Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Peter Watkin's 1964 Culloden
Polluting Regardless Of Its Effets
An article in the Toronto Star of September 15 focused on the Norwegian government's efforts to produce oil without endangering the environment. Norway is one of only five countries making sufficient progress towards their target cuts in greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, the only legally binding international agreement to combat climate change. This means little when the US, Canada, and China, who have not signed the agreement carry on polluting regardless of its effect on the environment. But even Norway has its problems – the state-owned Statoil injects steam underground to thin the bitumen and then pumps it to the surface. After diluting the bitumen with lighter hydrocarbons, it is sent to the refinery as in situ drilling. The process burns up a lot of energy to produce a single barrel of crude oil. It also produces two or three more times the greenhouse gas emissions per barrel than open pit mining in the Alberta oilsands that has received so much criticism. The point is that under capitalism profit is the determinant and no well meaning government can get around that fact. Only a system of common ownership where production would use common sense will alter it. John Ayers.
Going In Circles
Oh the loyalty of capital – Dutch multinational, Royal DSM is now locating its plants in the US where there is an abundant supply of cheap natural gas and a 'very lightly regulated labour' market. (New York Times, Oct 5 2014). Apparently China, where the corporation has forty plants, is losing its edge as a source from which to serve the world. Is globalization making a U-turn? The paper asks. Not really, more like going in circles searching for the highest profit possible with no regard to the consequences for workers and their families! John Ayers.
Common Ownership
Tuesday, December 02, 2014
A Wasteful Society
Flaunting Their Wealth
Arguing Socialism
Monday, December 01, 2014
No Class War Here
The House Of Lolly
Learning from the past
The non-market socialist position needs to be promoted urgently because humans have laid the basis for our extinction using capitalist practices and thinking. The intensity, frequency and scope of natural disasters is linked substantially to climate change. The Socialist Party see non-market socialism as the only way to address the combined crises we face, which are results of a capitalist system based in production for profit, relying on exchange rather than use. This system contorts and confuses the values, relationships and structures that ideally exist between people and between people and nature. Capital is money that begets more money. The modern state is the handmaiden to capital. Today, non-market socialists make the same points about the plethora of half-baked schemes — fair trade, carbon trading, community currencies and so on — that cannot lead to socialism. Money and markets represent capitalist power. Capitalists are defined by money, their power is monetary power, their logic is a market-based logic. Socialism must mean sharing power, the power to decide what is produced, how it is produced and for whom. Socialism must be state-free and class-free because states and classes represent exclusive power and needs to be want-free, sustainable and just as well. The motto “from each according to ability, to each according to need” envisions not some abstract, total equality, but rather a sensible, humane distribution of responsibilities
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Conflict And Its Cause
Now that China has become a major economic power, it needs powerful armed forces (to match other super powers) to protect and further its economic interests and ambitions. Recently released statistics show that China spends $188 billion annually on the military, second only to that of the US. This is pushing other Asian countries to increase their 'defense' spending. Viet Nam's budget has increased 83% in the last five years, Japan's $48 billion budget is the biggest ever, expanding its main coast guard fleet from forty-one vessels to three hundred and eighty-nine. Its proximity to China and Russia is driving the spending. The capitalist class in every country needs access to raw materials and markets to gain its share of the profits. Conflict and war are inevitable at some point, as we have seen many times in the past. John Ayers.
Nuclear Weapons Renewal
Thought we were getting safer as the cold war ended and nuclear weapons arsenals would be de-commissioned? Think again – the US for one is ramping up nuclear weapon production to replace the aging stockpile. A sprawling, state-of-the-art plant in Missouri has thousands of employees working on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. This comes under a president who made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. Capitalism needs to show who is boss when it comes to discussion of treaties. It is an antagonistic system that can never change. John Ayers.
A Crazy Society
Time to stop sitting on the fence
Saturday, November 29, 2014
No Problems For Some
While workers are anxiously trying to keep up with rising costs and low increases in pay, there's no such problem at the other end of the scale. Two former vice presidents of the Pan-Am games committee left after less than four years on the job and managed to win severance payments of over $300,000. John Ayers.
Political Nonsense
Mother Of The Free?
Socialists for a free society
Friday, November 28, 2014
For a World Without Borders
The existence of migrant workers offers the possibility of divide and rule, bosses have not always been successful in their unbridled exploitation of migrant workers. It is worth recounting a dispute in Sweden when Latvian workers were brought in to refurbish a school by the subcontractor on 9 euros an hour, rather than the nationally agreed 15 euros. The Swedish Byggnads union picketed the site and drew accusations of xenophobia from bosses and the Latvian government. The response of the Swedish union was not to demand “Swedish jobs for Swedish workers”, but to place a full statement in the leading Latvian newspaper inviting workers coming to Sweden to join the trade union. Solidarity between workers is not automatic AND the existence of separate racial and ethnic groups could lead to either unity or fragmentation, depending on the role played by workers associations. The disputes in the UK construction industry and in oil refineries in January 2009, under the slogan of “British Jobs For British Workers”, were a salutary lesson in the importance of uniting indigenous and migrant workers, and of the role of trade unions. While it is true that some sectors are dominated by these migrant workers, for instance in agriculture and food processing, they are also employed alongside British workers as bus drivers and on building sites. Where Polish workers have been in organised workplaces they have been on strike alongside British workers.
Genetic Damage in Jadugora, India
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Right now there are hundreds of campaigns globally for fossil fuel divestment as a strategy in the fight against climate change. Many are pr...