Edinburgh Anarchists

…they’ve arrested 1000 people demanding that the summit produce meaningful action.

While the rich governments try and fix things so they stay rich and oil companies finally get their hands on Iraq’s oil, the main certainty is that whatever comes out of Copenhagen, they’re determined that it won’t be decided by people on any of the world’s streets. The “indiscrimate” arrests are reported to have been focussed on the Libertarian Socialist Bloc, calling for System Change Not Climate Change.

It’s hard to be hopeful about the COP15 process but if delegates don’t come up with a satisfactory deal, and people in Copenhagen were to blockade them in the conference centre until they do, then history isn’t going to condemn them as much as it would for inaction.

My first reaction to this piece by Johann Hari in the Independent was: Dubai an authoritarian shithole? Who knew! but it’s well worth your time. The place is worse than the concrete, class-ridden shopping mall you might have expected, it’s positively medieval, but without a peasants’ revolt on the horizon. And don’t go thinking that it’s nasty because of some kind of Arabic cultural reasons, it’s an international of ignorant rich scum. Listen to these toerags:

I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”(…)

My patience frayed by all this excess, I find myself snapping: doesn’t the omnipresent slave class bother you[a City couple who've been coming there for 10 years]? I hope they misunderstood me, because the woman replied: “That’s what we come for! It’s great, you can’t do anything for yourself!” Her husband chimes in: “When you go to the toilet, they open the door, they turn on the tap – the only thing they don’t do is take it out for you when you have a piss!” And they both fall about laughing.

Johann Hari’s done some clownish stuff before, notably supporting the Iraq war, but this detailed, enraging story is dynamite stuff.

At the Forest Cafe, Tuesday at 7pm, two films exploring migration issues, followed by a discussion. No Borders.

Full details at the Indymedia event calendar.

‘Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy’
Compelling documentary presenting three stories of immigrants who left their homes in Bolivia, Haiti, and the Philippines after global economic powers devastated their countries.

‘Outside of Europe’
Critical, short documentary examining the exclusionary nature of EU immigration and border policies. Throws light on human right issues that arise from the expansion of the European Unio, and shows footage of the 2007 Ukraine No Border Camp.

There’s a war for minds going on around this issue at the moment. Neo-Malthusians (they think there’s too many people) and straight-up xenophobes all want to use concern over climate change to attack immigrants and the poor (see comments here). So we see newspaper articles and conferences scaremongering about hordes of refugees heading to despoil the UK’s beautiful pristine land.

We have to be absolutely clear about this: climate change is an issue of consumption, not population. The rich pollute, the poor suffer. The discussion after these films could be a good place to think around how to get the No Borders position across in the face of powerful interests looking to scapegoat refugees to divert attention from their own crimes.