As Leftfield reported a couple of days ago, Greece is currently in the midst of a huge economic crisis (well, everywhere is, but it’s ESPECIALLY bad there), with the government attempting to push through billions of Euros worth of cuts in the public sector - basically cause otherwise they’re running the risk of going bankrupt.
Thankfully though, the Greek working class are pretty militant, and they sure as hell aren’t going to let these cuts and austerity measures – in wages, jobs, pensions, services ETC – be pushed through without putting up a fight. This week, there was a huge general strike on Thursday, which saw airports, ports, factories and government offices all closed down, and even the police, who have a reputation for being a bit of nasty bunch, holding demonstrations in the street.
But it’s not just the Greek people that are militant. Oh no, Greece also has some of the most militant, revolutionary canines in Europe! Writes a Greek anarchist of their four-legged friends: “They always hated police and authority, lived in Exarchia and the university and came with us in every demo. Some are still with us, some have died, always dreaming of a free world.”
One dog in particular, who we believe to go by the name of Kellanos, has become a minor celebrity round Athens, as a regular participant in every demonstration there over the past few years, never shying away from the front line of battle. Think I’m joking? Take a look at these…
18 December 2008
24 February 2010
PAWS-ING FOR THOUGHT: 4 March 2009
9 May 2009
12 December 2008
24 February 2010
Leftfield salutes the efforts of Comrade Kellanos and the street dogs of Athens in their valiant struggle to bring about a fairer world for all creatures, two-legged and four-legged alike, and thinks the dogs of Scotland could learn much from their waggy-tailed comrades of Greece. Canines of the world unite! You have nothing to lose except your collars and leads!
If you’ve been watching the news in the last month or so, you could be forgiven for thinking the Earth has gone a bit crazy. Devastating earthquakes have hit Haiti, Chile, Turkey and then Chile again.
But in fact, the recent spate of earthquakes is not in any way unusual. In any given year, we can expect on average one richer-scale 8 earthquake, 17 quakes between 7 and 7.9, and roughly 132 with a magnitude between 6 and 6.9.
So why does it seem like 2010 has already been such a terrible year for earthquakes? In this case, it’s not the Earth which is changing, but human society.
Human society on Earth has recently entered an unprecedented new phase: for the first time ever, more people live in cities than in the countryside, on the land. The vast majority of these people live in recently built slums. These slums go by many names-favela, township, ghetto; they all add up to the same thing. Migrants from around the world, torn from the land by capitalist economic policies, pour into cities in search of a living. Faced with the failure of municipal governments to accommodate them with decent housing, they build their own homes with whatever they can find.
This process has been going on since the beginning of the capitalist era. The Highland Clearances were one of the first examples of poor people being chucked off the land, as wealthy landowners prepare to use intensive methods to extract the maximum profit they can from their land. Today’s clearances are taking place in rural China, India and Africa. They’re driven by the policies of the international financial institutions like the World Bank or the IMF, who force governments to make their agricultural sector only produce profitable commodities for export.
But at the time of the Highland Clearances, there was at least an industrial revolution that provided work for the mass of landless people flooding into cities like Glasgow, Manchester or Birmingham. Today, factories work differently, with more automation and advanced machinery than was possible in the 19th century. So although countries like China are rapidly industrialising, there will never be enough work to provide for all the people migrating to the coastal cities. The result is that those workers who do find a job labour in near-slavery conditions fro absolute pittance wages.
A favela in Brazil
Meanwhile, the majority are forced to try and survive in what’s been called the “informal sector”, or the black economy. They peddle goods on the street, they scavenge rubbish dumps for anything valuable, or they become involved in crime and the one profitable industry within reach-the drug trade.
Left wing sociologist Mike Davis has chronicled what he calls ‘The Planet of Slums,’ in a book of the same name. It started out life as an article which is well worth a read, and is available for download here.
Many of these third world cities are built close to geological fault lines, making them prone to earthquakes. But the really devastating thing is that so many people now live in poorly built housing, which is extremely vulnerable to collapse. This means that the numbers dying from earthquakes on average is increasing. Therefore, more media coverage.
There’s pretty much nothing we can do to predict or prevent the occurrence of earthquakes. But what we could do is start a major global programme to make sure everyone on Earth has a properly built home that could better withstand one, which would drastically reduce the numbers that die.
More than that, we could start looking at how to change our global agricultural system. In global capitalist agriculture, production isn’t geared to providing people with an opportunity for meaningful work, or feeding the vast majority. What most agricultural production in the third world is geared towards is to producing the products wanted on the supermarket shelves of the rich countries. A different kind of agriculture worldwide could give most of the world meaningful work and feed the world’s population without
People scavenging a rubbish dump for survival in Cambodia
Regular readers of this site will know of two attempts by the so-called “Scottish Defence League” to march in Glasgow in Edinburgh to demonstrate against Muslims in this country. On both occasions the SDL have been kettled, unable to march – and in Edinburgh unable to make even a token static protest. On both occasions democratic, grassroots and broad anti-fascist organisations have been formed, with SSY members working with different anti-fascist campaigners to physically stop the SDL from marching. These organisations have been responsive in nature, and have only formed in the cities where the SDL have planned to march – but it has left us with a network of anti-fascists, in Glasgow Anti-Fascist Alliance and Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance.
This Saturday both groups will be coming together to have a national anti-fascist meeting to discuss the way forward for anti-fascists in Scotland. The SDL have been convincingly thrashed both times they have attempted to march or demonstrate but it is now clear the SDL are changing tactics and the anti-fascist alliances must respond to this. They have shut down their facebook, bebo groups etc and now are reliant on a hardcore of their members to come out and demonstrate. They have given up trying to publicly advertise their demonstrations and are now reliant on contacting those who have already been on previous demonstrations.
This in itself is a victory, as it severely stunts the possible growth of the SDL as an organisation but it also makes it harder for anti-fascists to combat them. After the Edinburgh disaster for the SDL, they announced they would be having a memorial event in Lockerbie on the 27th of March. Again this shows they have been thrown out of the cities in Scotland and marks a retreat for them. However instead of demonstrating on the 27th the SDL organised a demo last Saturday – this was entirely in secret, with no press coverage of any kind. Again, a blow considering the media coverage they obtained in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.
What it does raise though is the possibility of “lightning demos” – where the SDL contact a few dozen of their trusted members to organise a brief, static demo in major cities in Scotland – possibly outside key targets for them, such as Mosques or the Parliament. The anti-fascist movement needs to be able to respond to this effectively, particularly as the conditions will be very different from in the past in terms of policing etc.
We also need to discuss how we deal with other fascist organisations, such as the National Front. Long dormant across the UK – and in particular Scotland, where they never had anything like the base they had in England – they are now planning a “Kriss Donald memorial” later this month. The NF is trying to stoke up racial tension and exploit the tragic murder of a young boy for their own fantasies of racial war.
The biggest threat we need to face is not forces on the street however – its the established party of the far-right across the UK, the BNP. The BNP took 2 MEP’s last year, alongside their dozens of councillors and GLA seat. They are trying to make the break into political respectability, and with Griffins infamous appearance on Question Time are making some inroads. While the BNP have no councillors in Scotland, and have never picked much support north of the border its clear they are now trying to break on to the Scottish political scene. In the Glasgow North East by-election they came 4th, not far off beating the Tories and holding on to their deposit.
The BNP are now talking about standing in up to 12 seats across Scotland, which would be their largest set of candidates in any General Election in Scotland. While the BNP do not have any chance of winning the seats – and are very unlikely to hold their deposit in any of these seats either – these elections will be used to boost their profile for the 2011 Holyrood Elections. The BNP will be trying to get a PR seat by winning 5-6% across a region, most likely Glasgow.
At the moment this appears unlikely, particularly as Scottish Elections don’t give the BNP media coverage on the basis of their successes down south. What their strategy most likely will be is to boost their profile in national elections across Scotland in preparation for the 2012 council elections. All the BNP need here is 16 – 20% in one council ward to take a councillor. The BNP built their base in council halls in England, its logical they would use the same tactics up here – where they do not need to win a FPTP election.
The anti-fascist movement not only needs to deal with the far-right in their political organisations but with a wider acceptance of racist views in society in general. It’s now commonplace to hear migrants being blamed for taking jobs, and attacks on Muslims as being disloyal, terrorists etc. Most of the people who make these kind of comments would never vote BNP, but they can influence the major parties through voting for them to accept these ideas.
If the organisations, and more importantly the ideas of the far-right are going to be beaten anti-fascists have to evolve a strategy beyond “Don’t vote Nazi”. We need to flesh out, and campaign as for a strategy that undercuts why people are attracted to racist parties and ideas. That means uniting working people for positive demands around housing, education, employment and wages. SSY hopes that the national anti-fascist meeting this Saturday begins that process, and helps to build a national Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance.
Saturday, March 13, 2010 6:30pm – 9:00pm upstairs in the Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh
Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.
The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.
Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.
Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.
The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.
Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.
The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.
Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.
Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat
The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.
In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.
“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.
Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach
Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”
The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.
The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.
Young people are lazy, illiterate, untidy, useless and have an ‘attitude problem’, one of the most highly-paid people in the country revealed yesterday to a conference of supermarket executives. Lucy Neville-Rolf, who earned £1.6 million last year in her job as an executive director of Tesco, blames the ‘education system’ for its failings to create a perfect society of conformist minimum wage robot clones, in a speech which rolled out just about every clichéd anti-youth prejudice in the book. I mean, it is about time these pesky young folk were brought into line and started showing some fucking gratitude for their shitty minimum wage temp contracts, isn’t it?
Well, Lucy agrees, adding into her anti-youth tirade that ‘a society where people don’t feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society.’ Well, Leftfield disagrees. The reality is that Lucy Neville-Rolf, Terry Leahy and all the other Tesco executives are an unnecessary bunch of parasites who scrounge off the hard work of tens of thousands of low-waged workers in supermarkets in the UK, in banana plantations inthe Caribbean, and all over the world. Obviously, Lucy, Terry and co. are deeply concerned with the continuation of a society that places an obsession with ‘material possessions’ above all else, as they’ve managed to get bloody well jolly rich off the back of it. Indeed, Tesco’s turnover continues to grow, with profits now topping £3 billion annually, and that’s even with a workforce that’re apparently all lazy, barely employable teenage slackers!
Undoubtedly, Neville-Rolf hinted in her speech at serious issues in our education system, in her claims that school-leavers “Cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing.”. There are tens of thousands of young people every year slipping through the system and leaving school lacking basic numeracy and literacy skills -- but the only reason this concerns Tesco is that it’s affecting their profit margins, not because they actually give a shit about the state of education in this country. If they really do care that much, maybe they could consider not going to such extreme lengths to avoid paying their taxes here…?
Tesco already employees 40,000 people under the age of 19, and seemingly want to see the whole school-system re-oriented to be a rolling production line of cheap labour to suit their own interests. In all their moaning about the state of education, something they’ve done in the past too, they seem to miss the point that education is important for education’s sake. This sentiment the education system purely acts to ready people for a live of wage slavery is pretty worrying at a time when schools and colleges are facing massive budget cuts from central government.
Lucy Neville-Rolf says that young people seem to think that the ‘world owes them a living’. Why the hell shouldn’t it? Everyone has the right to a job with decent pay and conditions, and just because the bosses at Tesco would rather we lived in a corporate paradise of low-taxes and the conditions of cheap labour (ie. mass unemployment), doesn’t mean it’s suddenly acceptable to start shitting all over young people. After all, do you think Lucy Neville-Rolf would go into her work smiling, happy and looking forward to a fun day of shelf-stacking if she was on £5.86 an hour? I doubt it.
When what is possibly the worst economic crisis since the 30’s got going in 2008, a lot of people looked back into history. They pointed out that when the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929, it took a couple of years before we really began to see political implications, like the rise of Hitler or the Spanish Civil War.
In recent weeks a wave of protests and strikes has engulfed Southern Europe, bringing people on to the streets of Greece, Spain and Portugal. It looks like for some countries at least, we won’t have to wait much longer to see consequences of financial meltdown.
The Euro as a currency is in crisis as a result of what’s happening. The fate of countries like Greece puts serious doubts on its long term viability.
Many people support the European Union, because they think it is a big club where everyone helps each other out and prevents wars. The EU’s own rhetoric has often talked about solidarity across Europe. But the response to the financial crisis in Greece has shown that the EU is no different than any other part of the capitalist world-the strong exploit the weak, and the powerful have no interest in solidarity with those who are relatively powerless.
Hyperinflation made money cheaper than jenga
The biggest power in the EU is Germany. The German elite have learned from history, and since the war they’ve wanted two things: sound money and European integration. In the 30’s hyperinflation made the German Mark worthless, causing misery for everyone and spurring the rise of the Nazis. And following the destruction of the war, the only way France and Germany could ever hope to match up to the global power of the US was by teaming up.
These two objectives came together with the establishment of the Euro, the aim of which was to give Europe a strong currency that could stand up to the dollar on world markets. But the idea was also that the Euro would help political integration, with the EU becoming more like a state of its own.
But closer integration has proved difficult, and in the meantime the EU has mushroomed outwards to take in a bunch of countries in Eastern Europe. Now 16 different states, many with very different economies, are tied together economically by using the Euro. Some of these countries, like Germany or the Netherlands, export a lot of products and as a result have surplus money. Others, like Greece or Spain, have huge debts. In the past, if a country had a surplus the currency would increase in value, making it more expensive to buy their products. If another had a deficit, then its currency would fall in value, having the opposite effect. This is the way, traditionally, that imbalances got sorted out.
But now, with so many countries locked into one currency, it’s nearly impossible for a national government to take action to try and deal with an economic crisis. Richer countries like France and Germany have been able to pump some of their own money into the financial system, but the banks and capitalists don’t trust the poorer countries like Greece, and won’t let them do the same.
EU members today
Germany has the second largest trade surplus in the world, after Saudi Arabia. It exports a lot more than it imports. Its relationship to the rest of Europe is a bit like China and the US-Germany provides goods and finances, and the rest of Europe buys those goods and takes the investment. The difference is that other European countries aren’t nearly as economically powerful as the US. Germany has invested and traded heavily with poorer countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal. These countries companies just can’t compete with German ones.
On top of this, it’s now clear that there was a lot of bullshitting going on by European governments in order to keep the Euro working, and get more countries as members. An investigation is being launched into how the former Greek government conspired with banks to hide the true extent of their debts. But more generally, many of the European governments have been breaking their own rules and covering it up.
PIIGS: shocked by hidden debt
This hasn’t been money that has been spent to the advantage of workers, but is the result of massive corruption and mismanagement, along with huge tax evasion by the wealthy. Without cooking the books like this, it would have been impossible for countries like Greece to join the Euro.
Before the crash, governments were able to cope with their debts by playing financial games and borrowing more money. But that option is closed off now for most of them after the collapse of the financial system, and several countries are left with huge debts that are causing a huge problem for the Euro. The worst problems are in the countries that have been rudely dubbed “PIIGS”-Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
In these countries the governments are now forced to desperately try and cut spending, meaning wage cuts, job losses and general misery, whilst at the same time raising taxes. In other words, they are trying to force the working class to pay the cost of the crisis that was created by financial speculators, banks and badly-managed governments.
In Greece, the government has a few months to raise £20 billion through cuts. If it doesn’t they could face the serious possibility of a Euro member going bankrupt. The German and French governments have been less than willing to come to the rescue, although they may yet be forced to. In the meantime the government is trying to force through an unprecedentedly harsh package of cuts.
Greek protesters: handy with a stick
The good news is that the Greek working class is one of the most militant in Europe, and is refusing to accept the government’s programme without a fight. From midnight tonight (Wednesday) Greek workers are walking out to start their second national strike. In previous strikes protestors have been fighting in the streets with riot police, and attempted to storm the parliament.
In other parts of Europe resistance is starting to heat up as well. In Portugal civil servants shut down courts, schools and hospitals in protest at government wage freezes. In Spain, where the government wants to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 to keep people working longer, tens of thousands have been on the streets protesting. And in Ireland 4,500 porters, caterers, security guards and other low paid workers are set to go on strike against wage cuts in Dublin hospitals.
These Greek protesters bricked up a bank entrance to demand the government takes action against them!
In the UK, with the PCS already on strike and the prospect of more savage cuts after the election whoever wins, it couldn’t be more important to learn about what’s happening across Europe. We aren’t yet looking at a real revolutionary situation, but there’s no doubt that if we let European governments implement their plans it will mean poverty and misery for the European working class on a scale not seen since the 1930’s. The only way we can stop that happening is by defeating our governments across the continent, through mass action, strikes and people on the street. There’s an urgent need to link up the struggles across borders and understand the international nature of what’s going on, and Leftfield will do its best to keep you informed in a clear and understandable way in the months to come.
Over the past couple of days, Glasgow’s famous Red Road flats - situated in Springburn, one of the most deprived areas of the city – have been the focus of huge media attention following the deaths of three asylum seekers, who took their own lives early on Sunday morning. The three family members, believed to be Russian nationals, were said to have been facing deportation after having their asylum application rejected. Much remains unexplained about the case, and rumours abound that immigration officials were at the door directly before the three took the decision to jump. This remains impossible to verify though, and the Home Office have issued a stringent denial that any UK Border Agency officials were in the vicinity at the time of the tragedy.
What is certain to anyone even vaguely familiar with the subject, however, is that the UK continues to have a deeply inhumane and flawed asylum system. The three tragic deaths at the weekend are not an isolated incident and are only one example among many cases of the desperate measures which those facing deportation can be driven to. As a recent report from Swansea University showed, the vast majority of those seeking refugee status in the UK are not, in fact, here to steal our benefits, our jobs or our taxes, but because they’re genuinely fleeing persecution in their home country. But these er, facts are all a little bit too inconvenient for the government, who’d rather hammer out again and again that they’re the TOUGHEST on immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers… the lot o’ them, in a pathetic bid to appease the right-wing press.
Indeed, the fact is that asylum seekers are usually given the very worst of the stock when it comes to housing – the Red Road flats are used to house dozens of families seeking aslylum, through a lease to the YMCA, yet are so dilapidated that demolition is scheduled to begin in a few weeks. Not to mention that asylum seekers aren’t even allowed to work and forced to survive on £35 a week – which was cut from £42 last November, which pretty much sums up the attitude of the government on this issue.
Recently, we’ve reported on the ongoing hunger strike at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the south of England, and the lies that the government have scandalously been spreading about it. Meanwhile in Scotland, it was reported only last week that children as young as five continue to be held at the Dungavel Detention Centre in South Lanarkshire. A few years ago, when the dawn raids on refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland were at their height, Dungavel became the focus for huge demonstrations against the horrific treatment of people seeking sanctuary from war and persecution. It’s time that we once again stepped up the campaign against ridiculous asylum laws that see some of the most vulnerable people in society constantly abused and let-down by the system, as the tragic events of Sunday morning only too graphically display.
A protest outside Dungavel in 2003
Earlier this evening, around 150 local residents, community campaigners and those wishing to show their solidarity from across Glasgow held a vigil for the Russian family outside the Red Road flats. The mood at the rally, where several asylum seekers spoke and told us their own experiences, was sombre, but beneath this grief lay a huge amount of anger at the dreadful way in which they are treated by the system, and the politicians who do nothing to help their desperate situation. On Saturday, the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, and the Unity Centre - who do loads of really good work helping asylum seekers on a day to day basis, through their centre in Govan – have called a demonstration in support of asylum seekers, and as a memorial to the Russian family who took their lives at the weekend.
NO DEPORTATIONS – SUPPORT ASYLUM SEEKERS! Meet this Saturday 13 March, 11.00am outside the Red Road flats, 63 Petershill Drive (nearest station: Barnhill), before marching into the city centre, with a rally at George Square. Facebook event page here.
I’m sure many Leftfield readers will have been watching the latest series of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, pretty much the best satire on telly.
I loved the second series of this vital show, taking down the lies and fantasies of the media at every turn. But I didn’t love most of the bits featuring “US comic and drunk [big woop] Doug Stanhope.”
This guy has a persona of an absolute misanthrope: he hates the world and everyone in it. His most objectionable bit was the one embedded above, talking about overpopulation.
In this little rant, Stanhope tries to make out like he’s telling the world a hidden truth, something hidden by the media because it doesn’t fit with the mainstream environmentalist agenda. This supposed truth is that there are too many people in the world, using up too many resources, and the only way we can really save the environment is to stop having kids.
But the reality is that this idea is a very powerful one, and it’s been used by the ruling class as an excuse for nearly 200 years now.
In 1798 English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that population growth would always outstrip the expansion of the food supply, and that as more workers became available wages would be driven down, leading to poverty.
2.Many.Malthuses.
In other words, the working class in Britain were to blame for their own poverty. It had nothing to do with the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, who owned the places where they worked, and got rich on the back of their labour.
The thing is, he was wrong. Food production has grown faster in the last 200 years than at any other time in history, and has rapidly outstripped population growth. Famines aren’t caused by food shortages, but by unequal distribution of food.
But blaming the poor for poverty and hunger was a convenient solution for the people who were really responsible-the rich.
In the 1960s Malthus’ arguments were revived by environmentalists, who argued that population growth in the third world was causing an ecological crisis and must be stopped.
These people never however stopped to think about the centuries of looting that the third world has suffered at the hands of European empires. Nor did they consider that many people in poor countries have many children to ensure that some of them survive the harsh realities of an impoverished childhood.
In fact, the rate of world population growth is slowing. It peaked in the 1960s, and ever since the rate of increase has been getting slower.
The population theorists thought that if the world’s resources were a pie, reducing the number of people who wanted a slice would mean everyone gets more. But what about the 1 or 2 people that are eating three-quarters of the pie, leaving the rest of us fighting over the crumbs?
Delicious pie: Time to fight for a bigger slice
Most mainstream environmentalists don’t want to confront the realities of inequality, caused by capitalism. It’s much easier to tell everyone that they have to play their part, change their lightbulbs etc., than to say “A tiny minority of the world’s population are fucking everything up to make themselves rich.” The reason it’s easier is that rich people are very powerful, and taking them on is a hard fight. But if we’re really going to prevent the worst of climate change, and save the global environment, then we’ll have to take them on and beat them.
As a system, capitalism is based on economic growth. Every year we must produce more products, consume more, and make more money. But growth is unequal-the economy is constantly funneling more and more wealth from the hands of the majority into the those of the rich.
Right now, 10% of the world’s population own 54% of the world’s wealth. The richest 50 humans on Earth make more money than the poorest 416 million put together. In their unceasing quest to get richer, these people are trashing the Earth, by pulling out everything of value from the ground, the sea, and the soil, and by pumping back the toxic waste left over. These are the people who are really responsible for climate change, and must be defeated.
The best way to reduce population growth is to start ending the poverty afflicting most of the world’s population. For decades the world’s rich countries and financial institutions have forced poorer countries to cut their public spending, preventing them from having decent health services. If more poor countries were able to follow the example of Cuba, and set up world beating health services, then less babies would die and parents would have less children. Another key issue is women’s access to proper sex education, and reproductive rights to control their own bodies.
If we’re really going to save human civilisation from the potential catastrophes on the horizon, we can’t be human-haters. We need to change our society to be more eco-friendly, and at the same time more people-friendly. It’s more than possible to meet all the basic needs (clean water, housing, enough to eat, a fulfilling life) for all the people in the world.
The people in the way of us achieving this would much rather believe that all humans are equally responsible. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but with unequal wealth and power comes unequal responsibility. So Doug Stanhope isn’t bringing us a radical message that they don’t want you to hear. His hatred of humanity (which conceals a real misogyny-see his comments about “a tired old whore” and women’s wombs) actually suits the mainstream agenda just fine. Because it lets the people who’s fault it really is off the hook.
This map uses colour and distortion to show two different things. The extent to which a country is squeezed or inflated shows the extent to which countries are consuming their fair share, based on population, of the world’s resources. Starved-looking countries consume less than their fair share (most of Africa), whereas stuffed-looking countries consume far more than their share (most of Europe and North America). The colour of the countries shows the balance between whether a country has, within its borders, can generate enough resources and cope with its own waste within its environment (green, like environmentally rich Brazil and Canada) or not (like the Middle East and, yes, the United States). (via www.pthbb.org)
Thirty thousand civil servants (people who work in places like the Scottish Parliament, job centres, courts and tax offices) are on strike in Scotland today.
The action is being taken by members of the PCS trade union, over changes to redundancy entitlement which mean that if staff lose their job, they could also lose up to a third of what they would’ve previously been paid as compensation. The government is hoping to save £500,000 through this scheme.
What makes this so important at the current time, is that both Labour and the Tories are intent on pushing through massive cuts in the public sector, including job losses - and now they don’t even want workers taking redundancy to even get decent compensation!
Meanwhile at the Student Loans Company – where workers are also represented by the PCS union – management are looking to lay off around around 150 staff in Glasgow – 20% of the total workforce!
Now, if you’re a student, you’re probably already pretty familiar with the SLC – last year, the issuing of loans was left in chaos, with tens of thousands of students starting the year with no money whatsoever. And these are the loans that have to be paid back, with interest, remember – no student grants for us! Predictably enough, it soon emerged that at the same time as students weren’t receiving their loans, senior executives in the SLC were getting massive bonuses – in some cases, up to five figures. And now, the same management have unveiled their plan to slash nearly 200 jobs across the country, which will presumably make the whole loans thing be even more efficient this year than it was last year, while hundreds of workers are thrown onto the scrapheap at the same time. Logic!
Mairi Cranie, an SSY member who works at the SLC in Glasgow, explained: “The Student Loans Company is cutting almost 200 jobs, the majority of which are in Glasgow. Forty-five of these jobs are moving from Hillington to Darlington at no saving to the tax payer. This will impact families across the west of Scotland and the service for both current students and people in the process of repaying their loans.”
You can sign a petition against the cuts at the SLC here: http://www.gopetition.com/online/34078.html The PCS strike continues tomorrow, so get down yr local picket line and offer them some support!
At the coming election the three major UK parties will work hard to convince you that there’s a big difference between them, and that they deserve your vote more than others.
But Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems are all united in their desire to make the internet shite. The government’s Digital Economy Bill looks like it will be rushed through parliament before the election because it’s supported by all the major parties.
The bill is a spectacular example of political knobhead-ery. It is a dogs dinner of law, aimed at helping massive entertainment corporations continue to rake in profits at our expense, and potentially limit our access to controversial information online. It shows just how much our political process is controlled by powerful companies that are beyond democratic oversight.
Let’s be clear-being able to get things for free on the internet is one of the greatest advances of the modern age. Being one of the oldest members of SSY, I can tell you that kids today don’t know they’re born. I remember the days when if you wanted to hear new music you had to save up to maybe buy one CD in a month. Every once in a while you might get a new video, and you were stuck with whatever council telly decided you got to watch. The Dark Ages of Entertainment in other words. Today, that’s all different, and the ability for cultural participation is enhanced unimaginably compared to what it was like growing up in the 90s.
But of course this presents the capitalist market with a problem. Propaganda on the issue of filesharing likes to try and make us think of some poor impoverished artist somewhere struggling by as we take away their livelihood. But we all know that the people who have really suffered are the culture industry, the massive entertainment corporations who monopolise the rights to the works of others so they can parasite off their creativity. These people have now pushed the government into putting forward a law that aims to reduce filesharing by 70%.
But it doesn’t stop there. Anyone providing internet access is to be made responsible for the actions of those using it. What that effectively means is that we’ll probably see the end of wee cafes providing wi fi access, as the government forces them to keep detailed records of what every single customer does, an unbearable burden for small businesses. Community centres, libraries and universities will face the same obligations. The government recognises that many universities already have stringent copyright protection in place on their networks, and wants to expand it. If you’ve ever stayed in uni halls and gone online, you may well know what this will mean-the possibility of arbitrary disconnection for doing things that are perfectly legal, and the internet generally being really slow and rubbish.
But perhaps the worst aspect of the proposed law is that it will make copyright law work like libel laws. Under our libel laws, if you write something nasty about someone else, they can take you to court. It is then essentially on you to prove that what you said was true. In other words, you are considered to guilty until proven innocent of lying. This has led to many ridiculous libel judgments, many involving politicians trying to cover stuff up. But more importantly, it means that unless you’ve got plenty of money and good lawyers, you can’t defend yourself, and so the rich and powerful can often stop things being printed that they don’t like.
Similar principles are going to be applied to websites under the Digital Economy Bill. Companies will have the right to demand the blocking of websites which they argue have “significant amounts” of material that infringes copyright. This could well lead to many people in the UK being unable to look at youtube, for example. Websites could be pulled down by their internet service providers without even knowing. In theory, these applications could be challenged in court, but only if you’ve got the dough for lawyers. The vast majority of small-time website operators won’t be able to afford this, and will just have to go along with it.
This raises the potential that companies could then abuse the system, putting up claims against websites they don’t like. The US, which already has passed some pretty shitey laws, we’ve already seen Microsoft try and block leaks websiteCryptome from publishing sensitive documents through spurious copyright claims. In other words, this law opens the door to severe corporate censorship of the internet.
This stuff is all politically bad. It is pro-corporate bullshit, which has the ultimate aim of taking money out of your pocket and putting it in the hands of rich people. But on a more basic level, it will also slow down the internet, prevent some of the best things on the internet from continuing, and generally make our lives a bit more rubbish. With all the mainstream parties lined up behind this campaign for shitness, what can we do?
The Open Rights Group (ORG) is an independent campaign group desperately trying to pull together as wide opposition to the bill as possible. They’ve got details on their site of how to get in touch with the government to express your opposition, and for anyone who’s down south or could make it to London, they’ve called a demo against disconnection on Wednesday 24th March, outside the Houses of Parliament at 17.30. Also, if you join ORG you get a free signed copy of the novel ‘Little Brother’ by Cory Doctorow.
Across Europe (and around the world) the threat to internet freedom by corporate controlled governments has led to the formation of Pirate Parties, particularly in Sweden where the party has been very successful. In the UK there’s a Pirate Party as well, although it looks unlikely to have anything like the same impact on the political system.
For those of us who are socialists, it’s time to get wise on these issues. The right of the working class to get entertainment outside of the market system is well worth defending. Yes, there are some issues about how to compensate artists for their work, but already extensive work has been done to resolve this, and the amount of artists and writers who support groups like ORG shows that the drive for a crappy internet isn’t driven by them.
What gives me hope is that for over 10 years now I’ve seen the evolution of filesharing technologies, and the overcoming by ingenious ordinary folk of all the attempts by governments and their corporate paymasters to stop us doing it. Alongside the political campaigning, the continued efforts of nerds everywhere to overcome internet censorship and damage benefit us all. In the coming weeks, Leftfield intends you to bring you comprehensive guides to how to get stuff online, before the government messes things up.
At the end of feudal society, the invention of new industrial technologies helped make fedualism obsolete, and usher in the new capitalist era. Today, the power of the internet ultimately shows that the monopolistic capitalist market is out of date, because we as a society can do things better if we work together in a non-profitable, collaborative and collective way. It’s a glimpse of how things would work under socialism, and socialists should be at the forefront of defending it.
As Leftfield reported a couple of days ago, Greece is currently in the midst of a huge economic crisis (well, everywhere is, but it’s ESPECIALLY bad there), with the government attempting to push through billions of Euros worth of cuts in the public sector - basically cause otherwise they’re running the risk of going bankrupt.
If you’ve been watching the news in the last month or so, you could be forgiven for thinking the Earth has gone a bit crazy. Devastating earthquakes have hit 
Regular readers of this site will know of two attempts by the so-called “Scottish Defence League” to march in Glasgow in Edinburgh to demonstrate against Muslims in this country. On both occasions the SDL have been kettled, unable to march – and in Edinburgh unable to make even a token static protest. On both occasions democratic, grassroots and broad anti-fascist organisations have been formed, with SSY members working with different anti-fascist campaigners to physically stop the SDL from marching. These organisations have been responsive in nature, and have only formed in the cities where the SDL have planned to march – but it has left us with a network of anti-fascists, in 
This raises the potential that companies could then abuse the system, putting up claims against websites they don’t like. The US, which already has passed some 
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