Food for thought

In the Target Zone -- many former Zellers' employees looking for work with retail giant. OPG blames profit decline on faltering equity market. Is it possible, even faintly, that capitalism may be in a crisis?

The British Royal Family in crisis! The government has cut funding to the monarchy to stay in line with wide-ranging budget cuts. In 2011 they had to manage on $50 million and now face a 25% cut. But don't worry folks, her majesty and her cronies have decided to raise admission prices for tours of Buckingham Palace to make up the difference. I'm sure the millions who have to live on a dollar a day will be greatly relieved.

In the Vietnam War, the US dumped 75 million litres of agent orange on about a quarter of former South Vietnam, killing two million hectares of forest about the size of Massachesetts. Now the US is involved in a massive clean-up to remove the dioxin contained in agent orange from a nineteen hectare site that is now a Vietnamese military base. And here I am thinking the American capitalists are all heart, until I hear the Vietnam and the US are getting chummy in order to boost trade and counter China's rising influence in the disputed South China Sea. This area is believed to be rich in oil and natural resources. The US says protecting peace and freedom of navigation in the sea is in its natural interest. Sure, they're all heart.

The soothsayers tell us that the US economy is in recovery, yet only 56% of Americans laid off between January 2009 and December 2011 have found jobs and more than half of them took jobs for lower pay. One third took pay cuts of 20% and more. It's nice to know we are in recovery. Next they will tell us the market corrects itself! John Ayers

Capitalism - A war fear system

China and the US seem to be on a collision course in the Pacific. Beijing is significantly bolstering its navy, and Washington is shifting its military focus to the Asia-Pacific Region. Many fear it could alter the balance of power in a region rich in oil and crucial for global trade. It is difficult to overstate the economic and military importance of the South China Sea, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Over half the annual tonnage of all the world's merchant navies is shipped through adjacent sea routes here, and the region sees a third of the world's maritime traffic. Eighty percent of China's crude oil imports pass through here, and the seafloor holds an estimated 130 billion barrels of crude oil and 9.3 trillion cubic meters (328 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas.  A US congressional study published on August suggests that the United States considers the modernization of China's navy an aggressive act. According to the study, Beijing is by no means simply trying to protect its trade routes and its citizens abroad but, rather, is determined to assert its territorial claims, push back the US' influence in the Pacific and underline its status as a global military power

The other drug problem

A study found almost half of elderly people may be kept on sedatives that make them “easier and more convenient to manage” for much longer than necessary. Research has shown people with dementia who take these drugs are at a much higher risk of stroke.

The report by Dundee University and NHS Fife, carried out over a two-year ­period in Tayside, found two in five elderly people in care homes were taking the drugs – compared to just one in six who still lived in their homes in the ­community. It also found that seven in ten people who were taking the drugs when they went into the care homes were then never reassessed to see if they still needed them.

Dr Colin McCowan, deputy director of the Health Informatics Centre at Dundee University, and one of the authors of the report, said: “Some elderly people are taking these drugs to make it easier and more convenient for people to manage them and for them to cope. Often this could start when they are living at home, on their own, and when they are waiting to go into residential care. But then, when they go into care many are kept on them and remain on them. No-one checks to see if they still need them. Some of these individuals and their families will know about them taking them, but there is evidence some won’t." He said the use of the drugs, known as psychotropic medication, which includes anti-psychotics, was a growing concern to health officials. Dr McCowan said guidelines for the use of the medication stated they should not be used, in most cases, for more than six months. He also said previous research had shown many of the anti-psychotics being prescribed to patients were likely to be having “very little beneficial effect” and could usually be gradually stopped without side effects.

Dr Donald Lyons, chief executive officer of  Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland – an independent body set up to safeguard the interests of people considered to be mentally disordered, said: “Anti-psychotic drugs are unquestionably being overused, more so in care homes but also, to a lesser extent in hospitals. The bottom line is more needs to be done to reduce the number of these drugs being prescribed. The rates are too high...At the end of the day, patients should only ever get any drug if it is for the benefit of their health, not for any other reason, not least to keep them more manageable."
The commission said providing more adequate outside space and stimulating environments were some of the ways to help people cope. Dr Lyons added: “Yes, this costs money, money to pay for the right environment and additional care but surely that is money well spent in the long run."

Food for thought

Spare a tear and some sympathy for the world's richest, the top 40 of whom lost a combined total of $3.7 billion in last week's stock market decline. Worst was Carlos Slim, telecommunications mogul who dropped $1.7 billion. Not to worry too much though, comrades, he retains $73 billion to tide him over. How ridiculous can this system get?

You gotta love those capitalists. They can smell money from a million miles away. To help slow climate change, the UN rated greenhouse gases based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gases, the more manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced emissions. But some soon figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but more than eleven thousand credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in manufacturing coolant gas. The credits could be sold on the international market earning tens of millions of dollars per year. Where there's a mill(ion) there's a way!

A group of nuns in North America is being disciplined by the Vatican. Apparently, their organization, representing more than 80% of the 57 000 (!) nuns on our continent, has been doing nefarious things, like harbouring radical feminist ideas, putting too much energy into social justice, and too little into fighting abortion, contraception, gay rights etc. They have also dared to discuss women's ordination, priestly marriage, and US health care (vehemently opposed by the Catholic powers). A spokesperson for the nuns said, "It [their response] entails resisting rather than colluding with abusive power." Imagine!

When the South African police opened fire on the striking miners, killing 34 and wounding 78, it brought back memories of the Sharpeville massacre of the 1960s. Only then, it was done by a white racist government. This time, it was done by a mostly black controlled government. This clearly shows that no matter what government you have, they will always put the interests of capital first.

In the last week The Toronto Star ran the following headlines: 300 000 jobs lost in Canada last month. Relief too late for Corn Crop J.C. Penny posts loss, but sees improvement. Asian economies -- Report paints bleak picture. Brookfield profit falls, revenue goes up. Housing market cools -- home sales in Toronto down in July. Scorching summer dries up hydro- power. Water based power output falls by 20%. Bigger the IPO, the harder it may fall -- think you are going to make money by getting in early? Think again. John Ayers

A SUICIDAL SYSTEM

A growing number of global and European health bodies are warning that the introduction and intensification of austerity measures has led to a sharp rise in mental health problems with suicide rates, alcohol abuse and requests for anti-depressants increasing as people struggle with the psychological cost of living through a European-wide recession. "No one should be surprised that factors such as unemployment, debt and relationship breakdowns can cause bouts of mental illness and may push people who are already vulnerable to take their own lives," Richard Colwill, of the British mental health charity Sane, told CNBC. "There does appear to be a connection between unemployment rates and suicide for example," he said, referring to a recent study in the British Medical Journal that stated that more than 1,000 people in the U.K. may have killed themselves because of the impacts of the recession." (CNBC, 4 September) Capitalism not only exploits and degrades members of the working class it can often lead them to suicide. RD

THIS SPORTING LIFE

THIS SPORTING LIFE

Sport according to most dictionaries is usually defined as "to amuse, recreate, to take one's pleasure", but we live in capitalism and it should probably be more accurately defined as a "business opportunity". When Andy Murray, the tennis player won a tournament in New York the press and TV speculated on how much it was worth. "Scott Barclay, a lecturer in sport business and management at the University of the West of Scotland, predicted that Murray will enter the Forbes rich list next year and that the win moved him "away from the celebrity clutter". ... "Without a doubt, next year he'll appear in the Forbes rich list, among the likes of [Roger] Federer, [Maria] Sharapova, [Cristiano] Ronaldo, [Lionel] Messi, [Rafael] Nadal." (DailyTelegraph, 12 September) Murray, 25, who already has lucrative contracts with Adidas, Royal Bank of Scotland and Jaguar, may also sign deals with other companies. His five-year contract with Adidas, signed three years ago, was worth as much as $5 million (£3.2 million), pushing his earnings last year both on and off the court to $12 million (£7.4 million), according to Forbes. Capitalism distorts everything and it should come as no surprise that a university has a subject entitled "Sport business and management". RD

Bloody mobiles!

With the much hyped release of Apple's i-Phone 5 perhaps it is timely to remember that "It’s possible that two children died so that you could have that mobile phone,” according to Jean-Bertin, a 34-year-old Congolese activist.

 The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has at least 64 percent of worldwide reserves of coltan, the colloquial African name for a dull black ore composed of two minerals, columbite and tantalite. Tantalum, the metal extracted from this ore, is a rare, hard, blue-gray, lustrous transition metal that is highly corrosion resistant. It is used in the production of capacitors for electronic equipment such as mobile phones, computers and tablets. The extraction of coltan contributes to maintaining one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in Africa, which has led to more than five million deaths, massive displacements of the population, and the rape of 300,000 women in the last 15 years, according to human rights organisations.

 “There are many economic interests around the coltan business,” stressed Jean-Bertin. In the meantime, in the DRC, “the killings are real. The blood is everywhere.”

DOUBLE STANDARDS

One of the constant themes pursued by the owning class is that workers should be proud of "their" country and if necessary from time to time take part in wars to protect it. However a recent example of this patriotism not necessarily extending to the owning class was recently revealed. Frances richest man Bernard Arnault (reputed to be worth £32 billion) has applied for Belgian citizenship. "He says the switch is for personal reasons. But few doubt that the "personal reasons" amount to a desire to insulate his wealth from the punitive taxes being threatened by Francois Hollande, France's new Socialist president. These taxes include a promised 75 per cent super-levy on annual incomes over ! million euros." (Times, 11 September) When it comes to protecting their immense wealth the owning class have little time for patriotism. RD

Fact of the day

In Scotland some 15 per cent of adults and 220,000 children living in poverty today.

 A 17-year-old school-leaver is entitled only to a basic minimum wage of £3.68 per hour. Even working full-time they would only earn £128.80 a week.

Food for thought

Canada lost 300 000 jobs in July. There will be more to come caused by the impending arrival of the American chain, Target, taking over Zellers leases for almost $2 billion. Both are almost identical stores in merchandise and prices. Although Target posted earnings of $704 million for the last quarter, they did not take all the Zellers, especially those that are unionized and they will have to close down. Crazy system! That's $2 billion of social wealth squandered!

In the midst of the recession, the banks have some good news(?). Canada's top five banks posted profits of over $8 billion for the last quarter, a record for two of them. Nice work if you can get it.

Americans and guns seem inseparable. A police officer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, on holiday in Calgary, wrote to the Calgary Herald that he felt threatened when two locals approached him and his wife and offered suggestions for sight seeing, including tickets to the Calgary Stampede. He was complaining that tourists should be able to pack weapons to defend themselves. Then in Colorado, the scene of two mass shootings in recent years, the University in Boulder thinks it has the answer to guns. Those packing weapons will be confined to just one dormitory on campus. Come on! It's a handy thing to have when you are studying! John Ayers

Fight the good fight

 
Union leaders have called for a mass campaign of civil disobedience against the cuts. Communities should take direct action to block roads and occupy services earmarked for closure in a show of resistance, union bosses said.

Dot Gibson, of the National Pensioners' Convention, which represents 1.5 million affiliated members, called on the public to "sit down in the road [and] take direct action" to fight the cuts. She predicted greater "radicalisation" across the country as the effects of the cuts started to be felt by ordinary people and said her organisation was already seeing a growing militancy in rural areas, where people were more reliant on disappearing services such as post offices.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades' Union, also called on communities to take matters into their own hands. "When they want to close down a youth centre, when they want to close down a school or a hospital, if communities want to occupy them we are going to support them. That's the sort of action we need to take to challenge this Government."
There were also growing signs there will be a fresh round of public sector strikes this autumn. The TUC general council announced it would back a call to consider the practicalities of a general strike – not seen in the UK since 1926 – while members of England's two biggest teaching unions announced industrial action short of a strike later this month.

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union, told delegates they had to band together to take on the Government. "If you spit on your own you can't do anything," he told a fringe meeting on co-ordinating action, "but if you all spit together you can drown the bastards"

We wuz robbed

Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, said, “Despite the crash, the economy has almost doubled in size over the last thirty years..." He added that the average full-time worker is now paid nearly £26,000 a year and if wages kept up with the growth of the economy, excluding the gap between high and low salaries, the average worker would now be earning £33,000 a year, making a £7,000 rise in pay.

Sadly, the trade union leader calls for what he describes as fair pay and declares this as a solution to the present recession.

The Party Line

Jim Sillars, a former deputy leader of the SNP, accused the current leadership of operating the most authoritarian regime in British politics by exerting “totalitarian” control over backbenchers.

Sillars pointed to the absence of dissent within SNP ranks over the recent legislation to create a single national police force, adding there had been an “astonishing spectacle” over “many years now of no rebellion against leadership policy and opinion.” He added: “If I did not know better, I would easily believe the leaders had been schooled in the old communist party, where the top, the elite, made the decisions and the rest fell into step automatically, with not a word of dissent. Totalitarian would be a fair description of Scotland’s majority party.”  It was “not possible” for all the SNP’s MSPs to be “in total agreement with Salmond, Sturgeon and Swinney, yet no-one has dared tell them to get lost. Those willing to be told to shut up seem happy to wait until the leadership issue edicts and statements – and follow whatever line is laid down for them.”

Food for thought

The futility of reform -- the Liberal government of Ontario has convened early from its summer recess to pass an education act that forces the teachers to show up on September 4th for the start of school, that forces a contract on them that invokes a pay freeze and loss of benefits such as sick days, that ignores the collective bargaining process entirely, and that suspends the right to strike. After a stormy education scene with the preceding Tory government, the Liberals entered a period of calm and Premier McGuinty actually calls himself the education premier. Many teachers say they feel betrayed but as the economic climate bites, what would you expect. The Liberals have crossed the line into neo-liberal policy. They have given the act the Orwellian title, The Putting Students First Act and have emphasized that they cannot raise wages and deliver all-day kindergarten at the same time, among several other things. The usual claptrap that sounds good but really expects the teachers to pay for educational services out of their wages. This is another example of the recent pit-bull attacks on workers and their wages and benefits, which is what we would expect in any recession.

While we are on the far right, The New York Times reported that Tom Morello, of the metal rap band Rage Against the Machine, described Romney's pit bull, Paul Ryan thus, " He is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lot of rage in him; a rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically, the only thing he is not raging against is the privileged elite he is grovelling in front of for campaign contributions." Nuff said!

John Ayers

false friends

McDonald’s and Coca-Cola prove capitalism can co-opt anything … even worker uprisings.

“Marketers are adopting the theme of workers’ rights at a time when unions themselves are confronting declines in membership and influence,” notes the New York Times. “In effect, some labor experts say, they are turning a pro-worker theme on its head to serve the corporate interest.”

Advertisers are urging workers to commit small acts of so-called rebellion — like taking a vacation, or going on a lunch break.nThat’s the message McDonald’s sent this spring with a campaign called, “It’s your lunch. Take it.” Meant to promote the Premium Chicken Sandwich and the Angus Third Pounder Deluxe burger, it included tag lines like “A lunch revolution has begun,” “It’s time to overthrow the working lunch” and “A sesame seed of revolt has been planted.”  In one television advertisement, a woman gets up from her desk and announces, “I’m going to lunch.” Her co-workers try to dissuade her, telling her that the days of taking lunch are long gone. An inspired colleague stands up and says, “I’m going with her.” The music swells, he tears off the lanyard around his neck and adds, “I don’t want to be chicken, I want to eat it.”

The appeals to downtrodden workers keep coming. If a mere lunch break or a weeklong vacation is not enough of a respite, workers can enter a contest called “Take the Year Off,” sponsored by Gold Peak Tea, owned by Coca-Cola, will pay $100,000 to the winner to take a year off work to do whatever he or she pleases. The Facebook page features pictures of office workers under various states of duress. In one photo, a man in a suit rests his head in his hands as paperwork piles up around him. In another, a woman is seen kneeling against a file cabinet, her mouth open in a scream of desperation.

 A television ad for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, called “Take Back Your Summer.” shows a woman who has had enough. Amid ringing phones and clicking keyboards she climbs up on her desk and shouts through her speakerphone: “I have 47 vacation days. That’s insane.” “Let’s take back our summer!” she yells as she raises a sign over her head with the phrase “Vacation Now” on it. “Who’s with me?”

“It’s an effort by management to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street spirit and redirect it to promote its product,” said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They are using it in a somewhat manipulative way.”

THE PROFIT MOTIVE IN ACTION

It is now two years since the horrific explosion that led to the deaths of 11 oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico and the largest oil spill in US history but it is still being fought over in US courts. "The Department of Justice filed a sharply worded brief with a court in New Orleans yesterday that accused BP of systematic management failures and a "corporate-driven, profit over safety" culture." (Times, 6 September) There is a lot at stake in this legal battle. If the events of the oil spill are judged to be an accident BP could be fined £4.5 billion but if its employees are found guilty of gross negligence BP could be fined £21 billion, followed by almost unlimited punitive damages. Behind the niceties of the legal struggle one thing should be apparent though. Every company inside capitalism has a "corporate-driven, profit over safety" culture. RD

UPPER CLASS ARROGANCE

Gina Rineheart, the Australian billionaire said to be worth A$29 bn. is not shy about boasting about her wealth. She is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second and blames Australian workers poverty on too much drinking and smoking. "Australian mining magnate Gina Rineheart has criticised her country's economic performance and said Africans willing to work for $2 a day should be an inspiration." (BBC News, 5 September) The news that a useless parasite such as Rineheart has an income of £393 a second should inspire workers throughout the world to get rid of the capitalist system. RD

A GREEK TRAGEDY

The present economic downturn is worldwide but Greece would appear to be suffering particularly at present. "One in three shops has been forced to close, and national unemployment has reached more than 20%. The number of down-and outs has increased by 25% over the past three years, while prostitutes work the streets of the city centre in broad daylight. Cases of HIV/Aids have exploded at a rate 1,450% since 2010 - a result of the growing sex trade and and a crumbling health-care system, which has suspended needle-exchange programmes used by drug addicts. The number of suicides in Athens rose by more than 25% last year." (Sunday Times Magazine, 2 September) Needless to say this modern Greek tragedy only affect the working class, the owning class in Greece continue to enjoy their usual affluent lifestyle. RD

THE PRIORITIES OF CAPITALISM

Capitalism is going through one of its recession, so politicians have got to find ways to cut expenditure. Cut the billions spent on armaments? Fat chance! Here is a more attractive prospect. "The NHS is putting patients' health at risk by denying them drugs and operations because of growing rationing being imposed to save money, the new leader of Britain's doctors has warned. The drive to meet demanding efficiency targets is so serious that the NHS is offering some GPs surgeries extra money if they send fewer patients for tests and treatment in hospital — a move condemned as "morally wrong" by Dr Mark Porter, the British Medical Association's recently elected chair of council." (Guardian, 1 September) Capitalism has nothing to do with "morals", it is only concerned about profit margins. RD

A WORLD WITHOUT NATIONALISM

During two world wars millions of workers died, often because they imagined they had a country. Today we find all over the world the same nonsense of nationalism. A hatred of people who do not speak the same language , behave differently or have a different life style. Here are some dreadful examples. "A French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. .... One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. deportations were aimed at ridding France of 'illegal' communities. ..... Greece has also begun a crackdown on immigrants, with Athens claiming the country faced an 'invasion'." (Daily Mail, 9 August) We are human beings we have no country. We are humans! RD

Thai Class

Numbers don't lie and show the social disparity in Thailand.

80% of land in the country is in the hands of only 10% of land owners. Economist used an indicator called the Gini index to measure the disparity. In the range of 0 to 1, the closer the index is to 1, the greater the disparity. On land ownership, the national disparity is .941, meaning the country is mired in a deep, deep problem with land ownership inequity. The biggest land owner has more than 2.8 million rai, the study found. For individuals, the top 20% own an average of 62.5 rai, which is 729 times higher than the lowest 20% who own an average of less than one rai.

The richest 20% own more than half of the value of all household assets ( which include houses, lands, cars and cash worth about 18 trillion baht.)

Stocks and shares are owned by only a handful of powerful business families.

Thai politicians are big landlords themselves. According to their declared assets with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the MPs own 27,035 rai combined, worth more than 15.7 billion baht, according to MPs' own estimates. The real market value is believed to be much higher. Also, the numbers do not include the land that might have been put under other people's names.

THE HAVES AND THE HAVENOTS

Capitalism is a world-wide system and its basic set up applies everywhere so recent figures about wealth distribution should come as no surprise. "A study by the United Nations suggests the gap between the rich and the poor in much of Latin America is widening. The report by the UN Agency for Human Settlements says that the richest 20% of the population on average earn 20 times more than the poorest 20%." (BBC News, 22 August) RD

FUTURE PROSPECTS?

A constant theme pursued by supporters of capitalism is that modern society provides great opportunities for the youth of today, but recent statistics show that this is far from true. "One in six 16 to 24-year-olds in England were not in education, employment or training at the end of June this year, new figures show. .....With 968,000 young people out of education and employment or Neet, it is the second highest June rate for more than a decade." (BBC News, 22 August) RD

The Gravy Train

Malcolm Rifkind, former Cabinet minister takes home £246,359.27 per year on top of his Westminster salary. He is a director of asset management and farming companies, does consultancy work and makes media appearances, reportedly working on non-Westminster duties for an average of 15 hours a month. 

 However, Gordon Brown was the top-earning MP, with £900,000 a year from work as an academic, author and speechmaker. 

 Labour’s David Miliband earns £410,176.60 from speeches and consultancy work.

WHAT ARE THE OWNING CLASS UP TO?

Have you ever wondered what the owning class do in their spare time? After they have eaten the best possible meal, drunk the best possible wine and shagged the best possible film star they must get a bit fed up moving from one of their mansions in France or California - oops here is something to do. "An 1873 dime from Carson City, Nevada, is displayed on Friday, August 10, 2012, in Philadelphia. The dime sold at auction for $1.84 million. The rare coin was minted in Carson City, Nev., during a one-day run of dimes. An anonymous bidder won the pristine coin, said Chris Napolitano, president of Stack's Bowers Galleries, which auctioned it during an American Numismatic Association convention. ... "Generally speaking, in the coin auction business, you might get a couple of people fighting each other" as they bid, he said Friday. "On this one, we had four or five buyers over a million dollars. We had a fair amount of buyers pursuing it." (gulfnews.com, 10 August) C'mon you have got to do something when you live a life of useless exploitation. RD

THE CURSE OF NATIONALISM

The majority of people in China and Japan own little or nothing but their ability to work. They are members of the working class. This does not stop them from falling into the stupid nonsense of nationalism. "Anti-Japanese protests have taken place in cities across China after Japanese nationalists raised their country's flag on disputed islands.Thousands of people took to the streets in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and a number of other cities demanding that Japan leave the islands in the East China Sea. In Shenzhen, some demonstrators attacked Japanese restaurants and smashed Japanese-made cars." (BBC News, 19 August) With world socialism there will be no countries and none of this nonsense. RD

THE NATIONALIST ILLUSION

We live in a class-divided society, wherein a small minority own the means of producing and distributing wealth while the vast majority have to work for wages and salaries and produce the surplus value that the owning class live on. How do the owning class manage this con trick? One of their ploys is religion. You may be poor in this world but when you die you will go to paradise. Another diversion is nationalism. In the recent Olympic games the media played on this prejudice all over the world. "From table tennis and shooting to diving and swimming, the gold medals have poured in, and hundreds of millions of Chinese have been glued to the wall-to-wall coverage of the Games on state TV. ...."With each gold medal that China wins, I feel my heart leap," said saleswoman Huang Weiwei as she ate lunch in a Beijing fast-food restaurant, her eyes fixed on a wall-mounted TV showing the Games." (Yahoo News, 4 August) Nationalism is a wonderful illusion that the owning class use to disguise their exploitation. It is an accident which country you were born in, in fact it is probably an accident that you were born at all, but it presents the illusion that you and your exploiters have something in common. RD

BAGS OF TROUBLE

The difference between the wealth enjoyed by the owning class and the working class is immense, but a recent example of how clueless the privileged elite are about this grotesque gap was recently exposed. "Marie Claire fashion director Nina Garcia sparked some shock yesterday, when she recommended that her Twitter followers spend 'a few weeks' salary' on an Hermes Birkin. The tweet read: 'This is the bag that you can spend a few weeks' salary on and not feel guilty. It is going to last you a lifetime.' Given that the accompanying link directed fans to the Moda Operandi website, where the luxury bags cost between $14,500 and $74,000, the statement revealed her to be vastly out-of-touch with the average American's earnings, which ring in at a more modest $26,364." (Daily Mail, 3 August)

IN PRAISE OF CAPITALISM

Every day in the press and on the TV we get the same message. That capitalism is a wonderful system and the only possible one, but it is doubtful if anyone has ever beaten the writer Charles Murray in his blatant support of the profit system. "From the dawn of history until the 18th century, every society in the world was impoverished, with only the the thinnest film of wealth on top. Then came capitalism and the Industrial evolution. Everywhere that capitalism took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall." (Sunday Times, 12 August) This defence of capitalism makes no reference to its inevitable economic conflicts that lead to wars, to its world hunger in a world capable of feeding everyone and its staggering differences in wealth distribution. RD

The Pix and Mix Race

The last ice age ended relatively very quickly and by 9,000BC and possibly even earlier, the ice had gone. Between  8,500BC and 4,500BC, it was possible to walk to Scotland across the lost sub-continent of Doggerland, now submerged under the North Sea, and it looks as though that was when family bands of men, women and children reached the farthest north-west of Europe. Lying at the farthest north-western point of the vast Eurasian landmass, a place on the edge of beyond, Scotland had to be the end of many journeys, the narrowing or point of a huge funnel. Until the 16th century, it was not possible to go any further.

Tiny variations in our DNA can tell geneticists a great deal about our ancestry. These markers or lineages can be both dated and located in the part of the world where they arose. There are no fewer than 100 different male and female lineages present in the modern population. Scotland turns out to be a tremendously diverse nation. There is no Scots pedegree, just another mongrel people .

Every Scot is an immigrant. For example, we have tested men whose male lineage originated in the ancient kingdom of Thrace on the Black Sea, the home of the gladiator-hero, Spartacus. We have men from the Roman province of Illyria on the Adriatic. Further afield, there are men and women from Siberia whose ancestors lived on the banks of the Yenesei River that flows into the Arctic. There are Scots with an ancient lineage from Anatolia, and also one man whose marker came from the medieval West African kingdom of Denanke. We have Saracens from the Near East and women from the biblical kingdom of Sheba on either side of the Red Sea. Germanic, Teutonic, Alpine and Saxon Y chromosome DNA make up about a third of all male ancestry in Scotland, and there exists a very colourful fringe of smaller lineages such as Berber, Arabian, Kurgan and Balkan. Significant Irish lineages came to Scotland after c450AD, and by the end of the 8th century, Vikings were sailing the North Sea first to raid and then to settle.

It also looks as though most female lineages arrived earlier and that the ancestors of Scottish women have been here longer than the ancestors of most Scottish men. It strongly suggests that later migrations to Scotland were largely male affairs, what one historian has described as waves of small groups of men in small boats.

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/scotland-s-dna-tracing-the-nation-s-ancestral-history-1-2465715

SOCIALIST IDEAS

When did you first hear of the notion of a world without money or ownership? I think in my case it was about 1951 but this author had heard of it much later "Ken MacLeod, the well-known Scottish science fiction writer, has featured the Socialist Party of Great Britain in his novel The Stone Canal where an SPGBer answering the charge of sectarianism from a follower of Trotsky exclaims: "How can a member of a split from a split from a split from the Fourth International call us sectarian?" Every one should read The Stone Canal better still every one should read Anti-Duhring. What a beautiful new world is possible. RD

As Others See Us

Ken MacLeod, the well-known Scottish science fiction writer, has featured the Socialist Party of Great Britain in his novel The Stone Canal where an SPGBer answering the charge of sectarianism from a follower of Trotsky exclaims: "How can a member of a split from a split from a split from the Fourth International call us sectarian?"

He has made number of internet postings in defence of the Socialist Party against what he considered inaccurate criticisms and where he eloquently put the the Party's case although he has his own reservations about the SPGB.

1) "World Socialist Party are honest-to-goodness pre-World War I Second International-type "Maximalists." "

Ken MacLeod: They themselves don't identify with any current in the pre-WW1 Social Democracy, apart from the original Socialist Party of Canada, which had an 'impossibilist' majority. They acknowledge some commonality of analysis with present-day 'Left Communists', the situationists, genuine anarchist-communists, and Bordigists. The difference is in their programme, in their rejection of vanguardism, insurrection, etc.

"They will send you a free literature pack, if you ask, just like the SLP will. And until a majority of workers of the world send away for such literature, them read it, then become ideologically committed to socialism by means of intellectual study, the World Socialist Party doesn't see much point in standing candidates for parliamentary election, either! "

Ken MacLeod: The SPGB, which has identical views to the WSP, most certainly does stand in elections. It gets the about the same level of support for its 'unrealistic' program as the Trotskyists (with very rare exceptions) get for their carefully crafted platforms of transitional demands i.e. from tens to hundreds. Their Euro-election candidate in West Lothian a few years back got about 900 votes.
They expect a majority of the workers of the world to become socialists, but they don't expect them to become socialists by sending off for and then reading literature packs. They expect experience, as well as (obviously) encountering the arguments of a growing number of already convinced socialists, to do the job.

"Against the DeLeonist formula of labor vouchers, they argue that Marx is out of date, and that socialism will be an immediate overnight transition to a moneyless post-scarcity economy" [http://www.worldsocialism.org/labvouch.htm]

Ken MacLeod: Correct, they do.

"One fine silliness is the SPGB's assessment of Trotsky. Among other idiocies, they attribute to the Bolsheviks [as well as the Mensheviks] a two-stagist theory"[http://www.worldsocialism.org/trotsky.htm]

Ken MacLeod: Where's the idiocy in that? The Bolsheviks did have a two-stage theory up April 1917. The difference with the Mensheviks was over whether the bourgeois-democratic republic would be won in alliance with the bourgeoisie, or against it ('the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry').

"They also have spiels about Lenin's "distortions" of Marxism" [http://www.worldsocialism.org/dictwrng.htm]

Ken MacLeod: It is, as a matter of fact, perfectly true that Marx used the words 'socialism' and 'communism' interchangeably (in reference to a future society); that he did not use the word 'socialism' to mean 'the lower stage of communism' as distinct from the higher; that Lenin did use (if not introduce) this usage; and that Lenin's definition of 'socialism' or the 'lower stage of communism' differed from that of Marx in that it included wage labour ('All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state [...] and get equal pay') and commodity production, thus equating the transition period with the first stage of communism.

"They have the same anti-Leninist bugs up their ass but with less hypocrisy: the World Socialist Party never solidarized with the Stalin purges of the Moscow Trials"

Ken MacLeod: Damn right they didn't, in fact they tore them to shreds at great length in October 1936.

"and they never had a hyperauthoritarian leader like DeLeon nor (as far as I can tell) any leaders at all."

Ken MacLeod: Correct. Not bad for an organization set up in 1904.

"You have to admit, a program like theirs more or less takes care of itself ;)"

Ken MacLeod: I know from experience that it's very difficult for people who have learned about Marxism via Trotskyism to *even understand* what the SPGB is saying, despite the clarity of their explanations.

2) On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Ken MacLeod wrote: But as to the more serious possibility of 30 billion, the FAO has said for decades, and still says, that current techniques alone could feed five or six times the present world population. Check out 'Feed the World' at http://www.worldsocialism.org/ for lots of relevant references.

"This is a bizarre cult that was started by the "Socialist Party of Great Britain" prior to the Russian Revolution."

Ken MacLeod: One thing the SPGB is not, is a cult. Their stubborn insistence that socialism will be made by a socialist majority may, I admit, seem a little bizarre to some.

"It is a little bit like the DeLeonists, who are also fond of simpleminded solutions. What MacLeod and the SPGB leave out are the environmental impacts of the "green revolution," which include--among other things--water pollution, increased global warming, degraded food quality, and increased health risks due to pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides."

Ken MacLeod: Another thing the SPGB is not, is ecologically insensitive. Of many possible cites, here's one from the very document I quoted:- "Which methods are sustainable? Environmentalists rightly show how many of our current productive methods are not 'sustainable' in that they damage the environment for future generations. For example, they now advocate a range of farm practices designed to reduce the need for high inputs of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Integrated plant nutrition with a combination of organic and mineral sources of soil nutrients with tillage and crop rotation can increase crop production; and integrated pest management (IPM) reduces the need for chemical pesticides by making use of biological controls to minimise disease and damage by pests. Such methods could only be used to their full when we remove the market forces that drive producers to the short-term, cheap methods. This short-termism has prevented progress on a whole range of environmental issues."

3) "OTOH without transitional demands you end up with something like the SPGB (never heard of 'em? can't say I'm surprised). They have been around about as long as the British Labour Party and they have correctly pointed out that the problems of society are caused by capitalism and the solution is socialism FULL STOP. They won't be drawn into any fight for partial demands because that means compromising with capitalism."

Ken Macleod: In the interests of clarity among the vanguard of the international working class :-) let me point out that this isn't strictly accurate. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its Companion Parties in the World Socialist Movement believe that the job of a socialist party is solely to make more socialists (and of course to get elected to all the representative bodies of the world and abolish capitalism when they convince a couple of billion people that it's a good idea.) They have no objection to workers, and socialists, getting involved in fights for partial demands but don't believe the party should do that. They regard the strategy of transitional demands as elitist and manipulative, as well as downright silly...The party doesn't support anything (apart from World Socialism) because that might lead people to support the party for the wrong reasons. (The exact opposite of Leninism :-)

"I don't get it. Not having a program will encourage people to support the party for the right reasons? How are they going to know what those are?!"

Ken MacLeod: Hmm. This is getting disproportionately complicated. The SPGB and its companion parties have as their objective the replacement of global capitalism with a likewise global society of common ownership, voluntary work and free access, which they call socialism. They believe that such a society can be achieved if and only if a majority of the workers of the world understand and want it, in other words if most of the world proletariat are convinced socialists. Contrary to rumour, they do not insist that the workers be convinced one by one by members of the party. This socialist majority will (they say) elect socialist delegates to whatever democratic institutions exist, with the sole objective of legally abolishing capitalism. The SPGB et al are well aware that if such a majority existed it could do as it damn well pleased, but they consider that a democratic mandate would smooth the transition. They are also aware that the socialist majority might have to use force to impose its will, but consider this unlikely. Hence the sole purpose of the party is to (a) argue for socialism, and (b) put up candidates to measure how many socialist voters there are. They are unique among political parties in calling on people not to vote for them unless they agree with what they stand for. (Hundreds of thousands of workers have enthusiastically not voted for them.) They don't see it as the party's task to 'lead the workers in struggle' or to instruct its members on what to do in trade unions, tenants' associations etc, because they believe that socialists and class-conscious workers are quite capable of making decisions for themselves. If this sounds difficult to understand, it's because you haven't risen beyond a Leninist level of consciousness :-)

4) "BTW, as you well know, the SPGB is a unique beast and therefore not too relevant. They predate the Russian revolution which they are proud to have denounced within hours. Their programmatic base is an academic,undialectical and abstract 'Marxism'. They have no conception of strategy or tactics, or indeed any understanding of the need to get involved in the class struggle. For 90 years they have been doggedly slogging away building, by arithmetic progression, their little band by holding debates,educationals and tea parties. They are amusing and innocuous and highly irrelevant."

Ken MacLeod: The jibe about the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) having denounced the Russian Revolution within hours of hearing about it originated, AFAIK, in a footnote to David Widgery's "The Left In Britain". Here is the central passage of the first recorded response of the SPGB to the Russian Revolution:-
'Whatever may be the final outcome, the Bolsheviks have at all events succeeded in doing what all the armies, alll the diplomats, all the priests and primates, all the perfervid pacifists of all the groaning and bleeding world have failed do - they have stopped the slaughter, for the time being, at all events, on their front.
How much more than this they ever intended to do the future may reveal. They may have higher aims, yet to be justified by success or condemned by failure; but it is an astounding achievement that these few men have been able to seize opportunity and make the thieves and murderers of the whole world stand aghast and shiver with apprehension.'('The Russian Situation', Socialist Standard January 1918, reprinted in 'Russia Since 1917', SPGB, n.d. (late 1940s?) Your other comments on them are similarly second-hand and unjust, IMHO.

5) "Fascinating stuff. I know very little about them except that they strike me as remarkably otherworldly. But, I've not come into enough contact with their stuff to be reasonable. For a few dollars you can get almost everything they have in print, and probably free sample back issues as well. Their website's front pages do look a bit icky, but dig deeper. Their pamphlets are not otherworldly at all. Wrong, maybe, but that's another question."

Ken MacLeod: It has occurred to me that by 'otherworldly' you may mean 'a complete lack of practical engagement with politics' - in which case, the description is apt. They comment, often intelligently, on political developments but they do not seek to influence them. The eventual outcome of politics in a society which has political democracy and a wage/salary-earning majority is the replacement of the market by a consciously and collectively negotiated organization of production. The response of Marx and Engels to this proposition was to get stuck in to the development of working-class politics. The response of the impossibilists to this proposition is to get stuck in to convincing the majority of its truth.

6) Ken MacLeod:The older Socialist Party, the SPGB, has never campaigned for bans on racist bookshops and paper-sellers.

"On the subject of the SPGB - do they still exist?"

Ken Macleod: They certainly do. I voted for their list in Lothian yesterday. (Better them than the Tartan Trots of the SSP.)

Link to Socialist Standard interview with Ken MacLeod

Review of Ken MacLeod's Stone Canal

and review of Dystopia

Over-worked footballers

Footballers play an increasing number of matches every season. Some teams are involved in two or even three competitions at the same time, leaving players with inadequate recovery time between matches. There is much information about how long it takes to replenish glycogen, the primary energy fuel for muscles during intense physical exertion, such as match play. Players’ glycogen levels can return to normal pre-match levels within 36 hours if they follow a proper dietary regimen, take the proper supplements, and get adequate rest. But glycogen replenishment is only one piece of the puzzle. Multiple physiological mechanisms play a vital role in a full recovery, and some of these parameters may actually take a week or longer to be normalized, depending on the load of physical exertion. For example, following exhaustive exercise, the immune system is depressed and several neurological mechanisms suffer changes. These changes are not fully understood, but they take time to be fully restored. Also, following back-to-back competitive matches, players may experience debilitating effects for several days—or even up to a week—including muscle tears and severe soreness.

Dr. Tobias Moskowitz, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and author of the bestselling book Scorecasting, warned about the economic imperatives that are pushing players to their limits.

“The economic incentive is there for more games and the hefty schedule that is in place. The fans want to go to and see as many games as possible, generating more revenues from ticket sales. You also have higher TV revenues from more advertisements. All of that adds up, and the players don’t get paid per game,” Dr. Moskowitz said. For the owners of the teams and the league bosses who control the game, it really does not matter if the players play too many games. “It may be that the league and players have to be willing to accept fewer financial rewards in order to obtain a more humane calendar,” Dr. Moskowitz said.

In the first phase of Euro 2012, participants played an average of three matches in less than ten days. Dr. John Ivy, a world renowned exercise physiologist at the University of Texas, said he highly doubted that a player would have been able to have a full recovery when that many matches were scheduled in such a short period of time.  The organizers surely did not have the physiological interests of the players at heart. Exhausted and completely drained, prior to the European tournament, from having just participated in a full season of football in their respective club team competitions, Dr. Ivy said " I would bet my money that most of these guys playing in this year’s EURO tournament were not physically and mentally at their best after playing a full season.”

A study by Swedish researchers from the University of Linkoping examined the correlation between European footballers’ exposure to match play in the months before the 2002 World Cup and their injuries and performances during the World Cup. The researchers observed that players who underperformed in the World Cup had played more matches in the weeks prior to the competition compared to those who performed better than expected. Researchers also observed that almost two-thirds of the players who had played more than one match a week during the last 10 weeks of the season either incurred injures or underperformed in the World Cup. The root and solution to the problem may be closely connected to the gross commercialization and the exorbitant amount of money that revolves around football.

The players united will never be defeated!



Adapted from here

world capitalism

The Olympics has been a frenzy of patriotism for Team GB. No doubt when the Commonwealth Games arrive in Glasgow a similar outpouring of nationalism for the Scottish athletes can be expected. In the independence referendum we will also meet those illusory phrases “national economic interest,” “national security,” and “national unity.”  In the patriotic fog we will be urged to ignore class divisions and join with the bankers and bosses, sacrificing our own worker interests for the “good of the nation.”  The capitalist economy can never work for all of us, because it’s designed for the wealthy. To be patriotic, workers are told they must nobly sacrifice to save the economy and the nation. A load of Bull.
 Nationalists pit Scottish workers against their class allies in other countries. It’s a way of diverting workers’ anger toward other countries’ labourers and away from the real cause of the economic crisis — the profit system. We have much more in common with sweat-shop workers in India, strikers in Spain  and protesters in Greece, than with capitalists from Scotland. Working people can improve their conditions by uniting with their mates across borders, instead of swallowing patriotic slogans against their own class interests. Paid propagandists whose job is to mystify and distract us while the ultra rich steal what little we have left. We have all heard reams of economic analysis. Many countries have announced that they are running out of money, and the solution they offer, everywhere on the planet, is pretty much the same.  People worldwide are told to expect less employment, lower salaries, reduced pensions and benefits, higher retirement ages, health care that is less available, more expensive, and lower quality, fewer government welfare services, etc.  You have heard the endless mantra, that we all must tighten our belts.

“Shared sacrifice” means accepting speed-ups, redundancies, and pay cuts. It means agreeing to austerity without rocking the boat with protests and strikes — all for the good of “our” national economy! The notion that a company or corporate executive or wealthy entrepreneur is bound by an allegiance to their country of origin is passé. The elite capitalists of today are bound to one another, not to countries. They meet at the same conferences, like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the The Bilderberg Group annual geopolitic forum. They stay at the same 5-star hotels, lease the same private jets, dine at the same 5-star restaurants, meet up with Bono and Geldof, and ceaselessly travel the globe together, with homes on every continent, taking up residence according to the season. Their allegiances extend beyond the borders of their nation-states of origin, and they could care less about the toiling class in any particular country where they do business. The common denominator of global corporations is cheap labour; they hover like bees around honey, wherever cheap labour is to be found,  combing the world for the loosest regulations. They are a transglobal community who have more in common with one another than with their supposed country-men back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in Edinburgh or London, Moscow or Mumbai, the super-rich are a nation unto themselves. Several thousand people control the world of finance and politics. They control food, energy, employment, real estate, health care, the police, the army, and the air force, and we control nothing. This global ruling class controls the levers of decision-making of the IMF, World Bank, the EU, and the WTO. World capitalism is a multi-headed hydra. International capitalism has been able to break free of nation-state constraints to maintain class power worldwide sharply in its favour and to undermine the strength of working class movements around the world. The gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us is the greatest it's ever been and growing. Yes, there is class warfare and the rich are winning.

The labour movement can be seen as in crisis, with trade union membership falling and increasingly discredited by their complicity with capitalist austerity programs. New fronts of anti-capitalist activity have been opened, away from the traditional structures.  The recent Occupy Movement is a reminder that the class struggle is still alive. The fatally compromised nature of trade unions under capital points the way toward different means of building struggles. Again an  example is the Occupy movement's clarion call of the 99% against capital. Yet for all the class struggle that’s been staged in the streets and squares, and despite what has been accomplished, those who govern and manage capital are still effectively making it harder for working people to survive. The changing shape of the labour market has called into question the labour movement as the chief conduit of struggle against capitalism. For example, an increasing amount of workers are employed in precarious conditions, and in part-time, temporary and fleeting forms of employment not immediately associated with the traditional base of trade union membership. These workers, the precariat as they have been called, do not fit so easily into the template of "workers". Their sense of individual identity and collective position as workers in the capitalist system is less pronounced. 

Did the workers cause the recession?  We lived exactly as we lived when we were being told that times were good. Whatever happened to the global economy was not caused by us. That is a fact. Yet it is also a fact that we are being forced to pay for it, for decades to come. Meanwhile, the rich really are getting richer.  Not even they deny it. How exactly is that happening, when all the rest of us are hard pressed to feed the family? The rich cut wages and pay everybody less, while demanding greater productivity.  Then they charge us more for everything. So their profits are soaring. The war of the rich against the rest of us has been going on since time immemorial.  This is blatant theft by the ruling class and amounts to class war on a global scale, and they have, quite literally, all the big guns. So don’t expect anything to get better with or without a sovereign government in Edinburgh.

August branch meeting in the

COMMUNITY  CENTRAL HALLS

304 MARYHILL ROAD, 8.30pm

“The Curse of Religion”

Speaker

John Cumming

Religious superstitions are not just silly outmoded belief systems, like astrology, fortune- telling and other stupid pastimes.

They are dangerous delusions which can prevent understanding of the world as it really is. Whether it is the Voodoo Mumbo-jumbo coming from Rome, Mecca, or any other “holy” place, all religions are quite good at keeping workers appropriately deferential, docile, and slavish…Religions assert unreasonable and unreasoning certainty based upon no evidence whatever. Consequently, socialists cannot be believers in any form of religious superstition.

John Cumming.

Food for thought

The development of drones is making war too easy to wage. David Kepes writing in the Toronto Star reports that drones are appealing because they save the lives that would otherwise be committed to action, it's easier to expend dollars than human lives and easier to get funding, and because if we can go to war for less, we will. Bright prospect to look forward to in the future!
On that topic, the American 'War from Above' touted to be so clean and accurate that it's almost anti-septic, was taken to task in The Toronto Star, June 23, 2012. According to the drone database compiled by the New American Foundation, the non-military fatality rate for Pakistan is seventeen per cent, not counting missile attacks such as the Majalah tragedy. The true count of civilian bodies will never be reported or known but it is heavy, even under Peace Nobelist Obama!
The Ontario budget finally passed. The ruling Liberals are in a minority position and so have had to rely on the support of the NDP to get it passed. One sticking point for the Liberals was the NDP proposal of a wealth 2% surtax on those earning more than $500 000. Big deal! And some believe this is a socialist party!
Information keeps popping up re the Harper governments massive omnibus bill. Environmental amendments account for 170 pages of the total 425. For example, the Tories are no longer required to report on their green (?) progress (nothing to report anyway!), less protection for fish, cut Parks Canada employees, reduce or eliminate the number of monitoring programs for water (not important, eh?). The Tories see environmental protection as a hindrance to economic growth. The only part of environmental that applies to this government is the "mental" part.
Noticeably absent in the Greek financial tragedy is any action on the part of the wealthy class. Shipping magnates have their tax-free status enshrined in the constitution and oil, gas, media, and banking magnates are showing their patriotism by NOT buying government bonds to help the country. (New York Times, June 10).
The Toronto and District School Board is looking to close school cafeterias that take in less than $35 a day in an effort to save $600,000 a day. Apparently, serving up nutritious food for their students doesn't seem to be a consideration. Not too surprising in a money driven world but disappointing that those charged to look after our children are oriented in such a way. And, of course, we all know about the 9 year-old girl in Scotland who posted pictures of the crap food served in her school on the internet only to be banned from doing so. Again, good food was not a consideration. Saving face was.
We all know that India is the latest capitalist economic miracle/poster boy. The economy is booming and 'all boats get lifted by the rising tide', right? Well, not exactly. The New York Times June 17) reports, "Despite India's Plenty, Poor Still Go Hungry". Apparently, infrastructure to get food to the needy does not take priority over infrastructure that is necessary to make a profit. This, we know, will never change in this system.
The Rio + 20 summit has been and gone and little or no progress is still the watchword, only serving to remind us, if we needed it, that nothing is happening. World leaders attended the first one but were conspicuous by their absence at the latest one. No problem, it's of little importance anyway. It does also let us know how far we have slipped. Little was reported in the leading newspapers but in 1992, every paper had an environmental reporter covering the event. Canada's environment minister, Peter Kent, commented, "There is a lack of familiarity with the good news that Canada has to report." Well, we are waiting! John Ayers

A DISABLED SOCIETY

Capitalism is a cruel unfeeling society wherein profit is much more important than human compassion. "A private care home for severely disabled people put its own profits before basic humanity, a scathing inquiry into abuse has found. Regulators, police, social services and the NHS are all heavily criticised in an official report for failing to pick up warning signs about the treatment of patients at the Winterbourne View home in Gloucestershire. It was published after 11 members of staff at the home pleaded guilty to almost 40 charges of neglect and ill treatment of people with severe learning difficulties in their care." (Daily Telegraph, 7 August) The scandal only came to light after an undercover reporter for the BBC's Panorama programme filmed abuse taking place after being tipped off by Terry Bryan, a former senior nurse. The footage showed frail and confused residents being forcibly pinned to the ground by groups of staff, beaten, soaked with water, trapped under chairs and having their hair pulled and eyes poked. Yes, capitalism is truly a "caring" society! RD

Food for thought

The development of drones is making war too easy to wage. David Kepes writing in the Toronto Star reports that drones are appealing because they save the lives that would otherwise be committed to action, it's easier to expend dollars than human lives and easier to get funding, and because if we can go to war for less, we will. Bright prospect to look forward to in the future!
On that topic, the American 'War from Above' touted to be so clean and accurate that it's almost anti-septic, was taken to task in The Toronto Star, June 23, 2012. According to the drone database compiled by the New American Foundation, the non-military fatality rate for Pakistan is seventeen per cent, not counting missile attacks such as the Majalah tragedy. The true count of civilian bodies will never be reported or known but it is heavy, even under Peace Nobelist Obama!
The Ontario budget finally passed. The ruling Liberals are in a minority position and so have had to rely on the support of the NDP to get it passed. One sticking point for the Liberals was the NDP proposal of a wealth 2% surtax on those earning more than $500 000. Big deal! And some believe this is a socialist party! John Ayers

THE ECONOMICS OF THE MAD HOUSE

 

There are many reasons why we should abolish the capitalist system of society and introduce world socialism, but surely there is no greater reason than this. "An unparalleled number of severe food shortages has added 43 million to the number of people going hungry worldwide this year. And millions of children are now at risk of acute malnutrition, charities are warning. ...... For the first time in recent history, humanitarian organisations have had to respond to three serious food crises – in West Africa, Yemen and East Africa – in the past 12 months, according to Oxfam. Almost a billion people are now hungry – one in seven of the global population – and the number of acutely malnourished children has risen for the first time this decade." (Independent, 5 August) While millions starve food is destroyed to keep up prices. Capitalism is a mad house. RD

Food for thought 2

In Britain, thieves are ripping up railway and telephone cables, stealing lead of church roofs, prying off manhole covers, blatantly carting away ramps for the disabled, and causing children to shiver in schools by stealing heating pipes. This is in response to a soaring demand for copper and lead as developing countries race to build skyscrapers, factories and other infrastructure. It's pointless to blame greed when it's endemic to the capitalist system.

Well, Egypt finally got its democracy -- you can choose who you like for President as long as we, the army aristocracy, get to vet all the
candidates and reject whoever we don't like, and as long as, when you have chosen a president, we get to suspend the elected assembly and make up our own constitution. That's what will happen until the working class realizes that only a socialist revolution will do the trick. John Ayers

Food for thought

In "Rich-Poor Divide in Toronto Hospitals", (Toronto Star, June 13) reporter, Carol Goar, highlights the findings of a recent survey. There are two -- "The first is that very low income people are using the parts of the health care system that are in its greatest crisis; the second is that to reduce hospital use, people need the ability to pay for healthy food, buy medicine, and live in a healthy place where they can receive home care." In other words, if you do not have the money you will not get the health care you need. Another example of capitalism's sickness!

Actress Halle Berry has been ordered to pay ex-husband, Gabriel Aubrey $240 000 a year to support their four-year old daughter..."in the comfortable surroundings she has become accustomed to." How many starving children would that feed. It makes one wonder if there isn't something wrong with the system under which we live!

A snippet in The Toronto Star recently focused on the United States of Anger. In 2011 there were one thousand and eighteen hate groups operating there, an increase of four hundred and eleven in that year. There was a thirty-five per cent increase in prosecutions of hate crimes during the first three years of Obama's administration, according to the justice department. That's what we like about capitalism -- it brings people together in peace and harmony!

SUB-STANDARD CARE

Many workers suffer awful social problems inside capitalism but undoubtedly the group that most feel the effects of its unfeeling cruelty are the old and the sick who have to rely on the state for treatment. "Complaints over care provision have risen by nearly a quarter in a year, a report said yesterday. The biggest complaint was the quality of care, with the poor attitude of some care staff also a common grievance, according to the Local Government Ombudsman for England. .... The Ombudsman said it had received more than 1,000 complaints about adult social care in the 2011/12 financial year – a 22 per cent rise on the previous year." (Daily Mail, 1 August) RD

BRITISH HOMELESSNESS

We can read every day about the super rich acquiring a new third or fourth house in some exotic part of the world at some ridiculous price, but less prominent in the media you can also read of less fortunate workers who are without a house of any sort. "The number of households declared in need of emergency accommodation in England rose by about 25% over the past three years, new figures suggest. SSentif said some 50,290 families and individuals were classed as homeless in 2011/12, up from 40,020 in 2009/10. But the data company said spending on tackling homelessness had fallen from £213.7m to £199.8m over that period." (BBC News, 31 July) The plight of the homeless is another glaring example of the class division that exists in such so-called modern, developed countries like Britain. RD

It's Scotland's Oil

 Umm...not quite..

 China may soon get control of a large slice of UK North Sea oil supply, which is key to determining global oil prices, if bids by its state firms for assets of Canadian oil companies Nexen and Talisman are cleared by the regulators.

 The Chinese state-controlled energy giant CNOOC last Monday unveiled a $15.1bn (£9.7bn) bid for Canada’s Nexen, the second biggest oil producer in the North Sea. If successful, the takeover will be China’s largest ever foreign investment. If approved, the Chinese would take control of the UK's largest producing oil field - Buzzard - and the Golden Eagle development, which includes both the Golden Eagle and Peregrine reservoirs in the North Sea, about 43 miles off Aberdeen.

Oil from Buzzard, although only 0.2 percent of global supply, plays a crucial role in setting prices because it is the largest contributor to the Forties oil blend, one of four North Sea crude streams making up the Brent oil benchmark. Forties usually sets the value of dated Brent, a benchmark used for pricing more than half of the world's crude, including oil from Africa, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, giving a Chinese company for the first time unprecedented insight and access into this secretive, yet enormously influential market. Foreknowledge of North Sea supply dispositions will give CNOOC a leg up in its trading operations, not only in the North Sea, but worldwide, should the company choose to make use of what it will be learning. Of course, there is nothing illegal or suspicious here. This system has long benefited the established oil majors like Shell and BP who use their knowledge of North Sea production to trade both physical and financial products linked to the Dated Brent assessment, including Brent crude futures. Instead of being a pure price taker, China will have some insight into short-term fundamental shifts that affects either directly or indirectly the cost of the oil the country must import.

Chinese refiner Sinopec said it would pay $1.5bn for a 49pc stake in the UK unit of Canada’s Talisman Energy, also a top 10 oil and gas producer in the North Sea. Talisman has about 2,500 staff and contractors and is involved in 11 North Sea installations.

The two Chinese firms will directly own 8% according to BBC estimates but consultancy Wood Mackenzie claculates it as 13% of all UK oil production if both deals go through.

Heartless capitalism

Disability tests are  'sending sick and disabled back to work'. People deemed too sick or disabled to work are being refused their benefits because the current assessment is inadequate, according to the expert appointed to review it. Prof Malcolm Harrington, the government appointed adviser on testing welfare claimants, admitted the work fitness test was “patchy”. Professor Harrington said: "There are certainly areas where it's still not working."

It emerged dying patients are being forced to attend interviews to prove they are unfit for work. It is claimed that because regulations over who is assessed are discretionary, thousands of terminally ill patients are being forced to prove they are incapable of work or face losing their benefits

Dr Dean Marshall, chairman of the BMA's Scottish General Practitioners Committee, said "Evidence appears to suggest that people with serious health conditions are sometimes being declared fit for work."

Macmillan Cancer Support explained "Too many cancer patients are undergoing stressful assessments when they are awaiting, undergoing or recovering from debilitating treatment."

Blasting Galloway with Uranium

Depleted uranium is a radioactive and chemically toxic heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear industry. It has been widely used by UK and US military forces to harden armour-piercing shells fired in the Gulf, Balkans and Iraq wars. When DU weapons burn, they release a hazardous dust that can contaminate wide areas. Civilians and soldiers exposed to the contamination claim to have suffered from cancers, birth defects and other illnesses as a result.

A new ruling by the UK Government after a secret review that depleted uranium (DU) weapons are acceptable under international humanitarian law means that DU tank shells could again be tested at the Dundrennan military firing range near Kirkcudbright on the Solway coast. Between 1982 and 2008, over 6000 DU shells were fired at Dundrennan. Soil samples taken in 2006 showed DU contamination breached agreed safety limits and high levels of DU have been found in earthworms on the site. The MoD has fired more DU in Scotland than anywhere else on the planet yet the Scottish government is powerless to intervene being a reserved matter. The MoD argued that UK DU munitions, known as Charm-3 and fired by Challenger tanks, did not cause widespread and severe damage to the natural environment.

The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium (CADU), is now seeking legal advice with a view to taking the Government to court. The group said  the UK Armed Forces Minister, Liberal Democrat Nick Harvey has downplayed the risks of DU, and misinterpreted the Geneva Convention.

Aneaka Kellay, of CADU, said: "It is disturbing that the Ministry of Defence appears to have ignored the findings of international organisations such as the UN Environment Programme, overlooked the wider conclusions of the World Health Organisation's reports, and ignored the widely accepted potential risks the chemical toxicity of DU poses."

"Us" vs "Them"

The world forever changes often before our minds can fully grasp the implications. Circumstances change and people change, yet many cling to an outmoded view of themselves and the world. Grasping the reality of one's situation can be painful. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from Crime and Punishment. Large numbers, perhaps even the majority of people have applied their energies and talents to avoiding change; they labour, moment by moment, day by day, to construct and dwell within what passes for normalcy. And in addition there are powerful interests which want to keep us at one another’s throats rather than working together.

We humans are by nature social creatures, even the most introverted of us, and we tend to trust and follow the thinking of the groups with which we identify. Some of these groups are small and select, our drinking buddies in our "local". Others groups are bigger but still rather specific, fellow union members.  Still others are larger yet, “imagined communities” like Scotland or Great Britain. Others are transnational, like Christianity or Islam (also imagined communities). Our groups define “us” and exert powerful influence on how we think, even how we feel, and how we behave in society. If there is an "us" then by definition there also must be a "them". These are the ones not in our group. They may not be hostile to "us"; we may even be favourably and peacefully disposed to them. In that case we will be friendly when we meet them; in fact, we may even invite them to join us at the bar and buy them a drink. We may also even actively want to seek to make them part of “us.” - to recruit or convert them. But, nevertheless, most groups see some as very much outsiders. These are members of other groups that believe things or advocate things that our group opposes. They are the enemy. In fact, many groups are formed specifically in opposition to another group, and thus are defined precisely by their competition or conflict with “Them.” It is now a case of “us” and “them” and there can be nothing but implacable hostility. We take “us and them” for granted and fail to reflect upon the implications for everybody when our political masters to achieve and maintain power turn “us against them”.

It's sadly been a primary tactic employed by rulers or would be rulers through history. Colonialists constructed “us" and "them” categories called races. In the current the industrial era, factory owners have pitted “us against them” to divide workers so that they would not organise unions, pitting "us" against "them" -- to gain and keep power and to implement policies that a clear majority dislikes, but cannot find any effective way to change. We cannot correct corrupt policies that benefit only the powerful few because our society is fragmented into rival competing groups of "us" and "them". Too many of us care more about the beliefs and agendas of our particular group than the common threats to all groups. Of course we console ourselves that our primary loyalty is to ALL humanity; that our group is not exclusive; that WE are trying to make the world better for everybody but we cannot because of THEM. If the truth is to be told, when we actually confront the difficult task of finding common ground between "us" and "them", we tend to give up the task rather quickly. Sometimes it just seems easier to fight “them” than try to break through our differences in order to build a more democratic and humane political system for everybody. Some of us even fear that if we sit down at the table to make peace with “them,” the very reason for our group’s existence will dissolve and we would no longer know who we are. That a few individuals could possess as much wealth as the rest of us, and that the government would protect their right to keep it, would be unimaginable in any other context.

 Our fragmentation is a barrier to effective political action that would move us toward a more democratic reality. There are so many different varieties of "us" and "them"—that forging a cohesive majority seems all but a hopeless pipe-dream. We need to learn new ways of relating together as "us" and "them". Nobody has the time and energy to be deeply invested in everything, and we each choose our own place to fight. The only common denominator is our class and by our emancipation from wage-slavery we dare to imagine that our world could be more peaceful, more just, and healthier if we could change the economic system. But change it to what? Have we really dared to imagine what a new system would look like, or are we so intently focused on the advancement of our own particular individual agendas that we do not ask that fundamental question? The fundamental question need to be raised, because what we imagine—no matter how undeveloped it may be—influences the way that we act and the choices that we make every day. Nothing is more immediately practical and political than imagination. What sort of society do we imagine? Have you ever wondered what we might do if we ever managed to get enough votes to control Parliament. Do we even have the foggiest notion of what sort of society we would like to create?

Socialism can be described as a community of communities, separate but equal communities.  Imagining a "us" does not mean leaving our separate groups/communities behind, but finding ways of living together. It is crucial that members of every group come to see that what we hold in common is far more vital than what differentiates us. Those powerful political and economic interests that want to keep us fragmented and at one another’s throats rather than working together to establish an inclusive democracy will do all they can to stir up continued discord between groups to defeat our aspirations for meaningful change. Can workers at least agree that we will stop doing their job for them and cease thinking in terms of "us" and "them"?

Radically adapted from here