Kashmir police published “survival tips” for nuclear war - Arundhati Roy's rebuttal to Praveen Swami

Does Your Bomb-Proof Basement Have An Attached Toilet?

An execution carried out to thundering war clouds

ARUNDHATI ROY 

What are the political consequences of the secret and sudden hanging of Mohammed Afzal Guru, prime accused in the 2001 Parliament attack, going to be? Does anybody know? The memo, in callous bureaucratese, with every name insultingly misspelt, sent by the Superintendent of Central Jail No. 3, Tihar, New Delhi, to “Mrs Tabassum w/o Sh Afjal Guru” reads:

“The mercy petition of Sh Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been rejected by Hon’ble President of India. Hence the execution of Mohd Afjal Guru s/o Habibillah has been fixed for 09/02/2013 at 8 am in Central Jail No-3.
This is for your information and for further necessary action.”

The mailing of the memo was deliberately timed to get to Tabassum only after the execution, denying her one last legal chanc­e—the right to challenge the rejection of the mercy petition. Both Afzal and his family, separately, had that right. Both were thwarted. Even though it is mandat­ory in law, the memo to Tabassum ascribed no reason for the president’s rejection of the mercy petition. If no reason is given, on what basis do you appeal? All the other prisoners on death row in India have been given that last chance.

Since Tabassum was not allowed to meet her husband before he was hanged, since her son was not allowed to get a few last words of advice from his father, since she was not given his body to bury, and since there can be no funeral, what “further necessary action” does the jail manual prescribe? Anger? Wild, irreparable grief? Unquestioning acc­eptance? Complete integration?

After the hanging, there have been unseemly celebrations. The bereaved wives of the people who were killed in the attack on Parliament were displayed on TV, with M.S. Bitta, chairman of the All-India Anti-Terrorist Front, and his ferocious moustaches playing the CEO of their sad little company. Will anybody tell them that the men who shot their husbands were killed at the same time, in the same place? And that those who planned the attack will never be brought to justice because we still don’t know who they are.

India has displayed a touching belief in the testimony of a former chief of the ISI, of which the mandate has been to destabilise India.

Meanwhile, Kashmir is under curfew, once again. Its people have been locked down like cattle in a pen, once again. They have defied curfew, once again. Three people have already been killed in three days and fifteen more grievou­sly injured. Newspapers have been shut down, but anybody who trawls the internet will see that this time the rage of young Kashmiris is not defiant and exuberant like it was during the mass uprisings in the summers of 2008, 2009 and 2010­—even though 180 people lost their lives on those occasions. This time the anger is cold and corrosive. Unforgiving. Is there any reason why it shouldn’t be?

For more than 20 years, Kashmiris have endured a military occupation. The tens of thousands who lost their lives were killed in prisons, in torture centres, and in ‘encounters’, genuine as well as fake. What sets the execution of Afzal Guru apart is that it has given the young, who have never had any first-hand experience of democracy, a ringside seat to watch the full majesty of Indian democracy at work. They have watched the wheels turning, they have seen all its hoary institutions, the government, police, courts, political parties and yes, the media, collude to hang a man, a Kashmiri, who they do not believe received a fair trial. With good reason.

He went virtually unrepresented in the lower court during the most crucial part of the trial. The court-appointed lawyer never visited him in prison, and actually admitted incriminating evidence against his own client.  (The Supreme Court deliberated on that matter and decided it was okay.) In short, his guilt was by no means established beyond reasonable doubt. They have watched the government pull him out of the death row queue and execute him out of turn. What direction, what form will their new cold, corrosive anger take? Will it lead them to the blessed liberation they so yearn for and have sacrificed a whole generation for, or will it lead to yet another cycle of cataclysmic violence, of being beaten down, and then having ‘normalcy’ imposed on them under soldiers’ boots?

Afzal Guru family weren’t given the President’s reasons for rejecting his mercy plea. (Photograph by Getty Images, From Outlook 25 February 2013)

All of us who live in the region know that 2014 is going to be a watershed year. There will be elections in Pakistan, in India and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. We know that when the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, the chaos from an already seriously destabilised Pakistan will spill into Kashmir, as it has done before. By executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, the government of India has taken a decision to fuel that process of destabilisation, to actually invite it in. (As it did before, by rigging the 1987 elections in Kashmir.) After three consecutive years of mass protests in the Valley ended in 2010, the government invested a great deal in restoring its version of ‘norma­lcy’ (happy tourists, voting Kashmiris). The question is, why was it willing to reverse all its own efforts? Leaving aside issues of the legality, the morality and the venality of executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, and looking at it just politically, tactically, it is a dangerous and irresponsible thing to have done. But it was done. Clearly, and knowingly. Why?

I used the word ‘irresponsible’ advisedly. Look what happened the last time around.

Kashmiri youth have seen Indian democracy at work now, and believe its institutions have sent a man to the gallows without a fair trial.

In 2001, within a week of the Parliament attack (and a few days after Afzal Guru’s arrest), the government recalled its ambassador from Pakistan and dispatched half a million troops to the border. On what basis was that done? The only thing the public was told is that while Afzal Guru was in the custody of the Delhi Police Special Cell, he had admitted to being a member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The Supreme Court set aside that ‘confession’ extracted in police custody as inadmissible in law. Does what is inadmissible in law become admissible in war?

In its final judgement on the case, apart from the now famous statements about “satisfying collective conscience” and having no direct evidence, the Supreme Court also said there was “no evidence that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group or organisation”. So what justified that military aggression, that loss of soldiers’ lives, that massive haemorrhaging of public money and the real risk of nuclear war? (Remember foreign embassies issued travel advisories and evacuated their staff?) Was there some intelligence that preceded the Parliament attack and the arrest of Afzal Guru that we had not been told about? If so, how could the attack be allowed to happen? And if the intelligence was accurate, and infallible enough to justify such dangerous military posturing, don’t people in India, Pakistan and Kashmir have the right to know what it was? Why was that evidence not produced in court to establish Afzal Guru’s guilt?

In the endless debates around the Parliament attack case, on this, perhaps the most crucial issue of all, there has been dead silence from all quarters—leftists, rightists, Hindutva-ists, secularists, nationalists, seditionists, cynics, critics. Why?

Maybe the JeM did mastermind the attack. Praveen Swami, perhaps the Indian media’s best known expert on ‘terrorism’, who seems to have enviable sources in the Indian police and intelligence agencies, has recently cited the 2003 testimony of former ISI chief Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, and the 2004 book by Muhammad Amir Rana, a Pakistani scholar, holding the JeM responsible for the Parliament attack. (It’s touching, this belief in the veracity of the testimony of the chief of an organisation whose mandate it is to destabilise India.) It still doesn’t explain what evidence there was in 2001, when the army mobilisation took place.

For the sake of argument, let’s accept that the JeM carried out the attack. Maybe the ISI was involved too. We needn’t pretend that the government of Pakistan is innocent of carrying out covert activity over Kashmir. (Just as the government of India does in Balochistan and parts of Pakistan. Remember the Indian army trained the Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan in the 1970s, and six different Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, including the LTTE, in the 1980s.)

A few days back, Pakistan test-fired a nuclear missile of short range, for use on the battlefield. And Kashmir police published N-survival tips.

It’s a filthy scenario all around. What would a war with Pakistan have achieved then, and what will it achieve now? (Apart from a massive loss of life. And fattening the bank accounts of some arms dealers.) Indian hawks routinely suggest the only way to “root out the problem” is “hot pursuit” and the “taking out” of “terrorist camps” in Pakistan. Really? It would be interesting to research how many of the aggressive strategic experts and defence analysts on our TV screens have an interest in the defence and weapons industry. They don’t even need war. They just need a war-like climate in which military spending remains on an upward graph. This idea of hot pursuit is even stupider and more pathetic than it sounds. What would they bomb? A few individuals? Their barracks and food supplies? Or their ideology? Look how the US government’s “hot pursuit” has ended in Afghanistan. And look how a “security grid” of half-a-million soldiers has not been able to subdue the unarmed, civilian population of Kashmir. And India is going to cross international borders to bomb a country—with nuclear arms—that is rapidly devolving into chaos? India’s professional war-mongers derive a great deal of satisfaction by sneering at what they see as the disintegration of Pakistan. Anyone with a rudimentary, working knowledge of history and geography would know that the breakdown of Pakistan (into a gangland of crazed, nihilistic, religious zealots) is absolutely no reason for anyone to rejoice.

The US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistan’s official role as America’s junior partner in the war on terror, makes that region a much-reported place. The rest of the world is at least aware of the dangers unfolding there. Less understood, and harder to read, is the perilous wind that’s picking up speed in the world’s favourite new superpower. The Indian economy is in considerable trouble. The aggressive, acquisitive ambition that economic liberalisation unleashed in the newly created middle class is quickly turning into an equally aggressive frustration. The aircraft they were sitting in has begun to stall just after takeoff. Exhilaration is turning to panic.
The general election is due in 2014. Even without an exit poll I can tell you what the results will be. Though it may not be obvious to the naked eye, once again we will have a Congress-BJP coalition. (Two parties, each with a mass murder of thousands of people belonging to minority communities under their belts.) The CPI(M) will give support from outside, even though it hasn’t been asked to. Oh, and it will be a strong state. (On the hanging front, the gloves are already off. Could the next in line be Balwant Singh Rajoana, on death row for the assassination of Punjab’s chief minister Beant Singh? His execution could revive Khalistani sentiment in Punjab and put the Akali Dal on the mat. Perfect old-style Congress politics.)

But that old-style politics is in some difficulty. In the last few turbulent months, it is not just the image of major political parties, but politics itself, the idea of politics as we know it, that has taken a battering. Again and again, whether it’s corruption, rising prices, or rape and the rising violence against women, the new middle class is at the barricades. They can be water-cannoned or lathicharged, but can’t be shot or impriso­ned in their thousands, in the way the poor can, the way Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, Kashmiris, Nagas and Manipuris can—and have been. The old political parties know that if there is not to be a complete meltdown, this aggression has to be headed off, redirected. They know that they must work together to bring politics back to what it used to be. What better way than a communal conflagration? (How else can the secular play at being secular and the communal be communal?) Maybe even a little war, so that we can play Hawks & Doves all over again.
What better solution than to aim a kick at that tried and trusted old political football—Kashmir? The hanging of Afzal Guru, its brazenness and its timing, is deliberate. It has brought politics and anger back onto Kashmir’s streets.

The idea of ‘hot pursuit’ is stupid, pathetic. What would we bomb? Some individuals? Their barracks? Or their ideology?

India hopes to manage it with the usual combination of brute force and poisonous, Machiavellian manipulation, des­igned to pit people against one another. The war in Kashmir is presented to the world as a battle between an inclusive, secular democracy and radical Islamists. What then should we make of the fact that Mufti Bashiruddin, the so-called Grand Mufti of Kashmir (a completely phantom post)—who has made most abominable hate speeches and issued fatwa after fatwa, intended to present Kashmir as a demonic, monolithic, Wahabi society—is actually a government-anointed cleric? Kids on Facebook will be arrested, never him. What should we make of the fact that the Indian government looks away while money from Saudi Arabia (that most steadfast partner of the US) is pouring into Kashmir’s madrassas? How different is this from what the CIA did in Afghanistan all those years ago? That whole, sorry business is what created Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It has decimated Afghanistan and Pakistan. What sort of incubus will this unleash?

The trouble is that the old political football may not be all that easy to control any more. And it’s radioactive. Maybe it is not a coincidence that a few days ago Pakistan tested a short-range battlefield nuclear missile to protect itself against threats from “evolving scenarios”. Two weeks ago, the Kashmir police published “survival tips” for nuclear war. Apart from advising people to build toilet-equipped bombproof basements large enough to house their entire families for two weeks, it said: “During a nuclear attack, motorists should dive out of their cars toward the blast to save themselves from being crushed by their soon-to-be tumbling vehicles.” And to “expect some initial disorientation as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features”.

Prominent and familiar features may already have been blown down. Perhaps we should all jump out of our soon-to-be-tumbling vehicles.

Big UK tax avoiders will easily get round new government policy

These new proposals to beat tax avoidance won't work, as they expect opaque corporations to come clean

• 
• • Prem Sikka
  • guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 February 2013 12.48 GMT

'Starbucks, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others can continue to route transactions through offshore subsidiaries and suck out profits through loans, royalties and management fee programmes and thus reduce their taxable profits in the UK.' Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

The UK government has finally responded to public anger about organised tax avoidance. The key policy is that from April 2013, potential suppliers to central government for contracts of £2m or more will have to declare whether they indulged in tax avoidance. Those with a history of indulgence in aggressive tax avoidance schemes during the previous 10 years, as evidenced by negative tax tribunal decisions and court cases, could be barred from contracts. Their existing contracts could also be terminated. The policy is high on gimmicks and empty gestures, and short on substance.

The proposed policy only applies to bidders for central government contracts. Thus tax avoiders can continue to make profits from local government, government agencies and other government-funded organisations – including universities, hospitals, schools and public bodies. Banks, railway companies, gas, electricity, water, steel, biotechnology, motor vehicle and arms companies receive taxpayer-funded loans, guarantees and subsidies, but their addiction to tax avoidance will not be touched by the proposed policy.

The policy will apply to one bidder, or a company, at a time and not to all members of a group of companies even though they will share the profits. Thus, one subsidiary in a group can secure a government contract by claiming to be clean, while other affiliates and subsidiaries can continue to rob the public purse through tax avoidance. There is nothing to prevent a company from forming another subsidiary for the sole purpose of bidding for a contract while continuing with nefarious practices elsewhere.

Starbucks, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others can continue to route transactions through offshore subsidiaries and suck out profits through loans, royalties and management fee programmes and thus reduce their taxable profits in the UK. Such strategies are not covered by the government policy and these companies can continue to receive taxpayer-funded contracts.

The policy will not apply to the tax avoidance industry, consisting of accountants, lawyers and finance experts devising new dodges. Earlier this week, a US court declared that an avoidance scheme jointly developed and marketed by UK-based Barclays Bank and accountancy firm KPMG was unlawful. The scheme, codenamed Stars – or Structured Trust Advantaged Repackaged Securities – enabled its participants to manufacture artificial tax credits on loans. This scheme was sold to the US-based Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM). The US tax authorities launched a test case and a court rejected BNYM's claim for tax credits of $900m. The presiding judge said that that avoidance scheme "was an elaborate series of pre-arranged steps designed as a subterfuge for generating, monetising and transferring the value of foreign tax credits among the Stars participants" (page 25). It "lacked economic substance" (page 53) and was a "sham" transaction (page 54). Whether equivalent schemes have been used by UK corporations is not yet known.

The above case highlights a number of issues. The UK-based organisations causing havoc in the US, Africa, Asia and elsewhere will not be restrained. They can still secure taxpayer-funded contracts in the UK. Now suppose that the Bank of New York Mellon scheme was applied by Barclays Bank to its own affairs and declared to be unlawful by a UK court. If so, possibly Barclays may be deterred from bidding for a central government contract, but there will be no penalties for KPMG as accountancy firms are not covered by the proposed rules.

The recent inquiry by the public accounts committee into the operations of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young noted that the firms are the centre of a global tax avoidance industry. Even though a US court has declared one of these schemes to be unlawful, the UK government does not investigate them, close them, or recover legal costs of fighting the schemes devised by them. No accountancy firm has ever been disciplined by any professional accountancy body for peddling avoidance schemes, even when they have been shown to be unlawful. The firms continue to act as advisers to government departments, make profits from taxpayers through private finance initiative, information technology and consultancy contracts. There is clearly no business like accountancy business.

The proposed government policy will not work. It expects corporations who can construct opaque corporate structures and sham transactions to come clean. That will not happen. In addition, a government loth to invest in public regulation will not have the sufficient manpower to police any self-certifications by big business.

An effective policy should prevent tax avoiders and their advisers from making any profit from taxpayers. It should apply to all the players in the tax avoidance industry, regardless of whether their schemes are peddled at home or abroad.

Esther Perel: The secret to desire in a long-term relationship

Now water companies are caught avoiding tax

James Moore in The Independent

British water companies are avoiding millions of pounds in tax by loading themselves up with debt listed on an offshore stock exchange, an investigation has revealed.

The disclosure is likely to reignite the public outcry about legal tax avoidance by big firms at a time when Britain is drowning in debt and suffering painful public spending cuts. It comes only a week after industry regulator Ofwat announced that water bills would rise by an average of 3.5 per cent to £388 a year. Corporate Watch found six UK water companies took high-interest loans from their owners through the Channel Islands stock exchange. Interest payments on the loans reduce taxable profits in the UK and, thanks to a regulatory loophole, go to the owners tax free.

According to the report, Northumbrian, Yorkshire, Anglian, Thames, South Staffs and Sutton and East Surrey water companies all borrowed from subsidiaries of their owners based overseas. Those owners can receive the interest payments tax free by issuing the loans through the Channel Islands stock exchange as "quoted Eurobonds".

When a UK company pays interest to a non-UK company, it usually has to withhold 20 per cent of the payments and give it to the UK tax authorities. But if the loans are issued as quoted Eurobonds on a "recognised" stock exchange – such as those on the Channel Islands or Cayman Islands –they benefit from an exemption, so no tax is taken off.

Corporate Watch found that some £3.4bn had been borrowed by the six companies using this method. It highlights Northumbrian Water as "the most brazen case", as it paid 11 per cent interest on just over £1bn of loans it has taken from its owner, the Cheung Kong group, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate run by Li Ka-shing, the world's ninth-richest person.

The Treasury considered closing the loophole last year, questioning the way companies were using it, but decided against it. The report also found that Britain's 19 water company bosses were paid almost £10m in combined salaries and other bonuses in 2012.

The huge levels of debt used by the industry overall to finance its operations are also costing UK consumers £2bn a year more than if it was publicly financed – equating to nearly £80 per household.

The figure comes from the difference the Government pays to borrow money and the rates that the water companies secure on the international money markets. In total, the report found, the companies have amassed debt of £49bn and paid more than £3bn in interest payments on it in 2012, as well as £884m in dividends. Total revenue in 2012 came in at £10bn.

This suggests that almost a third of the money spent by people on water bills in England and Wales went to paying either interest charges on water company debt or dividends to their owners, most of which are now based overseas. The water industry defended its financing and insisted consumers receive a "good deal".

Paul McMahon, director of economic regulation for trade body Water UK said: "The tax framework has been put in place by the Government and companies work within that regime. Clearly government debt is cheaper than private debt. But it's not free and the public sector is inheriting the risk that comes with that."

Anglian Water did not dispute the report's figures but said it contributed "£150m in other taxes" to the UK economy in the past year.

A Southern Water spokesman said it was "undertaking a major capital improvement programme from 2010 to 2015. A spokesman added: "At £1.8bn, it is the equivalent of spending nearly £1,000 for every property in the Southern Water region over the five-year period."

Northumbrian Water said it could not comment on the report until it had spoken to its shareholders. But it argued that the figure for its tax payment was "unrepresentative" and that Northumbrian Water Ltd, one of the group's operating subsidiaries, paid £30m in tax in the 12 months to 31 March 2012.

Thames Water accepted that interest rates had effectively wiped out operating profits, but said a tax credit received for 2012 came from "previous years" and that investment was at its "highest-ever" level.

Sutton and East Surrey Water told Corporate Watch it could not comment because it was "up for sale".

South Staffordshire Water confirmed it had Eurobonds in emails sent to Corporate Watch and also said it was investing heavily.

Ofwat did not respond to a request for comment.

The lowdown: Water suppliers

Northumbrian

Owner Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (Hong Kong)

Operating Profit £154m

Tax Paid £0

Debt £4bn

Chief exec Heidi Mottram – salary, bonus and benefits: £595,000

Yorkshire

Owners Citi (US); GIC (Singapore) Infracapital Partners and HSBC (UK)

Operating Profit £335m

Tax Paid £0.1m

Debt £4.7bn

Chief exec Richard Flint – salary, bonus and benefits: £800,000

Anglian Water

Owners Canadian Pension Plan; Colonial First State Global Asset Management and Industry Funds Managment (Australia); 3i (UK)

Operating Profit £363m

Tax Paid £1m

Debt £6.9bn

Chief exec Peter Simpson – salary, bonus and benefits: £1,024,000

Thames

Owners Macquaire Group (Australia), China Investment Corporation, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority

Operating Profit £577m

Tax Paid -£70m (tax credit)

Debt £9bn

Chief exec Martin Baggs – salary, bonus and benefits: £845,000

South Staffs Water

Owners Alinda Capital Partners (US)

Operating Profit £16m

Tax Paid £0.2m

Debt £488m

Chief exec Elizabeth Swarbrick – salary, bonus and benefits: £202,000

Sutton and East Surrey Water

Owners Sumitomo Corporation (Japan)

Operating Profit £17m

Tax Paid £1m

Debt £219m

Chief exec Anthony Ferrar – salary, bonus and benefits: £290,000

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science 

• How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups

• Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 February 2013 13.39 GMT

Climate sceptic groups are mobilising against Obama’s efforts to act on climate change in his second term. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

 The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."

Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.

 Graphic: climate denial funding

Those same groups are now mobilising against Obama's efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president's state of the union address.

And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.

"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.

The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.

Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.

That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.

In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.

"This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an organised effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States " Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effort."

In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg."

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate sceptic groups that year.

By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channelling just under $30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones."

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favourite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.

But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to stick.

She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy organisation," Ball said.

When did being lowly paid become a criminal offence?

Increasingly, corporations and politicians treat the poor with distrust. That's why this week's ruling on workfare was important

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Thursday 14 February 2013

‘In the ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly.' Illustration by Matt Kenyon

Inside Amazon's flagship factory in Rugeley, Staffordshire, a new way of working is evolving. There is a strong topnote of distrust, evinced by the full-body scanners that workers have to pass, every time they leave, to prove they haven't stolen anything. The profound insecurity built into the employment model is dressed up as discipline – which is to say, Amazon expects huge seasonal fluctuations in the number of people it needs, yet likes to mask their dismissals behind a misdeameanour, so a lot of people get axed for crimes like being ill. There's a lifesized blonde lady made of cardboard at the entrance, with a think bubble coming out of her head that says, "This is the best job I've ever had!" If that detail alone is enough to make your blood run cold, marry it to the testimony of the chairman of nearby Lea Hall Miners Welfare Centre and Social Club: "The feedback we're getting is that it's like being in a slave camp."

Of all the details revealed by the Financial Times, the one that sank my spirits was the electronic tagging – workers have a handheld device directing them to goods. But these devices also measure their productivity in real time. If they lag behind, the machine bugs them. They are issued with constant warnings not to talk to one another or tarry for any reason. A lot of people find it quite stressful. Call them crazy. (Amazon counters: "Like most companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazon employee, and we measure actual performance against those expectations.")

Meanwhile, in Tesco's Donabate distribution centre in Dublin, workers wearing these tags are awarded percentages for their speediness (100% if they perform a task in the time estimated, 200% if they're twice as fast, and so on), but claim they are docked if they take a loo break; afterwards, they find they have to work much faster – to get back up to their 100%. To put it in context, workers routinely scoring 110% are reported to be sweating quite hard for most of the day. So making up your targets is no walk in the park. Tesco insists that their tag is turned off while workers are in the toilet.

Anybody who's ever worked in a very repetitive, menial job will recognise this suspicious atmosphere – the less enjoyable a job is, the more people there are who suspect you of trying to get out of it. That's reasonable, I suppose, though if people were treated less like robots to begin with, they might not need so much surveillance. But the fabled "innovation" of the private sector never seems to be able to extend itself towards making jobs more self-determining and satisfying. Presumably this is because there's always a danger that self-determining, satisfied people might distinguish themselves in some way, might cease to be interchangeable and might want – indeed, deserve – more than the paltry wage they might be being paid.

But there is innovation here, in a new shamelessness. Let's be honest, tagging is what you do to criminals. Criminals often don't mind this, because the alternative for them is prison. The understanding, however, is that there's already been a significant breakdown of respect between the authority and the person before anybody's movements are electronically monitored. It used to be taken as read that you wouldn't do that to a person until you already had good reason to suspect that they wouldn't tell you the truth.

I am reminded here of the Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke calling for people's benefits to be delivered on a card, rather than cash, for the easier prohibition of the purchase of booze, fags, Sky+ and trips to Tenerife. Again, the government has form with this idea –certain categories of asylum seeker are given their sustenance on a card, with which they are banned from buying condoms and (obscurely) sanitary products.

A friend of mine stood behind an asylum seeker once while she was turned down for the purchase of some crayons. It's not a system I'd want on my conscience, but its development has some deterrence rationale to it: that is, to make conditions so unpleasant that the bogus claimant gives up of his or her own accord. So when did that become OK – to exclude benefit claimants from the mainstream economy, to humiliate them? Does Shelbrooke hope to deter them all from living here? Where does he propose they go?

What I cannot help noticing is a failure of normal human respect for the people at the bottom of the heap – Tuesday's ruling in favour of Cait Reilly and Jamieson Wilson has had its bones picked over for what it does or doesn't say about slavery, and yet the judges were clear: these people were treated dishonestly. They were treated as though, being unemployed, they could be parcelled about at the whim of the secretary of state.

A similar belief pervades the suggestion that those on benefits need to be ritually humiliated every time they go into a shop; or those on low wages, by dint of their low status, need to be monitored like criminals. Across the piece, having a low financial status is now elided, by politicians and by corporations, with being untrustworthy.

They may have different motives; Shelbrooke is hoping to make political capital out of the contempt in which he holds the poor; Tesco and Amazon's contempt is just a byproduct of their drive for profit. But the wellspring doesn't matter; what matters is that this is a frighteningly divisive worldview.

Is compulsory coupledom really the best way to live?

We are in thrall to the amped-up rhetoric of romance, but the primacy of the couple has political and social consequences

• 
• • Priyamvada Gopal
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 February 2013 14.45 GMT

'What we rarely do is question whether pairing off into hypothetically permanent monogamous units … are really where we must all want to end up.' Photograph: Mode Images Limited/Alamy

 

Now that parliamentary sanction finally extends to gay couples who wish to marry, could the floor be opened for a different sort of discussion? As the 10 Best Knickers recommendations, the dinner-for-two vouchers, and well-meaning How-to-Survive-Valentine's-Day-If-You-Don't-Have-a-Date advice tumble out of newspaper pullouts and special "love-and-marriage" issues this week, riffing on poet Adrienne Rich's resonant phrase "compulsory heterosexuality", I think we should talk about "compulsory coupledom".

In this country, we tend to flinch at the mention of "arranged marriages", that process whereby family and friends hunt out a compatible mate for you based on social, religious, lifestyle and economic indicators, or at least, offer you one to choose from a bouquet of options they come up with. Yet we are riveted by reality shows or blind date wedding triumphs, which offer us versions of this controlled mate-choosing but accompanied by the amped-up rhetoric of romance, sexual attraction and individual choice. An economist has just written a book about how market principles might be applied to romance, which people find a bit disturbing because we like to tell ourselves that rationality doesn't enter into the process.

Stories of other people's marriages, whether royal, rich and impossibly perfect or dismally toxic and dysfunctional, keep us in thrall. What we rarely do, though, is question whether pairing off into hypothetically permanent monogamous or even serially polygamous units are really where we must all want to end up. Given its less than inspiring statistical showing: a 50% failure rate and that's not counting unhappy marriages that carry on – the ugly end of the Huhne-Pryce marriage provided the depressing counter-notes to the chorus of joy over gay matrimony – should permanent coupledom really continue to be touted as the best possible way of organising our emotional, sexual and social lives? With tax breaks likely for all who obtain state-regulated matrimony, gay or straight, and with pressure to extend civil partnerships to straight couples – are there any dissident relationship possibilities left?

In her bracing polemic, Against Love – required reading for anyone desperately seeking an antidote to this week's excesses of retail heavy breathing – Laura Kipnis observes that refusing to participate in the required regimen of modern love and its elevation of the couple form is seen as both tragic and abnormal. To not conform willingly to the curiously uniform arrangements of modern coupledom is to be not so much dissident – you are certainly not accorded the dignity of choice – as either psychologically deficient or, in benevolent Channel 4 lingo, "undateable" (though that can be remedied, they say). Labour-intensive mantras now permeate the language of relationships. To refuse to "work" on achieving or preserving couple status is to be an irresponsible skiver, an emotional benefits cheat who undermines the social good.

To question the unchallenged primacy of the couple form isn't about advocating 60s-style "free love" or hip polyamory (itself not necessarily a radical option). Human beings, after all, have infinite ways of expressing love and being committed to ideals. But the way we are made to think about the right ways to love and establish relationships has decisive social and political consequences. It is unlikely to be an accident that a government that wishes to be seen as progressive in its extension of traditional matrimonial domesticity to all, seeks at the same time to viciously target those who are simultaneously economically vulnerable and living outside of the cosy middle-class ideal of two parents with a small posse of putatively well-behaved children. The disgrace that is the bedroom tax will overwhelmingly penalise those whose domestic arrangements fall outside of the idealised format – single parents, the widowed, the elderly, the disabled and carers.

The narrowly defined "love" and "commitment" touted by David Cameron and his ministers is so severely contingent on economic privilege and security that it is nothing more than rampant individualism in pairs with the recommended option of reproducing. You can certainly choose to be single if you can pull it off economically – no mean feat. The most gutting Valentine you will read this year is to Cameron from a fibromyalgia patient called Julia Jones who will now lose the 1.5-bedroom bungalow she shared with her husband who died of cancer and whose ashes are buried in the garden. Childless and living on £70 a week, she cannot afford the punitive tax to stay on and retain her loving local support network.

It is a given that people should be able to love whom and how they want and if pairing off for any length of time is what appeals, then that's fine. But it's time that coupledom stopped being touted as the best option, an idea reinforced not just by state approval and resource allocation, but also by religion, the market, popular culture, assorted therapists and our own anxieties.

Resisting the consolidation of invidious forms of social exclusion, it's time to get beyond the notion that yoking together love, coupling, marriage and reproduction is the only way to achieve happiness. The scare stories about single people dying earlier or loneliness becoming a pandemic must be seen in the larger context of a social order that is hostile to non-couples and an economic order to which the collective good seems to be anathema. Our own imaginations – and hearts – can come up with better.