CREATIONISM VERSUS SCIENCE

Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party GB

Don't recycle Capitalism, BIN IT

HOME OF THE BRAVE?

The manufacturers and traders of guns are in a lucrative business in the USA and in order to protect their marketplace they have a trade organisation known as the National Rifle Association to protect that market. "There are approximately 90 guns for every 100 people in the US (a rate almost 15 times higher than England and Wales). More than 85 people a day are killed with guns and more than twice that number are injured with them. Gun murders are the leading cause of death among African Americans under the age of 44. And the NRA is no joke. Claiming gun ownership as a civil liberty protected by the second amendment, it opposes virtually all gun control legislation. It claims more than 4 million members, has a budget of more than $300m and spent almost $3m last year – when there were no nationwide elections – on lobbying." (Guardian, 18 April) Being cowardly socialists we wonder if there is a Bullet Proof Vest Association we could contact before visiting the Home of the Brave. RD

CELEBRATING WAGE SLAVERY

In the media led frenzy that will no doubt accompany the Queen's diamond jubilee many workers may imagine that they have something to celebrate. As they raise their cut-price can of cheap lager in celebration they may perhaps reflect that their masters will be celebrating in quite a different fashion. "An ultra-exclusive port, the Graham's Tawny 1952, is being released with royal approval for the Diamond Jubilee. The port is available exclusively through Berry Brothers at £275 a bottle, in three-bottle oak cases at £825, and in five jeroboams (4.5 litres) at £1,800." (Decanter.com, 11 April) We doubt if your local pub will be getting in a stock of jeroboams. RD

CALL THIS PROGRESS?

Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party GB

Don't recycle Capitalism, BIN IT

PATRIOTISM AND PENURY

With the forthcoming Olympic Games in the offing the media will be whipping up nationalistic pride and crowds will be singing God Save the Queen and Rule Britannia, but behind this nationalistic nonsense a grim reality is at work. "Britons rack up nearly £14,500 in debt before they consider themselves in serious financial trouble, a study has revealed. Up to 10 million of us owe money, while more than 2.5 million are behind with at least one bill, the charity Money Advice Trust found. Debt problems have soared since the credit crunch began in 2008 and more than two million took out payday loans last year." (Daily Express, 17 April) Perhaps the song we should be chanting is "There's a Pawnshop Round the Corner" RD

A WONDERFUL TOWN?

The popular song may declare that New York is a wonderful town but for many of its residents this is far from the truth. "The number of New Yorkers classified as poor in 2010 increased by nearly 100,000 from the year before, raising the poverty rate by 1.3 percentage points to 21 per cent — the highest level and the largest year-to-year increase since the city adopted a more detailed definition of poverty in 2005. The recession and the sluggish recovery have taken a particularly harsh toll on children, with more than one in four under 18 living in poverty, according to an analysis by the city's Center for Economic Opportunity that will be released on Tuesday." (New York Times, 17 April) If you are a millionaire and a resident of New York it may well be "My kind of town" as the song would have it, but for many of the working class of that city there is not much to sing about. RD

Food for thought

Nobody could be more thrilled at the melting of the polar ice caps than the capitalist class who want to get their hands on the vast deposits of oil, natural gas, nickel, palladium, and other minerals beneath the arctic ice. Though some governments have established a claim to some territories, others are disputed. Both Canada and Russia have competing claims to a patch of seabed near the North Pole. Already Russia has a system of security forces, ice-breaking ships, bases and ports across the arctic and is planning on bringing in new nuclear submarines. The Harper government has said that it will establish a new coast guard HQ in the arctic in 2013 and send eight ice-class patrol boats there at a cost of $3 billion. Another war in the making and one the working class has no stake in.
Every second of every day a river of poison consisting of mercury, iron, aluminum, and nickel flows down the hillsides of San Carlos Creek, twenty miles south of San Jose, California. This is from the now neglected New Idira mine, once the second largest mercury mine in the US. The Environmental Protection Agency has measured the mercury that flows into the creek at levels that are toxic to wild life for more than thirty kilometers. It is five times more than the safe level for humans and affects the nervous system, the brain, kidneys, lungs, and the immune system. During the rainy months, the creek's water flows into the San Joaquin River that flows into the San Francisco Bay, a source of drinking water for two-thirds of California. The EPA and the state have been pressured for fifteen years to clean it up but the first stage alone would cost $10 million. Money counts, people don't.
A new study shows that rich people are more likely to engage in unethical behaviour than poor folk -- like cutting off motorists, lying in negotiations, and cheating to win a prize (really!). These were the findings from researchers at the universities of California and Toronto that were published in the proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences of the USA. They also found wealthy people were more likely to steal valued items than poor people. Another good reason to abolish a system that creates rich and poor. John Ayers

THE REAL ARTFUL DODGERS

It is a favourite trick of the popular press to depict the unemployed and the poorly paid sections of the working class as cunning recipients of state hand-outs and useless parasites on society, but the super-rich could teach them a thing or two when it comes to being artful dodgers. "Almost one in 10 people earning more than £10 million a year is paying less than the 20 per cent basic rate of income tax, new figures have shown. Treasury officials argued the revelation underlined the need for action to prevent the super-rich exploiting loopholes to reduce their tax bill below that of low-paid workers. The figures, released by the Government, show 6 per cent of £10 million-plus earners pay less than 10 per cent in tax and another three per cent pay below the basic 20 per cent rate. Fewer than three quarters pay more than 40 per cent." (Daily Telegraph, 16 April) The only thing we would argue about in this report is the use of the word "earn"! RD

THE ARROGANCE OF WEALTH

The wealth of UAE billionaires increased by more than 10 per cent to $7.6 billion, according to Forbes Middle East Arab billionaires ranking. In the UAE, according to Forbes Middle East, Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair's wealth improved to $2.9 billion from $2.7 billion, Saif Al Ghurair's assets jumped to $2 billion from $1.7 billion, Abdulla Al Futtaim's holdings increased to $1.6 billion over $1.3 billion. "The motivation behind publishing this list is to deliver the powerful message, that behind these billions lay wealthy individuals who have fought long and hard, and given generously. These success stories present lessons to be learned that money cannot buy, and serve as an inspiration to us all," Forbes Middle East's editor-in-chief, Khuloud Al Omian commented on the ranking." (Khaleej Times, 9 April) The amassing of such immense amounts of wealth is credited to individuals who have "fought hard and long" and supposedly "serve as an inspiration to us all". In fact their greatest attribute was to be born to some wealth blood-sucking member of the owning class. RD

MINING FOR MILLIONS

Glencore, the commodity and mining firm worth £27bn, stands accused in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of dumping raw acid and profiting from children working 150ft underground. When Glencore floated in London, five of its partners became billionaires, but the biggest winner was Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, whose stake is worth £4bn. "In his first television interview, Glasenberg said that Glencore took corporate responsibility seriously, saying: "We care about the environment. We care about the local communities." But an investigation by the BBC's Panorama has found Glencore dumping acid into a river and it discovered children as young as 10 working in the Tilwezembe mine, which was officially closed by Glencore in 2008." (Guardian, 14 April) When it comes to amassing billions the owning class care little for the environment or the plight of exploited children. RD

The Scottish Commons

The idea of individual (or private) ownership of fixed parcels of land is a relatively recent phenomenon, and by no means universal. Tom Johnston’s skill as a historian was to be able to demonstrate that the rapine, murder, massacre, cheating and court harlotry that led to the accumulation of land in the hands of Scotland’s feudal barons was rooted in historical fact. In particular, Johnston exposed how one of the greatest land grabs was engineered - that of Scotland’s extensive Burgh Commons.

The vast territories granted to Scotland’s Royal Burghs were designed to act as a bulwark against noble power. According to Johnston, such acreages, together with other common lands, extended in the latter part of the sixteenth century to fully one half of the entire area of Scotland.

But this valuable inheritance did not to last long:
"Until the Burgh Reform Act of 1833 the landowners and the commercial bourgeois class controlled all burghal administration of the common lands, and controlled it in such a way that vast areas of common lands were quietly appropriated, trust funds wholly disappeared, and to such a length did the plunder and the corruption develop, that some ancient burghs with valuable patrimonies went bankrupt, some disappeared altogether from the map of Scotland, some had their charters confiscated, and those which survived to the middle of the nineteenth century were left mere miserable starved caricatures of their former greatness, their Common Good funds gone, their lands fenced in private ownership, and their treasurers faced often with crushing debts. As late as 1800 there were great common properties extant; many burghs, towns and villages owned lands and mosses; Forres engaged in municipal timbergrowing; Fortrose owned claypits; Glasgow owned quarries and coalfields; Hamilton owned a coal pit; Irvine had mills, farms and a loom shop ...."
By the time the Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations in Scotland reported in 1835.
“Wick had lost in the law courts its limited right of commonty over the hill of Wick, and owned no property; Abernethy owned nothing, nor did Alloa. Bathgate was the proud possessor of the site of a fountain and a right of servitude over four and a half acres of moorland. Beith had no local government of any kind; Bo’ness owned nothing; Castle-Douglas owned only a shop; Coldstream was stripped bare, not even possessing 'rights in its street dung'; Crieff had two fields; Dalkeith nothing; Dunkeld nothing; and Dunoon, nothing”"

Nor is such overt municipal corruption and common land annexed ancient history. Take the case of the Cuillin of Skye which were put up for sale in March 2000. Much of the outcry which followed centred on whether or not MacLeod actually owned the Cuillin in the first place. Extensive research culminated in the Crown Estate commissioning a QC’s opinion which concluded in essence that MacLeod owned the Cuillin since his 1611 Crown charter was “capable of including the Cuillin” and he had enjoyed “possession” for an uninterrupted period of at least 20 years. It is important to note that the Crown never examined the question of whether MacLeod’s ancestors had actually been granted the Cuillin in 1611. It is clear that the land put up for sale had never been granted to MacLeod and to this day remains a Crown Common. But the laws of landownership in Scotland are constructed in such a way that render such questions irrelevant. Land which was never granted to MacLeod has become, by default and by neglect by the guardians of the public realm, part of the private possession of one man. It is hardly surprising that the Crown Estate never sought to dig deeper.

Many of the displaced people ended up in burgeoning industrial cities such as Glasgow, where their descendants formed an integral part of the Labour movement.

(The legacy of Scotland’s Burgh Commons is still present across Scotland, for example,in the North and South Inches of Perth, the racecourse at Musselburgh, the mussel beds at Tain, the links at Dornoch, the 1700 acres of Lauder Common and the other commons of the Borders which form the basis for the Common Riding ceremonies each summer)

http://www.scottishcommons.org/docs/scotlands_commonweal_2.pdf

SOCIALIST PARTY PUBLIC MEETING. FREE ENTRY

Glasgow Branch of the Socialist Party GB

Don't recycle Capitalism, BIN IT

We are constantly invited by the capitalist media to have an opinion on matters which are considered by the owners to be important. There is no shortage of crazy belief systems being promoted and discussed on television and other media, albeit in a rather superficial way. Some of these crazy belief systems constitute the main barriers to socialism. But we never hear of the stark choice between socialism and capitalism. This is not an accident….

LAND OF THE FREE?

Politicians in the USA like to depict America as the epitome of freedom and democracy and sneer at the repressive measures of totalitarian states, but their boasts are ill-founded. "America which is known as the freest country in the world has incarcerated more of it's citizens than the rest of the world combined. 7.1 million Americans are either in prison, on probation or under correctional supervision. The numbers continue to climb each year as more prisons are built nationwide." (CNN News, 2 April) RD

SQUALOR AND SPLENDOUR

The awful poverty and downright squalor of the Chinese working class is amongst the worst in the world but the affluence of their owning class is equally obvious. "The Chinese economy is booming at a blistering pace. It is driven largely by the Fudai: the superrich who call the superpower home. Many are just in their forties. From building 30-storey towers in just 14 days, to amassing a luxury fleet of sports cars or a private jet - China's million millionaires and 600 billionaires are helping to change the country's landscape. And China's mad rush to urbanisation is only helping these elites get richer and richer." (Aljazeera, 10 April) That this country of billionaires and poverty can still claim to be communist is surely one of the world's greatest travesties.RD

SLAVERY AND OPULENCE

Arising out of the case of a 13 year old girl who worked as a maid (for a couple who had gone on vacation to Thailand) and who had been rescued by firemen from a locked apartment, some staggering figures on child exploitation were revealed. The girl described a life akin to slavery, child welfare officials said. Her uncle had sold her to a job placement agency, which sold her to the couple, both doctors. The girl was paid nothing. She said the couple barely fed her and beat her if her work did not meet expectations."The International Labor Organization has found that India has 12.6 million laborers between the ages of 5 and 14, with roughly 20 per cent working as domestic help. Other groups place the figure at 45 million or higher. Unicef has said India has more child laborers than any other country in the world. .... Mala Bhandari, who runs Childline, a government hot line for child workers, said India's urbanization and the rise of two-income families were driving demand for domestic help. Children are cheaper and more pliant than adults; Ms. Bhandari said a family might pay a child servant only $40 a month, less than half the wage commonly paid to an adult, if such servants are paid at all." (New YorkTimes, 4 April) In stark contrast to the the life of that hapless 13 year old girl we have the case of Mukesh Ambani, the billionaire industrialist, who has several hundred domestic workers in his skyscraper residence in Mumbai, the country's financial capital. Child slavery for one luxurious opulence for the other. RD

Roman in the gloamin'

A great deal of patriotic pride has been associated with the idea that Scotland was never conquered by the Romans. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, there was a profound and fundamental shift in thinking across Europe in terms of how countries imagined their relationship with the Roman Empire. As new political ideas about authoritarianism and liberty were discussed, some writers and thinkers sought to identify their country’s national spirit with the indigenous peoples conquered by Rome. Rediscovering resistance to Rome went hand in hand with the nationalisms that swept across Europe in the 19th century. Scotland – despite its more recent incorporation into the United Kingdom – was no different, and a great deal of patriotic pride was associated with the idea that Scotland was never subdued to the might of Rome.

According to Rebecca H. Jones in "Roman Camps in Scotland", the idea of the “unconquered Scotland” is a myth. The idea of an intermittent pillage is debunked. She has shown that Scotland has more traces of camps – temporary or semi-temporary stopping places for the legions – than any other part of Europe. Rome’s presence north of Hadrian’s Wall was more persistent and more imposing than the idea of the sole hold-out in Europe might suggest. The decline of Rome’s significance in Scotland was more to do with apathy and poverty than with Braveheart-like sending them home again to think again. As the Empire fragmented and over-extended, successive Emperors thought to control the heart around the Mediterranean rather than bother with a province which gave little to the imperial coffers and cost a lot to keep going