IN THE CIRCUMSTANCES

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

 

Article 1.

Article 2.

• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

• Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

• Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

• All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

• Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

• Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

• (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
• (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

• (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
• (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

• (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

• (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

• (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

• (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

• Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

• (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
• (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
• (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

The best and worst-paying university degrees

Published 14 May 2010

 Neil Faulkner

We look at the value of a university education, tell you which degree is the best value, explain the premium you earn for post-graduate training.

Graduates could be asked to pay back their student loans earlier and at a higher rate of interest, after a group of the UK's leading universities demanded more investment to avert a funding crisis. 

The Russell Group, which represents the UK's top 20 leading univerisities, told the Government that the current repayment rate on student loans was "generous" and that "it might be reasonably increased without putting undue pressure on low earners".

While the universities stopped short of suggesting that amount of tuition fees charged should rise, It did argue that t?he threshold at which graduates start to pay back their loans ?s?h?o?u?l?d? ?b?e??l?o?w?e?r?e?d, and that students should be forced to agree to allocate a greater proportion of their graduate income towards paying off their debt???.

Currently, graduates only start making repayments on their student loan debts when they earn £15,000 or more each year, and pay 9% of their income above this threshold.

While the National Union of Students criticised the proposals, arguing they would plunge graduates into serious financial hardship, the Russell Group claimed the extra funding is essential to enable UK universities to continue to compete for the best academic talent on an international scale and maintain the quality of their research and teaching.

It warned that insitutions face a deficit of over £1bn by 2012, and will have to make major cutbacks to their staff and infrastructure in an attempt to plug it.

The review of whether students should pay higher university fees will continue with further evidence expected to be submitted next week.

In the light of this, we ask how great is the financial benefit of attending university?

Do degrees always pay off in the long run, despite the costs associated with them?

And what are the best and worst paid subjects to study?

All the comparisons we make in this article are between graduates and those who could have gone to university but didn't (i.e. they had two or more A levels or equivalent qualifications).

Average graduate earnings

While graduates often start off earning a similar amount to non-graduates, this changes quickly over the years.

For example, in 2008 (the latest statistics we could find), a typical 21-year-old graduate earned just £17,472 a year, while a non-graduate with A levels earned £15,912 a year.

However, the typical 33-year-old graduate earned £37,960 a year, while the typical 34-year old non-graduate earned just £27,768 a year.

Age in 2008	Degree or equivalent	A-level, GCE or equivalent
21-22	£17,472	£15,912
23-24	£20,696	£18,200
25-26	£24,960	£20,436
27-28	£28,912	£22,256
29-30	£32,916	£24,180
31-32	£34,632	£24,336
32-33	£37,960	£27,768
All ages (21 -34)	£28,860	£21,268

Average extra lifetime earnings

On average, graduates earn an extra £160,000, or 23% throughout their lifetime (which is even greater after tax). That's an extra £3,600 per year, compared to non-graduates.

That's despite increasing numbers of young people getting degrees: a third now do, compared with just 15% 20 years ago.

Subject matters

It's no surprise that there are wide variations in average earnings depending on the subject studied. 

Arts graduates earn just £35,000 extra (compared to non-graduates) whilst medicine graduates earn a massive £340,000 extra, on average, during their lives.

Average extra earnings for graduates by subject studied

Subject studied	Average extra earnings (compared to non-graduates)
Medicine	£340,000
Law	£245,000
Engineering	£245,000
Maths	£240,000
Physics	£190,000
Chemistry	£185,000
Business	£185,000
European languages	£165,000
Psychology	£100,000
Linguistics and English	£95,000
Humanities	£50,000
Arts	£35,000

Data from 2005 and 2007

Earnings growth steady in early years

Regardless of which degree you take, earnings grow at a constant rate in the first few years. However, they typically balloon in the mid-years in some subjects, such as chemistry.

Averages can be misleading...

...to say the least. There is massive variation within each field, which explains why some people get irate at so-called 'average earnings'.

One graduate working in the same field or even the same job as another can easily earn one-third less than some colleagues.

Public sector benefits less visible

Most graduates in the public sector seeing earnings statistics over the years will probably conclude they are unrealistic, but in return for a lower income most get greater job security and pension benefits.

Do degrees always pay off?

No, not always.

The evidence is limited, but it seems that men with arts degrees usually earn slightly less than their counterparts who chose not to go to university.

A case of those who can, do - perhaps?

It's also true that, without a degree, you can still earn more than the average graduate.

Those taking training places from one of the big accountancy or law firms, for example, can circumvent the need and cost of a degree.

Also, degrees are expensive.

The average student leaves university with debts totalling £15,700 and the current average graduates starting salary is just £22,300.

Even if your salary goes up every year by almost 5%, it will still take you around 12 years to pay off your debt, which will cost you even more than you think.

Finally, it's worth bearing in mind that 20% of students drop out of university and a third of graduates end up with non-graduate jobs.

On the plus side, graduates are less likely to be unemployed.

Degrees are more beneficial for women

On average, research shows that women gain greater financial benefits from a university education than men do.

Women who don't go to university tend to earn a great deal less than men who don't go to university.

However, women's incomes, on average, are boosted more by a degree to make it a more level playing field.

To take an example, men's incomes are boosted 43% by an economics degree, but women's are boosted 63%.

Similarly, men from poorer backgrounds also benefit more from university than men from affluent ones.

Discrimination, it seems, is more difficult for employers when you've got a degree.

There is still discrimination towards graduates

However, there is still a big difference in average earnings between male and female graduates, with men earning at least £14,000 more over their working lives.

(We suspect it's quite a bit more on average, but unfortunately there seems to be little research on this topic.

If you know a better statistic, please share it on lovemoney.com using our comments section.)

Law comes top

This is the most important section in the article.

Whilst medicine earns more, it also costs more.

What's more, you lose out on income, because you're studying (and so not working) for more years.

When you factor all these things together, law is the better investment with an average rate of return of more than 17% per year:

The annual rate of return on your degree

Subject	Rate of return
Law	17.2%
Management	16.9%
Engineering	15.5%
Chemistry	15.0%
Physics	14.9%
European languages	14.0%
Medicine (excluding dentistry)	11.6%
Chemical sciences	10.2%
Psychology	10.1%
Linguistics and English	9.7%
History	8.8%

The average rate of return for all degrees is 12.1% per year.

This makes a degree the best possible investment (on average), trouncing the stock market or property over the long term.

Surprisingly, medicine has a lower return than the average at 11.6% (although dentists were excluded from the figures) meaning that perhaps we focus too much on doctors' wages and not enough on support staff.

However, weI suspect that these figures (from 2005) will be out-of-date now. 130,000 doctors earn now, at the very least, £13bn between them, with many earning as much as £380,000 per year.

Also the figures in the above table may come down now that the cost of university is going up (to an average £23,000 for students starting this year, it's estimated).

However, some researchers believe the reverse will happen!

The post-grad premium

Some - but far from all - employers offer a premium for those who go beyond a Bachelor's degree. I

f you're lucky enough to get work for an employer that pays such a premium, those with doctorates could earn an extra £6,000 from the start.

Those with master's degrees could earn an extra £4,000 and those with an MBA an extra £12,000 (although very few employers offer a premium for MBAs).

That's a lot of statistics. You may need a degree just to take them all in!

Elite universities are 'still for the rich'

ARAB - ISRAEL  CONFLICT

THE MEANS OF A SOLUTION AND SECURITY IN THE REGION

1. 60 YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THE PROBLEM WAS BORN.
2. ISRAEL WAS ESTABLISHED BY AGGRESSION.
3. ISRAEL HAS ALWAYS ADOPTED VIOLENT POLICIES
4. ISRAEL REFUSES TO COMPLY WITH UN RESOLUTIONS

 

1. THE MOST RELEVANT RESOLUTIONS ARE 252,338,194 and 3236.
2. THESE RESOLUTIONS FROM THE HUNDREDS OF RELATED RESOLUTIONS, THAT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND SECURITY COUNCIL PASSED,ARE CONSIDERED THE ACCEPTABLE BASIS OF A SOLUTION IN THE REGION.
3. THE LEGITIMATE RESISTANCE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WAS IN CONFORMITY WITH LIBERATION FROM OCCUPATION AND SETTLEMENT, HAS BEEN ACCEPTED.
4. THERE MUST BE A COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL FROM ARAB TERRITORIES OCCUPIED ON 5^th JUNE 1967
5. THAT IS THE WEST BANK,GAZA STRIP,EAST JERUSALEM, THE GOLAN HEIGHTS AND SOUTH LEBANON. ALL OCCUPIED BY FORCE.
6. DISMANTLING OF ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS BUILT IN PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES AND GOLAN HEIGHTS
7. DISMANTLING OF THE RACIAL SEPARATION WALL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE AND RESTORE CONFISCATED LANDS WITH COMPENSATION.
8. ANNULMENT OF ALL  JUDAIZING OF EAST JERUSALEM
9. RELEASE ALL PALESTINIAN AND ARAB PRISONERS
10. DECLARATION OF THE CREATION OF A COMPLETELY SOVEREIGN PALESTINIAN STATE WITH EAST JERUSALEM AS ITS CAPITAL WITHIN THE BORDERS OF 4^th JUNE 1967
11. RECOGNITION OF THE RIGHTS OF PALESTINIAN REFUGEES TO RETURN TO THEIR PROPERTY THEY DESERTED IN 1948.PROVIDE HOUSES,COMPENSATION  DURING THE YEARS OF NAKBA THROUGH A UN PLAN.
12. IMPLEMENTATION OF UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 497 of 1981, (THE ANNEXATION OF THE GOLAN HEIGHTS AND CEASE EXPLOITATION OF WATER RESOURCES IN GOLAN AND OTHER ARAB OCCUPIED TERRITORIES)
   

REMOVAL OF ALL FOREIGN BASES AS WELL AS MILITARY FLEETS FROM THE REGION. TO EMPTY THE   REGION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THOSE OF MASS DESTRUCTION THROUGH THE INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY IN ACCORDANCE WITH UN REGULATIONS.

OTHER CONCERNS ARE ISRAELI WAR CRIMES AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
MIDDLE EAST OIL, AND THE USA . ITS PHYSICAL AND FINANCIAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE AREA
THE STRUGGLE OVER WATER RESOURCES
THE REALITY OF ISLAM IN THE AREA AND NATURE OF ITS MOVEMENT

Dimbleby attacks history lessons

RADICAL SAYS-ITS NOT ONLY WHAT SCHOOLS DON"T TEACH BUT THE WAY THEY DON"T TEACH IT!
1066 IS NOT "ALL THAT" - RIGHTSANDWRONGS IS DOING "A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND" SERIES IN AN EASY TO READ "POCKET VERSION"

Education: Broadcaster David Dimbleby criticised the lack of history teaching in schools on Tuesday.

Mr Dimbleby told the Radio Times that the popularity of programmes delving into the nation's past suggested that people were hungry to know more because the school curriculum had failed to deliver on history.

"Maybe we are filling in the gaps left by the less impressive treatment of history in the school curriculum," he said of his current BBC1 series The Seven Ages Of Britain.

Welcome to Orwell's world 2010

John Pilger

30 Dec 2009

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger draws on George Orwell's prophetic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to describe a superstate where truth and lies are indivisible, and peace is no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that, in the words of President Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan". In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth.  ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.” Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania.   In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”.  He called this “global security” and invited our gratitude.   To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying your country.” In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible.   According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said the “the world” supported the invasion in the wake of 9/11 when, in truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition.   He said that America invaded Afghanistan “only after the Taliban refused to turn over [Osama] bin Laden”.   In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over bin Laden for trial, reported Pakistan’s military regime, and were ignored.   Even Obama’s mystification of 9/11 as justification for his war is false.   More than two months before the Twin Towers were attacked, the Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, was told by the Bush administration that an American military assault would take place by mid-October.   The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as “stable” enough to ensure America’s control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go. Obama’s most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda’s attacks on the West.   His own national security adviser, General James Jones, said in October that there were “fewer than 100” al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.   According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but “a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power”.   The war is a fraud. Only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of “world peace”. Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose.   Under the disturbing General Stanley McCrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of one of the most impoverished countries is a model for those “disorderly regions” of the world still beyond Oceania’s reach.   This is a known as COIN, or counter-insurgency network, which draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings.   Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, its aim is to pit one ethnic group against another and incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbecks against Pashtuns. The Americans did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society.   They bribed and built walls between communities who had once inter-married, ethnically cleansing the Sunni and driving millions out of the country.   The embedded media reported this as “peace”, and American academics bought by Washington and “security experts” briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news.   As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true. Something similar is planned for Afghanistan.   People are to be forced into “target areas” controlled by warlords bankrolled by the Americans and the opium trade.   That these warlords are infamous for their barbarism is irrelevant.   “We can live with that,” a Clinton-era diplomat said of the persecution of women in a “stable” Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the “humanitarian crisis” and so “secure” the subjugated tribal lands. That is the theory. It worked after a fashion in Yugoslavia where the ethnic-sectarian partition wiped out a once peaceful society, but it failed in Vietnam where the CIA’s “strategic hamlet program” was designed to corral and divide the southern population and so defeat the Viet Cong - the Americans’ catch-all term for the resistance, similar to “Taliban”. Behind much of this are the Israelis, who have long advised the Americans in both the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures.   Ethnic-cleansing, wall-building, checkpoints, collective punishment and constant surveillance – these are claimed as Israeli innovations that have succeeded in stealing most of Palestine from its native people.    And yet for all their suffering, the Palestinians have not been divided irrevocably and they endure as a nation against all odds. The most telling forerunners of the Obama Plan, which the Nobel Peace Prize winner and his strange general and his PR men prefer we forget, are those that failed in Afghanistan itself.   The British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th century attempted to conquer that wild country by ethnic cleansing and were seen off, though after terrible bloodshed.   Imperial cemeteries are their memorials.   People power, sometimes baffling, often heroic, remains the seed beneath the snow, and invaders fear it. “It was curious,” wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four, “to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here.  And the people under the sky were also very much the same, everywhere, all over the world … people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same people who … were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”

 

Poisonous brain fodder

RADICAL SAYS :- THIS POISON FOLLOWS THE US EDUCATION WHERE THEY GO AROUND THE WORLD

Blair's Jewish paymasters

In the corrupt world of today's politics, those who finance a political leader also control him. So who controls Blair? The vast majority of the finances of Blair and his Labour Party come from Jewish millionaires. Below is a list of Jews who have been revealed by the media as regularly contributing at least £100,000 to Blair and his party.

 

May it please your Lordships...

"Lord" Levy

 

Blair's fundraiser-in-chief and a leading Zionist. Member of the Jewish World Board of Governors. Vice-President of the Joint Israel Appeal. Looks to Jews for most of Blair's finances.

 

 

"Lord" Gavron

 

 

 

"Lord" Hollick

 

 

 

"Lord" Bernstein

 

 

Note:
Levy, Gavron and Hollick were given their peerages by Blair, in return for their financial favours. 

 

Knights of the kosher table...

"Sir" Maurice Hatter
"Sir" Emmanuel Kaye
"Sir" John Ritblat
"Sir" Trevor Chinn

 

Peers in waiting...

David Goldman
Isaac Kaye
Ronald Cohen
Felix Dennis

Blair's accountant is Michael Goldstein of Blick Rothenberg.

 

Remember, the list is only of those who regularly contribute over £100,000 and is only those who have come to the attention of the press. Considering the influence of "Lord" Levy, it is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.

 

Update from 2001:

A partial listing of the Hebrew millionaires financing the party of the puppet Blair: Ronald Cohen of Apax Partners, donated £100,000; Isaac Kaye of Norton Healthcare, £100,000; Joel Joffe of Allied Dunbar; "Sir" Sigmund Sternberg, £100,000; "Lord" Sainsbury of Sainsburys the supermarket chain; Alan Sugar of Amstrad, £200,000; Tony Tabatznik of Amerpharm pharmaceuticals, whose family is worth over £250 million; "Sir" Trevor Chinn, the chairman of Lex Service, the UK's biggest motor dealer; "Sir" Emmanuel Kaye of the forklift truck firm Lansing Bagnall; "Sir" David Putnam the film producer; Alex Bernstein the former chairman of Granada, whose personal fortune is around £20 million and who regularly contributes in the order of £200,000; Robert Gavron the chairman of the Guardian Media Group which now produces 100 million books a year and numerous magazines, and who has handed out £500,000 at a time; "Lord" Levy the multi-millionaire music publisher probably worth £20 million with marble-lined house in Israel; "Sir" Maurice Hatter the electronics tycoon, donated £1 million; David Goldman the chairman of a telecommunications equipment supplier, donated £1 million; John Ritblatt the property tycoon, £100,000; "Lord" Hamlyn the publisher, reported to have given £600,000; Leslie Silver, the Leeds-based millionaire; Norman Hyams the property developer; "Lord" Diamond, £100,000.

Source: Colin Jordan's Gothic Ripples No. 44, Sept. 2001

 

  

The Men in Tony's Life

 

This research is intended to highlight some of the names and demonstrates the network of influence that certain business leaders and millionaires (with a particular ideological view) hold within "New Labour". Below is a selection of snapshots, quotes and articles about Tony's friends.

Lord Michael Levy
Lord Woolf
Lord Peter Goldsmith QC
Lord Janner
Lord David Sainsbury
Sir Ronald Cohen
Sir Alan Sugar
Sir Sigmund Sternberg
Lord Simon
Rupert Murdoch
Principle Donors to the Labour Party

 

 

Lord Michael Levy

Lord Levy is one of the most important fundraisers for the Labour Party and Tony Blair's unofficial envoy to the Middle East. He met Blair at a dinner party in 1994 held by Gideon Meir, a senior Israeli diplomat, and became his tennis partner. Levy was in charge of donations to the 'private trust’, which funded Tony Blair's office before the 1997 election (which reached £7 million), and is now the chief fundraiser for the 'high value' donors’ account at the Labour Party, along with his deputy Amanda Delew (who worked with him at Jewish Care). He is reported to have raised £12 million for the 'high value' fund before the 1997 election, becoming known as 'Mr Cashpoint'. Straight after the election he was given a peerage.

Although a multi-millionaire, he only paid £5,000 in tax in 1998-9 and less than £10,000 in 1997-8 as he said he wasn't working. He runs a private company called Wireart, an investment company which was based in an oversea tax haven until 1997. Wireart paid him £160,000 (plus £50,000 expenses) for work as a management consultant in 1998-9 at the time he wasn't working. Since 1992 he has been Chairman of Jewish Care, one of the UK's biggest charities (he was asked to join by the Tory minister Lord Young), raising as much as £60 million.

He also owns a villa in Herzliya Pituah, an exclusive suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel, which he bought after selling another villa nearby for £4 million. He has acted as a fundraiser for Ehud Barak, the Israeli Prime Minister, and maintains a close relationship with him. His son Daniel worked for the Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, to whom Levy contributed campaign funds. Both his children live in Israel.

His role as unofficial envoy for the Middle East took him to 8 different countries in 1999, staying in British Embassies, including Syria, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Israel, Egypt and Lebanon (where he was accused by the Lebanese Government of bringing them the Israeli position and the British Ambassador had to issue a statement to try and calm the situation down). He was also provided with cars, drivers and staff support. The Embassy in Amman, Jordan, arranged a lunch for him to meet Jordanian politicians.

For further information click here or visit the following links

Levy takes growing part in Middle East (Guardian)

Who will dare damn Israel? (Observer)

 

Lord Woolf

Chief Justice of England and Wales

Harry Kenneth Woolf was born in 1933 in Newcastle, to a rich and happy Jewish family, second-generation immigrants who had done well in the building trade. Educated at Fettes College in Edinburgh (later alumni include Tony Blair) and University College, London, he has claimed that as a young man, he devoted more attention to playing rugby than the law.

“Israel’s devotion to the rule of law, even in these troubled times, is highly laudable,” the Lord Chief Justice told an audience of American, British and European communal leaders last night. Here Lord Woolf was speaking at a dinner arranged by the Board of Deputies to honour the visit of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. The event was hosted by Board President Jo Wagerman and sponsored by the European Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress.

Further Information:

The Observer Profile: Lord Woolf

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE PAYS TRIBUTE TO ISRAEL (The Board of Deputies of British Jews)

 

 

Lord Peter Goldsmith QC

Attorney General

Lord Goldsmith broke with convention to publish his legal opinion declaring that UN Security Council resolutions going back more than a decade provided the legal authority for military action. He said: "Authority to use force against Iraq exists from the combined effect of resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. All these resolutions were adopted under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which allows the use of force for the express purpose of restoring international peace and security."

The parliamentary written answer ended suggestions that Lord Goldsmith, the Government's chief legal adviser, had told Tony Blair war would be illegal without a second UN resolution. His statement, made before a House of Lords debate on the legality of war, was immediately contested by anti-war peers and MPs, who insisted that war required an explicit authorisation from the UN Security Council.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, added his voice to the debate, saying in New York: "If the action is to take place without the support of the Council, its legitimacy will be questioned and the support for it will be diminished."

Lord Goodhart, a barrister and Liberal Democrat frontbencher, said: "I see nothing in any of these resolutions which gives authority to two members of the Security Council to decide for themselves whether the conditions for the use of armed force are satisfied."

For further information goto:

Attorney-General backs government

 

Lord Janner

Peer and member of Jewish Board of Deputies

Pro-Zionist peer Lord Janner was forced to leave a UK NGO meeting yesterday evening, reports Editor of The Muslim News Ahmed Versi from Durban. The meeting was convened to discuss the stance taken by the European caucus on the issue of accusing Israel as a racist state and was arranged held after meeting the UK Government official delegation at the Hilton Hotel, near the International Conference Centre.

“After the meeting with the British Government? Delegation, we wanted to discuss the important issue of the stance taken by the European Caucus on the issue of Zionism and racism in private," one of the UK NGO delegates, who did not want to be identified, told The Muslim News "However, one of us noticed Lord Janner with three Jewish men (one of them we believe was a security person) had somehow managed to enter the room and were listening to our conversation. One of our delegates from the Black Police Association (UK) went over to them and asked them to leave,” the delegate said. Lord Janner with his colleagues from the World Jewish Congress, left the room immediately. They were asked to leave as the World Jewish Congress was not a UK NGO.

For further information goto:

Lord Jenner forced to leave World Conference against Racism (Muslim News)

Who is Lord Janner? (Historical Review Press)

FIFTY YEARS’ SERVICE BY LORD JANNER (The Board of Deputies of British Jews)

 

 

Sainsbury, Lord David

Lord Sainsbury has given over £9 million to the Labour Party since 1996: nearly three times the total amount received in membership subscriptions each year. He was ennobled in 1997 and made Minister for Science in 1998. In addition to a 13 percent stake in Sainsburys PLC, now administered through a blind trust, he has both business and charitable interests in GM foods. He also benefits from income from trusts held in the British virgin Islands.

After Sainsbury's connections with Israel were exposed in Egypt; the Egyptians began their boycott, which resulted in shutting all the Sainsbury branches in Egypt. Lord David Sainsbury of Turville, who at present is the Minister for Science, visited Shenkar College, near Tel Aviv, to promote Anglo-Israeli Research and Development. He also spoke at the dinner of the Britain Israel Chamber of Commerce [B-ICC]. Lord Sainsbury is NOT currently a director of the company and his shares are in a trust while he is a government minister. Sainsbury also invests in Israel by purchasing Israeli products to be sold in the UK.

For further information:

Boycott Apartheid Israel (Friends of Al-Aqsa)

 

Cohen, Sir Ronald

Founder of Apax Partners & Co venture capitalists and of the British Venture Capital Association. He gave £100,000 in 1997 and pledged £100,000 in 1999.

Total donations given by this person / organisation since Feb 2001: £300,000.00

Boycott Apartheid Israel (Friends of Al-Aqsa)

Apax Partners & Co. Ltd - which is a substantial investor of institutional venture capital in Israeli growth companies. According to Virtual Israel "The State of Israel recognizes the recipient as one of the visionaries who have done the most to facilitate Israel's integration into the global economy and to realize its world-class business potential."

 

Sugar, Sir Alan

A one-time Thatcherite, Sir Alan Sugar (knighted in the 1999 New Year's Honours List) was first listed as giving more than £5,000 to the Labour Party in 1997. He is the Chairman of Amstrad and Executive Chairman of Viglen Ltd (he owns 73% of the company). His personal wealth is £585 million. He is also the former Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Total donations given by this person / organisation since Feb 2001: £200,000.00
(Jewish, known Zionist, supporter of Israeli football team)

 

 

Sternberg, Sir Sigmund

Sternberg has extensive connections to the financial, real estate, and computer industries, as well as Labour. He gave large donations to the Labour Party when it held office in 1977, as well as during the election year of 1979. In 1998 he paid over £5,000 on “tickets for dinners”.

He is currently a Chairman of Martin Slowe Estates Ltd (a property development company), founder of the Commodities Research Unit (one of the largest commodity consultancies in the world), a former Chairman of ISYS plc (a software company with big-name clients such as IBM, NatWest, Halifax, Abbey National, National Power, GlaxoWellcome, and BAE Systems), and is a Fellow of the Institute of Directors (an association of British company directors).

Sternberg’s political associations include an appointment as Justice of the Peace for the Middlesex Division of Greater London, a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), a life member of the Magistrates Association, and elected as a Freeman of the City of London. He is also an active promoter of multi-faith initiatives. Sternberg is former Deputy Chairman (1972-93) and now VP of the Labour Finance and Industry Group, whose members include corporate heads, bankers, accountants, and lawyers. It regularly conducts seminars and discussions for senior Labour Politicians.

For a comprehensive biography go to: John Templeton Foundation - Biography: Sir Sigmund Sternberg

Total donations given by this person / organisation since Feb 2001: £210,000.00

 

Others worthy of mention:

Lord Simon

Lord Simon, former Chairman of BP, was appointed Minister for European Trade and Competition by Tony Blair in May 1997. When he was appointed Minister he resigned from directorships at Grand Metropolitan, Deutsche Bank, Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ) and Allianz AG Holding. He put his shares in all these companies into a 'blind trust', except for BP, selling their shares for £2.25 million. He went to Cambridge University. He left the Cabinet in July 1999, frustrated with the slow pace of Britain's advance towards a single European currency.

At BP he was the boss of Bryan Sanderson, who sits on the Government's Competitiveness Advisory Group Task Force, the Company Law Review Steering Group and the Enhancing Business Performance Task Force. No other company has more members on Government Task Forces. Rodney Chase (paid £962,000 in 1998) BP Managing Director of Exploration, sits on the Advisory Committee for Business and the Environment (alongside Dr John Harford of BP Solar) and the UK Round Table on Sustainable Development. David Watson, BP's Group Treasurer, sits on the Working Party on Sustainable Development. Alan Jones, Director and General Manager of BP Exploration, sits on the Oil and Gas Industry Task Force. Sir John Browne, Chairman of BP, sits on the Government's Competitiveness Council, alongside Sir Richard Evans of BAE Systems and C.K. Chow of GKN.
BP have paid for employees to work in the British Embassy in Washington and on the Foreign Office's Middle East Desk in London. They also have staff working inside the DTI.

In September 1999 a subsidiary of BP-Amoco had to pay $22 million in fines and compensation after admitting it illegally disposed of hazardous waste in Alaska.

In 1996 a Colombian Government report revealed that BP had been collaborating with death squads in Colombia. Campaigners against BP were abducted by the military and murdered. BP passed photographs of Trades Unionists and peasant activists to the Colombian Military and used the army to break strikes (BP spends millions funding the Colombian army - in 1998 they gave them an extra £39 million). The Colombian Government's independent ombudsman José Castro Caycedo carried out an inquiry into BP's environmental record between 1991 and 1997. His report was a devastating catalogue of pollution, illegal deforestation, water contamination and the dumping of untreated toxic waste. In 1994 BP received the biggest fine in Colombian history for serious environmental damage at five oil rigs.

In 1993 BP were accused of backing a coup in the former Soviet State of Azerbaijan, which installed a ruthless ex-KGB man as President. President Haydar Aliyev then proceded to sign a £5 billion deal which gave BP the lead role in a consortium of Western companies which now dominates the oil business in the region. A secret Turkish intelligence report accused BP of organising an 'arms-for-oil' deal with Azerbaijan, providing weapons and mercenaries to the new President.

Lord Simon was Chairman of BP throughout this time.

Click Here for further information

 

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation, which has about 800 subsidiaries, including 60 in tax havens like Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. Murdoch owns 31% of News Corporation, which has a revenue of £7 billion a year. Newscorp Investments is his main holding company in the UK, which controls News International, his newspaper company. News International owns The Times, The Sun, The Sunday Times and the News of the World.

News Corporation includes the Twentieth Century Fox film studios, the Fox TV network in the USA, the New York Post, 200 newspapers in Australia and the L.A. Dodgers. News Corp also owns the publishing company Harper Collins (which owns Fourth Estate, one of the largest independent publishers in the UK). He also runs Sky Global Networks, owners of BSkyB. BSkyB paid for a large party for Young Labour (in the World Famous Palace Discotheque in Blackpool) at the 1998 Labour Party Conference, organised by Matthew Freud (the boyfriend of Murdoch's daughter) and hosted by Chris Evans. The party cost £20,000.

He meets Tony Blair regularly, visiting Downing Street at least every 6 months. In June 1998 he said that in some of their policies the Labour Party were "more Thatcherite than the Tories. But they'd kill you if you said that". Tony Blair was a guest of honour at a huge News Corp corporate meeting in Australia, before the 1997 election when The Sun newspaper switched sides to support the Labour Party. Gordon Brown gave a speech at the next of these News Corp meetings at the Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho in 1998. After the 1997 election it was alleged that Blair had phoned the Italian Premier Romano Prodi to assist the expansion of Murdoch's media empire in Europe.

Although their accounts show profits of £1.387 billion since 1987, Newscorp Investments has effectively paid no tax in the UK since 1988 - receiving tax rebates in some years that have cancelled out payments in others. In 1992 they received a tax rebate of £8 million, in 1993 £5 million and in 1989 £3 million.
In January 1986 Murdoch engineered a strike of 6000 workers at their Fleet Street print works, sacked them and replaced them with EETPU members at a new plant in Wapping (under a no-strike agreement) in a plan that had been worked out secretly for months. The Wapping plant took over production of The Times, The Sun, The Sunday Times and the News of the World amid large-scale and regular demonstrations and marches. The strike collapsed in 1987, a major defeat for the organised working class. On the 5/12/2000 in a speech to a Labour Friends of Israel meeting, Peter Mandelson said that Margaret Thatcher was right to be intolerant of "the behaviour of the Wapping mob".

Dr Irwin Steltzer, an American economist who writes a weekly column in the Sunday Times, is a close friend and key advisor to Rupert Murdoch. Steltzer has been a regular visitor to Tony Blair and at one point was being paid as a consultant by Downing Street (Murdoch is known to have paid him more than £1 million a year).

Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth Murdoch is a close friend of Peter Mandelson.

Click here for further information

 

 

Principle Donors to the Labour Party

	Donor	Total given, £
1	GMB	2,874,093.00
2	UNISON	2,677,295.17
3	AEEU	2,199,382.69
4	Lord Sainsbury	2,000,000.00
5	CWU	1,943,559.62
6	TGWU	1,803,990.08
7	USDAW	1,709,331.90
8	MSF	804,143.00
9	BAA Plc	525,830.70
10	Lord Paul Hamlyn	500,000.00
11	GPMU	448,381.00
12	Sir Ronald Cohen	300,000.00
13	UCATT	279,441.00
14	ISTC	276,393.55
15	Amicus - AEEU	237,125.00
16	RMT	219,730.66
17	Sir Sigmund Sternberg	210,000.00
18	Bill Kenwright	200,000.00
19	Charles Peel	200,000.00
20	Sir Alan Sugar	200,000.00

References: http://www.cleanpolitix.com/fund/index.asp?page=top20&i=0&top20=Labour

 

 

• More on Jewish influence in Great Britain; politics, media, business

 

Zionist control of Britain’s government: 1940-2009

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By William A. Cook

21 November 2009

William A. Cook charts the history of Zionist control of Britain's government and argues "it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity and in brazen arrogance tells the United Nations to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world".

“After so many years of setting the tone, bribing UK politicians and controlling the BBC they [the Zionists] are used to being untouchable.” (Gilad Atzmon, “Time for Britain to reclaim its sovereignty and dignity by de-Zionizing itself”)

This week the British people listened to the Daily Mail’s Peter Oborne present, on Channel 4 TV, his devastating account of the Jewish lobby’s control of the British government. Now we know that virtually all the principal politicians in the UK of both parties, like their brothers across the lake in our House and Senate, take “contributions” from the Israeli lobby machine, ensuring that the Anglo-American Middle East policies follow the dictates of the Israeli government. Gilad Atzmon responded to this report in his article “Time for Britain to reclaim its sovereignty and dignity by de-Zionizing itself,” noting that, because this control has been in place for so many years, the lobby feels “untouchable”.

How many years are “many” one might ask? On 16 October 1941 the high commissioner of Palestine, Harold MacMichael, senior Palestine Mandate officer for the British Mandate forces in Palestine, sent the following “Top Secret” “Memorandum on the participation of the Jewish national institutions in Palestine in acts of lawlessness and violence” to the secretary of state, a report prepared by the Palestine Police, Criminal Investigation Department:

The memorandum illustrates – indeed, brings into full limelight – the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention.

Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine. This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, and knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.

The Zionists and their “gangs”, a euphemism for well equipped and well trained military forces, launched a full-scale terrorist rebellion against the British by robbing banks, indiscriminate killing of British police and the assassination of British minister-resident Lord Moyne in 1944. By the end of World War II things got even worse:

The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations – liberation of interned immigrants from the Atlit camp; the bombing of the country’s railroad network; sabotage raids on radar installations and bases of the British police mobile force; sabotage of British vessels ... and the destruction of all road and railroad bridges on the borders.

All of this terrorism was conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda (Meir Pa’il, “From Hashomer to the Israel Defence Forces: Armed Jewish Defence in Palestine,” World War II).

But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine.

A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labour certificates in connection with the immigration quota, the forced contributions to funds and the power of the Histadruth… The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…

Perhaps one of the most frightening observations MacMichael makes comes at the very end of his dispatch: “As matters now stand it seems to me inevitable that the Zionist juggernaut which has been created with such intensity of zeal for a Jewish national state will be the cause of very serious trouble in the Near East.” Prophetic words indeed.

The memorandum provided by the Palestine Police Department includes approximately 500 pages of seized documents from the Jewish Agency and related organizations. These documents reveal the intention of the Zionists that controlled operations in Palestine as they worked to force into existence a Jewish state.

We regard it as our duty to caution you against any attempt to decide on an anti-Zionist solution… We regard it as a duty to utter another warning. Do not postpone the political solution for 10 years… The Jews are a nation. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The Jewish state will be established. It is better that it should be established with your help and for your benefit, than against you. (The Jewish Resistance Movement, 25 March 1946, Rhodes House Archives)

The Mandate Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Richard Catling. Catling’s memorandum begins with an understanding of the “intricate Jewish political, social and economic structure in Palestine”. A series of appendices chart these structures, remarking in passing that

… the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 understood “The Agency (Jewish) is obviously not a governing body; it can only advise and cooperate in a certain wide field”. But allied as it is with the Vaad Leumi, and commanding the allegiance of the great majority of the Jews in Palestine, it unquestionably exercises, both in Jerusalem and in London, a considerable influence on the conduct of government.

Catling’s frustration with the actual control of the Jews over British policy in Palestine glares through this document: “This powerful and efficient organization amounts in fact to a government existing side by side with the Mandatory Government…”

The Zionist-controlled Jewish Agency actively undermined the legal authority in Palestine even as it operated to undermine support for that government in Britain, placing UK forces in harm’s way as they attempted to fulfil their authorized responsibilities in Palestine. It also demonstrates the determination of the Jewish Agency’s leadership in undermining the very nation that gave it a means of establishing a “homeland” in Palestine through the Balfour Declaration. The wording of that declaration is rarely presented in its full form:

His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The declaration did not intend to establish a Jewish state. Indeed, the wording, “national home”, was used intentionally instead of “state”. Additionally, the first draft referred to the principle “that Palestine should be” reconstituted “as the national home of the Jewish people”. In the final text, the word “that” was replaced with “in” to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.

Now perhaps we can answer the question, “How many years has the British government been under the control of the Zionist influence?” Three score and ten, the biblical age. Perhaps it’s time that Britain is reborn, free from the shackles that bind it to this corrupt power that flouts international law, wantonly commits crimes against humanity, and in brazen arrogance tells the United Nations to shove its demands to comply with the civilized communities of the world.

(Note: Sir Richard C. Catling’s files have been released to this writer by the chief archivist of the Rhodes House Library of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University. Some of the material presented above comes from the “Introduction” of a yet to be published book due out this coming spring.)

---

William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and serves as editor and writer for multiple internet publications. His published books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied: The Rape of Palestine, and The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella.

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Undergraduate

Introducing the social sciences

On this page

• Summary
• Course content
• Entry
• Qualifications
• If you have a disability or additional requirement
• Course materials
• Teaching and assessment
• Students also studied
• Future availability
• How to register

Course code DD101	Credit points 60	OU Level 1
SCQF level 7	QAA level 4
7 Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs)
No examination				No residential school

Register for the course

This course is available for study in the countries shown.

Countries: EnglandNorthern IrelandScotlandWalesBFPOBFPO CyprusChannel IslandsIsle Of ManAland IslandsAndorraAustriaBelgiumBulgariaCyprusCzech RepublicDenmarkEstoniaFinlandFranceGermanyGibraltarGreeceHungaryIreland, Republic OfItalyLatviaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMaltaMonacoNetherlandsPolandPortugalRomaniaSan MarinoSlovakiaSloveniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandVatican City StateEurope

Start	End	Fee*	Register
Oct 2010	Jun 2011	Not yet available	Click to register Registration closes 09/09/10
Jan 2011	Oct 2011	Not yet available	Click to register Registration closes 15/12/10
This course is expected to run until February 2019.

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Summary

This course is an ideal introduction to the social sciences – psychology, social policy and criminology, geography and environment, politics and international studies, economics and sociology – through study of contemporary UK society. Using a blend of text, audio, DVD and online materials, you’ll explore a wide range of topics, including questions of society’s relationship to the environment, questions of identity and issues of social order and governance – all considered in their national and international contexts – that will equip you with a range of skills for independent study and for your personal and working life.

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Course content

Introducing the social sciences provides an approachable and contemporary introduction to the disciplines and subjects that form the social sciences, as well as the questions and issues that social scientists investigate and explore. It is ideal preparation for Level 2 courses in a range of social science and related qualifications.

The first course-wide question is: How is society made and repaired? This question asks about how people make society in their relations with one another and with the material world, and how, in turn, society shapes people. The second question is: How are differences and inequalities produced? People making and being shaped by society generate differences between and inequalities among groups and individuals – where do these come from and how do they change? And the third question is: How do we know? That is, how do social scientists set about investigating and answering questions about society? Social science answers to these questions are explored by looking at three strands of course materials called: Material Lives, Connected Lives and Ordered Lives.

Material Lives considers how the making of society involves not only relations between people, but also relations between people and things and their environments; how society shapes and is shaped not just by humans but by material objects and the environment; and some of the consequences of the fact that our lives are influenced by both the human and material worlds. In the first half of the course this strand is developed through an examination of consumption and consumer society, questions of power and markets, and issues of waste and sustainability. In the second half of the course the strand considers whether increased material consumption contributes to greater happiness and well-being, and whether our material lives are becoming more or less sustainable, how we live with and respond to the risks and uncertainties of our material environment, and how global problems such as climate change can be addressed in a world of many, competing states.

Connected Lives also considers people’s connections to material places but the focus is on the people themselves and how they are connected and disconnected from one another, how they see themselves and others, where they live and the mobility of things and people involved in making and breaking connections. In the first half of the course this strand is developed through an examination of questions of identity in relation to personal and social lives, issues around our connections to place and the natural and built environment and the social life of neighbourhoods or communities. In the second half of the course the strand considers migration and the making of identities, places and institutions, the contested nature of British identity in a national and international context and the changes of identity involved in the lifecycle especially in relation to motherhood and mothering.

Ordered Lives explores some of the different ways in which social life is ordered and governed through the rules, norms and expectations people have of one another in day-to-day interaction and how these arise and are sustained; how does social order and ordering vary in time and place; and how is social order contested, challenged, sometimes broken and repaired, including by institutions that claim various kinds of expertise and authority. In the first half of the course this strand is developed by an examination of day-to-day ordering in daily lives, through the issue of the anti-social as a certain kind of challenge to normal ways of ordering and by looking at aspects of how governments seek to assemble and regulate their populations. In the second half of the course the strand considers how various kinds of authority seek to govern social order, the role played by political authorities (states) in claiming certain kinds of legitimate authority to govern and questions of order and disorder in relations between states in transnational and international interactions.

You will learn

You will learn about the nature of the social sciences and the ways they develop through a process of questions, arguments, evidence and evaluation. You will also learn about some key issues and debates at the centre of life in the contemporary UK. You’ll develop an awareness of a range of different disciplinary approaches in the social sciences. You will gain confidence and skills in studying and accessing information from a range of sources; constructing arguments; reading, interpreting and evaluating evidence; and presenting and communicating ideas and information in a variety of formats. You will also practice how to manage your time effectively and organise and complete a programme of work, how to learn from feedback and reflect on your own learning and have an opportunity to plan a study pathway leading to personal and/or career goals.

Vocational relevance

After this course, further study in the social sciences could open up employment opportunities in a wide range of occupations in business, banking, insurance, education, health professions, administration, law, social services, voluntary and campaigning organisations, the media, public relations, public service organisations and government (national and local), planning and environmental management, the criminal justice system, and social welfare organisations. The course builds a strong basis of vocationally oriented skills that are transferable to the job market: clarity of written communication; critical thinking; ability to analyse, reflect on and present arguments, evidence and theories; problem-solving; evaluating issues; time management; self-motivation; and basic numerical skills.

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Entry

Level 1 courses provide core subject knowledge and study skills needed for both higher education and distance learning, to help you progress to courses at Level 2. You are strongly advised to start your OU studies with a Level 1 course – either this course or the two 30-point courses Introducing the social sciences - part one (DD131) followed by Introducing the social sciences - part two (DD132). As interdisciplinary approaches to the social sciences and because of their integrated teaching of key study and skills, these courses provide a firm foundation for further study at Level 2.

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.

Preparatory work

If you register for the course we will send you Preparing for Study, which will help you to get ready for studying DD101. It offers guidance on how to plan your studies and offers insight into the skills and techniques for study at university level. It also contains material and exercises that will indicate whether your reading, note-taking and other study skills are sufficient to cope with the early parts of the course.

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Qualifications

DD101 is a compulsory course in our

• BA/BSc (Honours) Social Sciences (B06)
• BA (Honours) Social Work (Scotland) (B41)
• BA/BSc (Honours) Criminology and Psychological Studies (B48)

It is an optional course in our

• BA (Honours) Business Studies (B04)
• BA/BSc (Honours) European Studies (B10)
• BA/BSc (Honours) International Studies (B11)
• BA/BSc (Honours) Economics and Mathematical Sciences (B15)
• BA/BSc (Honours) Environmental Studies (B19)
• BA (Honours) Childhood and Youth Studies (B23)
• BA (Honours) Philosophy and Psychological Studies (B43)
• BA (Honours) Modern Language Studies (B30)
• BA (Honours) Politics, Philosophy and Economics (B45)
• BA (Hons) Leadership and Management (B54)
• BA/BSc (Honours) Social Policy and Criminology (B57)
• Certificate in Business Studies (C63)
• Certificate of Higher Education in Social Sciences (C95)
• Certificate of Higher Education in Humanities (C98)
• Diploma of Higher Education in Business (E42)
• Diploma of Higher Education in Leadership and Management (E43)
• Diploma of Higher Education in Social Sciences (E50)
• Foundation Degree in Business (G07)
• Foundation Degree in Leadership and Management (G08)

It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is equally appropriate to a BA or BSc. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.

Excluded combinations

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Life after the recession

But for a while it went along with the new Labour pretence that Britain was best placed to ride the storm, not least because Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling had made available £1,350 billion in share and bond purchases, loans and guarantees to the financial institutions and money markets.

That's the biggest bail-out of capitalism in British history, committing financial resources equivalent to the value of the entire output of the British economy in a whole year, twice total public expenditure, 10 times the NHS budget and 15 times government spending on education.

After a brief period of disorientation, the British ruling class is now planning for the upturn and the post-recession period.

The Bank of England, which represents the collective interests of finance capital in the City of London, together with monopolist and government-funded institutes, senior financial and foreign policy analysts, military chiefs and trusted academics are turning their minds strategically to the future.

The latest editions of the Blue Book (the national accounts) and the Pink Book (the balance of payments) confirm the extent of the British economy's dependence on earnings from the City of London and from British big business investments around the world.

Without the income from City dealings with foreign capital and British capitalism's directly owned assets abroad, Britain's balance of payments with the rest of the world would be in a calamitous, unsustainable deficit.

Maintaining the City's competitive edge over other financial centres is therefore a top priority for the British ruling class.

Not only does it have to keep up with New York's Wall Street - its main rival at the top of the international league - the paralysis afflicting London's markets has also allowed centres such as Singapore and Dubai to take a larger slice of international financial business. 

But financial strategists in Britain see the main longer-term threat to the City's supremacy coming from mainland China.

Anything which stands in the way of the City's freedom to speculate, accumulate, export or stash away will therefore be stymied by powerful forces. 

Hence Darling's damp squib of a white paper on City regulation. Hence new Labour's failure to deal with the spider's web of tax havens spun out from the City to crown dependencies and former colonies across every time zone.

The priority given to rescuing and resuscitating Britain's financial sector is demonstrated by the allocation to it of £1,350bn of public funding, while less than £20bn has been made available to productive industry in subsidies, employment support measures, car scrappage and housing schemes.

France and Germany are emerging from the recession earlier than "best placed" Britain. France due in part to its large industrial public sector, Germany due to its industrial job protection programme, and both because of their continuing industrial export capacity.

But there will be no reorientation of the British economy away from financial and related services towards home-based manufacturing and other industry.

Large industrial projects in such fields as railway electrification, housing, arms production and renewable energy, including nuclear power, will only take place on the base of massive public expenditure and guaranteed private profits for the monopolies.

The reliance on foreign capital to maintain investment in other sectors of industry will continue, with overseas transnationals now accounting for 35-45 per cent of fixed capital investment in Britain - twice the average EU level and four times that in the US.

At the same time, the British capitalist class will continue to export more than a third of its fresh direct investment capital overseas.

British foreign and military policy will, in turn, continue to be devised in order to promote these British economic investments around the world. Of course, this involves participation in those alliances - with the US, NATO and the EU in particular - which make this possible.

Inter-imperialist contradictions between the US and the EU and competing priorities between powerful monopoly capitalists in Britain mean that no settled consensus has yet been reached about Britain's role in the drive to an imperialist, militarist United States of Europe.  

But there is agreement between the major imperialist powers that the energy-rich region stretching from the Caucasus across the Caspian basin and into central Asia is of increasingly strategic importance to the West. 

Proposed pipelines through Afghanistan and Pakistan could take Caspian oil and Turkmenistan gas to the Arabian Sea without passing through Iran.

Compliant and stable governments are also required, alongside new and existing US and/or NATO military facilities to provide the necessary protection.

In a recent address to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Tory shadow foreign secretary William Hague referred to Afghanistan and Pakistan as an example of "failing regions" as well as "failing" or "failed" states.

Incoming armed forces chief of staff Sir David Richards talks of British troops staying in Afghanistan for as long as 40 years.

Of course, imperialist invasion and occupation are usually dressed up in their best clothes for public approval. Therefore we are told that Britain and the US are engaged in "humanitarian" and "anti-terror" intervention in Iraq and southern central Asia, not to promote economic interests, and certainly not to benefit the oil, construction and armaments corporations.

Another highly influential ruling-class think tank, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), has devoted numerous research and strategy papers to the new struggle unfolding for mineral-rich Africa.

The need to expand British investments and counteract the rising influence of China features prominently.

The priority given to flexibly preventing nuclear proliferation while pursuing the "intervene, overthrow and control" approach in non-nuclear "failing" states and regions is clear. Britain's strategic nuclear weapons are increasingly seen in some ruling-class circles as less of a priority. More specialist battlefield and "theatre" equipment, including chemical and even nuclear weapons, is the new priority. 

Ruling-class determination to continue an imperialist military policy will mean that the public expenditure axe - to balance the budget and support sterling - will fall on services, wages and pensions in the public sector.

The likelihood is that huge areas of public-sector economic activity will be transferred to the profiteers. 

New Labour has already opened the door to private capital in the NHS and state education system through PFI, private procurement agencies, independent treatment centres, city academies and the suchlike.

To the delight of the Institute of Economic Affairs, new Labour's belated plans for a universal second pension will also be privatised.

New measures against trade unionism in "essential" public services are likely, especially under a Tory government, although it is under Labour that fire brigades have begun contracting private agencies to train a reserve army of strike-breaking firefighters.

Any such attacks should be seen as part of a wider, ongoing offensive to delegitimise and clamp down on dissent, especially in a "post-recession" period when there will still be several million unemployed, half of them young people. 

To help close the budget gap from the revenue side, higher taxation is inevitable whoever wins the general election and the burden will fall on the working-class and middle strata - not on the rich or big business.

This usually means higher VAT and other taxes not related to income or wealth, perhaps combined with increased national insurance contributions. 

Transport and energy costs are also set to rise sharply, whoever forms the next government. Gas, electricity and petrol prices will go up in order, we will be told, to fund capital investment and invest in a "greener Britain."

The same bogus reasons will be advanced for higher rail fares and water bills and for the spread of road tolls.

And yet Britain will continue to miss its targets for cutting carbon emissions. Any progress made will be at the expense of energy consumers and Third World development, while the producers reap their customary monopoly profits.

But state action in this and other fields will have achieved its top priority target - namely, to expand the profit base of monopoly capital.

How can the labour movement and the left resist the unfolding of such a scenario?

The ruling class is alive and well

In The State In Capitalist Society, first published in 1969, Ralph Miliband elaborated the means by which powerful finance capitalists utilised Britain's state apparatus and the mass media to ensure that their common interests and ideas predominate in capitalist society.

Since then, a range of commentators including Anthony Sampson, Jeremy Paxman and Hywel Williams have composed more up-to-date studies on the so-called Establishment or ruling elites in Britain.

But neither work by Aaronovitch nor Miliband has been comprehensively updated from a Marxist standpoint. More's the pity, not least because it might explain how the authors' sons have ended up today as twittering purveyors of ruling-class ideas and policies.

Dave Aaronovitch writes for the Times as its "liberal" house-dog, reputation courtesy of the Guardian, emerging from his plush kennel to savage the anti-war movement and those other sinister forces of "political correctness."

Miliband brothers David and Ed are new Labour government ministers with a severe gravitas deficit, the former a particularly ludicrous figure as he squeaks threats at Prime Minister Putin and other transgressors of the NATO world order across north America, western Europe, eastern Europe, the Baltic territories, the Urals and into southern Asia including Afghanistan.

All three are well-paid servants of the ruling class, rather than fully paid-up members of it.

When their talents born of treachery are no longer required, they will be dismissed.

Government ministers come and go - more frequently than media moguls as it happens - but the ruling class continues. Governments win and lose office, but the ruling class stays in power.

Who comprises the British ruling class?

The controlling shareholders - British residents and tax exiles - of the handful of giant companies which together monopolise the main sectors of finance, industry, commerce and the mass media who provide the basis of its economic power.

Many of those shareholders are also company directors whose multiple directorships and investments knit the capitalist monopolies into a single matrix, the links multiplied and reinforced by bank loans.

These are among the 5 per cent of Britain's adult population who, according to the Inland Revenue, own more than half (58 per cent) of Britain's wealth.

The poorer half of the population own just 1 per cent, down from 6 per cent on the eve of new Labour's election triumph in 1997.

The poorest three-quarters (which would approximate to the working class) own 15 per cent.

Britain's monopoly capitalists and their corporations invest and operate on a global scale, to an extent unmatched by almost every other ruling class. Only US capitalists own more economic assets outside their own country than do those of Britain.

Britain's historically prolific export of capital comes at a price, which is obviously regarded as "a price worth paying." This is that foreign capital has penetrated the British economy to an extraordinary degree, now owning large parts of the transport, energy, media and financial sectors in particular.

The permanent staff at the top of the different sections of the state apparatus, including the Civil Service, the judiciary, the armed forces and the police and intelligence services constitute the executive arm of the ruling class.

The BBC, the state church and the education system reflect and reinforce ruling-class ideas, although the processes by which this happens are more subtle, complex and contested than should be imagined - and all the more effective as a result.

The myriad ways in which the economic power of the monopolies fuses with the political power of the state give rise to the concept of "state-monopoly capitalism" to explain the economic and political system as it exists today.

Through its various agencies, the state devises and executes its social, economic, foreign and military policies, raising and spending some 44 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product in the process.

How and by how much it raises the necessary funds has a direct impact on the operations of the monopolies.

Big business will also be the recipient of much of the state's expenditure.

In order to ensure that state policy defends and promotes monopoly capitalism's common interests, the monopolies fund political parties and politicians, participate in state bodies and government committees of every kind, second leading personnel to government departments and influence government and public opinion through the mass media, lobbyists, institutes and "think tanks."

New Labour has been an enthusiastic tool of state-monopoly capitalism in every respect, aiding and abetting the fusion of monopoly economic power with state political power and plumbing new depths of political and financial corruption as a result.

Of course, the ruling class has a more or less permanent core membership, a peripheral membership, temporary and "honorary" members, many of them with fundamentally conflicting interests.

But it is given cohesion by its common material interests - to perpetuate capitalism as an economic system, to maintain and exercise state power, to create the optimum conditions in which profit can be maximised (but without endangering the system's existence) and to discredit and defeat threats to these interests.

This cohesion is enhanced by the fact that most of Britain's biggest monopolists come from families of monopolists, and like most of those who run the state apparatus, went to the same schools as each other and share the same clubs as well as the same "world view."

Utterly useless in its fatuous proposals, even the recent report on social immobility issued by new Labourite MP Alan Milburn, Unleashing Aspirations, confirms that three-quarters of Britain's judges, 70 per cent of company finance directors and one-third of our MPs are drawn from the 7 per cent of the population who attend public (ie private) schools.

Social exclusion is not the regrettable condition of a small "underclass" who can be pitied or scorned as "chavs." If it means anything, it describes the condition of that three-quarters of the population and more who are excluded from economic and political power altogether.

Because it has common material interests and a common world view, the ruling class (or the "socially included" as we might call them) has the motive and multifarious opportunities to think and plan strategically.

There is no British Ruling Class plc master plan, programme or annual report, just as there are no membership cards. But there are corporate, think-tank and government plans and reports. There are economic and financial statistics, and there are prestigious journals and newspapers owned and published by ruling-class interests.

From these it is possible to discern and assess the most significant strands in British ruling-class strategy. Some of these will be considered in the second article in this series.

1. The Formation of the British Empire

1.1 Introduction

??British earliest oversea colonies includes Newfoundland (the first, 1583), East India Company (1600), Virgin Company of London (1609), and Plymouth Company (1620) in North America. British colonization came to an end at the end of World War II. The total of the British colonies in 1876 covered 22,500,000 square kilometers, and by the beginning of World War I (1914) Britain had colonies of 33,500,000 square kilometers, 137 times that of Britain, 1/5 of the world land area (the UK included). The colonial population was 9 times that of Britain, about 1/4 of the world population. Thus Britain was called as an Empire, “on which the sun never sets.” ?

 

1.2 Formation of the British Empire

??The Formation of the British Empire was accompanied with atrocities of the British colonists in the colonies.
??In America, the British slaughtered millions of native Indians, deprived many Africans of their lives through slave trade.
??In India, the East India had the right to enlist army, enforce law, declare war and make peace. It had reaped fabulous super profits by buying low-priced cotton cloth, silk and jute in India and selling them at high prices in England and other parts of Europe. The company seized three important cities (the 17th c.): Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, and taken control of almost the whole country. 10,000,000 Indians died in famine in Bengal in 1700. Of course, British atrocities were met with opposition in India. In Indian Mutiny (1857), people rebelled in Delhi and other places, killed British officers, burned down garrisons and set free political prisoners.

 

??The British colonists used India as a gangplank to expand its colonies in such Asian countries as China, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), etc.
??By the First Opium War (1840-42), the British forced upon China the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. By the treaty, Britain occupied Hong Kong, opened five trade ports : Shanghai, Fuchow, Amoy, Ningpou and Canton, and acquired special privileges for travel and missionary activities. During the Second Opium War (1856 -1860), the British once occupied such major cities as Canton, Tientsin and Peking, and after having plundered and burned down the Yuanmingyuan Palace, they forced the Treaty of Tientsin and the Treaty of Peking upon China. During War of 1900 (waged by eight power allied forces), the British colonists attempted to further dominate China.

??In Africa, Britain occupied Azania in 1902, Botswana in 1885, Egypt in 1882, Gambia in 1889, Ghana in 1879, Kenya in 1895, Malawi in 1891, Nigeria in 1851, Somalia in 1887, Sudan in 1898, Uganda in 1896, Zambia in 1889, Zimbabwe in 1895, and Tanzania in 1890. 1/3 of the whole Africa was occupied by Britain.
??In 1899 the sharply divided interests of Boer farmers (the Dutch settlers) and British miners led to a war known as the Anglo-Boer War. After two years of struggle Britain defeated Boers in South Africa, and annexed South Africa as colony.

1.3 The Peak of the British Empire

 

??The British Empire reached the peak of its colonial expansion after the Boer War. Britain not only had colonies all over the world, but also owned a large and powerful fleet and possessed the strategic spots along the route from Europe to Asia: Gibraltar , Malta, Cyprus, Suez, Aden etc.
??With its territorial expansion, Britain became an imperialist power by 1900. Typical capitalists changed their identity from a factory owners to shareholders. Britain invested 2 billion pounds abroad in 1900, with a reward of 100 million pounds in divident. The country also achieved monopoly in the iron and steel, shipping and shipbuilding, railways, bank, and some new industries like the manufacture of chemicals, soap and margarine.

2. Britain in World War I and Post-War Period

2.1 Causes of the War

??The uneven growth of capitalism and re-division of the world

Old: the UK

New: the USA, Germany, Japan, Italy, France and Russia

2.2 Outbreak of World War I

??Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were killed by a young Yugoslav in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914. It had become a pretext by Austria-Hungary to declare war against Serbia.

 

??Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey sided with Austria-Hungary. Italy, though a member of the Triple Alliance, joined the Allies against the Central Powers.
??The war ended in 1918, with the Allies victorious.

2.3 Britain's Heavy Loss

??1) 3,000,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded, or disabled. 79% of her merchant ships were sunk or damaged. Britain lost her sea supremacy by the end of the War.
??2) The home situation was worse than the pre-war days. It accumulated a huge national debt, 10 times as large as that before the War. Business was slack. Many factories werer closed down and taxes were unbelievably heavy.

2.4 Britain between Two World Wars

??The British industrial production dropped by 46% during the economic crisis (1920-1921). In the world economic crisis and great depression (1929-1933), the worst economic crisis ever suffered by Britain, more factories and mills were closed down, banks went bankrupt, its foreign trade shrank. 3,000,000 people were unemployed in 1932. Value of export was only half the amount of the pre-war level while value of import doubled that of the pre-war level. Britain’s position in the capitalist world was greatly weakened. (<—Memory of WWI download)
Political situation also became worse. The working class fought one battle after another against the capitalist class. The climax of struggle was the General Strike on May 4th, 1926. 6,000,000 people went on strike.
??British foreign policy revolved around the hostility toward the young Soviet and non-intervention and appeasement towards Fascist aggression. In 1919, British imperialists mobilized 14 states for an armed intervention in Soviet Russia. But it Britain connived at Fascists’ aggression on weak nations and instigated them to direct their spearhead towards the Soviet Union. When Japan invaded China and occupied Manchuria in 1931, Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, the Fascists came into power in Spanish Civil War, and Germany annexed Austria and proceeded to invade Czechoslovakia in 1939, the British took no action.
??In the League of Nations no action was taken to check the Fascist aggression. Much was talked, but little done, only they conceded to Hitler. In Munich Conference (1938), Hitler was allowed to take over the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia.

3. Britain in World War II and Post-War Period

??In defiance of Munich Agreement (1938), a non-aggression pact between Britain and France on the one hand and Nazi Germany on the other, Hitler attacked Poland, which Britain and France were bound by treaty to defend. Britain declared war on Germany on September 23, 1939. France followed the next day.

3.1 Britain during WWII

 

??France surrendered to Germany in June 1940. England was bombed ever since. England was under first direct attack since the Norman Conquest of 1066. Italy joined Germany and entered the war in 1940. However, after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, and Japan attacked the US Pearl Harbor in 1941, the pressure was somewhat relieved for England.
WWII ended in 1945, with Nazi defeated.

3.2 Britain's Loss in the War

3.2.1 Disintegration of British Empire

??WWII sealed the fate of the British Empire. Australia, Canada and New Zealand became independent countries in 1931. After the war, a wave of national liberation and a movement of national independence just followed:
??1947: India and Pakistan
??1948: Ceylon and Burma
??1950s and 1960s: Sudan, Ghana, the Federation of Malaya, Somaliland, Cyprus, Kuwait, Tanganyika (East Africa), Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Western Samoa, Kenya, Malawi, Malta, Zambia, Gambia, Maldives Is., Guyana, Botswana, People’s Republic of Yemen, Nauru, Mauritius and Swaziland
??1970 Tonga and Fiji
??1966 Egypt seized the Suez Canal, and this event marked the disintegration of the British Empire. Even though the British Commonwealth of Nations remained, it was just a phony organization: no ideology, legal bonds or military commitments

3.2.2 Economic Loss

??Britain underwent a tremendous loss during WWII, its domestic capital was seriously depleted. 1 billion pounds of overseas investments were sold. Some very important industries, like coal mining and railroads, had to be nationalized.
??Owing to the collapse of the Empire, Britain lost the greater part of her export. As compared with other capitalist countries, Britain's export trade fell much more greatly. Most of the years since WWII, Britain were moored in a deficit in the balance of international payments.

3.3 Britain in the Post-war Period

??Britain’s serious economic troubles produced the following effects: 1) devaluation of pound sterling, and 2) inflation and debts. The pound was worth US$4.03 before it was devalued in 1949, but it was worth only US $1.60 in 1976. Prices of consumer goods have kept going up since the end of the War. When Wilson became Prime Minister in 1974, he had to face the problem of a brisk inflation and sluggish economy. In order to increase its trade, England joined the European Economic Community (Common Market) in 1973. The oil and natural gas deposits discovered off the Scottish coast, beneath the waters of the North Sea helped Britain tide over her economic problems.
??In 1979, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister and the Conservative Party was back in office. The political and economic policies pursued by Mrs. Thatcher in the 1980s are known as Thatcherism, the underlying aim of which is denationalization, i.e., to shift the economic emphasis back to private enterprise, directly contrary to nationalization carried out by the Labor government. This involves cutting public expenditure, returning state-owned enterprise to private ownership wherever possible, curbing the power of the trade unions, restraining the workers from striking, associating wages of workers with the profit of their enterprises and reducing inflation by “monetarist financial policies.”
??In the early 1980s, this “hard-line” right-wing doctrine was moderated slightly, partly because of the opposition from within the Conservative Party, and partly because most of the Conservative voters seemed to prefer less extreme policies. However, if modern British governments are judged merely on their economic records, by any standard Mrs. Thatcher’s economic record since 1983 was extremely good. It was on this record that she won the general election 1987. She served as Prime Minister until 1990 when she lost the support of the voters mainly because of a high rate of unemployment and was succeeded by John Major.

4. Sino-British Relations

? 
Thatcher and Her Fall Before People's Hall (download)

??Although the two countries are far apart geographically and have different social systems and cultural traditions, there is no conflict of fundamental interests between China and Britain.
?? There is a long history of contacts and a traditional friendship between the Chinese people and the British people.
?? Britain recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1950. The two countries established diplomatic relations at the rank of the Chargé d’ affaires in 1954, and at the ambassadorial rank in 1972.
Since then, the friendly relations between the two countries have ceaselessly been consolidated.
The Hong Kong issue, a legacy of the past, has already been settled satisfactorily through friendly talks between the two governments. Hong Kong was returned to China on July 1, 1997. The Chinese government began to exercise the sovereignty over Hong Kong on that day (download), and Hong Kong has become a special administrative zone of China since then.
The smooth settlement of the Hong Kong issue has pushed forward the political and economic relations between China and Britain.

 

5. Questions for Discussion

1. What do you know about the British Empire?
2. What atrocities did the British colonists in the colonies in America and India perpetrate?
3. Point out the causes and consequences of the Anglo-Boer War.
4. What were the key features that marked the formation of British imperialism at the end of the 19th century?
5. What were the major causes of the First World War? What a great loss was brought to Britain by the War?
6. Give a brief account of the fall of the British Empire.
7. What is Thatcherism?
8. Give a brief account of the Sino-British relations.

Asteroid attack: Putting Earth's defences to the test

• 23 September 2009 by David Shiga
• Magazine issue 2727. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
• For similar stories, visit the Comets and Asteroids Topic Guide

 

EDUCATION IS A WONDERFUL THING.

"TEACH A THAI A “TING OR TWO

 

Re: Socialism vs Capitalism

 If you believe politics is a way of life then the only alternative to Capitalism is Socialism.

If you believe that the theory of "ism's" is scientific and not an art then you are on the way to ask questions about the general theory of the world in which we live.

You first study Capitalism which succeeded feudalism.

Capitalist production grew out of individual production of feudal times.
With the development of a surplus.

Surplus was sold in exchange for articles brought in from other parts of the world

Production for consumption gave way to production for profit.
Workers produced things for the new "Lord" the capitalist.
These things are called commodities-- articles produced for sale.

What interested Marx was the source of this profit.

Marx pointed out that it could not possibly come from the capitalists selling the products above their value,this would mean capitalists cheating each other.

Where one made a profit the other would make a loss cancelling each other out.

It followed that the value of an article on the market must already contain a profit.

That the profit must arise in the course of production not the sale of the product.

Some factor in production adds value greater than its costs.
But what is meant by "value"?

Had enough or do you want to know more?

 

WHY I AM AN ANTI -CAPITALIST

AND THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS SOCIALISM

In order to understand the general theory, and the scientific view of the world of Marxism one has to understand something of capitalism.

The birth of modern capitalism which followed on from feudalism, was the industrial revolution and its working conditions which included a 14 hour day, child labour and shanty towns, as portrayed by Charles Dickens.

Slavery and Colonialism neither of which we condoned.

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest things for the greatest good of everyone” John Maynard Keynes.

Market instability or failure( you are now familiar with.)

Its permanent says Marx.

A Self interest in profit?

A free market that is not free? (The European Common Market was not even common!)

The unjustifiably low wages?

Pollution, in all its aspects

Unemployment and the distress and hardship it brings

Wealth, health and education inequality

The poor distribution of goods.

(200million on the Indian continent went hungry in 1995 while the Indian economy was exporting $625 million worth of wheat and $1.3 billion worth of rice that year.)

Milton Friedman, (wasn’t he Thatcher’s idol ?) argued his opposition to intervention in capitalist markets.( All western governments have since intervened)

Crises in capitalism are seldom caused by shortages, like crop failures, but by a production of too many goods. ( William Brown song)

Capitalism leads to “imperialism” and causes poverty, oppression, exploitation and abuse of human rights.

“ I’m alright Jack” the attitude doesn’t make for very nice people.

To expand, capitalism needs imperialism and goes to war. WW1, WW2, Chile , Opium Wars, African wars, even Iraq.to name a few. …

Imperialism, the highest form of capitalism, the monopoly of banks and industries as you see from take over’s.

Companies are getting forever bigger and competition getting smaller.

Yet capitalism claims the free market is competitive.

Even those capitalists who argue military exploitation should be condemned also argue that economic globalization is improving living standards.

What? Like in Afganistan ? (Who should be left to sort out their own future.)

Obscene wealth exists in the hands of the Land-owning elite while maintaining semi feudal property relations in the countryside.

The rich gets richer and the poor get’s poorer.

Don’t they steal from or exploit workers for ever larger profit and accumulation of capital and land?

This accumulation of wealth and the private ownership of the means of producing things is therefore seen as a restriction on freedom, and one cause of revolution.

Capitalists argue the opposite, but it is a contradiction laden system by recurring crises. Apart from war I remember 4 crises that affected me and my family that suffered as a result.

How about you?

It is interesting to understand Islamic criticism of capitalism by Malcolm X

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and becomes weaker and weaker. Its only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely”

So what is capitalism?

The main features , I learned and understood 50 years ago.

Wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people who own the means of production, that is raw materials, factories, machines etc.. as well as wealth in money form.
Masses of people have no means of getting a living except by selling their power to work for wages. (Marx calls this the class of propertyless workers or the Proletariat.
Virtually all production is not for the personal use of the producers, but for exchange, for sale on the market. Goods produced for exchange are termed commodities. Under capitalism therefore, commodity production prevails.
The value of a commodity, expressed in money is its price. ( the exchange value is what someone will give you for it). In modern capitalism some commodities are priced higher than their value and some lower, as in a slump, but over a length of time, prices level themselves out and the value is expressed by its price.
Commodities are products or goods of labour and for exchange, so the exchange value is determined by the labour value or labour power ie wages.
The value of commodities depends therefore on the labour time required for it’s production.
The capitalist produces surplus value, profit. That which is over the labour value.
Rate of profit = ratio of surplus value /over/ total capital ( total capital consists of constant and variable capital) To the capitalist, what he spends on wages (variable capital) and what he spends on plant and raw materials (constant capital) appear equally to be the costs of production, and the extra he gets by selling above costs, is his profit.

Imperialism, is capitalism “on its deathbed”, dying but not yet dead.

It is the highest and last stage in the development of capitalism.

Capital has outgrown States and established a monopoly in place of competition

( remember I said the free market was not free).

The productive resources that imperialism creates are “ ALL THE OBJECTIVE PREREQUISITES FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SOCIALISM” said Lenin.

The productive resources that imperialism creates, it is unable to use; the social relations of monopoly capitalism act as fetters ( shackles, restraints ) on the development of production.

The contradictions of capitalism express themselves in the most acute form.

The whole imperialist world is torn by violent conflicts.

In the conflicts between these antagonistic forces ( capitalist and worker), capitalism will meet its doom.

An alternative is Socialism.

A classless society group
What goes round comes round?

 

 

 

Follows on from explanation of capitalism
THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
A SCIENTIFIC VIEW

This is only an introduction to Socialism the only alternative to Capitalism. It is a scientific view of the world and it is a part of Marxism or the general theory of Marxism as described by Karl Marx and Fred. Engels in the 19 century. There is no other ism to compare with it unless you subscribe to Fascism and I don't want to think about that awful scenario happening again.

I am not a Marxist, but subscribe to Marx's contribution of the development to Socialism from Capitalism. Marx was more than just a philosopher. His influence has motivated peoples all over the world. These inspired people have faced persecution, imprisonment and worse under Fascism.

I will present Marxism to you in so far it affects the change from Capitalism. However Capitalists are not going to take this lying down. Their system fights Socialism, to protect their profits, tooth and nail and will not give them up without an almighty struggle, which has and will get nasty again. 99% of the media promotes Capitalism and the Labour Party has renegaded on its origins and now New Labour tries to make Capitalism work. As described before, this is futile in the long run. Britain needs an alternative policy to get s out of the boom and bust cycle.

Firstly we need peace in the world, as wars solve nothing and cause misery. Socialism is a peaceful system, it needs peace to survive and that must be good for people and bad for warmongers. I think it is poignant to mention that Socialists should stop 'fighting" or squabbling among themselves. Some believe violent revolution is needed to overthrow Capitalism, others don't. The Soviet Union, Cuba and Latin American countries have had violent revolutions. Chile had a peaceful one until Pinochet had its Socialist leader Allende assassinated. It is interesting that Barack Obama is moving away from US right wing policies yet even this could be challenged by violence.

So change needs protecting. Cuba and the Bay of Pigs attack! If you see Socialist states being over protectionist you know why.

British Socialists want, in the main, the change to be peaceful and through the ballot box and the failure of Capitalism. It’s a brave approach against the mountain of propaganda of Capitalist press and the "bread and circuses" system it follows. Keep the workers fed and watching soaps, blame everyone else on their crises and keep the obscene profits and life style quiet.

One other system that should be mentioned here is Religion and the Christianity approach. "Love our neighbour as ourselves" is preached and was brutally crushed by the King in 1381 when Rev John Ball and peasant leader Wat Tyler joined forces. The high and low Church today does mostly believe in socially acceptable policies, are often at odds with the "establishment", but the Church of England is a huge landowner and its head is the Queen of England who could never be considered a Socialist.

The message of Socialism, social justice, equality and democracy is not new and has been promoted by writers, philosophers, preachers, poets and a few politicians and remains a hope that an alternative society can be formed.

As I have said Capitalism began with the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the capitalist writer Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations". Philanthropists, like Robert Owen improved conditions for his workers but only after discovering that he could get more out of them by doing so, but could be identified an early Socialist.

It was Karl Marx 1818 - 1883 and Frederick Engels 1820 - 1895, who set out to discover why human society is what it is, why it changes, and what further changes are in store for mankind

Marx applied this theory or idea to the society in which we lived, mainly capitalist Britain.

The fact that it is a scientific theory of society as opposed to vague notions associated with so many others beliefs including religious, hero worship, personal inclinations or utopian ideas, because it is based on the actual experiences of men.

Having worked out the economic theory of capitalism he went to explain that these could not be separated from historical and social theory. Therefore Marxism is not a completed, finished theory. As history unfolds, as man gathers experiences, Marxism is constantly being developed and applied to the new facts that have come to light. Hence the Communist Parties of the world and the Marxists who make up these parties.

By using knowledge derived from the study of other periods and peoples we can use these scientific laws not only to foretell what is likely to happen, but can act in such a way as to make them happen.

Marx explained that ideas grew out of the actual practice of men. The first thing was: the production of the means of life-- of food, clothing and shelter. The ideas of equal rights for men did not apply to slaves and “liberty, equality and fraternity" of the French Revolution (which meant the liberty of the rising capitalist class over feudalism). Hence it can be said that most ideas especially connected to the organization of society are class based ideas. The idea that the dominant class imposes its will on the rest of society through ownership of the machinery of propaganda, control of education and its power to punish contrary ideas through the law courts, through dismissals and similar measures.

This does not mean that the dominant class says to itself: Here is an idea, which of course isn't true, but we will force it or deny it on the public or even believe it themselves. The dominant class on the whole does not invent such ideas. The ideas come up out of life but once established are imposed in "law" even to the extent of execution or imprisonment in order to prevent dangerous thoughts from spreading. ( Nelson Mandela).

To give you an example the idea that a social system is bad that destroys food to keep up prices, at a time when large numbers of citizens are in a state of semi starvation, is clearly a "dangerous thought". However it leads on to the idea of a system in which production is for use and not for profit: and this leads to the organization of Socialist and Communist parties, which in turn begin to work to bring about the change to the new system.

The Marxist conception of social development, man's actions, and the material changes which these actions bring about, are the product, partly of the material world outside him and partly of his own knowledge of how to control the material world. The exploited class understands and fights against barriers but inevitably is drawn into a general fight against the ruling class in order to change the system. The development of Socialism became no longer unplanned and as Engels says

“The objective, external forces which have hitherto dominated history will then pass under the control of men themselves. It is only from this point that men, with full consciousness will fashion their own history"

THE CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE STATE

In the first place, the revolutionary struggle is always conducted by the class which is coming to power in the new system of production, but not by it alone.

The important point remained: every real revolution which aims at overthrowing an existing ruling class is not a revolution only of the class which is to succeed it in power, but a revolution of all who are oppressed or restricted by the existing ruling class.

At a certain stage of development the revolution is led by the capitalists against the feudal monarchy and landowners; but when the working class has developed, it is able to lead all sections taking part in the revolution.

In other words, history shows that in every revolution wide sections of the people form an alliance against the main enemy; what is new is that the revolution against the large landowners and capitalists, the working class takes the lead in such an alliance.

This the high point of the continuous struggle between the classes, which is due to their conflicting interests in production.

“But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more“(Marx, Communist Manifesto 1848). Workers form trade unions which develop into great organizations capable of carrying on the conflict on a national scale.

How is the fight conducted?

Marx saw the aim of the working class party as the preparation for and organization of revolution – the overthrow of the ruling class of capitalists – and the organization of a new system of production socialism.

This general conclusion, reached from past history, was reinforced by Marx’s study of the State.

The State is sometimes thought of as parliament. But Marx showed that the historical development of the State had little to do with representative institutions; on the contrary, the State was something through which the will of the ruling class was imposed on the rest of the people.

In primitive society there was no State; but when human society became divided into classes, the conflict of interests between the classes made it impossible for the privileged class to maintain its privileges without an armed force directly controlled by it and protecting its interests.

“This public force exists in every State; it consists not merely of armed men, but of material appendages, prisons, and repressive institutions of all kinds” Engels as quoted by Lenin.

This public force always has the function of maintaining the existing order, which means the impression is given it is above society or impartial but in maintaining law and order it is maintaining the existing system.

Is the State machine controlled by the Parliament? Only so long as it represents the ruling class, but when it does not adequately represent the ruling class, and attempts to carry through measures “disturbing” to the ruling class, the fact that it does not control the state machine soon becomes obvious. This conclusion was reached by Marx ( Read here “New” Labour. -- Bliar understood he was a “lackey” from day one, the “sheep” in the main followed)

The whole basis of Fascism was the destruction by the armed forces of all forms of representative institution. The fact that the fascist organization was a new form, and not merely the old form of State force, alters nothing in the main analysis.

But how does the ruling class maintain its separate control of the State machine, and especially the armed forces which, on the surface and “constitutionally” are controlled by Parliament?

The answer is to be found in the character of the State machinery itself.

In every country, the higher posts in the armed forces, in the judicial system, and in the administrative services generally, are held by members or trusted servants of the ruling class. This is assured by the system of appointments and promotion. However far democracy may go in the representative institution, it is unable to penetrate into the tough core of the State machine.

So, if the State machine works only to preserve the status quo and not against it, no advance to a higher form of production is possible, without the defeat of the State machine, no matter what representative institutions exist.

Nevertheless, Marx was always a supporter of democratic institutions. He saw them historically as one of the fields of the class struggle.

“Win the battle of democracy” Marx. The peoples will can only prevail effectively when the armed barrier in its way----the capitalist State machine--- has been destroyed. But that is not enough. The working class must set up its own State machine---its own centralized apparatus of force, in order to defeat the capitalist class and to defend the new system against attack from within and without.

“The dictatorship of the proletariat”. The working class will have to set up its own Parliament, replace the army with a National Guard consisting of working men and the appointment of a really democratic State with a judicial system to match it.

Local Governments with delegated responsibilities would be elected and a new working class State would operate. Delegates represented sections of ‘industry” and that meant that capitalist influences could play no part. This could only be done by a “dictatorship” resting on force, against the old ruling class, which has and would use every means to undermine and destroy the new State system.

Having achieved all that, Marx went on to say that this would not at once end all class struggle. On the contrary it merely marks a turning point. But the apparatus of force, the army was no longer turned against the workers, but helped the workers, only turned against those who tried to hold back the workers. This power would be needed in order to defend itself and ensure control not only during the transition period, but for the reorganization of the system of production for the Socialist Society.

What Marx meant by Socialism and its higher stage, communism can be explained later if you wi

 

SOCIALIST SOCIETY

Marx did not write a detailed account of the new social system which would follow capitalism.

There are general laws of development outlined and the ways it would develop.

The most obvious was that it would not begin with a clean sheet of paper, but would develop “on its own foundation”.

The Socialist society, like all previous forms of society, would only come into existence on the basis of what existed before, that is to say it would be a society “just emerging from capitalist society” Its economic, moral and intellectual form would develop from what had gone before.

What is more relevant is to say that Marx states that it is the development within capitalism which prepares the way for socialism.

The first step in building a socialist society must be to give society the product which it has made; and this means that society as a whole must own the means of production, distribution and exchange. Distribution means the distribution of money as well as transport and Exchange means markets as well as well as currency.

Export and Import of all these products will come under State control.

The factories, mines, machinery, large land sites, shipping, banks, investment and insurance services etc.. which under capitalism are privately owned will come under public ownership.

Marx refers only to the “relatively large concerns”. Production would be carried on by a selected or elected staff of workers and employees. The transfer of ownership, as a whole, would not change or alter their work, so these large concerns can be taken over immediately.

The Health, Education and Social Services systems would continue only in the interests of the Socialist society with no privatization, but based on equality for all, and on the basis of affordability.

For smaller enterprises, especially where the owner plays a part in the production the position is different. What is essential is to prepare the way for centralized management. This includes both town industries and small farms.

I want to expand on this and add that only practical steps should be taken to encourage cooperation.

Engels wrote “ Our task will first of all consist in transforming their individual production and individual ownership into cooperative production and cooperative ownership, NOT FORCIBLY, but by way of example, and by offering social aid for this purpose” ( this was quoted by Lenin in the Teaching of Karl Marx)

(This is a sensitive issue and I would be very interested in comments).

(My own view as a farmer is that “small IS beautiful” but a market needs buyers and sellers. Producers should produce and the markets should be Cooperatives of Producers. Support to develop markets for the Cooperative should be centralized and managed to “aid” the producer. “Marketing Boards” would be my answer for small industry, agriculture and fisheries. Guaranteed prices and recognition that surpluses are better than shortages should be policy. “Boards would direct quotas based on common sense, the weather, and research opportunities. Advisory boards, apprenticeship schemes and education centres would be the responsibility of central government.)

One other important issue that I could only accept would be that all policies would be national policies, accountable, transparent and traceable. All International cooperation and agreements would be re – negotiated. The scenario of a European Government deciding policy would be unacceptable.

No Socialist state would be interested in holding back any other country. Development of industry and culture would follow making war unnecessary. Trade encouraged but not for exploitation of course.

IN SUCH A SOCIALIST SYSTEM, THE FURTHER ADVANCES THAT MAN COULD MAKE DEFIES IMAGINATION.

With all economic life planned for the benefit of it’s people, within every country, and a world plan co-coordinating these plans, with scientific discoveries and technical interventions shared, and cultural achievements exchanged, man would indeed take giant’s strides forward.

Towards what?
Marx never said because the conditions are too unknown for any scientific forecast.

A class based system that Socialism is, would develop with the establishment of a classless society, that is Communism and man’s history of class divisions and class struggles will have to come to an end. In early civilization there were no “classes”

A small if simple thought on the advance of your imagination toward a Socialist society and beyond:-

A little girl is in school and the teacher asks her;
A man buys a dozen eggs for 50p and tries to sell them for 90p,

How much does he get?
The little girl answers: 6 months!

( Making a profit will become a thing of the past, production systems will become based on need. Eggs of course will be free) ( If you don’t believe me, the Soviet System before capitalism destroyed it, made commodities of need, such as city travel virtually free, education free and basic needs like housing and all health care almost free. Ask a Russian if you never visited and found that out for your self.

From each according to his ability to each according to his work (Socialism)
From each according to his ability to each according to his need (Communism)
Money as we know it becomes obsolete.

What I would like to do is leave this article in your hands and encourage discussion on the way forward to a Socialist State.

I hope to come back with further articles on science in history to develop better, an understanding of Marxism. How does a social transformation in society affect science? What is a scientist, other than working man understanding a way of doing something more practical by discovery and how did his achievements affect the industry, the commerce, the politics and the religions of his contemporaries?

How much of that effect was permanent and how much a passing fashion?

I will try not to get you side tract into my two pet subjects of health and agriculture, but I will try to succeed by keeping your interest alive?

“The Emergence of Science,
The Scientific and Industrial Revolutions,
The Natural Sciences of our Time
The Social Sciences”

Based on the 4 volumes and works of JD Bernal.

 

 

THE ZIONISTS

UPDATED
THE MOVEMENT TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL IS BECOMING RESPECTABLE
ITS ABOUT APARTHEID AGAIN
CHECK YOUR PRODUCE, SUPERMARKETS & COMPANIES SUPPORTING ISRAELI GOODS 
THE COOP AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
THE FIGHT IS ON
R&W WILL REVEAL ALL

ZIONISM IS ALSO THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS

 

 

Moving on in socialism

 

UNDER the current crisis of capitalism, why is a socialist alternative being dismissed by so many as "unworkable?"