“We have no choice but to take food from the hungry to feed the starving.” – the chief executive of the World Food Programme (WFP), David Beasley
‘Take from the hungry to feed the starving’: UN faces awful dilemma | Aid | The Guardian
Heat or Eat?
Millions of people face the dilemma of cutting spending on food and clothing to pay their energy bill, one supplier’s boss has said.
Bill Bullen, chief executive of Utilita – which serves prepayment meter customers – said government financial support was not directed sufficiently to those who needed it most. Bullen argued that the rise was inadequately focussed, leaving millions of people facing tough choices on their family budgets.
“They just do not have the money,” he said.
He said ministers should spend money on “insulating the hell out of Britain”.
Millions of households are facing a 54% rise in the cost of a typical annual gas and electricity bill, to about £2,000, when the regulator’s new, higher price cap takes effect on 1 April.
The price rise for prepayment meter customers, who can include some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society, is slightly higher. The increase for prepayment meter customers is typically £708 a year.
Cost of living: Calls for targeted help to cut energy bills – BBC News
Capitalism in action
The five largest firms in Switzerland according to annual turnover are not banks or pharmaceuticals but commodity traders. Most of the 900 companies that trade raw materials are based in Geneva, Zug or Lugano. According to a Swiss government report from 2018, the trade volume reaches almost $1 trillion ($903.8 billion).
It is one of the most important trading hubs for raw materials in the world. About a third of the oil that is traded globally is bought and sold in Geneva. Two-thirds of the trade in base metals such as zinc, copper and aluminum are conducted in Switzerland, as are two-thirds of the trade in grain.
Oliver Classen, media officer at the Swiss NGO Public Eye, says that “this sector accounts for a much larger part of the GDP in Switzerland than tourism or the machinery industry.”
Gas and oil exports are the main source of income for Russian President Vladimir Putin. They account for 30 to 40% of the Russian budget. In 2021, Russian state corporations earned around $180 billion (€163 billion) from oil exports alone. This is money now being used to finance the war in Ukraine.
As long as politicians keep debating and Western countries do not impose sanctions on raw materials, Swiss commodity traders will continue making millions from Russian raw materials and help to fill Putin’s war coffers.
80% of Russian raw materials are traded via Switzerland. Russian oil and gas flows largely thanks to deals signed on Swiss desks. Swiss commodity traders continued to turn a blind eye to what the Russian state was doing with this money.
Angela Mattli, joint managing director at Public Eye, said she deplored the fact that all of this was “quite legal within the framework of Swiss legislation, which had huge loopholes for commodity traders.”
Raw materials are often traded directly between governments and via commodities exchanges. However, they can also be traded freely, and Swiss companies have specialized in direct sales. One important reason is that in Switzerland there is certainly enough of the most important raw material for the commodities trade — capital.
Depending on the current price of crude oil, a tanker load can cost $100 million — money that most companies do not have to hand. Certain instruments for handling such business have been developed in Switzerland. In raw materials transactions, letters of credits or L/Cs are often used. A bank will give a loan to a trader and as collateral receive a document making it the owner of the commodity. As soon as the buyer pays the bank, the document and thus ownership of the commodity are transferred to him/her. The system gives traders more credit lines without their creditworthiness having to be checked, and the bank has the value of the commodity as security.
This is an example of transit trade, where only the money flows through Switzerland. The raw materials usually do not touch Swiss soil but go directly from the country of origin to the recipient country. Thus, no details about the magnitude of the transaction land on the desk of the Swiss customs authority. The Swiss National Bank publishes certain details but no precise information about the flow of raw materials. What is clear is that everything is unclear.
“The whole commodities trade is under-recorded and underregulated,” said Elisabeth Bürgi Bonanomi, a senior lecturer in law and sustainability at Bern University. “You have to dig around to collect data and not all information is available.”
Who is buying what from whom at what price remains in the dark. The owners of unlisted commodity trading companies in Switzerland are mostly unknown. “There are quite a few companies that fly under the radar of the authorities and whose actual beneficiaries are not known because, for example, they are managed in opaque offshore holdings,” said Classen. This makes for a good investment opportunity for Russian oligarchs.
The lack of regulation is very appealing to commodity traders — especially because many raw materials are mined in non-democratic countries. “Unlike the financial market, where there are rules for tackling money laundering and illegal or illegitimate financial flows, and a financial market supervisory authority, there is currently no such thing for commodity trading,” financial and legal expert at Public Eye David Mühlemann explained.
Oliver Classen from Public Eye revealed that some commodity traders had become lenders to entire countries. Glencore, for example, had given over $1 billion to Chad as credit in return for access to the country’s crude oil reserves.
10 Million Ukrainians Displaced
In addition to the more than 3.1 refugees who have fled Ukraine, the Global Protection Cluster (GPC)—a network NGOs, international groups, and U.N. agencies—said Friday that nearly 6.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) are now seeking safety within the country’s borders.
With a population of 44 million, that means nearly a quarter of all Ukrainians are now displaced either inside or out of the country.
Over 12 million people are estimated to be stranded in affected areas or unable to leave due to heightened security risks, destruction of bridges and roads, as well as lack of resources or information on where to find safety and accommodation.
At least $100 billion worth of infrastructure has so far been destroyed by Russia’s attacks, which have also severely impacted the country’s internal food chain—as well as the global supplies of wheat and other grains, because of disruptions to production and exports.
Rosemary DiCarlo, the U.N. political chief, demanded accountability for civilian casualties and the destruction of infrastructure as well as “intensified” diplomacy.
“There must be a meaningful sustained political process to enable a peaceful settlement,” DiCarlo told the U.N. Security Council. “The lives of millions of Ukrainians and the peace and security of the entire region, and possibly beyond, depend on it.”
Nearly 10 Million Ukrainians Now Displaced by War, Says UN (commondreams.org)
WAR — THE SOCIALIST POSITION
WORDS ARE OUR WEAPON
So capitalism has again unleashed the horrors of war. The Socialist Party’s attitude is clear. Wars are never justified from a working-class point of view. They are fought by capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investments. None of these is issues of concern to workers. The outbreak of any war is an unmitigated disaster for the working class. It is the workers who are hired or conscripted to do the fighting, the destroying, the killing – and the dying. It is workers and their families who suffer from the bombings, the destruction, the restrictions, the food shortages and the disruption to health services that accompany all wars. War brings nothing but suffering and misery.
This is why, as the Socialist Party representing the working-class interest, has been opposed to all wars. Always. We are not prepared to support under any circumstances the killing and maiming of our fellow workers in the pursuit of capitalist profits. Ideally, from the point of view of the working class within capitalism, it would have been better if the capitalists had settled this conflict peacefully and, now that the war has started, it should stop immediately. Unfortunately, this can only be wishful thinking. Capitalism does not work that way. War will always be a policy option invoked by capitalist states from time to time.
The truth is that capitalism is triumphant everywhere because the working class are blind to their own class position, and are still persuaded that they have an interest in leaving power in capitalist hands. It is only a degree worse that in some countries large numbers of workers go further on the road of stupid servility, and help to place power in the hands of demagogues such as Putin. The only people who can end this are the workers themselves. It is the duty of each national section of the working class to struggle against their own capitalist masters, aided to the extent that is possible by the international movement. The way to prevent war is not by engaging in anti-war campaigns. These are quite useless because they leave the causes of war untouched. The only preventative is to take away the urge to war; take away the profit motive. Socialism is the only means to defeat the warmongers.
The Socialist Party has always and everywhere been pro-working class and nothing else. We are internationalists, and our slogan is “The World for the Workers”; not for the British or for the white races, but simply for the workers. Our internationalism rests on a firmer foundation—the sure knowledge that national sections of the working class stand or fall together.
We can reject the notion that human nature is essentially warlike. Mankind’s nature is just what conditions make it, and there are no naturally militarist races. Modern wars have their cause ultimately in economic rivalries and are the unavoidable accompaniment of capitalist civilisation. It is not suggested that tradition, religious beliefs, and racial hostility do not play their part, but these tend more and more to become mere auxiliaries to the main forces—means to the ends of our politicians, and excuses rather than causes. War as we currently see may come at any time unless the workers abolish capitalism. War is competition for profit writ large, the continuation of business by other means. It is not enough for the capitalists that the workers must suffer from continual exploitation, earning only enough to keep them in a fit mental and physical state in order to accrue more profits for their “masters”.
What adds injury to insult is when the workers are conned into fighting workers of other nations suffering under the same exploitative system—all for the right to be exploited by the more affluent victor. The working class has in reality only one enemy: the capitalist system. We denounce the war as yet another example of the barbarous nature of the capitalist system and call upon our fellow workers in all countries to unite even more urgently to bring the war-causing capitalist system to a speedy end by establishing in its place a world socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s resources by all the people of the Earth.
The Rich Profit, The Poor Bear the Pain
When soaring housing costs are taken into account, living standards have been falling for most working-age households since 2002.
House prices have risen 20% since the start of the pandemic and are at a record high, both in absolute terms and relative to earnings.
This leaves growing numbers of people trapped in the private rented sector, where about a third of their income is gobbled up by rent alone. Average rents have risen 8.6% in the past year and now stand at over £1,000 a month. This comes on top of a decade where rents already rose far faster than wages.
Of course, renters’ losses are landlords’ gains. Attracted by these outsize returns, buy-to-let investors have swallowed up a substantial chunk of available homes in recent years.
We see the same patterns elsewhere.
Britain’s childcare system is the third most expensive in the world: bad news for parents but good news for the private equity investors buying up nurseries.
Meanwhile, about £1 in every £10 spent on social care is extracted from the system by highly financialised companies that own and control assets within it – contributing to an eye-watering 30% increase in costs for self-funded care since 2012.
Rail fares have risen 20% in real terms since privatisation
And water bills 40% – with excess profits inflating the latter by an estimated £2.3bn a year.
Meanwhile, as the thinktank Common Wealth points out, the monopoly owners of the electric grid are achieving 40% profit margins, and pay out over £1bn a year to shareholders.
High energy costs may have millions wondering how they will heat their homes, but BP’s chief executive boasted unashamedly that they turn his company into a “cash machine”. BP’s and Shell’s profits soared to a combined $32bn last year, with BP shareholders standing to benefit from a $1.5bn share buyback.
In the US, where corporate power is even more concentrated than in the UK, the real danger is not a wage-price spiral but a “profit-price spiral”.
US corporate profit margins are at a 70-year high, and have risen 37% in the past year alone.
In one survey, more than half of retailers admitted to raising prices by more than their increase in costs – with larger firms most likely to be doing so. The narrative about inflation offers a convenient smokescreen for fattening margins, as investors brazenly admit.
In the words of one asset manager: “What we really want to find are companies with pricing power. In an inflationary environment, that’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
Morgan Stanley recently argued, it’s profits that must shrink to absorb the pain of inflation – making up for decades in which capital has increased its share at the expense of workers and consumers alike.
The Mexican Cartel Carnage
We would imagine elsewhere the death totals of civilans would be headline news and international action demanded to bring peace.
Disappearances are considered the perfect crime because without a body, there’s no crime. And the cartels are expert at ensuring that there is no body.
The phenomenon of Mexico’s disappearances exploded in 2006 when the government declared war on the drug cartels. For years, the government looked the other way as violence increased and families of the missing were forced to become detectives. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s government was the first to recognize the extent of the problem, to talk of “extermination sites” and to mount effective searches.
It wasn’t until 2018 — the end of the last administration — that a law passed, laying the legal foundations for the government to establish the National Search Commission. There followed local commissions in every state; protocols that separated searches from investigations, and a temporary and independent body of national and international technical experts supported by the U.N. to help clear the backlog of unidentified remains.
The national commission, which was supposed to have 352 employees this year, still has just 89. And Macías’ state commission has 22 positions budgeted, but has only filled a dozen
Nearly 100,000 disappearances. There are 52,000 unidentified people in morgues and cemeteries.
And people continue to disappear. And more remains are found.
There is no progress in bringing the guilty to justice.
More than 1,600 investigations into disappearances by authorities or cartels opened by the attorney general’s office, none made it to the courts in 2020.
a member of the Tijuana cartel confessed to having “cooked” some 300 victims in caustic lye. Eight years later, a report from a public university investigation center showed that what officially had been a jail in the border city of Piedras Negras, was actually a Zetas command center and crematorium.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-mexico-caribbean-forensics-4248edf042a13cce16801d58ee6ffea2
Marx Cancelled
Are universities really places of higher learning?
The University of Florida has changed the names of one of its library study rooms that was called the “Karl Marx Group Study Room.”
“Given current events in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world, we determined it was appropriate to remove the name of Karl Marx that was placed on a group study room at the University of Florida in 2014,” Hessy Fernandez, the school’s director of strategic communications.
Are these academics even aware that Marx was born in Trier which was in the Rhineland that later became part of Germany and not Russia. Did this education establishment know Marx wanted a class-free state-free society with no top-down control, or that Russia has a capitalist economy? Didn’t their politics or history department explain that Marx was virulently anti-Russian and supported the independence of Poland as a buffer against the autocratic Tsar?
University of Florida strips study room of ‘Karl Marx’ nameplate | Washington Examiner
An Unequal World
Inequality contributes to the deaths of at least 21,300 people each day—or one person every four seconds.
This is a “highly conservative estimate” for deaths resulting from hunger, lack of access to healthcare and climate breakdown in poor countries.
Oxfam outlines the fact that the climate crisis is one of the most harmful drivers of inequality.
Since the covid pandemic began, a new billionaire has been created every 26 hours. The world’s small elite of 2,755 billionaires has seen its fortunes grow more during Covid-19 than they have in the whole of the last fourteen years combined, says Oxfam in its report about inequality.
“This is the biggest annual increase since records began. It is taking place on every continent.”
It is enabled by skyrocketing stock market prices, a boom in unregulated entities, a surge in monopoly power and privatisation, alongside the erosion of individual corporate tax rates and workers’ rights and wages.
“Over the past two years, people have died when they contracted an infectious disease because they did not get vaccines in time. They have died of other illnesses because they could not afford private care. They have died of hunger because they could not afford to buy food…And while they died, the richest people in the world got richer than ever and some of the largest companies made unprecedented profits.”
“The climate crisis affects us all, but it doesn’t affect us equally. The richest 1% of people in the world, about 63 million people, are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the 3.1 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”
Since 2000, the UN estimates that 1.23 million people have died and 4.2 billion have been affected by droughts, floods and wildfires. We all suffer from a heating planet when rich countries fail to address the effects of their responsibility for an estimated 92% of all excess historic emissions.”
The number of climate-related disasters has tripled in 30 years, with currently one extreme weather event recorded per week.
Last year, Oxfam reports, the world saw a record 50 billion US dollars worth of damages from extreme weather disasters exacerbated by climate change, pushing nearly 16 million people in 15 countries to crisis levels of hunger.
“People in low-and lower-middle-income countries are around five times more likely than people in high-income countries to be displaced by sudden extreme weather disasters.”
Destructive weather, rising seas, unprecedented fires and historic famines. “Climate change is happening now. It is one of the most harmful drivers of worsening hunger, migration, poverty and inequality all over the world.”
“In recent years, already with 1°C of global heating, there have been deadly cyclones in Asia and Central America, huge locust swarms across Africa.”
Inequality is not an abstract issue, affirms Oxfam “It has devastating, real-world consequences… It is rigged into our economic systems and is tearing our societies apart.”
According to a World Bank’s report, four out of five people below the international poverty line still live in rural areas, and half of the poor are children. Women also represent a majority of the poor in most regions and among some age groups.
Of the global poor aged 15 and older, about 70% have no schooling or only some basic education.
And more than 40% of the global poor live in economies affected by conflict and violence, and, in some economies, most of the poor are concentrated in specific subnational areas. About 132 million of the global poor live in areas with high flood risk.
Inequality Kills One Person Every Four Seconds | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
The not so golden years
One in five pensioners – more than 2 million people – are living in relative poverty in the UK, an increase of more than 200,000 in the past year alone.
Inequalities within older generations are some of the most extreme in society today: the wealth of the richest 20% doubled between 2002 and 2018, while that of the poorest 20% fell by 30%.
There are differences of up to 10 years in the lifespan of rich and poor pensioners and more than 17 years’ difference in the time that pensioners get in good health without a disabling illness.
Experts are concerned that people who have not yet reached pension age will fare even worse in retirement. The proportion of older people aged 55 to 64 who rent rather than own their home has reached an all-time high of 11%, compared with 6% a decade ago.
There are almost 11 million people aged 65 and over in England today, 19% of the total population. In 10 years’ time this will have increased to more than 13 million people, 22% of the population.
The state pension age has risen to 66 but employment rates among people approaching retirement age have fallen to their lowest levels since 2016. The employment rate gap between older and younger workers is now wider than two years ago. The number of people aged 50 to 64 who are not working or looking for work has increased by 228,000 since the start of the pandemic. The employment rate in this group has fallen by 1.8 percentage points.
Caroline Abrahams, the charity director at Age UK, said: “The numbers of older people living below the poverty line seem to be inexorably rising. It’s these older people, and others whose incomes take them just above the poverty line, who are being badly hurt by the surge in energy prices.
“There is no obvious way out for them if they can’t afford their bills, except to economise on other essentials, but that’s the recipe for a miserable existence and one that can even put their health at risk.”
Number of pensioners in relative poverty in UK up 200,000 in a year | Older people | The Guardian