a merry xmas?

Shelter Scotland has warned. that 5300 youngsters will wake up on Christmas Day in poor quality temporary accommodation with no prospect of a permament home.

 Shelter Scotland director Graeme Brown said: "It's easy to think of homelessness as single people sleeping rough. What people don't often consider is the rising numbers of families who, through no fault of their own, have lost their home and have no permanent roof over their heads. For people with children, sofa surfing with friends and family just isn't a realistic option and the temporary accommodation they are forced to stay in is often unsuitable and of poor quality."

William Morris in Scotland (1)

William Morris (1834-1896)

A Letter from Scotland


Commonweal, Vol 2, No. 25, 3 July 1886, p.105-106;

On Tuesday 22nd I found myself at Arbroath, a pleasant stone-built town of some 20,000 inhabitants on the German Ocean, the original of ‘Fairport’ in Scott’s ‘Antiquary’, the remains of a magnificent church and abbey dominating the homely houses. The industry practised there is sail-cloth making, and it is in a very dismal condition at present. There was much suffering there in the past winter. In a walk that I took with my host (a Free Kirk minister and a Socialist), we got into conversation with a field-labourer who was resting from his job of harrowing at a field’s end. I should premise, for the benefit of our English readers, that Scotch field-labourers are hired by the half-year, and receive their ‘meal-and-milk’, lodging in a ‘bothy’ — or a not too luxurious pig-sty — and a sum of money. This friend, who was a brisk and intelligent young man, told us that wages were low, and that he was now receiving £9 for the half-year, instead of £12, which he used to receive. He also told us, perhaps unnecessarily, that he could not save out of this splendid salary. I was told afterwards that wages had fallen back to what they were ten years ago, at which time they had risen suddenly. A foreman, a friend told us, was now getting £28 per annum, which used to be the wages of a full private labourer.

In the evening I lectured to an audience of upwards of 600 very attentive persons, mostly of the working-class. They cheered me heartily, and took up the points well. There was a goodly attendance on the platform of the committee who had organized the meeting, and who were chiefly co-operators. Questions being asked for, I only got one, from the irrepressible temperance champion, which was received with some laughter. In fact, the meeting was rather huddled up at the end, as there was no gas and the light began to fade into the mid-summer twilight, which is all the darkness of those northern regions at this time of year. A fair amount of literature was sold.

On the 23rd I lectured at Edinburgh, in the Oddfellows’ Hall, for the committee which is the fag-end of the Industrial Remuneration Conference of last year. We expected but a poor attendance, as there were several meetings of parliamentary candidates going on in the city; but after all it turned out well, the attendance being better than at any previous lecture. Again the audience seemed sympathetic — nay, enthusiastic. I asked for questions in writing, dreading the meandering speech which usually accompanies spoken questions. I got quite a pack of cards of them; and the answers were well received. A clergyman was in the chair, another (our friend Mr Glasse, who made a Socialistic speech) moved the vote of thanks, and a third seconded it. This last gentleman poked some heavy ecclesiastical fun at me, interlarded with buttery compliments. Once for all, I must ask our comrades to forgive me for receiving votes of thanks, on the ground that I could not help it. The sale of literature was good. I had a short but pleasant interview with the members of the Branch afterwards. They seemed rather depressed; lack speakers, and so find it difficult to make much way; but are getting a few new members, in spite of the slackness of their propaganda. They told me that a branch of the Social Democratic Federation started, apparently with good prospects, early this year or late last (I forget which), had quite disappeared after a few weeks’ existence. One comrade said that in talking to fellow-workmen they would agree with everything that he said in favour of Socialism, but could not be brought further than this passive adherence. On the other hand our comrades are making most commendable efforts to push the Commonweal, and with much success. The news-shops take it and sell it, too, and they are also getting newsboys to sell it; so that propaganda of some sort is going on, only our comrades feel the want of public and obvious propaganda. I should add, the University Society, who have a good deal retreated from their position, at all events in appearance, are starting a kind of progressive debating society, appealing to trades’ unionists and co-operatives to join it, which our comrades intend to use for their own and other people’s education.

The 24th I gave the same lecture at Glasgow. A wet evening, meetings of candidates throughout the town, and again apprehensions of a failure; but again a good audience, perhaps rather more in assent than at Edinburgh; a somewhat overwhelming amount of questions, the answers to which were very well received. A sprinkling of Ruskinians were there, somewhat inclined, I fancy, to take exception to the roughness of the opinions: indeed, the mover of that (terrible) vote of thanks said as much, and was somewhat cheered.

I may here remark that it seems to me that the Scotch are much given to ‘lion-hunting’, and that therefore it is necessary for a Socialist who wants to get at the facts to discount a certain amount of the enthusiasm with which he is received, if he happens to have any reputation outside Socialism. Still enough remains in these cases to show that there were many in the audience who really agreed. At Glasgow there was a good sprinkling also of Land Restorers; but these, I think, are beginning to see out of the narrow close in which Henry George has hedged them.

The 25th I lectured at Dundee and had much such an audience as at Glasgow, only that they lacked the instruction that our Branch has, with all drawbacks, given to the Glasgow folk, and therefore did not seem so ready to take up the points. Trade is very slack at Dundee; the jute business nearly gone, Indian competition having destroyed it. I was told that there are few places where the difference between the classes is more felt than it is at Dundee. I much regretted that I could not stop there and get to know some of the workers. Our comrades here (Glasgow) ought to make a push to get up a branch at Dundee.

I meet the Branch to-day, and in the evening lecture again. Tomorrow I lecture at Bridgeton, a suburb of Glasgow. But I send this off to be in time for the current number, and will give an account of whatever else happens next week.

God and Class

 "The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly  intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellowmen and to Nature." -  Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I

It is too often overlooked that economics is inextricably mixed up with religion. The economic order is a reflection of the religious order. The linkage is utterly central to religion as a cultural and political forc - the connection between religion and class inequality. Because there are no remedies for social inequality within the present system of society the great masses of humanity are best kept sedated by pious delusions.

Reliable findings from the United Nations show that the wealthiest 10% of adults and the poorest 50% possess 85% and 0.01% of the world’s total wealth respectively. The World Bank reported last year, women own just 0.01% of the world’s wealth. In the United States, 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom half of the population. According to the 2010 Census, 46.2 million Americans, including nearly one-quarter of the nation’s children, were living below the official poverty line.

In 2009, Gallup Polls measured religiosity in 143 countries. They showed that in nations “where average annual incomes are $2,000 or less,” 92 percent of residents “say religion is an important part of their daily lives.” By contrast, among the wealthiest countries surveyed, “those where average annual incomes are $25,000 or more” the percentage was 44 percent. In the U.S. religiosity closely correlates with income inequality.  Nine of the ten poorest states are located in the Bible Belt (the tenth one, New Mexico, is partially in the Belt).  Sikivu Hutchinson author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars says “For urban communities of color, the lifeblood of organized religion is economic injustice.” Hutchinson added: “The domino effect of de facto segregation, job discrimination, unemployment, foreclosure, mass incarceration, and educational apartheid has bolstered the influence of religious institutions in many black and Latino neighborhoods where storefront churches line every block.”

Michael Parenti writes that in the Middle East “Sharia is put forth as the one source of social justice for both the very poor and “the ruffled professionals.”  and that “As with Islam so with the Christianist Pentacostals: church membership surged as poverty deepened in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere.” He goes on "Denied a material means of betterment, many people turn to the “spiritual.” The Christianist missionaries—or the mullahs and the imams—explain to victims why bad things happen to good people: They were not that good; they believed in false gods and evil material solutions such as leftist social revolution. Their suffering on earth is punishment for their sins. Once their worldly struggles against colonizers and rulers are thwarted, the people [quoting David S. Pena] “lapse into obscurantism and misdirected otherworldly supplications” that make “oppression more bearable and the ruling class more secure.”"

Chomsky once told an interviewer that the new atheist message “is old hat, and irrelevant, at least for those whose religious affiliations are a way of finding some sort of community and mutual support in an atomized society lacking social bonds.” If “it is to be even minimally serious” he continued, “the ‘new atheism’ should focus its concerns on the virulent secular religions of state worship” such as capitalism, imperialism and militarism. Radical scholar and anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein, derided Christopher Hitchens’ anti-god attitude as “pissing on other people’s mostly innocuous beliefs.” It is argued by many liberals that the Church is no longer an inordinately powerful institution and a mis-directed target. But religion as a force is not nearly as moribund as suggested. If religion can be shown to play a significant role in the oppression of a substantial number of people, discussion of the linkages between the two is essential. And we can hardly link religion to economic injustice if we evade and avoid criticism of religious thought and practice. Chomsky and Finkelstein ought to know better than to be complacent about religion. It is said that the question of God’s existence was answered decades ago and it is utterly futile to keep on talking about it. A recent Pew Research Center of religious belief found that 80 percent of American adults said "they never doubt the existence of God.” One-half of the American people reject the theory of evolution in favour of scipture-based claims of creationism. How is that possible if religion is so weak?

Unlike many of the popular atheists who don't have much say about the evils of capitalism as opposed to the evils of religion, the materialists of the World Socialist Movement understand the roots of supernatural belief and direct their energy to the removal of its causes, poverty and alienation. People should evaluate economic systems not by rhetoric or ideology, but by whether or not they increase economic well-being for all individuals and groups, increase the sum of human satisfaction, and enhance the quality of life. The absence of a god means we have no celestial paternal-guardian but more importantly, we are also free of any divine oppressor.

“The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty.” - Mikhail Bakunin

Freely adapted from an article here

Fact of the Day

According to economics professor John Foster, the aggregate wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 people was in 2010 some £333 billion, equivalent to half 2010's national debt.

 

The Glasgow Effect

"It's a human tragedy on a massive scale," says Gerry McCartney, an epidemiologist at NHS Scotland.

David Walsh, a lead researcher at Glasgow Centre for Population Health adds: "You are talking about thousands of people dying before their time."

Whether it is deaths from cirrhosis, drug abuse, lung cancer, murder or suicide, Glasgow's mortality rates are easily the highest in Britain, and among the highest in Europe. Life expectancy at birth in Glasgow is the lowest in the UK – more than six years below the national average for Glaswegian men (71.6 years, compared with a UK average of 78.2 years), and more than four years below average for Glasgow's women (78 years, compared with the UK average of 82.3). And because Glasgow is home to more than 10% of Scotland's total population, with nearly 600,000 people in the city itself, and more than a million in the greater Glasgow area, Glasgow's problems are very much Scotland's problems.

Despite years of research and decades of evidence that something has gone terribly wrong in the heart of Scotland's largest city, the underlying causes of Glasgow's fatally poor health remain something of a scientific mystery.  Deprivation accounts for less than half (around 40%) of Glasgow's "mortality gap" compared with the rest of the UK. The other causes are still unknown.  There are no fewer than 17 competing explanations for Glasgow's ill health.

Glasgow's city boundaries contain some of Britain's most deprived neighbourhoods. Liverpool and Manchester, for example – have rates of deprivation every bit as high as Glasgow, yet their life expectancies are substantially higher. Glaswegians neither binge-drink nor smoke more than their peers in Liverpool or Manchester. What's more, even Glasgow's most affluent citizens, those in the top 10% of the income distribution, die significantly younger than their counterparts in other British cities.  Obesity rates in the city are actually lower than in some English cities.

Drug abuse (particularly heroin), knife crime, murder and suicide are all significantly more prevalent in Glasgow than in other cities. What is it about life in Glasgow that seems to predispose some of its citizens to such destructive behaviours?

Socialist Courier has documented the evidence that the type of society we live in - capitalism - and the suffering inflicted in the past, can be seen as a culprit for the Glasgow Effect

The Bolshevik Coup

Although commonly called the October Revolution because of a change in calendars, it took place 95 years ago on this day.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has advanced a number of reasons why the Bolshevik Revolution couldn't be socialist.

1. The minority position of the working class, greatly outnumbered by the peasantry. 18 million wage workers of which only 3 million worked in factories or mines. The population at the time was 160 milion
2. Socialist consciousness was lacking amongst those workers. Socialism could not be established in backward isolated Russian conditions where the majority neither understood nor desired socialism.
3. Socialism could not be the outcome of the revolution in Russia because the low level of productive forces ruled out any chance of socialism being established there. The economic elements are lacking or insufficiently developed
4. Russia was surrounded by a capitalist world, to which it needed to adapt and conform to.

Certainly many workers believed that the Bolshevik Revolution would end in socialism, however, the illusions of the workers cannot replace the reality. Material conditions in Russia meant the development of capitialism, which the Bolsheviks were unable to avoid. In fact, they became its agents. It was the role of the Bolsheviks to develop industry through state ownership and the forced accumulation of capital.

The Bolsheviks disguised their seizure of power as an act of the soviets but, of course, Trotsky openly admits that the insurrection was planned by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he was the chair and which had a Bolshevik majority. Trotsky describes how this Committee took its orders directly from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, although the soviets had played a part in overthrowing Tsarism and opposing the Kerensky government, the events of 7 November were a Bolshevik coup d'etat. At one point Trotsky actually writes that on the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find the Bolshevik Party carried out a revolution while they were asleep. There is little doubt that Petrograd supported the overthrow of Kerenky's increasingly impotent and unpopular government, but they were in favour of a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, ie the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and others, that would be answerable to the soviet. Many within the Bolshevik Party itself accepted such a position but they were over-ruled by Lenin's determination to seize power for the Bolshevik party alone. What Russia got was a Bolshevik government which soon usurped power from the soviets and turned into a one-party dictatorship.

From 1917 all vestiges of democratic self-reliance by the working class was removed piece by piece. "Power to the Soviets" became a sham as Bolshevik party functionaries took total control.

"What have i done...?"

Workers safety?

The father of a Fife miner who was killed at a mine in New Zealand said he was "disappointed and angry" to hear the gas blast was preventable.

Scots Malcolm Campbell, 25, from St Andrews in Fife, and Pete Rodger, 40, from Perthshire, were among 29 workers killed at the Pike River mine in 2010. The miners' bodies remain in the mine

An investigation has found multiple warnings were ignored. Safety systems at the mine were inadequate, and reports of excessive methane levels were "not heeded". Workers were exposed to "unacceptable risks" because health and safety was not adequately addressed in a drive to achieve production created the circumstances for the tragedy, the report found. "In the last 48 days before the explosion there were 21 reports of methane levels reaching explosive volumes, and 27 reports of lesser, but potentially dangerous, volumes," the report said. "The reports of excess methane continued up to the very morning of the tragedy." The Department of Labour did not have the "focus, capacity or strategies to ensure that Pike was meeting its legal responsibilities. The report called for a new regulator to be established to focus solely on health and safety issues and for mining regulations to be updated.

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key apologised to relatives of those who died for regulatory failures, but hit out at the mining company, saying it "completely and utterly failed to protect its workers"

Malcolm Campbell snr, said  "Unbelievable in this day and age"

Socialist Courier is sorry to say that such tragedies are part and parcel of the capitalist system

The real union struggle

Since the Industrial Revolution there has been a Us versus Them.  Lined up on one side are the men and women who do the actual work, who toil long, tedious hours for a defined wage, and lined up on the other are employers who, while grudgingly recognizing the necessity of workers, are committed to not paying them any more than is absolutely necessary. It’s an economic law. You charge for your product as much as that the market will bear, and you pay your employees as little as you can get away with. Adhering to the principle that there is “strength in numbers,” workers have joined together to form trade unions. And without those strong, militant labour unions acting as buffers, there is no other force capable of resisting the bosses muscle. Unless working people have some form of organisation to represent their interests, they will be subject to any draconian measures the capitalist wishes to enact. Without the capability to fight back—without the means to offer genuine resistance— workers are not only vulnerable, they’re virtually defenseless. Workers need to take care of themselves rather than rely on politicians to do it for them. And taking care of themselves means banding together collectively. Until they band together and have strength in unity, no one is going to take them seriously.

 It is only through such an organised fight-back and the use of the greatest working class weapon - the strike - can the employers attack on worker's pay and conditions be repulsed. It’s a fight that must be engaged; a fight that must be won. Workers’ only real bargaining power is their ability to stop production. And to do this, workers must fight as a class. These two unavoidable facts gave birth to solidarity pickets, secondary strikes and boycotts that involved whole communities, regions and ultimately the nation. Class solidarity means halting scabs crossing picket lines, and blacking struck goods. We can and must lay the foundation for renewed struggle in the here and now. Without unions maintaining decent wages and benefits, we’re all subject to the inevitable downward pull of market forces, which, given our surplus of labour in this time of high unemployment, means that many of us will slide inexorably toward the minimum wage.

Capitalism cannot function unless it subordinates workers, so the employers close ranks and build their own class solidarity backed by the power of the government. Almost every political pundit has written about the decline and forthcoming death of the labour movement. The populist mantra is to pander to the wallet. Cut the inflated pay and pensions of public workers is the best way to help those who are suffering in a depressed economy. Curtail the corrupt power of unions is the solution. Not only have the rich succeeded in convincing workers to cheer on their campaign against labour unions — the one and only institution dedicated to their welfare —  but they’ve convinced them to support the interests of the wealthy rather than the interests of their own class. Some working people actually refer to other workers as privileged — to people who, by virtue of a union contract, have managed to stay above water, who’ve managed to retain an element of decent wages and benefits, and haven’t fallen totally victim to the recession. Instead of a union contract serving as a model — something to raise all our standard of living — they see it as being above the rest of us! With the poor now jeering at union members, the rich have had their wettest dream come true. The traditional union principle that capital can create nothing without workers – that labour creates all wealth – has been turned on its head, so that capital is now revered as the source of jobs and prosperity.

In the class war, workers may be struggling but they are far from dead. In any war there are only two options: fight to win, or surrender. Both options produce casualties. There is no “safe” option for workers under attack, no place in the trenches to hide in the hope of protecting one’s individual job, dignity and life.

There can be no common interest between bosses and workers, only war. Workers will always lose if they play by the boss’s rules. The power of workers lies in their ability to stop production. If they don’t use this power, they have nothing with which to bargain. Workers can stop production only if they unite as a class, disregarding the boundaries of job description, workplace and industry. Now that production is international, class solidarity must also be international. In order to fight effectively, workers must break the laws laid down by the employers and their State when they are able. When workers challenge the employers’ right to dictate what happens in the workplace, they challenge the essence of capitalism itself. The question of political power over economic power must lie at the core of any union strategy.

The American Election

The poor health of Scotland

The gulf between the health of the affluent and the poor in Scotland is exposed in a new report which shows the divide is wider in Scotland than most other countries in Europe. Only Hungary and the Czech Republic report a deeper contrast between the death rates experienced by men who left school with no qualifications and those who graduated from college or university.

The gap between women from the different academic backgrounds is greater in Scotland than any of the other 20 countries included in the research.

 Dr Gerry McCartney, head of the Public Health Observatory Division for health improvement agency NHS Health Scotland, said: "It is a massive injustice. If you are a child born just a mile from where I live you have got a 50:50 chance of making it to your 65th birthday. That is an appalling record."

 There were 501 more deaths per 100,000 men per year among 30 to 59-year-old Scottish male manual workers, than among non-manual staff. This was a greater difference than in all the 13 other European countries included in this aspect of the research. In England and Wales the difference was 222 deaths, and in Switzerland it was 121.

What is this thing with nationhood?

The capitalist class flood the air waves with illusory phrases such as, “national economic interest,” “national security,” “national unity,” “national competitiveness.” We are told that we all rise or fall together — as one nation and one people.

One of the key areas for nationalist talk is the economy. Patriotic voters are urged to ignore class divisions, shun unions, and join the bankers and bosses, sacrificing their own worker interests for the “good of the nation.” But let’s get real. Cuts, austerity measures, and wage freezes benefit only the rich, not the whole country. The capitalist economy can never work for all of us, because it’s designed for the wealthy, who relentlessly endeavour to widen the gap between rich and poor.

THE WIDENING GAP

Christia Freeland has spent 20 years of her life working for the Financial Times and Reuters and she has recently turned her long experience of the owning class into a book about them. Entitled Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich it was recently reviewed by the press. "In the 1970s, the top 1% of earners in America captured about 10% of national income. Today their share has more than doubled to 22%. .... Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have the combined wealth (about $100 billion) of the bottom 40% of the US population - about 120m people." (Sunday Times, 28 October) RD

THE CLASS DIVIDE

The daily press in Britain is fond of creating the myth that workers are gradually improving their economic position in society but occasionally a journalist will report on what is really happening. Here is an example from the writer Philip Collins giving the facts about Britain. "On current trends, an ordinary family will have 15 per cent less cash coming in by 2020 than 2008. This has happened all over the world. Blue-collar workers in America have hardly had a pay rise in 40 years. Their counterparts in Germany and Canada have been stuck for a decade. In the UK the household fuel has risen 110 per cent, council tax by 67 per cent and food is 37 per cent more expensive than in 2000." (Times, 1 November) Needless to say during this period the owning class have improved their economic standing. RD

War

To be sure, Socialist Courier is offering no defence of American policy. Where US interests are challenged there are no lengths American government won’t go to, nor the stinking depths it will sink, to secure its own ends, regardless of the cost of life.  Yet the focus on the role of American imperialism and the couching of anti-war sentiments in terms of US withdrawal from the world stage presents itself as if the American government had some choice in pursuing an imperialist policy, that its actions result from some mysteriously gung-ho national characteristic, rather than from the dictates of capitalist economy. It also ignores the fact that even if the US ceased to be the disruptive force for chaos in the region, there are plenty of willing understudies to take over that role. Every country in the world adopts a policy that it hopes will advance the interests of their capitalist masters. Duplicity and double-dealing are the norm in the cut-throat world of capitalism. All capitalist states are basically imperialist in character and ambition.

While it is important that workers oppose war, it is just as important that they recognise just why armed conflicts between states break out and in whose interests wars are waged. Without setting war in its true context some are going to oppose war and its effects, yet will still be prepared to support capitalism , as in the anti-war movement many still do, and then it will be a life of continual constant campaigning. The weakness of the anti-war movement is that the majority want nothing more than a return to capitalist "peace" rather than the overthrow of the system that causes war.

Socialists are always on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors and the massive use of overwhelming force by the US and Nato clearly exposes it as the oppressors. But just because we sympathise with the victims of US/Nato oppression does not mean that we favour the solutions popular amongst them. "Anti-imperialism" is the slogan of local elites who wish to dominate the region in place of the US, a situation which would still leave the mass of the population there exploited and oppressed.

Workers around the world share a lot in common. We all want peace and security for our families and a chance to participate in and share the production of wealth. In a conflict over which state and ruling classes should control a region, no working class interest is involved except in so far as it is they who are its innocent victims and need the killing, maiming and destruction to stop - without qualification or equivocation. Peace groups should be congratulated for their humanitarian outlook and attempts to stop the war but they must also be reminded to work to end the cause of all conflicts – capitalism

Cuba's Capitalism

The misty-eyed support for Castro's Cuba would not be so worrying were it confined to the ranks of Stalinists; however, its tendrils reach well beyond them to many Scots. The US trade embargo established in 1960 — the world’s longest-running trade sanctions — continue to squeeze Cuba’s finances, targeting foreign companies that do business with Havana for huge fines. But what has changed in recent years is that Raul Castro now publicly acknowledges that the island’s most nagging economic problems are mainly the result of bureaucracy and excessive state control.

The Castro regime has proven remarkably resilient and has maintained a tight control over the economy. At times, this has meant a heavy hand. None of this has abolished the commodity nature of production, nor the wages system. Generous subsidies from Moscow kept the island’s economy afloat until 1991, when the aid was cut off by the Soviet collapse. A period of painful austerity set in that Cuba has never really recovered from. The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the loss of Cuba’s export markets as well as the convenient supply of oil for industrial purposes led to the economy undergoing serious recession. Since then, the government has been trying to re-orientate the economy. President Raul Castro has been making headlines with easing travel restrictions and modifying agriculture land use rules. It's a cautious, free-market experiment meant to help streamline an inefficient economy. Since about 70 percent of Cuba’s food is imported. Castro has made boosting local agricultural production a priority of the reform effort, handing over 3 million acres of state-owned land to private farmers and cooperatives. But farmers still face massive red tape and restrictions on where they can sell their produce. Nor can they buy tractors, trucks or other key farming equipment without government permission.  New rules allow farmers to re-lease up to 165 acres of fallow government land. The change allows farmers to build homes on the land, which was previously prohibited. In the case of disability or death, a farmer's properties will be transferred to the surviving family. However they cannot buy tractors, trucks or other key farming equipment without government permission. In Cuba, 85% of the population is employed by the state but a pilot program will convert 222 state-owned companies into worker-run cooperatives. The government will maintain ownership of the company’s physical property and charge rent to the cooperative, but members will determine their own hours, pay and management.

Who Owns the SOUTH Pole

A switch from our usual pole.

  No one owns Antarctica, although a few countries persist in maintaining their frozen claims to slices of the continent for research and scientific purposes in line with the Antarctic Treaty. In reality, the international community is responsible for the region, operating through the Antarctic Treaty and its related agreements. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN body responsible for regulating shipping internationally, designated the Southern Ocean as a "special area"

Many parts of Antarctica have been coming under increasing pressure as the growing global demand for sea food means the region's rich resources are increasingly targeted. There are fishing boats, both legal and illegal, including a new breed that vacuum krill from the sea. 

The United States and New Zealand put forward competing plans to create a marine protected area of 1.6 million square kilometres in the Ross Sea. Another proposal would have created a reserve zone around East Antarctica - At around 1.9 million square kilometres, it would have covered an area almost three times the size of France.

For the past two weeks the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, made up of representatives from 24 governments and the European Union, has been meeting in Australia and has failed to reach agreement on new marine protected areas for the Antarctic ocean. They have deferred a decision until July 2013. Environmental groups blame Russia, China and Ukraine for blocking agreement.

"There are competing interests, in terms of commercial interests and in terms of the economic control of these areas" Steve Campbell of the Antarctic Ocean Alliance stated.

As long as power and money rule our lives the planet will never stand a chance! We talk about protecting the planet but what does that mean? Governments are more interested in protecting what share holders make. The bottom line is profits. As long as we continue to think that profits are more important than our future, the condition of this planet will get so bad it will be too late to save it.

THE RICH GET RICHER

The current economic recession has led to unemployment, house repossession and general lowering of workers standard of living, but it is not all doom and gloom. "The 100 richest people on the planet added $12.7 billion to their collective net worth this week after worse-than-forecast corporate earnings in the U.S. wiped out most of the gains global stocks had posted earlier in the week. Mexican Carlos Slim, 72, increased his fortune $1.8 billion after Telmex, the land-line unit of his Mexico City-based telecommunications company America Movil (AMXL) SAB, said on Wednesday it will begin offering high-speed Internet service without binding it with a phone line package. Slim remains the world's richest person with a $77.6 billion fortune, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index." (Bloomberg, 19 October) RD

EXPENSIVE COCKTAILS

Newspapers and television from time to time run items about the excessive drinking of young workers. We are regaled by journalist painting a dire picture of workers behaving badly after too much to drink. Little or nothing is ever mentioned about the owning class and drink, but here is one of their tipples that no worker is likely to purchase. "Salvatore Calabrese broke the record for the world's most expensive cocktail with his 'Salvatore's Legacy' drink which was made up of ingredients more than 200 years old. Salvatore, whose nickname is 'The Maestro', made the costly concoction using 1778 Clos de Griffier Vieux Cognac, 1770 Kummel Liqueur, Dubb Orange Curacao circa 1860 and two dashes of Angostura Bitters circa 1900s. The drink was valued at £5,500, smashing the previous record for the world's most expensive cocktail that was held by The Skyview Bar of Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai, which cost £3,766.52 a glass." (Daily Mail, 15 October) RD

Poverty means failing in school

Children who live in poverty in Scotland are already failing before school starts, a new study from Save the Children report suggested. Youngsters from poorer backgrounds were twice as likely to start primary school with developmental difficulties.

 The study found poorer children were twice as likely to have emotional and physical development difficulties. They were also twice as likely to have problems with communication and expressing themselves or making themselves understood. The report's authors said poorer youngsters were 50% more likely to face difficulties mixing with other children and were 40% more likely to be behind in their cognitive development - the ability to gain knowledge and learn. Figures from later in the education system showed that these children begin their school life behind their classmates and never catch up.

China, Chairman Mao, and Capitalism

0.1% of all households in China hold nearly half of the total wealth said the report released by Boston Consulting Group.  A long way from the image of Mao's China which was that of a regimented and spartan but egalitarian society, without hierarchical class distinctions. The blatant inequalities of post-Mao China have served only to enhance the image in retrospect. Yet the image was always an illusion, a meticulously maintained lie. China under Mao was, like China before Mao and China after Mao, a class-divided society. Since 1949, all top party leaders have lived and worked under extremely privileged conditions and in virtually total isolation from ordinary people.

Mao mobilised terror witch-hunts in which anyone refusing to wholeheartedly join in would find themselves a target. He repeatedly used this strategy throughout his career to gain and hold power, culminating in the infamous Cultural Revolution, which accounted for some 100 million people being humiliated, tortured, maimed and, in 3 million instances, murdered.

His callousness is almost beyond the scope of human imagining. In one year, 22 million people died of starvation – brought about primarily through Mao’s disastrous project to make China – then one of the poorest countries on Earth – into a nuclear super-power. The famines and over-work induced by the programme led to 38 million deaths. While people starved he would gorge himself on whole chickens and huge quantities of meat and fish.

He used women almost as imperial concubines, procured from the local labour force. Anyone who objected to his and other leaders’ privileges amongst squalor were derided as “petit-bourgeois egalitarians”.

Mao was more concentrated on fighting the nationalist government than the Japanese. On the Long March (a period of retreat by the Red Army from the nationalists), Mao and the other leaders didn’t march with their soldiers: they were carried. And the workers and peasantry have been carrying the party officials ever since. It is argued that Mao deliberately meandered along the Long March in order to strengthen his grip on the party before they met up with the rest of the army.

Some quotes of Mao:

“The present-day capitalist economy in China is a capitalist economy which for the most part is under the control of the People’s Government… It is not an ordinary but a particular kind of capitalist economy, namely, a state-capitalist economy of a new type”

“The transformation of capitalism into socialism is to be accomplished through state capitalism….”

“Some workers are advancing too fast and won’t allow the capitalists to make any profit at all. We should try to educate these workers and capitalists and help them gradually (but the sooner the better) adapt themselves to our state policy, namely, to make China’s private industry and commerce mainly serve the nation’s economy and the people’s livelihood and partly earn profits for the capitalists and in this way embark on the path of state capitalism….”

“the character of the Chinese revolution at the present stage is not proletarian-socialist but bourgeois-democratic….”

“A certain degree of capitalist development will be an inevitable result of the victory of the democratic revolution in economically backward
China….”

“it will guarantee legitimate profits to properly managed state, private and co-operative enterprises–so that both the public and the private sectors and both labour and capital will work together to develop industrial production…” [a very 'marxist' class interpretation indeed!]

” A sharp distinction should be made between the feudal exploitation practiced by landlords and rich peasants, which must be abolished, and the industrial and commercial enterprises run by landlords and rich peasants, which must be protected…”

“To counter imperialist oppression and raise her backward economy to a higher level, China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and people’s livelihood…Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it.”