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Watch the parking meters
 In a strange couplet
Bob Dylan once sang "Don't follow leaders, watch
the parking meters." It seemed a weird rhyme, although the advice about
leadership was sound; but a recent report on the Duke of Westminster
may have given some substance to Dylan's advice. "The duke, who is 53,
is Britain's second-richest man, whose wealth is based on tracts of
land in Central London, including 200 acres in Belgravia and 100 acres
in Mayfair. The land is so valuable that the Grosvenor Group sold a
parking space in Mayfair for £65,000 in 2002" The Times (25
January). Nice one, Bob. We won't be allowed to park there, will we?
Telling
it like it is
It is not often that capitalists tell the
truth about their system, so
we couldn't resist recording the following rare statement.
"Governments, not oil companies, must act now on global warning or
there will be a ‘disaster’, the chairman of Shell's UK arm warned last
night. ... ‘Whether you like it or not, we live in a capitalist
society. If we at Shell ceased to find and extract and market fossil
fuel products while there was a demand for them, we would fail as a
company. Shell would disappear as any kind of economic force,’ Lord
Oxburgh maintained" The Independent (26 January). Even the owning
class know this society doesn't work. It sucks. |
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Human
rights adviser?
"Elliot Abrams, a special assistant to
the president and an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan
administration, has been appointed deputy national security adviser
with a focus on promoting global democracy and human rights" Associated
Press (2 February). This is the same Abrams who was indicted by the
Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his
role in illicitly raising money for the contras, but he pleaded guilty
to two lesser offences (including withholding information from the
Congress) in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail sentence.
The
Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory said of him, "Members of
Congress remember Abram's snarling appearance at committee hearings,
defending death squads and dictators, denying massacres, lying about
illegal US activities in support of the Nicaraguan contras." Wow, we
have a real champion of human rights here.
Its a
mad, mad world
"Laura Bush - or ‘First Fashionista’ as
the New York Post has dubbed her - was posing for a photo opportunity
on a catwalk next to designers Caroline Herrera and Oscar de la Renta.
Her arrival turned Bryant Park, the temporary Midtown home of the
fashion circus, into a twilight zone.
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The
homeless people
had disappeared, policemen dotted the pavement instead.
A large black van was parked ostentatiously in a pedestrian area, and
filled with men in suits emblazoned with the words "secret service" in
white capital letters" The Observer (6 February). This prompts us to
ask two questions: where had the homeless people disappeared to?, and
how secret is a secret seviceman with a secret service label? We
imagine the homeless will have been put out of camera shot, and none of
them allowed to speak. This is called democracy?
An ill
wind
Two items from the same magazine illustrate what a hellish society
capitalism is. They show the awful consequence of a social disaster
like world poverty and how even a natural disaster can be a
money-making opportunity. "Poverty is a man-made tsunami. ‘The biggest
tyranny in the world is the tyranny of an empty stomach.’ John Samuels,
a founding member of Global Call to Action Against Poverty, launched at
the World Social Forum." "$300 Market price, before the tsunami, to
rent a house with indoor plumbing in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, for one
month. $4,000 Current market price, due to increased demand from aid
workers and journalists" Time (7 February). Making money out of human
misery is disgusting, but then capitalism is a disgusting society.
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Global poverty and the
UN:Natural disasters
The
UN
wants
to halve global poverty by 2016 and lift 500 million out of
misery. It wouldn't even cost much.So will it happen?Here
The
Real Class Division
We’re supposed to be moving towards a more equitable society.
Well how
come class division is worse than ever, asks Paul Bennett. Here |
Meat, Money and Malnutrition
A Vegan society claims that meat is a cause of famine. So could
vegetarianism
really help feed the world, or is it all more complicated?Here |
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Changing the System
If you have no freedom to change your life you may as well be in
prison.
Workers in capitalism get more porridge than empowerment. Here |
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Brown Reorganises Poverty
£6.2 billion was returned to the Treasury in 2002-3 in unclaimed
benefits.
Does that mean claimants didn’t need the money? Here |
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To Contents Here
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To Socialist Party Here |
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(est
1904)
