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Month: June 2022

The Worst Hoax Ever

Here’s What You Need to Believe in order to Believe Johnny Depp is the Victim of Amber Heard


13/06/2022

If you believe that Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were both abusive, that it was a toxic relationship, and that they were both as bad as each other, then you have to disagree with the Fairfax jury’s finding, on 1st June 2022, that she is guilty of defamation. In order for Heard to be guilty of defamation, she has to be the abuser, and Depp has to be the victim.

And, in order to believe that Amber Heard is an abuser, and her much older, much more famous, much richer, and, it has to be said, quite a bit stronger ex-husband Johnny Depp the victim, you have to be prepared to believe the following things:

  1. You have to believe that Amber Heard carried out a hoax, setting Johnny Depp up for abuse, just so she could get a restraining order at some point towards the end of their marriage, for no benefit to herself whatsofuckingever.
  2. You have to believe that she carried this hoax out over years.
  3. You have to believe that she persuaded at least 6 co-conspirators to carry out this hoax with her, even to the extent of being prepared to support her by lying for her in court – for no benefit to herself whatsofuckingever.
  4. You have to believe that ALL the bruises she took photos of were fake, and that she ripped her own hair out.
  5. You have to believe that she faked the photos, even though surely, if she was painting on bruises, she would have no need to be faking photos. You also have to believe she faked all these photos, but didn’t bother faking more. Like she was vengeful and malicious enough to fake photos, but not vengeful and malicious enough to fake a few more?
  6. You have to believe she did all this to get “revenge” on Depp – or possibly money (even though she was actually entitled to more money than she settled on in the divorce agreement, even though you don’t actually get extra money from your ex if they’re violent).
  7. You have to believe that the other co-conspirators who supported Amber’s hoax plan would not be prepared to go to the press and reveal the truth about her evil plan – despite the fact that public opinion is so decidedly against her, and, even after, in some cases, the friendship had ended.
  8. And you have to believe that she pulled off this hoax leaving no traces of any planning or coordination with the other conspirators.

If you don’t believe this, if you think they were “both as bad as each other” “both violent” “both toxic” “both terrible people”, then you have to think the decision was a travesty of justice, and you are basically a Heard supporter.

But the thing is, in order to believe Amber Heard’s version of events, you just have to, essentially, be prepared to believe the following thing:

  1. You have to believe that a man you liked and admired might be an abuser.

That’s it.

The painful truth is that even if Johnny Depp’s paranoid conspiracy theory about Amber Heard painting on bruises and texting pretend SMS-text messages to her mother over the course of years and years and years and fucking years on end turned out to be true (do no Depp supporters question the level of sheer evil, the level of sheer vindictiveness, you would need to have in you, in order to pull this off? It would be astounding. And the only person in the marriage where I see any proof of them having had these kind of vindictive feelings – from before they even got married, actually, well, hate to break it to you guys but that would be Depp himself, who in text messages sent in 2013 fantasized about raping her burnt corpse, demonstrating, I can’t help feel, his visceral contempt for his soon-to-be wife?)

Even if this crazy theory turned out to be true, well, still the level of misogynist abuse hurled at her over the past few weeks would be cruel and disturbing. Hashtags like #AmberTurd (there is no evidence that she pooed on his bed), laughing at her for wincing slightly because she remembered her dog treading on a bee (seriously, are you fucking sociopaths or what?), sex toys being produced to replicate the weapon used in her sexual assault story, make-up companies piling on, Starbucks tip boxes, graffiti artists in Gran Canaria…even Duofuckinglingo joined in.

Say publicly that you support Amber on social media and your DMs fill with messages from young white men letting you know that you’re too ugly to be raped – or that the sender is glad you obviously were and that the Amber Heard trial has traumatized you so much. Laugh emoji. Laugh emoji. Laugh emoji. Some of the young men sending these messages do not seem to be, in fact, young men at all – but young boys.

And let’s remember that while there is no evidence that Amber Heard pooed her own bed, there is plenty of evidence that Depp’s team not only doctored audio clips to turn public feeling against her, but also paid for bots to skewer social media.

John Christopher Depp, a man who has publicly defended convicted child rapist Roman Polanski (using the argument that he isn’t a predator, because he’s not on the streets, implying, perhaps, that raping your partner/groomed victim in the safety of your own home isn’t as much of a crime as raping a stranger outside – or even, perhaps, a crime at all. I am yet to hear how anyone who thinks Heard is the abuser and Depp the victim justifies his feelings on this topic) is best friends with Marilyn Manson, and has a new assault trial coming up next month, won this court case. He was won, and many people believe he is vindicated. It’s true.

However, during the entire court case, as Amber was being abused on social media, and walking into court being booed at by his deranged supporters every day – one woman dressed up as a poo emoji to show her support for Depp – this “victim of violence” said absolutely nothing to defend his ex-wife from the frankly sickening onslaught of misogynistic abuse she had to endure. It would have cost him nothing to say, were he truly the victim, “Look she abused me but abusing her back doesn’t make any of this better.”

But he couldn’t do that, because the truth is, the entire court case rested upon a complete character assassination of Amber Heard. To suggest she is a human being would destroy his entire legal strategy.

I ask myself every day how many of the young women who so maliciously, so gleefully, joined in with the horrendous bullying Heard has had to endure would have killed themselves had they experiences just 1% of what Amber has gone through?

There’s a reason rape trials are not normally televised. The reason is that rape is traumatic, and rape victims weirdly stigmatized in our society. This trial wasn’t actually a rape trial or a domestic abuse trial – Amber Heard has not been found guilty of abuse, but liable for defamation. However, for all intents and purposes, Depp’s legal team behaved as if it was a rape trial – one from the 80s or the 90s, when defence lawyers were allowed, or even encouraged, to emotionally destroy the victim on the stand.

Depp’s female lawyer, Camille Vasquez, used every trick out of the misogynist legal textbook to humiliate and degrade Amber Heard as much as possible, as well as aiming for some “gotcha” moments which, in all reality, would have meant nothing if they had succeeded (call me an old-fashioned man-hating feminist if you will, but I personally don’t see how why, if Depp HAD got Amber the job on Aquaman, his abuse of her would have been any more acceptable? But maybe that’s just me).

This case has shown that we still view rape victims as dirty and disgusting, stigmatize them as tainted, polluted, tarnished. We see, as a society, talking about rape and abuse as a far worse sin than the rape or abuse itself. This televised show trial was, in fact, essentially abuse itself. By forcing Heard to recount her sexual assault story before live TV cameras, Depp got to metaphorically rape her all over again – and forced all rape victims, the world over, to relive their trauma, the stigma, their pain.

And don’t let’s forget that Depp promised her this! He literally promised Amber would receive “global humiliation.” In August 2016, he wrote to Christian Carino, his former talent agent:

“She’s begging for global humiliation…She’s gonna get it.”

“She will hit the wall hard!!!”

He was right. She did. He achieved his aims – and then some.

But, despite the popular narrative, Amber Heard wasn’t actually found guilty of abuse by the jury in Virginia on 1st June 2022. In order to find her guilty of defamation, though, they had to believe a crazy conspiracy theory in which she not only was the abuser but also a hoaxer who had planned this hoax over the course of years and years and years for no reason whatsoever. It’s hard not to wonder why, if she was this vindictive, she didn’t just beat herself up more often to get more bruises as proof?

For me, personally, the inconsistency of her evidence points to the ridiculousness of the entire hoax theory. But it’s important to remember that Heard isn’t actually, legally speaking, an abuser. She has been found guilty of defaming Depp by writing – or having published in her name – the following three sentences:

  • I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.
  • Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.
  • I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real-time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.

I find it ironic that Depp was allegedly so offended by these three sentences, that he unleashed an army of incels, an avalanche of misogyny. Amber Heard is now, more than ever, a public figure representing abuse, who felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out. And we have all now had the (sadly no longer rare at all! The WHOLE world was watching) vantage point of seeing, in real-time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.

I am sickened and appalled by what has happened to Amber Heard. I am sickened by the way she was bullied, by many people I like and respect. I am disgusted by the way her sexual assault story was mocked and by the way Depp’s testimony about the poo incident was viewed as “proven” and her own testimony portrayed as lies. I am shocked by how easy it was for Depp to turn feminists into misogynists.

Many – or even most? – victims of violence and abuse just want to move on with their lives, but Johnny Depp not only pursues Amber through courts all over the world – he enjoys it, too. We all saw him sneering and jeering, swaggering his way through the court room. He enjoyed himself as much as he thought he would. “She will hit the wall hard!!!” How right he was. I stand with Amber Heard – and you should too.

Jacinta will be reading from her new book WTF Berlin. Expatsplaining the German Capital at the LINKE Berlin Internationals Summer Camp on Saturday, 25th June

Open Letter to LINKE negotiators in the Housing Coalition

Die LINKE should not be drawn into Franziska Giffey’s so-called “housing alliance” without guarantees of real change


12/06/2022

Dear comrades, dear negotiators for DIE LINKE in the Wohnungsbündnis [housing alliance],

After we declared the election to be a #Mietenwahl [rents election], the success of our participation in government will also have to be measured by whether we are able to substantially do something to counter the rent madness.

The SPD and the governing mayor Franziska Giffey have chosen the slogan“Cooperation instead of confrontation” as the basis of the new housing policy for Berlin and linked the work of the Bündnis für Wohnungsneubau und bezahlbares Wohnen [Alliance for New Housing and Affordable Homes] to it. The Green Party also saw the alliance as an opportunity to anchor their so-called “rent protection umbrella” and, among many other demands, to enforce a moratorium on rents.

Since January, representatives of the housing industry have been negotiating with associations and representatives of the government behind closed doors in the so-called Wohnungsbündnis. With this alliance. the private sector gains privileged access to political decisions, while parliament is kept out of the loop. Now we have to make clear: this has been no way of cooperatively agreeing on effective measures.

Time and again, the construction industry points to the fact that the increase in construction costs and the interest rate turnaround have changed the fundamentals of the housing industry. Private housing companies are terminating new construction projects and announcing further rent increases. At least since the real estate group Vonovia announced further rent increases at the beginning of June – despite all the social hardship for a great deal of people in view of inflation – the general conditions have quite obviously changed. Yes, Vonovia has broken the consensus in the alliance and is planning on confrontation!

As LINKE members and sympathisers we want to make clear:

The interim negotiation statuses that have become public so far will not fulfil the housing policy objectives that were agreed upon in the coalition agreement, especially with regard to the protection of tenants, while numerous concessions are to be clearly made to the housing industry. With this in mind, we call on the LINKE leadership and our negotiators to renegotiate the following points:

  • The guidelines of government action of 18.01.2022 shall be the basis of any agreement, and no agreement with the private sector should depart from this.
  • Instead of the intransparent and thoughtless proposal of somehow linking rents to income, there must be a rent freeze for the duration of the legislative period.
  • To counter democratic deficits, there must be a clear limitation of the responsibilities of the Housing Alliance: Sovereign tasks (e.g. the awarding of planning rights or the pre-determination of such rights) as well as guidelines for the state-owned housing companies must be excluded from the alliance.

As LINKE members and sympathisers we say:

In our view, the signing of the alliance is only possible if these points are successfully negotiated into the declaration to be signed. If the demands cannot be added, the alliance will not of any advantage in terms of housing policy and would cause more harm than good in the fight against rent madness. We need a broad, open-ended debate within the party about how we proceed.

Katalin Gennburg and Niklas Schenker

If you would like to sign this open letter, please send a mail to schenker@linksfraktion.berlin

Translation: Gerrit Peters. Reproduced with permission.

“Britain is particularly hostile towards trans people at the moment”

Interview with activist and author Laura Miles on Trans Rights in the UK


11/06/2022

Hello Laura, thanks for speaking to us. Could you tell us a little about who you are and your political background?

Hi. I’m a revolutionary socialist and a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party in the UK. I was a UCU (academic trade union) activist from the 1980s onwards, and on the UCU National Executive until 2015. Now I’m retired and I’m an activist for LGBT+ rights. I’m the author of several pamphlets and the book Transgender Resistance: Socialism and the Fight for Trans Liberation.

How do you think the awareness of Trans rights has changed in the past 30 years?

In the past, trans people were either invisible or treated as something exotic and salacious by the mass media. Being transgender was seen as completely different to sexuality. Now trans people are seen as part of the LGBT+ family. Trans people are more visible and talked about. Trans rights are discussed more in the mainstream media, there is a lot more public awareness. There are more trans role models now, partly due to social media. There are Trans Pride events. The experience of gay and trans people fighting Section 28 and the stigma of HIV/AIDS together has led to more unity within the community.

The British Tories have recently introduced a ban on conversion therapy which excludes trans people. Can you explain what is happening and why?

Yes. The Tories under David Cameron, and then Teresa May, promised to ban conversion therapy. Boris Johnson’s government delayed bringing in a ban, then backtracked on the promise. There was an outcry over this which led to the current bizarre position of bringing in a conversion therapy ban that applies to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but excludes trans people. In reality, it is impossible to separate trans people from the ban. We will enter very confused legal, moral and political territory. A lot of homophobia is related to gender expression; trans rights and LGB rights are not mutually exclusive.

It is happening because the Tories have become more transphobic, even in the last year. A moral panic has been whipped up around trans rights in Britain. It is part of the wider right wing ‘culture war’, part of ramping up their ‘anti-woke agenda’. This can be seen in other policy areas such as immigration as well.

What has been the response of the Labour Party?

The Labour Party has been trying to ride two horses at once. It has been aiming to appear trans-friendly whilst also making concessions to the so-called ‘sex-based rights’ of women. Recently the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, made a hash of answering the tiresome ‘can a woman have a penis?’ question in a radio interview with LBC. Starmer refused to answer the question, and said it was ‘unhelpful’ to discuss the subject.

Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, was a guest of honour at the first annual conference of the transphobic LGB Alliance. She remains a Labour MP. Another Labour MP, Stella Creasy, has recently been vocally supportive of trans rights, as has Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry. There have been big arguments over trans rights at the local constituency Labour Party level, which show no signs of abating. The Labour Party is divided on the issue and the leadership appears reluctant to take a firmly supportive position.

It seems that the British Left is divided on the trans issue, with some arguing that trans rights can only be won at the expense of women’s rights. How deep is this division?

It is important to note that it is a minority of the British Left that is arguing this. They argue that they are not allied with the transphobic Right on this, with the Right arguing that trans people are subversive, immoral, unnatural etc. The Leftists who take this position argue that there is a conflict between trans rights and women’s rights but deep down their arguments are based on sex-essentialism. The majority of the British Left do not argue this position, but those who hold this position have a vocal social media presence.

You recently decided to withdraw from an online meeting about trans rights organised by left wingers. What happened and why?

This was a meeting hosted by Red Line TV, Jackie Walker’s social media TV show. First, I was invited to go on the show as a guest, then it was suggested to me that there would be a debate about trans rights. I did suggest someone that I could possibly debate with, however it turned out that she had become very ‘gender critical’ since I had last been in contact with her. I felt it was wrong to debate her as on principle we shouldn’t be debating with transphobes. It gives them a legitimacy that they really want but shouldn’t have. Despite all their claims of being silenced, ‘gender critical’ voices have access to platforms in mainstream newspapers and media outlets. The Left does not have to give them a platform.

You’ve been accused of not wanting to discuss with anyone who doesn’t share your opinion. What do you say to that?

It’s not true. I am happy to discuss this issue with people who have genuine concerns. That is different to debating with people who want to roll back trans rights.

Do you feel that the discussion in Britain is different than in other countries?

The discussion in Britain is particularly hostile towards trans people at the moment. There was a furore after proposals were announced to introduce reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, especially around the proposal to introduce self-ID for trans people. This backlash has grown into a moral panic. Anti-trans rhetoric has become normalised in the mainstream media. Trans women are quite often portrayed as sexual predators.

Ireland has had Self-ID for years without a problem, but Self-ID has been portrayed as a huge threat to women’s rights in Britain. Of course, there are other countries where the discussion about trans rights is also hostile, such as South Korea, Spain, and the United States. In the United States we are currently seeing a wave of vicious anti-trans legislation. But in the United States, the hostility is driven by the religious and conservative right.

Finally, how do you think we can build an international movement for trans rights and what can people in Berlin do to support what you’re doing in the UK?

International links are really important. It is important to develop international solidarity between trans rights and LGBT+ rights activists within left parties and movements around the world. It is also important to develop the equality structures in our trade unions and link up with other unions and workers’ organisations. The fight for trans rights is a global one, we need to be vocally supportive of trans rights in our communities and internationally. We can all share experiences, raise awareness of attacks on trans rights, support each other’s initiatives and build trans pride internationally.

Solidarity is also vitally important for the revolutionary left internationally, as we fight for the socialist revolution that can transform the conditions we all live in. This is the only guarantee that trans rights, and the rights of all oppressed people, can flourish and be seen as ‘normal’ and not something ‘other’.

Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland

Representing the interests of Black Germans and standing up for justice in the migration society


09/06/2022

The Initiative Scharze Menschen in Deutschland (Initiative of Black people in Germany) which was formed in 1985 as the Initiative Schwarze Deutsche, has become the oldest self-organisation by and for Black people in Germany.

The formation of the ISD led to the book “Farbe bekennen”, which as the first publication by Black people laid a foundation stone for the young Black movement.

If we speak today of the young Black movement, this is because before the initiatives which exist today there have been socially relevant activities by Black people in Germany for a long time already. So, for example, in the 1920s Black workers, trade unionists, artists and colonial migrants join together to fight for their rights and life plans.

The contributions in “Farbe bekommen” laid the foundation stone for the political work of the ISD and shape it in part until today. For example, the book contributions from May Ayim and Katharina Oguntoye discuss German colonial history from the perspective of Black people for the first time, and present their effectiveness on a global and local level.

The ISD represents the interests of Black people in society and politics and wants to make a legislative impact. The subjects everyday racism, racist violence and police violence are a central focus of the work. Black resistance for is is primarily a fight for the recognition of this perspective.

The aim is the advancement of the political participation of Black people and the improvement of their living conditions in German. We demand an anti-racist stance in all areas of politics (education, residence, citizenship, asylum laws) and that the reality of different and interlocking forms of discrimination are recognised. In the awareness that collective political work is essential, the ISD organises networking of Black and migrant communities. This is how we connect the fights in the 20th Century which colonial migrants and anti-fascists fought against exploitation, discrimination and persecution. In this sense, the ISD shows solidarity with displayed people, in order to make it clear hear that flight and migration are an immediate consequence of European colonialism.

The ISD recognises and points out the different experiences and background of Black people, at the same time as making clear the possibilities of acting in solidarity and collaboratively. The initiative offers individual and collective experiences as a resource to use for political reflection and social engagement. We organise meetings like the yearly national and regular networking meetings and organise events like Black History Month, the Homestory Deutschland exhibition or the European networking meeting for People of African Descent & Black Europeans.

The ISD does not understand itself as the only representative of Black people in German, much more as part of the Black community with all its NGOs, initiatives, organisations and projects.

Commodity markets and the boiling point of societies

Will rising inflation lead to social upheaval?


Sri Lanka is experiencing dramatic political upheavals that have seen the ruling Rajapaksa dynasty losing its grip on power. It is not difficult to notice what is bringing people to the streets: rising food prices, forcing people to skip meals; fuel and medicine shortages; high energy prices and power cuts. The price of rice and wheat has increased by over 50%. The increases began around September 2021 with protests flaring up in early April this year resulting in the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, while his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, refuses to step down.

Sri Lanka imports more than it exports. Domestic crop failures in 2021 have increased the dependency on imports and put Sri Lanka at the mercy of the global commodity market and with prices rising, the cost of imports is growing. This is not unexpected: the threat of Sri Lanka defaulting on its $7.3 Billion foreign debt in order to subsidise everyday essentials has been in the air for a while now and in May the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history.

The pattern of increasing food prices resulting in riots is well documented. In December 2010 Tunisians were on the streets demanding: “Water and bread, yes! Ben Ali, no!”. The then leader, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country later that month to Saudi Arabia. One week later a restaurant owner in Cairo set himself on fire after being ineligible for state-subsidised bread.

Going even further back, there were many bread riots leading up to the French revolution, most famously the `Flour war’ of 1773-5. This complicates the narrative often sold of revolutions of `the people’ finally fed up with their corrupt leaders and taking to the streets. The reality is that there must be material causes that push a society above its boiling point.

There is one major difference between the spike in grain prices in 18th century France and the spike in food prices in the 2000s. In the years preceding the Flour War, unusually adverse climate patterns precipitated terrible harvests. There was no such cause to point to in 2008. There was no food and oil shortage -actually it was up on previous years- but the UN had declared a global food crisis and oil prices were soaring. At this point, standard economic ideas around supply and demand prove insufficient, and we might start to feel rather confused. What is the difference between now and then?

The role of Commodity Price Indexes

One facet of the answer to this question is financialisation, bringing with it convoluted markets, detached from the real world. Another is the context of a global economy run by people addicted to oil and with a delusional relationship to the consequences of neoliberal economic policy. Those with the greatest share of the wealth, encouraged and supported by politicians, interact with markets with their only goal being increasing their personal worth. They, enabled and spurred on by “too big to fail” banks, have created and invented a multitude of schemes and tricks to help them to this end.

A Commodity Price Index is an average of selected commodity prices. There are many Commodity Price Indexes, tracking different selections of commodities, with differing weights, focusing on specific countries or commodities. For example, the well-known the RF/CC CRB Index contains 19 commodities, among them: crude oil, gold, orange juice, aluminium. These indexes are intended to provide representations of broad trends in the commodities market. They are nothing new, the CRB Index was first calculated and published in the 50s, and it is not the oldest.

Commodity Index Funds track these indexes and are one way that investors can “choose to obtain passive exposure to these commodity price indexes” or speculate on the future movements. The upshot is that investors can buy these financial instruments, whose worth is calculated in order to track or speculate on a specific Commodity Price Index. Buying into one of these funds does not mean that one owns anything physical. You give your money to a bank who will then give you more money or take some away depending on the movement of a specific Index.

The trouble comes when large amounts of capital is parked in these funds. Then prices which have no material reason to be associated to one another start to move in unison. There is no natural connection between the price of nickel and the price of wheat, but as the market for CPI tracking became large, mass speculation on these indexes created a link between such commodities artificially.

“Without question increased fund flow into commodities has boosted prices” concluded Goldman Sachs’ own analysts. Predictably however, they do not blame the speculators and rather double down that in fact the speculators serve to help solve the problem. The exact mechanism through which this happens is complex. Trend following traders, algorithmic bot traders are all factors contributing to these speculative bubbles. Additionally, in an extremely egregious move, the banks who were selling these speculative contracts quickly moved into the commodity-storage trade [“Price Wars”, Russell, p65] to maximise their profits from the soaring prices.

After deregulation in the form of the Commodity Futures Modernisation Act, masterminded by Alan Greenspan and the Clinton administration at the turn of the century, these markets grew. In 2003, $13 Billion was spent on Commodity Index Funds, rising to $260 billion in 2006, as reported by Michael Masters, a hedge-fund manager, to a US House Committee. Increased demand for Commodity Index Funds were driving prices themselves up. Master’s testimony was met by attacks from the financial industry.

After the financial crash in 2008, investors and, pension and hedge fund managers found in commodities a safe place to place their investments after the mortgage and property market had shown itself not the safe haven it was once thought to be. This sudden demand for commodities caused prices to rise. Commodity prices across the board start to rise and speculative bubbles emerged. The standard logic that prices of wheat or rubber encode information about the availability is abandoned. The global south is then forced to suffer the consequences of this speculative game played in the global north.

How is this affected by the war in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is already having a serious impact on food security and global energy prices and these speculative schemes carried out by the financial industry are engineering a global catastrophe affecting billions of people. The financial institutions and the politicians they are in bed with will turn the finger of blame to the pandemic and a capital deficit; anywhere but themselves. This wilfully ignores the exacerbating role the unregulated speculative market plays. These people are either so blinded by their own self-interest or are too apathetic to see that the problem is not going to be solved from within.

Peering into the Wild West of Wall Street and understanding the devastating consequences its actions have, whilst those in charge profit from it is a very demoralising exercise. We are in need of a political class which is willing to challenge the hegemonic belief that we are in need of such a `healthy’ financial system and instead will prioritise the people they claim to represent.

We need to reign in these enormous speculative markets via robust regulation, preventing the amplification of small fluctuations in food markets to catastrophic spikes and crashes. It is a political failure that we can have record high food production in a year, and in that same year food prices soar.