Voice From The Back: Watch the parking meters (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

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.   

Human rights adviser?

“Elliott 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. 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.

Global poverty and the UN: Natural disasters (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

If there’s one thing the UN is good at, it’s compiling authoritative figures, and the UN’s data on global poverty underlines the desperation of the world’s poor. But what chance do campaigners really have to make history, by making poverty history?

In January the United Nations Millennium Project published a 3000 page report entitled ‘Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.’ The report calls on industrialised countries to assist  in “halving world poverty” by 2015 by increasing aid from its present level of £12 billion to a sum approaching £80 billion per year.  The Independent (18 January) reporting on the publication of this report carried the headline: “UN  unveils 10 year plan to lift 500 million out of misery. Many proposals are cheap, and could transform lives now.” The report concluded: “Only investment on that scale will help prevent 700 million slip further into preventable disease and extreme poverty.”

The strategy outlined in the UN report forms part of a wider set of initiatives agreed at the UN Millennium Summit  in September 2000, aimed at making the world a fairer place to live by apparently eradicating poverty. As a background  to world poverty, the Independent reported on the same day that 11 million children (mainly under 5) die each year, 6 million from preventable diseases, while “Every day, HIV/Aids kills another 6,000 people and another 8,200 become infected with the virus” and “Every 3.6 seconds, someone dies of starvation.”

The report’s author, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, candidly said in defence of his proposals:  “The system is not working right now – let’s be clear.” He explained: “There’s a tremendous imbalance of focus on  the issues of war and peace, and less on dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice. The overwhelming reality on our planet is that impoverished people get sick and die for lack of access to basic practical means that could help keep them alive and do more than that – help them achieve livelihoods and escape from poverty.” Sachs pointed out: “We have the world’s eyes focused on the tsunami of the Indian Ocean, but the world continues to overlook the silent tsunamis of deaths from malaria which take every month the number of people that died in the Asian tragedy. Every month, 150,000 children in Africa, if not more, are dying from the silent tsunami of malaria, a largely preventable and utterly treatable disease.” Elsewhere the article states that malaria can be prevented with a treated bed net costing less than £1.

Sachs’s concern that the Indian Ocean disaster has overshadowed permanent poverty and deprivation is echoed by pleas from charities working elsewhere in the world. The earthquake and resultant tsunami, killing perhaps up to 200,000 people in twelve countries, has siphoned donations away from these charities and threatens to end their money raising activities for good. But the tragic loss of life and devastation caused by the tsunami has been given so much prominence precisely because it was caused by a natural disaster, where no guilt can be apportioned.

Equally, as the Economist observed: “involvement in the disaster of so many resorts favoured by tourists from rich countries in the West and the richer parts of north-east Asia has given it more prominence in these countries than the sheer horror of the fatalities would have produced” (1-7 January) The class that lives by profit has no wish to be reminded of the loss of life and devastation attributed solely to the relentless pursuit of profit and is content to see attention deflected away such things.

Disasters – natural or otherwise – provide unexpected opportunities to those who live by making profits. As with the unnatural tragedy of the Iraq invasion where up to 100,000 people have been killed, companies engaged in the provision of food, housing, construction, energy, transportation, communications, engineering and so on, can expect to reap bumper profits. Aid and money cannot be injected into class society in a neutral way and is either directed to the working class or the owning class, generally the latter. We learn that money is urgently needed to restore the tourist industry and the profits it generates for the shareholders that own the hotels and tourist attractions, especially in Thailand where tourism generates 12 percent of GDP. Tourists have been urged to return to these holiday destinations with the lure that the only way to help the poor is by making them employable once more, which means making the tourist industry profitable once again.

The only consideration is profit. But while investors in Asian tourism may have lost, others have been more fortunate. The same issue of the Economist reported: “Insurers at least will be relieved that most of those whose livelihoods have been destroyed were not covered. Some hoteliers will make claims, as will families of western tourists who were covered by life insurance. Their bill, however, is likely to be far lower than followed the hurricanes in Florida and its neighbouring states earlier in 2004.”

Avoidable

It goes without saying that major disasters causing loss of life are always tragic. But while some disasters cannot always be avoided, as in the Indian Ocean, others are completely avoidable and there can be no excuse. The UN Report aims to significantly reduce world poverty without attacking its root cause. According to Sachs, “Billions more could enjoy the fruits of the global economy. Tens of millions of lives could be saved” (Independent, 18 January).  Millions of people, it seems, are to be lifted from poverty by trade arising from the globalisation of capital, a process that hitherto has been remarkably unsuccessful in doing anything more than spreading poverty from country to country and making enormous profits for investors. Globalisation is a particularly pernicious form of capitalist development, which has decimated the lives of millions of people in undeveloped countries.  Yet the UN plan is proposing more of the same, calling for initiatives that “involve both civil society organisations and the private sector,” and urging that “rich countries must open markets to exports from developing countries.”

Predictably the plan urges that ‘rich countries’ must “invest more in the very poorest countries through electricity supplies and roads.” (Independent, 18 January). In practice the report does no more than advocate concerted action by corporations and companies under the umbrella of their national governments to transform people into wage slaves. There are no poor countries, only poor people.

It can be no coincidence that both Blair and Brown have suddenly become interested in the continent of Africa – or rather the opportunities it can bring to the owning class they represent. Brown claims he will make sub-Saharan Africa his priority in 2005 while Blair says he will use Britain’s Presidency of the G8 to “focus on progress” in the eradication of African poverty as well as countering other potential but less desirable developments. Blair explains: “Famine in Africa will affect our countries because it will be a trigger for mass migration. Conflict, too, drives millions to flee their homes. Both create the conditions for terrorism and fanaticism to take root and spread directly to Europe, to North America and to Asia” (Economist, 1-7 January).

Like the UN Report Blair proposes ‘more of the same’. He writes: “We also need to tackle trade barriers

which push up prices to our consumers, prevent African countries exporting their products and see Europe spending more on subsidising its own farmers than on aid to Africa.” He concludes, as does the UN Report that aid will provide assistance in “building the infrastructure needed for private-sector growth.”

The forces are gathering and the strategy is in place. Capitalism is to make a concerted move into the African continent to provide opportunities for investment and profit from the glut of aid proposed by the UN and the resultant ‘opening-up’ of the continent. A market economy based on the domination of outside corporations or perhaps indigenous capitalists will obviate migration of cheap labour, forcing the indigenous people to become wage slaves, to join, in the words of the Independent, the “one billion people [who] live on less than $1 a day. Another 2.7 billion survive on less than $2 a day.” A further intention is to nullify the spread of religious fundamentalism that could interfere with profit taking. Like every other attempt to alleviate poverty it will fail. This is because the plan is less about poverty and more about profits. The plan’s success will be measured in dollars not lives saved.

If there was ever an indictment of capitalism it is world poverty. People die in Africa and elsewhere because there is simply no profit in saving them. Conversely, action to limit this barbarism only occurs when the companies and corporations owned by the capitalist class ‘sense a kill,’ an opportunity to expand profits. £81 billion in aid – if it ever arrives – is a good starting point. Many African countries have already a foretaste of foreign investment that directs that food be grown for export alongside a population on the brink of starvation. But this no inconsistency, simply market forces in action. We live in a world of plenty where scarcity and rationing through the market and money system is unnecessary and anti-human. It must stop.

The Independent editorial column hit the nail on the head. It reads, “The world must seize the opportunity and work together to fight the scourge of poverty, disease and hopelessness.”  But what it does not say

is that this can never be achieved under capitalism. The world’s working people must, as the editorial urges, seize the opportunity to end poverty — not by trying to reform an economic system that cannot be reformed but by abolishing it. The UN proposal that reinforces the institutional requirement to make and increase profits regardless of its human consequences is monstrous – a licence to make profit from human misery.

Steve Trott

Cooking the Books: Vice’s homage to virtue (2005)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

At their annual “World Economic Forum” jamboree in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in the last week of January, the world’s political and business leaders vied with each other to strike an “ethical” pose. It was, commented one newspaper, a case of ethics with everything.

There is even a magazine called the Ethical Corporation. At the time of the Tsunami its Asia-Pacific editor, James Rose, was active in the Australian press. “Put profits aside in the rebuilding” read the headline of one of his articles, “Shareholders should let companies assist in the post-tsunami reconstruction” (Australian, 4 January). “Companies must look beyond the bottom line” read another, “Corporate leaders see only profits as important. They must change” (Melbourne Age, 7 January).

Shareholders in construction companies would be only too willing to let them assist in the rebuilding. In fact, shares in them went up in anticipation of juicy reconstruction contracts. But this was not what Rose had in mind. Supply lines for aid, he wrote, “could be usefully shortened if corporations went in and did more of the work themselves, gratis, under the direction of the charity groups on the ground”, and:

  “What we need here is for corporations to throw off the cloak of self-interest. The best thing they could do is to approach the situation as it now stands as if it were a legitimate business opportunity, apart from one important factor: they will expect no financial or brand rewards”.

It’s a nice thought. The skills and the techniques are there, there are people in need, so why not bring the two together without any thought of profit? But it’s not going to happen, because that’s not the way capitalism works or could ever work.

Capitalism is a profit-making system and capitalist corporations have no choice but to put profits first. Not because the top executives are selfish or greedy or insensitive but because that’s the economic logic of the system. Corporate executives are merely what Marx once called “personifications of capital” and capitalism is an impersonal economic mechanism of the accumulation of capital out of profits which those in charge have to apply irrespective of their personal opinions or preferences.

Rose is aware of what he is up against as he wrote in the same issue of The Australian:

  “What is a corporation? On one level, it’s a pure money-making machine. There is solid opinion to say that’s all it can be. Even if a corporation wants to be a paragon of the New Age, it is constrained by the fiduciary obligations to its shareholders. It is legally constructed to focus on its and its owners’ self-interest”.

That opinion is indeed solid, very solid. Corporations don’t seek to maximise profits just because this is laid down by the law, as Rose suggests. The law merely reflects the underlying reality of capitalism. It’s not the law that needs changing – it never will  be on this point – but the whole profit system that needs dumping.

Editorial: A Giant Wave (2005)

Editorial from the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there is one thing you can always rely on when major disasters strike, it is that people wil  spontaneously respond with whatever they can afford to give towards the relief of the survivors, irrespective of nationality, creed or politics. That the efforts of governments so obviously followed the lead of private individuals in this case tells you everything you need to know about their political priorities. And even when governments publicly pledge money, as Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, recently complained, there’s no guarantee they’ll actually hand over the cash. Much of their ‘generosity’  in any case simply involves waiving some of the crushing debt which their control of international trade imposed on these countries in the first place. While states eye each other warily to see what the others are going to do, private individuals start collections without a second thought. While public relations departments sit up at night figuring out how they can help politicians milk the situation, some workers are on the plane at their own  expense to go where volunteers are needed. While governments are always looking for the angle or the pitch, the lowly masses pitch in regardless.

How different are the attitudes of the rich from those of ‘ordinary people’. People who have never known wealth and never had money are always the first to put their hands in their pockets when a cruel catastrophe slaughters complete strangers. They are the only ones who put their interests to one side and act instinctively, without once thinking of themselves, how they ‘appear’ and what they might get out of it. At times like this, common  humanity shows its true nature in a giant wave of decency, sympathy and solidarity. How unlike our ‘important people’. Politicians are furiously  striking the right self-conscious poses and taking the right media-savvy  positions, religious leaders wring their hands and try for the umpteenth time to defend the indefensible, to square the impossible circle of disaster and divine will, and rich celebs fall over each other to toss in a million  or so but never fail to do it in a blaze of publicity. When disaster is in the public eye, these people can always be found eyeing the public. To us, a wall of water is a terrible image. To them, it is merely a backdrop image against which they maneuver to be viewed.

Now the giant wave of publicity has started to ebb and recede. 150,000 more people in the region are severely threatened with water-borne diseases including cholera and typhoid, but the world’s media will have gone home before that happens and the forgetfulness will set in. Meanwhile, elsewhere, in the first two weeks since the tsunami struck, approximately 200,000 people have died, quietly and away from the cameras, of simple malnutrition and water-related illnesses. And in the next two weeks, 200,000 more. And again and again. It’s the simple background noise of capitalism which passes unnoticed and  unremarked, the lapping of a vast ocean of misery on our hardened consciousness. While the savagery of nature can wring our hearts and empty our purses, the savagery of our social system barely raises an eyebrow. Yet if there is anything positive that can be said about this catastrophe it is that human beings are at heart a caring lot and that if capitalism survives it is because of a lack of people’s conviction in their own abilities, and not a lack of depth in their compassion for others.

Pathfinders: Tsunami Special (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tsunami Special

Nature is humanity’s best friend and worst enemy. The tsunami in South East Asia was a major disaster that, for a change, cannot be blamed on capitalism, and one which reminds us if we need it that socialism can also expect to face sudden catastrophes like floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and even meteorite impacts. How would we deal with them? We present a special Pathfinder report on some aspects of disaster prevention and recovery.

Population and demographics

The real reason earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and floods kill so many people is that they live in known danger zones. In capitalism it is a question of livelihood and property, either or both of which prevent people moving. There is no way at present to predict population demographics in socialism, yet it must be obvious that nobody would choose to live next to a ticking timebomb, and given the freedom of movement implied by the abolition of land ownership we would expect the largest contribution to saving lives to come from populations spontaneously shifting away from high-risk areas. Furthermore, work patterns in capitalism mean most people take their holidays at the same time, and in the same holiday areas, giving rise to a dedicated and overcrowded holiday coast industry. Instead of moving away from danger, the financial incentive at present is for poor people to move towards it. It is highly debatable, in light of all this, whether socialism would ever be required to mount relief operations on anything like the scale we see at present.

Early Warning

Much has been made of the need for an early warning system in the Indian Ocean, and one proposal was turned down two years ago because the risk was thought to be remote (source: Unesco report). Most present systems are ill-suited to tsunamis, which cannot be detected by satellite or ocean-surface (a tsunami may only be centimetres high until it hits the shore). A new pressure sensor system (DART) sits on the ocean floor and detects a change in pressure in the water above it, a sure sign of a passing tsunami. Cost not being a factor, in socialism a network of DART sensors could be placed in all ocean floors for even unlikely events. One such tsunami, expected when part of the Canary volcano system eventually collapses, could devastate west Africa, Spain, western Britain and the US eastern seaboard.

Communication

One monitoring station in Hawaii did receive early warning of the Asian tsunami but could not confirm it with other stations and could not communicate it because many public offices were closed for holidays. Even had they been open, communication to people in risk areas would have been almost impossible in the short time available. Text messaging to mobile phones can get through when signals are too weak for voice calls, but who do you call? One answer is the Cell Broadcast system, originally designed for advertising local services but generally ignored, which exploits the fact that GSM phones can receive short data messages from the nearest cellphone base station on a separate channel from normal voice and text message communications. Another method is the mediascape system, which targets areas by global positioning satellite and then broadcasts to base stations. Phones are not destined to be separate items for much longer, with new technology emerging to have them sewn into clothes and bags. Capitalism may be developing this, but in socialism, keeping in touch would not be a matter of keeping in credit. Finally, even if socialists at leisure prefer naked bathing, there is always tannoy. Additionally, a chip implant the size of a grain of rice could track them down and, at worst, identify them. At present, the Verichip's usage is confined to Scottish clubowners offering it to customers to save time at the bar (News Telegraph, Jan 17)

Aftermath-disease

Cholera and typhoid are big dangers in tsunami-affected areas, and could double the already gigantic death toll. For our remarks about capitalism's approach to diseases which affect poorer parts of the world, see What is a disaster?.

Aftermath - food

A food crisis is set to emerge as the tsunami has introduced poisonous salt pollution into the arable land areas and polluted the water tables. Socialism could not prevent this, and is one more reason why pre-disaster depopulation would be a sensible precaution, however populations would not have to rely on their own agricultural production nor would they be forced to stay put. A massive mobilisation of people to other regions would be inconceivable today but not necessarily in socialism.

Aftermath - shelter

After a disaster, rescue services need to supply fast accommodation. Now there may be a better way to supply emergency housing, using reinforced polystyrene panels. Polystyrene is cheap and lightweight, quick to assemble, it insulates, so it keeps cool things cool and hot things hot, it is resistant to moisture, mould and mildew, and it's energy efficient. Wrapped in chicken wire and then coated in a film of concrete, it has been tested by the Florida designers in the most extreme conditions and outperforms every other temporary structure, even in earthquake zones. [Link.] This simple technology may very well be developed for widespread use in capitalism. However there is no guarantee that it will, as many such good ideas never see the light of day because there isn't sufficient profit in it for somebody. In socialism, a good idea and some team effort is all that's necessary.

What is a disaster?

Most natural disasters cannot be prevented in advance, but then, it depends what you call a disaster. Socialism, not being concerned with who has money and who doesn’t (because there wouldn’t be any) would prioritise those routine ‘natural’ disasters which capitalism is largely unable to deal with. Thus, quite apart from the ongoing disaster of famine and malnutrition, we would work flat out to save the 2 million people who die annually of diarrhoea due to poor water supplies, the 1.5 million who die of TB and the 1 million who die of malaria (source: WHO). These figures alone are the equivalent of almost two tsunamis a month. How would we deal with this? By not prioritising illnesses that only affect affluent westerners. The three largest drug markets today are fat reducers ($28b), anti-ulcerants ($25b) and antidepressants ($20b). Drugs that would help poorer countries are not developed because drug companies stand almost no chance of recouping the average $800m it costs to bring them to market (source: New Scientist, Jan 15, 05, p.41). In socialism, medical science could be re-oriented almost overnight to solve these ongoing disasters.

Paddy Shannon

Red Snapper: Sound bites and unsound nibbles (2005)

The Red Snapper column from the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“The Acehnese had betrayed Allah. They were not true to their faith…Allah always looks after his faithful followers…If they don’t become true Muslims they will be struck down.”

Salman al-Farizi, commander of the radical Islamist group Laskar Mujahadin, on the cause of the  tsunami. Guardian, Jan 8th

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“The sum required to establish an early warning system now looks pitifully small compared to the cost in terms of the tens of thousands of lives lost and the billions of dollars in damage caused.”

Professor Calestous Juma, of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, US. UN Millennium Project’s report chief author, on tsunami wave. BBC News Online Technology, Jan 6th.

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“It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs mankind has ever experienced if we pooled our wealth in order to look after the poorer people of the world. Sadly, I don’t think it will happen.”

J G Ballard, novelist, Independent, Jan 4th

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“If I go for a walk through large parts of the South-east, I am liable to be lynched”

Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport. Independent, Jan 3rd

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“A poison has entered the system. And it is beginning to harm us all.”

The Daily Mail on the Blair/Brown rift. Jan 7th

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“Politics is one of the few professions that you can enter without any training whatsoever and suddenly become an expert.”

Allen Carr, anti-smoking ‘expert’, Independent, Jan 5th

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“I was told in my last ‘appraisal’ that I wouldn’t be getting a promotion or pay rise until I proved to the company that I was “worth it”. I was told further that could mean “working through lunchtimes or staying an extra couple of hours in the evenings”. I get raised eyebrows if I leave on-time or am the first to go home, and have chosen to ignore the pointed looks as I leave for my lunch hours.”

Reader’s comment re. article on unpaid overtime, BBC Online Magazine, Jan 7th

Aftermath of the Tsunami: Querying ‘American Values in Action’ (2005)

From the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

  The tsunami in South-East Asia provoked very different responses from western governments and the populations they supposedly represent. The US state was obliged to raise its donation more than 20- fold in the light of public reaction, but arguably too late to disguise the politicians' real agenda.

Realising that upwards of 100,000 of the then estimate of 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 two fingers to since 2000.

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 Duvalier. Between 1945 and 1999, this same defender of global well-being toppled forty governments and helped crush thirty populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe. During this period the US 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, 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.

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 with one hand to help people in Asia, while forking out $150 billion (http://costofwar.com/) with the other to kill people 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 tenfold – 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.

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 too 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 is not the Bush administration’s “values”, which Powell seems to have been implying 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 beings. 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.

Americans are generous with their time as well. 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.

John Bissett

Floods of tears (2005)

From the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean on 26 December, and the ensuing tidal wave or tsunami, have devastated many areas in South and South-East Asia. At the time of writing, deaths are estimated at 225,000, a figure likely to rise, with millions having lost their homes and most of their possessions, and disease likely to increase the number of fatalities. Across the world, people have watched fascinated as their TV screens showed dramatic shots of the tidal wave hitting coastal areas, only to be appalled by the resulting devastation.

Such catastrophes make many reflect on their cause and what this reveals about the world. The religious strove to reconcile the notion of a loving god with the apparent evidence of uncaring brutality. While science can explain how and why these things happen, mystics and other believers have nothing to offer but nauseating platitudes. The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain opined that ‘People of faith need to have a very firm belief in God almighty… It is for the betterment of mankind at large.’ Of course he neglected to explain how the deaths of so many can benefit humanity. The leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales was no better, saying that Christians ‘trust that prayers and belief in an omnipotent God will bring good out of seeming evil and senselessness’. But again he failed to suggest how this might happen. 

While natural forces were responsible for the quake and tsunami, it is at least possible that an early-warning system could have been installed, which would have saved many lives, but of course the issue of cost was a real problem. And its effects have been magnified in many places (in southern India, for example) by developments taking place (in the name of profit) right on the beach, thus destroying natural protective barriers such as sand dunes and mangrove forests.

The Aceh area of Indonesia has been one of the hardest hit. But little attention has been paid in the media to Aceh’s situation before the earthquake. Despite its rich gas resources, its people have been blighted by poverty and malnutrition, as these resources have been exploited for the profit of Exxon Mobil and the Indonesian government. Aceh has also been subject to military occupation for years, with assassination and kidnapping rife, since the government refuses to allow a referendum on independence from Indonesia and persecutes anyone who advocates this. The Indonesian government and army have taken control of aid supplies shipped in to the local airport, and are only distributing these to those who support them.

Of course socialism will still see natural disasters, since it will not involve any kind of ‘mastery’ over nature. But their effect will be minimised by sensible precautions unencumbered by the profit motive. Action to relieve distress will be unhampered by nationalistic and military considerations, and will make use of well-established regional and global frameworks for cooperation and responding to emergencies. It is clear that such disasters call for working together rather than against each other and provision according to need rather than ability to pay.

Paul Bennett

Material World: Japan’s unnatural disaster (2011)

The Material World Column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earthquakes and tsunamis are natural phenomena. But it is known where – if not when – they are going to strike. So in principle society could take action to minimise the human impact.

It was known that the seabed off the northeastern coast of Honshu (the main island of the Japanese archipelago) is prone to earthquakes. It was known that a sufficiently powerful offshore earthquake would generate a tsunami. So why not leave the endangered coastal area uninhabited?

Crammed into the danger zone

This earthquake and most of its aftershocks were offshore. However, the next major earthquake may well occur, as long predicted, on land. It is a matter of when, not whether.

The area at greatest risk is the southern coastal strip of Honshu that stretches west from Tokyo – a city already devastated by earthquakes in 1891 and 1923. And yet the eastern half of this strip, up to Osaka, covering a mere 6 percent of Japan’s land area, is the country’s industrial powerhouse, with 45 percent of its population of 127.5 million. Tokyo and its outlying cities alone contain 30 percent of the country’s population. Would a rational society cram so many people and resources into the zone of maximum danger?

It is true that many modern buildings have been equipped to withstand seismic shocks. But most older buildings are much more poorly designed. For one glaring example, look at some photos of Tokyo street scenes and count the bulky signboards attached to storefronts at a single point, just waiting for a jolt to break free and fall on the heads of the people below.

To accommodate urban growth, about a quarter of Tokyo Bay (150 square miles) has been reclaimed from the sea. When the earth shakes, as it has recently, the loose soil of this reclaimed land undergoes liquefaction (becomes liquid). The shaking is also liable to spill and set ablaze the oil and toxic chemicals stored in the numerous tanks that line the shore of Tokyo Bay. Fires still rage up and down the coast, including a conflagration at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara City.

Suicide bomber

The ultimate in insanity, however, is Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power, driven by the desire of its ruling class to overcome reliance on energy imports, especially oil from the Middle East. Nuclear power currently supplies 30 percent of the country’s energy – a figure projected to rise to 50 percent by 2030. Fukushima, where a Chernobyl-type disaster is still unfolding, is one of a dozen nuclear plants located on the coastal strip of northeastern Honshu, in the path of tsunamis from offshore earthquakes. The Hamaoka plant, to the southwest of Tokyo, perches on an active fault line.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi of Kobe University, a seismologist who resigned from a committee setting safety guidelines for nuclear reactors in 2005 when his concerns over building nuclear plants on earthquake fault lines were ignored, put it this way: “Japan is an earthquake-prone archipelago, and lining its waterfront are 54 nuclear plants. It’s like a suicide bomber wearing grenades around his belt.”

It is not only Japan that generates nuclear power in earthquake-prone areas. Some 20 percent of the world’s 443 nuclear reactors are located in seismic zones. There are two nuclear power plants at risk from earthquakes in China’s Fujian Province, one in Turkey, and one in Armenia. In the United States several nuclear power plants are in places that have experienced earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes. Another tsunami-triggered disaster like that at Fukushima is waiting to happen in San Diego, California, where a nuclear power plant stands right on the beach, facing an active fault line a few miles offshore.

There were also technical problems with the design and operation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima complex. The company that owns the complex, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), has a record of covering up safety issues. The complex was built by Toshiba, using a reduced-cost design by General Electric with a relatively small containment structure.

Does it make sense?

From the perspective of a truly human community – that is, socialism – it makes no sense deliberately to court disaster in this manner. But does it make sense even from a capitalist point of view, considering the enormous losses borne by the companies most affected by the devastation? After all, capital craves its own expansion, not annihilation. It does not really share the death wish of the suicide bomber.

One answer is that most investors are concerned solely with expected short-term profits – and they never expect disaster, even though they must know it is always a possibility. Moreover, high-speed communications and data processing make it easy to move capital around almost instantaneously in search of maximum short-term profits. By giving priority to reducing risk, a company would have to accept higher costs and lower profits in the short term. It would soon find itself short of capital and might face hostile takeover or bankruptcy.

Another factor may be at work here – namely, the psychological mechanism called denial. Instead of carefully assessing risks and consciously accepting them, a capitalist may avoid stress by closing his mind in advance to considerations of risk that he fears will jeopardise his profits. He may persuade himself that those who draw attention to risks have a hidden political agenda. This applies especially to risks that are posed by nature. To take nature and its requirements seriously might jeopardise not only profits but the whole profit system.

Stefan