The G20 represent two-thirds of the world’s population and four-fifths of the world’s economic power.

 G20 world leaders have failed to take definitive action to tackle poverty, hunger, climate, debt and deprivation that is crippling millions of people around the world, says Oxfam.

“In the midst of a debt, austerity and inequality crisis we expected far more from the world’s largest economies, especially given the meteoric rise of billionaire wealth in their backyards,” said Oxfam’s  Joern Kalinski. “The world needs concrete action to avert economic disaster for poor people and countries, but all we were left with was recycled assurances, a simmering debt crisis and vaccine and health steps as useful as putting a band-aid on a broken leg.” Kalinski continued, “There was no sign of a collective resolve to address the world’s problems including climate crisis, growing hunger, rising poverty figures and gaping economic and social inequality.” 

Oxfam’s press release states, “The G20 reiterated often-heard promises of addressing world hunger but makes no new funding pledges to match that ambition nor commitments to support a shift to a more local and sustainable food production. Our food system has for years perpetuated inequality, impoverished small-scale farmers while wreaking havoc on the climate…The world continues to slide towards uncontrollable catastrophic warming which is exacerbating poverty, hunger and injustice worldwide.”

“The G20s theme was “Recover Together, Recover Stronger” but how can that be realized when this summit did nothing to bolster public goods like public health systems or make tangible new commitments to fix all the breakages in nations’ education systems?” said Kalinski. “…The G20 has shown an unfathomable ability to forget the scale of the economic, social and health crisis caused by the neglect and under-resourcing of health systems which are now more geared towards eyewatering profits over patients.”

 “…With so much at stake, this G20 summit finished largely empty and bereft,” said Kalinski.

G20 verdict: Oxfam criticizes G20 for lack of action to tackle extreme inequality | Common Dreams

Environmentalist Naomi Klein this week urged civil society organizations to boycott the 2023 COP 28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates — one of the world’s largest oil producers.

She pointed to the failure of COP27 and its “weak climate agreement that protects polluters”

Klein argues that “now is the time to decide not to do this all over again next year when the summit will be in the UAE. Of all places.”

“Civil society should announce a boycott and instead hold a true people’s summit…Let’s try something new.” Klein wrote.

At COP27, civil society was suppressed, spied upon, and sidelined by Egypt’s authoritarian government while lobbyists from Exxon, Chevron, and other fossil fuel giants, responsible for record-high greenhouse gas emissions fought off efforts to include a fossil fuel phase-out in the summit’s final text.

‘Let’s Try Something New’: Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Next COP Climate Summit (commondreams.org)

 Texas Governor Greg Abbott is seeking President Biden to invoke the invasion clause of the US Constitution to protect Texans from refugees and migrant workers.

Abbot wants the president to treat poor people without weapons as a military invasion.

On November 16 Abbot wrote a letter to Biden informing him that he has not lived up to the promise of Article IV, § 4, that the federal government “shall protect each of them against Invasion.”

Since, according to Abbott, the federal government isn’t treating poor immigrants like an invading army, Abbott will now invoke Article I, § 10, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, which allows states to “engage in War” when they are “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

 Last year, Texas passed Operation Lone Star, which militarizes the border by giving Abbot authority to deploy the national guard.

Thanksgiving food for thought: Immigrants are not ‘invading’ the United States – Alternet.org

 As Saudi Arabia celebrates victory over Argentine in the World Cup, praised by the football pundits, none  mentioned that on the very same day of the match Saudi Arabia football executed two Saudi citizens for drug offences

It brought the total number of executions in the past fortnight to 17 (10 being foreigners).

Saudi Arabia has executed 130 people this year.

The next victim may be Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a Jordanian, who was arrested in 2014 for smuggling narcotics when crossing the Jordan border into Saudi, and says he only confessed when he was tortured, including being suspended from his feet and beaten on his stomach and legs. 

An appeal court acquitted Kheir in March 2017, but the government ordered a retrial six months later, leading to a guilty verdict and he was re-sentenced to death in November 2017.

Much has been said about Qatar and its dismal human rights records regarding homosexuality. Iran’s team members were rightly applauded for their solidarity with their nation’s protests but silence on Saudi Arabia and other countries involved in authoritarian and totalitarian behaviour. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/22/saudi-execution-spree-continues-as-fears-rise-for-jordanian-on-death-row

 The 2018 World Cup in Russia released more than 2 million tons of CO2 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio emitting 4.5 million tons

FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar organizers have called it the first carbon-neutral tournament in history. But climate critics say the claims are misleading. 

 Carbon Market Watch questioned the carbon-neutral label, saying organizers have dramatically underestimated emissions.

The World Cup will emit some 3.6 million tons of CO2, according to official figures. That’s roughly equal to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s annual emissions.

Qatar said it has cut planet-heating emissions by installing solar-powered lighting and cooling systems, and constructing “energy-efficient stadiums.” Emissions it can’t avoid, it will be offset with local green projects. 

Most of those greenhouse gases will come from flights and accommodation for the more than one million visitors, as well as the construction of seven new stadiums, among other infrastructure, say organizers. 

Stadium construction is one area where organizers got creative with their carbon accounting, underplaying emissions by at least 1.6 million tons, said Gilles Dufrasne, author of the Carbon Market Watch study.

Only a small portion of construction emissions have been included in official estimates, as organizers say the stadiums will be used for other events. But the calculation ignores the fact that these stadiums would not have been built were it not for the World Cup.

51% of emissions will come from transport, according to official estimates. But that doesn’t include the shuttle flights set to ferry spectators into the desert city each day, said Dufrasne. Because of a shortage of accommodation in Qatar, 160 flights a day will take off from neighboring countries, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Carbon Market Watch analysis also criticized plans to offset these “unavoidable” emissions from transport and other areas, questioning their legitimacy. Only about 200,000 of the planned 1.8 million tons of credits have been issued. They all come from renewable energy projects in Serbia, Turkey and India through an organization more or less established by Qatar itself, rather than under internationally recognized and independent standards. 

Greenpeace question the idea of offsetting altogether.

“It does not work,” said Julien Jreissati , program director at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa. “This whole idea of offsetting is merely a distraction away from real climate action, which is reducing fossil fuel-based emissions at the source as fast as possible.”

Emissions aren’t the only environmental concern. Water use is another, and especially concerning given Qatar’s scarce water resources.

Qatar’s freshwater comes from desalination plants produced in an energy-intensive process that uses mainly fossil fuels. The plants also release salty, hot brine that is toxic to marine life back into the sea.

Waste is another problem.  Event organizers say 60% of the waste generated during the event will be recycled, while 40% will be turned into energy. But burning waste for energy releases greenhouse gases.

Is the Qatar FIFA World Cup really carbon neutral? – DW – 11/21/2022

 “Our team belongs to the people, not the Islamic regime.”

The Iranian players declined to sing their national anthem before their World Cup match with England in an expression of support for anti-government protests.

Iran state TV cut its coverage of the anthem. 

Iranian fans present in the stadium could also be heard chanting “Ali Karimi” in reference to the former footballer who is one of the most outspoken critics of the Islamic Republic.

The fans could also be heard chanting “Be-Sharaf”, which means dishonourable in Persian. This slogan protesters use against security forces in Iran. 

Many Iranian women in the crowd wore T-shirts with the phrase “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which has become the rallying cry for protestors and had their hair fully on display. 

 In 2021, Global Forest Watch placed Bolivia third in the world for loss of primary forest, behind Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ranked by population, Bolivia is highest.

Bolivia, today, has roughly 4m hectares of cultivated land and 10 million cattle. By 2025, the government wants 13m hectares and 18 million cattle. For Bolivia its agribusiness is booming.

Most of this deforestation is happening in Santa Cruz and Beni. But it is in Beni that a unique archaeological civilisation heritage is at risk.

“Archaeology is everywhere in Beni,” said Umberto Lombardo one of a handful of academics who study the archaeology of Beni. “They say if you put up a roof, you have a museum.”

In the Amazon basin a growing body of research has found traces of a vast network of earthworks predating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and implying the existence of large, complex societies.

In Bolivia the archaeologist Heiko Prümers and his team began flying over the Llanos de Mojos by helicopter in 2019, mapping the land beneath them with a laser. They then digitally stripped away the vegetation, revealing the topography of the ground underneath. In a paper published in Nature, they described settlements built around monumental mounds, some 20 metres high. Smaller settlements surrounded the larger ones, linked by causeways running for kilometres. Canals and reservoirs show how the people shaped the land for agriculture.

For most of the people that live here and work the land – whether Indigenous communities, settlers, Mennonites or agribusiness – the archaeological remains are so common they are barely remarked on, much less preserved. Roads slice through monumental mounds. Farmers flatten them. People build huts on top of them. In one case near the Mennonite colony, the state road company was taking earth from a mound to fill in potholes.

“For most people here, these mounds don’t have any special value,” said Lombardo. “There are so many things to study. If these sites are destroyed, we may never have the answers.”

There are no incentives for people to report them to the state – nor any experts that could readily be sent to study them. There are just a handful of archaeologists studying the Llanos de Mojos, and none lives in Bolivia. In an ideal world, he says, the government would educate locals about the importance of the mounds, pay to preserve them and set up an archaeological faculty in Beni.

Unchecked deforestation destroying evidence of lost Amazon civilisation | Bolivia | The Guardian

 US government records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Guardian show farms producing beef for meat packing firms Cargill, JBS, and Green Bay who in turn supply McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Walmart are risking public health by still using antibiotics classed as the “highest priority critically important” to human health (HP-CIAs). The findings have prompted condemnation from public health experts and campaigners.

Such drugs are so essential to human medicine that their use in livestock farming should be stopped, the World Health Organization has warned. HP-CIAs are often the last line or one of limited treatments available for serious bacterial infections in humans. The overuse of such antibiotics means they can become less effective. There is no ban on using antibiotics for treatment or to prevent disease, although farmers now need a veterinary prescription for many medically important antibiotics that were previously available over-the-counter and added to water and feed. There is a ban in the US on using antibiotics for growth promotion, which has been in place since 2017.

Cory Booker, a US senator has advocated for stricter controls on how antibiotics can be used in food production, explained:

 “Giant agribusinesses have built a system that is dependent on this misuse of antibiotics to maximise their profits, with no regard to the serious harm they are causing.”

 US cattle farmers still routinely use antibiotics often for months on end. Their use – and overuse – risks enabling bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs stop working.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the gravest global public health threats. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is responsible for more than 35,000 deaths in the US each year, and 1.3 million globally.

McDonald’s and Walmart beef suppliers criticised for ‘reckless’ antibiotics use | Meat industry | The Guardian

 The Iranian international team captain Ehsan Hajsafi spoke out against the situation in his home country before his nation’s opening game against England at the World Cup.

“We have to accept that the conditions in our country are not right and our people are not happy,” he said.

“Before anything else, I would like to express my condolences to all of the bereaved families in Iran,” Hajsafi said. “They should know that we are with them, we support them and we sympathise with them.”

“We cannot deny the conditions – the conditions in my country are not good and the players know it also.” 

“We are here but it does not mean that we should not be their voice, or we must not respect them. Whatever we have is from them. We have to fight, we have to perform the best we can and score goals, and present the brave people of Iran with the results.

“And I hope that the conditions change to the expectations of the people.”

World Cup 2022: Iran’s Ehsan Hajsafi speaks out over conditions in his home country – BBC Sport

 From the September 2006 issue of the Industrial Worker, paper of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The International (originally L’Internationale) is perhaps the most dangerous song in the world and just may be the most well known. Whistle or hum the tune in any country around the globe and eventually someone will recognize it.



It has become the anthem of all those seeking a fundamental change in society. Many have been jailed, even executed, for the mere singing of it. During the filming of the movie ‘Dr. Zhivago,’ cast members sang it on the movie site in Spain. The song had been banned by the fascist Franco regime. When the police heard the song in the distance they thought a rebellion was at hand, thinking it signalled the death of the fascist Generalissimo.

Debout! les damnes de la terre! Debout! les forcat de la faim!

With those forceful first words, Eugene Pottier, an elected member of the Paris Commune of 1870-71, member of the Federation of Artists and of the International Workingmen’s Association wrote the poem that would soon become the international battle cry of the world’s working class. They are words of condemnation against every injustice and the exploitation of capitalism.



The literal translation of those first two lines: Arise, you condemned of the earth! Arise, you imprisoned in hunger!



England’s socialists translated these words as: Arise! ye starvelings from your slumbers; Arise! ye criminals of want.



In the United States the radical publishing company Charles Kerr Publishers gave us the following translation: Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth!



For over one hundred years The International has been our song of continuing struggle, the call to the final battle, of radically remaking the world, and a song of hope. Workers have sung it at rallies, on picket lines, on the streets and barricades in times of revolution.



Interestingly, various competing factions of those considered “the Left” (anarchists, IWWs, Trotskyists, social democrats, Leninists) have endorsed their own versions, made known in the chorus.



The Charles Kerr version of the chorus read: ‘Tis the final conflict; Let each stand in his place. The International Shall be the human race.



Note that at the time of the translation in the late 19th century, it calls for each to stand in “his” place, denoting the worker as male.



The “International” in the original song refers to the International Workingmen’s Association (the so-called First International), which ended in bitter internal disputes.

 The Second International, dominated by the orthodox Marxism of the German Social Democratic Party was fractured by the First World War and disputed positions toward the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Third International was dominated by the official Leninism of the USSR until it was officially dissolved. A Fourth International was proclaimed by the competing adherents of the Trotskyite movement and a current Socialist International exists as successor to the Second representing social democratic parties.



You can sometimes identify the various movements and factions competing for the allegiance of the working class by the words they sing to the last two lines of the chorus. The Industrial Workers of the World handed down two versions. In the 1923 edition of its Little Red Songbook, “Songs of the workers to fan the flames of discontent,” the last lines read: “The International Union Shall be the human race”.



 Later editions of the songbook noted a clearer reference to the concept of organising all workers in one monumental industrial union for industrial democracy: “The IndustrialUnion Shall be the human race.”



I came across an old version sung by workers influenced by the Communist Party of Canada circa 1934: “The International soviets Shall be the human race.”



Trotskyites often sang the following words, denoting their acceptance of the supposedly vanguard role of a Leninist political party: “The International Party Shall be the human race.”



In a version learned from the former Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (now Democratic Socialists of America), I was given this version: “The international working class Shall free the human race.”



It’s a rather good version, at least noting that a true International organization does not exist with the astute recognition that only the actions of the world’s working class can indeed free the human race.



But even here there are slight differences. Some would sing, “The international working class shall free the human race” while others sang “The international working class shall be the human race.” By merely changing “be” to “free” the entire meaning of the chorus is changed. It is one thing that workers worldwide fight for human emancipation, it is another thing to say that the working class will become the people. The latter denotes that everyone will, after the revolution, become working class – anathema to those who wish to abolish the working class and all classes.



Yet The International has remained apart of the history of the world’s working class for over 130 years. Millions of workers have rallied to it and its singing has given them courage and hope. Ruling powers fear it, prohibit it and discourage it.



Sadly, just as those who consider themselves part of anti-capitalist Left have eschewed any notion of fundamentally breaking with capitalism through the “abolition of wage labour,” they have forgotten the words to this song. Occasionally it is sung at May Day rallies (hummed by those who do not know its words, tangentially knowing that the song is somehow “revolutionary” and “important”).



Many have criticised the lyrics of the song as outdated and stilted, reflecting a language of a past century. England’s Billy Bragg rewrote a new version for that very reason. His chorus reads: So come brothers and sisters, For the struggle carries on, The internationale Unites the world in song, So comrades come rally, For this is the time and place, The international ideal, Unites the human race.



For many years I remained faithful to the original (with small changes) simply because it is a part of working-class fighting history. And I say shame to those who consider themselves revolutionaries who do not know the words. Songs and poetry are action. You cannot change the world if you are afraid to sing.



So, to this end, I offer a new version of the first verse that hopefully remains faithful to the message of Pottier’s original (utilising in part the work of others). It is not there to replace the original, but to make all consider what we are fighting for:

“Arise you workers from all nations, For history has but one demand, The world youâve built by your own labour, Can be yours at your command.”

The old ways now must be abandoned, So let us rise to Freedom’s call, To raise this earth on new foundations, And fight to build a world for all.

“It’s the final battle, Let each stand in place. The international working class, Shall free the human race.”

Len Wallace

Len Wallace, a long-standing member of the Socialist Party of Canada and activist in the Industrial Workers of the World.

Here is his own rendition of the International