A new report  by Yale Law School, the number of prisoners subjected to “restrictive housing”, as solitary is officially known, stood at between 41,000 and 48,000 in the summer of 2021. They were being held alone in cells the size of parking spaces, for 22 hours a day on average and for at least 15 days. 

This is in breach of minimum standards laid down by the United Nations which considers such isolation a form of torture.

More than 6,000 prisoners have been held in isolation for over a year. They include almost a thousand people who have been held on their own in potentially damaging confined spaces for a decade or longer.

The new solitary study, Time-In-Cell: A 2021 Snapshot of Restrictive Housing, extrapolates its findings from the reported figures of 34 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Studies have shown that even short periods of solitary can bring on severe mental health problems including depression, aggression and suicidal thoughts. Its destructive harm was highlighted by the death earlier this month of Albert Woodfox who, before his release from Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison in 2016, was the longest-standing solitary confinement inmate in the country. He was cooped up for 43 years almost without break in a 6ft by 9ft cell. In his 2019 book Solitary, Woodfox described the impact of decades of isolation on him. He had regular terrifying bouts of claustrophobia which forced him to sleep sitting up to avoid the sensation of the walls closing in on him.

Nearly 50,000 people held in solitary confinement in US, report says | US prisons | The Guardian

 Rising food prices are causing widespread suffering in developing countries, and even in the rich world, the combination of high food and fuel prices threatens hardship for millions. Food prices have surged by about 20% this year and about 345 million people are experiencing acute food insecurity, compared with 135 million before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Food price rises around the world are the result of a “broken” food system that is failing the poor and concentrating power and profits in the hands of a few, food experts have said.

Alex Maitland from Oxfam explained the current crisis was “the latest in a long series of failures in the global food system”, which has been made even more fragile recently owing to extreme weather and the impacts of the climate crisis, economic upheaval and the pandemic. He said: “The war in Ukraine has caused massive price volatility and disruption of food supplies globally, but this is just the latest blow facing a global food system that was already broken. Global food chains are dominated by a small number of multinational corporations. It’s unsurprising that these corporations can squeeze such massive profits.”

Consumers are not the only victims: farmers, too, struggle to make a living when big companies abuse their dominance. 

Maitland said: “The people who produce and buy food are the ones who suffer from a system that puts shareholder profits over people. Half of the world’s undernourished are smallholder farmers and their families. The poorest spend far more of their income on food than the richest.”

Vicki Hird, head of sustainable farming at Sustain, a coalition of civil society groups in the UK, said: “Farmers have no control over setting prices and are ever poorer for it. It’s estimated that 25% of farm households in the UK are living under the poverty line.” She added: “The current food crisis is not a new one, just accelerated due to the Ukraine invasion, and unless governments recognise this and act to tackle the real causes – the corporate profits at the expense of farmer incomes, workers’ wages, consumers and the environment – we will just lurch from this crisis to the next.”

Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City, University of London, said both developed and developing countries were seeing the impacts of years of increasing distortion in food markets.

“We need to rethink the food system. People can’t afford a healthy diet, and this is a very serious problem. A lot of people are making a huge amount of money out of food, but food producers get about 8% of the £250bn a year we spend on food,” he said.

Food price rises around the world are result of ‘broken’ system, say experts | Environment | The Guardian

There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature.

There are no known biologically based differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between human populations from different regions of the world. There is individual variation within any human population in a particular place (obviously, individuals in any society differ in a variety of traits). But there are no meaningful biologically based differences between populations in the way people are capable of thinking, feeling, or making decisions. We are one species. We are all basically the same animal.

Although we are one species, there are obvious cultural differences among human populations around the world. Those cultural differences aren’t a product of human biology; that is, they aren’t the product of any one group being significantly different genetically from another, especially in ways that could be labeled cognitively superior or inferior. So why have different cultures developed in different places? The most obvious answer is that it is the result of humans living under different material conditions.

We conclude that the type of living arrangements that groups of humans develop arise from the differences in geography, climate, and environmental conditions. Absent any other credible explanation, we assume that the different material realities under which humans have lived have shaped the variations in human culture. People make choices to build cultures in specific ways, but if all people are basically the same animal, then the differences in those choices around the world are most likely the product of those different conditions.

We are not suggesting that we have no control over our lives but simply that we likely don’t have as much control as many people would like to believe. This is true of us individually and collectively. The conditions under which a culture emerged may have led to ecologically sustainable living arrangements, but those living arrangements would have been different if initial conditions had been different. If Culture A created an ecologically sustainable way to live and Culture B created an unsustainable system, it is important to highlight the differences, endorse Culture A, and try to change Culture B. Geography shapes people, and people act to shape the meaning of geography, making choices along the way. But not all people throughout history and around the world have been presented with the same choices by the landscapes on which they have lived. 

We want to be clear about how we understand racial and ethnic differences in the context of political and economic history. Europe is not rich because Europeans are racially superior. Europe is rich because it developed on a different trajectory from that of the Americas, Africa, and Asia as a result of geographic and environmental differences. That trajectory made it possible for Europeans to conquer and exploit the people and resources of those other continents. At one point, Europeans believed themselves intellectually and morally superior because of racial differences that were assumed to be immutable. We know that to be false. But if that’s false, then so is any other claim by any other group to be intellectually or morally superior on any criteria by virtue of a racial or ethnic identity.

If history was not shaped by the minor genetic differences that are associated with our ancestors’ region of the world, that leaves us with geography, climate, and environmental conditions, unless we want to argue that history is directed by gods. Geography shapes people, and people act to shape the meaning of geography, making choices along the way. But not all people throughout history and around the world have been presented with the same choices by the landscapes on which they have lived.  All organisms adapt to, and are shaped by, their places. There is no reason that humans should be exempt from that observation. While it’s true that humans’ physiology and cognitive capacity allow us to live almost anywhere on land on Earth, that doesn’t mean that geography has no relevance in how we have organized societies and developed new technologies.

Taken from here

We are One Species – CounterPunch.org

 “Putin’s war is funded through money from fossil fuels and these fossil fuels are causing climate breakdown as we speak,” said Svitlana Romanko, director of the Ukrainian NGO Razom We Stand.

Carbon bombs are fossil-fuel extraction projects identified by researchers to contain at least 1bn tonnes of climate-heating CO2, triple the UK’s annual emissions. Russia is a hotspot, with 40 carbon bombs, 19 of them operated or developed by Russian companies backed by foreign finance. The companies are Gazprom, Novatek, Lukoil, Rosneft oil company and Tatneft. More than 400 foreign financial institutions had provided $130bn (£109bn) of support to the Russian companies – $52bn in investment and $84bn in credit. 

Financial institutions in the US hold almost half the foreign investment in Russian carbon bomb companies, with 154 institutions holding $23.6bn. The largest combination of investment and credit – $10bn – was provided by JPMorgan Chase.

The biggest single investment in the Russian carbon bomb companies was the $15.3bn in Rosneft held by the Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

The UK was third in the list of investing nations, with 32 financial institutions holding $2.5bn in investments. HSBC had the largest investment and credit total, at $308m.

 Financial groups in Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands also held significant investments, while Chinese and Italian institutions provided $45bn in credit between them.

 Kjell Kühne, at Leave it in the Ground Initiative (Lingo), said: “This war has made really clear that, when you don’t care who you’re doing business with, it does translate into human suffering and lives lost. It’s also clear we should not be investing in new fossil fuel projects, as the International Energy Agency has confirmed. Anybody involved in these projects should be really questioning what they’re doing.”

 Lingo said some financial institutions may have reduced their support for the Russian companies since the war started, but that many seemed to have adopted a wait-and-see approach.

UK and US banks among biggest backers of Russian ‘carbon bombs’, data shows | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

Members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), have now been 500 days on strike against Warrior Met Coal, (previously known as Walter Energy.)

The miners went on strike in April of 2021 over a host of grievances: little-to-no raises, long working hours, cuts to healthcare, and cuts to their retirements. They accepted many of these concessions in 2016 to bring the company out of bankruptcy, at a cost to the miners of around $1 billion over the term of the contract, according to the union. 

The workers simply wanted something approximating a restoration of the pre-bankruptcy status quo. Warrior Met instigated the strike by refusing these modest demands.

Republican politicians have responded to this long-term work action with characteristic indifference, or overt support for the company. On the state level, Republicans are openly siding against the workers. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has mobilized state troopers to escort scabs crossing the picket line. On October 27, 2021, a Republican Tuscaloosa County Judge issued an injunction telling Alabama coal miners that they are not allowed to protest their employer. For several months, striking workers were limited in the number of picketers they could have on the line, and for a few months they could have none at all. The lack of support from Republicans is both typical, shameful but to be expected.

But the strike has also been largely met with silence from Democrats, including at the federal level, despite the Biden administration’s claim to stand with unions. While local rank-and-file Democrats have helped by donating to the strike fund and collecting donations, Democratic Party office holders have been totally absent. Some have spoken at rallies, yet only one elected Alabama Democrat, Tuscaloosa State Representative Chris England, has been to a picket line, and asked how he can help.

Lacking political power in the state, the federal leaders of the party could be doing far more. Yet, the White House and the Labor Department have both been mostly silent. Why hasn’t Labor Secretary Marty Walsh been loudly commenting on the Warrior Met strike?

The workers have been complaining that none of the politicians care. What these workers are left with in terms of material support from political leaders is virtually nothing, and at a time when the need could not be more urgent. The company is trying to shake the union down for millions in reimbursements for ​“unlawful strike activity,” including lost production. And with the skyrocketing price of steel, even operating the mines at a lower capacity has allowed the company to turn a profit (even though it is missing out on $1 billion dollars in potential revenue, according to UMWA). 

It is unconscionable that the ​“most pro-union president in history” and nearly the entire political party that he leads has allowed this strike to go on this long without strong support.

500 Days Into the Warrior Met Coal Strike, Where Are Joe Biden and the Democrats? – In These Times

From Yorkshires socialist discussion group comments about old age and social care

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Socialist-Voices-episode-1.mp3

 According to research into a staffing crisis that has left thousands of vulnerable people suffering inadequate care half of care workers employed in independent care homes would earn more if they took a new starter job in a supermarket. In June nearly 400,000 care staff earned less than the minimum wages paid in most of the major supermarket chains, while a third of workers would have received an immediate 6.3% pay increase, plus staff benefits, by moving to the best-paying supermarkets. For social care, the minimum rate for staff over the age of 23 in June 2022 was £9.50 – the statutory minimum set by the “national living wage”. It has been estimated that about 50% of care workers earn within 30 pence of the national living wage level. In June 2022 nine of the 10 largest supermarkets were paying more than this.  In 2012-13 retail assistants were on average paid 16p an hour less than care workers. But by 2020-21 they were being paid 21p an hour more.

There are about 165,000 vacancies in England’s social care. Inspectors found staff shortages were a key reason for inadequate care at dozens of homes, including people being left in their rooms 24 hours a day, denied showers and left wet in their own urine. Pay is a key reason for the social care workforce crisis.

Half of care workers in England earn less than entry level supermarket roles | Care workers | The Guardian

 State-sanctioned violence is part of everyday life for many Brazilians. This is true, especially for those who are unlucky enough to be poor, live in a favela and have “the wrong skin colour”. Indeed, poor Black and brown people living in precarious situations are the preferred victims of the Brazilian police – a force that is seemingly committed to eradicating not poverty, but the poor.

Brazil’s first favelas appeared in the 19th century in Rio de Janeiro and they grew exponentially after the end of slavery. Over time, poor migrants escaping armed conflicts also joined the former slaves and their descendants in these communities. Soon, similar favelas started to emerge and expand in other parts of the country. And the police forces, which had served to protect the elites, their property and lifestyles from dangerous “plebs” from the very beginning quickly focussed their attention on favelas.

In Brazil’s favelas, residents live with a constant fear of “police operations” – or to be more accurate, indiscriminate shootings across narrow residential streets involving automatic weapons and helicopters. They know that if a police officer happens to approach them – regardless of what they may or may not have done – they could be threatened, beaten up, jailed, killed or simply “disappeared”. They know that their house can be invaded any minute, their possessions confiscated, their lives turned upside down – all with the complete support of their country’s government and other state institutions.

On May 24, 25 people were killed during a police operation in the Vila Cruzeiro Favela in Rio de Janeiro. On July 21, 2022, yet another police raid claimed 18 more lives in Complexo do Alemao in the same state. These massacres were only a few in a much longer chain. According to a study conducted by Federal Fluminense University researchers, 182 people have been killed in at least 40 separate police operations in Rio de Janeiro alone between May 2021 and May 2022.

These deadly operations have the full support of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who regularly praises bloody police action in favelas and proudly claims all those who were summarily executed were “criminals” and “thugs” who have been “neutralised”. Of course, activists and international organisations emphasise that only a small percentage of those who have been killed in these operations have had arrest warrants in their names. And favela residents often talk of people being “hunted down” by police, and at times executed even after they surrender. But in the eyes of the Brazilian state, these details do not seem to matter.

In Brazil racialised police brutality is an inevitable consequence of a deep-rooted culture of criminalisation of poverty and the poor. Coupled with a failure to adequately train security forces and reluctance on the part of authorities to even acknowledge the problem, this culture of criminalisation turns police officers into willing and eager perpetrators of state-sanctioned violence.

Brazil’s security forces are spreading terror in the favelas and brutally murdering vulnerable Black citizens during traffic stops because that is what they were designed to do – and because they are not being trained, equipped or encouraged to police these communities in any other way. The main reason why the Brazilian police are acting the way they are – and seemingly waging a deadly war against the poor – is that the force was created to do just that. Historically, police forces were first formed in Brazil not to ensure public safety as we understand it today, but to control, repress and intimidate slaves. 

Brazil’s ruling class have always perceived the favela as areas to be controlled, places where the poor must live and be watched. And the police, as the protectors of the elites, took it upon themselves to keep the favelas in check through intimidation, abuse and violence.

The culture of policing the favelas – and generally the poor – with violence continues also because of the fact that there is no enforcement against poor performance and abuses by law enforcement. 

“The Public Prosecutor’s Office does not fulfil its function of overseeing police activity, the judiciary does not fulfil its function of protecting victims of abuse who resort to the courts, the state government does not regulate its agents,”  Cecilia Oliveira, a journalist specialising in public security once explained. “It is a whole system that allows the police to be what they are. The lives of Black and poor people are palanquin for those who sell cheap solutions to a complex problem.”

Brazil’s never ending war on the poor | Opinions | Al Jazeera

“Oligopoly in action” was how Kartick Raj, a Human Rights Watch researcher focused on poverty and inequality in Western Europe, responded news that the world’s four grain giants were raking in record profits. 

Using a term coined by author Naomi Klein, U.K. climate scientist Bill McGuire declared in response to Harvey’s article: “Disaster capitalism at its worst.”

“As 345 million people suffer from acute food insecurity,” McGuire continued, “the four corporations that control virtually all grain trade stuff their pockets with cash, pop the champagne corks, and laugh all the way to the bank.”

Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based group Global Justice Now, said that “food monopolies rake in bumper profits as speculation drives up food prices. We have enough food for everyone, but the financial markets dictate more and more people must go hungry to fill the coffers of the super wealthy.”

“Workers wages aren’t causing our #CostOfLivingCrisis. Profiteering is. Want proof?” UNI Global Union tweeted.

The U.K. group Plan B Earth took aim and stated, “Bonanza for fossil fuel companies, while people can’t pay their bills. Soaring stocks for defense companies on the back of war. And while famine stalks East Africa and Afghanistan, food companies make record profits.”

‘Disaster Capitalism at Its Worst’: Profits of Grain Giants Spark Global Criticism (commondreams.org)

Well, this blog has got news for all those commentators. It is not disaster capitalism, it is not a dysfunctional aberration. What’s happening is capitalism is operating just as it should and behaving perfectly normal, just as the market profit system intended it to.

And the World Socialist Movement have been pointing this out for years, highlighting the hunger amid capitalist prosperity so we ask why have these informed experts not been listening.

 São Paulo is a symbol of inequality. The wealthy enjoy incredible luxury while the poor are neglected. São Paulo is a dystopia. Society here has failed miserably in making a dignified life possible for everyone. The resulting dissonance has produced a radical form of dehumanization. It is estimated that almost half of the people in the São Paulo metropolitan region live in precarious conditions. Millions aren’t connected to the sewage system.

With more than 22 million inhabitants, São Paulo is the largest metropolis in the southern hemisphere and the wealthiest city in South America. At the end of the 19th century, São Paulo was a city of 200,000 residents, full of picturesque, colonial-style homes. By the 1950s, it was already home to 2 million people, and in the 1960s and 1970s, it began growing like a tumor – rapidly, uncontrolled and exponentially. Today, large parts of it are a concrete desert of high-rises, stinking rivers and multilane, raised highways known as viaducts. They spread throughout the city like the tentacles of a giant octopus, yet there is no coherent connection between them, a situation that results in daily traffic chaos.  In São Paulo, people rarely ever honk, even in the worst traffic jams, out of fear that they might get shot. São Paulo has some of the worst air pollution in the world, and the environmental degradation is so advanced that even the wealthy, who try to isolate themselves in their penthouses can’t escape it. 

It is also one of the most unequal cities in the world. There is hardly any other place on the planet where squalor and luxury exist in such monstrous proximity to each other – where the desperation of the poor and the hubris of the wealthy clash so brutally. 

Helicopters take off in São Paulo by the minute. The city is said to be home to the largest fleet of private choppers in the world, reserved for those important people who have to quickly get from A to B. Michelin-rated restaurants are located next to the leafy neighborhoods full of mansions, where the streets are called Alemanha, Luxemburgo and Áustria and Bentleys and Rolls-Royces are a common sight. 

The life expectancy in the rich, white neighborhood of Pinheiros is more than 80 years, while in the poorest black quarters, it is just 58.

“There has never been consistent city development in São Paulo,” says Barbara. “Instead, it has been a continuous state-of-emergency, where improvements are only made where things are especially bad.” She walks across a bridge toward the historic market hall, beneath her is a canal filled with polluted, brownish water full of trash. “But the greatest hurdle standing in the way of São Paulo’s transformation is the extreme inequality,” Barbara says. If the problems on the periphery aren’t solved, she says, the city can never become healthy and livable – for anyone.

The Dystopia of São Paulo Holds the Key To Brazil’s Transformation – DER SPIEGEL