- Editorial: Back to the 70s?
- Pathfinders: The Biggest Question? Don’t Ask...
- Letters: 'Corbyn for Leader?' & 'Blacklisted'
- Halo Halo! Catholics and Aliens
- Cooking the Books: Is He a Leninist?
- Material World: No Peace in the Pacific
- Greasy Pole: Catching a Crabb?
- Clause Four Resurfaces
- The Rainbow Party and Its Vision of ‘Socialism’
- More Union Bashing
- The Human Condition
- Cooking the Books: Who Pays the Working Poor?
- Mixed Media: Steel City
- Book Reviews: 'Postcapitalism - A Guide to Our Future', & 'The Deluge: the Great War and the Remaking of Global Order'
- Proper Gander: Under the Concrete Carpet
- 50 Years Ago: What Runs the Labour Government?
- Action Replay: From Ashes to Ashes
- Voice From the Back
- Cartoon: Free Lunch.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Brazil's Land-grabbing
According to the
report, "Violence Against Indigenous People in Brazil," recently
published by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), the number of indigenous
people killed in the country grew 42 percent from 2013 to 2014; 138 cases were
officially registered. The majority of the murders were carried out by hit men
hired by those with economic interests in the territories. In an effort to make
way for new investment projects, the Brazilian government and transnational
corporations have been taking over ancestral indigenous lands, triggering a
rise in murders of indigenous people in Brazil.
In addition to this, there has been a steady flow of people
forced to move to small territories after being displaced by economic
development projects, as in the case of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where
the majority of the population - over 40,000 people - live concentrated on
small reservations. These are communities that are exposed to assassinations by
hired hit men, lack education and basic necessities, and endure deplorable
health conditions. Infant mortality rates in the community are high and rising:
According to official statistics, last year 785 children between the ages of 0
and 5 died. A report, titled "Projects that impact indigenous lands,"
released by CIMI in 2014, revealed that at least 519 projects have impacted 437
ancestral territories, directly affecting 204 indigenous groups. The energy
sector has most deeply affected indigenous people; of the 519 documented
projects, 267 are energy-related. In second place is infrastructure, with 196
projects. Mining is third, with 21 projects, and in fourth place, with 19 expansive
projects, is agribusiness. Ecotourism comes next with 9 projects. According to
research carried out by Ricardo Verdum at the Center for the Study of
Indigenous Populations at the Federal University in the state of Santa
Catarina, of the 23 hydroelectric dams that will be built in the Amazon, at
least 16 will have negative social and environmental effects on indigenous
territories. They will destroy the environmental conditions that these
indigenous groups depend on to live and maintain their way of life.
"In the Amazon region, the region of the Tapajos River,
we are being fenced in," João Tapajó - a member of the Arimun indigenous
group - told Truthout. "The Teles waterway is being constructed and the
BR163 highway widened. This is being done to transport the transnational
corporations' grain and minerals," added Tapajó, who is part of one of the
groups that make up the Indigenous Movement of the region Bajo Tapajós, in the
state of Pará. "We live under constant threat from agribusinesses and
lumber companies. There is a construction project to build five hydroelectric
dams on the same river. To top it off, our region is suffering from a process
of prospecting for the exploitation of minerals, by the companies Alcoa y Vale
do Rio Doce."
The states of Mato Grosso del Sur, Amazonas and Bahía figure
heavily in the statistics. An emblematic case was the brutal killing of the
indigenous woman Marinalva Kaiowá, in November of 2014. She lived in recovered
territories, land that for over 40 years has been claimed by the Guaraní people
as the land of their ancestors. Marinalva was assassinated - stabbed 35 times -
two weeks after attending a protest with other indigenous leaders at the
Federal Supreme Court in the Federal District of Brasilia. The group was
protesting a court ruling that annulled the demarcation process in the
indigenous territory of the Guyraroká.
"We, the Guaraní, principally from Mato Grosso do Sul,
have been the greatest victims of massacres and violence," the Guaraní
Kaiowá indigenous leader Araqueraju told Truthout. "They have killed many
of our leaders, they have spilled much blood because we are fighting for the
respect for and demarcation of what is left of our territories that the
government does not want to recognize."
Capitalism has no interest in the health, safety or welfare
of people or the environment. Its only interests are profits - this is why our planet
is in such peril.
Scab Workers
Pittsburgh firm Allegheny Technologies has been involved in
a labor dispute with United Steelworkers that has led to 2,000 members being
locked out over the course of this month. A company Storm Engineering, which
finds scab workers to break strikes, has placed an ad on Craigslist looking for
workers to work 84-hour-week during the lockout. The company is very upfront
about that it is hiring scabs - “THIS IS
A LABOR DISPUTE SITUATION – EMPLOYEES WILL BE TRANSPORTED ACROSS A PICKET
LINE.”
In the UK, new proposed Tory legislation concerning the
employment of temporary workers during industrial action will result in similar adverts appearing in the local press and on websites.
War
The Institute for Economics and Peace analysis for its 2015Global Peace Index, shows 81 countries involved in external conflict. The worst
country in the world for internal conflict was Uganda, according to the IEP. It
has been heavily involved in fighting in the DR Congo, as well as in skirmishes
with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony in border regions. The US
came second, followed by Rwanda and then the UK. Japan is ranked as the
eighth-most peaceful country in the world, second only to New Zealand in the
Asia-Pacific region. Iceland is the most peaceful country.
The economic impact of violence on the global economy in 2014
was substantial and is estimated at US$14.3 trillion or 13.4 per cent of world
GDP. This is equivalent to the combined economies of Brazil, Canada, France,
Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Since 2008, the total economic impact on
global GDP has increased by 15.3 per cent, from US$12.4 trillion to US$14.3
trillion.
Meantime, tens of thousands of people protested outside the Japanese parliament on Sunday to reject plans put forth by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that would see an aggressive expansion of the nation's armed forces despite a long-standing constitutional mandate for a "defense only" military posture.
Meantime, tens of thousands of people protested outside the Japanese parliament on Sunday to reject plans put forth by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that would see an aggressive expansion of the nation's armed forces despite a long-standing constitutional mandate for a "defense only" military posture.
Fake Apprenticeships - Cheap Labour
Hundreds of thousands of young people are being encouraged
into low-skill, low-pay, on-the-job training schemes to meet ministers’ “mad”
target of creating three million apprenticeships by 2020, new figures reveal. 60
per cent of all new apprentices are now studying for qualifications worth no
more than five GCSE passes. In contrast, less than 3 per cent of new
apprenticeships were at the higher level – equivalent to a foundation degree. There
have been only 220 new science and maths apprenticeships created at any level,
while engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships make up fewer than one in
five of the new jobs.
The roles being offered on the Government’s website appear
to be little more than traditional school-leaver jobs in clerical, catering and
retail work “rebranded” as apprenticeships. There are now apprenticeships in
street cleaning, warehouse labouring and shop work. This allows employers to
pay a new 18-year-old worker just £2.73 an hour compared with the national
minimum wage for that age range of £5.13. While employers are obliged to pay
those staff for the one day a week they spend in academic training, this is
more than made up for by the government grants available for taking on
apprentices.
Experts warned that ministers risked “devaluing” the
apprenticeship brand in their efforts to hit an artificial political target. They
pointed out that there were only two million 16- to 18-year-olds in the
country, many of whom were still at school – making it hard to achieve the
Government’s aim even if it were desirable to do so.
“It is a mad and artificial political target which risks
undermining the reputation of apprenticeships,” said Professor Alison Wolf, who
chaired a Government review into vocational education in 2011. “What the
Government should be doing is concentrating on those high-value apprenticeships
which teach vocational skills in manufacturing and engineering which
historically Britain has been bad at fostering. The danger is that money and
resources is put into hitting a meaningless numerical target.”
“The political narrative and the reality of what is
happening in apprenticeships are quite far apart from one another,” said Naomi
Weir, the Campaign for Science and Engineering group’s acting director. “The
political narrative is about high-level, technical, graduate-equivalent
apprenticeships whereas the reality is that there are only a few thousand of
across the whole apprenticeship system. That is not a viable alternative to
university. It could be but there needs to be a lot of effort to get us into a
position of having a high-level technical system that we need to run alongside
higher education.”
Sunday, August 30, 2015
WSP(NZ) Welcomes Refugees
WORLD SOCIALISM |
Almost every day New Zealanders watch the reports on the
global refugee crisis. Anyone paying any attention to current events will have
seen the Mediterranean turning into a watery grave as Europe argues over how to
deal with this influx of asylum seekers. Workers should understand that the
country’s intake is very small. The New Zealand government's response has been
just 100 places within the quota since the war began four long years ago.
Many opposing help for refugees present the "put New
Zealanders first" line. It goes like this: we have poverty here, once that
is totally fixed we can accept more poor people from abroad. This argument
mistakes refugees as a burden and is a reasoning mostly founded on xenophobic
fears.
Murdoch Stephens, spokesperson and researcher for ‘Doing Our
Bit - Double New Zealand's Refugee Quota’ suggests that the quota should keep
pace with New Zealand’s rising population. This would increase the quota to
1120 places. But on top of the quota we also take 300 people through family
reunification and about 120 people as asylum seekers (once appeals have been
counted). Fifteen years ago the average was 500 accepted asylum seekers per
year. The significant decrease since then has been due to pre-screening of
people before they could get to New Zealand to claim asylum. Since the government closed that window, it
should open a door: 380 more places in the quota to make up for the number we
used to take. Add this to the population increase and the quota should be 1500
places. NZ would be doubling the quota in nominal terms, but in real terms we'd
be doing only what we've done in the past. The average Kiwi will not notice,
but the 750 extra people – roughly 200 families – certainly will.
Amnesty International is also calling for New Zealand to
double its refugee quota to help deal with the international humanitarian crisis.
New Zealand executive director of Amnesty International, Grant Bayldon said New
Zealand had not changed its refugee quota in almost 30 years and was ranked
90th in the world for the number of refugees it took annually. He said not only
was New Zealand not leading the world in taking its share of refugees, it was a
laggard.
Holocaust Research and Education Centre director Inge Woolf
said the Government must increase its current refugee limit of 750 people. She
said all nations should increase their refugee quotas. "I'm a survivor of
the holocaust and I know my family found it very hard to find shelter. We
eventually did by going on holiday visas to England, but most of my family
didn't." She said asylum seekers faced huge obstacles as they tried to get
to safety. Ms Woolf said she had empathy for refugees trying to flee their
homelands. "These people are desperate to leave the places they've gone
from. They don't do it for a joy ride and it's up to the nations of the world
to take in more of them." She said refugees were valuable citizens to the
country that took them in. After WW2 New Zealand took about 1,000 Jewish
immigrants and said it had done its bit. Paltry, insignificant and
inconspicuous are words they use to describe our efforts at rescuing people
fleeing the worst persecution the modern world has seen. We now face the
biggest refugee crisis since WW2. Sixty million people are displaced. This
time, New Zealand should step up and offer to take some of those Syrian
refugees. They're no different from us.
"What I am seeing here is quite hard to
comprehend," says New Zealander Corinne Ambler who works for the Red Cross
in Macedonia "It's hard to believe it's happening in Europe. These are
human beings, leaving their homes, they don't want to do that, and people need
to show them a little bit of humanity." Corinne Ambler says anyone could
become a refugee. "At the end of the day, they're people, they're human
beings, and other human beings should treat them like that."
The mayor of Ashburton says making it easier for migrants to
work in Canterbury will, in turn, help reinvigorate the region's economy. Angus
McKay said he wanted a friendlier, smoother transition for people coming to the
area to live and work from abroad. Mr McKay said there had been an influx of
migrants into Ashburton over the past 10 years. According to the latest census
figures, he said, the average age of people in the district was falling as a
result.
It is the lucky few only who manage to break through the
mass of regulations and restrictions which the various countries insist on imposing
before they will allow a refugee to settle within their boundaries. Every
country with room to spare should ease open its bureaucratic door and undertake
to accept unfortunate men, women and children in urgent need of help with no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’. Human
beings are being shunted from one place to another, in response to political
events, and treated as objects to be kept at arm's length or sent back as
quickly as possible to wherever they came from.
Sadly, under capitalism, artificial lines on maps
divide the world into different camps, which enable those who own the Earth to
defend their bit of it. A sensible society would have no concept of refugee-hood
or any of the other states of oppression. Far better to have a world where men
and women can be free to travel over its surface without the futile
restrictions of nationality, and where he or she can satisfy their needs from a
sufficiency of wealth that only socialism can make available. Inside socialism,
where the whole Earth is the common property of the whole world's population,
we will all be able to travel our planet to work wherever we desire, safe in
the knowledge that our brothers and sisters will welcome us on whichever shore
we land.
That is the aim of the World
Socialist Party (New Zealand). Shouldn't it be yours, too?
WSP(NZ) website:
E-mail:
wsp.nz@worldsocialism.org
WORKERS UNITED SOLIDARITY HAS NO BORDERS |
In a festival mood
The Socialist Party will have literature stalls at these two
events and members will be available to answer any questions on the Party’s
case that you may have.
Kent Miners' Festival
Monday, 31 August - 10:00am - 5:00pm
Betteshanger Community Park, Colliers Way (A258),
Betteshanger Business Park,
near Deal CT14 OLT
Carshalton
Environmental Fair
Monday, 31 August - 10:30am - 5:00pm
Carshalton Park, Ruskin Road,
Carshalton SM5 3DDWhat Golden Age?
In 1919, the percentage shares of total income received by
the top 1 percent and the top 5% stood, respectively, at 12.2 percent and 24.3
percent; in 1923 the shares had risen to 13.1 percent and 27.1 percent and by
1929 to 18.9 and 33.5 percent. According to the Brookings Institution, in 1929
“0.1 percent of the families at the top received practically as much as 42
percent of families at the bottom of the scale.”
By 1929, 71 percent of American families earned incomes of
under $2,500 a year, the level that the Bureau of Labor Statistics considered
minimal to maintain an adequate standard of living for a family of four. 60
percent earned less than $2,000.00 per year, the amount determined by the
Bureau of Labor Statistics “sufficient to supply only basic necessities.” 50
percent had less than $1700.00 and more than 20 percent had less than
$1,000.00.
During the steep recession in the first years of the decade
unemployment (among non-farm workers) hit 19.5 percent in 1921 and 11.4 percent
in 1922. In 1924 it rose from 4.1 to 8.3 percent, fell to 2.9 percent in 1926
and was back up to 6.9 percent in 1928. 1922-1926 was the period of fastest
growth in production and profits before over-investment and under-consumption
slowed the rate of GDP and sales growth. Yet two of those boom years saw
unemployment comparable to or exceeding 2015’s official unemployment figures.
Real poverty can be disguised, and the principal means of
obscuring material insecurity when there has appeared to exist a middle class
has been the extension of credit to vast numbers of working households. During
both the 1920s and the Golden Age households accumulated mounting debt in order
to achieve the “middle class standard of living.” Workers’ wages needed a
substantial supplement of financial speed to goose the buying power required
for middle class pleasures. The Twenties were the first instance of what was to
become an abiding feature of American capitalism, the need for large scale
credit financing to sustain levels of consumption required to stave off
macroeconomic retardation and persistent economic insecurity. The Hoover
Commission Report, a massive study of the economy of the 1920s conducted by a
large team of the country’s most prominent economists, reported that:
“The most spectacular and the most novel development in the
field of credit was the growth after 1920 of a variety of forms of consumers’
borrowing… the amount of such credit was tremendously expanded, both absolutely
and relatively, during the past decade.”
The proportion of total retail sales financed by credit
increased from 10 percent in 1910 to 15 percent in 1927 to 50 percent in 1929.
Over 85 percent of furniture, 80 percent of washing machines and 75 percent of
phonographs and radios -indeed most new consumer items- were purchased on time. A prime reason GM
pulled ahead of Ford in car sales was that it enabled credit purchases through
the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC). Credit was even used to buy
clothes. Young single working women often went into debt to keep up with the
latest styles. By 1929 sales on installment approached $7 billion. Many more
people bought these goods than would have had they had to save the total price
in cash before making the purchases. Credit pervaded the household economy and
disguised low wages, as it would again in the postwar period.
In Middletown, the landmark study of the industrial town
Muncie, Indiana, in the years 1924-1925, Robert and Helen Lynd note the
pervasiveness of credit in the everyday lives of working people there:
“Today Middletown lives by a credit economy that is
available in some form to nearly every family in the community. The rise and
spread of the dollar-down-and-not-so-much-per plan extends credit for virtually
everything – homes, $200 over-stuffed living-room suites, electric washing
machines, automobiles, fur coats, diamond rings – to persons of whom frequently
little is known as to their intention or ability to pay.”
Wages did not increase as rapidly as did debt growth. In
fact, wages remained flat throughout the 1920s. So debt grew to the point at
which it could not be paid. Borrowing and purchasing power then declined in
1926; under-consumption became conspicuous as excess inventories and capacity
built up. Crisis ensued.
In 1946 the ratio of household debt to disposable income
stood at about 24 percent. By 1950 it had risen to 38 percent, by 1955 to 53
percent, by 1960 to 62 percent, and by 1965 to 72 percent. The ratio fluctuated
from 1966 to 1978, but the stagnation of real wages which began in 1973
pressured households further to increase their debt burden in order to maintain
existing living standards, pushing the ratio of debt to disposable income to 77
percent by 1979. And keep in mind that accumulating debt was necessary not
merely to purchase more toys, but to meet rising housing, health care,
education and child care costs. With prohibitive health care costs the leading
cause of personal bankruptcy, debt was necessary for all but the wealthy to
stay out of poverty.
By the mid-1980s, with ‘neo-liberalism’ in full swing and
wages stagnating, the ratio began a steady ascent, from 80 percent in 1985 to
88 percent in 1990 to 95 percent in 1995 to over 100 percent in 2000 to 138
percent in 2007. As debt rose relative to workers’ income, households’ margin
of security against insolvency began to erode. The ratio of personal saving to
disposable income under neoliberalism began a steady decline, falling from 11
percent in 1983 to 2.3 percent in 1999. The debt bubble that became
unmistakable in the 1990s was to be far greater than the bubble of the 1920s;
the financial system by now was capable of far more fraud and treachery than
was possible in the 1920s, thanks largely to deregulation and derivatives.
The majority of Americans were poor. Working Americans were
poor. America was a poor country. In neither period was hard work and the
corresponding wage sufficient to avert relative poverty. In the absence of
organized resistance, the current age of rising inequality, low wages, high un-
and underemployment and increasing economic precariousness will persist
indefinitely.
12 countries with highest wealth inequality
This list is ranked based on the Gini coefficient. To put it
simply, the closer the number is to zero, the more equal the financial standing
between rich and poor. No country has ever gone below 30% so we can say that
there is always at least a 30% difference between the wealth of the rich and
the poor.
12. Belize
Wealth Inequality: 53.1%
Found on the eastern coast of Central America, Belize is the
only country in the area with a national language of English. It has the lowest
population density in the region but is one of the highest growing populations
of the world so far.
11. Colombia
Wealth Inequality: 53.5%
One of the more popular countries in South America, Colombia
is very diverse. Their population consists of different races, from immigrants
of other countries to colonist lineages from centuries ago. The country has
been well known for armed conflicts in the past.
10. Zambia
Wealth Inequality: 54.6%
Since Zambia’s independence in the 60s, growth and
improvement have been slow, and it was not only until a few years ago that
Zambia experienced economic growth. This has been due to an effort to stem out
corruption and improve the standard of living. Zambia is now known as one of
the world’s fastest economically reformed countries.
9. The Central African Republic
Wealth Inequality: 56.3%
Also known as CAR, the Central African Republic is known as
one of the poorest countries in the world despite being rich in natural
resources. This may be a case of mismanagement, but the country has had its
share of violent conflicts especially between religions.
8. Honduras
Wealth Inequality: 57.4%
The country has been
constantly experiencing political instability and social problems. Due to this
the country has become one of the poorest in the world. They also have the
highest murder rate in the world.
7. Angola
Wealth Inequality: 58.6%
Angola is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world.
Despite it being one of the fastest growing economies today, it still has a lot
of problems to overcome. The country’s standard of living remains low and so
it’s population’s life expectancy.
6. Haiti
Wealth Inequality: 59.2%
Haiti is one of the first countries to have success with a
slave revolt. They are also one of the first countries to receive independence
in Latin America having defeated the superpowers of the West. As of now Haiti
is riddled with problems especially with the frequency of political killings
and instability.
5. Botswana
Wealth Inequality: 61%
Botswana is the fastest growing economy in Africa and was
formerly the poorest country in the world. The country is one of the most
sparsely populated places in the world. One of the major problems they have to
overcome is the high HIV/AIDS infection rate.
4. Namibia
Wealth Inequality: 61.3%
Coming from a history of violence, Namibia has become one of
the most stable countries in the world having a consistently growing economy
because of accessible natural resources. Growth has been slow however as the
population remains very low and sparse due to the country being mostly desert.
3. Comoros
Wealth Inequality: 64.3%
Comoros is an archipelago island nation found in the Indian
Ocean. They are a mixture of different cultures. According to studies half of
the population of the country is below the international poverty line.
2. South Africa
Wealth Inequality: 65%
South Africa has a diverse and somewhat solid history having
very little violence in terms of their politics. They are the second largest
economy in Africa but they still suffer from a very high poverty rate and
inequality.
1. Seychelles
Wealth Inequality: 65.8%
One of the reasons why inequality is quite noticeable in a
country like Seychelles is because of their low population. With such a low
number for comparison, the differences are made larger despite the country
being quite stable.
You Stink!
“This is not a protest for political parties. It is for all
the Lebanese people... we are against the parties that are exploiting citizens,”
international theatre director Lucien Bourjeily, one of the figureheads of the
movement, told AFP. According to Reuters, many of the demonstrators were
chanting “Make it a revolution!,” while others adapted the Arab spring slogan:
“People want the downfall of the regime!”
Rubbish has been piling up on the streets of Beirut since
Lebanon's largest landfill shut down last month with no ready alternative. This
led to the creation of the You Stink movement, which blames political paralysis
and corruption for the failure to resolve the crisis. It was a stroke of genius
that Lebanon's young protesters named their movement "You Stink". In
just two words, they captured both the essence of their country's immediate
crisis over uncollected garbage and its longer-term structural problems. The
"You Stink" garbage campaign has been mobilizing independently of the
big sectarian parties that dominate Lebanese politics.
Parliament doesn't meet, can't muster the votes needed to
elect a new president (and so the post has been vacant for almost two years),
hasn't passed a budget in a decade, and has twice extended its mandate because
it can't agree on how to run the next election. In the absence of effective
state institutions, power and privilege reside in the country's clans and sects
and the feudal chiefs who run them. In a perverse way, this weak state and the
agreed upon distribution of power and patronage served, for a time, as a source
of Lebanon's resilience. It provided members of each sect a degree of access and
patronage, and absorbed their discontent. This system became ossified, but
remained "the only game in town". The neighbouring Syrian civil war has
inflamed passions, directly involved some Lebanese (most notably Hizbollah),
and brought one and one-half million Syrian refugees into Lebanon, placing
severe stress on the country's resources and decaying political system.
One of the movement’s activists, Michel Elefteriades, a
Lebanese artist, explained "This is not similar to
what happened in Egypt or elsewhere where people were manipulated, or without
greater political awareness. There is an awakening of democratic awareness, and
it has been a very long time since Lebanon has not come out of these political
parties and religious sects to ask that all political leaders be punished or
sidelined.” He added: "It's a sort of popular revolution, a mix of many
movements – some anarchic in the good philosophical sense such as the refusal
of the centralised power – it's really a grassroots movement so I don't think
it’s going to stop. The movement will grow." Elefteriades claims their
goal is the same: "To bring the collapse of a system that has been in
place for decades." The government's failure to solve crises linked to
electricity and water shortages stems from what Elefteriades describes as
"a rotten political class" and "our use of confessionalism"
– a system of government that proportionally allocates political power among a
country's communities (whether religious or ethnic) according to their
percentage of the population. "On top of everything now we have that
waste, and it has become unacceptable, especially because we are not a country
at war. We are a country with an economy that is holding together rather well,
with very rich people and luxury shops on every corner. But, despite that, it's
worse than in poor countries or those at war.”
“There is a leadership that is ready to take over and there
will not be a vacuum," Elefteriades explained. "There are many
people, with great capacities, but that are still suffocated by this political
elite and this new class will never be able to lead this country because those
in place don't want to give them space. So, as soon as that old political class
will have left, there will be the emergence of a new political class, from one
day to the next." The activist described how a new government could be
made up of personalities from the public sector, who have been in the political
life for 20 or 25 years but "have been marginalised by those in power, who
have money and who have the system on their side". A second possibility
could be to set up a military interim government. "I say a military government
because, in Lebanon, even if I consider myself to be a bit of an anarchist, I
trust the military. We have officers who have values and ideals – so they
should be more trusted than the politicians," Elefteriades said.
SOYMB recalls a similar optimism when the youth peacefully took
to the streets of Syria a few years ago to demand democracy, only to see it succumb to the State’s
repression which led to the militarization of the protests and the subsequent
involvement of outside parties with their own political agendas. We can only
hope that history does not repeat itself.
The recession begins in the womb
Economic recessions can be as damaging to a baby’s health as
smoking or drinking during pregnancy, according to the first study to establish
a causal link between foetal exposure to financial stress in an advanced
economy and the health of babies at birth.
Research by Arna Vardardottir, assistant professor at the
department of economics at Copenhagen Business School, tracks the unexpected
collapse of Iceland’s economy in 2008. After studying the weight of newborn
children in Iceland’s national birth register, Vardardottir found that babies
who had been in their first trimester during the crisis were born 120g lighter
than the average. They were also 3.5% more likely to have a low birth weight
(less than 2.5kg) than average and were generally more likely to suffer from
neonatal diseases.
Vardardottir said her results showed that financial stress
had an impact similar to those of the two most widely cited behavioural issues
during pregnancy: smoking and drinking. “My results show that a sudden
deterioration in economic conditions has a negative impact on birth outcomes
and that children in the early stages of gestation are more vulnerable to such
shocks,” she said. “The findings suggest large losses from financial distress
that have previously been ignored: children with worse health at birth can
expect to earn substantially less over their lifetime, and low-income families
are more likely to experience financial stress.” She explained, “The results
imply large welfare losses from financial distress that have hitherto been
ignored because children with worse health at birth can expect substantially
lower lifetime earnings,” she said. “They suggest that economic hardships may
in general exacerbate income inequalities in the long run, since low-income
households are typically more exposed to financial stress.”
Saturday, August 29, 2015
The reason why some refugees died
NOT JUST REFUGEES BUT ALL ARE WELCOME |
Austrian police opened the back of a truck abandoned on the
side of a motorway to find the bodies of 71 migrants. They had suffocated after
paying smugglers to transport them across the border from neighbouring Hungary.
Despite having made it into the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, they still
felt the need to travel clandestinely to avoid being fingerprinted and
registered for asylum in Hungary, which would have offered them few opportunities
to work or integrate.
“This tragedy comes as a cruel reminder that the Dublin
Regulation results in death,” commented Hungarian NGO Migszol after the news
broke. “What we need is a safe passage through our country, and for that, we
need to fight the European legislation.”
Under the EU’s Dublin Regulation, asylum seekers registered
and fingerprinted in one country, for example Hungary, can be returned there if
they later try to register an asylum claim elsewhere, say in Germany or the UK.
The rule was designed to determine which member state was responsible for
processing an asylum claim and to deter people from registering multiple
claims. In practice, northern EU states have used it to avoid processing claims
for people already registered in another country - usually frontline states
such as Italy, Greece and Hungary. As well as placing additional pressure on
frontline states, it forces refugees to stay in a country where they may have
no family connections, cannot speak the language, and struggle to support
themselves.
Critics point out the rule places an unfair burden on
frontline states such as Greece and Italy, which are already struggling to cope
with thousands of new arrivals and deters such states from fingerprinting and
registering. Italy in particular has been accused of failing to fingerprint a
significant portion of the 170,000 migrants who arrived there by boat in 2014. For
their part, asylum seekers intent on joining family members in Sweden or
Holland, or on finding work in the UK, are extremely reluctant for their
fingerprints to be loaded into Eurodac, an EU-wide fingerprint database.
Greg O’Ceallaigh, a London-based barrister who deals with
Dublin removals of asylum seekers from the UK back to countries such as Italy,
said that many asylum seekers were taking clandestine routes through Europe to
evade detection until they reached a country where they had a family member or
at least spoke the language. “We see people who have burned the skin off their
fingertips in an effort to avoid being fingerprinted,” he told IRIN. “...There
does need to be a more politically brave response to all of this; a proper
pan-European asylum strategy.”
Talking Marx in India
An article on Marx was recently published in the Indian
magazine The Statesman and our comrades in the World Socialist Party (India)
responded:
Dear Editor,
In the evening of August 23, 2015 in the Sunday Discussion
Meeting of our party, the World Socialist Party (India), we read with interest
the Saturday Statesman, August 22, 2015 article “Relevance of Marx” written by
Professor Gargi Sengupta. It is really heartening to note that a nineteenth
century communist revolutionary, Karl Marx, is being revisited by the 21st
century mainstream press to find answers to the present-day woes and worries.
Hopefully, this signals the beginning of Marx’s media-ride in India too. This
happens because, as Marx and Engels themselves observed, “consciousness can
sometimes appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical conditions,
so that in the struggles of a later epoch one can refer to earlier
theoreticians as authorities." – (The German Ideology) “Men make their own
history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under
circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past,” wrote Marx in The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In her defensive appreciation of Marx, Gargi Sengupta has
rightly claimed that “Marxism enables us to understand the nature of the
capitalist crisis,” and also that “Marx believed that human development
requires a cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of
production.”
She has excellently pronounced, “The overall significance of
religion may have declined, but the family, the schools, and the capitalist
controlled mass media continue to brainwash the working class and prevent them
from realizing their true destiny.”
Her observation: “From a global perspective, a class-based
analysis is still relevant,” holds up one of the basic principles of Marxism.
She defends Marx for “making a very fundamental contribution” whereby “He
placed human beings and their conscious, purposive activity – human labour – at
the centre of his analysis” and also for a “unique contribution” – the role of
“class struggle” in “human historical development”. She is right in pointing
out that “Marx’s writings still evoke interest across the world. … Marx’s
writings can throw light on the problems of our age”. Simply because, as Marx
viewed, “The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its
undeveloped form”; and “Production of surplus value is the absolute law of this
mode of production.” – Capital , vol - I
Actually, Marx is more relevant today than ever before.
This said, I would like to comment on a couple of
inaccuracies in Professor Sengupta's article. She says, “Marx visualized the
remedy in violent revolution followed by decades of civil and international
warfare.” This is a half-truth. True, in his early years Marx held a “violent
revolution” view. However, eventually and finally he arrived at the following
conclusion: “proletariat – organized in a separate political party. That such
organization must be pursued by all the means, which the proletariat has at its
disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of
trickery, which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation.” –
Written on about May 10, 1880, Printed according to L'Égalité, No. 24, June 30,
1880, checked with the text of Le Précurseur.
Secondly, in portraying capitalism as only a “private
enterprise” system she has missed the yardstick of defining state capitalism –
the defining characteristic of which is state ownership and control of the
means of production and articles for distribution. As a result she is mistaken
in recognizing the erstwhile so-called ‘communist’ dictatorial and despotic
state capitalist regimes of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. How could there be
“the eclipse of Communism” when Communism (Socialism the same) has nowhere and
never been attempted at all? Just what happened in these countries was
appropriately described in 1918 by Fitzgerald of the Socialist Party of Great
Britain: “What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia
a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the
November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists.” – Socialist Standard, Aug
1918
Hopefully the letter will be published by the magazine in due
course, if not, then the reply on this blog will have to suffice.
For those interested in the WSP (India)
Email: wspindia@hotmail.com
Paying the rich to pay the poor
Peter Georgescu has a message he wants America’s corporate
and political elites to hear: “I’m scared,” he said in a recent New York Times
opinion piece. He adds that Paul Tudor Jones is scared, too, as is Ken Langone.
Georgescu is former head of Young & Rubicam, one of the
world’s largest PR and advertising firms; Jones is a quadruple-billionaire and
hedge fund operator; and Langone is a founder of Home Depot.
“We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost
impossible to escape,” Georgescu wrote, not only trapping the poor, but also
“those on the higher end of the middle class.” Georgescu has the remedy:
“Invest in the actual value creators—the employees,” he writes. “Start
compensating fairly (with) a wage that enables employees to share amply in
productivity increases and creative innovations.” They have talked with other
corporate chieftains and found “almost unanimous agreement” on the need to
compensate employees better. How to do that? Get the government to pay. “Government
can provide tax incentives to business to pay more to employees.” That’s this
big idea. The government will subsidise corporate wage-hikes with tax-cuts. Their
proposal is to basically have the government pay them to pay their employees
more.
Fact of the Day
Data from the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions reveals the death of more than 2,000 benefit claimants between 2011 and 2014.
The DWP
figures disclosed that most of the claimants were reported dead within weeks of
being declared “fit for work” and taken off sickness benefits. Between December
2011 and February 2014, 2,380 were those who were found fit for work, meaning
that they were at risk of losing their ESA benefit.
Quote of the Day
“The tragedies we’ve seen in the last 24 hours highlight the
failure of Europe’s migration and refugee policy. We should be ashamed to see children
dying on our doorstep. The people who lost their lives in the truck in Austria,
including four children, were reported to be Syrians – they had fled
unimaginable horror in their home country only to die a lonely death just where
they should have been safe. Desperate people are making dangerous journeys to
reach sanctuary in Europe, and we are failing our fellow human beings if we let
them die trying.” - Justin Forsyth, Save the Children.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
The Catholic Kama Sutra!
Father Knotz, a celibate Polish Roman Catholic Priest, has written a
best-selling sex-manual, ‘Sex Is Divine’- but for married couples only!
______________________________________________
The Catholic Kama Sutra!
A celibate Priest’s sex-pertise,
Aids married couples with the ‘hots’;
To try out bondage as a wheeze,
To tie each other up in ‘Knotz’!
Rome’s devotees are off the hook,
For making love in ways thought odd;
It sayeth in the Priest’s new book:
“The new positions pleaseth God”!
In days of yore a work as such,
Would top the Vatican’s banned list; (1)
As priests in lust’s unholy clutch,
Might fancy a forbidden tryst. (2)
As in the past some monks had erred,
(Their ‘holy spirit’ was Chartreuse)
And on the whole they much preferred,
Those sins involving ‘his’ not ‘hers’!
These willy-nilly goings on,
Employed those bits Saint Paul eschewed; (3)
In places where the Sun ain’t shone,
With practices both lewd and crude!
Unholy habits struck down nuns,
Who biblically knew Beelzebub, (4)
And ended up with ‘oven buns’,
Inside the convent’s pudding club!
In Inquisition times a purge,
Was launched to quell this moral lapse;
And flagellate those with the urge,
To sport with both the gals and chaps.
Now in the Priest’s sex-guide today,
Of the positions shown therein;
The missionary way is passé,
Though onanism’s still a sin. (5)
The book’s sold out through Christendom,
Allegedly as each page shows;
Hot pics of Blair and Widdecombe, (6)
In many an erotic pose!
______________________________________________
(1) The Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
(2) Henry III, Bishop of Liege, was deposed in 1274 for having 65 illegitimate children.
(3) Paul was the earliest Christian writer to believe that sex ought to be avoided if possible.
(4) The Devil: Beelzebub (Baal-Zebub) the Canaanite deity who, in the Bible, was transformed into Satan.
(5) An unspeakable depravity thought to be rife amongst Boy Scouts - hence Lord Baden-Powell’s warning to them that it could cause blindness, insanity and hairy hands.
(6) Both converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. © Richard Layton
______________________________________________
The Catholic Kama Sutra!
A celibate Priest’s sex-pertise,
Aids married couples with the ‘hots’;
To try out bondage as a wheeze,
To tie each other up in ‘Knotz’!
Rome’s devotees are off the hook,
For making love in ways thought odd;
It sayeth in the Priest’s new book:
“The new positions pleaseth God”!
In days of yore a work as such,
Would top the Vatican’s banned list; (1)
As priests in lust’s unholy clutch,
Might fancy a forbidden tryst. (2)
As in the past some monks had erred,
(Their ‘holy spirit’ was Chartreuse)
And on the whole they much preferred,
Those sins involving ‘his’ not ‘hers’!
These willy-nilly goings on,
Employed those bits Saint Paul eschewed; (3)
In places where the Sun ain’t shone,
With practices both lewd and crude!
Unholy habits struck down nuns,
Who biblically knew Beelzebub, (4)
And ended up with ‘oven buns’,
Inside the convent’s pudding club!
In Inquisition times a purge,
Was launched to quell this moral lapse;
And flagellate those with the urge,
To sport with both the gals and chaps.
Now in the Priest’s sex-guide today,
Of the positions shown therein;
The missionary way is passé,
Though onanism’s still a sin. (5)
The book’s sold out through Christendom,
Allegedly as each page shows;
Hot pics of Blair and Widdecombe, (6)
In many an erotic pose!
______________________________________________
(1) The Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
(2) Henry III, Bishop of Liege, was deposed in 1274 for having 65 illegitimate children.
(3) Paul was the earliest Christian writer to believe that sex ought to be avoided if possible.
(4) The Devil: Beelzebub (Baal-Zebub) the Canaanite deity who, in the Bible, was transformed into Satan.
(5) An unspeakable depravity thought to be rife amongst Boy Scouts - hence Lord Baden-Powell’s warning to them that it could cause blindness, insanity and hairy hands.
(6) Both converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism. © Richard Layton
Sunday, August 23, 2015
‘Us’ and ‘Them’
There is no immigration problem. There is a problem of
poverty and inequality, wars and civil wars, but most of all, a problem of an
economic system that render the lives of many people in the world unsustainable,
sentencing many to misery and suffering. Anybody can become a refugee. Rich or
poor, black or white, male or female, adult or a child. There can never be
absolute safety in this capitalist world. By the Grace of God, go I, according to the saying. Only
a few decades ago, the Irish Republic were preparing to set up refugee camps
for displaced Northern Irish catholics.
The Al Jazeera's news organisation said
that it would no longer use the word 'migrant' to refer to people trying to
cross the Mediterranean.
"The word migrant has become a largely inaccurate
umbrella term for this complex story," online editor Barry Malone wrote. Malone
went on to say that the word 'migrant'
"has evolved from its dictionary definitions into a tool that dehumanises
and distances, a blunt pejorative" and from now on Al Jazeera will use the
words 'people', 'families' and 'refugees'. He explains “ It is not hundreds of
people who drown when a boat goes down in the Mediterranean, nor even hundreds
of refugees. It is hundreds of migrants. It is not a person – like you, filled
with thoughts and history and hopes – who is on the tracks delaying a train. It
is a migrant. A nuisance. When we in the media do this, we help to create an
environment in which a British foreign minister can refer to "marauding
migrants," and in which hate speech and thinly veiled racism can fester. We
become the enablers of governments who have political reasons for not calling
those drowning in the Mediterranean what the majority of them are: refugees.”
You cannot ignore the headlines in the papers, the deaths in
rusty leaking refugee boats, the futile attempts to scale razor-wire fences,
the death risking scrambles to get on lorries and trains. We cannot turn deaf
ears to the desperate cries for help. They have little promise of a future of
their own. Political refugees from repression, war refugees, economic refugees who
run away from hunger, and soon to arrive if not already, the climate change
refugees. They have endured horrific violence and terrors. To governments they
are all nobody's people. But to socialists they are our fellow workers. We
offer what sympathy and solidarity we can to brothers and sisters in need.
The humanitarian disaster the world is seeing is almost
beyond imagination. Hatred is once again on the march. In almost every country,
nationalists exploit concerns over immigration, crime and jobs in ways that
easily translate into finger-pointing scapegoating of “foreigners”. There has been
attacks on refugees and refugee centers. Yet this wave of attacks has led to another
wave: one of public compassion to assist migrants with their basic needs. In a
number of countries on the front lines, private groups have formed to provide
temporary housing, language training, clothing, and health services to
supplement the services of overwhelmed governments.
“While attacks against refugee homes dominate the headlines,
a new movement to aid asylum seekers is taking root in Germany,” declares the
German publication Spiegel. “From Munich to Berlin, Dresden to Hanau, tens of
thousands of people are standing up to help refugees: high school and
university students, workers, retirees.”
One survey shows a
quarter of Germans would share their homes or offer housing to a refugee.
“One needs to recognize the agency and dignity of those
migrants and refugees,” says François Crépeau, the United Nations special
rapporteur on human rights. “They face very difficult choices as well as
exclusion and violence on a daily basis, and yet they endure, they persist. Migration
is most often a survival mechanism undertaken out of love. And rather than
trying everything we can to prevent them from coming, welcoming them in a
regulated way would be a much more productive response.”
Instead we are faced with a situation that Arezo Malakooti,
a senior researcher with Altai Consulting, a firm that conducts on-the-ground
investigations for the U.N. refugee agency, describes is becoming “intensely
commercialized,” with migrants being treated increasingly like “market
commodities,” with a clear hierarchy based on means and nationality. In Libya,
the hub for the lucrative trade in migrant smuggling from Africa to Italy, the
system determining migrants’ survival is based primarily around wealth,
migrants said. Smugglers there aim to maximize profits through a web of
extortion, abuse and ultimately price differentiation. “Syrians have put more money together, they are able to pay
more so they’re placed at the top level of the boat and sometimes even buy life
jackets,” said Ms. Malakooti. “Sub-Saharans are put in the
hulls. If the boat takes water, they’re the first to drown,” she added.
This is verified by Lamin Wandi Dampha, a 17-year old Gambian, was in the belly
of a boat for two days in April. “There was no food, no water, no light, no toilet,” he said,
at a reception center in Pozzallo, Sicily. He said he paid the smuggler $300,
whereas many Syrians say they pay as much as $1,800. And his claim is corroborated by others
Smugglers in Libya for example tend to believe Eritrean
refugees are worth more money than West Africans,
because many have wealthier families in Europe, according to researchers and
Eritrean refugees. They abuse or kidnap Eritreans and extort their families,
getting payments of thousands of dollars from relatives abroad.
Don't Blame the Old Folk
The term ‘baby boomer’ is increasingly used as a term of
abuse with an increasingly polarised public debate pitching generations against
one another.
The popular notion that wealthy baby boomers are hoarding
the country’s wealth in retirement, at the expense of younger generations, is
wrong, according to a TUC report into wealth inequality. It acknowledges that
today’s young people will be poorer than their parents, but says the answer is
not to cut pensioner benefits. The TUC attacks the “myths that all pensioners
are rich and that reducing older people’s benefits would be a solution to young
people’s problems”, and warns that “growing wealth inequalities across
generations” are the real problem.
Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, says: “Big cuts
to working-age social security benefits [over the past five years], combined
with relative protection for some pensioner benefits, sparked divisive debate
about intergenerational inequalities and whether the so-called baby boomer
generation have been feather-bedded at the young’s expense.”
Written by James Lloyd, director of the Strategic Society
Centre, the report draws on an analysis of the UK Wealth and Assets Survey by
researchers at the University of Bristol. It reveals that people of working age
are those most likely to be wealthy, with two thirds of the richest 10 per cent
of households aged between 45 and 64. Only about a quarter of such households
are aged 65 or above. Although rising house prices have “seen some older
households accumulate as much wealth during retirement as during their working
lives”, there is “substantial inequality” among pensioners, with only 5 per
cent paying higher-rate income tax, the report adds.
Cuts to public spending on pensioners would have little, if
any, impact on young people. Winter Fuel Payments are cited as one example. If
these were cut, the £2.1bn which the DWP would recoup would result in extra
public spending of only £181 each for 16- to 30-year-olds, it says. “Cuts in
support for older people will eventually become cuts in support for today’s
young workers,” it adds. “Reducing public expenditure on pensioners as a means
to increase spending on young people would not provide the answer to the
challenges today’s new labour market entrants face, leaving wider inequalities
untouched and young people even worse off as they grow older themselves.”
A spokesperson for Age UK said: “Of course, some older
people have been lucky in life and as a result are financially comfortable and
secure, but unfortunately this is by no means the case for all or probably even
for most. It is in all our interests for young people to get on and do well,
and for older people to have enough money for a decent retirement. Surely these
aims are complementary, not in opposition to each other.”
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Green New Zealand?
A WORLD TO WIN, A PLANET TO SAVE |
In just 100 days or so, world leaders will gather in Paris
for the COP21 climate change talks. The urgent need for action to reduce CO2
emissions and stop global warming was recently described by both Barack Obama
and Pope Francis as a “moral imperative” and summed up by President Obama who
said: “We are the first generation to feel the impacts of climate change, and
the last generation to be able to do something about it.”
New Zealand’s recently-announced climate change target are
the second weakest of nine countries and regions. Only Canada will take a less
ambitious goal to the United Nations December climate change conference in
Paris. Even the carbon tax-scrapping Australians promise to do more than New
Zealand to address climate change. Of the nine countries, New Zealand has the
slowest greenhouse gas reductions planned for the decade beginning in 2020
decade.
Victoria University climate change scientist James Renwick
said it was disappointing to see New Zealand could not even match the
commitment of Australia, let alone the European Union’s goal to cut 40% from
its emissions by 2030. “Australia are not actually doing particularly well
either, but New Zealand is doing worse. It is not a good look. New Zealand
already has a rather poor reputation in these meetings and negotiations, in my
understanding.” The comparisons contradicted the government’s description of
its target as “fair and ambitious”, Renwick said “It’s unimpressive and it is
not fair, because it is not fair on future generations. As this becomes more
and more important, this is going to hurt us, economically.” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/21/clean-green-new-zealand-falls-behind-australia-on-climate-change
Paul Young, co-founder of Generation Zero, said “New
Zealand’s emissions are growing and the ministry for the environment tells us
we’ll be nowhere near our target by 2030 under current policies. It would look
even worse for New Zealand if you took that into account. Even if we had a plan
to meet these weak pledges, we’d be in a much better position.”
Let’s cut to the chase, civilisation as we know it is coming
to an end unless urgent action is taken. We are doomed and our time on this
planet is rapidly approaching its endgame. The capitalist structures of
society, and the foundations that our economic system and way of life are built
on, are completely unsustainable. We are blindly and seemingly willingly
accelerating towards our own self-destruction as a species. Many may think that
this is an exaggeration and little more than a depressing dystopian look to the
future.
The rising global temperature on both land and in the sea
impacts on every living thing on this and it is caused by increasing levels of
C02 in the atmosphere and has numerous knock on effects. New Scientist reported
that a 2 degree rise in global temperatures would see water availability drop
by 20-30%, crop yields in Africa drop by 5-10%, 40-60 million more people
exposed to malaria in Africa, 10 million more people affected by coastal
flooding, Arctic animal species will begin to die out, and Greenland’s ice
sheet could melt permanently.
The UN has said that “desertification is a phenomenon that
ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time.” Through
unsustainable farming practices and through the impacts of climate change, more
and more arable land is lost each year. It is occurring at “30 to 35 times the
historical rate” and causes 12 million hectares of land to be lost every year.
That is 23 hectares every minute with a single hectare being roughly the size of
a rugby pitch. 1.5 billion people are currently affected by desertification.
With capitalist society’s relentless drive for bigger,
better and more expensive, we have taken the phrase “out with the old, in with
the new” to an unparalleled stage. Human waste and pollution has turned
enormous parts of our Earth into dumping grounds of last seasons’ commodities.
Its detrimental effect can be seen across the globe. Scientists from the US,
France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand have found that there are “more than
five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes…
floating in the world’s oceans”. On the island of Midway, more than 2,000 miles
from the nearest continent, birds are found dead with plastic in their
stomachs.
In March of this year, The Observer reported that the “fresh
water shortage will cause the next great global crisis”. Though typically many
see this problem as an issue for the developing world, Californians can attest
to the fact that it is a concern for us all. The state is now in its fourth
year of drought and cities and towns are being urged to cut back on their water
usage by 35%. The crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, General Sheikh
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, recently admitted: “For us, water is now more
important than oil.”
There are also increasing number of floods each year, more
numerous and more violent tropical storms and cyclones, droughts, the threat of
volcanic explosions, earthquakes, rising sea levels, soil erosion, coral reef
destruction, ocean acidification, nuclear waste, and unsustainable and damaging
human farming methods.
The World Socialist Party (New Zealand)
would love to write about the coming global social revolution, but
realistically it seems more likely that the world will collapse rather than capitalism
being overthrown. Our society and our way of life need to be in harmony with
nature, not always battling against it, because in a fight against Earth and
Nature there can only be one winner, and it will not be us. There are so many
ongoing signs that the planet is heating up, even “on fire” when one reads the reports
of raging forest-fires around the globe. Globally, surface temperatures have
been setting record highs. Human-induced climate change is relentless. As the
WSP(NZ) continually point out, to pollute or not, is a matter of the impacts on
profits, and that alone. It does not take much digging to unearth the direct
relation between a system of production for profit and a whole range of
problems. This is particularly clear in the case of environmental problems. Capitalism
is all about capital accumulation and the insatiable pursuit of profit is
naturally accompanied by tremendous waste and destruction. If there are profits
to be gained, capitalists are not too bothered by the long-term, or even
short-term, consequences for other people or future generations. Political
leaders lecture about the need to address environmental problems, while turning
a blind eye to the role played by this rapacious system of profit chasing. Capitalism
is a blind process of profit accumulation. It doesn't understand moral
arguments. The functionaries of capitalism serve a supremely ignorant master.
New Zealand political leaders are never going to challenge the thing they most
believe in. They will still be making their bogus hot-air speeches while the
world burns round them.
The survival of humanity depends upon the victory of the
working class over the ruling class. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) chair R. K. Pachauri, said “The solutions are many and allow for
continued economic and human development. All we need is the will to change,
which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the
science of climate change...Addressing climate change will not be possible if
individual agents advance their own interests independently; it can only be
achieved through cooperative responses, including international cooperation.”
The threat of global warming is clearly a global problem
that can only be dealt with by co-ordinated action at a world level. But this
is not going to happen under capitalism. As a system involving competition
between profit-seeking corporations backed up by their protective nation-states,
it is inherently incapable of world-wide cooperation. So it’s not going to
happen. There is not going to be any coordinated world action to deal with
global warming as long as capitalism is allowed to continue. Something will be
done but it is bound to be too little, too late. Individuals do have some
responsibility in the matter. Capitalism - the cause of the problem - only
continues in the end because people put up with it. Effective remedial action
will only be possible within the framework of a united world which can only be possible
on the basis of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources being the common
heritage of all humanity. A growing consciousness that we are all inhabitants
of a single world, that we share the globe in common despite our different
languages and cultures, is essential if we are to tackle ecological problems
such as global warming. What is required is association with the other peoples
of the world, on the basis of socialism. What is required is world socialism
where the Earth's resources will be owned in common and democratically
controlled through various inter-linked administrative and decision-making
bodies at world, regional and local levels. A system without money and the
profit motive in which the interests and needs of all are paramount. In such a
system the challenge of the human impact on the environment can be seriously
addressed for the first time. People and not money will control the world and steer
the direction of social progress.
Think globally, act locally, we hear many sincere voices
within the green movement say. Anyone who follows the news cannot help but
think globally. We are up against a global system which can only be effectively
and lastingly dealt with at that same level. The urgent need for world
co-operation in dealing with the problems of world energy supply cannot be
realised within the social productive relations and the existing economic
framework. It is completely impossible under capitalism for humanity to use the
earth's resources for the benefit of all people. Yet there is in fact no
barrier presented by any alleged inability of people to co-operate in their
mutual interests. On the contrary, this ability to co-operate is universal. This
movement already exists as the movement for world socialism. It is vital that
those who see the need for world co-operation in dealing with the problems
facing all of humanity should join its ranks to swell its voice of sanity and
thereby contribute to the work of preparing practical programmes of action
which could be implemented once the socialist political objective is achieved. This
political objective is one of democratically gaining political control with a
view to taking the means of production and the earth's resources out of the
hands of the world's capitalist class and placing them at the free disposal of
the whole world's community. In the long run, humanity's greatest productive
resource lies in the innovative genius of our species. The essential problem is
one of how to establish a society in which this genius can find its fullest
expression directly for human needs.
So perhaps not all hope is lost.
WSP(NZ) website:
E-mail:
wsp.nz@worldsocialism.org
Rich and Poor Moms
Pretty much all developed countries require companies to
offer paid maternity leave to new mothers — all countries except, of course,
for the United States. About a quarter of new mothers return to work within two
weeks of giving birth.
80 percent of college graduates took at least six weeks off
to care for a new baby, but only 54 percent of women without college degrees
did so. This is how maternity leave works in a country that has no guarantee of
time off: It goes to the women who have higher-income jobs with better benefit
packages, or those who can afford to forgo income for a number of weeks or months.
Low-income women have little option but to return to work quickly.
Economists have looked at the relationship between maternity
leave policies and children's well-being — and they find, perhaps somewhat
unsurprisingly, that kids raised in countries that guarantee more time off have
better health outcomes. One 1995 study found that every extra week in
guaranteed maternity leave correlated with a 2 to 3 percent decline in infant
deaths. Separate research elsewhere found similar results. And this makes
pretty intuitive sense: Mothers with paid leave have more time to care for
their children, giving additional time to invest in a newborn's well-being.
The divide between rich moms and poor moms — those who do
get maternity leave and those who don't — is an example of a situation in which
economic inequality leads to unequal opportunities for the next generation.
Kids born to moms without paid maternity leave are getting a worse shot at
life, simply because of a benefit that their parent's employer declines to
offer.
Too Poor For Justice
Poverty-stricken people are being encouraged to plead guilty
to crimes they did not commit out of fear they will face crippling costs
imposed by new financial penalties, leading lawyers, magistrates and
campaigners have warned.
A new levy was introduced to make criminals pay for the
upkeep of the courts. Because the charge can be up to 10 times higher if
someone is found guilty after pleading innocence, critics say it is undermining
the justice system by encouraging impoverished defendants to plead guilty even
if they have done nothing wrong. The charge is not means-tested or adjusted
according to the seriousness of the crime. In the magistrates’ court it is
fixed at £150 if someone pleads guilty, but it can rise to £1,000 if they are
found guilty. Campaigners also say it has created an extra hardship for those
whose crimes are motivated by poverty – and makes the punishment for small
crimes disproportionate.
Many of those affected are homeless or unemployed, with no
hope of paying. Cuts to legal aid mean more people are representing themselves,
making them less confident of successfully proving their innocence – and more
likely to plead guilty in order to avoid exorbitant costs. The charge is so
immovable that even if you go to prison for failure to pay it is not wiped out.
The debt collection will be outsourced to private firms.
At least 30 magistrates – many of them among the most
experienced – have already stepped down from the bench over the changes and
many more are predicted to resign as further cases come through. Richard
Monkhouse, chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, the independent charity
representing the majority of magistrates in England and Wales, said: “The chief
concern of our members is the observation that pleas are being influenced by
the charge. Defendants may be pleading guilty in order to avoid a larger financial
penalty… We hope that the Lord Chancellor will grant the urgent review we’re
calling for and grant magistrates discretion in applying the charge.” Mr
Monkhouse added: “We are seeing experienced magistrates resigning from the
bench, and we expect this figure to increase as the cycle of trials with the
charge kicks in.”
Philip Keen resigned from the bench on 2 July after serving
as a magistrate for 30 years in the Isle of Wight. He said: “I couldn’t justify
sitting there and imposing that. Our discretion has been taken away and it goes
against everything we’ve been taught about fining people within their means and
ability to pay. The people we’re dealing with don’t have any money, that’s what
[the Government] can’t understand... This charge needs to be knocked on the
head quickly because it’s just unfair.”
Bob Hutchinson, who resigned as deputy bench chairman of
Fylde Coast magistrates this summer after serving for 11 years, has been an
outspoken critic of the new charge. “There’s a strong possibility that people
will feel financial pressure to plead guilty when they’re not,” he said.
District Judge James Henderson expressed exasperation at the
charge. Sentencing a homeless man for burglary at Wimbledon magistrates’ court,
the judge told the court of his disappointment that he was unable to waive the
charge because he had no discretion to do so.
A judge at Exeter Crown Court questioned the viability of
the Criminal Courts Charge after imposing a mandatory £900 fee on a homeless
shoplifter in June. As Stuart Barnes, 29, was led away for stealing £60 of
cosmetics, Judge Alan Large asked: “He cannot afford to feed himself, so what
are the prospects of him paying £900?”
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for
Penal Reform, said: “There’s beginning to be evidence that people who are
innocent and would like to say they’re innocent are worried that if they do it
will be like Russian roulette. This is encouraging them to plead guilty because
it carries less financial risk.” Ms Crook compared the charge to the poll tax.
“Because it’s mandatory and because it’s a fixed amount it’s a bit like the
poll tax. There’s no discretion, which makes it unfair on the people who
haven’t got money – as well as those who could pay more. The fines system has
always worked on the basis of whether people could pay.”
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