          Thats Capitalism (WS 45)

358 billionaires in the world have a net worth of 
$760 billion, equal to the wealth of 45% of the 
world's population.  The 200 largest multinational 
corporations control over 25% of the planet's 
economic activity.  Meanwhile, according to the 
international Labour Organisation, 30% of the 
planet's workforce - 820 million people - are 
either underemployed or unemployed.

*****

Bernie Cahill, executive chairperson of Aer Lingus, 
presided over job losses and wage freezes in the 
national airline.  He hammered his message home; 
nobody should expect a steady job or a reasonable 
wage.  Of course such rules don't apply to him.  As 
well as his Aer Lingus job, he is the chairman of 
Larry Goodman's massive Irish Food Processors and 
has gone for the hatrick by also being chairman of 
Greencore, the state sugar company.  

*****

Right in the centre of the "free world" state 
labour inspectors reported earlier this year that 
they had found over 2,000 sweatshops in New York 
City.  Mostly exploiting non-English speaking and 
illegal immigrant workers, the average pay was 
£1.67 per hour for a 12 hour day.  No overtime is 
paid, underage labour is common.  Fire exits are 
often padlocked and sprinkler systems unmaintained.  
The authorities have no plans to add to the just 20 
inspectors employed to investigate, nor to increase 
the maximum fines of £1,000 (first offence)/£2,000 
(subsequent offences) for employing 'off-the-books' 
workers in these near slavery conditions.

*****

Children in Dublin's Inner City have to wait up to 
six years for some dental treatments, according to 
the Inner City Teachers Group.  They revealed that 
one 12 year old found by the school dental service 
to need braces was told that there is a six year 
waiting list and that he would be 18 before he gets 
them.  The teachers group complained that there are 
also six year waiting lists for children needing 
treatment for cleft palates.

*****

The School of the Americas (SOA) is the unlikely 
name given to a military training academy set up by 
the US government in 1946 to "promote democracy in 
the Americas".  Since that time 'graduates' from 
the academy have played brutal havoc with the human 
rights of people throughout south and central 
America.  One example deserves mention.  The UN 
sponsored Truth Commission,which looked into 
atrocities carried out in El Salvador during the 
civil war there, found: 

¥ Romero assassination: two of the three officers 
cited as being ringleaders were graduates of SOA.

¥ El Mozote massacre of Salvadoran civilians: of 
twelve officers cited, ten were from the SOA.

¥ Massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper 
and her daughter: of 27 officers cited, 19 were 
from the SOA.

*****

Allied Irish Bank gave its five executive directors 
a 35% pay increase.  Each of them earned an average 
of £626,000 last year.  These are the people who 
refused to pay bank staff their 6.5% claim three 
years ago and tried to break their union, the Irish 
Bank Officials Association.

*****

Raoul Cedras, formerly of Haiti, has moved to a 
beach home in Panama courtesy of the US government.  
The former dictator will have his rent paid by them 
for the next year.  After that Cedras will have to 
fend for himself.  But to make things easy, the US 
government is freeing the assets he stole and 
siphoned off to the USA during his period of power 
in Haiti.  Who says crime doesn't pay?

*****

No recession for the directors of Cement Roadstone, 
which has recorded a pre-tax profit of £116 million 
(up 52%).  Last year they were paid an average 
£532,664 each, an increase of almost 48%.  Of 
course none of their staff got rises like that.  
The people who do the work were limited to the 3% 
PCW increase. 

*****

Cholera is a disease caused by poverty and poor 
sanitation.  Get rid of poverty and cholera usually 
disappears in turn.  What is surprising, however, 
is that it is making a comeback in countries where 
it has been unknown for most of this century - like 
the Ukraine, Romania and Albania.  Recent reports 
indicate that the disease is most widespread in 
Romania, but in the Ukraine last October it killed 
20 people and put another 800 into hospital.  Most 
commentators put the return of this deadly disease 
down to the collapse of the health services in 
those countries.  With privatisation all the rage, 
nobody wants to take over the 'unprofitable' 
business of keeping people healthy through basic 
sanitation.  So much for the 'free market'.

*****

600 Northern Bank staff in the six counties are to 
have their pay cut by up to £5,000 a year.  The 
IBOA has described the cuts as "outrageous at a 
time when the bank is showing such strong 
profitability"  

*****

According to the Centre for Economic Investigation 
for the Caribbean, the minimum cost of living for a 
Dominican family of four in 1993 was $276 per 
month.  Westinghouse, one of the major US 
multinationals operating in the Dominican 
Republic's Free Trade Zone, was paying its workers 
$99 per month during this period.  During the 
period 1980-92, real wages declined by 46% under 
austerity programmes applied to the Dominican 
Republic by the IMF and USAID (a branch of the US 
government).

*****

The World Bank's 'World Development Report' for 
1993, entitled Investing in Health, reports that 
life expectancy in at least eleven African 
countries has declined since 1986 when 'Structural 
Adjustment Programmes' of the World Bank were first 
applied.  In Tanzania alone, female life expectancy 
has dropped six years over the period of reform.

*****

Last year the slaughter in Rwanda hit the 
headlines.  But one aspect of the violence that 
received less attention than might have been 
expected was the involvement of the Catholic 
Church.  The United Nations Centre for Human Rights 
in Kigali has indicated that there is "strong 
evidence" that at least a dozen priests were 
involved in murder.  Two priests and two nuns are 
already in prison.  Other are accused of 
"supervising" gangs of killers that marauded, 
killing Tutsis.  One Tutsi priest has been quoted 
as saying that "the bishop and the archbishop could 
have stopped the killing, but they didn't speak 
out".

***********************************************

That's capitalism [WS 46]

Cholera is a disease caused by poverty and poor 
sanitation.  Get rid of poverty and cholera usually 
disappears in turn.  What is surprising, however, is 
that it is making a comeback in countries where it has 
been unknown for most of this century - like the 
Ukraine, Romania and Albania.  Recent reports indicate 
that the disease is most widespread in Romania, but in 
the Ukraine last October it killed 20 people and put 
another 800 into hospital.  Most commentators put the 
return of this deadly disease down to the collapse of 
the health services in those countries.  With 
privatisation all the rage, nobody wants to take over 
the 'unprofitable' business of keeping people healthy 
through basic sanitation.  So much for the 'free 
market'.

*****

In Ireland the rich are having a ball.  In 1965 wealth 
and property taxes represented 25% of the total tax 
take.  By 1990 this had shrunk to just 5%.  Although the 
European Union suggests 30% as a minimum figure for 
corporation tax, firms here get away with paying a 
maximum of 10%.  And if the bosses don't want to pay 
these minimal sums, no bother.  Nobody has ever served a 
jail sentence in Ireland for tax evasion.

*****

According to the Centre for Economic Investigation for 
the Caribbean, the minimum cost of living for a 
Dominican family of four in 1993 was $276 per month.  
Westinghouse, one of the major US multinationals 
operating in the Dominican Republic's Free Trade Zone, 
was paying its workers $99 per month during this period.  
During the period 1980-92, real wages declined by 46% 
under austerity programmes applied to the Dominican 
Republic by the IMF and USAID (a branch of the US 
government).

*****

In the last tax year only 5,000 self-employed admitted 
to incomes over £25,000 a year.  There must be an awful 
lot of poor shopkeepers, doctors, architects, dentists, 
auctioneers and consultants out there.  

***** 

The World Bank's 'World Development Report' for 1993, 
entitled Investing in Health, reports that life 
expectancy in at least eleven African countries has 
declined since 1986 when 'Structural Adjustment 
Programmes' of the World Bank were first applied.  In 
Tanzania alone, female life expectancy has dropped six 
years over the period of reform.

*****

Last year the 26 county economy grew by 7% (and the 
government expects it to grow by 5% in 1995).  This 
level of growth is the highest in the Organisation for 
Economic Co-operation & Development.  Exports grew by 
13.9% last year, while imports only rose by 11.9%.  A 
healthy picture?  No, just for the rich.  The government 
expects official unemployment figures to also rise, to 
278,400 this year.  

*****

Last year the slaughter in Rwanda hit the headlines.  
But one aspect of the violence that received less 
attention than might have been expected was the 
involvement of the Catholic Church.  The United Nations 
Centre for Human Rights in Kigali has indicated that 
there is "strong evidence" that at least a dozen priests 
were involved in murder.  Two priests and two nuns are 
already in prison.  Other are accused of "supervising" 
gangs of killers that marauded, killing Tutsis.  One 
Tutsi priest has been quoted as saying that "the bishop 
and the archbishop could have stopped the killing, but 
they didn't speak out".

*****

Allied Irish Banks, who tried to break the IBOA bank 
workers union and get out of paying a 6.5% rise in 1992, 
have just declared yet another increase in profits.  In 
the six months up to June 30th their profits jumped 10% 
to £161.7 million.

*****

In Clinton's USA a white minor accused of drugs offences 
has a 1 in 70 chance of being transferred to an adult 
court (which can hand down a harsher sentence).  A black 
minor has a 1 in 18  chance.

***************************************************

              **  What a waste!  **

We're commonly sold the lie that poverty and suffering 
are the result of there not being enough resources to go 
around.  Yet the United States has spent $4 trillion on 
its nuclear weapons program over the past 50 years, 
according to a report  "Atomic Audit: What the U.S. 
Nuclear Arsenal Really Cost," published by 'The U.S. 
Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project'.

The $4 trillion represents between one-quarter to 
one-third of all 'defence' spending since World War II.  
It includes most, but not all, of the program's direct, 
indirect and overhead costs.

Spending on the nuclear weapons program has dropped but 
$25 billion annually is still being spent on nuclear 
weapons and about $250 billion overall on war 
preparations.

*******************************************************

              **  Liars caught out  **

EL SALVADOR  A regional American newspaper, the Seattle 
Post-Intelligencer, reported in June that U.S. Army 
commandos killed 83 leftist guerrillas in El Salvador in 
1985 in a secret raid.  The report confirms what had 
long been suspected: that U.S. military personnel were 
actively engaged in combat operations during El 
Salvador's long civil war.  The newspaper said that it 
based its report on interviews with an ex-Ranger who 
took part in the raid, a former Army special operations 
officer and a former government official involved in the 
cover up.  The US government has always denied that it 
sent troops to help the Salvadorean dictatorship in its 
terrorist campaign against the rebels.

***************************************************

           **  Looking after No.1  **

While the US authorities slash welfare payments to 
single parents and their children, they are giving 
enormous handouts to their rich pals.  $10 billion was 
spent last year on subsidies to people with mortgages in 
excess of $250,000, what might be called a 'mansion 
subsidy'.  Another $200 million in subsidies went to big 
farmers who have incomes over $5 million a year.
