A tree surgeon reflects on why no business can give due regard to the needs of workers and the environment I am, I suppose, a businessman; not, I should say, from choice but more from the need to follow a prescribed and necessary course; necessary, because, were one not to, inevitably the business would fail and fall by the wayside. I say businessman, now, but thirty years ago I would have called myself a ‘tree surgeon’, or ‘woodman’ without the slightest feeling of inadequacy or embarrassment. Admittedly the term ‘tree surgeon’ does sound rather more grand than the reality...
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If you want to know the truth, you cannot rely on newspapers. We have that on good authority – in fact, on the authority of the more honest newspapers. (The more honest papers are those that are read mainly by capitalists who need reliable information about the world in order to make investment decisions, as opposed to those that are read mainly by workers.) In a startlingly frank appraisal of the history and practice of the public relations (PR) industry, The Economist (18 December 2010) admits that PR was invented in the early 20th century to counter working-class struggles,...
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Revolution is in the air, or at least the word is. The media talked of a “Tunisian Revolution” in January and of an “Egyptian Revolution” in February. In a weak, narrow sense of the word this could be said to be true. In both countries a long-established dictator was overthrown as a first step towards establishing political democracy, the only kind of democracy that capitalism can offer. Already some changes have been made, even though many of the personnel of the old regime are still in place. There is less arbitrary police repression. There is freedom of speech and...
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The United States of America has been under one-party rule since its birth at the drafting of the Constitution. This document was drawn up by a small group of men (the founding “fathers”) representing four major economic interests – money, public securities, manufactures, and trade and shipping. In the conclusion to his classic work An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, Charles A. Beard reports the results of his extensive research: The Constitution was essentially an economic document based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond...
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When the popular movements against long-standing despots in the Arab world spread from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya the Western powers thought that something they had long wanted – regime-change in Libya – was about to be handed them on a plate. But they didn’t have the same control over Gaddafi as they did over Moubarak and Ben Ali and so could not arrange for him to bow out. His own man, and true to form, Gaddafi chose to try to brutally repress the movement. With the support of mercenaries and some sections of the population armed with superior...
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Hans-Jörg Rudloff, the head of the Management Board of investment bank Barclays Capital knows how to solve the debt crisis and bring “competitiveness” back to the European Union. Half of the social benefits have to go. People have to work more, doing longer hours for longer years. He explained that “Europe is carrying a social rucksack, which makes us uncompetitive in this world. We have provided living standards for our populations which are unheard of, which no one ever thought would be possible, for the last 50 years. People do not want to give up these living standards. Populations...
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No, of course 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...
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Saudi Arabian troops sent to help put down the protests for democracy in Bahrain. While the UK government demands action against Gadhaffi , is there a similar call for a move to oppose this military intervention by Saudi Arabia? Will those governments who rightly condemn Gadaffi’s use of foreign mercenaries now condemn this use of foreign military power by oil sheiks to crush majority protestors in Bahrain? The opposition said : “We consider the arrival of any soldier, or military vehicle, into Bahraini territory… an overt occupation of the kingdom of Bahrain and a conspiracy against the unarmed people of...
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Mental illness in America has become an established epidemic. So-called miracle drugs like Prozac are taken by 11% of the population – and Prozac is only one of the 30 available antidepressants on the market. Antidepressants are accompanied by anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic drugs. Xanax, America’s leading anti-anxiety medication, is so ubiquitous that Xanax generates more revenue than Tide detergent. Anti-psychotics drugs alone net the pharmaceutical industry at least $14.6bn dollars a year. Psycho-pharmaceuticals are the most profitable sector of the industry, which makes it one of the most profitable business sectors in the world. Americans are less than 5%...
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The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission set up by the US government reported at the end of January. They concluded that the crisis of 2007 and 2008 was the result of “human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire”, but “of human mistakes, misjudgments, and misdeeds” and so avoidable. Obviously, the crisis was the outcome, even if unintended, of decisions by humans to behave in particular ways, but that’s not at issue. We need to know why the economic decision-makers involved took the decisions they did. What was the context of their decisions? What were...
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