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	Brics from below civil society summit by AllAfrica & agencies South Africa   Mar 20, 2013   As the five heads of states of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) meet on African soil in Durban next week for the developing nations’ summit, civil society in Durban will be holding its own summit of a very different nature.   BRICS governments often use radical rhetoric alluding to anti-imperialism, and in this year’s summit, they will undoubtedly impress upon the rest of Africa that their corporations offer better investments in infrastructure, mining, energy, and agriculture than traditional Northern multinationals. In the brics-from-below civil summit, hosted by groundWork (Friends of the Earth South Africa), the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) and the University of KwaZulu Natal Centre for Civil Society (UKZN CCS), civil society organisations aim to play two roles: firstly, acting as a watchdog of the claims, processes and outcomes of the BRICS summit, and secondly, providing a platform for civil society organisations in these countries to share experiences and create networks.   The prospect that South Africa “presents a gateway for investment on the continent” could leave Africa overwhelmed by BRICS corporations and is indicative that the trajectory of the 21st century ‘scramble for Africa’ has already begun.   Africa’s ‘Resource Curse’ will attract billions of dollars worth of BRICS infrastructure developments. In this light, the BRICS Summit in Durban is set to be the next successor to the initial carving up of Africa, which took place in 1885 in Berlin.   Africa’s survival, however, is largely at the mercy of climate change. Climate change is driven by increased greenhouse gas emissions, which is fuelled also by BRICS countries that continue to rely on and supply their Northern counterparts with dirty, non-renewable sources of energy. The United Nations COP17 hosted in Durban in 2011 resulted in a weak, non-binding deal, which neglects the historic responsibility of Northern countries and promotes a rising average temperature for the continent.   The major focus of this year’s summit is the new BRICS Bank. Austerity scenarios continue to play themselves out in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, as a result of IMF bail-out of banks – which in 2012 included $75 billion of BRICS countries’ capital. The proposed new BRICS Development Bank has the potential to exacerbate economic austerity in our and our neighbour’s social, economic and environmental spheres already caused in part by multilateral financing. Existing development finance institutions in BRICS countries – like South Africa’s Development Bank of Southern Africa – do not offer mainly convincing lessons.   Along with these issues, people in BRICS countries face numerous serious socio-economic, political and civil rights violations. Inequality, lack of adequate infrastructure, increased levels of violence, state repression, and the exploitation of resources to the detriment of people’s livelihoods and their ability to live in a healthy relationship with their environments, are all symptoms of development not oriented towards people but rather government and corporate profit.   The brics-from-below civil society summit will take place from 22 to 27 March at different venues around Durban.   http://www.foei.org/en/blog/friends-of-the-earth-south-africa-brics-from-below-summit-watching-and-challenging-power   http://allafrica.com/stories/201303201121.html   http://www.actionaid.org/news/press-release-actionaid-response-brics-announcement-development-bank
	What happens when you rip a hole in the Safety Net by Bryce Covert, Will Hutton The Nation & agencies USA   March 2013   America’s social safety net, such as it is, has recently come under some scrutiny. Chana Joffe-Walt’s in-depth exploration of the increase in people getting Social Security Disability benefits at NPR got many listeners buzzing. Then in The Wall Street Journal, Damian Paletta and Caroline Porter looked at the increase in the use of food stamps, called SNAP. All three journalists look at the increasing dependence on these programs and come away puzzled: Why are so many people now getting disability and food stamp payments?   The answer is twofold. Recent trends give us the first part of the explanation. Yes, as Paletta and Porter note, the economy is recovering and the unemployment rate is falling. But, as they recognize, the poverty rate is also rising. And therein lies the rub: people are getting jobs but staying poor. The available jobs are increasingly low-wage and don’t pay enough to live off of. And the big profits in the private sector haven’t led to an increase in wages.   GDP and employment may be doing well, but that hasn’t done much for those at the bottom of the totem pole. As the WSJ article points out, 48.5 million people were living in poverty in 2011, up from 37.3 million in 2007, a 30 percent increase. This is despite an unemployment rate that’s fallen off its peak. Some of the fall in the unemployment rate has been driven by people simply giving up on looking for a job altogether. But those who do get jobs are likely trading their once middle-class employment for low-wage work. The National Employment Law Project has found that mid-wage jobs have been wiped out during the recovery in favor of low-wage work: low paying jobs grew nearly three times as fast as mid-wage or high-wage work.   But there’s a deeper explanation that goes beyond the current economic picture. Aren’t there other programs for the increasing ranks of people living in poverty to turn to? Unfortunately, we’ve worked hard to weaken key parts of the safety net by changing how programs operate and then cutting back on their funds. Consequently, the number of people who are reached by programs for the poor has shrunk. But when you take away someone’s lifeline, they don’t stop needing it.   * See link below.   The retreat of virtue has become a plague of our times. Greed is legitimate, by Will Hutton. (The Observer)   There was a time when to live a life virtuously was well understood. It embraced personal integrity, commitment to a purpose that was higher than personal gain, a degree of selflessness and even modesty. Those at the top may have got there through ruthlessness and ambition, but they understood that to lead was to set an example and that involved demonstrating better qualities than simply looking after yourself.   No more. Perhaps the greatest calamity of the conservative counter-revolution has been the energy it invested in arguing that virtue, whatever its private importance, has no public value. The paradox, the new conservatives claim, is only through the pursuit of self-interest can the economy and society work best. Responsibilities to the commonweal are to be avoided.   The retreat of virtue has become the plague of our times. Greed is legitimate; to have riches however obtained, including outrageous bonuses or avoiding tax, is the only game in town. But across the west the consequences are becoming more obvious. Politics, business and finance have become blighted to the point that they are dysfunctional, with a now huge gap in trust between the elite and the people.   The drama playing itself out in France is a classic example. François Hollande was elected president of France less than 12 months ago, promising an "exemplary" administration after the sleaze of the Sarkozy years. Then came Jérôme Cahuzac. Until four weeks ago, he was the French budget minister, leading the crusade against tax avoidance. It now transpires that he himself had hidden 600,000 euros in a secret Swiss account. He has resigned, but it has triggered not just a major controversy for the French president, but for the entire French political class and political system.   With the mainstream political right in some disarray and no less compromised, the danger is that the major beneficiary will be France"s National Front, riding the disillusion not just with politicians but with the entire elite. There is one rule for them, it seems, and another for ordinary people who confront austerity, declining living standards and unemployment at a 16-year high.   The extreme right"s pitch is clear – France can no longer trust its leaders. It must assert its republican virtues against its own elite, foreigners, immigrants, Muslims and even the interference of Brussels. Vote National Front.   Meanwhile in Spain, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was recently alleged to have hidden €250,000 from the tax authorities. Now King Carlos"s daughter, Cristina, faces trial over her role in her husband"s allegedly nefarious business affairs. In Italy, Beppe Grillo"s anti-elite Five Star Movement won nearly 30% of the vote as a protest against a political class that is corrupt from top to bottom. Grillo at least is not a quasi-fascist. Less comforting is the prospect that if he fails to get the constitutional changes he calls for, the unstable forces he has unleashed could easily manifest themselves in a much uglier form.   In these countries, what is needed are credible, clean politicians with a credible programme to take on the super-rich, restore virtue to public life and relaunch their stagnating economies. But popular opinion knows the new rules of the world of tax havens, bankers bonuses and corporate self-interest along with the ideology that justifies them.   Today, the state is seen as ineffective and repressive. The rich have no compunction in hiding their wealth and avoiding tax because selfishness is legitimate, even indeed a moral obligation. Electorates doubt not just their politicians, but their capacity to do anything even if they were minded.   Britain is also captive to these trends. The MPs expenses scandal is a recent case in point. Lawyer Anthony Salz (a member of the Scott Trust that owns the Observer and Guardian), in his report into the culture at Barclays, inveighed against the ethical "vacuum" of the seriously overpaid 70 top bankers over the last decade. The promotion of their own interests trumped those of the bank or even basic ethics. Centrica, custodian of the near-monopoly British Gas, felt justified in creating a bonus pool of £15m for five executives running essentially a risk-free business. Senior police officers are jailed for accepting bribes from tabloid newspapers. Disproportionately of reward, preoccupation with one"s own interests and diminishing public virtue disfigure Britain, too, and into the trust gap marches populist Ukip.   We know the precepts of a fair society – a proportional relationship between reward and effort, helping each other when bad luck strikes and sharing the benefits of good luck. But this sort of society needs to be led by people who live by those virtues. Up until 50 years ago, belief in God underpinned our public morality: even if the elite behaved badly at least it knew it behaved badly. Today, we are living through the revolt of the elites as historian Christopher Lasch warned nearly 20 years ago. The moral code undergirded by Christianity and which supported fairness has been enfeebled by secularisation and the precepts of free market economics. Nor are there powerful labour movements, informed by a belief in the feasibility of socialism, to keep the elites honest.   Lasch"s view was that there was only one way forward – the reaffirmation of democracy. What we need is not the democracy of the one-off referendum. We need the deep democracy of transparency and accountability, along with constitutional mechanisms and processes that hold our private and public leaders to account day by day.   In this respect, Grillo in Italy may foretell a better future – the insistence that Italian politics is completely opened up has to be right. We are also learning more about who is doing what, thus Cahuzac"s fall. But this is only the first foundation of what is necessary to bridge the trust gap. We need even more openness, with the same principles extended to our businesses and banks. There needs to be a new understanding of the legitimacy of the public domain and public intervention. The time has come to hold our leaders - in the public and private sector alike - to account for their actions. Visit the related web page
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