The Roma in the Czech Republic makes up just 2 percent of the country’s 10 million. The community struggles with discrimination in education, housing and employment. Ghettos, rife with rubbish and disease, scar towns and cities.

Stanislav Tomas,  a 46-year-old Roma man, in Teplice, a small city close to the Czech Republic’s northern border with Germany,  died after police knelt on his neck for more than six minutes. Many see similarities with the murder of George Floyd. The incident has shone a light once more on the plight of the large Roma communities that live in Central Europe, who face deep discrimination, and often abuse, at the hands of police and authorities. Reports of casual mistreatment by police and other authorities are common across the country. The Council of Europe and Amnesty International have called for an independent investigation into the incident

“The Czech police are racist,” said 38-year-old Milan. “We don’t believe anything they say.”

“This isn’t the first time the police have killed Roma,” said Jan Cervenak. “No one believes them about what happened here.”

There has been a deafening silence from across the political spectrum. Several political parties did not respond to questions from Al Jazeera.

“There’s no political advantage to be gained by supporting the Roma community,” suggested activist Gwendolyn Albert.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis certainly sees little potential. Within two days of Tomas’s death, he expressed his full support for the police.

One local woman, echoing claims made to Czech media, says that police have made witnesses sign agreements not to discuss the incident. She says people in the neighbourhood are scared of the police.

Police forced several witnesses to delete videos of the incident from their phones.

Roma see little hope as they mourn ‘Czech George Floyd’ | Roma News | Al Jazeera

 This week in the Pacific north-west, temperature records were being broken. Temperatures reached 47.9C in British Columbia, Canada, temperatures more typically found in the Sahara desert, dozens have died of heat stress, with “roads buckling and power cables melting”.

Another heatwave earlier in June saw five Middle East countries top 50°C. The extreme heat reached Pakistan, where 20 children in one class were reported to have fallen unconscious and needed hospital treatment for heat stress. 

Additional warming from greenhouse gas emissions means that such extreme heatwaves are more likely and scientists can now calculate the increase in their probability. For example, the 2019 European heatwave that killed 2,500 people was five times more likely than it would have been without global warming.

Extreme heatwaves outside the usual range for a region will cause problems, from disrupting the economy to widespread mortality, particularly among the young and old. Yet in places in the Middle East and Asia, something truly terrifying is emerging: the creation of unliveable heat.

While humans can survive temperatures of well over 50C when humidity is low, when both temperatures and humidity are high, neither sweating nor soaking ourselves can cool us. What matters is the “wet-bulb” temperature – given by a thermometer covered in a wet cloth – which shows the temperature at which evaporative cooling from sweat or water occurs. Humans cannot survive prolonged exposure to a wet-bulb temperature beyond 35C because there is no way to cool our bodies. Not even in the shade, and not even with unlimited water.

A 35C wet-bulb temperature was once thought impossible. But last year scientists reported that locations in the Persian Gulf and Pakistan’s Indus River valley had already reached this threshold, although only for an hour or two, and only over small areas. As climate change drives temperatures upwards, heatwaves and accompanying unliveable temperatures are predicted to last longer and occur over larger areas and in new locations, including parts of Africa and the US south-east, over the decades to come.

 Heatwaves intensify inequality. Poorer neighbourhoods typically have fewer green spaces and so heat up more, while outdoor workers, often poorly paid, are especially vulnerable. The rich also buy up cooling equipment at high prices once a heatwave is underway and have many more options to flee, underscoring the importance of public health planning.

Heat can cause havoc with crop production. In Bangladesh, just two days of hot air in April this year destroyed 68,000 hectares of rice, affecting over 300,000 farmers with losses of US$39m (£28m). 

Canada is a warning: more and more of the world will soon be too hot for humans | Simon Lewis | The Guardian

  More money is being spent destroying the environment than protecting it,  according to the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC).

The government’s 25-year environment plan to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 and its promise to deliver biodiversity net gain on infrastructure projects look good on paper, but inadequate monitoring and a lack of compliance mean the government is not delivering on them. Nature is still not being taken into account in policymaking. Funding cuts and a lack of ecological expertise in government and local authorities is worsening the situation, MPs said.

Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “We are losing species at a terrifying rate and multiple warnings are not being heeded. The collapse in biodiversity has to be pushed up the political agenda, and nature protection and restoration given the priority and resources it needs, before it’s too late. The Treasury still sticks to an outdated mindset, which sees GDP growth as the key measure of progress and nature as an expendable resource. That has to change, as the report makes clear.”

Philip Dunne, chairman of the committee, said despite countless policies to improve the natural environment, they remain “grandiose statements lacking teeth and devoid of effective delivery mechanisms”.

Tories’ ‘toothless’ UK policies failing to halt drastic loss of wildlife | Wildlife | The Guardian

 JULY 2021 PDF

 Sir Michael Marmot, director of the UCL Institute for Health Equity and a leading authority on public health,  revealed the coronavirus death rate in Greater Manchester was 25% higher than the England average during the year to March, leading to “jawdropping” falls in life expectancy and widening social and health inequalities across the region over the past year.

His latest report shows life expectancy in north-west England fell in 2020 by 1.6 years for men and 1.2 years for women in 2020, compared with 1.3 years and 0.9 years across England as a whole. Within the region, life expectancy dipped most sharply in the poorer areas. Such a rapid decline was in life expectancy terms “enormous”, Marmot said.

The deteriorating health equalities picture in the region and across similarly deprived areas of the country as a result of longstanding, avoidable socioeconomic inequities and ethnic disadvantage, exacerbated by a decade of spending cuts and amplified by Covid and the effect of prolonged lockdowns, he said.

The findings of the Greater Manchester report were “generalisable” across other deprived areas of England, added Marmot, saying: “It’s pretty bad for life chances to live in poorer parts of London, too. Levelling up shouldn’t only be about the Midlands and the north-east and the north-west of England. Deprived parts of London need attention as well.”

Life expectancy had gone down all around the country but the degree to which people were affected depended on two things: level of deprivation and the region of the country in which they lived. A decade of government spending cuts had left the poorest parts of England in a weakened state when Covid hit in 2020, and there was an urgent need to do things differently, Marmot said, adding that as the UK emerges from the pandemic it would be a “tragic mistake to attempt to re-establish the status quo that existed before”.

Covid-19 mortality rates varied within the region from around 400 males per 100,000 in the poorer boroughs such as Salford and Tameside to fewer than 250 per 100,000 in more affluent Trafford. For women, they ranged from just under 250 per 100,000 in Manchester, to 150 per 100,000 in Stockport. Almost all local authority areas in the region had mortality rates above the England and Wales average.

As well as damaging communities and harming health prior to the pandemic, funding cuts had “harmed local governments’ capacity to prepare for and respond to the pandemic and have left local authorities in a perilous condition to manage rising demand and in the aftermath of the pandemic,” the report said. 

Even before the pandemic, the UK had witnessed a stagnation in health improvement that was the second-worst in Europe and widening health inequalities between rich and poor. “That stagnation, those social and regional health inequalities, the deterioration in health for the most deprived people, are markers of a society that is not functioning to meet the needs of its members.”

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester,  said: “The pandemic has brutally exposed just how unequal England actually is. People have lived parallel lives over the last 18 months. People in low-paid, insecure work have often had little choice in their level of exposure to Covid, and the risk of getting it and bringing it back home to those they live with.

Life expectancy key to success of levelling up in UK’s poorer areas | Greater Manchester | The Guardian

 The smoke ventilation system at Grenfell Tower was “woefully inadequate”, breached building regulations and is likely to have contributed to deaths.

The network of ducts and vents was supposed to keep the building’s common parts clear for escape but it failed, allowing thick smoke to spread through hallways making evacuation harder.

The smoke control system installed as part of the refurbishment completed a year before the fire “actively posed a very significant hazard to life safety”. Dr Barbara Lane, a leading fire engineer providing expert evidence to the inquiry, has concluded it breached building regulations and British standards performance criteria.

 Dense smoke filled the hallways, making it impossible for many people on the upper floors to escape, and a coroner investigating the 72 deaths, Dr Fiona Wilcox, has said most of the victims succumbed to smoke inhalation.

 Experts repeatedly warned the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) the system was not working properly and breached fire regulations. In 2014 the London fire brigade also issued a deficiency notice because a quarter of the smoke vents did not work.

A replacement system installed during the disastrous 2014-16 refurbishment should not have been approved by building control officers at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council. It failed to account for the possibility that multiple flat doors might be opened as occupants escaped or that firefighters might prop open stair or lobby doors with fire hoses, all of which happened on the night of the fire when some dampers did not close properly and others leaked. Checks on the system were “inadequate” and this was “brought into sharp focus by the lamentable events just days before the fire”, Barwise said, when the main refurbishment contractor, Rydon, noticed the vents were not working. A quotation obtained by JS Wright, the subcontractor that installed the ventilation, to get its designer to fix the system was not acted upon.

Grenfell smoke ventilation ‘woefully inadequate’, inquiry told | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

 All Socialist Party meetings/talks/discussions are currently online on Discord. Please contact spgb.discord@worldsocialism.org for instructions on how to join.

 

Friday 9 July 19.30 (GMT + 1)

Poverty

Speaker: Paul Bennett

Poverty need not mean destitution: it can be described as people being excluded from what others take for granted, such as decent living conditions. In this talk, we will look at the extent of poverty both in the UK (homelessness, food banks, etc) and globally. We will also examine the consequences and causes of poverty. And we will argue that the world can produce enough goods and services for poverty to be completely unnecessary.

 

 

Friday 16 July 19.30 (GMT + 1)

The Highland Clearances

Speaker: Alwyn Edgar

Thanks to Marx’s mention of it in Capital, the Duchess of Sutherland’s clearance of her vast estate in the first part of the 19th century is notorious. But it wasn’t just her. This talk explains how the Scottish Highlands came to be depopulated in the 18th and 19th centuries and why.

 

Friday 30 July 19.30 (GMT + 1)

For and Against Anthropocentrism

Speaker: Mark Z

“In religious fantasy, God made man the centre of the universe. In material fact capitalism has alienated him from it.” (Ted Wilmott, Socialist Standard, October 1959). The concept of a human-centred world is a double-edged sword: it can be an inspiring vision of a society of true equality (contra the claims of religion and capital), but it can also neglect the needs of other sentient beings and the planet itself.

 Donald Parkinson’s essay on the “Revolutionary Minimum/Maximum programme” reopens the debate that took place amongst English-speaking Social Democrats at the turn of the 20th century as to whether or not a Socialist party should have a minimum programme (of measures to be implemented under capitalism, by the capitalist state) in addition to the maximum programme of common ownership and democratic control of the means of production (to be implemented by the working class once it had won political power). Some, such as Daniel De Leon and the Socialist Labor Party of America, argued against this. The same position was taken in Britain by the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Founded in 1904 as a breakaway from the Social Democratic Federation, the SPGB is in a line of descent from the French Parti Ouvrier as seen from the similarities in the wording of its declaration of principles. However, the SPGB adopted only the maximum programme set out in the POF’s preamble, rejecting adding a programme of immediate demands and has always refused to have one, campaigning for socialism and only socialism.

The reason for this rejection was not rejection of the demands as such — some such as political democracy and health and safety at work legislation are clearly beneficial for workers. It was because advocating them ran the risk of a socialist party being transformed into a reformist party, i.e., a party seeking only political and social reforms within capitalism, with the maximum programme relegated to the status of a long-term aim evoked only on ceremonial occasions.

The history of the Social Democratic parties of the pre-WWI Second International bears this out, amply. The support they built up, as expressed in votes in elections, was on the basis of their minimum not the maximum programme. What these supporters wanted were the proposed democratic and social reforms, not socialism. The parties became the prisoners of their non-socialist voters. Since socialism can only be established when a majority of workers have come to want and understand it and democratically organise to take political action to get it, this meant that these parties became useless as instruments for furthering the maximum programme.

The danger of lapsing into reformism from having a minimum programme of reforms, to be achieved under capitalism and implemented by the capitalist state, exists irrespective of the reasons invoked for having one. This applies to the Trotskyists’ “transitional demands”, which Donald Parkinson quite rightly rejects as dishonest and manipulative, but also to the alternative theoretical justification for one that he offers. A reform programme will always attract people who want the reforms; support built on that basis is built on sand as far as furthering the cause of socialism is concerned. Support needs to be built directly for socialism.

Adam Buick, 

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

The racial wealth gap is primarily based on differences in home appreciation values: Black families historically had homes that did not appreciate and often went down in value. Segregated housing creates segregated schools: 75% of students in primary and secondary schools are assigned based on where they live. The racial impacts of the criminal justice system are rooted in racial segregation. 

Home values are twice as high in highly segregated white neighborhoods as in segregated neighborhoods of color. Poverty rates are three times greater in highly segregated neighborhoods of color. Life expectancy is starkly different. Every outcome that matters in life is shaped by environment. That’s what we mean by structural racism. It’s not about racial prejudice. It’s about the system and environment in which we live.

Segregation is not about separating people on the basis of their skin color: what it’s about is separating people from resources based on their skin color. It’s about putting people of color in neighborhoods that have less resources, fewer public goods – and predatory finance, harmful environmental exposure, and so on. Segregation is the most efficient way to do that. It’s about efficiency. You can spend all the money you want to try to compensate it: you will never fully overcome the disparity.

Anyone arguing just for redistribution to equalize equality of opportunity – you’re essentially saying, let’s make things separate but equal. When have things ever been separate but equal? It’s a fundamental fallacy. White people are not going to tolerate spending eight times as much in a black school as in a white school to create equality of opportunity. It’s unsustainable.

Racial inequality is a byproduct of self-interested behavior among the most powerful. The wealthy are channeled into the top zip codes, and the people who run those municipalities may be progressive politically, and pro-Black Lives Matter, but they want to protect their investment, and they will enact policies that minimize tax base outlays and maximize property values.

‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US | US news | The Guardian

 The exact cause of the collapse of a 12-storey building in the Miami disaster that befell the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside has yet to be fully determined, but already it has raised questions as to the role played by the climate crisis, and whether the severe vulnerability of south Florida to the rising seas may lead to the destabilization of further buildings in the future.

It has highlighted the precarious situation of buildings and maintaining high-rise apartments in an area under increasing pressure from sea-level rise. Experts say that while the role of the rising seas in this collapse is still unclear, the integrity of buildings will be threatened by the advance of salty water that pushes up from below to weaken foundations.

“When this building was designed 40 years ago the materials used would not have been as strong against saltwater intrusion, which has the potential to corrode the concrete and steel of the foundations,” said Zhong-Ren Peng, professor and director of the University of Florida’s International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design. “Cracks in the concrete allows more seawater to get in, which causes further reactions and the spreading of cracks. If you don’t take care of it, that can cause a structure failure.”

Champlain Towers South was built near the coast of what is a narrow barrier island flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Biscayne Bay on the other. Such barrier islands naturally shift position over time due to the pounding ocean, requiring a certain amount of engineering to keep them fixed in place.

Most of south Florida is just a few feet above sea level at a time when the region is experiencing a rapid increase in sea level, due to the human-caused climate crisis. Compounding this problem, the region sits upon limestone, a porous rock that allows rising seawater to bubble up from below.

This scenario means that Miami residents have become used to flooded car garages and water seeping up from drains onto roads, even on sunny days. The city is planning to build a major new sea wall to keep the ocean at bay but there is no simple defense against water rising from underfoot, placing the foundations of buildings at risk of being gnawed away by seawater.

The land beneath Champlain Towers South is also, unusually for eastern Florida, subsiding, according to a study released last year that found the condo was subsiding into the ground at a rate of around 2mm a year throughout the 1990s. Shimon Wdowinski, a professor with Florida International University’s Institute of Environment who conducted the research, said he was “shocked” to see the building collapse and didn’t immediately connect it to his study.

The region abuts seas that are about 8in higher than they were a century ago and this pace will quicken – with another 17in of sea level expected by 2040. Depending on the melting of the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, south Florida could be assailed by a foot of extra sea level a decade in the second half of this century, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami.

“It’s going to be an enormous to impossible job everywhere to deal with that,” Wanless said. “The sea level rise is accelerating and will do so more dramatically than most people anticipate. Every sandy barrier island, every low-lying coast, from Miami to Mumbai, will become inundated and difficult to maintain functional infrastructure. You can put valves in sewers and put in sea walls but the problem is the water will keep coming up through the limestone. You’re not going to stop this.”