ETHICS AND CAPITALISM

"The Body Shop, the cosmetics giant that claims to source ingredients from companies that protect local farmers' rights, buys palm oil from an organisation that pushed for the eviction of peasant families to develop a new plantation. Daabon Organics, a Colombian firm that provides the British chain with 90% of all its palm oil, was part of a consortium that asked the courts to remove farmers from a sprawling ranch 320km north of the capital Bogotá with a plan to grow African palm. Police in riot gear evicted the farmers in July. Now solicitors for 123 peasant farmers and their families are appealing against the decision with the backing of a British charity. They say that some locals had lived and worked on the land for more than 10 years and had already applied for the right to own it under Colombian law before the consortium bought it." (Observer, 13 September) RD

SOCIETY AND SELFISHNESS

“The Age of Empathy” (written by Franz de Waal) is best seen as a corrective to the idea that all animals—human and otherwise—are selfish and unfeeling to the core. It offers not only plenty of examples to the contrary, but also some hints as to how and why empathy evolved, and how it might be related to self-awareness. In the case of humans, one might think that it is hardly necessary to get the professional opinion of a zoologist on the matter. Don’t we already know that people can be rather good at co-operating, and are not always mercilessly hostile towards their rivals? Yet Mr de Waal does manage to spring some pleasing and intriguing surprises on this score: how many people are aware, for example, that most soldiers are unwilling to fire at the enemy, even in battle?" (Economist, 3 September) RD

SCRAPPING SHIPS AND WORKERS

Largely untrained workers break the ships apart using hand-tools

"The economic downturn and a subsequent fall in demand for cargo ships has meant that for many ship owners it makes better sense to send an ageing ship to the scrap yard rather than to keep her maintained but idle. But while the recession may have been good news for the owners of the ship-breaking firms, it is very bad news for the environment. The scrapping of ships in South Asia – Bangladesh and Pakistan are also major scrappers – is a rudimentary, almost medieval affair. Ships are allowed to beach on the sands and then armies of men with little or no training pull apart the ships with hand-tools. Toxic substances such as mercury and asbestos are allowed to seep into the environment. One of the attractions to the ship owners of having their vessels dismantled here is that the ship breakers in this part of the world receive little of the regulatory oversight that takes place in Europe or the US. For the ship owners, it means they can dispose of their ships more cheaply, while for the scrappers it means bonanza-time. ....Campaigners point out that the working conditions for the often undocumented migrant labourers from India's poorest states, can be highly dangerous and there are regular reports of injuries and fatalities. Earlier this month, six workers died when a fire broke out at one of the plots. Activists say the impoverished workers have no bargaining power." (Independent, 31 August) RD

POVERTY IN THE USA

"In the recession, the nation’s poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent last year, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released Thursday by the Census Bureau. The report also documented a decline in employer-provided health insurance and in coverage for adults. The rise in the poverty rate, to the highest level since 1997, portends even larger increases this year, which has registered far higher unemployment than in 2008, economists said. The bureau said 39.8 million residents last year lived below the poverty line, defined as an income of $22,025 for a family of four." (New York Times, 10 September) RD

CAPITALISM'S PRIORITIES

As various pieces of legislation pass through the US governmental machine it is often observed that the process is torturously slow. An example of this tardy procedure has recently been revealed in the proposed Health Bill. No such delay is evidenced when it comes to military budgets.
"With hardly any debate, a powerful Senate committee Thursday approved President Barack Obama's $128 billion request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the budget year beginning in October. The move came as anxiety is increasing on Capitol Hill over the chances for success in Afghanistan and as Obama weighs whether to send more forces to the country. The war funding was approved as the Appropriations Committee voted unanimously for a $636 billion spending measure funding next year's Pentagon budget." (Huffington Post, 10 September)
The health of the American working class is obviously of less importance than the military needs of the owning class. RD

LAZY WORKERS?

"One in four of people of retirement age cannot afford to leave their jobs and will have to continue working indefinitely, researchers have found.
"Falling house prices, shrinking pension pots and the need to support financially dependent children have created a perfect storm for retirement plans," said Simon Lough, chief executive of Heartwood Wealth Management, which commissioned the independent research of almost 2,000 people aged 55 and over. "Since we conducted this research last year, baby boomers have found themselves forced to stay in semi-retirement for even longer as many simply can't afford to stop working." The number of older employees has risen by 97,000 in the past year. There are now 1.33 million workers above retirement age in the UK. The survey demonstrates the bleak choice facing 11.5 million pensioners in the economic downturn: despite having saved throughout their working lives for a comfortable retirement, many have to carry on working or try to make do with a drastically reduced income." (Observer, 13 September) RD

A TEN MILLION POUND VIEW

The newspapers are full of stories of unemployed workers suffering the indignity of their homes being re-possessed. Everyday we hear of the crashing property market and the resultant misery suffered by hard working families. The story is completely different for members of the capitalist class of course.
"At £10m it must be the most expensive sea view in Britain. A Russian multi-millionaire liked a plot of land on the coast at Sandbanks in Dorset so much that he was happy to pay £5m for it. The plot was already occupied by a substantial house, but he did not much like it so is paying the same again to have it knocked down and replaced with something better. The purchase last September by Maxim Demin, 39, a petrochemicals trader, shows that at the top end of the property market lavish spending has survived the slowdown." (Sunday Times, 13 September)

There is nothing unique about the property market. In every market - housing, education, medical treatment, holidays and entertainment - "lavish spending has survived the slowdown".
RD

CENSORSHIP IN THE USA

"Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie. The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution."
(Daily Telegraph, 11 September) RD

THE RISE OF THE BNP

Admission FREE

All Welcome

Introduction

The recent rise of the BNP as exemplified by them gaining local council seats and now returning two European Members of Parliament in this year's election makes it necessary for us to have a look at this organisation and what it stands for. Towards that end we intend to deal with this introduction to the subject in three parts.

Overviews

1. The past of far right organisations

All during the 20th century there has been a far right element in British politics. Inside the Conservative Party we have had such organisations as the League of Empire Loyalists. They saw the threat of a diminishment of the British Empire as the great evil to be fought against. With the advent of the Russian revolution in 1917 and the rise of the Labour party to replace the Liberal party, this element became more and more evident. It was during the Thirties however that the far right became a more potent force in British politics. The rise of the NAZI party in Germany and Mussolini in Italy were a great stimulus to far right ideas in the UK. Mosley and his fascists supporters were supported during the 1930s by such establishment institutions as the Daily Mail.

2. The causes behind the BNP rise.

The most obvious reason has been put down to immigration. Indeed when Enoch Powell made his infamous "rivers of blood" speech his sole reason for proposed action was immigration. It is worth noting that his greatest support was not from re-tired colonels regretting the demise of the British Empire but from London dock workers. This I think gives us a clue to their present rise. One of the most important reasons for the rise of the SNP was the failures of the Labour Party, and likewise a powerful ingredient to the rise of the BNP. While a core element of the support of the BNP is nationalism and racism it is the loss of support for the Labour party that has been a large factor in their growth. The growth of unemployment has also led to the "British jobs for British people" nonsense.

3. How to deal with this organisation.

The left wing political parties have no doubts about the actions to take. Do not allow them a platform. Break up their meetings. Use violence against their demonstrations. In fact in the past when the SPGB attempted to have a public debate with the far right it was broken up by left wingers. "No platform for fascists" is their oft repeated mantra. We take the opposite view. Only by debate can their stupid ideas be exposed. The present upsurge is probably only a temporary movement but the SPGB should nevertheless analyse why it is happening and be prepared to deal with their growth.

WAR THREATENS ONCE AGAIN

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, says goodbye to Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin after a meeting near Moscow on Thursday.

While we have a capitalist system there will always be war and threats of war, this is the latest,

of course they are for peaceful purposes.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez said Friday that his country is buying Russian missiles with a range of 186 miles as part of a series of arms deals with Moscow.
Chavez, who on Friday returned from a ten day-tour of Africa, Asia and Europe that included a visit to Russia, is also negotiating the purchase of 100 T-72 and T-90 tanks from Moscow. "We signed some military agreements with Russia. Well, soon some little rockets are going to be arriving," he said during a speech to supporters from a balcony at Venezuela's presidential palace. (msnbc 12th September 09)

BUSINESS AS USUAL

"The world will suffer another financial crisis, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has told the BBC.
"The crisis will happen again but it will be different," he told BBC Two's The Love of Money series. He added that he had predicted the crash would come as a reaction to a long period of prosperity. But while it may take time and be a difficult process, the global economy would eventually "get through it", Mr Greenspan added.
"They [financial crises] are all different, but they have one fundamental source," he said. "That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue." (BBC News, 9 September) RD

MARKET MADNESS

"Christophe Voivenel is a dairy farmer, and the son of dairy farmers, in one of the finest dairy regions in the world. At some point in the next few days, he will commit an act of sacrilege. He will rise, as usual, at 6am to milk his 60 cows and then throw away the warm, white liquid which is his family's life's blood. "You have to understand how hard that will be," he said. "It is like an artist destroying his own painting or a craftsman smashing one of his own creations." Mr Voivenel, 43, a farmer near Vire in lower Normandy, is about to go on strike. Tens of thousands of dairy farmers in 14 European countries, including some in Britain, are preparing to join the first ever pan-European "milk strike": an attempt to push up the farm-gate price of milk, which has almost halved in the last 18 months." (Independent, 29 August) RD

CAPITALISM IN ACTION

"Changing weather patterns have decimated crops in several of the world's poorest countries this year, leaving millions in need of food aid and humanitarian workers warning about the dangerous effects of climate change. Farmers in Nepal have been able to produce only half their usual crop, said an Oxfam International report released last week. Livestock are dying of malnutrition in Yemen, according to the humanitarian news service IRIN. And the Red Cross is bracing for the effects of heavy rains across 16 West and Central African nations. All three are the result of extended atypical weather events -- drought, rain, or untimely combinations of both -- in places where subsistence farmers have long depended on predictability. In Nepal, more than 3 million people -- about 10 percent of the population -- will need food aid this year, said Oxfam." (Yahoo News, 2 September) RD

HUMANS ARE SOCIAL BEINGS

Hurricane Katrina: A disabled woman is rescued in Pascagoula, Miss., Aug. 29,
2005

"But ask any New Yorker about, say, the blackout of 2003, and you’re likely to get not a shudder of horror but wistful reminiscences about people spontaneously directing traffic when the signals went dark. As Rebecca Solnit documents in “A Paradise Built in Hell,” a landmark work that gives an impassioned challenge to the social meaning of disasters, this same sort of positive feeling has emerged in far more precarious circumstances, from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to Hurricane Katrina. Disasters, for Solnit, do not merely put us in view of apocalypse, but provide glimpses of utopia. They do not merely destroy, but create. “Disasters are extraordinarily generative,” she writes. As the prevailing order — which she elliptically characterizes as advanced global capitalism, full of anomie and isolation — collapses, another order takes shape: “In its place appears a reversion to improvised, collaborative, cooperative and local society.” (New York Times, 1 September) RD

Reading Notes

The industrial epoch alone has built up every spot between these old houses to win a covering for the masses whom it has conjured hither from the agricultural districts and from Ireland; the industrial epoch alone enables the owners of these cattle sheds to rent them for high prices to human beings, to plunder the poverty of the workers, to undermine the health of thousands, in order that they alone, the owners, may grow rich.In the industrial epoch alone has it become possible that the worker scarcely freed from feudal servitude could be used as mere material, a mere chattel; that he must let himself be.
"The Condition of the WorkingClass in England", p.87).

A CHILLING PROSPECT

"Iran has until late September to respond to the latest international proposal aimed at stopping the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon. Under the proposal, Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for a U.N. Security Council commitment to forgo a fourth round of economic and diplomatic sanctions. But if diplomacy fails, the world should be prepared for an Israeli attack on Iran's suspected nuclear weapons facilities. As Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently acknowledged: "The window between a strike on Iran and their getting nuclear weapons is a pretty narrow window." If Israel attempts such a high-risk and destabilizing strike against Iran, President Obama will probably learn of the operation from CNN rather than the CIA. History shows that although Washington seeks influence over Israel's military operations, Israel would rather explain later than ask for approval in advance of launching preventive or pre-emptive attacks. Those hoping that the Obama administration will be able to pressure Israel to stand down from attacking Iran as diplomatic efforts drag on are mistaken." (Los Angles Times, 30 August) RD

THE FAILURE OF CHARITY

Women and children gather at a food distribution centre in Ethiopia's Oromiya
region

"The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world's pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country's worst food crisis for decades. Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million." (Independent, 30 August) RD

Food for Thought

On the environmental front, Peter Gorrie (Toronto Star, 22/08/09) wrote,
"Lobbyists hired by the American coal industry sent forged letters, purporting to be from non-profit groups opposed to the US climate-change plan, to members of Congress. The oil industry is organizing 20 'public rallies' supplying props, speakers, and busloads of placard-carrying company employees – their chants well rehearsed – to mimic grass roots opposition to the Clean Energy and Security Act."
Would we expect anything different form a profit driven system? Meanwhile, in China, the world's new leader in greenhouse gas emissions, there is a push to become the world leader in electric power, not, say manufacturers, to save the planet but to make money and conserve oil. Seventy per cent of China's energy comes from coal and with another 5 billion tons in the ground, we can expect China to continue to be number one. John Ayers

Food for Thought

Despite the cheerleaders, read Economists' use of number crunching to show that the recession is over, other numbers show the opposite.Toronto’s jobless rate rose to 11.5% from 8.5% one year ago, and welfare cases rose 12 000 to 87 450 over the same period. For the 18-24 age group, unemployment is up to 20%, leaving many students to face more debt to be paid off after graduation. Great system!
- Then there are the effects of capitalism. The Brighton Independent reported that 19%, or 1 000 soldiers and police serving in Afghanistan have been discharged for psychological strain, a jump of 50% over the last year.
- Imagine this – you buy a condominium in Florida for $430 000 forRetirement. Then the market crashes and all other buyers walk away. You are left as the sole tenant in a 32 -storey building! Of course, there are plenty of homeless people who could fill it up, but they don’t count without the cash. Only in capitalism could you encounter something this stupid!
John Ayers

Early Death: Greater Returns!

After the mortgage business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one.
The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money. (New York Times September 6th)
It's your patriotic duty. no doubt.