The Willie Lynch Speech

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Although determined a forgery and a hoax, the Willie Lynch speech remains a valid observation of how control can be maintained over the oppressed by divide and rule. It was purportedly given by William Lynch, a slave owner, back in 1712 in Virginia.



 Gentlemen, I greet you here on the bank of the James River in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twelve. First, I shall thank you, the gentlemen of the Colony of Virginia, for bringing me here. I am here to help you solve some of your problems with slaves. Your invitation reached me on my modest plantation in the West Indies where I have experimented with some of the newest and still the oldest methods for control of slaves. Ancient Rome would envy us if my program is implemented. As our boat sailed south on the James River, named for our illustrious King, whose version of the Bible we cherish, I saw enough to know that your problem is not unique. While Rome used cords of wood as crosses for standing human bodies along its old highways in great numbers you are here using the tree and the rope on occassion. I caught a whiff of a dead slave hanging from a tree a couple of miles back. You are not only losing valuable stock by hangings, you are having uprisings, slaves are running away, your crops are sometimes left in the fields too long for maximum profit, you suffer occasional fires, your animals are killed. Gentlemen, you know what your problems are; I do not need to elaborate. I am not here to enumerate your problems, I am here to introduce you to a method of solving them. In my bag here, I have a fool proof method for controlling your Black slaves. I guarantee everyone of you that if installed correctly it will control the slaves for at least 300 years. My method is simple. Any member of your family or your overseer can use it. I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves; and I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes. These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences, and think about them. On top of my list is “Age”, the second is “Color” or shade, there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, status on plantation, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair or coarse hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action- but before that I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than adulation; respect or admiration. The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don’t forget you must pitch the old Black vs. the young Black male, and the young Black male against the old Black male. You must use the dark skin slave vs. the light skin slaves and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male, and the male vs. the female. You must also have your White servants and overseers distrust all Blacks, but it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect, and trust only us. Gentlemen, these Kits are your Keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful. Thank you, gentlemen.

Cambodia’s Eco-system Destruction

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The destruction of critically-important Tompoun/Cheung Ek wetlands, by politically-connected developers in Cambodia threatens to flood more than one million Phnom Penh residents, ruin the city’s wastewater system, force hundreds of families from their homes, and trigger environmental devastation, a new report has warned.



 Just south of Phnom Penh, play a vital role in sustaining the Cambodian capital, acting as a natural store of 70% of its rain and wastewater and providing livelihoods for the more than 1,000 families who live, farm and fish in the area. Sophal Ear, an associate professor at Los Angeles’ Occidental College, said the wetlands were “nature’s way of protecting Phnom Penh”. He labelled their destruction “inane”, but said the government did not appear to care. “Phnom Penh’s floods grow worse year after year, and they see no correlation, no causation.”



 However, in 2004 developers, acting with government backing, began to gradually destroy the 1,500-hectare wetlands, filling them with sand dredged from the Mekong and Bassac rivers to prepare for the construction of a vast 2,500 hectare satellite city, dubbed “ING City”, the largest development in Cambodia, according to a report released on Monday by an alliance of local land rights and human rights groups – Sahmakum Teang Tnaut, Equitable Cambodia, Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, and the Cambodia Youth Network. They warn the development associated with ING City and other projects will destroy 90% of the wetlands, causing untold environmental damage and the potential eviction of hundreds of families.



 The report, titled Smoke on the Water, warns the wetlands’ destruction will have “severe effects on the quality of life for an estimated one to two million people”, including placing one million Phnom Penh residents at increased risk of flooding. The wetlands’ aquatic crops also act as a natural wastewater treatment system, preventing Phnom Penh’s raw sewage polluting the Bassac River and connected waterways and contaminating the fish stocks that many depend on, the report says.



 The Cambodian government hopes that a $US26m wastewater plant funded with Japanese aid money will offset the wetlands’ loss. But the NGO report warns the facility would treat only 2% of the sewage flowing into the wetlands, making it a “wildly unfeasible” alternative.



 The report warns that the extraction of the huge quantity of sand needed to fill the wetlands – estimated at a staggering 100m tonnes – has also been linked with the collapse of riverbanks on the Mekong.



 “It will not just cause problems for the environment and flooding, but also the livelihood of the people who are living around the lake,” Eang Vuthy, executive director of Equitable Cambodia, told the Guardian. “We estimate for the city, if there’s no proper plan in place to mitigate that, it will affect more than one million people. That does not include the untreated water that could flow directly into the river.” 



 One of the wetlands’ last protected areas was Boeung Cheung Ek, a large lake that was demarcated as public state land until 2017. The retention of that lake had eased fears about the impact of the ING City project. But local authorities have recently signalled their intention to develop Boeung Cheung Ek. Between 2017 and 2019, a series of government sub-decrees converted roughly 70% of the lake to private land and leased plots to a series of companies and individuals, according to the report.



 The former Cambodian People’s Party secretary of state at the ministry of transport Ing Bun Hoaw, one of country’s most powerful tycoons and a Hun Sen ally, is involved in the project.He is one of the founders of ING Holdings, the entity behind ING City. A Guardian analysis of corporate records and government documents reveals that some land at Boeung Cheung Ek was leased to people connected to Hun Sen and his government. One sub-decree gave 37 hectares of land at Boeung Cheung Ek to a company named Orkide Villa Co Ltd, which lists Hun Mana, one of Hun Sen’s daughters, as a director and chair. The NGO’s report also lists the Hero King Company Co Ltd as a supplier of sand for the ING City Project. Its parent company LYP Group Co Ltd is owned by Okhna Ly Yong Phat, an economic advisor to Hun Sen’s government.



 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/one-million-cambodians-under-threat-from-development-of-vital-wetlands-report

Why Poverty Persists?

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 Poverty matters and it persists.  It reduces well-being today and limits life-chances tomorrow. 



 In the UK the incomes of the poorest families actually fell in the pre-crisis years, leaving them no higher in 2018-19 than in 2001-02. 



  More than 700 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2015. Why do people stay poor? 



  Research on poverty in Bangladesh debunks the idea that individual choice or failure is the explanation. Instead, it is a poverty trap. Using data from a programme that gave significant resources to poor families, the authors show there is a tipping point at around $500 (£391) under which people cannot sustainably break into higher-income opportunities. If the program pushes individuals above a threshold level of initial assets, then they escape poverty, but, if it does not, they slide back into poverty. 



 The authors write: “It is not their intrinsic characteristics that trap people in poverty but rather their circumstances.”



 There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make the poor choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view emphasizes that access to opportunities depends on initial wealth and hence poor people have no choice but to work in low productivity jobs. W



  The lesson? If circumstances are the problem, then those circumstances can and should be changed.



 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/proof-that-poverty-is-not-failure-but-a-trap



Understanding Sex-Roles

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We make no claim that the solution of economic problems created by capitalism will miraculously address all the issues discriminations and prejudices between us as human beings as men and women. However real permanent change in social relationships is not fully possible without a basic change in society. Much of capitalist culture make women more slaves than they need to be. The many wishes and desires of women are not realisable under private ownership and the profit system. They cannot attain and hold such reasonable goals under capitalism mainly because much of the system that stands in the way.

There are many aspects of woman’s liberation which are centred upon their economic problems. There is the demand for equal pay for equal work. There is the fight against discrimination in the work-place. There is the need for access to child-care to enable women to reproduce and be producers. These are problems of working-class women who have a requirement  to earn a living for herself and a family. Within capitalist society few women, or men, can find such work without a fundamental change in society.  The pressure and misery of economic necessity must be removed and human happiness must replace the profit motive. Hours of work and conditions have to be planned on technological possibilities and society’s consumption needs, with distasteful labour reduced to the minimum and instead where everyone will be in a position to exercise a choice about work, to train and qualify for that which may bring each individual fulfilment. Socialism seek to dissolve the separation between “woman’s work” and “man’s work.”

Boys and girls should both be taught housework chores such as cookery, and since both may become parents, they will be instructed in childcare. Motherhood is not the entirely a woman’s role and, in fact renounce motherhood if she so wishes.

We are aware that capitalism as an exploitive society means that many relationships in daily life cannot be tackled without first establishing a more favourable social, economic and political milieu. So we say we do not know whether under socialism whether it will be a woman’s or a man’s place in the home, other than socialism will relieve men and women of the dreary drudgery of a earning a income. We say that the place NOW for all people regardless of gender, sexual orientation and ethnic origin is in the revolutionary World Socialist Movement.

Turkey’s “We Will Stop Femicide”

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 Turkish women’s rights activists are calling for the government to tackle the widespread problem of femicide in the country.



 Violence against women is not uncommon in Turkey. The recent killing of 27-year-old student Pinar Gültekin at the hands of her  former boyfriend out of jealousy sent shock waves through the country.



  According to the ‘We Will Stop Femicide’ online platform, this year alone, 27 women were murdered for similar motives; a further 23 suspected femicides were recorded as well.



 Women in Turkey’s cities, particularly in the country’s west, have taken to the streets to express their anger at the state of affairs. At a recent protest march in the coastal metropolis of Izmir, however, Turkish police intervened, arresting several activists and abused while in custody.



 Lawyers and attorneys have expressed outrage over the violent crackdown. Zeynep Tepegoz, a lawyer, says Turkish citizens have a constitutional right to stage peaceful protests. Police acted illegally, she asserts: “The events in Izmir indicate that police deployed disproportionate force…there is no justification for pinning protesters to the ground and beating them,” she says. 



  Turkish womens’ right groups say the crackdown reflects a wider societal problem. They say many women who are being abused seek — but never receive — proper help. 



 Melek Önder of the ‘We Will Stop Femicide’ initiative told DW that Turkish police, the government and state officials must do much more to protect women at risk: “There were cases where women who were being violently abused asked for help, but nothing happened,” she says.



 Many womens’ right activists say the government has done little to implement the so-called Istanbul Convention, which aims to tackle violence again women and domestic abuse, as well as promoting gender equality. The initiative was launched by the Council of Europe in 2011, and Turkey was the first country the ratify the treaty a year later. It has since adopted legislation reflecting the treaty.



 Women’s rights activists regard the Istanbul Convention as a powerful tool to fight violence against women. But many criticize the treaty is not being properly implemented. Even though signatory countries have vowed to do so, in reality few are applying and enforcing the enshrined principles. There are also too few measures designed to help and protect endangered women. Turkish protesters have therefore called for the treaty to be fully implemented in the country.



 Religious forces within Turkey regard the Istanbul Convention as a threat to country’s traditions and have been undermining efforts to see it implemented. Ebru Asiltürk, the spokeswoman for womens’ affairs for Turkey’s Islamic conservative Saadet Party, is one such critic. In an opinion piece for Turkey’s conservative daily Milli this May, she wrote the treaty would be like a “bomb” destroying Turkey’s traditional family structure. She argued it would threaten the “financial and moral integrity of families.” In her view, the convention breaches Article 41 of the Turkish Constitution which enshrines the protection and unity of the family. She therefore urges Turkey to abandon the treaty altogether.  Many people on social media expressed support for Asiltürk’s viewpoint, with some claiming on Twitter that the treaty is a simply means by the West to hurt Turkey.



 Turkey’s government, meanwhile, has not displayed any real determination in tackling the problem of femicides and has failed to side with those who decry it. Protest marches calling for women to be better protected are regularly dispersed. When 2,000 women gathered in Istanbul on November 25, for a demonstration marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, police disbanded the protest using tear gas and rubber bullets.

The US–China confrontation

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With the closure of China’s consulate in Houston and the American consulate in Chengdu, the confrontation between China and the United States moves up another notch. 
Not such a big deal, you say? But other recent developments are more worrying.
Following her re-election in May, Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen made it clear that Taiwan is unwilling to negotiate unification with China on the terms set by Beijing. Since then China has stepped up its military exercises near Taiwan, sailed warships around the island, and flown fighter jets into its airspace.
More clashes have taken place in the Himalayas, along the poorly defined border between India and China. 
The National Defense Authorization Act 2021, passed by the Senate on July 23, includes an armaments program called the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which has bipartisan support and is ‘aimed at countering China’s rise.’ The program is not all that costly, as armaments programs go: its allocation is ‘only’ $7 billion for the next two years – a mere ½% of the Pentagon’s current annual budget of $738 billion. What worries me is the destabilizing nature of many of the armaments – especially the hypersonic missiles, which combine the speed of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability and stealth of cruise missiles. 
The situation continues to deteriorate in the South China Sea, where China’s claims to sovereignty are challenged both by the US and by local states like Vietnam and the Philippines (see here for a fuller account). Hu Bo informs us in The Diplomat that ‘the China—US rivalry in the South China Sea is certainly growing’ and that there are ‘daily operational confrontations’ between naval vessels and military aircraft – but then assures us that ‘war is still some way off.’ 
Whew, what a relief! Still some way off! 
But hold on. How far off? Years? Months? Weeks?
In analyzing a confrontation like that between China and the United States, it is helpful to distinguish three general sources of conflict:
Resources and trade routes
First, states are constantly struggling for control over trade routes, markets, and resources. This kind of struggle is specific to the capitalist world order. 
Thus, the struggle in the South China Sea is a struggle for access to deposits of oil and natural gas (global heating be damned!) and to fish stocks. It is also a struggle for control over the main trade route linking the Pacific with the Indian Ocean. 
Another relevant example is the struggle for control over deposits of rare earth metals, which are essential to the manufacture of modern electronic devices. China used to be the sole source of these substances. When it suddenly restricted their export in 2010, a storm of righteous indignation swept Japan and the West (see here). The development of alternative sources – in particular, in Greenland (see here) – is gradually weakening China’s monopoly. 
The ‘geopolitical’ struggle  
The second source of conflict is the ‘geopolitical’ struggle among states for regional and global military and political supremacy. This kind of struggle is not specific to capitalism, although it is specific to class society. It goes back thousands of years and is an unavoidable consequence of the division of the world into separate states. 
A very common type of geopolitical struggle occurs during periods when one or more formerly dominant powers are in decline and one or more rising powers are challenging their dominance. Specialists in international relations call the formerly dominant powers ‘status quo powers’ and their challengers ‘revisionist powers.’ 
In World War Two the revisionist powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan, whose rulers felt excluded from earlier carve-ups of the world and now sought their ‘place in the sun.’ The war reduced most of Europe and much of Asia to ruins, so that in 1945 the United States emerged as the world’s dominant power. In the course of time its dominant position came to be challenged first by the Soviet Union and later by China, now the leading revisionist power. 
At the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century China’s ruling elite concentrated on accumulating its power potential and abstained from active self-assertion in world affairs. The new leadership under Xi considers that the time has now come to realize that potential. China is accordingly expanding its presence in underdeveloped countries – above all, in Africa with its abundant mineral and forest resources. In its own region the near-term strategic goal is to gain full control over the marine zone within the ‘First Island Chain.’  
A rational ruling elite would be realistic in assessing the shifting balance of power and make corresponding adjustments to its policy. The trouble is that ruling elites are not always rational. In particular, the ruling elite of a formerly dominant power finds it painful and humiliating to adjust to its decline. It is these feelings that generate the danger of war. Thus, the British ruling elite were emotionally attached to their empire and took ages to come to terms with the fact that ‘Britannia’ no longer ‘ruled the waves.’ The American ruling elite still inhabit a mental Cloud Cuckoo Land in which they are the rightful masters of the world. It is agonizing for them even to imagine withdrawing from beyond the First Island Chain, let alone from Africa. 
The Financial Times featured a perceptive article by Gideon Rachman entitled: ‘America v China: How trade wars become real wars.’ The author argues that the trade war with China unleashed by Trump heightens the danger of a real war, ‘because the geopolitical ambitions of a rising China will no longer be restrained by the need to keep the West’s markets open.’ True, the conflicts associated with trade entail their own risk of war. Nevertheless, the curtailment of trade brings to the surface a deeper and even more dangerous substratum of interstate relations. 
The foreign policy impact of domestic politics
Capitalist politicians usually prioritize the demands of domestic politics. Often enough it is these demands that determine their foreign policy orientation. Trump gave his supporters the explicit instruction that they should respond to any criticism of his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by ‘blaming China.’ On no account should they address the actual content of the criticism. 
And just as Trump lays the blame for his own failures on China, so do his Democratic opponents lay the blame for their failures on Russia. And in just the same way do the Chinese rulers lay the blame for their failures on the United States. 
Deflecting popular discontent against foreign ‘enemies’ is an age-old method of political manipulation. Even though this method is used for internal purposes, it inevitably has an impact on international relations and is one of the causes of conflict.
Our message to fellow workers everywhere
Our message as socialists to our fellow workers – here in the United States, in China, and throughout the world – is the same as it has always been. All these disputes that might lead to war – over territory, trade routes, access to resources, geopolitics, and all the rest of it – are disputes among our bosses. They are not our concern. It is they and not we who control territory and exercise power. Our basic position is the same everywhere. Despite differences in language and customs, we have much more in common with one another than we with our bosses. Nothing is at stake that is worth a single yuan or a single cent to us, let alone human lives.  
We hope that peace will be preserved. We hope that everyone who is in a position to act in defense of peace will do so. Hand in hand around the four oceans, heart with heart across the five continents, we shall unite humanity and build a new and better world.  

Stephen Shenfield


Slavery – “a necessary evil” ?

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Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.



 In support of his legislation, Saving American History Act of 2020:



  “The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton said, “I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.” He then added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”



 Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize  for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project tweeted: 



 “If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end. 



 “Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen.



 “So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”



 Cotton then retorted in a tweet:



 “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”



 Senator Cotton is determined to prove the truth of Frederick Douglass that “to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.” 

New Faces For Britain’s Currency

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The Independent headline of 26-7-20 says: ‘All backgrounds helped

build Britain’



        Ethnic minorities are to feature on coins for the first time.

 Zehri Zaidi, former Conservative parliamentarian who helped push the campaign forward said: ‘People of all backgrounds helped

build Britain.’



        She also said: ‘We hope it helps build cohesion, inspires young people and unites us as a nation that we all have an equal stake and contribution in society.



         The Working Class worldwide have always built countries. Socialists want to live in a world without money, where banks etc. would be a thing of the past.



         We want to live in a world without buying and selling.

We want to live in a world where we produce goods and services for need and not profit.

Moscow-on-Thames

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Businesspeople born in the Soviet Union play a significant role in British business and politics. Some have given money to political parties. Others have made substantial investments in media and industry. All have homes in London.



 The PR executive and former Ulster Unionist MP David Burnside has introduced several prominent Kremlin figures to senior Conservatives. His communications firm, New Century Media, founded a Positive Russia foundation to improve Moscow’s image in the UK. One of Burnside’s employees is Alex Nekrassov, whose late father Alexander was a Kremlin adviser and hardline Putin apologist. In 2012, Burnside took a Russian embassy diplomat, Sergei Nalobin, to a Conservative party fundraising dinner. Nalobin, the son of a senior officer in the FSB, the successor to the KGB, founded the Conservative Friends of Russia, a parliamentary group. Its 2012 launch party took place in the Russian ambassador’s Kensington garden. The following year, Burnside invited Vasily Shestakov, an influential MP in Russia’s Duma, to the same Tory fundraising dinner. He introduced him to the prime minister, David Cameron. Shestakov is an old friend of Putin.



 The Conservatives have received more than £3m from wealthy Soviet-born donors – all of whom can legally give money to the party as British citizens. They include Alexander Temerko, a former Russian junior defence minister, and Lubov Chernukhin, a financier whose husband Vladimir served in Putin’s cabinet as deputy finance minister. Temerko has funded the constituency associations of several leading Tory MPs, including the business secretary, Alok Sharma, and Mark Pritchard. Pritchard sits on parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), which on Tuesday published its long-awaited Russia report.  Temerko has given more than £1.3m to the Conservative party. 



 Alexander Lebedev bought the loss-making Evening Standard newspaper in 2009, installing his son Evgeny as proprietor. Lebedev later acquired the Independent and launched a successful spinoff version, the i. The Standard office is around the corner from where Lebedev worked in the 1980s as an undercover spy based at the Soviet embassy.



 Lebedev supported Russia’s takeover of Crimea and held a conference there in 2017 to counter what he said was western media “bias”. Lebedev has come under scrutiny over his close personal ties with Boris Johnson. In spring 2018, Johnson flew to the Lebedevs’ villa in Perugia, Italy. The then foreign secretary left his security detail behind and was spotted at the airport on his way home, dishevelled and hungover. Johnson attended Lebedev’s 60th birthday party the day after winning December’s general election. David Cameron and then Evening Standard editor George Osborne were guests too.

Lebedev’s billionaire Moscow contemporary Alexander Mamut bought the bookshop chain Waterstones in 2011 for £53.5m. Mamut introduced a Russian-language section to its store in Piccadilly Circus, central London. His then teenage son was educated at a leading British private school.
Mamut owns extensive media assets in Russia, including the news website Lenta.ru. In 2014, he fired its editor, Galina Timchenko, after she published an interview with a Ukrainian nationalist. Mamut replaced her with a pro-Kremlin journalist. In 2018, he sold a majority stake in Waterstones to a hedge fund.
Chernukhin keeps a low public profile. The former banker turns down interview requests and has not publicly explained why she has given the Conservative party more than £1.7m. Born in the Soviet Union, Chernukhin is the biggest female donor in British political history and one of the Tories’ most important cash supporters.
Her largesse seems directed at whoever is the Conservative leader. In 2014, she paid £160,000 at a Tory fundraiser to play tennis with Cameron and Johnson, then the PM and London mayor. She paid £135,000 in April 2019 for a dinner at the luxury Goring hotel with Theresa May, also then the PM, and several female cabinet members. Other donations have flowed to Brandon Lewis, the former Tory party chairman. He has received £24,500, according to Electoral Commission filings. He defended the donations in media interviews on Thursday. Cash has also gone to Theresa Villiers, who sits on the ISC. In February, Chernukhin spent £45,000 on another game of tennis with Johnson and Ben Elliot, the Tories’ co-chair. 
Chernukhin’s husband served as a Russian minister in 2000, during Putin’s first presidential term. He was chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a bank and state corporation with reported close ties to the Kremlin security establishment. He later left Moscow and became a British citizen in 2011. The couple have an £8m London mansion, owned by an offshore trust, a jet and two yachts.
 Andrei Borodin is the former president of the Bank of Moscow. In 2013, Borodin attended the Conservatives’ summer ball with his wife Tatiana Korsakova, a model, four months after receiving political asylum. He spent £40,000 on a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. The payment was made by Henley Concierge, a firm registered to a cottage on Borodin’s £120m country estate near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.
Super-wealthy businessmen from former Soviet countries also control a dizzying array of UK assets spanning football clubs, oil and gas and multimillion-pound mansions. Their financial clout affords members of this select group considerable influence and access to Britain’s professional and ruling classes.
Perhaps the most high-profile London-based oligarch, thanks to his £140m purchase of Chelsea Football Club in 2003, is Roman Abramovich. The Israeli-Russian billionaire has limited UK business interests outside football, but his extensive property portfolio includes a 15-bedroom mansion in London’s prestigious Kensington Palace Gardens, bought for £90m in 2011.
The Chelsea owner’s wealth is derived partly from proceeds from the controversial privatisation of the oil giant Sibneft after the fall of the Soviet Union. When Sibneft needed an international communications chief it turned to Greg Barker, who would go on to become Conservative energy minister under David Cameron.
Lord Barker of Battle, as he has been known since his elevation to the House of Lords, has also worked for another Russian businessman with the ear of Britain’s powerful elite, Oleg Deripaska.
 Deripaska attracted public attention in 2008 over claims that he discussed making a donation to the Tories with George Osborne, during a meeting held aboard his yacht in the Mediterranean. In 2017, Deripaska listed his En+ energy and metals group on the London Stock Exchange and turned to Lord Barker to serve as its chairman. The Tory peer received a bonus of $4m (£3.14m) after helping Deripaska get the company removed from a list of firms hit by US sanctions.
The legendary oil dealmaker and former BP boss Lord Browne is executive chair of billionaire Mikhaeil Fridman’s Letter One Energy group, which has a one-third stake in the oil and gas company Wintershall DEA. Fridman and Browne enjoy a longstanding business relationship that includes the foundation of TNK-BP, a joint venture involving British oil supermajor BP and a group of three billionaires, including Fridman, under the banner AAR. The relationship between BP and AAR often proved acrimonious and TNK-BP boss Bob Dudley was at one stage forced to flee the country fearing for his safety. After a power struggle, AAR eventually sold its half in the venture to Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft. That deal left BP with a near-20% stake in the Kremlin-backed company, making cordial Russian relations vital for BP. Rival Shell also has interests in Russia via the huge Sakhalin-2 offshore gas project.
One of the other billionaires behind AAR, Sir Leonard (Len) Blavatnik, also wields significant influence in the UK. Blavatnik was born in Odessa, in Soviet Ukraine, but has renounced Russian citizenship and is a dual US-UK citizen. Blavatnik has amassed a vast business empire, including Warner Music. He endowed Oxford University by spending £75m to found the Blavatnik School of Government. He also sponsors the Baillie Gifford literature prize and is the main benefactor of multiple London museums and art galleries. Like Abramovich, he owns a mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, a property that has been valued at up to £200m.
But that pales in comparison to the estimated price tag on Witanhurst, often referred to as Britain’s most expensive home. The mansion in London’s upmarket Highgate was bought for £50m in 2008 by the family of the Russian fertiliser baron Andrey Guryev, through an offshore company called Safran Holdings, located in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. It has been valued at more than £300m after extensive refurbishment.
Arsenal Football Club, in which the Uzbek-born Russian metals, mining and publishing billionaire Alisher Usmanov was a long-time shareholder – even at one time considering a full takeover. Ultimately he sold his shares for £550m in 2018 to the US sports tycoon Stan Kroenke.
Another of London’s most successful Russian businessmen is Andrey Andreev. He has made a fortune of close to £1bn by founding dating apps, including the female-focused Bumble and Badoo.

Lockdown and Women’s Empowerment

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School closures are putting young girls at risk of early marriage, unintended pregnancies and female genital mutilation (FGM). 



 A recent analysis has revealed that if the COVID-19 lockdown continues for six months, the disruptions in preventive programmes may result in an additional 13 million child marriages, seven million unintended pregnancies and two million cases of FGM between now and 2030.  Globally 243 million girls and women (aged 15-49 years) have been subjected to sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in the past 12 months. Yet, nearly 50 countries have no laws that specifically protect women from such violence. 



  2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights and gender equality. It was supposed to have been a ground-breaking year for gender equality, but the novel coronavirus pandemic has instead widened inequalities for girls and women across every sphere – from education and health to employment and security. It has increased women’s unpaid workload and aggravated the risk of domestic violence. 

Gabriela Cercós, 24, from Barueri, a municipality in Brazil’s São Paulo state, told IPS, “Women, who work from home are overburdened with housework, home schooling and looking after their children. In isolation, domestic violence has grown. Recently my close friend was assaulted, but she didn’t report the incident because she has a child and she can’t afford to be a single mother.” 
As COVID-19 cases spiral, lockdowns are being extended, further isolating women living with abusive, controlling and violent partners. Civil society organisations are reporting an escalation in calls for help to domestic violence helplines and shelters across the world. But for every call for help, there are several others who are unable to seek support.
As security, health and money worries heighten, and the stress is compounded by cramped and confined living conditions, these numbers will soar, according to United Nations Women. 
“Before COVID-19, we already knew that every country in the world would need to speed up progress to achieve gender equality by 2030. And we also know that disease outbreak affects women and men differently and exacerbates gender inequalities. That’s why to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and have a strong response and recovery to COVID-19, we must apply a gender lens in order to address the unique needs of girls and women, and leverage their unique expertise. Without this gender lens, we can’t truly ‘Build Back Better,’” Susan Papp, Women Deliver’s managing director for Policy and Advocacy, told IPS.
Essential maternal healthcare and family planning needs of girls and women have also been adversely impacted by reallocation of resources to contain the pandemic. 
“The impact of COVID-19 across Africa on women, girls and youth in particular has been immense. The pandemic closed more than 1,400 service delivery points across IPPF’s member countries, including nearly 450 mobile clinics, which are vital to reach rural populations, and in humanitarian settings so often poor and underserved,” International Planned Parenthood Federation’s (IPPF) Africa Regional Director Marie-Evelyne Pétrus-Barry told IPS. 
IPPF is one of some 400 organisations and diverse partners that have joined the Deliver for Good campaign by committing to deliver for girls and women. 
“Twenty of our African member associations reported shortages of sexual and reproductive health commodities within weeks of COVID-19 appearing. We’re now seeing the impact on our ability to deliver services, despite the very best efforts of our members to adapt to new ways of working. 
“The number of services delivered to young clients in Benin between March and May fell by more than 50 percent compared with the same time last year. In Uganda the fall was 47 percent. These are devastating figures, and the impact on women, girls and youth will be have a very negative impact on the development, livelihood and human rights of African women, girls and youth,” Pétrus-Barry added.
Women are primary caregivers, nurturing their own families, and they are also serving as frontline responders in the health and service sectors. Globally, women make up 70 percent of the health workforce – nurses, midwives and community health workers. They also comprise the majority of staff in health facility services, such as cleaning, laundry and catering. 
The pandemic has compounded the economic woes of women and girls, who generally earn less, work in insecure informal jobs and have little savings. Many women work in market or street vending, depending on public spaces and social interactions, which have now been restricted to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Almost 510 million or 40 percent of all employed women globally work in the four economic sectors – accommodation, food, sales and manufacturing – worst affected by the pandemic.
Cercós, who worked in hospitality at one of the international hotel chains earning a monthly income of BRL 2200 ($ 412) before the pandemic, is now on unemployment insurance. She’s just received the first of four instalments of BRL 1700 ($ 319) each.
“It is very difficult to get a job now. I have been having anxiety attacks. I am afraid to leave home and I am trying not to sink into depression. Some days are harder than others and the news doesn’t help,” she said.
This year, some 49 million extra people may fall into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis. In June, at the launch of the policy brief on food security, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ warned that the number of people who are acutely food or nutrition insecure will rapidly expand.  He is urging governments to put gender equality at the centre of their recovery efforts.
Gerda Verburg, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement coordinator and U.N. Assistant Secretary-General, noted that gender equality (SDG 5), good nutrition and zero hunger (SDG 2) are intrinsically linked. SUN is also a partner organisation for the Deliver for Good campaign, prioritising action and investments for girls and women.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic reared its head, progress was stalling in these areas, alongside needed climate action. Although the impacts of the coronavirus on women’s and girls’ nutrition and food security are yet to be seen, there is no doubt that the loss of livelihoods and food system disruptions – disproportionally affecting women and the future perspectives of young women – will push countries even further from reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and ensuring a more equal world, free from hunger and malnutrition in all its forms,” Verburg told IPS.

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