Food for Thought 2

The Canadian auto union recently agreed to a 3-year contract with no increases in return for keeping the Oshawa, Ontario, truck plant running. Two weeks later, plunging sales brought news that the plant would close anyway. The protest and picket line that ensued was quickly dismantled by court order. Profitability overrules workers’ livelihoods, as usual. The madness is that reality has finally caught up to the gas guzzling SUVs that North American car manufacturers have been producing for years and on which they have been making huge profits. For example, the original Hummer weighed in at 10 300 lbs. and got 11 mpg, while the Ford Excursion weighs 9 200 lbs. and gets 10 mpg. Any excursion in that monster would have to be very short these days! Our neo-con government is continually driving home the point that we need to continue the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan, keep increasing military spending, that we are making real progress, and that the 85 Canadian deaths so far are worth it. Last week, the Taliban broke into a prison in the heart of Canadian-held territory and freed over 1 000 prisoners. Some progress for 85 lives and 1 in 7 soldiers returning with mental health problems! - The recent hike in gas and staple food prices is hitting the poor hard. In Ontario, food bank numbers have increased 15% and 45 000 are expected to lose jobs in the coming year. So much for making poverty history! - A new paper in the journal Science by Samuel Bowles, director of Behavioural sciences at Santa Fe Institute, Texas, says that altruism is as much, or more, a factor in motivating people to do their best. Merely putting a price on a desired action can make it less spontaneous and attractive, e.g. fines at an Israeli day care centre for late pick-ups of their children resulted in increased tardiness as parents saw it as something they could purchase, and another study showed that women donated less blood when they were paid for it. Even in capitalism! - Let’s give the last word to George Carlin – “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.” And “ By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.” And “Capitalism tries for a delicate balance. It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and taking other people’s stuff.” And (on Sports) “If it requires a uniform it’s a worthless endeavour.”
John Ayers

Food For Thought

In whose interests the government works –
1. The US Supreme Court Recently struck down a Washington, D.C. ban on handguns despite the fact that 30 000 Americans are shot to death each year including over 3 000 children. Any thoughts on the involvement of the gun industry in this decision?
2. The Supreme Court gives the go-ahead to proceed at full speed with the construction of the US/Mexico security fence despite the harmful affects on the environment and the animals. Free movement for capital, but not for workers.
3. The new IBM supercomputer is the first to operate at “petaflop” speed – one thousand trillion calculations per second. This great advance will be used by the US department of energy to…keep track of the country’s nuclear stockpile!
4. In Canada, new iPod rules for downloading and sharing songs etc. will bring fines of up to $20 000. An attempt to prevent free access that is guaranteed to fail.
John Ayers

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

From old Frank Sinatra songs to Hollywood movies about Rio beaches, with beautiful young men and women the image is projected about the wonders of Brazil. The reality is less gorgeous. "A study by the government's Institute for Applied Economic Research showed that the richest 10 percent of Brazilians hold 75.4 percent of the wealth. Thanks to a regressive tax system, they only lose 22.7 percent of their incomes to tax, compared with 32.8 percent for the poorest 10 percent of Brazilians. In Rio, only a handful of slums out of more than 600 in the city are in line for improvements under the federal program, leaving many feeling left out." (Yahoo News, 8 July) RD

WORKED TO DEATH

"A Japanese labour bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm. The man who died was aged 45 and had been under severe pressure as the lead engineer in developing a hybrid version of Toyota's blockbuster Camry line, said Mikio Mizuno, the lawyer representing his wife. The man's identity is being withheld at the request of his family, who continue to live in Toyota City where the company is based. In the two months up to his death, the man averaged more than 80 hours of overtime per month, according to Mizuno. He regularly worked nights and weekends, was frequently sent abroad and was grappling with shipping a model for the pivotal North American International Auto Show in Detroit when he died of ischemic heart disease in January 2006." (Yahoo News, 9 July) RD

SAVE MONEY OR GET RID OF THE MONEY SYSTEM?

Capitalism causes the death of many people every day, another example, result of removing cleaners from direct employment (to save money, not lives evidently) by the Health Service in the name of more efficiency is this article in today’s Sunday Mail.
Eighteen people have died from the C.difficile bug at overcrowded Vale of Leven Hospital in six months. The shameful conditions included:
Wards with no working wash basins.
Dirty linen stored next to clean linen.
Filthy toilets and commodes soiled with excrement.
Corridors flooded because of faulty showers.
Holes in flooring and walls.
"The staff try their hardest but the place clearly needs a lot of money spent on it to bring it up to a decent standard."
Michelle Stewart, whose mother-in-law Sarah McGinty died at the hospital in February, said: "We all feel very angry because this was left to go on so long. The response was totally unprofessional and the fact is it risked lives and cost lives.
"People died in Vale of Leven who could have been saved”.

Save money or get rid of the money system?, I know what socialists would rather you do.

Labour's success??

Something to remember at the coming by-election in Glasgow East constituency as reported here and here
Male life expectancy is 63, which is 14 years below the UK average. Life expectancy is lower than for Palestinian males living in the Gaza Strip according to Channel 4.
Unemployment runs at 25 per cent and about 40 per cent of the constituents live on benefits. About 40 per cent of the children live in workless households.
The teenage pregnancy rate is 40 per cent above the national average.
The east end of Glasgow had Scotland's highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions. An average of 860 people per 100,000 were admitted between 2004 and 2006 in Scotland. But in the east end of Glasgow that rose to 1,505.
In 2002, a United Nations rating system taking account of life expectancy, unemployment, incomes and rates of illiteracy put the Shettleston area as the most deprived in Britain. Nearby Baillieston, also in Glasgow East, was placed seventh.

Nor will changing the MP have any real lasting effect on this poverty regardless of the promises made by the parliamentary contestants .

CAPITALISM IN ACTION

Upstairs Downstairs

"Thirty countries have already seen food riots this year. The ever higher cost of food could push tens of millions of people into abject poverty and starvation. To a large degree, this crisis is man-made — the result of misguided energy and farm policies. When President Bush and other heads of state of the Group of 8 leading industrial nations meet in Japan this week, they must accept their full share of responsibility and lay out clearly what they will do to address this crisis. To start, they must live up to their 2005 commitment to vastly increase aid to the poorest countries. And they must push other wealthy countries, like those in the Middle East, to help too. That will not be enough. They must also commit to reduce, or even better, do away with their most egregious agricultural and energy subsidies which contribute to the spread of hunger throughout the world."
(New York Times editorial, 6 July) RD

PROFITS BEFORE HEALTH

"A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has hit out at what he terms the "moral corruption" of the medical industry. Britain's Sir John Sulston says that profits are taking precedence over the needs of patients, particularly in the developing world. He was speaking at the launch of a new research institute into science, ethics and innovation. Sir John shared the 2002 Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on the genetics controlling cell division. ...He says there is now great concern among researchers about private companies patenting genes and genetic tests. He is also concerned about the misuse of information, and what he terms "disease mongering". ...Sir John believes that our current systems place the needs of shareholders ahead of the needs of patients." (BBC News, 4 July) RD

A HISTORIAN'S VIEW

"As Britain's rich see their wealth grow are we risking a dislocation in society that would surprise our Tudor forefathers, asks historian Lisa Jardine. The extremely rich are getting even richer. So we are told in the World Wealth Report, widely discussed in the newspapers over the past few weeks. The number of super-rich increased by almost 9% last year. Last Monday it was announced that the annual income of the Prince of Wales had risen by £1m, an increase of 7%, very much in line with the general trend." (BBC News, 4 July) RD

HOW CAPITALISM OPERATES

We are constantly amazed at the current ignorance about how capitalism operates. Chancellors that claim they can get rid of slumps and booms, prime ministers who believe that a series of reforms will solve social problems, but this piece of nonsense takes a bit of beating. "Adam Sampson, chief executive of Shelter, said: "Mortgage lenders have made billions from first time home buyers and Shelter believes it's now the turn of those lenders to help them." (Metro, 10 July) What Mr Sampson does not seem to realise is that capitalists makes their fortunes from rent, interest and profit not from some benign urge to "help" borrowers! Perhaps its "now the turn" of Mr Sampson to learn a litle bit about the basics of capitalist society. RD

WAR IS HELL

"The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it "would be permitted" to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces. In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950. Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified "secret" and filed away." (Yahoo News, 6 July) RD

ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"As the credit crisis lightens middle-class wallets, the super-rich are continuing to buy the finest art, antiques and wine, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). Bordeaux Index, the wine merchants, says that Russian, Latin American and Asian buyers are helping to prop up the high-end art and antique market. Roman Abramovich, the Russian owner of Chelsea Football Club, is believed to have spent £17.2 million on Lucian Freud's painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping - a record price for a living artist."
(Times, 8 July) RD

CAPITALISM COMES TO INDIA (3)

"One evening not too long ago, India's top fashion designers, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, invited 35 members of the country's moneyed class over for dinner at their home in a posh suburb of Mumbai. The affair was elegant and understated: The guests sipped a 1999 Dom Perignon as they were served home-cooked Goan fish curry and rice. "We are the present-day maharajahs -- in thought, at least -- so we reconnected with friends from all walks of life over a luxurious meal," says Khosla." (Yahoo News, 7 July) RD

CONSPICIOUS CONSUMPTION

"Talk about a luxurious soak in the tub. The Amaltea bathtub, designed by Baldi of Florence, Italy, is made entirely of the precious gem amethyst, and adorned with 24-karat gold-plated legs. Matching lotion dispenser, soap dish and tumbler are also available. Now there's no reason for a bather ever to get out. 95,000 euros." (Newsweek, 7 July) RD

POOR? BLAME YOURSELF

"David Cameron declared yesterday that some people who are poor, fat or addicted to alcohol or drugs have only themselves to blame. ... "Of course, circumstance - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequences of the choices people make." (Times, 8 July) RD

PATRIOTISM GOES MEGA

Away back on the 7th April 1775 when Samuel Johnson wrote "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", he couldn't have imagined how much modern capitalism would use patriotism to enslave the working class. "On the field before the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball plans to assemble the largest gathering of Hall of Fame players in baseball history. And as fans salute their heroes, the former players will join the crowd in saluting the American flag — one that is roughly 75 feet by 150 feet, as long as a 15-story building is tall, spread horizontally over the Yankee Stadium turf. That is a relatively small flag by big-event standards in American sports these days. But it will signal the latest can’t-miss blend of sports and patriotism, a combination increasingly presenting itself through gigantic American flags, unfurled by dozens or hundreds of people in an attempt to elicit a sense of awe and nationalism in the surrounding crowd."

(New York Times, 4 July) RD

THE MAD HOUSE OF CAPITALISM

He is reputed to be the richest man in the world so the recent down turn on the world's stock exchanges has led to speculation that Warren Buffett may be ready to plunge into an increasingly bearish market. "During the great bear market of 1974, Warren Buffett was asked by a rather staid fellow how he felt. "Like an over-sexed guy in a whorehouse", he replied. "Now is the time to invest and get rich." (Observer, 6 July) Whether he in fact invests or not the richest man in the world, said to be worth $35 billion, certainly has a rich use of the vernacular. As Bob Dylan once sang "Money doesn't talk - It swears!" RD

AN UNCARING SOCIETY

"The sad truth facing the victims of the natural disasters in China and Burma is that they will soon disappear forever from the headlines and awareness of the international media, inevitably crowded out by more current and pressing stories. The same thing happened to the survivors of Bhopal, where, in December 1984, 40 tons of mostly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas - one of the deadliest chemicals invented by man - escaped from a Union Carbide factory, immediately killing some 8,000 people, and eventually being linked to 12,000 subsequent deaths. The biggest industrial disaster ever, many times deadlier than the Chernobyl nuclear accident, made headlines around the world, but soon receded into the remote corners of public memory. ...Two decades on, a criminal case charging Union Carbide and its officials with culpable homicide is still dragging on in a local court in Bhopal, because none of the accused have been available to the court. In 1985, the Indian government had filed a $3.3 billion claim in a U.S. court against Union Carbide, but eventually settled out of court for $470 million - which amounted to less than $500 for each of the 500,000 people harmed by the accident. In addition, Union Carbide never cleaned up the accident site, which continues to leech highly toxic chemicals into the soil and groundwater of the surrounding area, affecting even people born decades after the gas leak. In 2001, Dow Chemicals acquired Union Carbide, but has refused to accept any liability for Bhopal." (Yahoo News, 29 June) RD

LEARNING ABOUT CAPITALISM

Every child that is born has to be taught about the crazy system of ownership and poverty that is capitalism in order to survive in this dog eat dog society, but even supporters of this system with its insatiable greed for profits would surely draw the line at the following piece of "shrewd" business strategy. “Thousands of children as young as 11 have been sent debit cards by Lloyds TSB without their parents' consent. One 15-year-old reportedly used the card to buy cheap cigarettes, Viagra and fake adult identification on the internet."
(Times, 5 July) RD

THIS IS PROGRESS?

"Consumers buckling under the strain of higher living costs are returning to the Victorian age in a bid to get their hands on some cash – they are hot-footing it down to their local pawnbroker. And it is not just those on low incomes who are pawning bits of jewellery and small family heirlooms. Some brokers report City whiz kids and professional footballers offering cars or Rolex watches worth tens of thousands of pounds in return for a loan. Business is booming thanks to the clampdown by high street lenders on giving people credit. The National Pawnbrokers Association (NPA) estimates that there has been an increase of up to 30 per cent in business across the UK in the past six months. It says the stigma attached to pawn broking is disappearing because we live in a credit society and this is just another way of borrowing."
(Daily Telegraph, 28 June) RD