Variant 28 Spring 2007 - the Oil issue
http://www.variant.org.uk
...the free, independent, arts magazine. In-depth coverage
in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues.
text : full issue
http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/issue28.html
pdf : full issue
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Variant28.pdf
Front cover
Texan Oilfield, USA, 1922.
Image courtesy of the Houston Public Library photo archive
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/cover28.pdf
Content
* Over a Barrel
Editorial
Moving through the United States, the Middle East and the Niger
Delta,this edition of Variant takes us from the southern tip of Latin
America all the way to the Western coast of Norway. Devoted to oil,
the writers for the special issue of Variant magazine take a multi-
layered internationalist approach to the questions surrounding the
commodity which Juan Pablo Alfonzo, a former Venezuelan oil minister,
called the "devil's excrement." There are also many anti-war
activists and environmentalists who will pin point oil as the root of
all evil. What was compelling to us in preparing this issue was how
the crisis of faith in the oil economy brings us to diverse questions
about hi-finance, the expansion of debt, enfeebled democracy and the
chances for progressive social change.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/editorial28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/editorial28.pdf
For an ongoing resource and updated content, go to:
http://www.OveraBarrel.info
* Cold Death by Neoliberalism
John Foster
John Foster's political economy of fuel poverty in Scotland reveals
the impact of privatisation, monopoly tendencies, and speculation in
the UK's energy sector. Despite North Sea oil, energy is more
expensive in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. And in 2006, when UK
pensioners faced a 30% rise in their energy bills, the companies
operating in the North Sea yielded a 42.9% return on capital. Energy
policy is being hindered by reliance on transnational companies
which, under rising speculative pressures, have increasingly short-
term goals to maximize profits. Working against any real progress
towards developing sustainable and renewable energy big business
appears to be set on a course of inaction when reform of the energy
sector is urgently required.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/poverty28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/FuelPoverty28.pdf
* Living on oil under democracy
Owen Logan
In our minds, at least, oil is often linked to power more than
energy. However, Owen Logan writes that it's not so much that oil and
democracy don't mix, but more that the oil economy shows the dubious
nature of modern democracy. Drawing on interviews done for the 'Oil
Lives' oral history project based at the University of Aberdeen his
journey from Texas to Venezuela and Argentina is travelogue from the
Bush dynasty's heartland to the politics of Latin American anti-
imperialism. He examines the 'solidarity economy', speaks to trade
union leaders dissatisfied with conventional trade unionism and meets
oil workers whose Piquetero campaigning was defined early on by their
stand on environmental protection. He considers the broader
implications of these developments.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/OilUnder28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/OilUnder28.pdf
* Many Sellers. One buyer.
Jake Molloy & Ronnie McDonald
In this article from OILC, the offshore workers trade union, the
writers say that it is disconcerting when the man working alongside
you is paid a wage only a third of what you regard as the absolute
minimum acceptable. In providing the background of Filipino
recruitment to the North Sea industry this article exposes the way
the Philippine economy was broken apart by national debt bringing
about an exodus of labour which serves the interests of the state and
employers at the expense of workers' abilities to negotiate their
wages and conditions of employment. A system of monopsony, which
binds Filipino workers, is aided and abetted by partnership
agreements with British trade unions. Rather than truly representing
these workers big UK unions appear to be managing industrial
relations for the employers.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/Monopsony28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Monopsony28.pdf
Accompanying drawing by David Shrigley: www.davidshrigley.com
* The Fictitious Commodity
Andy Cumbers
Comparing different experiences of the North Sea oil industry, from
the perspectives of so called 'deviant' trade unionists in the UK and
Norway, Andy Cumbers considers the diminishing returns of larger
bureaucratized trade unions who, like the employers, regard labour as
a commodity. Focusing on individual cases, this article highlights
the Norwegian cases where divers were betrayed by trade unions which
colluded with false safety standards. Yet discussions at the SAFE
union in Stavanger, that are reported here, suggest that
Scandinavia's history of militancy, and a more honest trade unionism,
is not yet over. Organisations like SAFE, and their sister union OILC
in the UK, are rightly proud of their achievements, but their
greatest challenges lie ahead in integrating immediate needs of their
members with the broader issues facing society.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/fictitious28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Fictitious28.pdf
* "To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair
convincing"
Phil England
An upbeat approach, England considers the contrasting arguments put
forward by George Monbiot in his book 'HEAT: How to Stop the Planet
Burning' and James Lovelock's, 'The Revenge of Gaia'. Countering
Lovelock's defeatism with what England sees as Monbiot's political
pragmatism towards the transitional demands of consumerism, England
sets out Monbiot's plan to reduce the UK's carbon emissions and
ultimately save the planet.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/hope28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Hope28.pdf
http://coinet.org.uk/climateradio
http://www.turnuptheheat.org
* The Ecological Question: Can Capitalism Prevail?
Daniel Buck
Daniel Buck's article refutes a millenarian tendency on the Left
which combines a vision of ecological catastrophe with the
catastrophe for capitalism itself. Buck looks instead at the uneven
development of capitalism and its capacity for 'creative
destruction'. Buck's cool headed Marxist appraisal shows the double-
sided characteristics of public relations phenomena like 'greenwash.'
Rather than sheer spin, greenwash reflects a real desire for
structural flexibility within the capitalism, albeit one which is
likely to usher in another historic round of dispossession.
Reprinted from the Socialist Register 2007, 'Coming to Terms with
Nature'.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/EcoQ28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/EcoQ28.pdf
Illustrations by Paul Bommer:
http://www.paulbommer.com
http://www.socialistregister.com
* The Next Gulf
Simon Pirani
The infamous 'Atlantic Triangle', active in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and built around the slave trade, has been duplicated
today by a more complex network based on oil and gas, corrupt flight
capital, and circuits of high finance. This has left the people of
Nigeria in penury, while the impact of the oil industry has been
reduced the Niger Delta to a chaotic 'death economy.' The imperial
solution is international militarization, hence the title of this
2006 book by authors from the Platform organization - 'The Next Gulf:
London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria'. Simon Pirani
reflects on his own experience of the Niger Delta and advocates a
critical response which needs a robust analytical framework if it is
to lead beyond the politics of liberal protest. In the aftermath of
the invasion of Iraq, the powers that be are surely immunized against
this kind of dissent and if anything they are softening up public
opinion for further aggressive warfare.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/NxtGulf28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/NxtGulf28.pdf
http://www.platformlondon.org
* "Anyone can go to Baghdad; real men go toTehran"
Muhammed Idress Ahmed
Applying Antonio Gramsci's theory of civil society, Muhammed Idrees
Ahmed's article criticizes the strategies and arguments of the anti-
war movement, particularly in the United States. He points to the
failure of the anti-war movement to confront the Israel lobby and the
underlying geo-politics of regional control in the Middle East.
Sadly, this meant that many people confused the structures of
imperial hegemony with agency within it. Anti-war discourse focused
on oil reserves as the main reason for invading Iraq disregarding the
evidence supporting a more nuanced critical understanding of the
reasoning for war - one that would take into account the
institutional strength of Zionism in the United States as well as
crisis in oil markets. The title of Robert Fisk's 2006 article in the
Independent newspaper, 'United States of Israel?', poses the same
question that Scott Ritter put before the US congress, when he
asked ... "[w]ho is driving US policy towards Iran?" The existence of
such powerful, yet unaccountable, lobbying groups in the US is not
confined to its Middle Eastern strategies of course. But in pursuing
Iran, while ignoring Israel's contraventions of international law,
the hypocrisy of US foreign policy may yet prove to be the undoing of
US power.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/TehranOil28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/TehranOil28.pdf
http://fanonite.wordpress.com
* The Friendly Atom
NuclearSpin
Illustrated with Corneila Hesse-Honegger's studies of deformed insect
life found in the vicinity of power plants, this article looks at the
public relations machine which would have us believe that nuclear
power is the answer to crisis in energy markets and the threat of
global warming. Official devotion to the nuclear option is difficult
to comprehend when balanced against the evidence presented here which
suggests that not only is it an extremely costly and dangerous
option, but, even in the short term nuclear power is in fact less
practical than a coherent environmental policy which would include
adequate resources for the research and development of renewable
energy. Such fiscal support has instead been channeled to the nuclear
industry through the lobbying of powerful vested interests who
apparently find public opinion an inconvenient management problem.
Indeed as one of the members of Supporters of Nuclear Energy said to
the House of Lords, "the public should not be expected to have an
opinion."
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/atomic28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Atomic28.pdf
http://www.spinwatch.org
http://www.nuclearspin.org
* The Inverted Coalmine
Terry Brotherstone
The late Bob Ballantyne was a survivor of the Piper Alpha disaster in
which 167 oil workers were killed when the platform was consumed by
fire. Caused by corporate negligence, this industrial accident in
some ways changed the face of North Sea labour politics. The article
explores the social and cultural context of a composite photograph,
'The inverted Coalmine', made for the Scottish Parliament by Owen
Logan in collaboration with Bob Ballantyne. Terry Brotherstone is
director of the 'oil lives' oral history project at the University of
Aberdeen and Bob Ballantyne was one of the first people who recorded
their life story in that project.
text : http://www.variant.org.uk/28texts/crisis28.html
pdf : http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue28/Coalmine28.pdf
-----------------------------
Associated Events:
* Variant Oil issue - Aberdeen Launch
Peacock Visual Arts will launch Variant magazine's issue devoted to
the oil economy
Thursday 15th March, 7pm, Aberdeen Trades Council, 13 Adelphi, Aberdeen
An open panel discussion will be chaired by Terry Brotherstone,
director of the Oil Lives oral history project at Aberdeen
University. Guests include trade unionists, Kari Bukve from SAFE in
Stavanger, Norway, & Jake Molloy, from OILC in Aberdeen. Also
speaking will be Femi Folorunso, who was closely involved in the
democratic struggle in Nigeria; & co-editors & contributors for this
issue, Owen Logan, Leigh French & Andy Cumbers.
For further information, please contact Peacock Visual Arts:
e: info@peacockvisualarts.co.uk t: 01224 639539
PDF flyer :
http://www.variant.org.uk/images/issue28images/Barrel2.pdf
* 'With', not 'For'
Half-day discussion event, built around the cultural urgency of
independent & dissident film -- An opportunity to bring together
organisations / individuals that independently work putting on
screenings to discuss issues that affect them, provide a platform to
celebrate each others? activities, witness some much needed
collaborative models, and aid in connecting groups together that
might not otherwise meet to share experiences & exchange thoughts.
Sat 10th March · 12 noon-6.00 pm
Star & Shadow cinema, Newcastle
http://www.starandshadow.org.uk
http://wiki.starandshadow.org.uk/index.php/With_Not_For
PDF flyer :
http://www.variant.org.uk/images/issue28images/WithNotFor.pdf
* Privatising Culture
A One-Day Symposium hosted by Variant Magazine
Speakers include: Jim McGuigan, Paola Merli & Alex Law
CCA, Glasgow 31 March 2007 * 10.30 - 5pm * FREE
The publication of the draft Culture (Scotland) Bill marks a defining
moment in the relationship between the state and its cultural workers.
The response so far has been largely hostile and this symposium will
examine the arguments for and against the proposed legislation. However,
the Bill is also published against a wider context of neoliberal reform
in Scotland and elsewhere, marked by a diminishment in the freedoms of
artists, intellectuals and their audiences. In the wake of worrying
developments in higher education, local authorities and elsewhere, the
symposium sets out to explore the extent of the privatisation of public
culture. Are we witnessing a decisive turning of the Thatcherite screw
in Scotland?
For further information please contact: variantmag@btinternet.com
PDF flyer :
http://www.variant.org.uk/images/issue28images/CBillA6.pdf
* Radical Independent Book fair project - Glasgow
NEXT events:
Sat 10 + Sun 11March, Kinning Park complex, nxt to U, 11am onwards
Sat 12 May, CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St.
www.ribproject.org
rib@angryartworks.com
PDF flyer :
http://www.variant.org.uk/images/issue28images/RIB07.pdf
* Document 5 : International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
Call for Submissions - Deadline : 1st July 2007
http://www.docfilmfest.org.uk
