The Socialist Party represent an idea which is unfashionable these days, an idea which is ignored by the media, dismissed coldly by politicians, and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo to stay put. This idea is the cooperative commonwealth.

 You already know that in our world, private property is king, and that the rich make the rules. You probably know that only about 5 percent of the world’s population is rich, while 95 percent does all the work and lives in varying degrees of poverty, debt and stress. You may have concluded that this situation causes everything from street crime to international warfare, and you have almost certainly suffered yourself from the effects of overwork, deprivation and other people’s “anti-social” behaviour. Considering that private property society, or capitalism in its developed form, was built by human beings, it is an amazingly anti-social and unfriendly system, and it brings out the worse in us. We treat each other with suspicion and we treat the planet with contempt.  

This state of affairs is bad news all round, but what can be done?

 The politicians’ response is to ignore the problem and talk about trivia instead, hoping nobody will notice. Look at their manifestos. That’s why nothing changes. Our response is direct, and simple: the 95 percent need to sort their act out and abolish the private property principle, that mutual agreement that says one person has the right to own and keep what other people need, even if they should die because of it. And every single day, people are dying because of it. The real enemy of humanity is not a person or a group of rich people, it is simply this agreement.

Privately-owned property is an anachronism in this day and age. There is enough food in the world to make every individual fat. There are ten empty houses to every homeless person. Technology is producing abundance so fast that commodity prices keep collapsing, yet nobody has yet recognised what this all means. It means that there is a higher level of civilisation, of science, or arts, of culture, of personal fulfilment, waiting to come after capitalism—an advanced society which, because it has abolished scarcity, does not contain all the horrors that have dogged human organisation until now. From the standpoint of such a society, we in capitalism are still living in the Dark Ages, with our wars, famines, pollution and other disasters, and our outlook is suitably bleak. 

 A post-scarcity society seems a dim and distant image, a matter for the 22nd century perhaps, but not now. Lulled by the incessant idiotic chatter of politicians and their meaningless agendas, we do not notice that even now, today, we are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do, as individuals, is take one step forward.

 Business Advice

Become a friend to the Prime Minister,

Who will be always open to offers

For contributions to party coffers,

Which are definitely never sinister,

Just free expressions of philanthropy,

Though the tax breaks are not to be ignored,

Then serve your queen and country as a lord

In the ‘other place’, where you deserve to be.

You must, of course, eschew publicity

For all of your largesse and selfless acts,

Quietly fulfilling government contracts

The electorate do not need to see.

But, if people find out more than they should,

Just insist it’s all for the public good.

D. A.

 “The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate. It does this in the face of the fact that its very preparation for a nuclear war may destroy all life.” –  Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, 1986

 Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islamic practice. Every adult Muslim is required to perform hajj once in a lifetime if they can afford the journey. The Saudi royal family has been  profiting from Hajj and has turned Hajj into a lucrative business. Hajj is a huge asset for the Saudi economy, bringing in about $12 billion annually, and may catch up with oil as the country’s main economic asset. Hajj revenues are expected to reach $150 billion in 2022, according to economic experts.

The Saudi authorities have been attempting to convert Mecca from just a religious capital where pilgrims visit it every year in specific times to a luxury city where people would come for commercial reasons. The House of Saud has issued licenses for the construction of 500 hotels near the Grand Mosque in Mecca. 

Mohammed roughly foretold the marketization of Hajj in one of his hadiths:

 “Near the time of Judgement Day, the rich ones from amongst my people will perform Hajj for the sake of travel and holidays. The middle class will perform Hajj for commercial purposes, thereby transporting goods from here to there while bringing commercial goods from there to here. The scholars will perform Hajj for the sake of show and fame. The poor will perform Hajj for the purpose of begging.”

“In the Land of Invisible Women”, the British-American physician Qanta A. Ahmed writes that to some Saudi women “VIP Hajj meant…being waited on hand and foot and enjoying a sense of superiority over…dark-skinned maids from Mecca, poor women who had to work for a living and chose to make a few extra riyals in Hajj season.” 

While the rich enjoy in their lavish quarters, poor pilgrims – mainly from Africa and South Asia – can be seen sitting, eating and sleeping adjacent to shopping complexes constructed near Kaaba.

Rosie Bsheer argues: “In Mecca…urban redevelopment plans centered on the complete overhaul of the city’s physical, cultural, social, and economic landscape. The multi-billion dollar mega projects have been replacing historical sites, cultural landmarks, and private properties in the neighborhoods circling Mecca’s Grand Mosque. Petro-resources, circulated through Saudi Arabian banks in the form of loans to contractors and Mecca’s real estate market, will turn Central Mecca into a collection of mixed-use developments comprising upscale international hotels and short-term and permanent residences, as well as state-of-the-art commercial facilities and markets…”

The Abraj Al Bait Complex project consists of hotels, malls and apartments, valuing $3 billion, with 15,000 housing units and 70,000 square meters of retail space. Mecca is fast becoming a “Vegas” for wealthy pilgrims, with a hotel that has four helipads, five floors for Saudi royalty, and 10,000 bedrooms on 45 levels, called Abraj Kudai. Along the western edge of the city, Jabal Omar Development has been constructed, a complex that will eventually accommodate 100,000 people in 26 luxury hotels – sitting on a large plinth of 4,000 shops and 500 restaurants, along with its own six-storey prayer hall.

Instead of making Hajj a more egalitarian experience for all Muslims, the Saudi royal family has squandered revenues on perpetrating massacres and wars in Muslim lands, such as the bombing of Yemen, the indirect attacks in Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, and Sudan.

In 2019, Libya’s Grand Mufti Sadiq al-Ghariani called for all Muslims to boycott the pilgrimage and went as far as stating that anyone who embarked on a second hajj was committing a sin, rather than a good deed. 

A year earlier, the association of “Imams and Religious Leaders” in Tunisia released a statement calling upon Tunisians to boycott the pilgrimage, and urging would-be pilgrims to spend their money on disadvantaged groups in the country. The secretary general of the association, Fadil Achour, told Al-Jazeera that Saudi Arabia “spends Muslims’ money on wars against its neighbors rather than creating development opportunities.” 

Profiting from Hajj: Commodification of Spirituality | Countercurrents

101 Nobel laureates published a letter urging world leaders and governments to “keep fossil fuels in the ground” as a critical first step toward addressing the climate emergency. 

The letter notes that the climate emergency “is threatening hundreds of millions of lives, livelihoods across every continent, and is putting thousands of species at risk.” It adds that “the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—is by far the major contributor” to the crisis. The letter concludes. “Allowing the continued expansion of this industry is unconscionable. The fossil fuel system is global and requires a global solution—a solution the Leaders Climate Summit must work towards. And the first step is to keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

101 Nobel Laureates Urge World Leaders to ‘Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground’ | Common Dreams News

 Food aid reliance is set to triple to 3.4 million people in Myanmar within months, the World Food Program has warned. The WFP in its press release blamed three primary causes: Myanmar’s February military coup, “pre-existing poverty,” and the global coronavirus pandemic’s spread across Myamar.

WFP’s director for Myanmar, Stephen Anderson, said families were already “skipping meals” in the 10 poorest suburbs of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.

“More and more poor people have lost their jobs and are unable to afford food,” said Anderson, depicting a “sharp” rise in “hunger and desperation.”

Prices for staples — such as rice and cooking oil — had risen nationwide, especially in Myanmar’s border areas of Chin, Kachin, Rakhine and Shan states. For example, said Anderson, rice prices had soared by up to 43% in some townships of Kachin state and cooking oil by 32%. Prices for fuel had increased by “roughly 30% nationwide,” he said.

“The world must act immediately to address this humanitarian catastrophe.” 

In Myanmar’s eastern Karen border region — near Thailand — 24,000 subsistence rice farmers had been displaced by recent military air and ground mortar strikes, said David Eubank of the Christian aid group, Free Burma Rangers. Unable to safely return home to tend their paddy fields, “you’re looking at a six-month problem of no food,” said Eubank.

UN: 3 million facing hunger in coup-hit Myanmar | News | DW | 22.04.2021

 More than 54,000 food parcels went to children in Wales between April 2020 and March 2021, the Trussell Trust charity says – one parcel every 10 minutes but called the figure “the tip of the iceberg”.

Trussell Trust said it provided 145,828 parcels to adults and youngsters. It said the need for emergency food was driven by poverty, with its research showing 94% of people referred to them were destitute – meaning they cannot afford the essentials. 

High rates of unemployment and record numbers of redundancies meant more people than ever needed social security to provide a “lifeline to stay afloat”, the charity said.

Wales operations manager Susan Lloyd-Selby said no-one “should face the indignity of needing emergency food”. Ms Lloyd-Selby urged voters to write to Senedd candidates asking them to commit to working to end the need for food banks.

Food banks: One parcel given to children in Wales ‘every 10 minutes’ – BBC News

We can assure Lloyd-Selby that the Socialist Party candidate, Brian Johnson for Cardiff Central, has the only answer to the problem of food insecurity and that is a new form of economics – socialism.

Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca—three of the world’s top coronavirus vaccine manufacturers—have paid out a combined $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders over the past year, a sum that could fully fund the cost of inoculating Africa’s entire 1.3 billion-person population.

Pfizer has paid out $8.44 billion in dividends over the past 12 months. Johnson & Johnson, which received $1.5 billion in public money, paid out $10.5 billion in dividends.

Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are projecting revenues of $33.5 billion this year from their mRNA vaccines.

 According to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, “One of the reasons Pharma companies have been able to generate such large profits is because of intellectual property rules that restrict production to a handful of companies,” alluding to an international agreement that bars generic manufacturers from replicating vaccine formulas.

Heidi Chow, senior campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. “It’s morally bankrupt for rich country leaders to allow a small group of corporations to keep the vaccine technology and know-how under lock and key while selling their limited doses to the highest bidder.”

“Vaccine apartheid is not a natural phenomenon but the result of governments stepping back and allowing corporations to call the shots,” said Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam International. “It is appalling that Big Pharma is making huge payouts to wealthy shareholders in the face of this global health emergency.” She continued, “This is a public health emergency, not a private profit opportunity,” Marriott said. “We should not be letting corporations decide who lives and who dies while boosting their profits. We need a people’s vaccine, not a profit vaccine.”

The soaring shares of vaccine makers has created a new wave of billionaires.

BioNTech founder Ugur Sahin is now worth $5.9 billion and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel is worth $5.2 billion.

“Instead of creating new vaccine billionaires,” Marriott observed, “we need to be vaccinating billions in developing countries.”

Big Pharma’s ‘Appalling’ $26 Billion in Shareholder Payouts Could Fund Vaccines for All of Africa: Report | Common Dreams News

 The humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, (MSF), Doctors Without Borders, has pleaded once more for the United States, European Union member nations, and other rich countries to immediately end their opposition to South Africa and India’s patent waiver proposal, which would enable the mass production of generic coronavirus vaccines to meet the developing world’s dire needs.

“In this Covid-19 pandemic, we are once again faced with issues of scarcity, which can be addressed through diversification of manufacturing and supply capacity and ensuring the temporary waiver of relevant intellectual property,” Dr. Maria Guevara, international medical secretary of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. “We urge all countries in opposition to this, including the U.S. and the E.U., to stand on the right side of history and join hands with those in support. It is about saving lives at the end, not protecting systems.”

With strict intellectual property rules in place, low-income countries have been left largely without access to life-saving vaccines as infections continue to surge across the globe, leading experts to fear the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains that could prolong the global pandemic.

However, the U.S. and European countries have repeatedly refused, denying the World Trade Organization (WTO) the consensus support necessary to move forward with the waiver and keeping vaccine production under the control of profit-driven pharmaceutical companies that have lobbied aggressively against the proposal.

Dr. Márcio da Fonseca, infectious disease adviser for Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, said that “we have learned the hard lessons of the past of having to take a country-by-country and product-by-product approach of removing intellectual property barriers impeding access to lifesaving treatments; it is not sufficient and doesn’t provide no expeditious option for this global pandemic. At a time when more than three million lives have already been lost to Covid-19,” da Fonseca added, “we urge countries to take all possible measures, including supporting this waiver, to be able to protect everyone, everywhere during this pandemic.”

‘It Is About Saving Lives’: Doctors Without Borders Calls on US, EU to Stop Blocking Vaccine Patent Waiver | Common Dreams News

Mark Lowcock, the coordinator of the UN’s aid relief operation since 2017 and the UN’s humanitarian agency head,  will say this week that “The humanitarian system is set up to give people in need what international agencies and donors think is best, and what we have to offer, rather than giving people what they themselves say they most need.”

“In Chad and Cox’s Bazar [in Bangladesh] and other places too, people in dire humanitarian need are frequently selling aid they have been given, to buy something else they want more – a clear indication that what is being provided does not meet people’s needs and preferences. After the central Sulawesi earthquake in 2018, almost half of displaced households reported shelter as one of their most important and immediate priorities. Yet only a small fraction of people got immediate help with that. Unfortunately, these are not isolated examples. Last year, more than half the people surveyed in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Somalia and Uganda said that the aid they received did not cover their most important needs. In Chad, only 12% of people surveyed were positive about the aid they received.”

Lowcock admits the need for agencies to be more sensitive to the views of those in need of aid has been part of the development reform agenda for two decades. But there has been limited “piecemeal” progress owing to the lack of any incentive structure for aid agencies to respond.

“In many places, we have information on what people want and how they want it. The problem is we are not consistently acting on that information. Ultimately, organisations or decision-makers can choose to listen to people and be responsive, or they can choose not to. There are no real consequences for the choice they make. There are weak incentives to push them in the right direction.”

“If we hold such a mirror up to the system, humanitarian agencies collectively will see that we are simply not adequately listening and responding to what people say they want.”

Lowcock explains underfunding is unsustainable unless the causes of humanitarian need – famine, displacement, conflict and climate change – are addressed at the source.

“Today one in 33 people worldwide needs humanitarian assistance or protection – more than at any time since the second world war. Almost 80 million people are displaced by conflict and violence. Wars last twice as long as in the early 1990s.”

Humanitarian system is failing people in crisis, says UN aid chief | Humanitarian response | The Guardian