Volume three of Alwyn Edgar’s work on the Scottish Highland Clearances is out now as an ebook. This volume is about the clearances in Sutherland.

Before the Rebellion of Prince Charles in 1745, each Highland clan owned its own land. No one else, including the Government in Edinburgh, had the power to deprive them of it. (Travellers saw that in the mountains every crag was a new fortress for men defending their own country.) But the Highland Jacobite rebels having been defeated at Culloden and scattered, and the Lowland Government in Edinburgh now being much stronger since the Union with England in 1707, the British authorities decided to incorporate the Highlands into Great Britain in fact, as well as in theory. The anglophone legal system was successfully imposed, and the clan chiefs were made into landlords, owning all the land which had once belonged to their clans. Scots law now gave each chief-landlord the right (for any reason or no reason) to turn his entire clan out of their homes and farms, and keep the whole clan land as his private back garden, if he wanted. So when the new landlords realized that big grazing farms, for cattle or sheep, would make a lot of money, the clearances started. Well-to-do Highlanders, Lowlanders, even a few Englishmen, rented the clan lands; the chiefs evicted their folk; and the chief/landlord found his income shooting up over the years to five times or fifteen times what it had been (and there was no income tax!). Many of the evicted Highlanders were given an acre or two of worthless, barren land, and told to make it fertile: and when by donkey-work the crofters were able to grow a few potatoes, they had to pay rent for the value they themselves had created. Others – either immediately or after years of rack-rented drudgery on the croft – went to the Lowland factories, or abandoned Scotland entirely for arduous pioneering lives in North America (those who survived the journey).

The Earls of Sutherland were chiefs of the Sutherland clan, Murrays, MacKays, Sutherlands and others. Adam Gordon married a daughter of the Earl of Sutherland about 1500, and managed to cheat the rest of the family out of their land-charters. After that the Earls of Sutherland were Gordons. The 18th earl died in 1766 leaving a year-old daughter, Elizabeth Gordon, to succeed him. She inherited nearly two-thirds of the county of Sutherland, over 1250 square miles, an estate about the size of Gloucestershire. The long wars with France between 1793 and 1815 meant there was a desperate need of soldiers, such as the Sutherland small tenants could provide: but (despite being married to one of the richest men in England, the Marquis of Stafford) she wanted the much higher rents which big sheep farms would supply. (You can never have too much money.) She was indifferent to the fate of the small tenants – “a good many of them”, would “inevitably be tossed out”, she wrote; they would be “driven from their present dwellings by the sheep farms”. She cleared her estate between 1807 and 1821, greatly increasing her rents. She and her husband became the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland.

The second greatest Sutherland landowner was Lord Reay, the chief of the Reay MacKay clan. Reay cleared his estate even before Elizabeth Gordon, beginning about 1800. (Thirteen smaller landlords owned the rest of the county, and rivalled the countess and Lord Reay with their own clearances.) Reay belonged to a London firm which provided finance to slave-traders, and spent most of his time in gambling dens and brothels. Having wasted vast amounts of money, he sold his estate to the Sutherlands in 1830, and bought a slave plantation in the West Indies. When the slaves were freed in 1833, like the other slave-owners he was compensated. (The slaves weren’t.)

The Sutherland Clearances. The Highland Clearances Volume Three – Theory and Practice

 Poorer households have been found to pay as much as 50 per cent more on their energy bills than those with more money.

It was revealed that those living in poverty pay a significantly higher proportion of their household budget on energy bills, with the poorest households spending around seven times as much of their funds on energy as the richest households, and three-and-a-half times the national average.

Figures also show Britain’s poorest 10 per cent of households pay on average £756 a year per person for electricity, gas and other fuels. This is compared with an average of £504 per person in the richest households, as well as a national average of £530.

As of 1 October, the cap on what energy companies could charge households for their monthly consumption rose by £139 for people on default tariffs and £153 for people on pre-payment meters. As a result, millions face higher monthly bills.

People living in poverty ‘hit harder by gas and electricity bills’ | The Independent

Analysis of data on the 540,000 wealthiest individuals in the UK – the top 1% – shows how decades of low taxes on capital gains, a type of income mainly available to the wealthiest in society, is creating a new breed of “super-gainers”. 

Under the current system, income – which covers earnings such as salaries – is taxed at a maximum rate of 45%. Capital gains – the profit made when an asset such as shares or property is sold for more than it cost to acquire – is taxed at much lower rates. Gains from shares attract a maximum rate of 20%, while the maximum for property is 28%. 

The analysis has found that since the late 1990s, the proportion of earnings that are declared as capital gains by the top 1% has ballooned: just 3% of their income came through gains in 1997, doubling to 5.4% in 2010. By the 2017/18 tax year it had reached 13.3%.

Among the extremely rich – the 50,000 people who make up the 0.1% – the amount declared in capital gains grew by 213% between 2007 and 2017. 

They found this type of income was very concentrated at the top, with the 5,000 highest earners receiving 54% of all capital gains.

Because gains are so lightly taxed, the wealthiest pay a far lower share of their earnings to the tax authorities than most workers. The top 0.001% – 400 people with earnings of between £9m and £11m – were paying an effective tax rate of just 21%, Advani found. This was slightly less than someone on median earnings of £30,000, whose effective rate was 21.4%.

Adam Corlett, the principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, said there were “glaring holes” around capital gains which needed to be addressed. “Thanks to the glaring holes in the capital gains tax system, it’s quite possible for the wealthiest to pay a tax rate of only 10%, or even zero, while low income workers pay much higher rates. That should change,” he said.

The government could raise an extra £16bn a year if the low tax rates on profits from shares and property were increased and brought back into line with taxes on salaries.

Treasury could raise £16bn a year if shares and property were taxed like salaries | Tax and spending | The Guardian

 Asia suffered its hottest year on record in 2020. The mean temperature pushed 1.39C above the 1981-2010 average, according to a report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

“Extreme weather and climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems,” the WMO said in its State of the Climate in Asia report. “Sustainable development is threatened, with food and water insecurity, health risks and environmental degradation on the rise.”

“Weather and climate hazards, especially floods, storms, and droughts, had significant impacts in many countries of the region,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. “Combined, these impacts take a significant toll on long-term sustainable development.” 

In 2020 floods and storms affected approximately 50 million people in Asia, resulting in more than 5,000 fatalities.

The report revealed the total annual average losses due to climate-related hazards. China suffered an estimated $238bn, followed by India at $87bn, Japan with $83bn and South Korea on $24bn. But when the size of the economy is considered, the average annual losses are expected to be as high as 7.9% of gross domestic product for Tajikistan, 5.9% for Cambodia and 5.8% for Laos. 

Increased heat and humidity are forecast to lead to an effective loss of outdoor working hours across the continent, with a potential cost of many billions of dollars.

In 2020, average sea surface temperatures reached record high values in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Sea surface temperatures and ocean warming in and around Asia are increasing more than the global average. They have been warming at more than triple the average in the Arabian Sea, and parts of the Arctic Ocean.

There are approximately 100,000 square kilometres of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas – the largest volumes of ice outside the polar regions and the source of 10 major Asian rivers.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating and it is projected that glacier mass will decrease by 20 percent to 40 percent by 2050, affecting the lives and livelihoods of about 750 million people in the region,” the report said. “This has major ramifications for global sea level, regional water cycles and local hazards such as landslides and avalanches.”

Asia had hottest year on record in 2020 – UN | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 Asia suffered its hottest year on record in 2020. The mean temperature pushed 1.39C above the 1981-2010 average, according to a report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.

“Extreme weather and climate change impacts across Asia in 2020 caused the loss of life of thousands of people, displaced millions of others and cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while wreaking a heavy toll on infrastructure and ecosystems,” the WMO said in its State of the Climate in Asia report. “Sustainable development is threatened, with food and water insecurity, health risks and environmental degradation on the rise.”

“Weather and climate hazards, especially floods, storms, and droughts, had significant impacts in many countries of the region,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. “Combined, these impacts take a significant toll on long-term sustainable development.” 

In 2020 floods and storms affected approximately 50 million people in Asia, resulting in more than 5,000 fatalities.

The report revealed the total annual average losses due to climate-related hazards. China suffered an estimated $238bn, followed by India at $87bn, Japan with $83bn and South Korea on $24bn. But when the size of the economy is considered, the average annual losses are expected to be as high as 7.9% of gross domestic product for Tajikistan, 5.9% for Cambodia and 5.8% for Laos. 

Increased heat and humidity are forecast to lead to an effective loss of outdoor working hours across the continent, with a potential cost of many billions of dollars.

In 2020, average sea surface temperatures reached record high values in the Indian, Pacific and Arctic Oceans. Sea surface temperatures and ocean warming in and around Asia are increasing more than the global average. They have been warming at more than triple the average in the Arabian Sea, and parts of the Arctic Ocean.

There are approximately 100,000 square kilometres of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas – the largest volumes of ice outside the polar regions and the source of 10 major Asian rivers.

“Glacier retreat is accelerating and it is projected that glacier mass will decrease by 20 percent to 40 percent by 2050, affecting the lives and livelihoods of about 750 million people in the region,” the report said. “This has major ramifications for global sea level, regional water cycles and local hazards such as landslides and avalanches.”

Asia had hottest year on record in 2020 – UN | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 More than half of Afghanistan’s population is facing acute hunger in one of the world’s largest food crises.

23 million Afghans will be hungry due to conflict, drought and an economic downturn that is severely affecting livelihoods and people’s access to food as a harsh winter looms, the UN has warned; an increase of nearly 35% compared with last year.

“Afghanistan is now among the world’s worst humanitarian crises – if not the worst – and food security has all but collapsed. This winter, millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation,” the World Food Programme’s executive director David Beasley said, adding that “we are on a countdown to catastrophe”.

Foreign aid payments – 40% of the country’s gross domestic product – have ceased and almost $10bn (£7.3bn) of Afghan central bank assets have been frozen.

 Urban residents, for the first time, suffer similar rates of food insecurity to rural communities; a shifting pattern of hunger in the country. In the southern city of Kandahar, the malnutrition ward at Mirwais hospital was packed with women and children, most of them sharing beds with several others. Although the hospital is the biggest health facility in southern Afghanistan, it is poorly equipped. More than 2,000 health clinics across the country have closed due to lack of funds.

In Kabul’s Indira Gandhi children’s hospital, the biggest paediatric clinic in the country, doctors said about a dozen children were arriving each day, even though the city’s markets were still stocked with food.

“We don’t have money to afford it,” said Fereshta, a 30-year-old mother. 

Cash is largely unavailable, and many government employees are waiting for unpaid salaries.

Only 5% of households have enough to eat every day, the UN said. 

The Taliban launched a ‘wheat-for-work’ scheme, saying it would employ 40,000 casual labourers in Kabul who would be paid in wheat instead of cash. During the initiative, set to last for two months, the Taliban pledged to distribute 11,600 tonnes of wheat in the capital.

Many families who fled fighting before the Taliban takeover can’t afford to go back home and remain in makeshift camps with no source of income. 

About 3.5 million people remain displaced within the country.

‘Countdown to catastrophe’: half of Afghans face hunger this winter – UN | Hunger | The Guardian

 Philip Dunne, the chairman of the cross-party environmental audit committee explained, “Encouraging announcements of investment in green sectors of the economy are very welcome but the government admits that claims about green jobs lack explanation and data on how the targets will be achieved.” Dunne said. “Monitoring the sectors and regions where the jobs are needed, and rebooting careers advice that demystifies green jobs, is critical if we are to meet our environmental goals.”

The UK’s net zero strategy, claims to support up to 440,000 jobs by 2030, should have been used to define and measure what green jobs are, the committee said, and called for a detailed action delivery plan. 

The government’s lack of understanding showed up in the green homes grant voucher scheme, where it failed to engage with the sector to develop the skills needed, leading to contractors making staff redundant as consumers awaited confirmation of vouchers.

 Kevin Bentley, the chairman of the LGA’s people and places board, said “Councils know where and in what sectors these jobs will be. It now needs the levers to work with partners to build a skilled and experienced workforce which is crucial to the government meeting its net zero targets and ‘levelling up’ ambitions.

Cross-party MPs deride government’s ‘inconsistent’ green jobs policy | Green politics | The Guardian

Despite its pledges, the British government, according to its own politicians, cannot deliver a coherent and cohesive policy.

It has been the practice of the blog to occasionally post articles from non-World Socialist Movement members if it is thought that the content holds sufficient merit that it should reach a wider audience.

 We may not endorse everything stated in the article nor accept the views and opinions expressed on other topics.

John Spritzler is a Boston-based activist involved with the New Democracy group that now publishes content on the People for Democratic Revolution website.

The following is a partial transcript of an e-mail exchange Spritzler had with his local Boston Jewish Voice for Peace chapter where he explains that in his view the purpose and motive of the Israeli government’s violence against Palestinians are not to make Jewish-Israelis safe but to enable the Jewish-Israeli ruling class of Israel to control (using the fear of the Palestinian bogeyman) Israeli working-class Jews whom it oppresses.

First: Most of the general public, to their credit, want nothing to do with anything that they perceive to be “against the Jews,” i.e., anti-semitic.

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Second: The main Zionist Big Lie–the PILLAR of Zionist propaganda–is that the Israeli government is about protecting Jews from harm and that the violence it uses against Palestinians is only what is required for it to accomplish this.

Third: Because most people believe the Zionist Big Lie (about the Israeli government protecting Jews from harm) they also agree with former Harvard President Larry Summers’s assertion that anti-Zionism–because it criticizes what the Israeli government does to protect Jews from harm–is antisemitic in effect if not intent.

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Fourth: The only way to win over the great majority of the public to support the anti-Zionist movement is to persuasively (and truthfully!) refute the Zionist Big Lie, as my article (at https://www.pdrboston.org/israel-s-government-attacks-jews-to) has been proven to do even with Jews who were passionately pro-Israel before reading it. My article proves that the Israeli government treats Palestinians like dirt not simply to grab more land from them but FOR THE PURPOSE of making them be so angry at Israel that they will be perceived by Israeli Jews as a frightening bogeyman enemy–an “existential threat”–so that the Israeli government can pretend to be protecting Jews from their “real enemy” (Palestinians) and thereby prevent working class Israeli Jews from seriously challenging the power of the Israeli government while actually economically oppressing working class Israeli Jews horribly in order to enrich the billionaire Israeli upper class. Jews who were passionately pro-Israel change their mind after reading my article and see the Israeli government as their enemy, not the protector of Jews. And non-Jews likewise change their mind because they see that it is not antisemitic to oppose the Israeli government but is actually antisemitic to support it.

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Fifth: Until we persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie, the anti-Zionist movement will remain a minority movement that the U.S. government will therefore be able to ignore and thus continue to give enormous support to the Israeli government. The anti-Zionist movement will remain a minority movement because it asks people to choose between “supporting Palestinians” or “supporting Jews” and most, in order to support Jews and avoid doing what they believe would be antisemitic, will oppose the anti-Zionist movement.

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Sixth: It is an unfortunate fact that, having done my due diligence to try to find a single prominent anti-Zionist person or organization that is refuting the Zionist Big Lie (note that merely pointing out that Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews are discriminated against in Israel does not refute the Zionist Big Lie; the truth is that ALL working class Israeli Jews are oppressed by the Israeli government, including Holocaust survivors who are Ashkenazi Jews of course) I have not found a single one. Not a single one! As long as the Zionist Big Lie goes un-refuted, Zionism will prevail. (If you know of a prominent person or organization that is refuting the Zionist Big Lie, please let me know so I can get in touch with them and help them.)

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Seventh: I hope JVP will devote serious and energetic efforts to refuting the Zionist Big Lie. Otherwise Zionism will prevail.I trust you agree that the idea expressed here is extremely important for all JVP members to hear and discuss…

…I am asking the JVP to persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie that enables Zionism to maintain the support of a majority of the U.S. public. The Zionist Big Lie says Israeli government violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of protecting Jews from harm. To persuasively refute this Big Lie one must show that the real purpose of the Israeli government’s violence against Palestinians is to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to control Israeli working class Jews whom it oppresses terribly in order to enrich itself at their expense.

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Here are some simple yes or no questions that I would like to hear your answer to:

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Question #1. Do you agree that the purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians is to enable the billionaire ruling class of Israel to control Israeli working class Jews whom it oppresses terribly in order to enrich itself at their expense?

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Question #2. If you answered No to Question #1, then Do you agree that the true purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians–whatever it actually is–is NOT to protect Jews from harm?

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Question #3. If you answered No to Question #2, then Do you agree with the Zionist claim that Israeli government violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of protecting Jews from harm?

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Question #4. If you answered Yes to either Question #1 or #2, then Do you want JVP to directly and persuasively refute the Zionist Big Lie by showing that the purpose of Israeli government violence against Palestinians is NOT to protect Jews from harm?

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Question #5. If you did not answer Yes to either Question #1 or #2, then Do you agree that JVP’s opposition to Israeli government violence against Palestinians is opposition to violence the purpose of which is to protect Jews from harm? (Note: If you answer No here, then I challenge you to defend your answer because, after answering No to both Question #1 and #2, it is illogical. If you answer Yes here, then you are essentially agreeing with former Harvard President, Larry Summers, who said that anti-Zionism is antisemitic in effect if not intent; this argument is what keeps a majority of the U.S. public in the pro-Israel camp, of course, and if it is not refuted then Zionism will prevail.)

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Question #6. If you answered Yes to Question #5 (after answering No to both Question #1 and #2), then Do you intend to win over a majority of the U.S. public to the anti-Zionism side in spite of the fact (that you agree with) that the anti-Zionism side opposes the violence that the Israeli government uses to protect Jews from harm?…

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John Spritzler

With the climate crises, the worse-case scenarios begin with the triggering of invisible climate tripwires known as tipping points.

“Climate tipping points are a game-changing risk — an existential threat — and we need to do everything within our power to avoid them,” said Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter. “Just because tipping points are challenging to predict doesn’t mean they can be ignored,” Lenton said.

An analogy is to lean back in a chair balancing on two legs and there is a threshold beyond which you irrevocably crash to the floor. That portal between two stable states — in this case, an upright versus a fallen-over chair — is a tipping point, and Earth’s complex, interlocking climate system is full of them. Planet-altering tipping points have different temperature thresholds. Scientists know these tripwires are there, but not exactly where they lie. More unsettling is how easily efforts to eliminate carbon pollution could be overwhelmed by the changes set in motion.

“We have seen a number of tipping points already in coral reefs and polar systems, and more are likely in the near term,” the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a draft report on climate impacts, due out in February. “Abrupt responses and tipping points of the climate system… cannot be ruled out,” the UN’s climate science advisory body now warns.

In most cases, reversing the changes set in motion would be beyond the grasp of humanity for many generations, if not millennia.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), explained, 

“Planetary machinery — the monsoon system, ocean circulation, the jet stream, the big ecosystems — abounds with non-linear systems,” referring to the potential for abrupt, dramatic change. “That means you have so many points of no return.”

Scientists count about 15 significant tipping points in the planet’s climate system. Some are regional, others are global, all are interconnected.

Those most vulnerable to global warming and closest to a point of no return are tropical coral reefs, the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, alpine glaciers, Arctic summer sea ice and the Amazon forest.

Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that the AMOC will stall altogether, as it has in the past. If this happened, European winters would become much harsher and sea levels in the North Atlantic basin could rise substantially.

For example, accelerating melt-off from the Greenland ice sheet is almost certainly slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This, in turn, could push Earth’s tropical rain belt southward and weaken the African and Asian monsoons, upon which hundreds of millions depend for rain-fed crops. Scientists cannot rule out the possibility that the AMOC will stall altogether, as it has in the past. If this happened, European winters would become much harsher and sea levels in the North Atlantic basin could rise substantially.

Johan Rockstrom, PIK director, said a 2C cap on warming was “not a social or economic choice, it is actually a planetary boundary. The moment that the Earth system flips over from being self-cooling — which it still is — to self-warming, that is the moment that we lose control.” 

Climate scientists fear tipping points (maybe you should too) – France 24