Wednesday, October 24, 2012

The common struggle

The documentary ‘You’ve been Trumped’  by Anthony Baxter, is a film about how money and power, with the collusion of politicians that has ridden roughshod over ordinary people. It’s a lesson in how capitalist ‘democracy’ functions. ‘You've Been Trumped’ encapsulates the chasm between the powerful, glamorous, jet-setting Donald Trump and a deeply rooted, relatively powerless Scottish community. For Trump, the golf course is just another money-making deal. For the residents, it represents the destruction of a globally unique landscape that has been the backdrop for their lives. Seduced by Trump’s wealth, the politicians, the media, the business community, a local university and the police kow-tow to the billionaire. Someone like Trump does not get to where they are without knowing how to play the media and the politicians. The film shows his half truths, untruths, tacky PR gloss and slurs against local residents who stand in his way are taken as facts by much of the media and many of those in authority. Politicians overturn their own laws in the face of dubious promises of jobs, which are never genuinely investigated by them to see if they actually stand up to scrutiny. The rich have the knack of talking absolute rubbish, but say it with utter conviction that it becomes accepted as ‘fact’.

In South India local people are peacefully protesting against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. More than 56,000 have been falsely charged, including 6,000 for the offence of ‘sedition’. 53 have been imprisoned.

Why? Because of the influence of money; because of unaccountable power. India’s expanding multi-billion dollar nuclear sector represents rich pickings for the key players both within India and abroad. The Indian government has agreed to buy US$150 billion worth of nuclear reactors, equipment and other materials from the US, whose companies will benefit for decades from Indian orders for military equipment. It has also promised various other countries that their companies will receive lucrative contracts in India. The French company Areva, US companies GE Hitachi and Westinghouse and the Russian company Atomstroy export are all building nuclear plants in the country. In return, the US lobbied to allow India to engage in civilian nuclear trade, despite not being a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

What is happening concerning the expansion of nuclear sector is however symptomatic of the wider situation in India. Anti-nuclear activist Neeraj Jain says the Indian elite’s vision for the country is to freely allow Western multinationals to access the Indian market and hand over thousands of hectares of land to them to set up projects like mines, refineries, airports, shopping malls and expressways, while dispossessing people from their mineral-rich lands in rural areas, and demolishing slums in urban areas.

Some like to call this 'progress'. Others choose to call it ‘development’. But let’s state it for what it actually is: self-serving, powerful, wealthy elite interests acting in collusion with politicians and demonstrating utter contempt for democracy and ordinary folk.

Whether we live in Scotland, India or elsewhere, it begs the question: Are we willing to be 'Trumped'? Well, that all depends on us, the 99 per cent, and what we are prepared to do about it.

An extract from an article by Colin Todhunter.

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