More on Islamic Reformation

The M4 Monologue has a comment of Where there is injury let me sow pardon about Chrenkoff's Blog Interview with Stephen Schwartz.

What interested me about this interview is Stephen Schwartz's version of the Protestant Reformation, especially in view of my own uninformed rant on the subject at American Wahabbis and the Ten Commandments :

I believe we make a mistake in thinking that historical and social success is determined by religious success; I believe the opposite is true. To me, Protestantism flourished because it took root in nations living on the North Sea where navigation and commerce were impelled by individual initiative, from which Protestant theology, for various reasons, benefited. Spanish Catholicism fell into decline because it conquered the richest provinces of the New World, and the country choked on all that gold and silver. Similarly, the Islamic world has been slow in its social development; first, because it conquered ancient and overcrowded societies where progress was always slow; second, because it gained control of the main global trade routes.

Firstly, my ill-informed comment about the Protestant Reformation is that before the rise of Capitalism in the 16th Century CE, there were outbursts of reform in various guises from Hus in Central Europe, St Francis of Assisi in Italy, the Anabaptists in Germany, etc. These were basically communist in outlook but the political and economic developments were not ready for these movements so they were crushed or assimilated by the temporal powers. This kept bubbling along until Martin Luther, in Germany, rebelled at an oppotune time and was able to find a political protector. The rise of Capitalism and Protestantism feed off each other - there was a positive feedback loop in that the Protestant justified the work of the Capitalist and the Capitalist became a Protestant. Capitalism arose in Northern Italy and Germany before moving to the Netherlands where the merchant class became the capitalist class.

In the more successful empires of Islam and China, there was no independent incentive to develop their economies further. Their bureaucracies controlled everything. Anyone who wanted advancement in those societies became a soldier, bureaucrat, merchant, or a scholar. Their brand of feudalism was not as rigid as the European one where birth determined your status in society. Their success was a product of their more developed sense of equal opportunity. The European had to break the feudal society to gain opportunity.

The blindness of the present ruling class is no more apparent than in the above quote: all of those ruling empires are now dust. Do they think the USA is immune to the laws of history? Especially the more ruthless laws of a Capitalist system?

Then there is this vain hope:

I believe Iraq shows us that as capitalist democracy advances, friendship with the United States, the most successful capitalist democracy in history, will also prevail.

Capitalist economies are ruthless competitors. Old and stagnanting economies will be devoured by the new comers. The Dutch overcame the Spainards; the English overcame the Dutch; the Americans overcame the British.

My vision of global capitalist democracy is not a fantasy of "the end of history" or eternal peace and security, in contrast with the false claims of Francis Fukuyama. It is based on entrepreneurship, not compulsory collectivism, meaning that competition will always be a factor in society, and competition inevitably leads to contention. History will not end until humanity ends, and in later generations wars and revolutions may again take place. At the same time, however, their extremity may be ameliorated. Still, we have no guarantees for the future. History, like the human mind, plays tricks, and we can only do the best we can to secure liberty for the greatest number of people, act morally, and defend our rights.

This is the intellectual basis for Capitalism: because of competition, we must have a competive economy. Even though great wars have been fought, are being fought, and will be fought for control of resources, competition is good. I think there is conflation of many different degrees of competition here: from a competition between atheletes to the deadly struggles of world domination. They are not all the same.

When people speak of democracy, they do not consider democracy in the workplace. There tyranny rules and is alright by the ruling class for some strange reason. And liberty means the freedom to strave if you cannot find work. And how can one act morally in an economy in which ruthless competition rules? Whose rights are to be defended: the bosses' or the workers'? You must choose which side you are on. As GWB says, we might fight tyranny everywhere it exists: in the workplace, in the national security state, in the World Bank, in the IMF, in the WEF.

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Keen to work, a million lost in the system

The Sydney Morning Herald discovers there are people who are Keen to work, a million lost in the system that does not count them as

The jobless rate would be as high as 14.8 per cent if these hidden unemployed were counted in official statistics.

Instead of the "official" 5.1%. Why should anyone be amazed that the victims of Capitalism are not counted? The victims are not counted in Iraq, in Africa, or anywhere else. Why should Australia be different? If the victims of Capitalism were counted, the number would vastly exceed the 100 million victims of Communism and would ruin the argument that Communism is worse than Capitalism. And you can't allow that for people might start to think that another world is possible.

Business groups and the Government seized on yesterday's figures to press the case for further industrial relations reform and smaller minimum wage rises. The Workplace Relations Minister, Kevin Andrews, said high minimum wages would cost jobs.

There is a strange economic concept called Supply and Demand. If there is a shortage, the price tends to rise. If there is a surplus, the price tends to drop. If the employment rate was truly 5.1%, then there would be a wages explosion with employers offering benfits like child care, aged parent care, real job training, etc. The competition for employees would drive the price of labour up, but there is no wages explosion. Instead, things are getting tougher. And the employers think this is the time to strip more rights from workers because workers are fearful of losing their jobs as they would be during times of high employment.

In this age of globalisation, the labour market is no longer confined by national boundaries. To calculate the true unemployment rate, you will have to consider the worldwide labour market for industries that allow jobs to be anywhere: call centres, manufacturing, computing, etc. This is the gist of what the Minister is saying - the minimum wage in Australia is high compared to that in India, China, Vietnam, etc.

The Minister is right, we should be thinking globally. Our unions should be global. Our political parties should be global. Our resistance should be global.

AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

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American Wahabbis and the Ten Commandments

William Thatcher Dowell confuses the Saudi Wahabbis with the American Wahabbis and the Ten Commandments could become one of the graven images forbidden under the first commandment.

In the United States as in the Middle East, the core of this Puritanism stems from a nostalgia for an imaginary past -- in our case, a belief that the U.S. was a wonderful place when it was peopled mostly by pioneers who came from good northern European stock, who knew right from wrong, and weren't afraid to back up their beliefs with a gun, or by going to war, if they needed to.

The founding fathers, of course, had a very different vision. They had seen the damage caused by the arcane disputes which triggered the religious wars of the seventeenth century. They preferred the ideas of the secular enlightenment, which instead of forcing men to accept the religious interpretations of other men, provided the space and security for each man to seek God in his own way.

The idea that religious values should affect, and indeed control politics, is something that you hear quite often in the Islamic world. But perhaps the strongest rationale for separating these two dimensions of our daily lives is that politics inevitably involves compromise, while religion involves a spiritual ideal in which compromise can be fatal. The conflict is easy to see in contemporary Iran. Iran's rulers have had to choose whether they consider politics or religion to be most important. Ayatollah Khomeini himself once stated that if forced to choose between Islamic law and Islamic rule, he would choose Islamic rule. The effect of that decision was to betray Islamic law and ultimately God. Iran's genuine Islamic scholars have found themselves under continual pressure to change their understanding of God in order to conform to political realities.

One of the political realities is that the ruling class (Feudal or Capitalist) needs to justify its existence to the oppressed. This is done through control of the education system, the mass media, and religion. All of these are strongly encouraged to support the status quo else they are persecuted if they do not. Witness the attacks on universities, the indymedia and deviant sects such as the Branch Davidians, Quakers, etc.

Here the similarity between the Saudi and US fundamentalists end. The Saudis are propping up a system in which everyone has an unchanging place it while the US system has the myth of self-advancement (i.e. you are the master of your own fate). These two ideologies cannot exist side by side. One must destroy the other. Historically, Capitalism triumphs over Feudalism unless there is a strong countervailing force. Nowadays, this force is the US military.

Now this is a contradiction. In the early stages of Capitalism, Capitalists are evangelical - everyone should be a capitalist (self-motivated, striving, achieving, risk-taking). This is the power of early Capitalism. It thrives on competition. It is literally revolutionary. As wealth accumulates in fewer and fewer hands, competition is seen as an evil so the spread of Capitalism must be curtailed lest a superior economy should emerge. Now we are in the reactionary phase of Capitalism. The advanced Capitalist countries must actively destroy all potential Capitalist economies in the rest of the world. This is being achieved through the crushing third world debt, and corporate globalisation.

The very success of the Capitalist economies makes them the ideal to be achieved. Almost everyone wants to live like an (white) American with all that wealth. (The white trash have vanished). People of drive and initiative are leaving their home countries to seek opportunities in order to test their mettle. But they are facing restrictions and discrimination in the host countries. So they return to fester in their home countries. They become the explosive elements in the reaction against the Islamic Fundamentalism. All this awaits a Martin Luther to nail his theses to the door of a mosque somewhere and an emir to give him shelter.

This explosion, when it comes, will further erode the US hegemony as the Europeans and Chinese watch the US flounder in the face of the Islamic Reformation.

Communism and Religion

There is a misunderstanding about Communism and Religion (especially by Communists): Religion is a personal choice - the State should not define what Religion is nor seek to make a person follow a particular religious doctrine (including atheism).

My personal opinion is that Religion cannot be free unless it practiced in a Communist society else Religion is being subverted to serve the State.

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Hang 'Em High

If John Winston Howard wants to revive Capital Punishment in Australia, he should consider the case of the Gretley Mine murders in 1996 as a test case. The Miners welcome Gretley disaster fine, but

Ken Kaiser, the father of one of the coal miners, says the fines mean little to him or his family because the company will not accept responsibility for the tragedy.

"What we were more hopeful was that the four men didn't die in vain," he said.

"In fact the disappointing thing is not the levels of fine or the levels of guilt [it] is the fact that the company [Xstrata] appears to be pursuing that the mine managers shouldn't be responsible for such tragedies, and that to me's appalling."

Emphasis Mine

I suppose the company's attitude is that is business as usual for Capitalism: people die, companies make money. So what's the problem? Ah! The Eichmann attitude.

Meanwhile, Unions angry at Govt move to override workplace laws in order to protect government bodies from Industrial Manslaughter laws.

In 2003, the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to make industrial manslaughter a criminal offence, rendering employers criminally responsible for a workplace death.

But Federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has introduced a Bill that would override laws for Commonwealth bodies.

"We think they are discriminatory in the sense that they pick on one party," he said.

And why not? If a government can participate in the mass murder of thousands of people in Iraq, why should it be held accountable for the death of any of employees or contractors?

PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS!

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Anti-War Protest 20 March 2005

Sydney: Sun March 20, noon. Hyde Park Nth, city. Featuring John Pilger & Senator Kerry Nettle. Organised by Stop the War Coalition. Ph 0412 139 968, 0404 015 789.

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Majority ruling gives the minnows little chance

Richard Ackland decries judicial activism in the Majority ruling gives the minnows little chance in their quest for justice against the predations of the legal profession. International legal opinion form the UK, NZ, Canada, and the USA has that the legal profession has no immunity against being sued. Of course, 'them foreigners' have no weight in deciding that our legal profession needs protection against the public

The High Court says that what people respect and what is a "central and pervading tenet" of our jurisprudence is the idea of finality. One might rub one's eyes in disbelief at reading such a sentiment in a judicial system in which length of time is the measure of reward and where appellate correction is the order of the day.

But apart from the beauty of finality and "the quelling of controversies", the court gave weighty consideration to the importance of the judicial process as an aspect of government.

Emphasis Mine

The ruling class must be very anxious to keep the masses quiet and unquestioning of the judgements of the ruling class. They are the ruling class because they are smarter than us. They are smarter because their judgements are unchallenged. They are unchallenged because challenges are illegal.

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Mummy, What Did You Do In The Revolution?

From the almanac for 8 March, comes these two items:

1908: Thousands of workers in the NY needle trades (primarily women) demonstrate and begin a strike for higher wages, shorter workday and an end to child labor. Becomes the basis for International Women's Day.

1917: February Revolution begins, Russia. Women workers in Petrograd begin economic and political strike, providing the spark.

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The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

I have started reading John Dewey's essay, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and I am struck by his contention that the anti-evolution forces are driven by the politics of preserving the status quo. This has been said by others in many other forms, but John Dewey gave this essay as a lecture in 1909.

The material conditions at the time were that the USA and Germany were rising Capitalist powers and their ruling classes were enthralled with the idea that change was good. Whereas the declining capitalist powers like Britain and France, and the declining feudal powers like Russia and China were hostile to the idea of change - they wanted the world to remain as it was. So, the Americans and Germans were enthusiats for evolution while the British and French reacted against it.

Now we have the declining Capitalist power of the USA reacting against evolution because the Americans want the world to remain as it is with them on top. Alas, the wheel of history has turned and the current American empire is headed for destruction.

But I am surprised how rapidly this has come about. I would not have thought the decline would be so rapid even ten (10) years ago.

I think globalism of capital has had a big influence on this because capital is no longer tied to a country as before. This has exposed a great contradiction in Capitalism - nationalism gives rise to Capitalism but capital has no need for nationalism except to raise armies to destroy other capitalists and communists.

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Youth riots in Sydney: the real story

If you are concerned about the Youth riots in Sydney: the real story is that, according to Peter Perkins (a long-time resident of Macquarie Fields),

There has been a very sharp hardening of the police stance in the area, a new-style paramilitary policing with coppers being bussed in in large numbers from outside.

This new approach began about two months ago, at the same time as it was taking place in other poor outer-Sydney working class suburbs like Claymore and Airds.

The first signs were raids on residents’ homes in the early hours of the morning. They stuck guns through windows and set police dogs on people. They’d cordon entire areas off for half a day at a time, using police in full paramilitary kit. So tensions had been building up.

All those cuts to services and to benefits come at a cost.

I know of very few young people who have permanent jobs in the area. Probably half the kids drop out of school at 15. The tightening of social welfare payments in this high unemployment area drives many people to rely on petty crime for an income.

Many young people here don’t see it as morally wrong to steal from those who have more than them in order to survive. They simply have no real alternative.

Some steal cars simply to get around because there is no public transport after 8pm and very limited services on Sundays.

And of course, they are simply people living on valuable real estate.

Public housing is run down and there is a $650 million dollar backlog on repairs and maintenance for the public housing, according to the papers today. The Carr government is running it down as an excuse to bulldoze more public housing and sell the land to private developers. It is the same as in Redfern.

My previous rant on this subject is at:

• Car thieves, not police, to blame for chase death

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With Sincere Apologies to Rats Everywhere

Mickey Z writes, with sincere apologies to rats everywhere, that

It’s truly irksome to watch these people--unaware of how much they have in common--as they battle each other like mortal enemies in the futile effort to get out of the train first. They delude themselves each morning that if they get our first, they’ll make it to the office before anyone else and avoid any risk of being singled out by the powers-that-be (or powers-that-shouldn’t-be, as Amy Goodman so aptly puts its).

My opinion is that this is an example of the atomisation of society that happens under Capitalism. We are set against each other in our daily struggle to earn enough to survive another day. This terror is enforced by the threat of unemployment when the rules are not obeyed. (Whatever the rules happen to be at a particular time is subject to the discretion of management).

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The Poor Are Not Dying Fast Enough

The juxtaposition of the Growing health divide blamed for 7000 deaths a year

About 7000 disadvantaged Australians a year die prematurely because of the growing inequities in health care, a medical specialists' organisation says.

In a report to be published today, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians describes the standard of care for poor and indigenous people as "one of the most pressing health problems facing Australia today".

with Pay rise critics could rule on wage claims

The Reserve Bank and Treasury - past critics of the impact of pay rises on the economy - will be directly involved in setting workers' minimum wages under a restructuring of the industrial relations system expected to go before federal cabinet today.

leads one to suspect that the poor are not dying fast enough for the Australian ruling class.

If enough people are worked to death in unsafe working conditions without access to adequate health care, thenthe problem of an aging population is solved.

Arbeit macht frei von Leben

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China plays down Taiwan war threat

China plays down Taiwan war threat, but

Tom Lantos, a veteran Democratic congressman, said relations with China were extremely positive but the US needed to tell its “friends in Beijing” that the anti-secession law was aggressive and counter-productive.

He also warned the European Union of a “horrendous” reaction from Congress should it decide to lift its arms embargo on China. Lifting the embargo could create a new source of advanced weapons for China, which already buys arms from Russia and Israel, critics say. China's military modernisation is driven by rapid economic growth, a process underlined by the announcement on Friday that the defence budget would rise in 2005 by 12.6 per cent to Rmb248bn ($30bn).

But as US political power slowly wanes, incidents like this will become increasingly common. The real reason for the continued separation of Taiwan and the PRC is the insistence of the US ruling class. This is same strategy used on the Korean peninsular. The conflict creates control. The Taiwanese business would be making huge profits in the PRC if it were not for the Americans. Instead, they are being extorted to keep buying expensive weapon systems and making campaign donations.

At this stage, no one is prepared to directly contradict the godfather in Washington, but they are gnawing away at the edges. The Europeans and the PRC are drawing closer in order to eventually take on the USA through a strategy of economic and political guerallia warfare.

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$42m land rights dream in ruins

When the primitive communism of Koori communities meets the unbridled capitalism of Koori bureaucrats, the result is $42m land rights dream in ruins.

Now that dream of self-sufficiency - and freedom from what the Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has called "the poison of welfare" - is in tatters. Angry in-fighting and allegations of violence have riven the community. The independent directors appointed to safeguard the money, ... have resigned. More than $1 million, almost the community's entire income for 21 months, has been spent on legal costs. A QC has said the transfer of the community's money to the trust was unlawful, and a court has frozen the assets.

This is straight out of the business pages of the newspapers. You could say that these Kooris have been throughly assimilated into the wider community. The real beneficaries have been the land developer and the lawyers.

If I were a property developer or a lawyer, I would be a fervent supporter of Aboriginal land rights for this is the most profitable means to get Crown land to market. A land council whose members have the bare minimum of education are suddenly expected to run multi-million dollar enterprises under the strictest conditions. It is very easy for them to fall victim to breaking some government rule and then their wealth is locked up in lengthy court trials while being frittered away in legal fees and costs.

I suppose, that after 200 years of the rich whitefella stealing stuff from the poor blackfella, rich whitefellas giving something back to the poor blackfella was an unexpected change, but it turned out to be a different type of stealing.

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Short-Sightness of Capitalism

I have been making wild accusations that Capitalism is short-sighted. See the comment thread here. I think a truer picture would be that the general population is encouraged to be short-sighted (in the main) - to think of immediate gratification with a passing concern for the future. While the ruling class are struggling to maintain the viability of capitalism in the longer term, they are coming up against the finiteness of resources and the short-sightness of the general population. If the general population were not short-sighted, they would begin to think for themselves and may come to the conclusion they do not need a ruling class.

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We are all Americans Now!

On p.362 of The 9/11 Commission Report, there is this quote:

In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests "over there" should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America "over here." In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet.

Nice of them to tell the rest of us. Or does this mean that I am now an illegal alien in the New America? We cannot say YANKEE GO HOME !!! because they are already home here and everywhere.

That wonderfully ill-defined term, "American Interests", sure covers everything from gun running, drug running (illegal and legal), money laundering (aka international finance), standover tactics (aka FTA), loan sharking (aka IMF and World Bank), and Murder Inc. (aka US Armed Forces). I wonder why the Mafia bothers to compete against the US Government - the former are completely outclassed.

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Science vs Religion

In a comment to my article about More on Behind the Hockey Stick, anonymous made the following remarks:

I've been picking up a similar vibe (for the last year or so) on the conflict of science and conservatism. I think here (in the US) it starts with the anti-evolutionists and rolls very naturally to a distrust of global warming scientists.

Once you start rejecting science, why stop?

I would see this is a different light:

• Tecnological superiority through superior scientific research (this leads to military and economic superiority thereby creating global hegemony) versus
• A compliant population through religious control

The fundamental conflicts between these two types of cosmologies cannot be bridged (even though there are those who are trying hard). This widening gap means that the Anglo-American capitalist view of religion as a vital adjunct to the capitalist dominance will succumb to the European view of religion as the arch-enemy of capitalism (after communism, of course). In the Anglo-American world, this alliance between capitalism and religion will not be easily broken.

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