of a small handful of big businesses behaving badly in specific sectors. Corporate power now defines our economic model, strengthened and protected by the rules of the global economy. Under such a regime, really extreme inequality is not a side note, it’s integral to how the economy works. And it poses more general threats to our democratic rights too. As US anti-monopoly campaigner Zephyr Teachout says, when private interests are allowed to use public power for their own private and selfish ends, this doesn’t simply encourage corruption, it is corruption.

We believe such an economy can accurately be described as monopoly capitalism. We hope that this label can help mobilise people from across society not only in the important but specific battles against ‘big pharma’ or ‘big agriculture’, in which we’ve been engaged in for many years, but in challenging an economic model which encourages corporate power. Only then, can we build a more equal, democratic and sustainable society.

Today, in the age of the modern global economy, ever more powerful corporations have again become the central vehicle for extraction and exploitation.

We must confront extreme corporate power

Nick Deardon Director

Breakthrough on loss and damage fund at COP27

The COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November ended with an historic agreement to set up a new loss and damage fund to compensate lower income countries for climate impacts. This was a big win for the global south that has been 30 years in the making and, while the talks didn’t produce significant steps forward on curbing fossil fuels, does show that when the climate justice movement is united, we can win. A transitional committee, made up of 10 representatives of rich countries and 14 representatives of countries in the global south, now has until the end of March to begin the process of deciding how the fund will operate.

There are sure to be many tough political battles ahead, on which countries should pay in and receive money from the fund, and how much finance is needed, before the funding arrangements are confirmed – this is planned to be at COP28 in Dubai. Civil society will need to monitor this process carefully to ensure that rich countries follow through on the agreement made in Sharm el Sheikh last year.

Meanwhile, plans are already in progress to ensure the UK makes a significant commitment to the loss and damage fund and that the government funds this by taxing big polluters in the fossil fuel industry.

Global Justice Now research published during COP27 argued that the Big 5 oil companies, which reported over $170 billion of profit in 2022 alone, could owe as much as $8 trillion to the global south because of the damage caused by their historic carbon emissions. We want the government to tax these climate criminals and to use some of the funds raised to provide climate compensation to the global south. Take action at: globaljustice.org.uk/ loss-and-damage

Above: Global Justice Now joined campaigners from around the world in Sharm el Sheikh to demand polluters pay for climate loss and damage.

Energy Charter Treaty on its last legs

The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is crumbling – we’re winning! For the past two years, Global Justice Now has been campaigning with allies all across Europe on this controversial ‘corporate court’ treaty between fifty countries. It is being used by fossil fuel companies to sue governments over things like phasing out coal power and banning fracking. Together we’ve been calling for countries to exit the ECT.

At times it has felt like the campaign was stuck – that inertia would win out. But as the clock ticked down to a final decision in November on whether members of the ECT would accept a plan to allow fossil fuel companies to continue to sue for ten more years,

the pressure finally paid off – the dam burst and a cascade of countries announced they’re leaving.

So far Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Slovenia and Luxembourg have all declared they are withdrawing from the ECT, with many openly saying the treaty is incompatible with climate goals. It’s an amazing success for all the campaigners and activists who’ve been pushing for this all across Europe. Together we’ve made a little-known trade agreement and its secretive tribunals so toxic that countries are tripping over themselves to get out of the door.

But you will of course note that the UK is not in that list of countries – yet! The government is giving itself space to potentially change course, though, saying it is “closely monitoring” what other countries are doing and taking that into account in its plans.

We’re redoubling our efforts, including talking to government insiders who may be able to persuade ministers that the ECT is not worth defending. If we can keep up the momentum, there’s a good chance the UK will join the exodus from the ECT in 2023.

Take action at: globaljustice.org.uk/ect

© David Mirzoeff

With countries across Europe quitting the Energy Charter Treaty, it’s vital to keep up the pressure on the UK to join the exodus.

Urgent call to stop Sunak’s dangerous banking bill

Global Justice Now has been leading efforts to sound the alarm about prime minister Rishi Sunak’s dangerous plan for a second ‘big bang’ in the City of London – the mass financial deregulation which laid the ground for the 2008 banking crash. The Financial Services and Markets Bill was tabled by the then chancellor last summer, continued under Liz Truss’s illfated premiership and ultimately passed through the House of Commons in December. Campaigners now face a battle to block or amend the bill in the House of Lords.

More than 30,000 have signed our petition against the bill’s efforts to strip back the limited measures introduced after the financial crisis to prevent the worst excesses of City speculators. From removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses to scrapping the restrictions on food speculation won by our campaigning in the early 2010s, the plan contains a litany of measures which encourage risk-taking among Sunak’s former colleagues in the banking industry at the expense of wider society.

Take action at: globaljustice.org.uk/sunak-banks

UK attacks affordable medicines in India trade talks

In November, leaked trade documents revealed efforts by UK ministers to impose a list of big pharma demands on India in talks over a trade deal. This includes pressure to extend patent monopolies and stopping civil society from having a say about new patent applications.

All this could seriously undermine India’s medicines industry, which is currently the world’s biggest producer of cheaper, generic medicines. Famously, Indian generics brought the price of key HIV medication down by 99%. The NHS also relies heavily on medicines made in India, where

intellectual property laws are much more balanced, making sure health needs are considered alongside pharma profits.

Global Justice Now has teamed up with Indian health groups, UK medics and supportive MPs to demand the government drops these dangerous demands. The trade secretary has responded with vague denials, but as long as the government continues to negotiate behind a veil of secrecy, we’ll be keeping the pressure on.

Take action at: globaljustice.org.uk/uk-india-deal

© Lauren Hurley/No 10 Downing Street

Right: Ex-Goldman Sachs banker Rishi Sunak is pushing the interests of his former industry as prime minister.

Indian workers join global day of action to Make Amazon Pay

Amazon workers across India took part in protests on Black Friday in November as part of a global day of action organised by Make Amazon Pay, a coalition of 80 trade unions, civil society organisations and environmentalists. They are calling for the company to pay its workers fairly, respect their right to join unions, pay its fair share of taxes and commit to real environmental sustainability.

“It was similar to working at a sweatshop… 10-hour long shifts, low wages, insufficient breaks, and leave,” said a former employee at Amazon’s packing warehouse near Manesar, Haryana. Protests took place in Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. They were among actions in dozens of countries.

Dharmendra Kumar, one of the organisers and co-convenor of the Joint Action Committee against Foreign Retail and E-commerce, said, “Amazon is lowering working standards across the board in India. It is based on a business model which is ecologically disastrous and economically unviable.”

Guatemalans vow to resist US mine despite $400m corporate court claim

Communities living near the site of a gold mine north of Guatemala City have vowed to continue resisting the project, after Nevada-based mining firm Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA) filed a $400 million claim against the Guatemalan government at the World Bank’s investor-state dispute settlement tribunal.

For more than a decade, community

groups have maintained a roundthe-clock protest camp in front of the road to the mine site, while presenting evidence of how it would lead to water depletion and contamination. The mine was suspended by Guatemalan courts in 2015 over a failure to adequately consult with communities. KCA hopes the corporate court claim will force the Guatemalan government

to unblock the project – or pay out on its expected profits.

“What’s needed is a different economic model — one that prioritises clean water and soil, healthy communities, peace, dignity, and selfdetermination,” said Ana Sandoval of Peaceful Resistance La Puya, one of the groups resisting the mine.

Amazon warehouse workers along with other workers shout slogans at a demonstration in New Delhi in November.

© Kabir Jhangiani/ZUMA Press Wire/ Alamy Stock Photo

NEWS SHORTS

UAE oil chief urged to quit as COP28 chair

Climate campaigners have condemned the appointment of the UAE state oil company’s CEO as chair of COP28 climate talks in Dubai in November, calling on him to step down.

Memory Kachambwa of the African Women Development & Communication Network called the appointment “an insult to the collective wisdom of everyone committed to addressing the climate crisis.”.

French 'insurrection' over attack on pension age

An estimated two million people took to the streets of France in January to oppose efforts to raise the retirement age by two years to 64. Transport, schools and the energy sector were all heavily affected by the second day of industrial action, as 250 protests against the changes took place across the country.

MST pledges to keep up fight under President Lula

The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) has pledged to continue mobilising to help President Lula deliver on his agenda, following the defeat of Jair Bolsonaro in October’s elections and the failed coup attempt in January by his supporters. “We know that without popular mobilisation there will be no real change in the country”, it said.

Charges against migrant support workers annulled in Greece

A court on the Greek island of Lesbos has rejected several charges against a group of volunteer human rights defenders who took part in migrant rescue operations. The group of 24 people – seven Greek and 17 foreign nationals – faced charges including espionage, forgery and unlawful use of radio frequencies. They argue they were simply helping people whose lives were at risk. “Trials like this are deeply concerning because they criminalise life-saving work and set a dangerous precedent,” the UN Human

Rights Office said before the hearing. The court accepted procedural objections by defence lawyers including that documents had not been translated for the foreign defendants. “It is a step, it is the first recognition that there were many legal mistakes that violated the essence of a fair trial,” said defence lawyer Cleo Papapantoleon. “We expect the same to happen with the investigation into the felonies, for which there is also no evidence.”

Indigenous peoples lead popular uprising across Peru

Weeks of mass protests led by Indigenous peoples have been taking place across Peru since the removal and arrest of President Pedro Castillo in December. Protesters demanding fresh elections and a new constitution have been met with violent repression by the caretaker government of Dina Boluarte, with more than 50 people killed in the rural south.

Large parts of the country have been brought to a standstill by the protests and roadblocks since Castillo’s removal,

which reflect deep-rooted inequalities between the majority rural, Indigenous communities from the south of the country and the social and political elite based in the capital, Lima. Despite the repression, tens of thousands have travelled to Lima for a new wave of protests which include demands for justice for those killed.

“We have been humiliated and forgotten,” said Dina Quispe from the community of Checyuyoc. “They are killing our brothers with bullets.”

An anti-government protest in Lima on 2 February, part of a wave of protests which have lasted two months.

© Alessandro Cinque/Reuters/Alamy

The problem with monopoly capitalism

What do baby milk formula, an Epipen, and the Google search engine all have in common? Although seemingly unconnected, they are all produced by highly concentrated industries. In the US, nearly 100% of baby milk formula consumed comes from three companies: Abbott, Gerber and Reckitt (Abbott alone accounts for 40%). Just one pharmaceutical company holds approximately 90% of the Epipen market, allowing it to more than quadruple its prices over the course of a decade. The technology giant Google has a share of around 84% of the global search engine market. This is monopoly capitalism.

Throughout capitalism's relatively brief history, large corporations have always held a dominant position in the global economy. They’ve used their central position to fix the rules of the game in their favour. One of the earliest transnational corporations was the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which operated from present-day Indonesia and had a monopoly over many spices and textiles in the 17th century. It is estimated that if the VOC were around today, it would be worth $7.9 trillion – more than Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and 17 of the other top-valued corporations of today combined.

While the early corporations were

deeply entwined with colonial plunder, the tendency towards concentration of wealth and resources survived the end of formal empires. Over the past century, the concentration of industries has become widespread across the global economy, with the United States leading the way. Since the 1930s, the share of the US economy dominated by the top 1% of companies by total assets has increased from 70% to 97%. The share of the top 0.1% of companies is even more stark, rising from 47% to 88%. By sales, the top 1% today account for 80% of revenues generated, compared to 60% in 1969. Similar trends are visible in the UK, Europe and further afield. Whichever way you want to slice it, the facts are clear: this is a problem that is only growing. And we can see the consequences through two global industries which are significant in our lives: food and pharmaceuticals.

BIG AGRICULTURE BLOSSOMS

In a short time, the global food industry has become dominated by a handful of multi-billion dollar companies. As of 2018, the seed market was run by the ‘Big Six’ of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, DuPont and Dow Chemical, which controlled 63% of the world’s commercial seeds and 75% of global agrochemicals. Megamergers have

From the medicines we need to the food we eat, the concentration of economic power among a handful of big companies is at the heart of global injustice. It’s time to fight back, writes NIALL GLYNN.

meant even more concentration. The Bayer and Monsanto $63 billion deal turned the Big Six into the Big Five. The megamerger of Sinochem and ChemChina in 2021 led to the creation of the third-largest seed firm and the largest chemical conglomerate in the world.

This has real consequences for the food we eat. It is estimated that around 75% of plant genetic diversity has been lost since the 1990s as farmers worldwide have been forced into cultivating genetically similar highyielding crops. Around three-quarters of the food we consume now comes from only twelve plants and five animal species. Heavily relying on a handful of food crop varieties will be dangerous for our and our planet's survival. One crop disease, as seen across Europe in the 1840s in potatoes, or extreme weather event, could wipe out food for many millions of people.

Coupled with large corporations' seed control and ownership, there is another aspect of global food trade: agricultural traders. The largest agricultural traders, collectively known as ABCD, control 75% to 90% of all international grain trade. Commodity trading houses understand the benefits of being one of a few dominant firms. From 1990 to 2019, these trading houses have increasingly been acquiring those around them – the ABCD group accounted for 63% of acquisitions amongst the top ten commodity trading houses. Cargill alone accounts for 30%. Of these acquisitions, 42% happened from 2010 to 2019. It is no coincidence that commodity markets –which dictate the incomes of hundreds of millions of people across the global south –have become more volatile in this period.

VACCINES AND PATENTS

It’s a similar story in the pharmaceutical industry. There is a long tradition of

pharmaceutical companies keeping the prices of drugs artificially high in order to reap huge profits. In 1958, a US government report on the antibiotics industry found that a handful of companies had cornered the market to keep the price of the antibiotic tetracycline high. The production of post-penicillin antibiotics was highly concentrated, with Pfizer and American Cyanamid controlling 50% of total antibiotics production.

In recent decades, this problem has been accelerating. Since the 1980s, global biotechnology and pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions have steadily increased in number and value. Between 1995 and 2015, 60 pharmaceutical companies merged into ten in the United States.

The increasing concentration in the pharmaceutical industry means a smaller number of firms can control prices for often essential drugs. We have all experienced how Pfizer and Moderna jacked up the prices for Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the devastating pandemic. But this practice is long-standing across the industry. Just three pharmaceutical giants, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lily, own the US patents to manufacture insulin and were able to raise their prices by 168%, 169% and 325%, respectively, in the early 2010s. With few alternatives to these big pharma giants, even wealthy governments cannot prevent them from dictating terms and prices.

FIGHTING BACK

All too often, governments in the global north fail to see the concentration of economic power as a problem. While there are cases of mergers being scrutinised by anti-trust bodies, the number of times they are blocked is a drop in the ocean. Monopoly capitalism is the norm, and anything good for big business is seen to be

All too often, governments in the global north fail to see the concentration of economic power as a problem.

Back: The fleet of the Dutch East Indian Company, one of the world's first transnational corporations, returns from Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1648.

© Peter Horree/ Alamy Stock Photo

Inset: Demanding food sovereignty at a Global Justice London protest in 2015.

© Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk

good for society. We know this is not the case.

But these corporate monopolies are at the heart of so many injustices in the global economy. As we have seen, they directly harm the way we produce and consume the basics of life – from the destabilising of small farming communities through big agriculture to enabling hikes in the price of medicines to excruciating levels. Here, we’re essentially letting private interests make decisions which should rightly be made only by workers, communities and democratic governments.

Monopolies also contribute to wage inequality as those at the top of corporations decide to pay their workers as little as possible to keep their costs low as workers have few alternatives. At the same time, monopolies make our economies more fragile – just look at how consolidated global supply chains led to disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic, with fewer points of failure, making the system less resilient.

Corporate monopolies are also a barrier to solving enormous environmental problems like climate change. Big oil companies donate millions to politicians to maintain the status quo, they have funded think tanks that publish anti-climate change propaganda and have used their power to delay the development of renewable alternatives.

To fight back against monopoly capitalism, we need to promote two key ideas: economic democracy and collective ownership.

Economic democracy is needed so communities and workers can take control of their own economic livelihoods. People need more influence over the resources available to them and the decision-making processes that affect their lives - determining the what, where, how and why of extraction, production, distribution and consumption in a democratic manner.

We must also reverse the decades-long privatisation trend of more and more of the public realm worldwide. Instead, we must re-make the case for collective ownership of the essentials of our society – from resources and land to housing, education, institutions, finance, economic planning, public utilities, infrastructure, governance bodies, and visions of the future. An ownership that is climate-focused, nonextractive and internationalist at its core, and where resources, wealth and power aren't concentrated in the hands of a few.

Monopoly capitalism will be a vampire that keeps on draining us all if we allow it. Let us take back what is rightfully ours.

Niall Glynn is an economist, researcher and founder of The Working Class Economists Group.

Protesters demand access to affordable insulin outside the offices of US pharma giant Eli Lilly in New York in 2019.

© Sipa US/Alamy Stock Photo

Global Justice Now Supporters

Events

Join one of our two national events in the coming months

25 March

Resisting Monopoly Capitalism

On Saturday 25 March at SOAS in London we’ll be holding what we hope will be a significant activist conference on extreme corporate power on a planet in crisis. Multinational corporations have grown wealthy by monopolising the resources we need to live a dignified life. These leviathans set the rules of the game, triggering a race to the bottom in terms of workers’ rights and environmental protection. But the movement against monopolies is growing, and we’ll be joined by speakers at the forefront of this fight, including:

Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change, India

Julia Kosgei, People’s Vaccine Alliance, Kenya

Aurélie Trouvé, French MP, parliamentary chair of NUPES

Michelle Meagher, Balanced Economy Project

Anthony Barnett, founder, Open Democracy

Nicholas Shaxson, author, Treasure Islands and more to be announced

Join us to discuss what monopoly capitalism is and look at the problems it poses to our food system, medicine production and communications, as well its implications for war and climate change. And importantly, we’ll talk about how we bring these corporations to heel. Book your place at: globaljustice.org.uk/monopolies

3 June

Global Justice Now's AGM

Global Justice Now members should have received a notice about our annual general meeting with this issue of Ninety-Nine. We’re holding the AGM on Saturday 3 June this year, but returning to running it online. This might not be a permanent change, but there has been demand from members to access the AGM online,

and it certainly makes this important part of our governance more accessible to those who can’t travel. It also allows us more flexibility with the structure and timing of our annual conference and other events.

More information is available at: globaljustice.org.uk/agm-2023

Big tech monopolies are a form of digital colonisation

The digital economy presents unique challenges for the movement against extreme corporate power. It must be understood to be resisted, says PARMINDER JEET SINGH.

As apps like Uber and Amazon spread around the world, the corporations behind them want us to see it as good for everyone – more developing countries are getting access to these platforms, and it doesn't matter who provides them. But at the core of the digital economy is a fundamental problem of data monopoly that is not well understood. Just last year the chief of the IMF – who doesn't

normally make radical statements – said that we are heading towards a digital Berlin Wall. The changes brought in by the digital economy are comparable to the start of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of machines. This was not just a technical or economic shift, but a social, cultural and political shift as well. For the first time the physical power which had earlier been

The power of digital giants like Amazon comes from their monopoly over data.

provided by human beings or animals was embodied into a machine, and a whole 300 years of the Industrial Age was the result.

What is happening today in the digital economy is that for the first time, systemic intelligence has been disembodied from human beings into machines. Not just the intelligence we know in a computer, which is a kind of recorded or reflected intelligence, always to be acted upon by human beings, but a somewhat autonomous systemic intelligence. Intelligent machines are able to run whole sectors, activities and actors almost autonomously.

Uber famously doesn’t own any cars – instead, its platform is like a brain which is functioning and nobody is actually taking those decisions, human beings are largely out of it. Of course, management decisions and incentives to the system are set by human beings, but once the incentives are fed in, it’s an autonomous system. Amazon is a similar kind of brain, orchestrating logistics providers, traders, manufacturers, suppliers, payment providers. Like a brain does to the body it is able to control and orchestrate everything in one go..

DATA AS A RAW MATERIAL

It is often said that data is the most valuable asset in the digital economy – but I can give you truckloads of data, and you're not going to be able to do anything with it. Data is a raw material which provides intelligence about the subjects of data. And therefore, the real asset is intelligence, whereby these digital platform companies can be called intelligence corporations. The corporations that are at the top of the value chain today are those corporations which own the intelligence of a sector. In many ways, these corporations supersede the intellectual property-

owning organisations which until recently have been at the top of global value chains.

In the age of digital transformation, the new value chain involves data produced in developing countries and collected by platforms which are majorly-owned by big tech companies in the US and China. The product of intelligence resides inside servers and is controlled by these companies.

UNCTAD statistics show that 90% of the ownership of the top 70 platforms in the world is divided between big tech companies based in the US and China. This is a greater concentration of wealth and power than we have ever seen.

DIGITAL COLONISATION

What this is leading to is a form of digital colonisation. Industrial colonisation consisted of a chain of economic activities where raw materials were produced in the colonies, which were forced to remain as producers of raw materials for industrialised countries, from where the finished products were then sold to all, including to the colonies. The digital version of this dependency is happening today. And once we get dependent on what is called ‘outsourced intelligence’, that dependency is acute. Because unlike if you stop being able to import Mercedes cars, the data that has been collected about you over many years is not easily replaceable with domestic alternatives.

This process of digital colonisation is a global challenge we all face. One of the most important steps to address it is to have data infrastructure as public infrastructure. Some of the biggest work being done on this is surprisingly in Europe, because this is the first time that Europe is actually no better off than say India or Indonesia –although they call it a ‘data sovereignty’ issue (and not colonisation). India also has had a committee report on a non-personal data framework, of which I was a member, which recommended mandatory sharing of important data by platforms with start-ups, public agencies and researchers. Just like in the Industrial Age, when roads, ports and bridges were common to everybody, certain kinds of data could then be used by everybody equally within the country.

Ultimately what is needed is a digital industrial policy, which directly addresses the excesses of data and digital corporations by giving preference to domestic industries – insulating industries and helping infant industries, as an industrial policy framework should do. Europe is bringing in a barrage of laws in this direction, but it is still shy of directly naming the problem – because of its ideological attachment to the free market. But the problem of who provides these digital platforms and how is one that collectively we must address.

Parminder Jeet Singh is the executive director of IT for Change in India. This is an edited extract of a talk give to an Asia-Europe People’s Forum webinar in October, available at aepf.info.

90% of the top digital platforms in the world are owned in the US and China, a greater concentration of wealth than we have ever seen.

What big oil owes the world

It has hardly been a winter of discontent for the fossil fuel industry or for the shareholders of its biggest corporations. In 2022, the Big 5 oil companies reported more than $170 billion in profits, reaping huge rewards from their stranglehold over our economies while creating hardship for millions who have had to struggle with enormous energy bills. At the same time these companies have made a huge contribution to climate change through their historic and ongoing carbonemitting activities.

Countries across the global south, meanwhile, are picking up the bill for this wanton destruction. Last year, Pakistan faced an estimated $30 billion reconstruction bill after devastating floods. Yet Pakistan has generated less than half a percent of global historic emissions. BP and Shell have contributed more than 2%, each. Where is the justice in letting those who have caused the crisis off scot-free, while leaving the countries least able to pay to pick up the tab?

The story is the same in Mozambique, Bangladesh, in the small island states of the Pacific and Caribbean, and in the Horn of Africa. People and communities who have done next to nothing to cause the climate crisis are facing the consequences of centuries of colonial extraction. While enabled by governments in rich countries and their financiers, it’s the biggest fossil fuel corporations which have carried out this destruction.

The agreement made at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh last November (see page 3) was an attempt to begin rectifying this. Negotiators from the global south have long argued that rich, polluting countries owe climate compensation to those facing the worst impacts, and finally their demands were (at least partly) met, with the agreement to establish a new ‘loss and damage’ fund by this year’s COP28.

Many of the details and mechanisms to make this fund work in practice are yet to be established, so we don’t know exactly how big a win it is yet –that is to be decided in the coming months. But the biggest question raised by the loss and damage fund is: who should pay for it?

POLLUTERS MUST PAY

Many governments across the global north are already tightening public expenditure after significant spending to ease the impacts of Covid-19 and the current energy crisis. In this context, building public support for large financial transfers to the global south, when the impact could be even further austerity and spending cuts here, is a challenge.

This is where the big polluters come in. Corporations like the Big 5 (that is, Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and TotalEnergies) have got rich by ripping off households in the UK and by denying their responsibility for climate catastrophe in the global south. There is a clear and simple case for these companies to be the ones which pay for

After the breakthrough on loss and damage at COP27, we must demand that big polluting corporations pay for what they've done, writes DANIEL WILLIS.

Right: Public pressure to demand fossil fuel companies pay for the pollution they’ve caused is essential in the cost of living crisis.

The big 5 oil companies have cost the global south an estimated $8 trillion of climate damage.

climate compensation. As Bolivia’s former lead negotiator Pablo Solón says, “if you break it, you buy it”.

Global Justice Now research put out during COP27 established that the Big 5 have very much broken it. Their historic emissions alone, which are more than 4 times as big as those of the 150 least emitting countries combined, have generated around $8 trillion in costs for the global south (for loss and damage, reducing carbon emissions and adaptation) that are currently going unmet.

That is why we are campaigning with allies to make polluters pay. A windfall tax on profits is a start, but we don’t want these companies to keep profiting from destruction. Our movement needs to develop new, innovative ideas on how we tax these climate criminals, and build public support and power to see them adopted by parliaments here and internationally.

We shouldn’t stop at taxing fossil fuel companies. We know that the fossil fuel industry is funded by the world’s biggest banks and financial

institutions. In 2020, investments made by the asset manager Blackrock generated more carbon emissions than the whole of France. Taxing financial institutions that bankroll planetary destruction could be another route to funding loss and damage.

We must also pay attention to the role of the super-rich in climate change. In Europe, the poorest 50% of the population emits around 5 tonnes per person per year, while the top 0.01% contribute a staggering 2,530

tonnes each. Climate justice within the global north means things like introducing significant taxes on highlypolluting luxury goods and on wealth, with the proceeds split between the UK’s loss and damage contribution and climate justice measures at home. This may seem a distant prospect, but many of these ideas are already being discussed and accepted as common sense by some in Westminster. The government has already introduced an (insufficient) windfall tax on fossil fuel profits, and opposition parties are exploring ideas around wealth taxation.

And in response to the energy crisis, public opinion has rarely been so firmly set against profiteering corporations in the fossil fuel industry, or so willing to consider bold new proposals for how to achieve justice in the face of multiple crises. This is our opportunity to tax the climate criminals. 2023 must be the year when we make polluters pay.

Daniel Willis is the climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now.

© David Mirzoeff

Our Sophisticated Weapon

Posters of the Mozambican Revolution

Having overthrown Portuguese rule in 1975, the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) looked to the arts for tools to build the new nation on ideals of socialism and internationalism. Working anonymously for the government’s new Department of Propaganda and Publicity, a team of artists including José Freire (1930-1998), João Craveirinha Jr (b 1947), and Manuel Ruas (b 1953) were tasked with creating and disseminating an image of the ‘new man’ through murals, print journals, and screen-printed posters. The result was a pivotal moment for graphic design in postcolonial Africa.

The exhibition brings together 25 of these posters. They chart the primary aims of the post-revolutionary nation, as they sought to establish a new society of unity and resilience in the wake of colonial rule. Campaigns included memorialisation of the heroes of the liberation struggle; declarations of solidarity with the socialist world and ongoing anti-colonial struggles; and directives for the future of culture, production, and women in the new society. Together, the posters offer a fascinating insight into Frelimo’s vision for a utopian future, pitched as their ultimate weapon in the ideological battles of the time.

Our Sophisticated Weapon was curated by Polly Savage and Richard Gray, and supported by SOAS. The full exhibition is available online at: alutacontinua.art

The Africa Centre is at 66 Great Suffolk Street, London SE1: www.africacentre.org.uk

All posters are copyright of the artists.

José Freire

1975, 25th of June 1975, Independence of Mozambique

Two-colour offset lithograph, DNPP, Maputo

Issued to celebrate Mozambique’s independence day, this poster represents the revolution as a peaceful sunrise that allows peasants to work freely on the land, and a soldier, still holding his gun, to concentrate on studying rather than fighting. The lab flasks and cog wheel signal the promise of science, technology and universal medical care, and the jubilant crowd wave placards to declare ‘Long Live Frelimo’ and ‘The Struggle Continues’. José Freire was also responsible for designing the uniforms, banners and emblems for the independence ceremony, and for organising the street decorations in Maputo, the renamed capital city.

Late last year, SOAS and The Africa Centre held an exhibition of political posters produced during the early years of Mozambique’s independence. Words by POLLY SAVAGE and RICHARD GRAY.

João Craveirinha Jr

May 1st, Day of the Worker. May 1st was always and will continue to be a manifestation of the struggle of the working classes and their internationalist character Colour offset lithograph, DNPP, Maputo

The red star of international socialism shines down on an idyllic Mozambican landscape, worked by labourers wielding hand tools and a woman driving a tractor, signalling a new dawn of equality, production and technology. João Craveirinha Jr worked as Frelimo’s graphic designer during the Armed Struggle, issuing posters, pamphlets and journals from the Front’s base in Tanzania. Despite many years of commitment to the party, he ultimately found Frelimo’s cultural policies oppressive, and left Mozambique in 1983.

Uncredited

OMM 2nd Conference, Maputo. Mozambican woman: let us free ourselves by increasing knowledge in productive work, energising the class struggle, making the revolution.

Two-colour offset lithograph, DNPP Maputo

The Organisation of Mozambican Women (OMM) was formed in 1973 as a non-military structure to promote women's education, emancipation and mobilisation during the struggle. After independence in 1975, the focus of the OMM shifted to issues of health, welfare and family planning.

25th June 1976, One Year of Independence / Generalised Political and Organisational Offensive on the Production Front

Three-colour offset lithograph, DNPP, Maputo

This poster marks the first anniversary of independence, a time when the need to restore economic productivity was Frelimo’s main priority. The sudden exodus of Portuguese settlers had caused a crisis of production and distribution, threatening food supplies and reducing valuable cashcrop exports. Frelimo responded by prioritising the organisation of communal villages, collective farms and cooperatives, invoking the social and economic model used in the Liberated Zones during the Armed Struggle.

7 April 1979 / Mozambican women, let us consolidate our revolutionary conquests by participating in the increase of production and productivity by resolutely engaging in the defence of the country

Three-colour offset lithograph, DNPP, Maputo

The image shows women studying, producing and fighting. These were key activities for all Mozambican militants, exemplified by the women of Frelimo’s Destacamento Feminino (Women’s Detachment) during the Armed Struggle (1964-1974).

José Freire

José Freire

Darin J. Sallam, 2022

1h 32m

Farha tells the story of Palestine in 1948, when Zionist forces took over the region, resulting in the Nakba (or ‘catastrophe'), the displacement of countless Palestinian families and the creation of the state of Israel. The film is an emotive, harrowing depiction of what took place during the Nakba with the focus on a 14-year-old girl, Farha, who as the violence begins has dreams of getting an education. It’s a powerful, heart-breaking true story written and directed by Jordanian filmmaker Darin Sallam, based on experiences recounted to her mother.

The film is Jordan's pick for the Oscars this year but has faced a backlash from pro-Israel pressure groups claiming (incorrectly) that the film is not an accurate portrayal of what happened. Having a platform like Netflix host a film like Farha helps engage millions of people with this important history, which is too often suppressed. It's also an incredible film in its own right.

Frances Leach

THE SWIMMERS

Sally El Hosaini, 2022

2h 14m

Based on a true story, The Swimmers follows two young sisters who make the perilous journey from war-torn Syria to Germany in pursuit of their Olympic dreams, and a future for their family. The dramatic irony at the beginning is almost unbearable, as they dance joyfully in a Damascus club to La Roux’s Bulletproof, while bombs rain down in the distance. The scene emphasises how ‘normal’ everything was in Syria, until it wasn’t, and highlights the awful loss of the culture, community and spirit of a country due to war.

It is a devastating and yet uplifting tale of courage, heroism and unexpected friendship, as shared experi-

AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY Dipo Faloyin Vintage, 2023

A really enjoyable argument for a greater understanding of Africa (I saw it in a bookshop cheekily placed next to another competing title: ‘It’s a Continent’). It cuts right into all the ways Africa is misrepresented in the west from the unintentionally hilarious lyrics of Feed the World, to Hollywood’s pseudo-African accents, to the loot of the Benin Empire literally lost in European museums, to Jamie Oliver’s foray into the jollof rice wars (an intervention that united diverse African nations with rival recipes in ferocious contempt).

Faloyin’s writing is really wonderful, and it’s pretty accessible to most readers even when relating political move -

ence outweighs the vast differences between refugees. By focusing on Olympic athletes, the film arguably plays into ‘good migrant’ narratives. However there’s no denying it’s a powerful and humanising representation of refugees and their resilience in the face of unimaginable traumas.

Daisy Pearson

ments – from the effort to overthrow the Bouteflika regime in Algeria to protests against the notorious, thieving ‘anti-robbery’ police units in Nigeria –that may be new to western readers. Veering from polemic to a determined defence of so much that’s good in Africa’s emerging cities, movements and culture, it’s an ultimately uplifting read.

Alex Higgins

FARHA

RESISTING MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

EXTREME CORPORATE POWER ON A PLANET IN CRISIS

Saturday 25 March • 11am–6pm • SOAS, London

An activist conference with:

Aurélie Trouvé French MP, parliamentary chair of left bloc NUPES

Julia Kosgei People’s Vaccine Alliance, Kenya

Parminder Jeet Singh IT for Change, India

Nicholas Shaxson Author, Treasure Islands and Finance Curse

Anthony Barnett Founder, Open Democracy

Michelle Meagher Balanced Economy Project

Landless Workers’ Movement, Brazil