POVERTY AND HYPOCRICY

One of the tenets of Christianity that men of the cloth delight in expounding is its rejection of worldly wealth and riches. "Blessed are the poor", "Seek not the material things of life" and the old favourite about a rich man entering heaven was as unlikely as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. These are all great stuff on a Sunday morning sermonising from a pulpit, but the practice is somewhat different. "The Roman Catholic Church has lost the first round of a court battle to escape liability for paying damages to victims of sexual abuse." (Times, 9 November) This case reported the RC Church's attempt to escape paying compensation to children who were raped by the clergy in the Portsmouth area. They are more concerned about holding on to their wealth than practicing what they preach. RD

ANOTHER BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

The guns in Libya have barely quieted, but a new invasion force is already plotting its own landing on the shores of Tripoli. "Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya, now free of four decades of dictatorship. Entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them, plus the competitive advantage of Libyan gratitude toward the United States and its NATO partners. A week before Colonel Gaddafi's death on Oct. 20, a delegation from 80 French companies arrived in Tripoli to meet officials of the Transitional National Council, the interim government. Last week, the new British defense minister, Philip Hammond, urged British companies to "pack their suitcases"and head to Tripoli." (New York Times, 28 October) It is always good to see the fall of a dictator but obviously the capitalist class are more interested in profit than democracy. RD

Food for thought

No wonder the latest beating of the workers is gaining ground with little opposition. I refer to the practice of work auctioning. In Canada so far, it is limited to determining what shifts you will work, according to desire and seniority. In the US, the price you are willing to work for has already been introduced. Up to now, it's used for nurses to work extra shifts who bid for them with the wage they want to earn. Right now bidding begins at regular wage rates and saves the hospital money by replacing hiring from temp firms that charge much more. Will it be long before the floor drops below the normal wage, or is applied to all work? Capitalism gets uglier by the day and spawns the occupy movements, hopefully, digging its own grave. John Ayers

A CRAZY SOCIETY

The madness of capitalism can be observed worldwide but surely nowhere is the insanity more obvious than in the case of the poverty stricken masses of Africa and this grotesque parasite. "The U.S. government may soon own one of Michael Jackson's white gloves, a $530,000 Ferrari and a $30 million Malibu estate if it succeeds in seizing them from the son of a corrupt African dictator. In a case kept hidden from public view until last week, the U.S. Department of Justice says it's pursuing more than $32 million in assets from Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, whose father Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea for 32 years -- and has been accused by authorities around the world of illicitly siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars for himself and his family." (Yahoo News, 26 October) RD

Food for thought

The Toronto City council is trying to ban the sale and use of shark fins. With a large Chinese population, it is facing some tough opposition. Culture is often cited for keeping the fin, but we are in capitalism and money triumphs over all. The price of a bowl of shark fin soup at top Hong Kong restaurants will set you back $200. Shark fins sell for $1 600 per kilogram on the specialty markets. Do you think that if they sold for $10 per kilo there would be the outcry against banning the practice?
Speaking of sharks (the human kind), Sergio Marchionne, Chrysler CEO has weighed in with a call for cutting costs of auto manufacture. The union gave up the right to strike as part of Chrysler's bankruptcy restructuring in 2009 so he expects an easy time with the contracts. He wants worker compensation to reflect how well (or not) the company is doing. He also came out with this gem, "As a producer, you cannot be small and cute and compete. You're going to get killed." There goes the myth of the small entrepreneur being the driving force of the economy. Welcome to capitalism. He wants to end the present two-tier wage system, saying it makes for an unhappy work force. He would like everybody to be on the lower rate, of course! John Ayers

Food for thought

The bank bailouts continue, although there is little else that can be done if capitalism is to be saved. The Toronto Star reports (Oct 23 2011) that the Eurozone is close to settling on a plan worth one hundred billion euros (C$414 billion) to recapitalize European banks, while The New York Times reports (Oct 11 2011) that "China's Gains Benefit Banks, Not People". Well that's a surprise.

While the Arab Spring has proven to be enduring, widespread, and a popular movement, it is not a done deal. Apart from the lack of socialist understanding, gains won are hard to hold. The Toronto Star reports (Oct 1, 2011) that actor Sean Penn turned out with thousands of others on the Egyptian streets to urge military rulers to end emergency laws that date back to Mubarak. That's the problem of waiting for the next great leader and hoping he/she will be a good one. Democratic councils would have been a major step forward and would have done the job once and for all.

After Gadhafi, who's next? There are lots of top candidates, the Al Khalifa family in Bahrain, Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and the top prize, Bashar Assad in Syria. Whatever the outcome, you have to give top marks for people who face guns every time they protest. John Ayers

CENSORSHIP AND CAPITALISM

Inside slavery no slave was allowed to speak about slavery. Inside feudalism no serf was allowed to complain about the lords of the manor. Inside capitalism wage slaves are allowed to complain about poverty, unemployment and war as long as they don't do anything about it. In state capitalist China they are even trying to stop workers complaining. "No government in the world pours more resources into patrolling the Web than China's, tracking down unwanted content and supposed miscreants among the online population of 500 million with an army of more than 50,000 censors and vast networks of advanced filtering software. Yet despite these restrictions - or precisely because of them - the Internet is flourishing as the wittiest space in China. "Censorship warps us in many ways, but it is also the mother of creativity," says Hu Yong, an Internet expert and associate professor at Peking University. "It forces people to invent indirect ways to get their meaning across, and humor works as a natural form of encryption." (New York Times, 26 October) In China, America and indeed all over the world the capitalist class with their control of the mass media suppress opposition to the profit system, but their days are numbered. No matter how much they try to stop us the workers will win. We are many - they are few. RD

Fact for the Day

Three-quarters of prisoners in Scotland cannot functionally read, write or count, according to a study.

The crack-down

Under the new rules, claimants face a tougher medical test, existing claimants are being re-tested, there are new requirements to engage in work-related activity, and the entitlement to non-means tested benefit is time-limited.

115,000 Scots will lose their incapacity benefit. 65,000 people in Scotland will be pushed out of the benefits system altogether, forcing a big increase in reliance on other family members and will add 35,000 to the number of those seeking Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Glasgow will be hit hardest. The report estimates that more than 22,000 people are likely to lose their incapacity benefits and more than 12,000 will be denied benefits entirely. Other hard-hit areas have been identified as Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire and Clackmannanshire.

Professor Steve Fothergill, who co-wrote the report, said: the reduction in the numbers did not mean there is currently widespread fraud or that the health problems and disabilities were “anything less than real”.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/115-000-scots-will-lose-their-incapacity-benefit-1.1133639

Independent - Nae Chance

Those who think that an independent Scotland would necessarily make things any better there is sorry news. The conflict between the national and international fractions of the capitalist class would remain and it is perfectly plain that the rich who run the current devolved Scotland would be the same as the rich who would run independent "free" Scotland. The Scottish capitalist class run the country with the connivance of the Executive and they would continue to do so with the connivance of an independent parliament.

Since the creation of the Scottish Executive, business representatives have had access as secondees to the Executive and civil servants have been seconded outwards to the private sector. Companies involved include, Inward, Scottish Power, Scottish and Newcastle, Stagecoach, Ernst and Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Outward: Lloyds TSB Foundation, Scottish Power, McGrigor Donald (law firm and lobbyist), Scottish and Newcastle and business lobby groups Business in the Community and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce. The Executive also run a scheme to second staff from road building and consulting firms to their Road Network Management and Maintenance Division. The biggest firms in the area such as Babtie, Scott Wilson and Fairhurst bid to be included in the scheme in which they supervise road building projects and even assist with the procurement process for such projects. As Minister Andy Kerr noted inward secondments “foster and promote links, co-operation and a mutual understanding”. Not to mention the financial benefits of helping to decide which consultants get which road contracts. In Scotland the allegedly environmentally conscious members of the Business Council for Sustainable Development include road building consultancy Scott Wilson, two of the biggest users of natural (Water) resources Scottish Power and the brewers Scottish and Newcastle and the oil giant Shell. In such circumstances the distinction between civil servant, public official, elected representative and business operative begins to break down.

"Scotland is governed not simply via the institutions of formal governance (meaning the political institutions of Scotland), and not simply via the traditionally understood “Scottish elite”, meaning either the various elite groups in the Scottish village or the Scottish capitalist class. Scotland is also run by political and economic decision-makers only some of whom are based in Scotland. Other centres of decision making are obviously London and Brussels, the Headquarters of the WTO/IMF/World Bank and the board rooms of the transnational corporations, including those which have no interest or base in Scotland."
http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/27829/

The Scots should turn a deaf ear to the siren song of Scottish independence where any prosperity would as always only be for the elite ruling class and not for the working class.

"The working man has no country" declared Marx

THE RICH GET RICHER

There is an old song that states "The rich get rich and the poor get children", but it is not just a line in a comic song - it is true. "Here's another stat that the Occupy Wall Streeters can hoist on their placards: The world's millionaires and billionaires now control 38.5% of the world's wealth. According to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the 29.7 million people in the world with household net worths of $1 million (representing less than 1% of the world's population) control about $89 trillion of the world's wealth. That's up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion, according Credit Suisse." (Wall Street Journal, 19 October) Despite the claims of its supporters capitalism is not improving. The gap between the rich and poor keeps widening. RD

The United States has spent roughly $1 trillion on new weapons since the 9/11 attack.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/208244.html





One hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000.
$1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000) can be stuffed a grocery bag.
$100 million would require a standard pallet.
$1 billion ten pallets.

But one trillion, that's a million million. It's a thousand billion.
It's a one followed by 12 zeros - 1,000,000,000,000. See the little man? This is what he would look like to stand next to a trillion dollars on pallets.

If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills. A trillion dollars is a stack of 20 dollar bills 3,000 miles high!

Instead of spending on the military and weaponry it could be spent on basic education for the 2.2 billion children in the world, a mere $6 billion, water and satitation for the whole world's population , at a trifling $9 billion, or basic health and nutrition for all at $13 billion or the world's women's reproductive health at $12 billion

FROM THEIR OWN MOUTHS

When socialists point out that capitalism despite the promises of politicians isn't improving the conditions of the working class we are accused of distortion of the facts, but even the capitalist class agree with us. "Americans' incomes have dropped since 2000 and they aren't expected to make up the lost ground before 2021, according to economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey. From 2000 to 2010, median income in the U.S. declined 7% after adjusting for inflation, according to Census data. That marks the worst 10-year performance in records going back to 1967. On average, the economists expect inflation-adjusted incomes to rise over the next decade, but the 5% projected gain isn't enough to reach prerecession levels." (Wall Street Journal, 14 October) The Wall Street Journal is the spokesman for capitalism but even it agrees with us. RD

Gone Fishin'

A mile long stretch of river with an average catch is 135 fish a year, plus one wooden hut, and a £1 million pound price.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/world-famous-salmon-beat-could-be-yours-for-1m-1.1133005

"...It is great owning your own stretch of water and being able to bring your family and friends for a day’s fishing.” - William Jackson, the agent

Fact for Today

Every day in Scotland 60 children become homeless – that is nearly 22,000 a year.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/-1.1132982

Food for thought

The Occupy movement continues to be a thorn in the sides of government and Big Business, and even capitalism is often singled out as the main culprit. Although socialist understanding is often lacking in the comments by participants, it is exciting to see a spontaneous movement against the establishment materialize out of nothing. Of course, there are severe circumstances for many. In Spain, for example, The New York Times (23/10/2011) writes that unemployment for youth is around 40% and 20% overall. Young people are being asked to work for a pittance with little chance of getting hired permanently with benefits. This temporary work, "...creates an enduring second-class job tier similar to the phenomenon of 'permatemps' in the United States in the 1990s".
Comments from Wall Street as reported by New York Times -- "Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll."
"Who do you think pays the taxes/" "It's not a middle-class uprising. It's fringe groups. It's people who have the time to do this." (maybe because they are unemployed?). The newspaper asks, "Do the bankers get it? (Obviously not!)
On CBC radio, the one percent was invited to comment. One was 'don't forget it's the one percent that provides the entrepreneurs and the driving force for the economy'. The old myth that we depend on them and we would be lost and staggering around starving without them.
The good thing is the speed with which it spread around the world - as we always say, ideas respect no boundaries and socialism would do
the same. Also, capitalism is becoming the target more and more. John Ayers

Beware of Greeks bearing votes

Beware of Greeks bearing votes

Greece gave us democracy, Europe and economics, in both concept and language.

While referendum is from a Latin route, Greeks also gave us chaos and catastrophe.

Also from Greek, Fathom Consulting's Yiannis Koutelidakis has today taught me a word that's going to weigh heavily on the Hellenic people - euthinophobia, meaning the fear of responsibility and duty.

All this is playing out in a global drama (another gift from the Greeks), with markets taking a deep dip on the news that the people could be about to have their say on the state of their nation's finances.


_______________________________________________________________

Comment:

It is an delusion that 'we' can control or regulate a capitalist economy to do anything other than create the conditions of the next crisis.Capitalism comes with uncertainty, war,crisis as inbuilt inevitable concomitants of it.  It is a global system and can only be replaced by a revolutionary alternative.A free access society of common ownership and democratic control without markets.In other words, socialism. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15548435?postId=110757181#comment_110757181

SEX SLAVERY IN CAPITALISM

The journalist Rageh Omaar investigating the enslavement and trafficking of women from Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, to wealthier European countries, in particular to the red light district of Amsterdam, one of Europe's most profitable sex markets and a major international tourist attraction, came to this conclusion."There are an estimated 1.4 million sex slaves in the world today; most of them are women, although there are some men and many thousands of children. These women do not voluntarily enter prostitution, but have been forced under the threat of violence to have sex with men who pay their 'owners'. Sex slavery is present in every country of the world. In some cases, categorised as 'domestic', women are sold into brothels within their own country. But international sex trafficking of women and children is on the rise." (Al Aljazera TV, 13 October) The exploitation of the poor is the basis of capitalism and this is its indefensible outcome. RD

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The recent economic downturn that has left many workers jobless and in some cases homeless has not affected everyone quite as harshly. "Egyptian pays £37m for a sliver of Knightsbridge. An Egyptian billionaire has splashed out £37 million on a London flat as the overseas goldrush for metropolitan property continues. ....Many foreign buyers have focused on flats at One Hyde Park, where prices of more than £7,500 per sq ft have been reached. More than £1.4 billion of flats have been sold at the estate since it opened last year" (Times, 29 October) So while you can be stopped in the streets of London by some poor desperate, homeless person asking "any change?", somewhere not far away some billionaire is luxuriating in a splendid flat. RD

Socialist Standard Vol.107 No. 1287 November 2011

• Editorial: Beyond the Cutbacks
• Pathfinders
• Letters
• Material World: This Land is Our Land
• Cooking the Books: Producers and Predators
• Halo Halo! - Rowan Williams v New (and old) Atheism
• Tiny Tips
• Greasy Pole: Djanogly – One Of The Family
• Where Will It End?
• Riot!
• Is 20 Years of the Big Issue Something To Shout About?
• What is Wrong With Using Parliament?
• Casino Capitalism: Inefficient and Irrational
• Cooking the Books: Ground Rents and Coronets
• Obituary: Margaret Hopwood
• Book Reviews: 'Why Marx Was Right', 'Speak for Britain!', 'The Political Economy of Development'
• Proper Gander: Stripped Blair
• Action Replay
• 50 Years Ago: Labour Conference
• Voice From the Back
• Cartoon: Free Lunch