P&O Ferries has sacked 800 seafaring staff with immediate effect, but some crew are defying orders and refusing to leave their ships in protest. Workers are understood to have been told the news on zoom.

 Union RMT said crewmembers were being replaced with foreign labour.

 Ukrainian Plot

Born of revolt, misnamed revolution,

With hammer and sickle gilding the red

Since furled, yet workers still being bled

In cause of nation set against nation.

History’s managers draw, redraw borders,

Lines of convenience too easily crossed;

Capital gains, but then reckon the cost

In lives of those just following orders.

War is grim work and soldiers are workers

Trained and skilled in the old craft of killing

Each other. Whether willing or unwilling

It’d be better by far they were shirkers.

Of all, such is the very worst of toil

For each laid beneath a mean patch of soil.

D. A.

Ever since the Socialist Party was formed in 1904 it has opposed all wars. Our members have suffered imprisonment and persecution rather than fight—and the members of our companion socialist parties have done the same in other parts of the world. It is because we recognise that under capitalism wars arise when rival powers fall out over the control of markets and supplies of raw materials or over the domination of trade routes and spheres of influence. It is this struggle between rival capitalist states which compels countries to maintain armed forces wherever they have interests. But in these struggles, the working class have no interests at stake. We do not appeal to you merely as people who think that war is senseless and want to see an end to it. We appeal to you as working men and women whose interest lies in establishing a world socialist community. The workers are asked to make the supreme sacrifice in the name of patriotism.

The slaughter continues. It is now clear that this was always the intention of Putin. He cynically allowed the diplomatic wrangling to go on so as to buy time to get his forces massing on the borders of Ukraine up to full fighting strength. This done, diplomacy was discarded and the military was given the go-ahead. This war is no different from any of the wars that have taken place in modern times. It’s a business war. Capitalism is driven by the competitive struggle for profits between corporations and states. Conflict, economic, political and, as a last resort, the military is built-in to capitalism over sources of raw materials, investment outlets, markets, trade routes, and strategic points to control and protect these. When a state judges that its “vital interest” is threatened—e.g. needing to secure access to a key raw material, trade route or military outpost – it goes to war. 

Most people would prefer to live in peace. Consequently, massive propaganda exercises are employed by the state to stoke their fears and anxieties. Invariably, they also endeavour to present it as being in some way humanitarian. This is because people have a healthy horror of war. They know war means death and destruction. Death not only of the soldiers on both sides, but also of women, children, the infirm and elderly as “collateral damage” and destruction not only of military installations and hardware but also of bridges, roads, power stations, ports, hospitals and other socially-necessary infrastructure.

Many people’s gut reaction is simply that war is crazy. Socialists share this anti-war sentiment. It is one of the reasons why we are Socialists-real Socialists that is, not supporters of the sort of state capitalist dictatorships that failed in Russia and Eastern Europe, but advocates of a united world community without frontiers based on all the Earth’s resources, natural and industrial, becoming the common heritage of all humanity and being used to satisfy people’s needs instead of for profit. We have concluded that capitalism means war and that therefore to get rid of wars and the threat of wars-and the constant preparation for war represented by maintaining armed forces-you have got to get rid of capitalism.

That voices are raised against the war, millions of voices show that there is hope. Those workers—whose experience of life stems from using their energies and talents to cooperatively solve problems and achieve goals; who realise the potential for mutual dependence and support; who enjoy some security of life won through the class struggle—are determined to oppose the war shows that opposition to war has its basis in material reality rather than mere moral condemnation.

War is completely unnecessary. We are living in a world that has enough resources to provide plenty for all, to eliminate world poverty, ignorance and disease, to provide adequate and comfortable life for everyone on the planet. Yet under capitalism resources are squandered on armaments, of individual as well as of mass destruction, and, as now, in actual war. Even in times of peace -as the armed truce between wars is called – capitalism’s pursuit of profit pollutes and plunders the planet and upsets the balance of nature with potentially devastating consequences. The economic law “no profit, no production” applies implacably, resulting in millions dying of hunger and related diseases every year simply because it is not profitable to produce the food to feed them and, in fact, often while the food that could feed them is destroyed so as to maintain prices and profits.

As world socialists, who are opposed to war and to capitalism which creates it:

· We place on record our horror that capitalism has once again provoked the orgy of death and destruction known as war.

· We extend the hand of friendship to our fellow workers in Ukraine who the political masters in Moscow have designated as targets for destruction.

· We pledge to do all within our means to bring the slaughter to an immediate end.

· We pledge ourselves to continue to work for the establishment of a world socialist society of peace and cooperation.

· We call upon fellow workers everywhere to join in the struggle for One World, One People! Unite for World Socialism!

Moderna’s covid vaccine is one of the most lucrative medicines of all time, bringing in nearly $18bn in revenue for the company in a single year. It’s still some way behind the truly astonishing $37bn which Pfizer’s vaccine made.

Even more astonishing than the sales figures is the profit Moderna made.  According to company accounts, they brought in $13bn in pre-tax profits. That comes to $36m a day throughout 2021, giving Moderna a profit margin of around 70 percent. It’s the kind of margin which you should find on luxury consumer goods, not essential medicines.

And no wonder, when experts have calculated that Moderna’s vaccine could be produced for as little as $2.85 a dose, yet is the most expensive vaccine on the market, averaging between $19 and $24, but costing up to $37 a dose to some countries. In other words, the company could be charging up to 13 times the estimated cost price of its vaccine.

These profits have turned some of Moderna’s investors into multi-billionaires. At one point during the pandemic, Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel, also a major shareholder, was worth over $12bn, and while Moderna’s stock has been volatile, he is still worth $5bn today.

 In Spring 2021, the People’s Vaccine Alliance calculated that the COVID-19 vaccines had actually created nine new billionaires, with Bancel topping the nine, and two of Moderna’s founders and Moderna’s chair also appearing on the list.

 The pharmaceutical sector is built on perverse incentives which encourage secrecy and competition in place of collaboration and which, worst of all, created a terrible inequality in vaccine access which has actually damaged our ability to end this pandemic.

Moderna sold most of its vaccines to the rich world. Back in November 2020, before a single vaccine had been authorised, Moderna had already sold 78 percent of the doses it expected to produce by the end of 2021 to rich countries, home to just 12 percent of the global population. Nearly a year later, in September 2021, the situation had become even worse, with 85 percent of Moderna’s total supply delivered to the richest countries, and almost no doses at all going to low-income countries. While the company has sold a tiny three percent to international distribution mechanism Covax, it still hadn’t actually delivered any as of last autumn.

Even if you were lucky enough to get an adequate supply of Moderna’s vaccine, your government was probably paying twice for them. Moderna’s vaccine was backed to the hilt by public money, with US group Public Citizen saying it should be referred to as the “National Institutes of Health (NIH) vaccine” after the United States public research institution that made its development possible. Nearly $1bn of US taxpayer money was poured into research for this vaccine, while the US government put another $1.5bn on the table as an advance purchase agreement through Operation Warp Speed. They also received support from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a body set up to correct the failure of the market to deliver the vaccines the world needs. The United Kingdom is a major contributor to CEPI.

 Moderna has refused to share its recipe, patents or knowhow with the World Health Organization. South Africa is currently host to an exciting new body – a so-called mRNA hub which is attempting to recreate mRNA vaccines with the express purpose of sharing this technology freely with the world. Moderna was asked to collaborate, but despite their massive profits, and the public backing that made these profits possible, they refused. Scientists will crack this technology, but it will take them much longer and many more people will die as result.

 Moderna claims it has already agreed not to enforce its patents during the pandemic, and has recently confirmed this will continue in lower-income countries long term. But it doesn’t include all countries, and in particular, South Africa is not covered. Even more worryingly, Moderna has applied for a broad set of patents in South Africa, even while it dropped such applications in richer countries.

 The head of the mRNA hub in South Africa has been clear that these patents “will impact on our freedom to operate”.

The reason for Moderna’s behaviour is, ultimately, that the company needs to maintain control of the knowledge behind the vaccine, whether it invented that technology or not, because in today’s pharmaceutical industry a corporation’s main assets are not its factories or its staff, but its “intellectual property”. In essence, they have turned knowledge into a commodity which can be traded on markets. But developing that knowledge in the first place is considered too risky for these corporate giants and so they either take public money to remove any risk, like Moderna, or they simply buy the knowledge from someone else, like Pfizer.

They aren’t the firms that do the risky but vital research we need to produce the medicines of tomorrow. Some are more or less government contractors, but paid in monopolies rather than cash, preventing the public from properly enjoying the fruits of their tax money. Others are more like hedge funds, buying up and sitting on intellectual property until they’ve squeezed as much value as they can from it, regardless of the cost in human lives and suffering.

Moderna’s profits show why Big Pharma can’t meet our health needs | Health | Al Jazeera

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine.

Guterres said:

“Food, fuel and fertilizer prices are skyrocketing. Supply chains are being disrupted. And the costs and delays of transportation of imported goods – when available – are at record levels.”

He added that this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

Poorer countries had already been struggling to recover from the lockdowns and the closing down of much of the global economy. There is now rising inflation and interest rates and increased debt burdens.

It all indicates that regional and local community-owned food systems based on shorter food supply chains that can cope with future shocks are required. How we cultivate food also needs to change. The agri-food and global trade system is heavily reliant on synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels. However, agroecological and regionally resilient approaches would result in less dependency on such commodities.

This involves a policy paradigm shift that prioritises the local over the global: small farms, local markets, renewable on-farm resources, diverse agroecological cropping and food sovereignty. An approach based on local and regional food self-sufficiency rather than dependency on costly far away imported supplies and off-farm (proprietary) inputs.

During times of war, sanctions or environmental disaster, systems of production and consumption often undergo radical transformation. If the past two years have told us anything, it is that transforming food systems is required now more than ever.

Taken from here

The war in Ukraine is a bonanza for arms manufacturers, which are lined up to profit as the United States and its allies increase military spending.

Less than three full months into 2022, Lockheed Martin’s stock has surged by more than 25%, while the share prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman have also risen by roughly 12%, 14%, and 16%, respectively.

 Historian Jonathan Ng, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tulsa, explained how “the spiraling conflict over Ukraine dramatizes the power of militarism and the influence of defense contractors. A ruthless drive for markets—intertwined with imperialism—has propelled NATO expansion, while inflaming wars from Eastern Europe to Yemen.” 

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told The Hill that “there’s a lot of possibilities for ways that the contractors will benefit, and in the short term we could be talking about tens of billions of dollars, which is no small thing, even for these big companies.”

The U.S. Congress approved a record-setting Pentagon budget, and their counterparts in several European countries also vowed to significantly boost military spending to counteract Moscow.

The government funding bill that U.S. President Joe Biden signed provides $6.5 billion in military aid to Eastern European nations, including $3.5 billion worth of additional weapons for Ukraine. As The Hill reported, the extra support for Ukraine “comes on top of more than $1 billion the U.S. has already spent in the past year to arm Ukrainian soldiers with modern weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, and Raytheon’s anti-aircraft Stinger missiles.”

The U.S. is not the only country where military contractors are anticipating a bump in sales. Over the past few weeks, European countries including Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden have announced that they will boost military spending.

 Germany said that it would purchase up to 35 American Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, a major reversal from its previous plan to revamp its aging fleet with a combination of older, less expensive American- and European-made jets. That comes after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced late last month that the nation would invest $111 billion in a new military investment fund and increase defense spending above 2% of its gross domestic product.

U.S. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said next year’s Pentagon budget is “going to have to be bigger than we thought,” he added—suggesting that far from being temporary, the recent spike in military spending may be a harbinger of what’s to come in the years ahead.

War in Ukraine a Windfall for Weapons Industry (commondreams.org)

Oil and gas companies are facing a potential bonanza from the Ukraine war, though few in the industry want to admit it.

 “There is going to be a very high price for oil for a very long time, and even the prospect of physical shortages.”  said Robert Buckley, head of relationship development at Cornwall Insight, an energy analysis company.

Oil prices have leapt dramatically, to more than $130 a barrel, sending petrol prices in the UK to more than 155p a litre, while gas prices have also surged.

Luke Sussams, of Jefferies investment bank, said: “The high-price environment is likely to last a long time…”

Big oil and gas companies are now awash with cash.

Green campaigners warned that oil and gas companies were using the Ukraine emergency to further their own interests, by encouraging governments to prioritise oil and gas production and make decisions now on investments that would have little impact on the current crisis but would vastly increase fossil fuel use for years to come.

Marc van Baal, of Follow This, a group of 8,000 green shareholders in oil and gas companies, said: “The leaders of oil and gas companies really have shown in the last years that they want to hold on to their old business model. This is what they understand – turning hydrocarbons into petro-dollars. So I am afraid this is what they are telling governments they should do.”

Tessa Khan, director of Uplift, which campaigns to end North Sea fossil fuels, said: “It’s shameful that oil and gas companies, some of whom have profited from their Russian partnerships for years, now seek to use this humanitarian crisis to further their interests. The fact that they are still being listened to by governments, the UK’s included, is beyond belief.”

Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power, a campaigning group in the US, said: “More drilling in more places isn’t a short-term fix, it’s a long-term problem that only makes oil and gas CEOs richer and locks us into more dependence on dirty, unreliable, expensive and volatile fossil fuels.”

Oil and gas companies are looking at a bonanza from the Ukraine war | Environment | The Guardian

 Since 2015, a fifth of the population has left the country, making Venezuela one of the largest displacement crises in the world, according to the UN Refugee Agency, not far behind Syria.

On average, 2,000 Venezuelans crossed into Colombia every day in 2021, according to the UN.

 The Brookings Institution has described the Venezuelan refugee and migrant crisis as “the most underfunded” in modern history. 

The flow of people may have slowed since Venezuelans first started to leave their country in droves in 2015, but it shows no signs of stopping.

Hunger is one of the main reasons people leave Venezuela. The Venezuelan Finance Observatory, an independent group of economic analysts, said that a shopping basket for a family of four cost 75% more in January 2022 compared to the same period two years ago.

Colombia has been generous to the 1.8 million Venezuelan migrants it hosts, which is equivalent to 32% of all Venezuelan migrants in Latin America, according to the World Bank. 

In February 2021, president Iván Duque announced a new ten-year Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Venezuelans already in Colombia. 

Hunger and desperation: Venezuela’s huge displacement crisis | openDemocracy

Tactical nuclear weapons is a term generally applied to lower-yield devices designed for battlefield use, which can have a fraction of the strength of the Hiroshima bomb — reduced their lethality, limiting the extent of absolute destruction and deadly radiation fields. That’s also made their use less unthinkable, raising the specter that the Russians could opt to use a smaller device without levelling an entire city.

 Detonate a one kiloton weapon on one side of Kyiv’s Zhuliany airport, for instance, and Russian President Vladimir Putin sends a next-level message with a fireball, shock waves and deadly radiation. But the blast radius wouldn’t reach the end of the runway.

The Russians are thought to have roughly 2,000 such weapons — some so small as to be attached to artillery shells and land mines. The world might reel in horror at nuclear deployment of any size. But, if boxed into the right kind of corner, some argue, Putin could use one in Ukraine without necessarily triggering World War III.

Washington has downplayed the prospect of Russian nuclear deployment, suggesting it’s just Kremlin bluster. Plenty of observers believe Putin would not risk even a low-grade nuclear attack. Doing so could trigger deeper sanctions than the ones already crippling the Russian economy, increase war opposition at home, negatively impact his all-important alliance with the Chinese and change perceptions in nations still hedging their bets with Russia, including India, Brazil and South Africa.

Many in the West have questioned Putin’s state of mind. But a number of experts — including the director of the CIA — appear to have determined he remains more or less within the parameter of sanity. They estimate him, however, to be isolated and angry. 

Michael Gove, a senior British official, reasoned this week, Putin dwells in a “moral sphere the rest of us would find almost impossible to conceive of.”

However,  Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, explained this week that he finds the highest risk of Putin deploying a low-yield nuclear device if the against-the-odds resistance in Ukraine shifts toward triumph, and Moscow is seen to be decisively losing the war.

“I find it hard to imagine Putin accepting a complete military defeat without him trying to use nuclear weapons first,” Kroenig said. “I think he sees limited nuclear use as more attractive than accepting defeat.”

He suggested if Putin went nuclear, he would almost certainly deploy a low-yield weapon with a narrow target. That would fit with what some experts view as a Russian military strategy of escalate to de-escalate — or bringing a crisis to a dramatic climax to force a settlement with the West that leans toward Russian terms.

“They could nuke a ship in the Black Sea, they could nuke a Ukrainian airplane, they could nuke tanks on the ground,” he continued. “They could nuke a small city, although that is probably less likely, and it’s less escalatory to go after a military target than a civilian one.”

“But the message in the West would be, ‘Oh my God, he’s just used a nuclear weapon.’ I mean, at least that’s what Putin would be hoping for. That we’d say, ‘this has gone too far. We’ve got to sue for peace,’ ” he said.

In the mind-set of Putin’s government, a nuclear option may not seem as taboo as it does to Western observers. During his 2018 state of the nation address, Putin, to loud applause, aired a concept video showing a storm of hypersonic, unlimited range nuclear missiles raining down on Florida.

The West might see nuclear deployment as unimaginable; that such weapons exist only for deterrent. But “I don’t think it’s so unimaginable for Putin and for the Russians,” Kroenig said. “I do think that there’s a big cultural difference here. The Russians often finish their major military exercises,” which serve as war simulations, “with nuclear strikes. … I think there is just, you know, a comfort with nuclear weapons as kind of big artillery shells, whereas we see them as categorically different weapons.”

Even if he holds fire now — Putin’s nuclear threat will loom beyond the Ukraine conflict, raising a ghost of destruction that many thought had finally dematerialized after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We were fortunate not to really have great power competition for 25 years after the end of the Cold War,” Kroenig said. “But now, it’s back.”

From the Washington Post

hat tip to Mike Browne

 Once again the socialist assertion that nationalism can never serve the interests of the working class is being attested to daily amidst the horrors of the war in Ukraine. Workers are butchering workers for the privilege of rearranging capitalist state borders. Needless to say, in this as in all wars it is the working people who suffer most. They do the fighting and the dying, they are raped and “ethnically cleansed”, and it is their lives and homes that count for most of the “collateral damage” whether or not they swallow the nationalist myths of their leaders. It is surprising to find how many workers are always ready to believe anything the media and their masters tell them.

Once again European cities are being bombed. Once again displaced persons are on the move. This has never ceased to be a lot of people in Africa and Asia but one of the claims of Western capitalism was that it had at least established peace and prosperity in Europe. Now full-scale war has returned to Europe. The illusion that permanent peace and prosperity is possible under capitalism has been shattered. When the capitalists of different nations fall out and go to war, they don’t do the fighting themselves but get their respective working classes to do it for them. This requires an appeal to patriotism, where politicians whip up enthusiasm for the war.

 The fact is the working people are impoverished and subjugated, whether under Putin or under Zerenskyy and consequently have no business to offer their blood and interest for the war service of either set of bloodsuckers. 

The interest of the workers everywhere is not in helping their rulers to grab or hold, but in the speedy overthrow of capitalism everywhere, the ending of the exploitation of one class by another. Let the workers of all countries apply that touchstone to the policies of their respective governments. Whether they call their wars offensive or defensive, struggles for colonies or to protect trade, for democracy or for independence, for religion or against it, the true purpose will be to hold or increase the wealth of the various sections of the ruling class. Workers have none of it.

Wars are inevitable under capitalism because of the economic competition between states that is built-in to it, but is normally only a last resort when a state’s “vital interest” is involved. Within a year of its founding the Socialist Party had published an article putting its view on war:

‘I do not think it will be questioned by any socialist that it is his duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and refuse to participate in them’ (Socialist Standard, August 1905)

We do not distinguish between “offensive” and “defensive” wars. In truth, no real distinction is possible. We do not attempt to distinguish between the relative merits of the conduct of capitalist governments at war with each other. Should wage slaves take sides when the slave-owners fall out? Obviously, no. We oppose working-class participation in wars between capitalist governments for reasons based directly on working-class interests and the interests of the socialist movement. In all countries, the workers are exploited by the owners of the means of production and distribution. There are no differences between the conditions under which exploitation is carried on in the different countries sufficient to make it worth the workers’ while supporting war in order to defend their subjection to one national group of capitalists rather than to another. 

For socialist propaganda to make headway, nationalistic prejudices have got to be struck at the roots, and that from the very beginning. As a practical policy, this means that socialists must carry on their struggle against the capitalist parties in their own country and must on no account allow it to appear, through political alliances or collaboration in capitalist governments, that they associate themselves with their own capitalists against the rest of the world.

In war, “Our duties as Socialists are clear enough, and do not differ from those we have to act on ordinarily. To further the spread of international feeling between the workers by all means possible, to point out to our own workers that foreign competition and rivalry, or commercial war, culminating at last in open war, are necessities of the plundering classes, and that the race and commercial quarrels of these classes only concern us so far as we can use them as opportunities for fostering discontent and revolution; that the interests of the workers are the same in all countries and they can never be really enemies of each other; that the men of our own labouring classes therefore, should turn a deaf car to the recruiting sergeant, and refuse to allow themselves to be dressed up in red and be taught to form a part of the modern killing machine for the honour and glory of a country in which they have only the dog’s share of many kids and few halfpence—all this we have to preach always. though in the event of imminent war we may have to preach it more emphatically” –  William Morris