For more than 25 years Cardinal Roger M. Mahony served the Roman Catholic Church in Los Angeles, but his retiral nearly 2 years ago is hardly likely to be a peaceful one. 'Internal church personnel files released this week as part of a civil court case reveal that he and his top adviser knowingly shielded priests accused of child sexual abuse from law enforcement. ...... Lawyers for the Los Angeles Archdiocese fought for years to prevent the release of the files, but a demand for transparency was a primary goal of the more than 500 victims of clergy abuse who signed a record settlement for $660 million with the archdiocese in July 2007. When a judge ordered the files to be made public despite the church's objections, the archdiocese fought to be allowed to redact names and identifying details. But it recently lost that battle and now awaits an imminent cascade of 30,000 more documents that could further tarnish Cardinal Mahony's legacy.' (New York Times, 22 January) The Roman Catholic Church like other institutions inside capitalism may speak movingly about honour and morality but in practice they are prepared to spend $660 million to keep their child abuse secret. RD
The Glasgow & Edinburgh Branches Blog. Towards a better understanding of the world, in order to change it.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
THE HUNGRY SOCIETY
Socialists are scorned by the "practical" people who want to deal with capitalism's problems one by one in a series of reforms of capitalism instead of getting rid of the whole system. Here is a recent example. 'A coalition of 100 UK development charities and faith groups will on Wednesday launch a major campaign to lobby David Cameron, the prime minister, to use Britain's presidency of the G8 to leverage action on ending global hunger. The If campaign is the largest coalition of its kind since Make Poverty History in 2005, the last time Britain held the G8 presidency. ..... In a report published to coincide with the launch, Enough Food for Everyone If, campaigners estimate that 28% of children in developing countries are underweight or stunted.' (Guardian, 23 January) The report goes on to say that at present "one in eight people go to bed hungry every night, and each year 2.3 million children die from malnutrition." This is the result of "practical" solutions. RD
Who owns the North Pole - part 56
The white wilderness' black plague
The Arctic is changing at a breathtaking pace, which has oil and gas companies flocking to the region. Thawing sea ice and improved technology is opening up the race for natural resource exploration in the Arctic Circle, home to nearly a quarter of the world's untapped oil reserves. Natural resources that will become much more accessible when the Arctic ice melts are of critical importance. International oil companies are racing to develop new oilfields in the Arctic.
China is hungry for natural resources, and the Arctic is home to a wealth of them. Beijing insists that its interest in the region is first and foremost for research purposes, that the Arctic can help shed light on climate change, that it offers useful shipping routes, and so on and so forth. Beijing would also welcome a chance to be granted observer status on the Arctic Council. At a conference in Tromsø, the Chinese ambassador to Norway resorted to a linguistic slight of hand to justify his country's focus on the Artic region: Northeastern China, Zhao explained, stretches almost to 50 degrees north latitude, making his country what he called "a near-Arctic state." According to that logic, the German island of Sylt, which lies at 54 degrees north latitude, could also be described as "near-Arctic" -- but no one would.
Chinese companies have understood that although oil and gas from the Arctic could make a long-term contribution to the country's energy supply, it won't come cheap. China will have to "play by the rules of capitalism." China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) wants to acquire its Canadian competitor Nexen, but the deal first has to be approved by US authorities. Beijing's raw-materials managers are also eyeing Greenland. Just outside the capital, Nuuk, a British company has teamed up with Chinese financiers to develop a giant iron ore mine. Over 2,300 Chinese workers will be employed here, boosting the island's population by 4 percent. The total investment will be around €1.7 billion. Chinese investment in Greenland's mining sector would be as welcome as investment from any other country. "China is all over the world. It is no surprise that they are also interested in Greenland's resources," said Sara Olsvig is a member of the Danish parliament who represents a separatist party in Greenland.
Norway's new Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide declared that "the Arctic is not special in legal terms; it is just an ocean." The Antarctic is protected by a special treaty. "Some people have the misconception that the Arctic is similar to the Antarctic, a common heritage of mankind. But whilst the Antarctic is a continent, the Arctic is an ocean. And it is governed by the law of the sea. It is an area of opportunity." The fate of the Arctic affects the whole planet. Yet Norways minister insists "We need no specific rules like the ones that apply to Antarctica. The Arctic is not something completely unique compared to other waters."
For the Danes, European Union solidarity ends at the Arctic Circle. Countries like Germany are only welcome as "guests," say Danish polar strategists. Diplomats from Finland, Iceland and Sweden are upset; indigenous groups are furious. Five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are meet behind closed doors to discuss the region's future. Many of those who have interests in the Arctic are not invited. "This is our homeland, why shouldn't we have a say?" asked Gunn-Britt Retter, a Norwegian who defends the interests of the Sami people in the Arctic Council. Members of the Inuit Circumpolar Council are also displeased.
The Arctic Council produced a carefully crafted diplomatic text. the existing legal framework "provides a solid foundation for responsible management by the five coastal States." The statement also emphasized that "We ... see no need to develop a new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean." The Arctic Council use scientific data and the somewhat vague rules of international law to increase and extend their influence. Outside investors need legal security, and to know that the agreements they enter into won't suddenly lose their validity.
"We are witnessing a unique historical situation," says Rüdiger Gerdes, a physicist studying sea ice at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, in Bremerhaven, Germany. "As new ocean territory opens, it awakens new greed."
"Around the Arctic there is neither the technology nor the capacity to respond to oil accidents," says Alexander Shestakov, the head of the WWF Arctic Program. "That isn't just the opinion of an environmental organization, it's an acknowledged fact." Environmental protection has never been a high priority for Russian strategists, who see the energy sector as the instrument Moscow can use to cement its position as a world power. For decades, Moscow ignored environmental degradation above the Arctic Circle. Putin has promised to adhere to "strict environmental guidelines," but just how little these assurances mean can be seen in the pioneering project at the Prirazlomnoye oilfield. If an accident occurred here, the platform's crew would be left completely to its own devices, with the closest rescue team stationed 1,000 kilometers away in the Barents Sea port city of Murmansk. Gazprom Neft Shelf is the Gazprom subsidiary that holds the license for the Prirazlomnoye oilfield, and its emergency plan for handling potential environmental damages currently consists of three axes, 25 buckets, 15 shovels, 15 rakes and two all-terrain vehicles. The drilling platform's insurance against environmental damage amounts to a laughable €180,000. In December 2011, a mobile drilling platform called Kolskaya sank in the Sea of Okhotsk, 200 kilometers off the coast of Sakhalin island, while being towed by an icebreaker. Gazflot, another Gazprom subsidiary, had been using the platform outside of the approved season. With 53 of the 67 crew members on the rig declared dead or missing in the icy sea, it was the largest number of causalities that an accident in the Russian oil sector has seen. According to state-run regulatory authorities, pipelines here in the world's largest country burst at over 25,000 locations each year. Greenpeace estimates this leads to leaks of 5 million tons of oil -- seven times the amount that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. Snowmelt here in spring and rain in summer wash around 500,000 metric tons of oil into the region's major rivers and then into the Arctic Ocean.
"The companies would rather pay the laughably low fines," Greenpeace activist Roman Dolgov says. When Greenpeace reported 14 oil spills in Komi last year, Russia's environmental authorities fined Lukoil, a company with annual sales of €80 billion, a total penalty equivalent to €27,500.
Yekaterina Dyakova, a biology teacher at the village of Ust-Usa said "Everywhere else, oil is seen as black gold," she adds. "For us, it's the black plague."
Once the villagers drank the water from the river, but to do so now could be fatal. In between the rainbow-colored streaks of oil, pale foam floats toward the Arctic. A doctor has kept records of patients' medical histories in Ust-Usa and the surrounding villages. The incidence of cancer is 50 percent higher than it was in 2000, and children and teenagers suffer from respiratory illnesses twice as often. Few men in these villages ever reach retirement age. Average life expectancy here is 58, compared to a national average of 70.
The Arctic is changing at a breathtaking pace, which has oil and gas companies flocking to the region. Thawing sea ice and improved technology is opening up the race for natural resource exploration in the Arctic Circle, home to nearly a quarter of the world's untapped oil reserves. Natural resources that will become much more accessible when the Arctic ice melts are of critical importance. International oil companies are racing to develop new oilfields in the Arctic.
China is hungry for natural resources, and the Arctic is home to a wealth of them. Beijing insists that its interest in the region is first and foremost for research purposes, that the Arctic can help shed light on climate change, that it offers useful shipping routes, and so on and so forth. Beijing would also welcome a chance to be granted observer status on the Arctic Council. At a conference in Tromsø, the Chinese ambassador to Norway resorted to a linguistic slight of hand to justify his country's focus on the Artic region: Northeastern China, Zhao explained, stretches almost to 50 degrees north latitude, making his country what he called "a near-Arctic state." According to that logic, the German island of Sylt, which lies at 54 degrees north latitude, could also be described as "near-Arctic" -- but no one would.
Chinese companies have understood that although oil and gas from the Arctic could make a long-term contribution to the country's energy supply, it won't come cheap. China will have to "play by the rules of capitalism." China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) wants to acquire its Canadian competitor Nexen, but the deal first has to be approved by US authorities. Beijing's raw-materials managers are also eyeing Greenland. Just outside the capital, Nuuk, a British company has teamed up with Chinese financiers to develop a giant iron ore mine. Over 2,300 Chinese workers will be employed here, boosting the island's population by 4 percent. The total investment will be around €1.7 billion. Chinese investment in Greenland's mining sector would be as welcome as investment from any other country. "China is all over the world. It is no surprise that they are also interested in Greenland's resources," said Sara Olsvig is a member of the Danish parliament who represents a separatist party in Greenland.
Norway's new Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide declared that "the Arctic is not special in legal terms; it is just an ocean." The Antarctic is protected by a special treaty. "Some people have the misconception that the Arctic is similar to the Antarctic, a common heritage of mankind. But whilst the Antarctic is a continent, the Arctic is an ocean. And it is governed by the law of the sea. It is an area of opportunity." The fate of the Arctic affects the whole planet. Yet Norways minister insists "We need no specific rules like the ones that apply to Antarctica. The Arctic is not something completely unique compared to other waters."
For the Danes, European Union solidarity ends at the Arctic Circle. Countries like Germany are only welcome as "guests," say Danish polar strategists. Diplomats from Finland, Iceland and Sweden are upset; indigenous groups are furious. Five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean are meet behind closed doors to discuss the region's future. Many of those who have interests in the Arctic are not invited. "This is our homeland, why shouldn't we have a say?" asked Gunn-Britt Retter, a Norwegian who defends the interests of the Sami people in the Arctic Council. Members of the Inuit Circumpolar Council are also displeased.
The Arctic Council produced a carefully crafted diplomatic text. the existing legal framework "provides a solid foundation for responsible management by the five coastal States." The statement also emphasized that "We ... see no need to develop a new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean." The Arctic Council use scientific data and the somewhat vague rules of international law to increase and extend their influence. Outside investors need legal security, and to know that the agreements they enter into won't suddenly lose their validity.
"We are witnessing a unique historical situation," says Rüdiger Gerdes, a physicist studying sea ice at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, in Bremerhaven, Germany. "As new ocean territory opens, it awakens new greed."
"Around the Arctic there is neither the technology nor the capacity to respond to oil accidents," says Alexander Shestakov, the head of the WWF Arctic Program. "That isn't just the opinion of an environmental organization, it's an acknowledged fact." Environmental protection has never been a high priority for Russian strategists, who see the energy sector as the instrument Moscow can use to cement its position as a world power. For decades, Moscow ignored environmental degradation above the Arctic Circle. Putin has promised to adhere to "strict environmental guidelines," but just how little these assurances mean can be seen in the pioneering project at the Prirazlomnoye oilfield. If an accident occurred here, the platform's crew would be left completely to its own devices, with the closest rescue team stationed 1,000 kilometers away in the Barents Sea port city of Murmansk. Gazprom Neft Shelf is the Gazprom subsidiary that holds the license for the Prirazlomnoye oilfield, and its emergency plan for handling potential environmental damages currently consists of three axes, 25 buckets, 15 shovels, 15 rakes and two all-terrain vehicles. The drilling platform's insurance against environmental damage amounts to a laughable €180,000. In December 2011, a mobile drilling platform called Kolskaya sank in the Sea of Okhotsk, 200 kilometers off the coast of Sakhalin island, while being towed by an icebreaker. Gazflot, another Gazprom subsidiary, had been using the platform outside of the approved season. With 53 of the 67 crew members on the rig declared dead or missing in the icy sea, it was the largest number of causalities that an accident in the Russian oil sector has seen. According to state-run regulatory authorities, pipelines here in the world's largest country burst at over 25,000 locations each year. Greenpeace estimates this leads to leaks of 5 million tons of oil -- seven times the amount that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. Snowmelt here in spring and rain in summer wash around 500,000 metric tons of oil into the region's major rivers and then into the Arctic Ocean.
"The companies would rather pay the laughably low fines," Greenpeace activist Roman Dolgov says. When Greenpeace reported 14 oil spills in Komi last year, Russia's environmental authorities fined Lukoil, a company with annual sales of €80 billion, a total penalty equivalent to €27,500.
Yekaterina Dyakova, a biology teacher at the village of Ust-Usa said "Everywhere else, oil is seen as black gold," she adds. "For us, it's the black plague."
Once the villagers drank the water from the river, but to do so now could be fatal. In between the rainbow-colored streaks of oil, pale foam floats toward the Arctic. A doctor has kept records of patients' medical histories in Ust-Usa and the surrounding villages. The incidence of cancer is 50 percent higher than it was in 2000, and children and teenagers suffer from respiratory illnesses twice as often. Few men in these villages ever reach retirement age. Average life expectancy here is 58, compared to a national average of 70.
Scottish Nationalism
Due to a broken link Socialist Courier is re-posting Vic Vanni's 1975 articles on the history of Scottish nationalism
Scottish Nationalism
Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to "The Nation". Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests.
What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.
This is certainly true of Scotland and far from having a common history or anything else the population there are mainly the descendants of native Picts, invaders from Ireland (the original Scots), Western Europe and Scandinavia. After centuries of what were really tribal wars the whole land came under one king by the middle of the ninth century and the nation was born –by the coercion of the people and in the interests of a class of bandit chieftains.
Right up until the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1707 there were really two distinct nations in Scotland. The Highlanders spoke Gaelic and had a culture (way of life) very different from that of the dialect-English speaking Lowlanders. Indeed
“In rural districts, the Scottish dialect or dialects was barely intelligible even to a Scot of another district” (James G. Kellas. Modern Scotland –the Nation Since1870. p. 7)
So the nationalist idea of a once united Scotland is just a myth. Yet no one can deny that despite over two hundred years of Scotland's incorporation within the United Kingdom most Scots feel themselves to be part of a separate nation. This can be explained by the fact that the Act of Union allowed Scotland to retain its own law, religion, and education system thus ensuring the continuation of national identity.
Scottish Nationalism
Nationalists believe that all classes in society should hold allegiance to "The Nation". Socialists do not and point out how nations have always been the creation of a ruling group having nothing to do with working-class interests.
What is a nation? It is simply the people and the territory which have been appropriated by a class of robbers at some point in history. It has less to do with a common language, religion, race, culture, and all the other things which nationalists imagine or pretend are essential ingredients in the making of nations.
This is certainly true of Scotland and far from having a common history or anything else the population there are mainly the descendants of native Picts, invaders from Ireland (the original Scots), Western Europe and Scandinavia. After centuries of what were really tribal wars the whole land came under one king by the middle of the ninth century and the nation was born –by the coercion of the people and in the interests of a class of bandit chieftains.
Right up until the union of the Scottish and English crowns in 1707 there were really two distinct nations in Scotland. The Highlanders spoke Gaelic and had a culture (way of life) very different from that of the dialect-English speaking Lowlanders. Indeed
“In rural districts, the Scottish dialect or dialects was barely intelligible even to a Scot of another district” (James G. Kellas. Modern Scotland –the Nation Since1870. p. 7)
So the nationalist idea of a once united Scotland is just a myth. Yet no one can deny that despite over two hundred years of Scotland's incorporation within the United Kingdom most Scots feel themselves to be part of a separate nation. This can be explained by the fact that the Act of Union allowed Scotland to retain its own law, religion, and education system thus ensuring the continuation of national identity.
Friday, January 25, 2013
NO MORE SURPLUS VALUE? DIE!
Socialists used to say that the perfect worker from the standpoint of an employer would be one who left school, worked two nights and a Sunday for fifty years and then dropped dead on the first day he went to collect his old age pension. If that seems a bit cynical then you haven't heard about this Japanese politician. 'Japan's new finance minister has claimed that the elderly should 'hurry up and die' to help ease the cost to the taxpayer of caring for them, it has emerged. Taro Aso made the controversial statement as he discussed how to deal with the country's emerging demographic crisis as its population continues to shrink while life expectancy soars.' (Daily Mail, 22 January) RD
A DEADLY SOCIETY
Researchers found that patients were almost 10% more likely to die when there were fewer medically-trained staff available. 'It is thought that those being treated in overstretched hospitals are more prone to developing fatal complications and infections because they are not properly monitored. The study from the University of Southampton and Imperial College London looked at almost 70 million records of patients who had surgery between 1997 and 2009. .....They found that across the NHS every year around 28,000 patients died as a result of complications which might potentially have been cured, the Daily Mail reported.' (Daily Telegraph, 22 January) The alternatives seem very clear - be a member of the owning class and get the best possible health care or be a member of the working class and risk the chance of death because of possible lack of staff. RD
Religious Belief
Readers of Socialist Courier may find this article by Jeff Schweitzer on religion of interest.
The human brain manages to make sense of a chaotic world by picking out patterns from the noise bombarding our senses. We don't see the trillions of photons coming into our eyes as pointillist smears of colors; we see trees and forests. We process all of that incessant sensory input and come up with a familiar scene filled with grasses, animals, lakes and mountains. In addition, we are extraordinarily good at matching cause to effect so that we can quickly learn the behaviors necessary for survival. Burning your hand quickly teaches that fire causes pain. Understanding patterns, combined with correlating cause and effect, will save your life.
Unfortunately, this incredible talent for seeking patterns and linking cause to effect has a dark side, too. Humans see patterns where none really exist and cause where only chance reigns supreme. We cannot seem to turn off our pattern-seeking or cause-effect neurons. Sometimes the results are benign: We identify animal shapes in cloud formations or see a human face in a rock cliff or in an outcropping on the surface of Mars. A baseball player wears the same underwear during a hitting streak, believing that the underwear is the cause of his good fortune. These are silly manifestations of our mental abilities, but with no consequence. The dark side appears when we attribute cause and effect falsely in a way that has long-term impacts on our behavior and society.
Religion was born of fear of the unknown, of the drive to control the uncontrollable, of the need to have mastery over one's fate in the face of an uncertain world. The first ideas of religion arose not from any awe of nature's wonder and order that would imply an invisible intelligent designer but from concerns for the events of everyday life and how the vast unknown of nature affected daily existence. To allay fears of disease, death, starvation, cold, injury and pain, people fervently hoped that they could solicit the aid of greater powers, hoped deeply that they could somehow control their fate and trusted that the ugly reality of death did not mean the end. Hope and fear combine powerfully in a frightening world of unknowns to stimulate comforting fantasies and myths about nature's plans.
The human brain is extraordinarily adept at posing questions but simply abhors the concept of leaving any unanswered. We are unable to accept "I don't know," because we cannot turn off our instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, even when none exist. So we make up answers when we don't know. We develop elaborate creation myths, sun gods, rain gods, war gods and gods of the ocean. We believe we can communicate with our gods and influence their behavior, because by doing so we gain some control, impose some order, on the chaotic mysteries of the world. By making up answers to dull the sting of ignorance, we fool ourselves into thinking we explain the world. Religion was our first attempt at physics and astronomy.
Of course, the biggest and most wrenching unknown served by religion is that of our fate upon dying. As a matter of survival, we are programmed to fear death, but perhaps unlike other animals, we have the cruel burden of contemplating this fear. Religion is one way we cope with our knowledge that death is inevitable. Religion diminishes the hurt of death's certainty and permanence and the pain of losing a loved one with the promise of reuniting in another life.
But fear of the unknown, fear of mortality and hopes for controlling and understanding nature's course do not represent the only foundation on which religion stands. Another is social cohesion. We are social animals, gregarious by nature. Cooperation is what makes the human animal -- a weak, slow and vulnerable creature -- a powerful force on Earth. But cooperation becomes more difficult with increasing numbers. Some means of maintaining social order is necessary. Early societies soon learned that rules of behavior imposed in the form of rituals enabled large groups of people to live in close proximity. Rituals create norms against which people can readily judge the behavior of others in diverse social settings. Any deviation from the norm is easily spotted and can be quickly addressed. In this way order can be maintained. Notice that modern-day teenagers express their rugged individualism by dressing identically. Any nonconforming outlier would be easy to spot. Religion offered, and offers still, an obvious means of enforcing societal rules by promising a joyous afterlife for conformers or eternal punishment for those who misbehave. Religion is used as a bribe to induce good manners.
Finally, religion was eventually transformed into an important source of raw political power, divorced from any role more benign. If religion is used as a tool to control individual behavior, someone needs to develop those rules and ensure their enforcement. Who better to act as behavior police than religious elders, shamans or high priests? What better way is there to manipulate and bend people to your will than by making up the rules by which they must live? With that influence over the daily lives of every citizen comes power traditionally reserved for city-states and empires, with all the normal trappings, including armies, treasuries and palaces.
Fear of death, the need to explain away the unknown, hopes for controlling one's destiny, a desire for social cohesion and the corrupting allure of power are the combined masters of all religion. We see all of that in the face on Mars.
The full unedited text is here.
The human brain manages to make sense of a chaotic world by picking out patterns from the noise bombarding our senses. We don't see the trillions of photons coming into our eyes as pointillist smears of colors; we see trees and forests. We process all of that incessant sensory input and come up with a familiar scene filled with grasses, animals, lakes and mountains. In addition, we are extraordinarily good at matching cause to effect so that we can quickly learn the behaviors necessary for survival. Burning your hand quickly teaches that fire causes pain. Understanding patterns, combined with correlating cause and effect, will save your life.
Unfortunately, this incredible talent for seeking patterns and linking cause to effect has a dark side, too. Humans see patterns where none really exist and cause where only chance reigns supreme. We cannot seem to turn off our pattern-seeking or cause-effect neurons. Sometimes the results are benign: We identify animal shapes in cloud formations or see a human face in a rock cliff or in an outcropping on the surface of Mars. A baseball player wears the same underwear during a hitting streak, believing that the underwear is the cause of his good fortune. These are silly manifestations of our mental abilities, but with no consequence. The dark side appears when we attribute cause and effect falsely in a way that has long-term impacts on our behavior and society.
Religion was born of fear of the unknown, of the drive to control the uncontrollable, of the need to have mastery over one's fate in the face of an uncertain world. The first ideas of religion arose not from any awe of nature's wonder and order that would imply an invisible intelligent designer but from concerns for the events of everyday life and how the vast unknown of nature affected daily existence. To allay fears of disease, death, starvation, cold, injury and pain, people fervently hoped that they could solicit the aid of greater powers, hoped deeply that they could somehow control their fate and trusted that the ugly reality of death did not mean the end. Hope and fear combine powerfully in a frightening world of unknowns to stimulate comforting fantasies and myths about nature's plans.
The human brain is extraordinarily adept at posing questions but simply abhors the concept of leaving any unanswered. We are unable to accept "I don't know," because we cannot turn off our instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, even when none exist. So we make up answers when we don't know. We develop elaborate creation myths, sun gods, rain gods, war gods and gods of the ocean. We believe we can communicate with our gods and influence their behavior, because by doing so we gain some control, impose some order, on the chaotic mysteries of the world. By making up answers to dull the sting of ignorance, we fool ourselves into thinking we explain the world. Religion was our first attempt at physics and astronomy.
Of course, the biggest and most wrenching unknown served by religion is that of our fate upon dying. As a matter of survival, we are programmed to fear death, but perhaps unlike other animals, we have the cruel burden of contemplating this fear. Religion is one way we cope with our knowledge that death is inevitable. Religion diminishes the hurt of death's certainty and permanence and the pain of losing a loved one with the promise of reuniting in another life.
But fear of the unknown, fear of mortality and hopes for controlling and understanding nature's course do not represent the only foundation on which religion stands. Another is social cohesion. We are social animals, gregarious by nature. Cooperation is what makes the human animal -- a weak, slow and vulnerable creature -- a powerful force on Earth. But cooperation becomes more difficult with increasing numbers. Some means of maintaining social order is necessary. Early societies soon learned that rules of behavior imposed in the form of rituals enabled large groups of people to live in close proximity. Rituals create norms against which people can readily judge the behavior of others in diverse social settings. Any deviation from the norm is easily spotted and can be quickly addressed. In this way order can be maintained. Notice that modern-day teenagers express their rugged individualism by dressing identically. Any nonconforming outlier would be easy to spot. Religion offered, and offers still, an obvious means of enforcing societal rules by promising a joyous afterlife for conformers or eternal punishment for those who misbehave. Religion is used as a bribe to induce good manners.
Finally, religion was eventually transformed into an important source of raw political power, divorced from any role more benign. If religion is used as a tool to control individual behavior, someone needs to develop those rules and ensure their enforcement. Who better to act as behavior police than religious elders, shamans or high priests? What better way is there to manipulate and bend people to your will than by making up the rules by which they must live? With that influence over the daily lives of every citizen comes power traditionally reserved for city-states and empires, with all the normal trappings, including armies, treasuries and palaces.
Fear of death, the need to explain away the unknown, hopes for controlling one's destiny, a desire for social cohesion and the corrupting allure of power are the combined masters of all religion. We see all of that in the face on Mars.
The full unedited text is here.
Burns Night
To some, Robert Burns was a political radical and thinker, a seditious revolutionary and a staunch republican. Research suggests that Burns was an active member of The Friends of the People, formed in 1792 and the first organisation in Scottish history to openly call for universal suffrage for all men, rich or poor. This early proto-democracy movement never really had mass support in Scotland, and was crushed by government forces by 1794. "Robert Bruce's March To Bannockburn", better known as "Scots Wha Hae", was written in response to the trial of the radical Thomas Muir. Thomas Muir sentenced to 14 years imprisonment and deportation to Botany Bay, amongst the charges he was indicted with was singing ‘Ca Ira’ in public, an unofficial anthem of the French Revolution. The last line of Scots Wha Hae is “Let us Do or Die!” - was the oath of the French revolutionaries.
Burns was an advocate of "make love not war" as penned in "I Murder Hate".
"In wars at home I'll spend my blood-
Life-giving wars of Venus.
The deities that I adore
Are Social Peace and Plenty,
I’m better pleased to make one more
Than be the death of twenty.”
In ‘Address of Beelzebub’ Burns uses satire and has the poem’s narrator, Auld Nick, praising the landlord class encouraging them to actually brutalise their tenants even more than they have been doing.
“And they, be Damned, what right hae they
To meat or sleep or light of day
Far less to riches, power or freedom
But what your Lordships like tae gie them.”
"Man Was Made to Mourn - A Dirge" is a cheerless poem and yet another example of Robert Burn's loathing of the class differences between the workers and the land-owners. Burns once told his brother that "he could not well conceive a more mortifying picture of human life than a man seeking work." Burns felt it was horrible that a "wight," a human being, needing to earn money and wanting to be useful to people, was able to work only by permission of somebody else - somebody who could make profit from him! That humiliating and desperate "sentiment" came to life with "Man was Made to Mourn," It shows again his deep compassion for the man trying to find work in order to feed and house his family. Two lines raise it to the level of a modern proverb:
'Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!'
Throughout history, countless thousands continue to mourn as a result of pain, torture, and loss of life inflicted upon them or those near and dear to them--innocent men, women, and children.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
A SOCIETY OF DESPAIR
Capitalism kills millions in its wars. It starves millions to death amidst plenty, but the awful feeling of helplessness and despair that it engenders in everyday life can only be guessed at by the following statistics. 'The number of people taking their own life in the UK rose "significantly" in 2011, latest figures from the Office for National Statistics have shown. Some 6,045 people killed themselves in 2011, an increase of 437 since 2010.' (BBC News, 22 January) RD
A REDUNDANT SOCIETY
Capitalism is a social system based on slumps and booms and no amount of political posturing by so-called statesmen will change that. 'The number of jobless people around the world rose by 4 million in 2012 to 197 million and is expected to grow further, the UN labour agency warns. In a report, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said the worst affected were youth: nearly 13% of the under 24s were unemployed. It said global unemployment was projected to rise 5.1 million this year and by a further 3 million in 2014.' (BBC News, 22 January) This immense waste of human endeavour is the norm for capitalism. Inside world socialism think of the abundance that these millions of producers could contribute to society. RD
Banking on charity? Don't !
Charities lost a protracted battle against the banks.
The trustees savings banks which operated prior to 1986 had a tradition of charitable giving. When TSB Group plc was floated in that year there were established several charitable foundations. The Deed of Covenant dated 10 September 1986 by which TSB Group plc ("the Company") bound and obliged itself at quarterly terms to pay to the reclaimer the greater of "(a) the amount equal to one quarter of one third of 0.1946 per cent of the pre-tax profits (after deducting pre-tax losses) ... or (b) the sum of £9,730".
Following the banking crisis of 2009 and the takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group tried to change the terms of its relationship with the foundation. It wanted to half its donation and put its own staff on the foundation’s board. The following high-profile dispute resulted in the bank and foundation formally breaking their links, which will come into effect after nine years notice.
The foundation should have received £3,543,433 but the bank interpreted the small-print of accountacy rules to mean they were required to only pay £38,920 and has had this upheld by the Supreme Court.
The trustees savings banks which operated prior to 1986 had a tradition of charitable giving. When TSB Group plc was floated in that year there were established several charitable foundations. The Deed of Covenant dated 10 September 1986 by which TSB Group plc ("the Company") bound and obliged itself at quarterly terms to pay to the reclaimer the greater of "(a) the amount equal to one quarter of one third of 0.1946 per cent of the pre-tax profits (after deducting pre-tax losses) ... or (b) the sum of £9,730".
Following the banking crisis of 2009 and the takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group tried to change the terms of its relationship with the foundation. It wanted to half its donation and put its own staff on the foundation’s board. The following high-profile dispute resulted in the bank and foundation formally breaking their links, which will come into effect after nine years notice.
The foundation should have received £3,543,433 but the bank interpreted the small-print of accountacy rules to mean they were required to only pay £38,920 and has had this upheld by the Supreme Court.
There is enough food
Almost one billion children will be trapped in poverty by hunger and
malnutrition by 2025 unless action is taken, a new campaign has warned.
Kathy Galloway, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said: "In a world where there is enough food for everyone, the fact that not everyone has enough to eat is nothing short of a scandal.
Actor John Michie, is supporting the campaign. He said: "We need to solve the underlying issues which create global hunger once and for all. People are denied access to land that could produce food. Parents work tirelessly, but still can't afford to feed their children. It's unfair, it's unjust and the truth is it's totally preventable. If we get enough Scots behind this campaign we can make world leaders listen."
Did the politicians listen in 2005 when hundreds of thousands of charities churches and celebrities marched in Edinburgh to "make poverty history"? Did they listen when tens of thousands besieged Bush, Blair and the G-8 at Gleneagles?
Socialist Courier over the years has witnessed numerous campaigns and pleas from well-intentioned folk and organisations but they have always fallen short in identifying the real cause of poverty and hunger - the capitalist system and because of that failure they mis-direct their policies and solutions to symptoms and not the root of the problem. They repeat red herrings and political baloney. Reformers have wait for crumbs to fall from the overflowing plates of world capital.
IF a socialist world came about we would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health. It is not a utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition. Let’s campaign for the abolition of capitalism and not misdirect our energies in pleading to politicians.
Kathy Galloway, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said: "In a world where there is enough food for everyone, the fact that not everyone has enough to eat is nothing short of a scandal.
Actor John Michie, is supporting the campaign. He said: "We need to solve the underlying issues which create global hunger once and for all. People are denied access to land that could produce food. Parents work tirelessly, but still can't afford to feed their children. It's unfair, it's unjust and the truth is it's totally preventable. If we get enough Scots behind this campaign we can make world leaders listen."
Did the politicians listen in 2005 when hundreds of thousands of charities churches and celebrities marched in Edinburgh to "make poverty history"? Did they listen when tens of thousands besieged Bush, Blair and the G-8 at Gleneagles?
Socialist Courier over the years has witnessed numerous campaigns and pleas from well-intentioned folk and organisations but they have always fallen short in identifying the real cause of poverty and hunger - the capitalist system and because of that failure they mis-direct their policies and solutions to symptoms and not the root of the problem. They repeat red herrings and political baloney. Reformers have wait for crumbs to fall from the overflowing plates of world capital.
IF a socialist world came about we would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health. It is not a utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition. Let’s campaign for the abolition of capitalism and not misdirect our energies in pleading to politicians.
Part time job - full time poverty
Citizens Advice Scotland warned that the number of people in part-time work is pushing many to the brink of poverty.
Norma Philpott, chief executive officer of Citizens Advice and Rights Fife, said: “We are increasingly seeing people who are struggling to make ends meet because they can’t find work with enough hours. The rise in the number of people coming to us for help accessing food banks and the proportion of people turning to payday loans shows that many people who can only find part time work are being pushed into poverty.”
Norma Philpott, chief executive officer of Citizens Advice and Rights Fife, said: “We are increasingly seeing people who are struggling to make ends meet because they can’t find work with enough hours. The rise in the number of people coming to us for help accessing food banks and the proportion of people turning to payday loans shows that many people who can only find part time work are being pushed into poverty.”
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Food for thought
The Toronto Star Business section (1/12/12) reported that US home
improvement giant, Lowes, has offered $1.8 billion to buy Quebec-based
Rona. The idea is that the industry is somewhat 'overbuilt' in Canada,
meaning that the big players got greedy and expanded ahead of the
demand. The "good" thing would be that the takeover would lead to a
store 'rationalization' meaning reduction of the number of stores.
Somewhere in all this jargon is the fact that a lot of people are going
to lose their jobs -- but that's the last consideration when
accumulation of wealth is at risk. John Ayers
improvement giant, Lowes, has offered $1.8 billion to buy Quebec-based
Rona. The idea is that the industry is somewhat 'overbuilt' in Canada,
meaning that the big players got greedy and expanded ahead of the
demand. The "good" thing would be that the takeover would lead to a
store 'rationalization' meaning reduction of the number of stores.
Somewhere in all this jargon is the fact that a lot of people are going
to lose their jobs -- but that's the last consideration when
accumulation of wealth is at risk. John Ayers
THE POLLUTED SOCIETY
The leaking Japanese nuclear plant has led to badly polluted waters around Fukushima, and has led many to be wary of the fish catch in the area. 'A murasoi fish, caught close the the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, is over 2,500 times the legal safe radiation limit for seafood, the plant's operator Tokyo Electric has revealed. ....... The Japanese government has admitted that levels of contamination in the area are very high, but says that high levels of cesium were only detected in fish that are found nearest to the site of the disaster.' (Independent, 21 January) This reassuring statement by the Japanese government must put local minds to rest, but we wonder how many MPs will be having a murasoi fish supper tonight. RD
Depressed Scotland
The number of people in Scotland prescribed antidepressants has reached record levels, with more than one in seven people taking the drugs. There has been a steady rise in usage. There were 1.26 million drugs dispensed in 1993/94, increasing to 5.01 million in 2011/12.
The diagnostic criteria for depression as two weeks of low mood, irrespective of any change in the circumstances of the patient which might have left them feeling down. It even proposes that being low two weeks after bereavement should be considered depression.
Glasgow GP Des Spence argues treating depression like a medical condition is distracting attention from what really makes patients unhappy. "I think we use antidepressants too easily, for too long and that they are effective for few people (if at all)." Dr Spence's concern about the widespread use of antidepressants is they leave the real reason for someone's poor mood unexplained. He said: "Improving society's wellbeing is not in the gift of medicine nor mere medication, and over-prescribing of antidepressants serves as distraction from a wider debate about why we are so unhappy as a society."
The diagnostic criteria for depression as two weeks of low mood, irrespective of any change in the circumstances of the patient which might have left them feeling down. It even proposes that being low two weeks after bereavement should be considered depression.
Glasgow GP Des Spence argues treating depression like a medical condition is distracting attention from what really makes patients unhappy. "I think we use antidepressants too easily, for too long and that they are effective for few people (if at all)." Dr Spence's concern about the widespread use of antidepressants is they leave the real reason for someone's poor mood unexplained. He said: "Improving society's wellbeing is not in the gift of medicine nor mere medication, and over-prescribing of antidepressants serves as distraction from a wider debate about why we are so unhappy as a society."
She-Town
 |
| Jeanie Spence (Jute and Flax workers, Dundee), Lamont (National Federation of Women Workers), Agnes Brown (National Federation of Women Workers), Mary McArthur (national leader and general secretary of the National Federation of Women Workers) and Rachel Devine (Jute and Flax Workers, Dundee). |
Raw jute was produced in significant quantities in only one region of the world: the deltas of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers in Bengal in India. And for a short period – long finished by 1900 – Dundee and the surrounding district had a near monopoly on its manufacture. The Dundee jute industry was composed of many firms, most of them carrying out only one part of the process of buying, transporting, manufacturing and selling jute. Big profits were made in jute, but these were invested overseas rather than in the local economy. From the 1870s on, investment trusts launched by Dundee businessmen, channelled enormous sums into foreign investments and particularly into American railway, land and cattle companies. Dundee's ‘jute barons’ preferred to invest in American stocks rather than in developing new industries in Dundee. The result left Dundee dangerously dependent on the jute industry.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Food for though
How capitalism creates war. Japan is beginning to wake up to the fact
that China is a military as well as an economic power as the latter
flexes its muscle in SE Asia. Japan is retaliating by providing its
first military aid abroad since WWII, spending millions on training
troops in Cambodia and East Timor and providing the Philippine Coast
Guard with 10 new cutters worth $120 million. In other words, it is
building alliances against China for future confrontations that would be
called on in the event of military action. Too bad they can't put this
kind of forward thinking into scientific, medical, and educational
activities that would benefit mankind! John Ayers
that China is a military as well as an economic power as the latter
flexes its muscle in SE Asia. Japan is retaliating by providing its
first military aid abroad since WWII, spending millions on training
troops in Cambodia and East Timor and providing the Philippine Coast
Guard with 10 new cutters worth $120 million. In other words, it is
building alliances against China for future confrontations that would be
called on in the event of military action. Too bad they can't put this
kind of forward thinking into scientific, medical, and educational
activities that would benefit mankind! John Ayers
THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY
Every Sunday priests will rebuke society for its greed and trot out the old slogan of "blessed are the poor" and lecture the gullible about the evils of materialism. During the week however the church is a little less noble. 'Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929. Since then the international value of Mussolini's nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James's Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry.' (Guardian, 22 January) RD
Who put the swizz in Switzerland
Statistics say the Swiss are the richest people in the world, with net financial assets of nearly $148,000 per capita. That is a third more than the average for the next two wealthiest nations-Japan and the United States. But the ownership of that wealth, including stocks or physical assets such as land and housing, is much more unequally shared in the nation.
The top 1 percent in Switzerland control more than a third of the nation’s wealth, which is slightly larger than the share owned by the richest 1 percent in the United States. Switzerland also has the highest density of millionaires in the West, with 9.5 percent of all households having $1 million or more, and the greatest number of ultra-rich families - 366 households worth more than $100 million. Ten percent of all the world’s billionaires live there. The number of super-wealthy foreigners lured to Switzerland has doubled in the last decade, to more than 5,000. Their taxes are based on the rental value of their property rather than their income or wealth, on the condition that they do not work in the country.
Swiss companies accounted for five of the top 10 best-paid chairmen in Europe in 2011. Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck has accumulated a fortune of up to $215 million. Credit Suisse’s CEO, Brady Dougan received $75 million stock windfall he received in 2009. The annual list of Switzerland’s wealthiest 300 people published by Bilanz names has Ikea founder Kamprad in first place, at $38 billion.
The top 1 percent in Switzerland control more than a third of the nation’s wealth, which is slightly larger than the share owned by the richest 1 percent in the United States. Switzerland also has the highest density of millionaires in the West, with 9.5 percent of all households having $1 million or more, and the greatest number of ultra-rich families - 366 households worth more than $100 million. Ten percent of all the world’s billionaires live there. The number of super-wealthy foreigners lured to Switzerland has doubled in the last decade, to more than 5,000. Their taxes are based on the rental value of their property rather than their income or wealth, on the condition that they do not work in the country.
Swiss companies accounted for five of the top 10 best-paid chairmen in Europe in 2011. Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck has accumulated a fortune of up to $215 million. Credit Suisse’s CEO, Brady Dougan received $75 million stock windfall he received in 2009. The annual list of Switzerland’s wealthiest 300 people published by Bilanz names has Ikea founder Kamprad in first place, at $38 billion.
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