At one time the plight and suffering of the Rohingya were headline news. Now other events around the world have relegated their continuing misery to mere passing mentions in the media. More than a million Rohingya Muslims are crowded into squalid refugee camps in southern Bangladesh after having fled ethnic cleansing and other violence and repression in Rakhine state, Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Since 2020, thousands of Rohingya have fled the camps by sea.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K. said, “These people are facing genocide in Burma. It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there.”

The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia’s Aceh province was praised Tuesday as “an act of humanity” by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that’s been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that “Indonesia has helped to save 472 people in the past six weeks from four boats, showing its commitment and respect of basic humanitarian principles for people who face persecution and conflict.”

“UNHCR urges other states to follow this example. Many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help,” the Geneva-based agency added. “States in the region must fulfil their legal obligations by saving people on boats in distress to avoid further misery and deaths.”

Residents of Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh, rushed to help 58 Malaysia-bound Rohingya men who arrived Sunday in a rickety wooden boat, many of them severely dehydrated and starving. The following day, 174 more starving Rohingya men, women, and children, were helped ashore after more than a month at sea.

Babar Baloch, the UNHCR regional spokesperson in Bangkok, stated that 26 people had died aboard the rescued vessel, which left Bangladesh a month ago.

“We were raising alarm about this boat in early December because we had information that it was in the regional waters at least at the end of November,” he said. “After its engine failure and it was drifting in the sea, there were reports of this boat being spotted close to Indian waters and we approached and asked them as well and we were also in touch with authorities in Sri Lanka,” Baloch continued. According to the BBC, the Indian navy appears to have towed the boat into Indonesian waters after giving its desperate passengers some food and water. The boat drifted for another six days before it was allowed to land.  Baloch stressed that “countries and states in the region have international obligations to help desperate people.”

‘A Sigh of Relief’ as Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Rescued After Harrowing Sea Journeys (commondreams.org)

Extreme weather events caused severe human suffering from food insecurity, drought, mass displacements and loss of life. No corner of the globe was spared from the costliest climate impacts in 2022.

 A devastating drought has affected more than 36 million people in East Africa, pushing many to the brink of famine. Whilst people in East Africa have been suffering from drought, in West Africa 1.3 million people were displaced by floods which killed more than 600 people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Mali and Niger.

February’s Storm Eunice set a new UK wind speed record of 122mph and Hurricane Fiona struck the Caribbean and Canada in September and caused losses valued at more than $3 billion in just a few days. Other events took months to unfold, like the droughts in Brazil and China which lasted all year.

 Hurricane Ian struck the US and Cuba in September costing $100 billion and displacing 40,000 people. The drought in Europe heatwave in Europe cost $20 billion while floods in Pakistan killed more than 1,700 people, displaced a further 7 million

The increasing frequency of heatwaves, due to climate change, resulted in an estimated 98 million more people suffering from moderate or severe food insecurity in 2020 compared to the 1981–2010 average.

https://mediacentre.christianaid.org.uk/download?id=10041

 “Higher wealth tends to be associated with capture of government and state institutions by the elite,” Francisco Ferreira, director of the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE) said. This, he said, can take different forms in different democratic contexts. But the result is the same. “The bargaining power of the rich increases due to various tools they use such as lobbying,” he said. “Policies end up benefitting the wealthy and that again creates a cycle. But, this time, it’s a political cycle.”

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, 131 billionaires more than doubled their net worth during the pandemic. 

The world’s richest person, Louis Vuitton chief Bernard Arnault, was worth $159bn on December 27, 2022, up by around $60bn compared with early 2020. 

Elon Musk, the planet’s second-wealthiest man, boasted a $139bn fortune — it was less than $50bn before the pandemic. 

And India’s Gautam Adani, third on the index, has seen his wealth increase more than tenfold in this period, from approximately $10bn at the start of 2020 to $110bn at the end of 2022.

At the same time, close to 97 million people — more than the population of any European nation — were pushed into extreme poverty in just 2020, earning less than $1.90 a day (the World Bank-defined poverty line).

 The global poverty rate is estimated to have gone up from 7.8 percent to 9.1 percent by late 2021.

 Now, skyrocketing inflation is affecting real wage growth, eating into the disposable incomes of people around the world.

Billionaires saw their fortunes increase as much in 24 months as they did in 23 years, according to Oxfam’s “Profiting from Pain” report released in May this year. Every 30 hours, while COVID-19 and rising food prices are pushing nearly one million more people into extreme poverty, the global economy is also spawning a new billionaire.

A year into the pandemic, capital markets had risen $14 trillion, with 25 companies — mostly in the technology, electric vehicles and semiconductors segment — accounting for 40 percent of the total gains, according to an analysis of stock performance of 5,000 companies by consulting firm McKinsey.

“The result is that this pandemic period has seen the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since the records began,” Oxfam America’s Director of Economic Justice Nabil Ahmed told Al Jazeera. “And we are still coming to terms about how extraordinary that rise has been.”

143 of 161 countries analysed by Oxfam froze tax rates for the rich during the pandemic, and 11 countries reduced them.

When the pandemic began o save the economy from collapsing, central banks slashed interest rates, thereby lowering borrowing costs and increasing the supply of money. They also pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets with the aim of encouraging companies to invest in the economy. Major central banks have infused more than $11 trillion into the global economy since 2020. These interventions triggered a boom in the value of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments — but the rise in asset prices wasn’t accompanied by an increase in economic production.

“The easy money policy that began after the global financial crisis led to really low to negative interest rates and big liquidity in the financial system,” Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Al Jazeera. “So, in the past 15 years, corporations chose to reinvest the money into buying more financial assets chasing high returns, rather than increasing their production.”

Yannis Dafermos, a senior lecturer in economics at SOAS University of London explains, “Even when inflation has increased, the profit margins of firms have not declined.” Large companies are retaining profits to give dividends to their shareholders rather than increasing wage incomes, even as smaller companies suffer due to a lack of investments by bigger firms, he said.

“Because of the way the global financial system works, there will be a lot of pressure on developing countries to implement austerity measures,” Dafermos said. “That can create more inequalities and for me, this is perhaps more significant because it limits their capacity to provide social protection to the poor.”

According to Oxfam, lower-income countries spent approximately 27 percent of their budgets in repaying their debts – twice the money spent on education and four times that on health.

Why do the rich get richer — even during global crises? | Business and Economy | Al Jazeera

 It’s been revealed by sources within the US Department of Justice that direct messages sent through Facebook by American users, along with public postings, have been rigorously monitored, and reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) if they express anti-government, anti-authority views, or if they question the legitimacy of the November 2020 presidential election’s outcome.

Under the terms of a secret collaboration agreement with the FBI, a Facebook staffer has, over the past 19 months, been red-flagging content they consider to be “subversive” and immediately transmitting it to the Bureau’s domestic terrorism operational unit, without the FBI having filed a single subpoena – outside the established US legal process, without probable cause, and in breach of the First Amendment, in other words.

Just as shockingly, these intercepted communications were then provided as leads and tips to FBI field offices across the US, which in turn secured subpoenas in order to officially obtain the private conversations that they already possessed, and thus cover up the fact the material had been obtained extra-legally. Facebook invariably complied with these subpoenas, and would send back “gigabytes of data and photos” within an hour, suggesting the content sought was already packaged and awaiting legal confirmation before distribution.

It is uncertain quite how many users were flagged, but it’s abundantly clear a specific type of person was of interest to the FBI – “red-blooded” conservative right-wingers, many of whom supported the right to bear arms. No one connected to Antifa, BLM or any other left-wing group was ever informed on.

It seems not a single Facebook user snitched upon for daring to be possessed of troublesome political opinions was ever arrested, or prosecuted, for their wrongthink, even though some were reportedly subject to covert surveillance and other forms of intrusion and harassment. Their views were consistently found to not translate to criminality or violence – their words were simply brutal condemnations of Biden’s election and presidency, and aggressive calls for protests.

However, once these users’ information reached FBI headquarters, it appears to have been selectively and misleadingly edited, “the most egregious parts highlighted and taken out of context” in order to perk the interest of field offices. Once the same data was sought and accessed by them via subpoena, the conversations “didn’t sound as bad” and none pointed to any “plan or orchestration to carry out any kind of violence.” No one spoke of injuring, let alone killing, anyone.

The entire operation appears to have been a gigantic waste of time but, given the Biden administration’s rhetoric about the January 6 Capitol “insurrection,” it would hardly surprise if the FBI was under intense political pressure to make as many arrests as possible of “right-wing terrorists” in order to make the sensationalist fantasies of White House officials a reality.

During the War on Terror, the FBI was in effect charged with creating a domestic terror threat, and delivered on a grand scale. Almost every major terrorism-related case in the post 9/11 period was effectively entrapment, with informants and undercover agents encouraging often mentally ill people to commit violent acts, helping them sketch mass casualty plans, and even providing the weapons to be used in the plots, which the FBI heroically busts at the last minute.

Luckily for those Facebook users flagged to the FBI, none were the victim of similar sting operations, although in the case of the October 2020 kidnapping plot targeting Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer by militia members, at least 12 individuals involved in the planning were working for the Bureau.

In two separate statements to the New York Post, a Facebook spokesperson seemed to contradict themselves on whether the Justice Department whistleblowers’ claims were accurate. First, they said the allegations were “false because they reflect a misunderstanding of how our systems protect people from harm and how we engage with law enforcement.” An hour later, they got in touch unprompted to say the accusations were “just wrong,” rather than “false.”

Coincidentally, that spokesperson previously worked for Planned Parenthood and “Obama for America.” The latter campaign, to get the then-President re-elected in 2012, not only employed the exact same tactics as Cambridge Analytica to harvest user data without knowledge or consent, but has also admitted it was allowed by Facebook to “do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

For its part, the FBI would neither confirm nor deny the incendiary charges, although that the Bureau maintains a little-known “unclassified/law enforcement sensitive” relationship with Facebook has long-been a matter of record, and a spokesperson did concede that this connection allows for a “quick exchange” of information in an “ongoing dialogue.”

Even more ominously, if we accept that Facebook’s denial it has a subpoena-less agreement for the unfettered sharing of private user data to be truthful, this could imply that the FBI is running an agent –a “confidential human source,” in Bureau parlance– within the social media giant who has unfettered access, whether granted or not, to sensitive, private information on millions of users

Of course, Facebook’s denial could just be a lie – or a literally true but consciously dishonest statement, in that it is aware a senior staffer is passing the FBI information and has approved the arrangement but this is not formal or officially admitted. Such a setup would grant the social media monopoly plausible deniability were questions to arise about misuse of users’ data – as they now have.

There are strong grounds to believe that whether Facebook is fully aware of the staffer’s relationship with the FBI or not, it would approve of the arrangement, and its upper-tier employees assisting US security and intelligence agencies in their work.

The Washington Post recently exposed how the Pentagon is conducting an extensive internal audit of all its psychological warfare operations online, after several fake accounts it was running were identified by researchers. 

A fascinating passage in the article noted that, back in Summer 2020, David Agranovich, Facebook’s Director of Global Threat Disruption, who spent six years at the Pentagon then served as Director for Intelligence at the elite White House National Security Council, got in touch with his Pentagon pals directly, to warn them he and his team had identified a number of US military-managed trolls and bots on its network, and “if Facebook could sniff them out, so could US adversaries.” 

“His point was, ‘Guys, you got caught. That’s a problem.’”

The obvious meaning of all this, which The Post apparently missed, is that senior Facebook staff consider their platform being weaponized for information warfare purposes to be acceptable if not welcome, as long as it’s US military and intelligence operatives doing it, and they don’t get “burned” – and they are willing to provide American spies with helpful guidance on how to operate in secret more effectively.

RT 6\10\22

Dave C.

 Actual earnings in the UK have shrunk by £76 ($93) a month over the course of a year as a result of pay not keeping pace with inflation, the nation’s federation of trade unions, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has said.

According to its report on Monday, Britons have seen the sharpest drop in real wages since 1977 and the second worst on record since the end of World War II in 1945. Real wages are defined as the amount people earned in relation to their cost of living.

Data showed that key workers in the public sector are now £180 ($221) a month worse off in real terms than they were a year ago.

The report comes as many workers across the UK, including postal workers, train and bus drivers, as well as NHS workers and teachers, have either started or are about to strike for increased pay.

The current wave of industrial action in Britain is the result of workers “being pushed to breaking point” by years of pay austerity, TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady explained. She has accused ministers of being more interested in escalating disputes than resolving them.

“Family budgets have been shredded by soaring bills and more than a decade of pay being held down. The Conservatives have presided over the longest real wage squeeze in over 200 years,” O’Grady stressed.

“The Tories’ failure to get pay rising has left millions of households brutally exposed to the cost-of-living emergency. We cannot be a country where NHS and teaching staff have to use food banks, while City bankers are given unlimited bonuses,” the TUC general secretary concluded.

12\12\22

Dave C

If you’ve been reading this blog then you know what the solution is.

“The British government borrowed a record £22 billion ($27 billion) in November, the highest monthly figure since records started in 1993, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed.

According to its report on Wednesday, the figure is £13.9 billion more than the same month in 2021, as the country has been hit by soaring natural gas prices that have forced the government to subsidize heating and electricity costs for millions of households and businesses.

The ONS data showed that public sector net borrowing (excluding banks bailed out during the financial crisis) was £105.4 billion in the financial year to November 2022, the fourth highest year-to-date total since 1993 and £50.8 billion higher than in 2019.

The report comes as the British government is facing a wave of strikes by public sector workers, who are demanding a wage increase due to rising inflation. These include nurses and ambulance drivers, as well as workers in the railway industry, which is heavily dependent on subsidies.

In response, Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt has said he will not change his spending plans. According to Reuters, these allow no scope for public-sector pay to keep up with inflation, which hit a 41-year high in October.

“We have a clear plan to help halve inflation next year, but that requires some tough decisions to put our public finances back on a sustainable footing,” Hunt said.

Official data shows that inflation, which slowed from a peak of more than 11% in October to 10.7% last month, is still near its highest since the early 1980’s.

Last month, the British government’s Office for Budget Responsibility revised up its forecast for borrowing in 2022/23 to £177 billion, or 7.1% of GDP, from an earlier estimate of £99.1 billion.”

25\12\22

Dave C.

 Zero-hours contracts among the over-50s have reached their highest level since records began, according to new analysis of official government statistics.

There are nearly 300,000 people aged 50 and older with zero-hours contracts, the highest number for this age group since records began in 2013 and almost double the number 10 years ago, from 149,000 in October to December 2013 to 296,000 in July to September 2022.

More than a quarter of the total number of zero-hours contracts are held by workers aged 50+.

“The large rise in the number of people aged 50+ working under zero-hours contracts is worrying,” said Stuart Lewis, chief executive of Rest Less. “We know many who have turned to zero-hours contracts because they were unable to find a more permanent or structured type of work thanks to age discrimination or a lack of workplace flexibility,” he added. “Others are juggling zero-hours contracts alongside other part-time roles to top up working hours to make ends meet amidst double-digit inflation.”

Chris Peace, director of campaigning organisation Zero Hours Justice, warned that the usual challenges of relying on a zero-hours contract – the insecurity of not knowing whether one is working or not, whether one has enough money coming in to pay their bills, and what one’s employment rights are – are exacerbated for those aged over 50 because of how their inconsistent wages affect their financial planning as they get closer to retirement.

“Often, pension contributions of those over 50 are particularly badly affected because their wages fluctuate month to month,” said Peace. “Added to which, the use of zero-hours contracts is rife in the health and social care sector, and the impact on women over 50 in this sector is worrying.”

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said that zero-hour contracts are on the rise among older people because, “sadly, it’s often very hard to find a new job in your 50s and beyond, because ageism is rife in the labour market…”

Dr Emily Andrews, deputy director for work at the Centre for Ageing Better, said, “all too often, these contracts mean one-sided flexibility in favour of the employer. Last-minute changes to shifts leave people unable to structure their time or plan their finances. This is particularly worrying in a cost-of-living crisis”.

Zero-hours contracts among over-50s hit highest level recorded | Zero-hours contracts | The Guardian

 As we come to the end of the Christmas holiday season, the party’s over and it is time for the piper to be paid. The problem is, a lot of people are finding it harder and harder to pay not just the piper but their living expenses too.

“As the cost-of-living crisis squeezes British households, many have fallen behind on their bills, according to the Which? Consumer Insight Tracker.

Data released on Wednesday shows that an estimated 1.9 million households have failed to make at least one mortgage, rent, loan, credit card, or other bill payment over the last month. The figure is up from 1.7 million households this time last year.

The report indicated that missed payment rates generally tend to be lower in the lead-up to the holiday period and peak in January, when many households have to pay back their Christmas expenses.

The data suggests that there could be a significant wave of payment defaults in the coming months as the UK heads into recession, and consumers will only face further financial pressures in 2023.

Which? data shows that energy bills have been missed the most (2.3% of households), followed by council tax (1.9%).

Overall, renters were more likely to have missed a housing payment. Of those surveyed, 3.1% reported having missed a loan or credit card payment.

“We’re worried that many more people could be facing financial crisis in January – as the credit repayments pile up and the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite,” Rocio Concha, director of policy at Which? said.

“As so many people face financial hardship, Which? is calling on businesses in essential sectors like food, energy and broadband providers to do more to help customers get a good deal and avoid unnecessary or unfair costs and charges during this crisis.”

According to the latest report by research group GfK, consumer confidence in the UK has remained at its lowest level in almost 50 years for eight months now, as households across the country grapple with the deepening cost-of-living crisis.

Inflation in the UK reached 10.7% in November, according to the Office for National Statistics, which is more than five times the 2% target.”

Ain’t capitalism wonderful?

RT 24\12\12

Dave C.

From the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Christianity is a comparatively recent religion but it is thick with the debris of man’s earlier superstitions. The pagan influence on the Christmas festival is especially well marked, for December 25th was a holy day long before Jesus Christ was even thought of. Primitive man worshipped the sun because the course of his life was dominated by the yearly round of that planet in the heavens. This practice was widespread but especially in northern countries mid-December was thought to be a critical time, as the days became shorter and shorter and the sun itself weaker. Great bonfires were lit to give the sun god strength and, when it became apparent that the shortest day had passed, there was great rejoicing. Thus the Roman winter-solstice festival, held on December 25th in connection with the worship of the sun-god Mithra, was known as the birthday of the unconquered sun-god.

December 25th was not generally introduced into the Western Church as Christmas day until the fourth century and it was even later before it was accepted in the Eastern Church. Several Christian sects had previously fancied the 24th or 25th of April as a suitable “holy” period—thus arbitrarily connecting Christ’s birth with the vernal equinox rather than the winter-solstice—while still other factions chose alternative solar festivals. However, St. Chrysostum (5th century) gives a very practical reason why December 25th was to be preferred. “On this day the birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome, in order that while the heathens were occupied in their profane ceremonies the Christians might perform their holy rites undisturbed.”



Man’s consciousness is a reflection of his material environment. While he was struggling to find his feet in the universe it was understandable that he should interpret phenomena which he could not comprehend in supernatural terms but, in the twentieth century, such irrational relics from the past can be of no value to the working class.



Christians have argued against the materialist conception of history by claiming that the driving force behind the universe is a god’s will and that, while everything else may be subject to change, God and his religion remain constant. Yet the briefest examination of Christ and his theories shows him clearly as a product of his times. For example, he plainly shared the then common belief that disease was due to infestation with demons and he told his followers, “In my name ye shall cast our devils”. Again, religion has always been the willing tool of the ruling class. The church today holds chattel slavery to be immoral. But when Constantine the Great accepted the Christian religion the pope of the time received him with acclamation and no one suggested to him the need to surrender his slaves, of which he held thousands. Similarly the Christians’ god today dutifully reflects the interests of capital. Thus for hundreds of years the popes excommunicated those who put their money out at usury and denied them Christian burial because of this “grievous sin”. Yet, strangely, since Pope Benedict XIV’s condemnation in 1745, God has not moved his spokesmen to breathe one word against this practice.



We are told that the Bible is God’s word. This being the case, his laconic message could not be clearer—“Thou shalt not kill”. The record of the Christian churches in this century alone illustrates that they have never hesitated to take sides in Capitalism’s bloody quarrels. In the first world war the workers were urged to slaughter one another with God on their lips: “God of our Fathers . . . Be thou the rampart of our costs, the frontline of the battlefield”. And in the second world war Christians intoned in harmony with capitalist interests in both Germany and Britain. “You have every reason to say prayers for the Führer. May God preserve him, because we need an eternal Germany.” (Reported in the Daily Mail, May 9th. 1944.)



On the other hand in the Church of England Newspaper, February 23rd, 1940, we find a thoroughly English god rallying under the Union Jack: “It is to the living God therefore we must look for deliverance in the present hour. He it is Who delivered our fathers from the ‘Invincible’ Spanish Armada; He appeared on our behalf in 1914-18; and He will help us now if we call upon Him with a true heart.”



Capitalism is a dirty business, based as it is upon the misery of the majority of mankind. But it is well served by its priesthood, always ready with the facile lie and the glib distortion to endorse the actions of the bourgeoisie and persuade the workers that their present lot is part of some unalterable, God-given system.



Clearly then the Christian religion is a most versatile creed. Is it possible that it could be adapted again to serve the interests of a socialist society? The answer is no, for at all times Christianity and Socialism are contradictory. Socialism involves a rejection of leadership and the determination that the workers themselves must achieve socialism. Conversely? Christianity is rooted in a blind faith in leaders, both worldly and supernatural. The priests urge their flocks to remain servile and reap the blessings of poverty. They say that it is not up to the workers to consider the system which robs them, throws them into unemployment, subjects them to war and disease; that it God’s province. The Bishop of Barcelona orders: “Have confidence in your Bishops, who have received from God the mission of commanding; learn to obey . . . do not change a word of the directives that the Holy Church gives you through the Bishops. Be obedient!”



Again, within capitalist society there is a continual class struggle which can only be abolished by the establishment of a classless society—socialism. But Christians believe that there is a harmony of interests under capitalism. Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclincal on Labour asserted: “If one man hires out to another his strength or his industry, he does this in order to receive in return the means of livelihood, with the intention of acquiring a real right, got merely to his wage, but also to the free disposal of it . . . Socialists . . . strike at the liberty of every wage-earner, for they deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages.” The good pope has a point—in that socialism will certainly deprive everyone of the “liberty” of wage-slavery. However, with typical Christian charity (towards the bourgeoisie) he chooses to overlook the fact that under capitalism the workers are forced to sell their labour power to the owners of the means of living. This is not, as the pope suggests, a case of fair exchange but is based upon the appropriation of the surplus value created by the workers by the master class.



Yet there are those who still maintain that Socialism and Christianity can somehow by synthesised, given the right leader as a catalyst. The Labour Party has always taken this line and the so-called Christian Socialist Movement lingers on. desperately trying to create some sort of comprehensible amalgam out of conflicting idealist and materialist theories. Their analysis of capitalism is based upon the contention that it is an “evil” system, rooted in sin. But in their literature we find: “Capitalism has served mankind by accumulating capital, so making large scale production possible and increasing wealth generally . .  .” Thus these Christian gentlemen admit that what they call “sin” and “ evil ” have been of service to man. This inconsistency is the inevitable result of trying to accommodate Christianity and Socialism—the utopian and the scientific.



Christmas is supposed to be a time of good cheer, when the harsh reality of this world is briefly forgotten. But it is impossible to disregard capitalism even at this time of the year. We address our Christmas message to the working class, about to enjoy yet another wretched holiday under capitalism—the system they chose to perpetuate when they voted for the Labour and Tory parties last October. That man of the people, the sanctimonious Harold Wilson, has gone on record as talking of “our quest for the Kingdom of God on earth”. After one year of Labour government the conclusion in inevitable; God and Mr. Wilson are forced to administer capitalism in the interests of the ruling class as ever. But then Mr. Wilson is not a socialist—and neither is God.