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	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Commentary</title>
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		<title>World Socialist Party (US)</title>
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	<itunes:author>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:author>
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		<title>Titanic: 100 Years On</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/04/titanic-100-years-on/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/04/titanic-100-years-on/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:17:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2562</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This April will witness the 100th anniversary of the sinking of theRMS Titanic. Many words will be written in the capitalist media about the disaster, but what of the class aspects of the tragedy and has anything really changed in the last century? The Titanic came into being purely for the speedy conveyance of the rich and wealthy classes between Britain and the US. Opulence and luxury were the watchwords of her design and construction, rather than safety. Designed around class division and reflecting the extremes of wealth and poverty in Edwardian Britain, the vessel featured Turkish baths, gymnasiums, electric lifts, ballrooms, dining rooms, a swimming pool and a library for the first class passengers – all designed to attract the wealthiest clients and secure the biggest returns for the investors in White Star Lines. The now famous story of the Titanic&#8217;s maiden voyage and her striking an iceberg off Newfoundland is too familiar to need repeating.  Also familiar is the often quoted lack of adequate lifeboat provision, although according to the maritime laws at the time, Titanic surprisingly carried more than she was legally required to. What is more interesting from a socialist&#8217;s perspective is how the class divide, evident in the [...]


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		<title>From the Horses…</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2012/03/from-the-horses/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2012/03/from-the-horses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:29:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=2515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Greg Smith resigned as executive director of Goldman Sach&#8217;s European, the Middle East and Africa equity derivatives business, declaring his employer &#8220;morally bankrupt&#8221;. &#8220;&#8230;if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence&#8230;persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit&#8230; get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman&#8230;not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them&#8230;It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,”&#8230;the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, &#8216;How much money did we make off the client? &#8221; Smith unfortunately for all his experience and insider knowledge has failed to come to the realisation that his description of [...]


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		<title></title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/01/1185/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/01/1185/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:15:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jim Haygood</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1185</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No related posts.


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		<title>OBAMA – WHOSE PRESIDENT?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2009/11/obama-%e2%80%93-whose-president/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2009/11/obama-%e2%80%93-whose-president/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:48:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>JB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1084</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Whose president is Barack Obama? He would have us believe that he is president of “all Americans.” But how is that possible when there are such sharp conflicts of interest in American society? Does the business owner have the same interests as the workers he hires at or below the minimum wage? Or consider the health insurance company assessor whose pay and prospects depend on how many claims she denies. Does she have the same interests as those whose survival depends on her decisions? Is Obama president of the millions of “black” Americans who voted for him with such pride in their hearts? He has not addressed the specific problems that face “black” people. True, he has raised their status simply by being president. By the same token, he provides a pretext for pretending that the issue of racism no longer exists. If he can make it, why can’t they? Is Obama president of the millions of working people of all colors who voted for him because they hoped he would make their lives easier and more secure? Because they hoped he would stop layoffs, foreclosures, military adventures? Look at the military budget. Look at Afghanistan. Look at the huge [...]


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		<title>Can you spare a dime?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/12/can-you-spare-a-dime/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/12/can-you-spare-a-dime/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:09:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>JB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=858</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The American government’s potential bail out package is now at $7 trillion and rising. It will be the most expensive single expenditure in American history, more expensive than WWII ($3.6 trillion in today’s dollars, and greater than the Marshall plan, the Louisiana purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, and the entire budget of NASA to date (including the moon landing) together, all in today’s dollars(globalnetnews-summary@lists.riseup.net). You have to wonder how a government that can’t solve poverty, homelessness, and health care for its citizens can access theses prodigious sums. Just like 1939 when a decade of deprivation for the working class was followed by massive amounts of money that magically materialized for the war. The more things change… -John Ayers No related posts.


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		<title>Why The Economic Crisis?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/10/why-economic-crisis/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/10/why-economic-crisis/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:32:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=564</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The WSP has produced three leaflets (in pdf format) meant to aid working people to understand the causes of the current economic crisis: &#8220;Booms and slumps &#8211; what causes them?&#8221; &#8211; Discusses in plain terms the causes of economic cycles and why &#8220;Ultimately, it is the economy that controls politicians and not the other way around.&#8221; &#8220;Bubble Troubles&#8221; &#8211; Deals specifically with the housing market collapse. Good Cap, Bad Cap discusses how capitalism is structured and why economic crisis cannot be blamed on &#8220;bad&#8221; capitalists. Crises And Depressions Pt 1, Pt 2 We highly recommended this talk given by &#8216;Hardy&#8217; of our companion party in the UK. MP3 format. Please feel free to forward, e-mail, repost and/or print them widely. No related posts.


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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<title>Green without being Green</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/10/green-without-being-green/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/10/green-without-being-green/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Oct 2007 10:16:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>virgo47</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=290</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[October 25th&#8216;s New York Times contained a special full-color insert titled &#8220;Corporate Social Responsibility &#8211; Designing a Sustainable Future&#8221;. The introduction, given by the President and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility Aron Cramer, tells us that &#8220;Consumers are paying more attention to the sources of the food they eat and the safety of the products they buy for their children&#8221;, implores business to heed &#8220;a new urgency for business strategy integrate social and environmental impacts with opportunities&#8221;, and goes on to say &#8220;The most exciting chances to leverage business success for broad social benefit involve innovations that deliver new products&#8230;&#8221; You don&#8217;t have to be fluent in business-speak to realize what he is saying; people are buying more and more &#8220;green&#8221; goods and services, and capitalists can make money from it if they pay attention. The insert contained other articles on the following: Yahoo! Green&#8217;s Carbon Footprint calculator, Greenpeace helping Coca-Cola revamp its refrigeration technology, DuPont&#8217;s latest efforts in Frankenfoods, delivery of women&#8217;s reproductive health care to under 25 year-old sweatshop workers in Asia, and some marketplace innovations made by an outdoor apparel and a household chemical company. All of these are intended to show you that companies big [...]


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		<title>How money downed the Minneapolis bridge</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/09/how-money-downed-the-minneapolis-bridge/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/09/how-money-downed-the-minneapolis-bridge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Sep 2007 03:41:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Who</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=202</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Associated Press reported this week that in 1989, bridge inspectors had warned that pigeon droppings were accumulating on the steel beams of the I-35W bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul. Apparently, the ammonia and acids in the droppings, the inspectors said nearly a decade ago, could corrode the beams. This span collapsed August 1st of this year, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100. It is not yet clear if the bird droppings had been the cause of the terrible accident last month, but this story illustrates how terribly accident-prone is the capitalist system. Such a system simply does not have the money available to perform the necessary checks, cleanings, and repairs of the thousands of similar bridges in the United States to the advisable extent (as advised by professional bridge inspectors). In fact, existing technology that could aid in averting such accidents are almost never employed on a consistent basis because of economic cost. For example, according to a report on Southern California Public Radio 89.3 on August 6th, Orange County, UC Irvine researcher Maria Feng has already developed a real-time sensor technology that could detect at any moment the effect of traffic upon a bridge. If [...]


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		<item>
		<title>The UN at 65&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/08/the-un-at-65/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/08/the-un-at-65/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 25 Aug 2007 08:09:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=22</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The United Nations is sixty-two years old, but should have been pensioned off years ago. Those present at the birth were naive in the extreme for thinking that in signing the charter they would come within light years of saving &#8220;succeeding generations from the scourge of war.&#8221; Surely, even an historian such as Simon Sebag Montefiore can appreciate that there have been many more wars since 1945 than he has fingers and toes! Socialists knew at the birth of the UN, or rather its earlier incarnation, the League of Nations, shortly after the &#8216;war to end all wars&#8217;, that as an agency for bringing peace and prosperity to all it was doomed to failure, because: &#8220;&#8230;the &#8216;League&#8217; is a mere phantasm, a spineless, parchment entity which can have no power or influence in the real world &#8211; the world of strife for economic interests.&#8221; (Socialist Standard, July 1919) Fifty years ago we repeated this fact, one which &#8220;most politicians, British and foreign, have always been well aware of&#8230;But politicians, if they are to keep their jobs, must profess to have an answer. After each world war the working class has looked to its &#8220;leaders&#8221; for a scheme to prevent the [...]


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		<item>
		<title>Smile, Smile, Smile! But Why?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/07/smile-smile-smile-but-why/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/07/smile-smile-smile-but-why/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:58:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stefan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=195</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The demand to keep smiling – or, in fancier language, to maintain a “positive outlook” – is pervasive in American culture. Song lyrics and gurus drum the demand into our heads, and we echo them, telling ourselves things like “Mustn’t complain!” and “Must look on the bright side!” The philosophy of the compulsory smile goes back at least to 1936, when Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People appeared. His first two pieces of advice are “don’t criticize, condemn or complain” and “give honest and sincere appreciation.” How you can always be honest and sincere if you have to be appreciative, whatever your true feelings may be? Don’t ask me! The entertainment industry is celebrated as the pacesetter of nonstop smiling in the Irving Berlin song There’s No Business Like Show Business: There&#8217;s no people like show people. They smile when they are low. The second verse elaborates: You get word before the show has started That your favorite uncle died at dawn. Top of that, your ma and pa have parted You&#8217;re broken-hearted, but you go on. From this I infer that you might be let off smiling duty if a parent rather than just an [...]


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