ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"The Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim Helu has been named the world's richest man, with a net worth of $53.5 billion (£36 billion), the first time since 1994 that the top spot has been held by a non-American. The annual billionaires list published by Forbes magazine shows that the number of billionaires increased from 793 to 1,011." (Times, 11 March) RD

RELIGIOUS BLISS?

"Christians streamed out of villages in central Nigeria yesterday after threats of new attacks from Muslims responsible for a weekend massacre in which at least 500 people were killed. As burials of the victims of the attacks - believed to be revenge for Christian killings of Muslims in January - took place near the city of Jos, residents in nearby villages said that they had received new threats from the mainly Muslin Fulani group which was driven out in January." (Times, 10 March) RD

THE INCOME GULF

"The President of Azerbaijan suffered embarrassment yesterday when it was reported that nine luxury mansions in Dubai worth millions of pounds had been bought in the name of his 11-year-old son. ... The Washington Post newspaper reported that they were bought in a two-week shopping spree last year for about $44 million (£29 million) -10,000 times the average annual salary in Azerbaijan." (Times, 6 March) RD

£23 MILLION AND A £1 A DAY

We live in society full of inequalities. We see people starving and kids dying from lack of clean water, but surely the most hardhearted of us must scream at this news item when we realise that many members of the human race must survive on less than a £1 a day. "This is a bauble that even a banker with an intact bonus would struggle to buy - the 507.5 carat, flawless white-coloured Cullinan Heritage Diamond which was sold to a Chinese buyer yesterday for $35.3 million (£23 million)... The sale to Chow Tai Fok Jewellery in Hong Kong highlights the growing importance of China in the global diamond market." (Times, 27 February) It also highlights the madness of a society that allows some useless bastard in China to consume the equivalent in wealth of millions of kids staying alive. Capitalism sucks! RD

CONSPICIOUS CONSUMPTION

"One of the many stresses of being a billionaire is the difficulty in choosing between purchasing a yacht or an island. Happily, designers this week unveiled plans for a "moving island" that renders the conundrum redundant. Designs for WHY 58x38 were unveiled at the Abu Dhabi yacht show this week. ... The motor yacht is", as the name suggests, 58 metres long and 38 metres wide, providing a total guest area of 3,4oo sqare metres, and weighs in at 2,400 tonnes. It boasts a maximum speed of 14 knots, and a price tag, when built, of $160 million." (Guardian, 3 March) RD

DOUBLE EXPLOITATION

"More workers are taking on a second job to make ends meet. A survey for the law firm Peninsula suggested that the proportion having two jobs had risen from 26 to 28 per cent in the past year." (Times, 1 March) RD

THE PRICE OF GARMENTS

"Several hundred people protested in Dhaka and Gazipur yesterday after locked gates were blamed for the death of 21 people in a fire at a Bangladeshi factory that made sweaters for H and M. Most of the victims of the blaze were women who suffocated on the top floor of the seven-storey Garib and Garib factory. The nephew of one of the victims said that the gates had been locked, trapping them. The National Garment Workers' Federation said: "These workers were killed by the factory's blatant disregard for worker safety." (Times, 27 February) RD

WHILE MILLIONS STARVE

"Two comic books sold for more than a million dollars this week, shattering world records. Rare comics are now posed to join Old Master paintings as favourite purchases for the super-rich looking for safe investments, experts predict. On Monday, a copy of the first comic book to feature Superman, Action Comics No1 from 1938, sold for $1 million (£657,000) in private sale arranged by the New York auction site ComicConnect.com. On Thursday the first appearance of "The Batman", in Detective Comics No27 from 1939, sold at auction in Dallas for a little under a million dollars, but with buyer's premium, the price reached $1075,500 ($703,000)" (Times, 27, February) RD

Driven to Suicide

Three immigrants facing deportation died after jumping from the 15th floor of a high-rise flat. Two men and a woman tied themselves together before making the 150ft suicide leap. Locals said they may have been Kosovans who faced being kicked out the country.

Socialist Courier can only regret the price they felt they had to pay for being victims of capitalism .“Illegal” remains a class-based description that politicians, through their two-faced cant and deceit, will continue to attach to asylum seekers entering the UK for “economic reasons” rather than “genuinely fleeing persecution”.

We are all asylum seekers.

THE SAME OLD BNP

The British National Party has found it necessary for legal reasons to soft pedal its racist basis, but recent event have shown that this is only window-dressing and it remains the same old BNP. Their leader Nick Griffin recently illustrated this dilemma. "While Mr Griffin once called for a defense of white rights with "well-directed boots and fists", the party began changing course in 1998. He told the BNP, "We must at all times present (the public) with an image of reasonableness." (Times, 16 February) The forcible ejection of Dominic Kennedy, the Times journalist from a BNP meeting and their defense of such strong-arm tactics shows the reality behind the fine words. "The BNP chairman told members: "Millions of viewers ... will have seen the report of us ejecting a lying Times journalist from the press conference. That's not the action of a sniveling PC party, but of an organisation that has had enough of being lied about." Same old Griffin, same old BNP! RD

Reading Notes

Although containing many oxymoronic statements, as far as socialists are
concerned, the Spanish Republic (1931) prepared a draft constitution that
is interesting, at least, "Spain is a democratic republic of workers of
all classes, organized in a regime of liberty and justice. Government
emanated from the people and all citizens were equal. The country would
renounce war as an instrument of policy. No titles of nobility would be
recognized. Both sexes would vote at twenty-three. All education was to be
inspired 'by ideals of human solidarity'. Religious education was to
end…divorce was to be granted as a result of mutual disagreement between
the parties…Civil marriages were to be the only legal ones." (The Spanish
Civil War by Hugh Thomas, p72.) John Ayers

US LABOUR PAINS

Barrack Obama's election to the US presidency was supported by many American trade unionists, but as unemployment rises much of that support is evaporating.  "Richard Trumka does not mince his words. The former miner now leads America's largest union body, the AFL -CIO, describes George Bush's language as: "stolen elections, ruinous tax cuts for the rich, dishonest wars, financial scandal, government sponsored torture, floodedalism has periodic slumps and booms and governments cities and finally economic collapse." Barrack Obama is a huge improvement, of course, but unemployment is close to 10% and the government must do something, reckons Mr Trumka." (TIME, 13 February) Mr Trumka like many supporters of capitalism thinks by government intervention of $400 billion of what he calls "immediate job-creating investment" the problem of rising unemployment can be solved. He is living in cloud cuckoo land. Capitalism has periodic slumps and booms and governments know that getting the capitalist class to invest during a slump is near impossible. RD

THE TERMINATOR TERMINATED?

In the big budget movies of some years ago Arnold Schwazenegger often played the all-action hero. Today he is the governor of California and is finding that in an economic downturn capitalism isn't so easy to manage. One of the causes of that state's economic  deficit is the growing number of prisoners and the consequent growth of economic deficit in the  state's budget.  "The fact that 9.5% of spending now goes to prisoners while only 5.7% goes to universities - 25 years ago, prisons got 4% and universities 11% - is indeed a harsh indication of California's fall from grace." (TIME, 13 February) Schwazenegger has proposed three different ideas lately to deal with the problem. One is to pay Mexico to build prisons and have US prisoners in them, another is to spend more of the state's budget on prisons and finally he proposes to privatise prisons as a cheaper way of running things. Twist and turn as they may capitalism's politicians are finding that capitalism throws up problems that are incapable of easy Hollywood solutions. RD

Food for thought

On the environmental front, the Canadian government, like the US, has
announced that carbon emissions will be reduced 17% over the next ten
years. Unfortunately, as environmentalists were quick to point out, this
will increase emissions by 2.5% over the 2006 targets already announced.
It's like the pas de deux, two steps forward, two steps back, two steps
forward, three steps back, and round and round we go. This bunch of lying
sycophants, managing the capitalist system in the interest of the
capitalists, had the gall to state, " Throughout the Copenhagen
negotiations, we maintained that our clear policy was to support the
outcome of Copenhagen…" (Toronto Star, Jan 31 2010).

What outcome are they talking about, I wonder?

Talking of liars, Tony Blair, testifying at the Iraq enquiry in London,
said, "When you are the prime minister and the Joint Intelligence
Committee is giving you this information (weapons of mass destruction),
you have got to rely on the people doing it, with the experience and with
the commitment and integrity as they do…Of course now, with the benefit of
hindsight, we look back on the situation differently." (Toronto Star, Jan
30 2010). Strange how he was able to dismiss the evidence of the UN
weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq, then.

Are the Olympics worth it, asks the Toronto Star? The Vancouver games
have an 'operating budget' of $1.76 billion but,  cleverly, does not
include the construction of venues, $580 million. The Montreal games cost
$1.5 billion and took until 2006 to pay off; Sydney cost $6 billion and
has facilities that are too far out to be used efficiently; Athens cost
$14 billion and most of the facilities are not getting the use envisioned
for them; Beijing's spectacular facilities cost $15 billion and are laying
empty. Any idea how many houses, hospitals, schools we could have built,
how many lives we could have saved by providing free food, etc? Crazy
system! John Ayers.

Food for thought

A recent wildcat and violent strike by Chinese workers producing mobile
phone panels was over exposure to hethane, a toxic chemical that
hospitalized 47 workers last year. The appalling thing about the article
(Toronto Star, Jan 30, 2010) was the revelation that, in 2008, 91 000
Chinese workers died in work-related accidents. Workers do have rights in
China, "but in reality, enforcement tends to be lax and it's almost always
up to the workers themselves to take matters into their own hands." If
that last part were true, there would be a minimal number of accidents.
It's the pressure from authority that prevents worker control. With these
lax laws and low wages, China, of course, is a veritable toyshop for
capitalist production and its investors. John Ayers

Food for thought

Regarding the current recession, we are not out of the woods yet by any measure. The European Union is staggering as Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are in danger of defaulting on their debts.

President Obama's recently tabled budget would raise American debt to $28 trillion (twice the size of the US economy) by the end of the decade. Seems we are awash in debt, mostly unsustainable.

The squabble over arctic rights (there's money under that thar' ice!) is simply capitalism operating as normal. All the arctic countries are scrambling to assemble data to grab as big a share as possible.

Canada has launched a six-metre torpedo-like device to map the ocean floor to support its claim and the competition is on.

Spying, rhetoric, lies, reprisals, and bullying, if not outright war, will be the order of the day for some time to come.

John Ayers

Slums and Migrants

Govanhill sits between the Gorbals and Queens Park on the south side of Glasgow. It is a place of traditional tenements and has been home to various migrants for generations. The latest come from Eastern Europe's Roma community. It is estimated that about 2,000 to 3,000 have moved to this part of Glasgow.The BBC reports

A report by Oxfam into the Govanhill migrants found:

"On arrival, Roma without exception find themselves either without employment, or with a temporary 'position', and sharing small flats in conditions of extreme overcrowding and squalor. Having paid weekly 'fees' to 'gangmasters', Roma find they are unable to change their situation. Indeed, to break away from this exploitation puts them at extreme risk, not only of unemployment, but also homelessness and destitution in the absence of benefit entitlement."

EU migrants like the Roma are not entitled to housing benefits. They are also unlikely to satisfy the credit checks expected by most landlords.This means they group together in order to afford rents and accept properties in conditions that others wouldn't. Oxfam concluded that in Govanhill:

"There appears to be high availability of poor quality, private rented accommodation provided by landlords prepared to turn a blind eye to overcrowding providing the price is right. Issuing no formal tenancy agreements means tenants have limited notional rights and therefore cannot easily protect themselves against unregulated landlords."

Mike Dailly, from the Govan law centre said: "People are coming from Eastern Europe and they are coming to work. They arrive in Glasgow with the promise of work having paid £450. They then discover there is no job for them and they have been ripped off.So what we've got is gangmaster agencies working abroad, working hand in hand with landlords in Govanhill and ripping people off."

Who Owns the North Pole - Part 19

Further to our continuing Arctic saga we now read that China has decided it too cannot be side-lined.

China has no Arctic coast and therefore no sovereign rights to underwater continental shelves, and is not a member of the Arctic Council which determines Arctic policies.Officially, the country's research remains largely focused on the environmental challenges of a melting Arctic.

"However, in recent years Chinese officials and researchers have started to also assess the commercial, political and security implications for China of a seasonally ice-free Arctic region," Linda Jakobson , a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute researcher, said."The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research,"

Last year Beijing approved the building of a new high-tech polar expedition research icebreaker, to set sail in 2013. China already owns the world's largest non-nuclear icebreaker.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches, claiming overlapping parts of the region -- estimated to hold 90 billion untapped barrels of oil -- and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes.
"Despite its seemingly weak position, China can be expected to seek a role in determining the political framework and legal foundation for future Arctic activities" Jakobson said.

Food for thought

The costs of the recession are becoming due. Whose paying, the capitalists or the workers? In Canada, our 'prorogued (suspended) parliament is getting set to return with a monster budget of punishment for the workers to balance the budget put heavily into deficit by the billions given to corporations as bail-out money. "Tories target Civil Service Pensions" is the headline in the Toronto Star (Feb 20 2010). The pensions are described as 'gold plated' mainly because workers in other sectors have none.

Thus we have a deliberate attempt to get one section of the working class to see public servants as the villains. Those 'gold plated pensions" actually amount to an average of $23442/year and for recent retirees, $33519. Neither amount would enable one to buy anything gold plated!

Joel Harden, the Canadian Labour Congress' pension specialist commented," We can't solve this problem by beginning a race to the bottom. We will solve this problem by emulating the pensions of the public sector, not destroying them."

The public servants also point out that those who want to reduce their pensions, the members of parliament, (for the benefit of the capitalist class) do quite well, e.g. former PM Martin (already a wealthy shipping magnate) qualifies for $167 051/year and NDP MP, Bill Blaikie, who never held any ministerial position, will get $122 224.

John Ayers

Socialist Standard March 2010 ,Vol.106 Issue No.1267.

Socialist Standard March 2010 Vol.106 Issue No.1267. Contents Editorial Letters Available also as PDF Features Tony Blair and the Chilcot inquiry Does it matter whether the Iraq War was legal or illegal? Read > Tilting at windmills with a banjo Pete Seeger is now in his 90th year. His songs have always been better than his politics.Read > What is Real Democracy and How Do We Get It? In a month or so the people of Britain will be asked once again to decide which representatives of the ruling class will rule over them for the next four or five years.Read  > Capitalism breeds inequality A recent report shows that the reformist actions of the Labour government have not been able to reverse the inequalities that capitalism generates.Read >