Angry Baghdad demonstration against the bombings

Just as the US and Kuwait prepared to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the ending of the Gulf War, so US and British planes bombed the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing and injuring civilians. The aggression marked a flexing of muscles by the new US president, George W Bush, whose father headed up the coalition which wreaked such murderous havoc in the Gulf last time round. The idea that since then there has been peace in the Gulf is a lie. The US has continuously intervened against Iraq, imposing no-fly zones over large parts of the country's territory, and carrying out punitive sanctions which have brought incredible hardship to the people of Iraq while leaving its government and dictator intact. An estimated 1 million Iraqis have died since 1991 as a result of sanctions and bombing. The bombing is carried out by US and British planes--even the French government has pulled out from the original project. Most states which formed part of the Gulf War coalition have at the least reservations about continued action against Iraq.

The latest bombings have brought widespread protests across the world. Only the Israeli government--itself a nuclear power in the region, and engaged in a war against the Palestinians--has fully endorsed the actions of Britain and the US. The claims of humanitarian intervention have worn thin. No such intervention has been proposed against war criminal Ariel Sharon's Israeli government, nor against the Turkish right wing regime which represses its Kurdish population and is presiding over the torture of hunger strikers in its jails. And, despite all the bombing and sanctions, Saddam Hussein's regime is still intact.

Now even the major western powers are questioning the whole rationale of what their intervention has meant. They are saying that the sanctions have not worked, and that there have to be 'smart sanctions' which target the ruling class and not the poor. Even if these were possible, they would not be about helping the ordinary Iraqi people, but about exerting further control by the west. The last major bombing of Baghdad (as opposed to the routine daily bombing around the no-fly zones) in December 1998 led to the withdrawal of UN 'weapons inspectors'--in effect western spies. The west wants these inspectors back, but, as Iraq's foreign minister has said, this will not be allowed even if all sanctions are lifted. He argues that if inspectors go to Iraq they should go to every Middle East country, and 'first Israel because they have atomic arsenals and all other arsenals'.

The furore in the Middle East over Palestine has been added to by the bombing, with even pro-western governments in the region condemning it. Why the double standards, is the question increasingly asked in the Middle East and here in Britain, as the government's ethical foreign policy lies in ruins. The answer, of course, goes to the heart of why they fight these wars in the first place. The western powers have greatly added to Middle Eastern instability by their offensive since 1991. They have made the region a militarised wasteland to protect their interests-- especially those in oil, which is still getting out of Iraq to the US despite the sanctions through intermediary countries such as Belarus. Oil is the reason why the war in Kuwait happened in the first place.

The 'world community' is not concerned primarily with the humanitarian disasters around the world but is in fact held together by economic interests. It bombs and kills to protect those interests, and uses vast amounts of its ordinary citizens' taxes to pay for more and more weapons of destruction. The two major western interventions of the 1990s have proved nothing short of disastrous. There is a real danger of a much bigger war in the Middle East than those already taking place. And the Balkans remains one of the world's troublespots. Fighting has now broken out on the borders between Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia. There is now a strong possibility of the Kosovan war turning into a war between Macedonia and Kosovo Albanians.

Meanwhile ordinary people pay the price. In Britain money goes on warfare rather than welfare, to the detriment of us all. And the poor and displaced of the war regions are used as pawns. Used as a pretext for war in their countries, they face discrimination and deportation if they come to the west. No wonder the movement against war and weapons is growing, as was demonstrated at the recent protest in Faslane and at the growing outcry against sanctions.
Lindsey German

BETWEEN THE LINES Foot and mouth disease is only the latest in a long line of food scares including listeria, salmonella, BSE, E coli, swine fever and infectious anaemia in salmon. In the last 15 years two thirds of abattoirs have been closed due to increased costs of inspection from the BSE crisis. Over the same period the average number of animals killed each week has risen from 13,313 per abattoir to 32,729 per abattoir. Imported meat is rarely inspected for disease on arrival. But Britain's farms are no better. On the farm where the latest foot and mouth outbreak occurred, rotting pig carcasses had been left with live pigs. Sows gave birth among other pigs, and grown pigs were eating piglets. Since the early 1980s reported cases of food poisoning have risen sevenfold, and now stand at more than 100,000 a year. More intensive production methods means the use of antibiotics in agriculture has risen fifteenfold in 30 years. Animals are regularly transported across the country because of the small number of abattoirs.

REFUGEES The route to further repression Forced out of Turkey, these Kurds finally arrived in France Home secretary Jack Straw has recently proposed new Europe-wide measures to further restrict asylum seekers' rights to enter. The proposals are part of a pre-election government offensive designed to scapegoat refugees. The 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act has already forced asylum seekers to receive vouchers set at 70 percent of income support instead of cash, to be dispersed without choice and to be denied the opportunity to work for the first six months of their arrival. A survey organised by the TGWU, Oxfam and the Refugee Council finds that 35 of 50 refugee support organisations have reported cases of asylum seekers experiencing hunger. Mental health problems are severe and complaints of the non-arrival or delay of vouchers are commonplace. Against this background Prime Minister Blair has recently met with Italian counterpart Giuliano Amato to try and close the 'Sarajevo route' of asylum seekers fleeing the former Yugoslavia, and has struck an agreement with the French government to let British immigration officers onto the Eurostar. Straw's latest proposals add a new twist to such barbarism. He wants refugee camps in those countries nearby to crisis areas where asylum applications would be locally processed and a quota system then established to share out a trickle of refugees into the EU. A refugee on the run from the Taliban in Afghanistan, for example, would be expected to cross the border into Pakistan where state officials would be 'paid' by the EU to process asylum applications. If Pakistan refused to cooperate then provisions would be used which compel developing countries to cooperate with EU immigration policy as a condition of aid. Kurds would be provided with special internment camps in Turkey where the EU has agreed to discourage any camp inspections by the United Nations. There is no guarantee that these measures would work, but then that is not the point. It would create a situation in Britain where any likely-looking refugee on the street would be much more likely to be stopped and deported if they did not have the correct papers; a prospect that even the ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) has recently cautioned against as encouraging racist attacks. The likelihood for more detention centres would also be nearer as the government sought to regulate its quota of refugees. All this is done on the basis, as Tory leader William Hague argues, that Britain is a 'soft touch' for immigration. Hence it is an election issue and one with deep racist undertones. However, the facts deny the myths. According to Oxfam, there are currently more than 33 million refugees, compared with 14 million in 1997 and 2.5 million in 1975. The vast majority of refugees move within the Third World, including an estimated 8 million in Africa alone. Some 76,000 refugees entered Britain last year, less than a quarter of 1 percent of the world's total. Welfare for refugees here is among the worst in Europe. The number of asylum seekers entering Britain is lower by far (1.21 applicants per 1,000 people) than Luxemburg (6.79 per 1,000), Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark. The growth of displaced persons is a direct consequence of wars fanned by western interests and poverty. Rather than challenge these interests and fight for liberation and social justice, western leaders would prefer to win an election by playing the race card and deflecting working people from real opposition to job losses and cuts in public funding. In contrast, socialists must welcome asylum seekers and oppose the government's barbarism. Martin Upchurch BOYCOTT Canteen culture French-based multinational Sodexho is marketing New Labour's voucher scheme for asylum seekers. It also part owns Britain's detention services in which asylum seekers are imprisoned. It is a large investor in 'for profit, private prisons' in the US through its subsidiary company Corrections Corporation of America. The managing director of Sodexho said, 'I used to be into hotels, but with prisons I can guarantee a 100 percent occupancy rate.' Sodexho is the largest contract catering company in the world. It owns university and workplace canteens. Students in the US are boycotting campus canteens and demanding they offer subsidised canteens with full rights and benefits for employees. In Britain the Hackney Refugee and Migrant Support Group has started a 'boycott the canteen campaign' at Hackney Community College against overpriced food. Sodexho now wants more. It's UK 'partner', Douglas Tilbury Co UK, recently bought the PFI contract for the Dudley hospitals, where workers have been on strike against privatisation. Resistance against a company like Sodexho unites refugees and workers. Judyann Platts

AIDS

One of the many Aids victims in Africa

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline plans to take the South African government to court this month over an alleged violation of the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips) agreement. The South African government is defending its right to manufacture or import cheaper generic versions of anti-Aids drugs. The Trips agreement, drawn up by the WTO, gives drug companies a monopoly on the promotion, distribution and pricing of anti-Aids drugs. Countries are then tied to Trips for up to 20 years. The agreement prohibits the manufacture of cheaper generic versions while a drug is under patent.

The top ten pharmaceutical companies alone are worth a staggering $1,200 billion. At the end of 1999 Glaxo-Wellcome and Pfizer enjoyed profits of $2.77 billion and $2.19 billion respectively. GlaxoSmithKline's profits are expected to reach nearer £5 billion this year.

A clause within the Trips law allows countries experiencing a national emergency to manufacture locally (compulsory licensing) or obtain cheaper drugs manufactured in other countries (parallel licensing). These cheaper generic drugs cost as little as one tenth the price of branded drugs. For example, the anti-fungal drug Biozole, whose patent is owned by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, costs £9 to purchase in South Africa, but the cheaper generic version costs just 15p in Thailand. Established drugs like AZT cost an average of $12,500 per year.

Brazil, where the government is implementing compulsory licensing, has seen the number of deaths from Aids plummet by 38 percent since the early 1990s. South Africa wants to follow suit. Aids campaigners Act Up and the Treatment Action Group (Tag) have campaigned hard to allow developing countries to obtain cheaper drugs. Equally, the conglomerate of the big pharmaceutical companies (Pharma), backed by the US government, has been aggressive in its response. Some 42 pharmaceutical companies are spending millions in lawsuits to block countries like South Africa, Thailand and Brazil utilising the clause. Sir Richard Sykes, chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, recently compared countries like South Africa and Brazil to 'pirates on the high seas'. But none of these countries are breaking any laws. The pharmaceutical companies know that the expansion of generic drugs could hurt profits and shares.

Aids has already killed 19 million people since its identification in 1981--16 million in Africa alone. There are up to 36.1 million people living with HIV in the world today. Some 25.3 million are living in sub-Saharan Africa. In eastern Europe infections have trebled--30,000 people are infected with HIV in western Europe, and another 45,000 in the US. Aids kills over 2.5 million people each year.

The availability of anti-Aids drugs should mean that everyone infected with the virus can lead a normal life, but less than one in 1,000 people living in Africa have access to these anti-Aids drugs. The World Health Organisation estimates that access to anti-Aids drugs will save 4 million people in south east Asia and Africa.

The drug companies argue that they need their profits to recoup research and development costs. But the cost of branded drugs far exceeds the cost of manufacturing them, and much of the research and development of drugs is government funded. The total expenditure on research and development in 1998 was $300 million, and only $5 million of this was spent on research within the developing world. Compare this figure to Sir Richard Sykes' salary in 1999--he collected over £3 million in wages and share revenues. His company, GlaxoSmithKline, spends four times as much money on employing salesmen compared to recruiting scientists.

But the big drug companies are not emerging completely unscathed. They are facing mounting pressure from campaign groups, and are losing credibility amongst the media, scientists and the public. They are also being forced to offer some discounts to protect their patents, but usually these are in the form of loans (payable at standard market interest rates). The leading charity Oxfam, which is itself campaigning for access to cheaper drugs, condemns loan packages as 'debt that tomorrow's Aids orphans will be forced to pay'. In Zimbabwe, one of the worst afffected areas, death from Aids has increased thirteenfold in the healthcare sector in the last ten years. Companies avoiding paying medical benefits are sacking millions of workers, crippling an already struggling economy and shifting the onus of care onto the poor.

Governments reiterate that the poorest countries must open their borders to foreign direct investment (FDI). Yet loans are the only way some of the poor countries can afford to import goods. Furthermore, loans, Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) and Public Expenditure Reviews come as a package. PRS chip away services such as health, education and welfare to a bare minimum. Public Expenditure Reviews ensure repayment of loans to the detriment of health services. In the least developed countries payment of loans has taken precedence over healthcare. PRS and the repayment of debt have stripped £70 billion from Africa's economy. Zimbabwe spends three times as much on debt as it does on health. And in Britain Private Finance Initiatives mean cuts in health services. A recent report by the Public Health Laboratory Service states that in the last three years there has been a 40 percent increase in the number of people living with HIV in England and Wales. This figure is set to rise by another 40 percent in the next three years. There have been significant increases in the number of heterosexual men and women contracting the virus.

Whatever the outcome of the court case, the role of pharmaceutical companies as primary health givers will be severely tarnished.
Hazel Vigille