Disaster capitalism in your kitchen

Cause-related marketing, they call it.  Linking purchases of a branded product or service to help for a worthy cause: computers for schools, say, or product (RED).  The idea being that merely by buying brand X instead of brand Y, consumers can help other people.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?  

So here comes Ariel, the struggling British household detergent brand owned by US-based P&G, which enjoyed net earnings of $10 billion in 2007.  

Ariel is supporting the Children’s Safe Drinking Water Programme and Five & Alive in giving water to developing countries. With your help Ariel will provide clean, safe drinking water to families who need it most by donating 10 litres to families in need for every special pack purchased. 

Yet what the promotional campaign doesn’t mention is that P&G, Ariel’s parent company, has a commercial interest in clean water through Pur, another subsidiary which markets a patented water filtration system. Indeed Pur is the company behind the Children’s Safe Drinking Water campaign, the beneficiary of Ariel’s 10-litre promotion.  So by buying Ariel, what consumers are really doing is shifting numbers on a spreadsheet from one part of P&G to another.  P&G is turning a healthy profit on thirst.

It’s hard to know where to begin with the obscenity of the Ariel marketing campaign.  The lack of the single most basic human need – fucking water – is being used to sell soap powder, and to serve the interests of a multinational corporation, while drawing a veil over the power relations responsible for denying people access to water in the first place.  If people are really interested in fighting this problem, they can do it for free by finding out about it at activist sites like this and this.  And maybe donate the money they would have spent on Ariel.

Marginalium

Incidentally, after writing the previous post, I clicked the 42 days tag to see what, if anything, was on wordpress.com about the issue. It took me to the blog of one Tom Harris MP(above), hilariously and originally titled “And another thing”.  The post in question, “Why I’ll vote for 42 days”, does what it says on the tin – “Because we couldn’t get 90 days through” is the answer, in case you cared. 

As the photos above suggest, Harris is your standard issue New Labour middle management cyborg, whose solidly rightwing instincts have propelled him to the giddy heights of some junior ministerial post in Transport.  I also note he claims membership of an all-party Islam group.  Given his voting record, one wonders what he finds to talk about at its gatherings:

How Tom Harris voted on key issues since 2001:

• Voted very strongly against a transparent Parliament. votes, speeches
• Voted a mixture of for and against introducing a smoking ban. votes, speeches
• Voted strongly for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches
• Voted moderately for introducing foundation hospitals. votes, speeches
• Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly for Labour’s anti-terrorism laws. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly for the Iraq war. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly for replacing Trident. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly for the hunting ban. votes, speeches
• Voted very strongly for equal gay rights. votes, speeches

Stay tuned for gems from the minister’s blog as they emerge.

Irony

I was concerned, but not surprised, to see that a postgraduate student at Nottingham University was recently arrested and held by police for six days under anti-terrorism laws, before being released without charge.  Rizwaan Sabir drew the attention of the authorities after downloading, as part of research for his dissertation on Islamic extremism, a supposed version of an al-Qaeda training manual.  Sabir passed the document, which is freely available online and which he had downloaded from a US government website(pdf), to Hisham Yezza, a member of the university’s administrative staff so that he could get it photocopied without incurring £75 copying charges.  As Lenin’s Tomb reported,

Someone, somehow, saw this material on Yezza’s computer and, thanks to the culture of prying and snitching encouraged by the government and right-wing media, assumed the worst and told the University authorities. The authorities, instead of checking with the staff member in question, or even making a roundabout preliminary investigation, called the police.

Long story short, the pair were arrested and detained for nearly a week while their homes were raided and their families harrassed.  

One reason this frightening tale caught my eye is that, as someone teaching at an English university, I have been witness to continued efforts by the government to bully universities into precisely this kind of activity. The other reason is that the universities secretary, John Denham, was due to attend a debate next week at Southampton University on the very topic of academic freedom.  I say “was”, because today I received an email from the organisers letting me know that the debate had had to be cancelled, owing to the non availability of Mr Denham, who

has been called to vote in the Commons on the counter-terrorism bill and this is a three-line whip.   We are obviously disappointed to lose this opportunity to debate with the minister our thoughts and concerns surrounding academic freedom.  

If and when the debate is rescheduled, I will be more eager than ever to learn how the minister squares his support for academic freedom with the treatment of Messrs Sabir and Yezza, and his role in pushing through the extended detention of terror suspects without charge from 28 days to 42 days. 

Brown gets tough on immigration

Immigrants who want to become British and settle permanently in the UK will need to pass more tests to “prove their sanity” to the country under new plans. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, told MPs the tightening up of immigration controls was essential: “Why would anybody in their right mind want to come to this shithole?”

The new regulations – which will only apply to people from outside the EU, who don’t speak English, have brown skin and eat curry – are part of a package of measures designed to outflank the Conservatives. Other plans include introducing literacy tests for people who lobby their MPs or contact radio phone-ins to complain about immigration. The prime minister added that foreigners who planned to marry British citizens and settle in the UK would have to pass an English test to prove their understanding of key terms such as “gutted”, “whatever” and “Lowri Turner“.

J’approve!

In the positive spirit of the kind comments on my last post,  The Tampon Teabag has invited me to list things of which I approve.  Long-time readers will understand what a tall order this was, but here goes (the list which follows is in no particular order, nor is it exclusive) : 

1. The Birmingham accent.  Deeply unfashionable, but very musical;
2. Marxism.  Whatever your political persuasion, an indispensable aid to making sense of capitalism, becoming more rather than less relevant in the 21st century;
3. Reality TV.  As I have repeatedly observed, those who cannot see the moments of purest TV gold embedded in the likes of Big Brother, American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, etc (as distinct from lumpen fare such as X Factor, or Any Dream Will Do, which is just weird) are truly blind;
4. Smoking.  It calms me down, it gees me up, it’s my relaxation technique of choice from sparrow’s fart to the moment my head hits the pillow.
5. The iPhone.  Having had one of these little wonders for a whole five weeks now, I can honestly say that the iPhone represents as much of a leap forward in consumer electronics as the original Macintosh did in 1984.  While lesser technology brands screech at us to proclaim their mediocrity, Apple products reinvent our world;
6. Antidepressants.  Lorna and I agree that anyone who thinks happy pills are evil has never had to take them.  I remain on a gradually-reducing dose of Venlafaxine after seven years (and after emerging from a long night of clinical depression) and, while the pills on their own did not help me recover, they possibly saved my life when it was at its worst;
7. Italy.  While I’ve never lived there, as an occasional visitor I cannot imagine how this earthly paradise might be improved.

Happy old year

Back in October 2006, I drew attention to my referral to a psychologist, and my hope that it would sort my head out once and for all.  As 2007 drew to a close last night, I am happy to report that the National Health Service has exceeded my wildest expectations.  After nine months of working with the psychologist, I have now been able to identify and address the root causes of the depression which had blighted my life and those of my family; I have reunited with Mrs Bitches; and I am looking forward to the New Year for the first time in decades.  So I only wish that 2008 brings you as much happiness as 2007 did me.

The corporation as paedophile

I spend a lot of time discussing corporate social responsibility with my students, and it is a complex topic on which opinions are divided. Do corporations have an obligation to the wider society? Or simply to their shareholders? How should such responsibility be discharged? Are we right to be suspicious when corporations bang on about how “committed” they are to the community or the environment?

Joel Bakan’s excellent book, The Corporation, presents a credible argument for the corporation as a psychopath: its overriding, statutory responsibility to shareholders renders it incapable of sustaining longterm relationships, experiencing guilt, considering the harm its actions may cause others, and so on.  But another characterisation, that of the corporation as paedophile, is equally apt.  Like the paedophile, the corporation in late capitalism thinks of itself as the friend of those it seeks to exploit; it uses its unequal power relationship with communities and groups to manipulate them for its own ulterior motives – a paedophile might use a puppy and a van, but the corporation might use promises of community investment, codes of conduct on child labour, and so on.  And, like the paedophile, the corporation sees nothing wrong in its conduct: doing well by doing good, as the CSR evangelists never tire of saying.   If I’m a kid and some multi-billion dollar global corporation wants to be my friend, I know what to do.