Off With their Heads?

It must have been not long after 10 am, Saturday, September 6th, 1997, that I left my comrade’s house – he lived near Stockwell tube station in South London and I’d been staying there overnight – and headed down Clapham Road, which leads on to Clapham High Street and to the head office of The Socialist Party.

Anyone who has seen the film 28 Days Later will know what a lifeless London looks like. From my comrade’s home to the SPGB Head Office is a half hour’s walk, yet during that journey I spied perhaps only two other humans and not one car passed me on that generally congested 4 lane road.

London had not been evacuated; nor had some neutron bomb disintegrated every piece of organic matter for miles around and neither had some super-bug wiped out the South London population overnight. No. Today, in fact, was the funeral of ‘Princess’ Diana, the “Queen of Hearts” and the country was in mourning. Londoners were either watching the event on TV or lining the route of the funeral procession.

Every shop along my route was closed. Everywhere were hung posters of Diana, in shop windows and in the front windows of a thousand homes. The only door open for business at that sacred hour was the outer door at The Socialist Party’s head office -announcing to the world, that the revolution was not on hold for the funeral of a parasite – I had opened it and I entered at perhaps the same time Diana was entering Westminster Abbey.

There was no doubt in my mind how important an event this was to the brain-numbed masses. I had seen the wailing crowds on my comrade’s TV as Diana’s funeral procession left Kensington Palace and I had travelled down to London the day before aboard a National Express coach (a mobile violation of human rights) full of ageing royalists whose flowers packed the coach’s hold and saw the thronging crowds, some of whom had been there for days to secure a decent vantage point, as the coach (the 525 service from Newcastle) neared Victoria station.

Yet despite all of the grief, the Windsor ascendancy was not secured that day. Indeed, the popularity of the royals had plummeted to an all time low in the week after Diana’s death – she wasn’t one of them, she was “one of us”, was the popular misconception – and if Tony Blair had have stood up in the House of Commons that week and demanded a republic the country would have handed him one on a plate.

I had been watching the film Reds – based on John Reed’s book 10 Days that Shook the World – on BBC 2 when Diana’s car crash was announced. It was late at night and the film was interrupted with a news flash and I just knew she was dead and her death was indeed confirmed an hour later. “They’ve got her,” I told my wife as I woke her up in the early hours, to tell her of the hit. I still have the video recording of the film with that special announcement of the Paris tragedy.

I wasted no time in writing an obituary the next day – not the sycophantic, fawning variety, that would increase the weight of many a national newspaper by a few kilograms in the coming days – but the ‘tell it like it us’ kind, about how she courted the media when it was to her advantage and avoided them like the plague when it was not.

She was popular for many reasons. She had poured her heart out in a TV interview in which she imparted she had contemplated suicide, bemoaned her relationship with Charles and spilled the beans on the three-way marriage – the other partner to this ‘manage a trios’ being Camilla Park Your Balls – and was seen as a friend of the sick, filmed comforting cancer and Aids sufferers and clearing land mines in less fortunate countries. Moreover, she was quite bonny and coy and had a motherly grace about her.

But she was still a bloody parasite and for all her ‘good work’ was not noted for throwing open the gates of Kensington Palace to the homeless, or for offering pensioners a lift home from Netto with their weekly groceries in her Rolls Royce or for her blood donations.

And as for the obituary I sent to six regional newspapers, none published it; none dared publish it! The press were raking it in, so to speak, and couldn’t print enough pull-outs about their fairy tale princess, so there was no way they were going to print some anti-Di piece from a gobshite on South Tyneside. The TV networks were just as obsessive with their coverage, constantly showing us the spreading acres of flora laid at the gates of Kensington Palace by sobbing hoards of admirers, ever ready to tell the camera crews how their lives would never be the same again and what a miserable twat the Queen was for not flying the flag at half-mast above Buck House and what Tampax head needed was a good stiff kick in the jacobs.

It took the House of Windsor many years to recover from the popularity nose dive they had suffered after Diana died. And nothing they could do could raise their pre-Diana public profile. The Queen seemed to be having one “annus horribilis*” after another, and nothing her degenerate offspring did helped – they seemed hell-bent on living life as if it was one fun-filled holiday.

Husband Phil the Greek continued to make the racist royal gaffes* that have made him the toast of the BNP and the KKK and her sons looked destined to make prats of themselves at every opportunity, as if life was one long Monty Python sketch.

Even the Queen’s grandchildren kept on dragging the house of Windsor into the mud. On one occasion, back in July of 2001, Prince William, on one of his strenuous overseas visits, was pointed out a protected species of ibis flying over head. Just like gramps, his inbred reaction was to reach for a gun and shoot the poor creature dead, no questions asked, thereby showing that both stupidity and bloodthirsty sadism runs in the family, every bit as much as noses. For further details of Philip's bloody roll of dishonour go to the bottom of this post.

It was going to take something big to warm the multitudes to the occupants of Buck House. This happened on March 30th 2002, when the Queen Mum, who a year previous had received her 100th birthday telegram off her daughter, decided what the royal family needed right now was the sympathy vote, and promptly died – just six weeks after the funeral of the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret and which had attracted about as much attention as a USAF bomb-laden sortie over Iraq.

Anarchists jubilantly observed how you can wait for decades for one of the royals to die and then two pop their clogs at once and then went out and got pissed.

The public outpouring of affection in the days after the Queen Mum’s death was both amazing and nauseating. Again the press wasted no time in running off no end of obituaries and souvenir pull-outs, and the TV ran documentary after documentary about her wondrous like, from her humble beginnings in a stately home in Scotland to her wartime heroism (travelling to London to see the blitz victims each day, before making the 50 mile dash back to Windsor for he favourite war-time meal of swan and chips) and to her position as the nation’s favourite 101 year old gin-totting scrote. The queues of people waiting to file past her coffin as it lay in state for a week was estimated – if laid out in one line – to stretch to Neptune and back. Kleenex made another killing.

I again wrote a royal obituary and this time had it had it published! Several times - one paper, with a national circulation, even phoning up asking if they could also use it. The Queen mum may have been popular, but her age meant that she could not claim as her epitaph – as Diana had done – “only the good die young.” This coffin dodger had lived it up for over a century, so was fair game.

For over a year previous to the Queen Mum’s 100th birthday we had heard non stop the news of the preparations of this momentous occasion. Newspapers have given over thousands of column inches to this most important of national events, even stimulating debate as to whether the occasion be afforded the status of a bank holiday. On Wednesday, 19th July 2000, there was a national tribute to the Queen Mother, with military parades and presentations and the dropping of a million rose petals over the crowds who turned out in their tens of thousands and similar events were planned for the coming weeks.

As a socialists and hater of privilege, I was certain I was not alone in believing that not one penny should have beeen spent celebrating the 100 years of luxury that this ageing parasite had enjoyed; not that I believed it should have be put to better use. No doubt it could, but I’m not into the business of juggling the nation’s accounts.

For one thing, the Queen Mother was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, into the aristocracy and into a family which, at her birth owned three luxurious homes at a time when 99% of this country lived in various degrees of poverty. And 100 years later, she was still enjoying the good life, jumping hospital queues, waited on hand and foot by maids and servants and chauffeurs, whilst the average pensioner, after decades of struggling to survive, living in the shadow of debt, having been insulted by successive Labour and Tory governments, was given a weekly rise that year that could not, quite honestly, have bought a packet of chips.
Undoubtedly, the cost of keeping this wizen-faced has-been alive and in the manner to which her ilk have grown accustomed – in the finest accommodation, the best food, the most expensive clothes and jewellery – for 100 years, was perhaps equivalent to the annual income of many a third world country.

It is estimated the Queen Mum was ‘worth’ £60 million at her death, yet still managed to sponge of her relatives and receive £650,000 from the civil list, while being £4 million overdrawn. The crown that lay on top of her coffin was encrusted with 2,500 diamonds, any one of which could have given the average pensioner years of relative luxury.

The contribution made to society by the Queen Mother and her greedy and incestuous clan was, in my opinion, quite simply zilch. Each one is capable of happily consuming in one day more resources and commodities than any 100 members of the working class, perhaps 1000 times as much as the inhabitants of a small African village. Yet we are meant to kowtow to this bunch of indifferent, self-seeking brain-dead leeches, to prostrate ourselves like imbeciles in front of them?

As I wrote in my obituary on the Queen Mum: “It is time we, the working class, celebrated something of far more importance – ourselves and the latent strength we have and can utilise to help bring about a world in which we can all enjoy the nice things that civilisation ought to bring. It seems we have been led for so long by idiots, convinced we should look up to our ‘betters’ and to celebrate their shenanigans, brainwashed into thinking the same by the media, that we have forgotten our own collective strength. The Queen Mother’s 100th birthday deserves no more our sanction than the bombing of Iraq or the reintroduction of the slave trade. If the injustices that plague our world and perpetrated in the name of profit were to receive one-tenth as much coverage as this 100th birthday do, then our case would have been well publicised and our ranks undoubtedly swollen.”

But all said the Queen Mum had made the ultimate sacrifice – she died and saved her family. Or so many thought, for without the guiding hand of the Queen mother, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren just did what they bloody liked.

A few months ago, Diana’s cute little son Harry, now an upper class, hedonistic, beer swilling, nymphomaniac, prone to outbursts of rage - once slamming a camera into the face of a member of the paparazzi – thought it would a good giggle if he turned up for a fancy dress party dressed a World War 2 German soldier. Of course, Harry saw nothing wrong with the stunt. He was simply following a long royal Nazi tradition. The Nazi uniform is just one of the traditional costumes of royalty.

It is well known that the Queen Mum was the guardian of the secret vaults at Windsor castle, which house war time records of the dealings the House of Windsor had with the Third Reich. Sending a copy of Mein Kampf to a friend in the pre-war years, she commented: “Even a skip through gives a good idea of his obvious sincerity.” Harry’s Grandpa, Prince Phillip, had a brother in law in the SS, and his (Phil’s) uncle Prince Christopher of Hesse was in the Gestapo

In Germany, in 1997, Phil welcomed German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a trade fair as “Reichskanzler” – the last German leader who used the title was Adolf Hitler. And, Edward VIII, Harry's great-great uncle, is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. After giving up the throne to marry divorced American Wallace Simpson in 1937, the couple visited Germany and met Hitler, voicing admiration for his policies. He once remarked while on a visit to the USA: "It would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were overthrown."

With the "Prince Harry the Nazi" story still making the news weeks after the event, what was noticeably absent from the debate about whether Harry was right, wrong or silly to wear a Nazi uniform, was that pertaining to the very existence of the Royal Family. It seemed to be taken for granted that we have one, we need one, they have always been there etc., and all that needs to be discussed is how the bastards should behave in public. No mention at all that the sole purpose of this parasitical and unscrupulous family is to serve as a repository for ‘history’ and ‘tradition’, which of course provides the glaring injustices of capitalism with some form of moral authority. What pissed people off was that Harry had dressed as a Nazi. If he had have come as a Coco the Clown the press would have applauded his sense of humour and written reams on what a fun-loving chappy he was and how Diana would have adored him..

Lately, and once again, we are subjected to endless reams of newspaper commentary and TV debate about the legality of Tampax head’s coming marriage to Park Your Balls. This morning’s Daily Mirror (9th March, 2005) ran a front page photo of a new first class postage stamp which will be produced to mark the occasion on April 8th and protested at the commemorative stamps (there are actually two). Why, the Mirror queried, if this is such a low key affair is the occasion being marked with commemorative stamps? Again, no mention that the Queen’s profile has graced every British stamp since 1952!!

Debate has been ongoing for weeks as to whether they should marry, where they should marry, whether the Queen should attend the wedding or only the piss up afterwards and whether, in marrying such a commoner, Charles would forfeit his right to the crown. And amidst all this intense debate there has been lost one far more important question: who gives a shite? Just why should it concern any member of the working class if these sad old spongers marry or not? What the hell are the mass media thinking of, imagining that the majority of people will really take an interest in this farce?

Who the hell gives a toss for Charles? Anyone out there elect him Prince? He doesn’t give a bugger for any of us yet he thinks he can lecture us on every aspect of life: how to identify architectural ‘carbuncles’ – he should know, he’s marrying one – and how to get the best out of plants by talking to them. Incidentally, I’d like to see him talk to the plants in my garden – they’ll grow for no bugger, royalty or not – far too many cats have pissed on that plot of soil.
But for the future king of England to lecture us on family life, whilst phoning his lover on the phone and telling her he wants to be reincarnated as her tampax, is just taking the piss and perhaps suggests it is high time he met the fate of a previous king Charles. And…hold on a second…just what made him think that a woman that age still used a tampax? Christ, a colostomy bag, yeah - a tampax? Fuck off.

So there you are – my slant on royalty. You can love them or you can hate them, but how much, either way, determines your continuing acquiescence in your own exploitation. You may well think that the country would fair better without royalty, but at the end of the day in a republic we would be exposed to the same inequalities of the present system and our class position would change not one iota. So, are we going to allow ourselves to be brow beaten with royal sentimentality by the media again? Isn’t it time we snapped out of our hypnotic vulnerability to such garbage and threw the whole sorry spectacle back in our masters’ faces? More! Let’s just topple their god-damned system and refashion the world in our own interests!!

Notes

* annus horribilus: does not actually refer to the Queen having a horrible arse, but was actually her description, during one Christmas message to the people, of theyear that was coming to an end: “a horrible year”, which sounds more impressive in Latin, as if her “horrible year” was more horrid than ours.

*Phil the Murderer: By 1993 deranged Phil’, who has an arsenal of over 56 shooting rifles, had personally killed for the pleasure of murdering 15,000 pheasants, 15,000 assorted other birds, 2 crocodiles, 60 wild boar (killing 50 in one day), hundreds of stags, and a tiger.
Not bad for the president of the World Wildlife Fund.
(source, Mail on Sunday,7.2.93)
___________________________________

* Phil the Racist:In China in 1986, he described Beijing as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."

And meeting a Briton on a 1993 visit to Hungary he joked "you can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly" - in what was seen as an unflattering allusion to the national cuisine.

He was savaged by the media when he quipped during a visit to an Edinburgh electronics company that an unsophisticated fusebox looked as if it had been "put in by an Indian".

In Egypt he quipped "You Egyptians breed too much."

TWELVE MAD MONARCHS

First 10 taken from Time Out, November 1998

King George III once walked over to an oak tree, shook hands with one of its branches and chatted to it for several minutes. The King thought he was talking to the King of Prussia.

Princess Alexandria of Bavaria believed she swallowed a grand piano as a child and kept up this belief until she dies.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria decreed that day was night and night was day and had a moon painted on his bedroom ceiling.

Prince Otto - Ludwig II's youngest brother decided that the only way to keep his sanity while Ludwig reigned was to shoot a peasant a day. He shot peasants working in his garden.

Catherine The Great of Russia imprisoned her hairdresser for three years to stop him spreading the news that she had dandruff.

Queen Juana of Spain went mad when her husband Philip died. She refused to let him be buried and had his coffin accompany her wherever she travelled.

King Fedinand II of Sicily would only allow his face to be used on stamps if franking marks were never placed on his image.

Prince Philip of Calabria was mad about gloves - and wore up to 16 pairs at once.

King Charles VI of France was convinced he was made of glass and refused to travel by coach in case the vibrations caused him to shatter into a thousand pieces.

King Henry Christophe of Northern Haiti forced his guards to prove their loyalty by marching off a 200ft cliff. Those who refused were executed.

Prince Charles of Wales talked to plants and professed a desire to be reincarnated as a sanitary product. Despite being as thick as pig-shit he felt he could tell other people how to educate their children, what types of houses they should live and work in and what foods they should eat. He seemed confused that his proclamations were met with the near-universal derision.

Prince Philip of Edinburgh felt that the best way to advertise his commitment to world wide environmental issues was to be seen as often as possible shooting at domestic wildlife. After Scottish school-children were massacred by a crazed gun-men, Philip proffered the view that a cricket bat was as dangerous as a gun.

Into the national security state with New Labour

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 27/01/05

Dear Sir,


As I write, it is with having just heard that the Home Secretary has proposed the house arrest of UK citizens ‘suspected’ of involvement in terrorism, inclusive of curfews and tagging. British citizens are being included in these proposed changes after the law lords declared the present powers were discriminatory because they could only be used on foreign suspects.

Currently we are witnessing Labour politicians taking measures calculated to turn the United Kingdom into a national security state. The impact of this on those millions of decent working people who have over decades voted for the Labour Party must be utterly shattering. Socialists oppose the Labour Party because we stand for social ownership and democratic control of the means of life, while Labour promotes the flawed idea that capitalism can be legislatively humanised. That said, we sympathise with the motives of workers who vote Labour even if we wonder at their credulity as Labour aims to outdo the Tories in every area of repression of working class aspirations.

Now we have to ask Labour voters are they concerned, even frightened, at this savage curtailment of personal freedom and democratic rights? These authoritarian careerists in the Labour Party need your vote in the forthcoming elections; in exchange they will grant you the freedom to do what you are told.

Labour is attempting to induce in us the psychosis of threat, such as now exists in the USA where fear has become the natural condition of many Americans and which lends legitimacy to Bush's repressive actions. Just as Bush told the world, "either you're with us, or with the terrorists", so to is Labour telling us "either you're with Tony or you're with the terrorists." Blair's logic is that we will be so afraid of terrorists that we will gladly agree to anything he claims to do in our name. How long before pacifists, human rights activists and critics of Labour are denounced as unpatriotic?


It is surely ironic that at a time when the media is urging us to think about Auschwitz and the growth of fascism the Labour Party takes its first bold steps down the road to the savage denial of basic democratic rights.

Yours,

John B

Open Letter to Michael Howard

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 25th January 2005

Dear Sir,

This is a piece I have just written in response to Michael Howard's call for a debate on immigration and which I'd be obliged if you could consider it for publication (personal details at the end of the open letter).


Yours,
John B (Gen. Sec., SPGB)


Dear Mr Howard

Fully aware that the Tories face another electoral pounding in the coming election, perhaps also aware that the racist BNP are contesting 105 seats and the recent victories they have enjoyed, you are making immigration the main focus of the Tory election campaign in the full knowledge that your party is bankrupt of new ideas, desperate for support and fully aware just how popular xenophic scaremongering can be at election time. Shame on you!You now boldly announce you want a debate on immigration in the hope you can outflank the racist hierarchy of New Labour.

Okay, Mr Howard, let's start by acknowledging that the fundamental cause of immigration is global capitalism. It causes huge inequality in the world, inflicting poverty and deprivation on billions of people. It also creates endless wars over natural resources, strategic areas and other "vital interests". This inequality, uncertainty and conflict impels people to escape to better lives and safety. Who can blame them?

Let us also acknowledge, Mr Howard, that capitalism in Britain also causes inequality, poverty and deprivation, which affects millions of working class people who, unaware of the real cause of their suffering, are prone to believe power-hungry politicians playing the "race card" and blaming immigration for their problems.

When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and anger arise from the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it any wonder that workers will fall for the scapegoating lies of the far right and the quick fix they offer? That you can even think of making immigration part of the Tory election strategy is thus utterly despicable. Moreso at a time when we remember the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the mass slaughter resulting from Hitler's xenophic rantings.

I'm sure many of my fellow South Tynesiders, hearing your comments on immigration, remembered the fate of one popular local family, the Reys-Prado family, who have recently been forced into hiding in Venezuela not more than a year after they were deported from their home in Laygate, South Shields, following a ruling by immigration chiefs that it was safe for them to return to their native Colombia. Their case is only one of many.

My solution, Mr Howard? By switching to a classless, moneyless society (socialism), where the people themselves directly owned and controlled the means of production and distribution (farmland, oil fields, factories, power stations, railways etc), the global population could use those assets to provide for all their needs. Goods and services would all be freely available. And with an end to deprivation, wars and money problems, people would no longer be compelled to leave regions they were born in.

Yours,

John B

A Fantasy of Freedom

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 24th January, 2005

Dear Sir,

GY (A Fantasy of Freedom, 24th January) highlights well the hypocrisy that punctuated President Bush's inauguration speach. What Mr Y failed to consider was that President Bush also declared that freedom overseas was a precondition for freedom in the USA.

I can only presume the words 'freedom' and 'liberty' (used 42 times in Bush's speech) have taken on new meanings in the White House dictionary. History testifies that as soon as the US takes an interest in your country then you can say goodbye to freedom. Since 1945 the US has leant its support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Pinochet. Since 1945, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe, turning a blind eye to the most horrendous affronts to the democratic process. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments.

Perhaps Bush was telling the truth, considering the growing restrictions on personal freedom in the USA - i.e. the Patriot Act. If freedom is not allowed to thrive overseas, then why the hell should it be allowed to exist in the USA

Yours,

JB

The Coming Elections in Iraq

Since the end of the Second World War, when the US forced the Italian government to discharge its communist cabinet members as a prerequisite for aid, to its support for the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2003, the US has been regularly subverting elections around the globe for the benefit of its own corporate elite.


Ever fearful that foreign governments should respond to the real needs of their people, for instance introducing labour and environmental legislation, instead of the wishes of US investors, Washington has opposed the principle of democracy on every continent on the planet, even helping to overthrow democratically elected governments whenever it felt its interests threatened (i.e. Iran in 1953, Guatemala 1954, The Congo 1960, Ecuador 1961, Bolivia 1964. Greece 1967, Fiji 1987).


Neither has its methods been peaceable. Indeed its agents, in the CIA, have carried out assassination of prominent individuals with as much indifference as its embassies have supported right-wing death squads and bloody coup attempts throughout Central and South America. Across the world, the US has backed dictators of every hue, turning a blind eye to their horrendous affronts to the democratic process.


We are now to believe that the US, presently occupying “sovereign Iraq” (for President Bush has declared Iraq is now “sovereign”), a country with sizeable oil reserves, and which has lost 100,000 of its people since the US-UK invasion, will see free and democratic elections to take place on January 30th. Moreover, President Bush has since informed the people of Iraq—the same Iraq in which the CIA helped Saddam Hussein pull of a military coup: “We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave."


John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Iraq, was adamant that the US would not allow a delay in the Jan. 30 vote, a necessary step toward establishing the first “broadly accepted” government in Iraq since the demise of Saddam Hussein and would honour Bush’s promise.


Speaking to reporters at the Embassy in Iraq he assured them that the elections would go ahead and that the security situation would be improved by then and went so far as to say that conditions in 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were already safe enough for elections to be held.


He said:” I think once they realize that the elections will go forward as planned, then they [Sunni opponents of the election] are going to have to deal with that reality. Do they want to really opt out of an electoral process that is going to pick a National Assembly that drafts the constitution and shapes the political future of their country?” (Washington Post, 1st December).


Perhaps Negroponte is unaware that the resistance looks set to spiral, his comments coming just after it was reported that US deaths in Iraq matched the post invasion record set in April – 135 troops dead.


In Washington and London, the claim is that the ongoing attacks by insurgents is an all out attempt to disrupt the coming elections, when in truth the overriding fact is that many Iraqis still see the US as an army of occupation whose presence they have a right to oppose. An opinion poll carried out in September by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority confirmed that opposition to the US presence was widespread. It revealed that just 2 per cent of Iraqi Arabs—minus the Kurdish population—agreed wholeheartedly with the occupation. If anything this shows that in spite of the age-old hostilities between Sunnis and Shiites, one thing that could unite them is their hostility to an occupying army of 138,000 – a figure set to increase in time for the election.


Securing the peace in Iraq in time for the elections has so far meant installing a pliable puppet regime, and implementing Order 39, which The Economist described as “a capitalist dream” and which opened up the Iraqi economy to complete foreign takeover. It has meant the deliberate bombing of homes, hospitals and religious buildings by squadrons of bombers and helicopter gun-ships, turning cities into rubble (Fallujah was napalmed), cutting off water, electricity and medical supplies and spreading hunger and disease.


A comprehensive new study by the British-based charity organisation Medact, that looks at the impact of war on health, reveals that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years has increased from 4% prior to the invasion to 7.7% since the invasion and that about 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from 'wasting' and 'emaciation' ­ conditions of chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency.


A recently published UNICEF report reveals that, "Before 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East". Now "at least 200 children are dying every day. They are dying from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure easily treatable diseases".


Despite such facts as these, Washington would have it that people in Iraq—who, on the face of it—faired better under Saddam, are being irrational in not supporting US organised elections. And little wonder that various groups of rebels have promised to upset the elections with waves of attacks around the country, including Baghdad, where many insurgents are claimed to have fled as Fallujah fell.


As we go to press, Iraq's delicate political arrangement looks to be on the brink of collapse, with Sunnis, Shias and Kurds at odds over whether elections can take place on January 30th as planned. Iraq's 60 per cent Shia majority, who clearly suffered worst under the reign of Saddam Hussein, are keen for the elections to go ahead on time, knowing they are likely to consolidate the increased power they have enjoyed since the Sunni president's overthrow.


However, as rebels have continued their assaults on other towns since the fall of Fallujah, a campaign led by Sunni politicians has gathered momentum, with Shia leaders claiming that a postponement of the election date would only play into the hands of the insurgents.


The head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has said he would discard calls to delay the elections to choose a national assembly. He has been backed by 42 mainly Shia and Turkmen parties who have issued a statement to say moves to delay the elections were illegal.


Contemplating the stalling of elections, Al-Hakim said: 'This would mean the terrorists have been able to achieve one of their main objectives; that there be no elections and that a suitable political process does not start…We will insist on the necessity of holding elections and that a delay will not be in the interests of the Iraqi people.' (Observer, 28/11/04)


Conversely, Adnan Pachachi, a former Sunni minister, is heading a group of 17 political parties asking that January 30's vote be delayed by six months because of the violence, fearing the insurgency in Sunni towns will discourage people from voting, thus disenfranchising them. Significantly, the two major Kurdish parties have also signed up to the delay


Pachachi claimed it was “unthinkable that a large and important section of Iraqi society be left out of the political process…Security has to improve to enable people to vote without fear.” (Observer, ibid).


Iyad Allawi, the interim leader appointed by Washington to run Iraq, has said that in centres of resistance like Fallujah elections could be “delayed” until stability existed there, without the vote being invalidated, or in other words Washington-style Democracy would will be available in the first instance only to those who did not resist the occupation by US forces.


Alawi, it seems, has no real control over the situation and though it is said he has the power to cancel the election if he wished, there still exists the US hand-picked seven-member commission set up to run the elections, and which has the power to bar any candidate or party from standing and which will be deciding who is and who is not eligible to stand as a candidate.


Under the rules, the Iraqi electorate will vote for a 275-member Transitional National Assembly. Political parties will submit a list of candidates and every third name has to be a woman's. Those Parties with alleged connections to militias are disqualified from taking part, along with former leading members of the Baath Party.


Only recently has the US taken into consideration the fact that the elections will coincide with the haj (one of the five tenets of Islam), when millions of pilgrims are en route to Mecca via Iraq. Many of these pilgrims will be fundamentalists, aware that numerous mosques across Iraq have been bombed by US forces and with fresh memorises of Fallujah, Najaf and Samarra and other instances of US hard-handedness and with 120 parties allegedly contesting the election, many “foreign” fighters are expected to be smuggled in amidst the mayhem. Shopkeepers who have been asked to take on the job of distributing election registration papers have been threatened with death should they comply

The US hopes to have 150,000 troops in place in time for the election, evidence if ever it was needed that the crisis in Iraq is escalating. It was not so long ago that Bush was boasting how US troops had been greeted as liberators and projected that the country could be policed with 50,000 troops by the end of 2003. Now military analysts are cautioning that the Iraq army and police force will not be in a position to police the country for another ten years. So much, then for Bush’s claim that once a legitimate Iraqi government is up and running the troops will be on their way home

And as for the post-election situation, make no mistake, any government elected in Iraq will be permitted to function only so long as it kowtows to the dictates of Washington and any member of a forthcoming Iraqi parliament will be allowed to breathe only so long as he does not point to US corporate designs on the country, or mention words like “trade unions” or “accountability”. Whatever, government is elected to ‘rule’ Iraq on January 30th it will only be allowed to do so with the endorsement of the White House.


Here in Britain, Bush’s sidekick, Tony Blair, is likewise looking forward to a post-election regime in Iraq that has no real say on foreign investment. Moreover, Blair is desperate for elections to take place in Iraq for the simple reason that he needs something resembling a foreign policy success to present to voters in the run up to the election. Indeed any good news at all at the moment would be welcomed by New Labour.


The essential goal of the Bush regime in the Middle East remains the same as that of preceding administrations going back to WWII, and that is to reinforce control of the region’s oil reserves and the profits that arise from them. Furthermore, Washington is well aware that control of Middle East oil gives the US enormous leverage over its economic rivals, Europe, Japan and China, all of whom are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the US, the latter expected to have the same oil demands as the US within 25 years.

That Iraq has huge oils supplies is the sole reason the US cannot allow a government—freely elected by its people and one advocating a US departure—to exist.

Bush and freedom

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 22nd January 2005

Dear Sir,


Speaking at his inauguration on January 20th, President Bush declared that freedom overseas was a precondition for freedom in the USA. He certainly never elaborated on this theme and made no reference to the utter misery the US has, in the last few years, brought to Afghanistan and Iraq. He moreover, in his short speech, used the words “freedom” and “liberty” 42 times.


I can only presume these two words have taken on new meanings in the White House dictionary. History testifies that as soon as the US takes an interest in your country then you can say goodbye to freedom. Since 1945 the US has leant its support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Pinochet. Since 1945, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe, turning a blind eye to the most horrendous affronts to the democratic process. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments.


Perhaps Bush was telling the truth, considering the growing restrictions on personal freedom in the USA – ie the Patriot Act. If freedom is not allowed to thrive overseas, then why should it be allowed to exist in the USA?

Prince Harry

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 20/01/05

Dear Sir,


With the "Prince Harry the Nazi" story still making the news, what is noticeably absent from the debate about whether Harry was right, wrong or silly to wear a Nazi uniform, is that pertaining to the very existence of the Royal Family. It is taken for granted that we have one, we need one, they have always been there etc.


In truth, the sole purpose of this parasitical and unscrupulous family is to serve as a repository for ‘history’ and ‘tradition’, which of course provides the glaring iniquities of capitalism with some form of moral authority.


Honestly considered, the contribution made to society by Harry and his greedy and insensitive clan is zilch. Each one is happy to consume in a day as much resources and commodities as 100 members of the working class, indeed 10000 times as much as a small African village. Yet we are encouraged to bow with suppliant’s before this bunch of indifferent, self-seeking leaches like imbeciles, crying and sobbing at their misfortune, debating their transgressions, negligent of the immense global suffering of our own class?


What real loss to society would there be if the entire House of Windsor was abolished overnight? None. Though I would certainly not oppose the abolition of the monarchy, I would hardly find much to celebrate. For we would simply exist in a republic as wage slaves, every aspect of our lives still subordinated to the worst excesses of the profit system.


One thing is certain, however. If the injustices that plague our world were given one tenth the media coverage afforded royal gaffes, then the case for world socialism would have been well publicised and our ranks greatly swollen, and real injustice would at last be nearer a solution.

Yours,

John B

Tsunami and early warning systems

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 19/1/05

Dear Sir,


The head of the UN's cultural and scientific agency has said an Indian Ocean early warning system, similar to one used by countries bordering the Pacific Ocean to warn of tsunamis would cost $30 million. Considering the number of lives this could save, the cost is a pittance, more so when one realises the cost is equivalent to about two and half hours worth of US occupation of Iraq.


Whilst the world’s governments will heed calls for such an early warning system that can warn of natural disaster which we have no control over, they are deaf when it comes to those blaring in our ears, the man-made early warning systems. For instance, did we not also have fair warning of the devastation in Iraq? Did not President Bush telegraph his message to the world, over a year in advance, that Iraq would be invaded with a US military tsunami? Over one hundred thousand have been killed in Iraq since the US led invasion and now we are getting warnings that the US is just about ready to attack Iran.


Early warning systems have been sounding for decades. It was known in the mid 70s there were 400 chronically malnourished on the planet and there was a promise to eradicate hunger within 10 years. That figure now stands at 870 million. We know that today 17,000 children will die from hunger and many more from hunger related disease, and that this figure will be repeated tomorrow and the next day, and a year from now. The world is aware of the Aids epidemic in Africa, of increasing deaths from malaria, of the diseases facing the 2.4 billion with poor sanitary access, and we know that such problems will be with us in years to come.


These are not new problems. They have existed for so long that the statistics seem hackneyed and you feel something of a prat quoting them repeatedly. The point is, these early warning systems are ringing non-stop. Capitalism’s problems are hitting the human race with the force of a dozen tsunamis a day, killing millions.


And the reason governments fail to respond to the countless deaths caused by the very system they tenaciously defend is because it is unprofitable to do so. The victims, in the main, don’t constitute much of a market. For instance, it is more profitable to destroy thousands of tons of food than to give it to the starving. It makes more sense to have vacant buildings remain unoccupied than to allocate them free to the homeless.


The only early warning system that can prevent non-natural human disaster is one that frees production, science and technology from the artificial constraints of profit, using them for the benefit of humanity, allowing all people to have free access to the benefits of civilisation; a system that can allocate resources and the necessities of life where and when needed, as quickly as possible, and not on the prior estimate of cost. Such a system, world socialism, is the only system that can realistically address the myriad problems facing the human race, heading of disaster in advance.


Yours,
John B

The Beauty Myth

I was born facially disfigured with neurofibromatosis (a kind of "spontaneous mutation" in my case, the affliction usually being congenital) and the condition it is believed that seriously deformed John Merrick, the Elephant Man. Being thus afflicted it was more or less evident that my trek through life was never going to be smooth and that I would meet with a fair bit of subconscious, inbred prejudice.

The school career service in 1976 somehow failed to notice that I was different, even if most of the kids had, and negligently forgot to inform me that you can only get the job you want if your “face fits”. It was hardly their fault – they were on piece-time and the state-run conveyor belt that year had a large consignment of wage slaves to package for the sweat shops of the future. Neither did these experts on my future tell me how my disfigurement would impinge upon every aspect of my life, although I’d had a fair few hints by then, and how in capitalist society you are constantly judged by your appearance.

I know for a fact that I failed my first 13 interviews in late 1976 on my looks alone. In one instance I was talked out of entering the interview room—where I would be questioned by a panel, having been short-listed—by an assistant manager in the corridor. Even years later, when I gained a degree, I discovered that my access to a respectable job was barred on the grounds that I looked “intimidating”.

The first and only time I tried to enter a night club I was stopped by a doorman who said: “You’re not fucking getting in ‘ere with a face like that.” On another occasion a woman in a cafe asked if I would sit at another table and face the other way as I was putting her child off his meal. On several occasions during my post-school years I was stopped and searched by the police because I looked different. I could fill many pages with such instances – though many would be too painful and embarrassing to recount. It was enough to leave me with a feeling that my true vocation in life was to swing from the bell towers of Notre Dame cathedral screaming “sanctuary”. However, you learn to roll with the blows, and after each knock-down you pick yourself up, dust yourself down and proceed to the next encounter, angry of course, but in the growing awareness that it is society’s standards that are wrong.

When you’re an ‘outsider’ you inwardly celebrate every success of your kind. You see a small victory in every encroachment the outsiders make into the ‘normal’ world. Your powers of empathy are heightened and you silently share in every triumph over a system in which external appearance is paramount. In a culture that encourages compliance with idealised criteria of beauty, people with disfigurements and deformities clearly present as a distinct group of people more likely than others to suffer psychological problems and social stigma as a result of their appearance. That they can rise above this, that they can wriggle free from the niche society has allocated them and make their mark says a lot and perhaps offers hope for the rest of society caught up in the beauty trap.

I (pictured some years and many ops ago) was thus delighted to read in the broadsheets of mid-March, that after 150 years of debate, a panel of judges had decided upon the sculpture that will grace the fourth and hitherto vacant, plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square. The successful artwork is Marc Quinn's marble statue of Allison Lapper, naked as the day she was born, eight months pregnant and disfigured with a condition known as phocomelia, the outward appearance of which gives armless Allison the form of a victim of the 1960s maternity drug thalidomide.

As could be imagined, the decision met with much criticism, largely from those campaigning for the plinth to be given to a statue of the late parasite of Buck House, the Queen Mum, The Daily Mail included. Others, including the Disability Rights Commission, welcomed the forthcoming statue as a blow against the culture of perfection. From what I have read of the criticism, the choice of Quinn's sculpture has been slated chiefly on the grounds that the work is ‘all message but no art’. Undoubtedly much of this disapproval is rooted in uneasiness with the subject matter, a popular held belief being that representations of disabled people should only be deemed satisfactory when the significance relates to charity.

Being interviewed in the Guardian (17th March), Alison was quite upbeat about her deformity, commenting that there was not a single thing about her body that she would change. "If you told me I could have any bit of plastic surgery that I wanted, I wouldn't take it because I'm just fine as I am, thank you very much.” It is an exceptional and brave outlook to hold in today’s world – but there again Alison is an exceptional woman. She works as an artist and lives the life of a single mum, looking after her 4-year-old son Parys.

In a video that accompanied one of her exhibitions, in which her own disability takes centre stage, she commented: “Why do I use myself? That's a good point. My body isn't this ugly…I had always assumed it was because I'd been told it was…You are disabled so therefore you are ugly. So now, I think I almost throw myself at the public, if you like, for want of a better word, then say, well actually, look again...I don't feel ugly, and I forget that people become quite shocked by my nudity and by what I'm doing, but then great ... if that's had an impact ... good.”

Though Alison has found significant success as an artist in her own right, consider when you last saw a disabled newsreader, a crippled Miss World hobbling onto the stage in an ill-fitting bikini, a facially disfigured Club 18-30 rep or a compeer at the Oscars fumbling as he passes the golden academy award to best supporting actor with his misshaped hands. You could think all night and not recall any such moments because, quite honestly, the general public would find them unsettling, having been conditioned to see them as inappropriate. Instead, we expect the above to look about as perfect as it is possible to look.

Of course Alison, and certainly myself and others not cast in the generally accepted human mould, are not that unique. Indeed, ‘normal’ people everywhere feel less than perfect and intimidated by society’s notion of what is and what is not beautiful and feel their expectations and opportunities are limited because of their physical appearance.

Every day of our lives, everywhere we go—whether reading a newspaper, watching TV, looking at bill hoardings or the elongated adverts on buses as they pass—we are constantly inundated with idealistic images of how we should look. Our opinion of ourselves is under relentless attack from the advertising and media industries and our insecurities sharpened and thus easily exploited by those who seek to make a profit out of our fears, whether it be from dieticians and food and clothing manufacturers, the cosmetic industry or the plastic surgery fraternity.

We are conditioned to aspire towards quite impossible standards of beauty and are exposed daily to the myriad miracle products and procedures that exist to refashion us. We are weaned on the benefits of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants, manicures, Botox parties, face lifts, lip collagen injections for a fuller pout, vibration beauty therapy – the list is endless. Our email is bombarded with penis enhancement spam. We buy products that remove hair from our legs, nostrils and crotches, restore it to our heads and change it to any colour of the rainbow. Just pick up any glossy-paged Sunday supplement and try looking for someone who resembles, in outward appearance, yourself.

Women in particular are bombarded with images of what the ‘perfect woman’ ought to look like. She is a stunning blonde, a sensuous looking brunette or dark, mysterious and exotic looking, aged in her mid-twenties, tall and slender with two rows of gleaming white, film star teeth, devoid of any visible flaws and with her clothes hugging her body like a second skin.

I know women who have spent a small a fortune visiting beauticians, sometimes for complete makeovers - all to enhance their own self-esteem and the fancied image of themselves in the eyes of others. Every external inch of our bodies are shown to be inadequate and in need of improving, from our eyelashes to our toe nails. If a woman has a rounded, shapely, Rubenesque body—perfectly acceptable in the 1950s—she has too much cellulite. If her breasts don’t measure up they require liberal dollops of silicone and if her face shows the lines of maturity she is made to feel like a wizen-faced hag. Meanwhile, men enter the dressing room with trepidation, the member they once felt comfortable about now derisory.

Under constant attack from the media and advertising industry, women are left feeling happiness equates only with looking beautiful, whilst men can only find contentment in being affluent and powerful, there being no generic look to male success. In short, today’s beauty culture creates needless anxiety for people, women in particular, maintaining that if you don't look perfect, or make some effort to improve you appearance, there must be something wrong with you, that you lack self-respect and have “let yourself go”.

All of this needless anxiety, stress and concern with, what is after all truly superficial, represents a terrible waste of human energy. How much good is lost to society for the want of a little confidence and self-esteem is anyone’s guess. Again, we can only speculate how far the working class have been steered away from their historic mission by the obsession with such false needs.

What a wonderful tool of suppression the master class have at their disposal – our opinion of ourselves. What marvellous instruments of counter-revolution are the insecurities we have and which they know they can target. What better distraction from the really pressing issue in life – how to establish a world free of waste and want and war and to displace from power our ruling elites – than to deflect any outward thoughts the workers have inwards and on to themselves.There are many ways we can help shape the socialist society of the future in the here and now. One is to recognise that there are powerful forces at work night and day (the media and advertising industries, cosmetic companies and food manufacturers, for instance) with only one objective in mind – to profit by making us feel less than normal.

If Alison Lapper and many like her can feel good about themselves and challenge some of the most basic assumptions society holds head on, why can’t we all? As the final battle with the master class is to be waged on the battlefield of ideas, what better way to limber up for that offensive than to gain confidence in ourselves as individuals by liberating our minds from false notions of what it is to be perfect? As a class, united by the same basic needs and desires, we stand as perfect as any revolutionary class before us, and as much in need of a philosophy of beauty dictated from on high as a medieval peasant was his oppressive religion.

Aftermath of the Tsunami: Querying “American Values in Action”

Realising that upwards of 100,000 of the estimated 165,000 victims of the Tsunami disaster were Muslims, the US wasted no time in sending US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the scene of the devastation. There was much to gain from this mission at a time when the US has been accused of an anti-Muslim crusade in the wake of the devastation it has wrought on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Powell was keen to show the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that the Bush administration is not islamophobic, even if its military machine did seem to have a penchant for the slaughter of Muslims. He said “We’d be doing it [participating in the relief effort] regardless of religion, but I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.”

As for the US “values” Powell’s mission aimed to promote we need only mention Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay for starters before moving on to the myriad international treaties, on gun control, nuclear proliferation, the environment, human rights etc. that the Bush administration has flicked the proverbial V’s to since 2000.

While Powell bangs on about US aid, it is worth remembering that 40 per cent of US aid goes to Israel, a US military ally, a country in breach of numerous UN resolutions, and given in contravention of a Congress ruling that no foreign aid goes to a nuclear power.

US “values” have prompted successive White House administrations to support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Papa Doc Duvaliere. Between 1945 and 1999, this same defender of the global well-being toppled 40 governments and helped crush 30 populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe. During this same period the US has armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments. Some values!

When asked on US television whether the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a consequence of Western sanctions was acceptable, Madeleine Albright, Powell’s predecessor under President Clinton, replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.”
It seems there are American “values” and “values”. Those Powell is charged with furthering are those of a corrupt elite operating in the interests of corporate America. He was certainly not sent to Indonesia on a show of hands of the US public. His attempt to seek political capital out of present US offers of help to the disaster region is thus opportunistic and utterly despicable, nay, nauseating.

Powell further commented in Indonesia: "I've been in war and I've been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I've never seen anything like this." This from the man who rose to prominence trying to cover up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when US forces slaughtered 500 Vietnamese women and children in the village of My Lai; part of a larger conflict that left 2 million dead, many from the use of napalm and agent orange! We can only assume that Powell is suffering from selective amnesia.

He added: “I cannot imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave.” Neither, it would seem, could he imagine the horror of the thousands trapped in Fallujah as US planes bombed it, napalmed it and American artillery shelled it from every angle, raising that city – once with a population 300,000 – to the ground. And we can only assume that Powell was oblivious to the fact that the 100,000 dead of Indonesia is matched by the 100,000 Iraqis killed since the US invasion of Iraq.

While he feels a surge of pride in the knowledge the US government has promised $350 million to the stricken areas, what is to be made of the fact that this is only a minute fraction of the amount spent on the US invasion and occupation of Iraq? Or, to put it another way, the world is meant to applaud the Bush administration for paying out $350 million in one hand to save Asia’s Moslems, while forking out $150 billion (http://costofwar.com/) with the other to kill their counterparts in the Middle East.

If you consider that we err in comparing the war in Iraq with the rescue mission in the Indian Ocean, then remember the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Bush and Blair both claimed that this was a humanitarian intervention, a rescue mission, aimed at restoring democracy and freeing the Iraqi people from years of oppression. On this count it stands as the most expensive humanitarian mission in history, considering the size of the Iraqi population, and what does this make of the people who opposed that invasion, the 35 million across the world who marched and protested at the Bush/Blair rescue mission to Iraq in February of 2003?

When Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, criticised the initial US offer of $15 million in aid as “stingy”, Bush’s response was to claim Egeland was “very misguided and ill-informed”. Bush later had the figure raised to $35 million, with this figure later increased ten fold – a figure, incidentally now dwarfed by private donations in the US. All Egeland was saying was that in times of disaster Western governments do in fact appear parsimonious. Clearly Egeland was thinking of statistics compiled by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development which reveal the amount of a country’s GDP given in overseas aid. Of the wealthiest countries in the world, none give more than 1% of their GDP in foreign development aid. Egeland was also aware that his own Norway had the best showing at 0.92% and that down at the bottom were the US of A with its "stingy" 0.14%.

Many radical commentators backed Egeland’s “stingy” claim, pointing out that the Bush administration would be spending far more on the president’s inaugural celebration on January 20th and how the Republican Convention in New York last year cost a staggering $166 million (inclusive of $70,000 for donuts and coffee for the press). We can perhaps better set the US aid promise in context by considering that the occupation of Iraq is costing the US an estimated $270 million per day, and that the Pentagon’s military budget is $1.5 billion per day – this spent with a view to killing people, not saving them. What else are guns and bombs, tanks and warships for? One F22 Raptor fighter costs $225 million. It does not carry food parcels and medicines but surface to air missiles and cannons. According to the US-based International Action Centre’s estimates, "for what the US is spending for less than one second of bombing and destruction, it could construct a system that could have prevented thousands of needless deaths [caused by the Tsunami]."

As in Britain, so to in the US have the general public humiliated their governments with their generosity. If we accept that the invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian step, that Bush and Blair were motivated solely by the plight of the suffering Iraqi people under Saddam, why did they not set up a charity and see how much the public would have donated to this mother of all rescue missions? Simple, because they realise that people, though often conned at election time, are just not that stupid, and that they couldn’t have collected enough to feed a regiment’s mascot goat.

The generosity shown towards the victims of the Tsunami disaster are not Bush administration “values”, which Powell seems to have been inferring in his damage limitation exercise in Indonesia, but rather the basic values of human beings in America, indeed, the world over. Unlike other animals, humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow humans. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others. Across the US, as in other countries, there have been all manner of fundraising events, in all sections of society, inclusive of nursery schools, prisons, universities and impoverished communities. In some instances people have queued for over an hour to put money in a plastic collection bucket.

According to a survey by Independent Sector a US coalition of non-profit organisations, the percentage of volunteers in America is the largest of any country, almost 56%. The average hours volunteered per week by an individual is 3.5 hours. According to Charity America, donations to charity for 2002 were $241 billion, 76.3 per cent of this given by individuals.
If governments depended for their existence on us promoting our real values, they wouldn’t last a week. That is why they spend so much time trying to divide us as a class, lying to us, instilling in us false needs, a false consciousness, appealing to patriotism and the rest of the rot. When it comes to values, there are only class values, ours and theirs. That Powell had to go to Indonesia to try to hijack any US initiated relief effort, before it was credited to the workers of the US, shows perhaps that they fear not only class solidarity across the world but the very values that have come to the surface in recent weeks.

Open Letter To The Workers

Fellow Workers,

The world we live in at the beginning of the 21st Century is one that is fraught with contradiction. Some 800 million of our fellow humans are chronically malnourished and at least 1.2 billion will, on any one day, go without food. At the same time, the governments of the world order the destruction of vast mountains of food to keep prices high, stockpile food until it rots and pay farmers to take land out of production because the laws of supply and demand insist that overproduction is bad for the market.


Some 600 million of our fellow humans are homeless, sleeping rough on the streets of the world's cities, yet there is no shortage of vacant buildings—countless millions of acres of empty living space in the major cities of the world—and certainly no shortage of building materials or skilled builders and craftsmen presently out of work. Again, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not eat, but who does and does not sleep comfortably.


Well over 1 billion of our fellow humans have no access to clean water, while its growing scarcity is calculated to spark many wars across the globe this coming century. Meanwhile, the technology exists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up treatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there is not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixth's of the planet, so the investment never comes.


While millions of children die each year of curable diseases and while we still await breakthroughs in medical science that can cure the presently incurable, we find there are literally thousands of scientists around the world employed in weapon's programmes—paid by their respective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ warfare.


The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we find evidence of how capitalism destroys us physically and mentally, retarding real human development. At every turn we come smack up against the iron law of our age—"can't pay, can't have." At every turn we find capitalism running wild like a rabid dog, infecting all it comes into contact with.


Credit where credit is due. Capitalism has enabled us to carry out some pretty fantastic technological and scientific feats. Advances in warfare sparked a race for rocket technology that has enabled us explore the furthest limits of the solar system. The search for oil and other resources has allowed us to plumb the deepest oceans and map out the ocean beds. We can split the atom, map the human genome, and perform the most amazing organ transplants. Nothing, it seems, is beyond us. Our productive powers are fantastic. Our capabilities are awe-inspiring. Sadly, however, and in spite of the technology at our disposal, because of the never-ending battle for profits, we have entered the 21st Century dragging with us every social ill that plagued the previous century. War, hunger, poverty, disease, and homelessness are still making the headlines, and each of these problems is, to a lesser or greater degree, rooted in the way we continue to organise ourselves for production. The terrible irony is that we are already capable of solving the major problems that face us. Indeed, we have been capable of solving them for quite some time—though obviously never within the context of capitalism.


Over 20 years ago, the World Health Organisation revealed that the technology existed to feed a world population twelve times its (then) size. Five years ago the UN reported that Africa could easily feed a population six times its current size if western farming technology was introduced. Science and technology are in fact so advanced as to enable us to solve all these problems. However, the requirements of profit everywhere act as a stumbling block not only to the full use of the productive forces, but also to the full and unhindered use of science and technology in the service of humanity.


Socialists long ago realised that the problems we face are in fact social problems, not natural ones or the vengeance of gods—social problems because they have their roots in the way our world is organised for production, that is production for profit, not need. If you think seriously about it, you'll be hard pressed to find any aspect of our lives that is not subordinated to the requirements of profit. This is the case the world over. We are all of us at the mercy of the anarchic laws of capitalism.


What is to be done?

If this is the case, then what can we do about it? Socialists, real socialists, believe the only way forward lies in abolishing the money/wages/profit system that we know as capitalism and establishing a world socialist society or, in other words, a world of free access to the benefits of civilisation. Only then can we gain real control over our world and reassert control over our own destiny. Only then can we produce without polluting our world and only then can we enjoy a world in which there is no waste or want or war.


Since 1904, the Socialist Party has been advocating the establishment of such a world system: a global system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of all people.


We advocate a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders, states or governments, armies, police, force or coercion. A world devoid of money or wages, exchange, buying or selling. A world in which people give freely of their abilities and take according to their own self-defined needs from the stockpile of wealth. A global system in which each person has a free and democratic say in how their world is run.


Of course, many we come into contact with agree that such a world would be a beautiful place to live in, but that “human nature” will always be a barrier to its establishment, because humans are “by nature” greedy, selfish and aggressive. It quickly becomes apparent that what they are describing is not human nature as such, but various traits of human behaviour exhibited under particular circumstances. Socialists maintain that human behaviour is determined by the kind of system people are conditioned to live in—that it is not our consciousness that determines our social existence, the way we behave, but that our social existence determines our consciousness. Nobody is born a racist or a patriot, a bigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.


In general, the ideas the common people hold have been acquired second-hand, passed down from the ruling class above us. This is because the class which owns and controls the productive process, also controls the intellectual life process in general. Any anti-social behaviour is likewise determined by our position in the relations of production and in general by our social circumstances at any given time, ie. when we are poor, depressed, lonely, angry and frustrated.


In most cases, those who produce the world’s wealth (some 95 percent of the world's population) have had that second-rate education that makes free-thought preclusive—an upbringing that conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our betters and superiors. Indeed, the education system is so geared as to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo. Children may well cite that 8 times 8 equals 64, but how many will ask about the cause of wars or query the destruction of food?


Socialists hold that because we can adapt our behaviour, the desire to cooperate should not be viewed as irrational. We hold that humans are, “by nature”, cooperative and that we work best when faced with the worst and that our humanity shines through when the odds are stacked against us. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work—all of this without financial incentive. There is even the case of a man throwing himself on top of a grenade to protect children in a school yard. He died to protect children, none of which were his own, and in the instant knowledge that his action was suicidal.


Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we have been conditioned to accept it, not born to perpetuate it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.


Again, many we come into contact with tell us that socialism has already been tried and has failed. They then point to the former Soviet Union, to China, Cuba and a dozen other states that claimed to have established “socialism”. What they fail to grasp is that socialism has existed nowhere, and that what existed - being passed off as socialism—was in fact state capitalism, not socialism or communism (which mean the same thing). A cursory glance at the affairs of these countries reveals they never abolished the wages system. The rulers exploited their workers and outlawed dissent. They produced when only viable to do so, maintained commodity production, traded according to the dictates of international capital and, like every other capitalist state, were prepared to go to war to defend their economic interests. Moreover, in all of these countries, it was believed that socialism could be established by force, that socialism could exist in one country. The Leninists who carried out the Bolshevik Revolution maintained that the revolution could only be carried out by a vanguard, that the masses were too ignorant to understand the case for change.


Since 1904, our movement has maintained that socialism, like capitalism, can only exist on a global scale, and that it will only come about when a majority of the world's people want it and are prepared to organise for it peacefully and democratically, in their own interests and without leaders. No vanguard, no party can establish socialism—the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”.


Who are the workers?

But who is the “working class”? Agreeing with Marx, we believe that there are two classes in society—the working class and the capitalist class, each one determined by its position in the relations of production. The capitalist class own and control the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, living like parasites off profits, rent and interest. The working class, other than possessions we have purchased with our own sweat, own little more than our ability to sell our physical and mental abilities to the highest bidder. There is no “middle class” and view the working class as being inclusive of tradesmen, land workers, doctors, lawyers and teachers—anyone, indeed, who must sell their mental and physical energies to survive.


This class, the working class—not the capitalist class—runs the world and it's important to grasp this fact. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the forests and till the land and plantations. It is we who build the cities and railroads, the bridges and roads, the docks and airports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools, who empty the bins and go down the sewers. It is we, the working class, who produce everything society needs from a pin to an oil-rig, who provide all of its services. If we can do all of this off our own bats, then surely we can continue to do so without a profit-greedy minority watching over us and, more, in our own interests.


The ruling class, the capitalists and their executive, the governments of the world, have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. These belong to us. Moreover, it is we who are responsible for the inventions that have benefited humanity and the improvements in productive techniques. Most inventions and improvements are the result of those who do the actual work thinking up easier and faster ways of completing a task, the result of ideas being passed down from generation to generation, each one improving the techniques of the previous. If those who work have given the world so much, in the past say 2000 years, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world devoid of the artificial constraints of profit, in a world devoid of oppression and coercion?


Capitalism must be abolished

It is easy to cite the advances of capitalism over previous economic systems. Many people believe that capitalism, though not perfect, is the only system possible. One thing is certain, though—if we follow the capitalist trajectory, we’re in for some pretty troublesome times. Capitalism has undoubtedly raised the productive potential of humanity. It is now quite possible to provide a comfortable standard of living for every human on the planet. But, to reiterate, capitalism now stands as a barrier to the full and improved use of the world’s productive and distributive forces. In a world of potential abundance, the unceasing quest for profit imposes on our global society widespread artificial scarcity. Hundreds of millions of humans are consigned to a life of abject poverty, whilst the majority live lives filled with uncertainty.


Our ability to imagine has brought us so very far, from the days when our ancestors chipped away at flint to produce the first tools, to the landing of someone on the moon, the setting up of the world wide web, and the mapping out of the human genome. Is it really such a huge leap of the imagination to now envisage a social system that can take over from the present capitalist order of things? Is it just too daring to imagine humans consigning poverty, disease, hunger and war to some pre-historic age?


Do we really need leaders deciding our lives for us? Do we really need governments administering our lives when what is really needed is the administration of the things we need to live in peace and security? Must every decision made by our elites be first of all weighed on the scales of profit, tilted always in their favour? A growing number think not and have mobilised to confront what they perceive to be the major problems of contemporary capitalism.


In recent years there has been a world-wide backlash against neoliberal globalisation, corporate power and the iniquities of modern-day capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s ruling elite have assembled to decide their next step they have been met with protests and demonstrations that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations at Seattle, Gothenburg, Prague and Genoa, for instance, have fuelled the ongoing debate on the nature of modern day capitalism. Thousands of articles have been written on the subject and hundreds of books have been published that explore the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.


What is now clear is that the anti-globalisation movement, however well meaning, does not seek to replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. At best it attracts a myriad of groups, all pursuing their own agenda. Some call for greater corporate responsibility. Some demand the reform of international institutions. Others call for the expansion of democracy and fairer trading conditions. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism.


One thing is certain: capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. The world’s leaders cannot be depended upon because they can only ever act as the executive of corporate capitalism. The expansion of democracy, while welcome, serves little function if all candidates at election time can only offer variations on the same set of policies.


Capitalism must be abolished, if we as a species are to thrive, if the planet is to survive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to establish a different global social system - a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed. Socialism.


It is now no utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will—the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests. And how soon this happens depends upon us all—each and every one of us.

Starvation

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 14/12/04

Dear Sir,


More than one billion children, that's half of the world's population of children, suffer from poverty, violent conflict and the scourge of AIDS, the United Nations Children's Fund has just reported (the report can be downloaded in PDF format at: http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2005_(English).pdf)


Eight years after the promise to halve the number of the world's starving the figure is not budging. One child is dying from hunger according to the UN every 5 seconds. Its a startling figure. It means 17,280 child deaths every day from hunger. Where the two minute silence for this daily massacre? Indeed those two minutes, two minutes of inactivity, would see an extra 24 deaths added to the figure.


It is possible to read the figures on the world's hungry and to regard them in a very dispassionate way. There are many such lists of dead. Most of us cannot fail to be shocked at the number of 50 million who died in the Second World War. That number is horrendous but the numbers who die from lack of food are relentless - a holocaust that kills its victims every day of every year with no end in sight!


Unlike the casualties of the violence in New York back in 2001, the deaths from hunger are not the material of media drama. This is a silent outrage which is mostly ignored. It is of course impossible to take in the suffering of the millions of families who go into mourning every year over the death of a child because of starvation – over 800 million children since the FAO was set up in 1945, so I am informed. The total number is incalculable, but must approach 2 billion. Those who are better off are not uncaring but pre-occupied, pursuing their own daily struggles. We are driven by an economic individualism that provides us with little freedom to act effectively as a community.


The reason there are so many hungry is that under capitalism they do not constitute a market. The system Bair, Bush and their ilk defend says: "can't pay, can't have". Neither is it sound business sense giving millions of tons of food away free. It is far more logical to destroy tens of millions of tons of food each year and to pay farmers to take land out of production to keep prices high. It makes more sense for the West to have poor countries producing cash crops such as coffee and cocoa to pay off their debts than to produce food for their own people.


It is not so many years ago that The Gazette ran a lead story (I still have the clipping) about the cost to the EU of destroying their fruit and vegetable surplus of 3 million tons. It was £56 million. Of course it had to be destroyed. Were it allowed on to the market then the price of food would have come down and profits would have been hammered and that just would not do.


Were a child on South Tyneside to die of hunger, The Gazette would run the story on the front page. Parents, school teachers and social workers would be called to account. 17,000 die and the story is buried away on the inside page of the tabloids and, furthermore, totally devoid of any analysis.


Pop bands might well get together and re-release "Do they know it's Christmas?" in the hope that charitable donations will address the problem of hunger in Africa. But clearly it does not as the figures for global hunger have increased about 40 million since the record was first released in the 80s. I can only ask of those buying the record: "Do they know it's Capitalism?"

Yours,
John B