Issue #94 January 7th - 20th 2004

The year in a box
November was when I fell in love all over again. I'm not fickle, it's just been this sort of year. I also got a job and I rode on trains to and from it, and I noticed the weather a lot.
By Dimitra Daisy

Waiting
God may well be waiting for you in the next life, son, but here on this earth, the daily process of living is something you have to come to terms with yourself. Somehow.
By Paul Williamson

The Tsunami and Foreign Aid
UN officials doubt whether governments’ aid donations for Tsunami relief are as generous as they appear. Conditions put on aid and debt relief by the G8 countries, the IMF and the World Bank could make things worse. The Sri Lankan and Indonesian governments are also cutting off aid supplies to rebel areas, and in Indonesia continuing military attacks in Aceh.
By Duncan McFarlane

The year in a box

The idea, which wasn't mine, was to write about the things from 2004 that you would remember for a long time. So there you go. I'm not sure how this can be of any use to you: perhaps you can read it as a study on the way time passes and the way things change.

January was when I resolved to spend more time in the sunshine and take notes of the beauty in the way that we are living. Also, I told a near-stranger who was about to become a friend that I shouldn't live in my own world so much and he replied by asking me if I know of a better one. I thought about it long and hard and decided I didn't. It was a revolutionary thought; by August it had stopped me regretting living in my own world completely.

February was when I found myself sitting on a bench watching half a thousand birds fly in cirlces above me and the trees and the buildings over and over and over again as if there was a reason, and I felt honoured, as if I was in the presence of something rare. I listened to a certain song a hundred times and the phrase 'spring is coming closer and summer will be really nice'

March was when I saw a street arched with pink trees in bloom -the wind occasionaly making pink petals rain down on the dark street- and it made me want to write "and did you care, when I cut my hair? 'cause I wanted you to" on a hundred walls. For a while Blueboy songs sounded like the most perfect thing ever. Then, I turned twenty-three.

April was when I watched 'Lost in Translation' and I liked it so much in so many ways, it made me swear I had to do something with my life, so that I'd get to see Tokyo and tell at least one story as beautifully as the it did. It also made me resolve to say the things I think more.

May was when my grandad died and on the way to funeral, very early in the morning and after not much sleep at all me and my brother discovered there were green rolling hills just a few minutes away from our house. Nick and I made a mixtape I took it everywhere with me, and I fell in love.

June was when I went swimming in the sea for the first time in years. When I came out I was overcome by the feeling that came over me and was very much like happiness, except a bit more tangible and completely unrelated to anything but the sea and the breeze and the sun. And my brother made me a swing.

July was when I went to London and Stockholm and a festival in a tiny but magical place near Kalmar, which is in the south-east coast of Sweden and a long way away from here; I rode a roller-coaster, met some lovely people, saw a few great bands and had my heart "half the way broken", which, as my friends promplty informed me, makes listening to indiepop better.

August was when I came back to Athens which despite everything (hoards of tourists, Olympic Games and the heat included) won my heart again in a matter of minutes by being so pretty. Then Ola came and I showed it to her and it won her heart too. Oh and I think managed to convert her into at least half an indiepop fan.

September was when a letter made me smile on a night when making me smile was a bit like saving my life, or at least restoring my faith in the world. I wrote a lot of letters too. One night it rained and the raindrops hang on to the plants in my parents' balcony; they caught the light of the streetlamp and they reminded me of Edinburgh at Christmas time.

October was when I went out every week. It was a lot of fun and hard work too, and it made a few magical things happened: there was a clubnight, some music that I never thought I'd hear played outside my front room (in Greece) and a drunk conversation that resulted in arranging a Pipas gig in Athens. Once I caught myself walking down a street thinking it is good there are boring things to think of too or I would explode.

November was when I fell in love all over again. I'm not fickle, it's just been this sort of year. I also got a job and I rode on trains to and from it, and I noticed the weather a lot. Everything looked as easy and simple as it does when you write it down in a letter, and I did that a lot too while counting down the days to Chickfactor.

December was when I went to London where I nearly died of excitment a couple of times; I ended up getting drunk in the same room as Dan Treacy and hearing him sing "we love the Pastels, we love the Pastels"; and I had the happiest day of my life (so far.) And back in Athens, one the last whole night of the year, I found myself dancing my heart out at an improvised party. On a schoolnight. When I would have normally been fast asleep.

It was a sort of perfect ending.

And then it was time to start all over again.

Dimitra Daisy 
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WAITING

I keep waiting for her to tell me she's made a mistake, but there's nothing; my inbox remains empty, there are no new messages on my answerphone, no letters of repentence, no special deliveries, no parcels no packages no hope and thats it. Full stop. I keep waiting for her to walk through the door. Waiting, like she used to wait for me, when my blackness got too much and I'd disappear into the hills, the bars, twenty seven years old and still trying to come to terms with twenty six of them- "It's over" I'd say, and that would be me, lost to her, to the world, for days, weeks, months- however long it took for me to recognise myself again- but all that time, she'd be waiting for my return. "I'll wait for you forever" is what she always said.
And she did.
Waiting.
Forever.

Now she has gone. She has stopped waiting. She tells me she is tired of fighting for me, for us, and who am I to tell her different? What did I ever do except keep her waiting? A friend calls, someone marries, someone dies, someone forgets to put out the rubbish, two cars collide and the world heads into the final act of the final war. None of this means a thing to you.
"Tea or coffee sir? mineral water? a soft drink?"
"Just another beer please."

You have been drinking now for eight days straight, and it is just enough to keep you from falling into the abyss, from disappearing into the hills for good. Enough for that, but for nothing, nothing else. The plane will touch down in Budapest in less than an hour. You're not sure what you will find there, but you have always wanted to go ever since you were seventeen and found yourself picking strawberries in Scotland with a group of East Europeans. "Hungary good. Cheap. Two hundred pounds. Six weeks live there. Budapest happy." It was enough to convince you then and it still is now.
Budapest happy.

Experts apparently agree that, at the end of a relationship, there follows a period of 'mourning' akin to mourning the death of a loved one. You think this is rubbish. The death of a person brings about a finality you will never get whilst the one you love or loved is still walking the earth, probably laughing, joking, sharing a bed with no-one you know, doing anything with anyone, anyone but you. There is no sense of finality in knowing they are still alive and living a life apart from you and grateful for it.

All you have are suffering, regret, and wonder. These are the things you have to deal with. God may well be waiting for you in the next life, son, but here on this earth, the daily process of living is something you have to come to terms with yourself. Somehow.
Somehow.

You are sat on the sketchy banks of the Danube glugging on deep Hungarian red. The sun reflects off the ripples in the water. You squint and blink at shadows and ghosts. You can see your face in the river, but it's not you, it's a distortion of you. You tell yourself not to worry, that it's just the sun playing tricks on you.
This time.

Paul Williamson

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The Tsunami and Foreign Aid

Some UN officials doubt whether the governments donating to the countries hit by the Tsunami are as generous as they want to appear

Some governments in the countries hit by the Tsunami are also cutting off aid supplies to rebel areas, and in Indonesia continuing military attacks on islands hit by the Tsunami.

Some of the conditions put on aid and debt relief by donor countries, the IMF and the World Bank could make things worse rather than better.

Government Aid Pledges tiny compared to Iraq war and total spending

Governments often don't deliver the amount of aid they promise

Tied Aid – Subsidising Arms Sales and Company Profits

Some Recipient Governments are cutting off aid to rebel areas

G8 suspends debt repayments but G8, IMF & World Bank offers of Aid may be conditional on 'free market reforms'

What's the Solution?

Donating to the Tsunami relief effort

Link to BBC map of affected countries

Government Aid Pledges tiny compared to Iraq war and total spending

The US has pledged $350 million of aid to the countries affected by the Tsunami. This sounds like a lot of money. Yet in terms of the scale of the disaster and government’s annual budgets it isn’t that much.

At least 11 countries were affected , over 150,000 people were killed , 500,000 estimated injured , 5 million estimated without food or water and an unknown number of homeless. UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said that rebuilding basic infrastructure – clean water supplies , sewerage , housing ,roads etc – and economies could take up to a decade.

$350 million is also less than 0.5% of the $146 billion ($146,000 million) the Bush administration has spent on the Iraq war and contracts for US firms in Iraq.

It’s less than one thousandth of the annual budget of the US federal government of over $1 trillion ($1 million million).

Japan has made the most generous pledge so far at $500 million. This is again under one thousandth of its annual budget of over a trillion dollars.

The British government’s aid pledge of £50 million so far (roughly $100 million) is more generous given the smaller budget of the UK. However it’s a mere 1% of the £5 billion the UK has spent on the war in Iraq so far and less than one five-hundredth of the UK government’s annual budget of around £400 billion.

If Blair does keep his promise to increase the pledge to ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ it would be a big improvement – but still under a fifth of what he has spent on the Iraq war and a fraction of his government’s annual budget.

UN officials have also pointed out that governments commonly pledge aid which they never actually give.

For instance after an earthquake in December 2003 destroyed the Iranian city of Bam $1.1 billion was pledged in aid by various countries. A year later only $17.5 million – less than 2% of the amount pledged – has actually been given. Aid agencies requested $73mn to help Afghans hit by the drought of 2004. Only $26mn was provided.

Double accounting is another trick – re-directing aid already being given for other purposes as aid for the disaster and counting it as additional aid.

A British Aerospace Hawk fighter-bomber – British aid to Malaysia under Thatcher and Indonesia under Blair has been tied to sales of these aircraft

Foreign aid can also be used by the donor governments more as a subsidy for companies from their own country than to benefit anyone in the country the donation is officially being made to.

In many cases aid is made conditional on it being spent on contracts given to companies from the donor country – or , as in the case of the notorious Pergau Dam scandal, made conditional on buying arms or other purchases from companies in the donor country.

Two of the countries hit by the Tsunami are Malaysia and Indonesia.

In 1988 the British Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher offered the Malaysian government £234 million of aid on two conditions. The Malaysian government would let British firms including Balfour-Beatty and Cementation (then donors to the Conservative party) bid for contracts to build a hydro-electric dam at Pergau in Malaysia . Malaysia would also buy Hawk fighter jets from British Aerospace – which was also a donor to the Conservative party. (Independent 24 Oct1993; Independent 22 Oct 1993).

In 1995 the British High Court found the government had acted unlawfully in tying aid to arms sales (Independent 11 Jan 1995)

Blair’s ‘New Labour’ government has similarly tied aid to Indonesia to arms sales – including British Aerospace Systems Hawk fighters and spare parts for them (BAE now being a Labour party donor).

The Indonesian military used these to massacre civilians in occupied East Timor throughout the 1990s. After a brief moratorium on arms sales in 1999 the EU, the US and the British government still sell arms to Indonesia. Aceh – one of the islands hit by the Tsunami - has an independence movement like East Timor before it, and the Indonesian military has repressed the people of Aceh brutally and cut off aid to areas suspected of sympathising with rebels. They refuse to allow aid workers access to Aceh on the grounds that rebels havekidnapped around 150 people. British Hawk fighters have been used against the Acehnese as they were against the East Timorese.

The risk now is ‘tied aid’ practice – which has continued despite government assurances – is imposed on the the countries hit by the Tsunami.

There is a long history of governments fighting rebels or during civil wars cutting off aid to areas suspected of sympathising with their opponents. This was part of the cause of the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s and is a problem in Indonesia now.

The Indonesian military has continued to attack Acehnese rebels even after the Tsunami and prevented aid getting through to much of Aceh while claiming its troops are there purely to distribute aid.

There are also tensions between the Tamil tiger separatist movement in Sri Lanka and the central government over whether aid should be distributed directly by the government or be distributed through the rebel Tamil government of North East Sri Lanka.

The G8 group of governments ( the US , UK , Germany , France, Japan , Russia , Italy , Canada and the EU ) have agreed to suspend bilateral - meaning government to government - debt repayments from countries hit by the Tsunami to G8 nations , which is good news.They may also offer to cancel some of the debts of the countries hit by the Tsunami - whether this is really beneficial will depend if conditions like those imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (see below) are attached to debt cancellations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are also offering aid to Thailand and Indonesia of up to $1bn. This would be great news if it wasn’t for the strings attached.

Unfortunately the IMF and World Bank will not give the $1bn of aid unless the countries they’re offering it to agree to carry out ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ or ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers’ (an ironic name given they have the opposite effect). The G8 offer of debt relief has the same condition

Structural Adjustment Programs involve privatisation of public services – including for instance water in South Africa , Indonesia and Colombia – resulting in the poorest no longer being able to afford clean water.

They also involve ending government subsidies on basic necessities such as food and fuel – again hitting the poorest hardest. The country must also open up its markets to imports from the wealthier countries and free capital transfers ( meaning end any restrictions or taxes on the amount of money that can be taken out of the country by investors and companies within a certain period of time).

The effects of structural adjustment programs are profits for international investors and foreign companies along with increased poverty and unemployment for the majority, then economic collapse – as in Argentina in 2002.

According to Joseph Stiglitz , former chief economist of the World Bank , the imposition Structural Adjustment policies were also largely responsible for the 1997 Asian financial crisis – one of the biggest disasters in Asia since world War Two up until the Tsunami. (Stiglitz , 2002)

This is one reason that the Indonesian government has rejected the offer of debt relief from the G8 countries – it would only be given on the condition that they carried out an IMF Structural Adjustment program

The IMF has also agreed a Structural Adjustment package with the government imposed on Iraq by the Bush administration on. Privatisation will lead to another 145,000 Iraqis becoming unemployed (the unemployment rate is already over 70%) and the government will stop providing Iraqi families with a basket of food each day – probably causing mass malnutrition or starvation.

What is promised is often not enough , what is delivered is not always as much as is promised , and the conditions attached to aid from governments or international financial institutions can end up making it do more harm than good.

It was only after donations by the public outstripped their own original paltry offer that the UK government increased its pledge. It was only after the UN criticised the mean-ness of initial pledges that the US, Japanese and other governments increased theirs. If governments can be embarrassed into pledging more , actually keeping their promises, and not imposing harmful conditions on the recipients of aid then it’s well worth keeping embarrassing them.

In the short-term Indonesia should be publicly shamed and criticised by the media and governments into an immediate ceasefire in Aceh and other rebel provinces and allowing aid workers into Aceh. The Indonesian military should not be allowed to continue fighting in Aceh while survivors need immediate aid. Any long-term reconstruction aid to Indonesia should be made conditional on it negotiating a peace settlement in Aceh and other rebel provinces. There should also be a UN embargo on arms sales to Indonesia.

Similar methods should be used to maintain the existing ceasefire in Sri Lanka and ensure that aid is distributed. If the central and Tamil governments cannot quickly agree on which of them distributes aid they should be pressured into allowing charity and UN aid agencies to organise the delivery of aid with authority to direct both Tamil and Sri Lankan troops

Governments - both donors and recipients of aid - might be forced to realise that they could lose votes and aid if they don’t spent our taxes or aid money on saving lives rather than fighting un-necessary wars or subsidising large firms.

You can also donate to established charities such as those making up the Disasters Emergency Committee who give aid which has no conditions and cant be mis-used by governments or companies and help the victims of all disasters – including the Tsunami

Offline Sources

The Independent 24 Oct1993 , ‘Thatcher negotiated illegal pounds 1bn arms deal’

The Independent 22 Oct 1993, ‘Aid report criticises Thatcher and Hurd’

The Independent 11 Jan 1995, ‘Law Report : Pergau Dam aid unlawful’

Jospeh Stiglitz (2002) , ‘Globalization and its discontents’ , Penguin Books , London & New York , 2002

copyright©Duncan McFarlane 2005

Duncan McFarlane

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