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

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

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)

 While the world’s attention is upon the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Yemen continues.

More than a dozen U.N. agencies and international aid groups said that 161,000 people are likely to experience famine over the second half of 2022 — a fivefold increase from the current figure.

“These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it,” said David Beasley, head of the World Food Program, appealing for immediate funding to “avert imminent disaster and save millions.”

“More and more children are going to bed hungry in Yemen,” said Catherine Russell, UNICEF’s executive director. “This puts them at increased risk of physical and cognitive impairment, and even death.”

19 million people in Yemen — out of a population of more than 30 million — are likely to unable to meet their minimum food needs between June and December, up from 17.4 million.

Also, 2.2 million children, including 538,000 already severely malnourished, and about 1.3 million women, could be acutely malnourished by the end of the year, the report said.

Yemen depends almost entirely on food imports, with 30% of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine, the U.N. agencies said.

“Peace is required to end the decline, but we can make progress now. The parties to the conflict should lift all restrictions on trade and investment for non-sanctioned commodities,” said David Gressly, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen.

‘Harrowing figures’: Yemen report says 161K to face famine | The Independent

Russia’s Channel One, protester Marina Ovsyannikova, recorded a video in which she called events in Ukraine a “crime”.

“I’m ashamed that I allowed myself to tell lies from the television screen. Ashamed that I allowed Russians to be turned into zombies,” Ovsyannikova, an editor at the channel, explained.

She called on the Russian people to protest against the war, saying that only they could “stop the madness”.

Ovsyannikova is now in police custody.

Half of low-paid workers in the UK are given less than a week’s notice of their shifts, according to a study highlighting an “insecurity premium” for employees paid close to the minimum wage.

The Living Wage Foundation said 50% of people earning less than £9.90 an hour around the UK or £11.05 in London were told details of their work schedules with less than seven days before they were due to begin.

In contrast, about 32% of all UK workers in full or part-time jobs are given less than a week’s notice of their shifts.

Lower-paid workers were, therefore, more likely to pay a financial price – an “insecurity premium” – because of the added costs of childcare and travel when shifts were cancelled or changed at short notice.

Almost half of shift workers lose out on £30 or more a month because of last-minute changes, according to the study, leading almost a third to increase their reliance on credit cards and borrowing to make ends meet.

“We’ve long known that it costs to be poor, but this research shows it’s even more costly to be both poor and in insecure work,” said Katherine Chapman, the director of the Living Wage Foundation. “In an unfolding cost-of-living crisis with energy bills set to rise even further, low-income households are facing ‘heat or eat’ decisions.”

A separate study from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank showed a growing proportion of Britain’s lowest earners are missing out on stronger earnings growth for employees on the minimum wage in recent decades.

It found pay growth for the lowest-paid tenth of workers in the country had been twice as fast as for a worker on average pay between 2011 and 2019, helped by inflation-beating increases in the “national living wage”. However, it warned a quarter of the lowest fifth of earners are self-employed and not covered by the legal pay floor.

It said median earnings for those born in the 1980s were no higher than they were for those born in 1960 by the same point in their careers, spelling the end of steady growth in median living standards through the 20th century.

Mark Franks, the director of welfare at the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the research, said: “Policies such as the minimum wage and tax credits have helped many low earners, but they have not been sufficient to fully protect all low-paid workers, including those among the growing number of self-employed. This, in combination with sluggish pay growth and factors such as rising prices and a lack of access to stable housing, has left many individuals and families in vulnerable circumstances.”

Half of UK low-paid workers given less than a week’s notice of shifts | Business | The Guardian

THE WAGE SQUEEZE

 Average wages in Britain have fallen at the fastest rate since 2014 as annual pay growth fails to keep pace with rising inflation amid Britain’s cost of living crisis.

The Office for National Statistics said that annual growth in regular pay, excluding bonuses, fell by 1% in the three months to January after adjusting for its preferred measure of inflation – the biggest fall since July 2014.

Average total pay including bonuses rose slightly by 0.1% amid a bumper bonus season in the finance sector.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said, “Working people deserve financial security and a wage they can live on. But instead, they are facing the steepest decline in real pay for eight years, and a cost of living crisis that will get worse if the government doesn’t act now. Energy bills will rise at least 14 times faster than wages this year. Household budgets are already stretched to the brink and can’t take any more.”

“It doesn’t matter that a record number of people are now on UK payrolls or that there is still a record number of job vacancies, people in work are feeling the pinch and it’s going to get worse,” said Danni Hewson, a financial analyst at the stockbroker AJ Bell.

Nye Cominetti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said the pay squeeze was unlikely to end soon. “Overall surging inflation will wipe out any wage gains in 2022,” he said. “Britain’s real pay squeeze, which started as far back as summer 2021, will get deeper in 2022, and is unlikely to end until summer 2023.”

UK wages fall at fastest rate since 2014 as cost-of-living squeeze bites | UK unemployment and employment statistics | The Guardian

 That the Russian Government is a menace to the peace of the world, is a fact as much recognised by socialists as by all those who support the war. No socialist will deny that all the Putin regime stands for is repugnant and revolting to every ideal. The suppression of free expression of opinion, the arrests and the persecution of dissenters arbitrarily deemed out of sympathy with Russian nationalism, are things indicative of a form of social life that must befoul the finer feelings of all those worthy to be classed as genuine human. Intellectual development cannot be where such conditions are prevalent. There must be no mistake of the Socialist Party’s hatred for Putin and his elite entourage. It stands out to us calling aloud for destruction. But when we have said all this we have but touched the outer edges of the problem presented by the existence of the present Russian government. That government, like that of any other throughout the world, owes its origin and maintenance to definite historical and social causes, in which we include such mass ideology as that upon which all governments largely depend for their existence.

The basic condition for the rivalry between modern states is the quest for profit on the part of those who own all such resources of the earth. The people who own these vital forces of human life are, in broad outline, represented by those who are in control of the machinery of government. Whether such government be democratic or a dictatorship in form, the above statement applies with equal force. It cannot be too often stated that the method of government in all capitalist countries is a sort of by-product of the same general mode of wealth production and distribution. We leave aside for the moment whether the democratic or dictatorship form of the state in capitalist countries is more favourable for working-class expression and development. One point here is, that in democratic Britain, France and America, as in dictatorship Russia and China, wealth is produced primarily for profit. Therein is to be found the secret of the world situation in modern times. Profit represents–is in fact–the unpaid labour of the workers. Every worker must realise that after he has spent his energy in producing things for the capitalist, and after all materials and other items have been provided for, there is a surplus above the amount he gets in wages. When this surplus fails to materialise, capitalist production normally ceases. We describe the surplus wealth taken by the capitalist as surplus value. The worker labours for the capitalist (when he is permitted to do so) for wages, and the capitalist puts him to work to realise the difference between the wages paid and the value of the worker’s product of labour. “It is this sort of exchange”, says Marx, “between capital and labour upon which capitalistic production, or the wages system, is founded, and which must constantly result in reproducing the working man as working man and the capitalist as capitalist.”

The perpetuation and expansion of the capitalist’s pursuit of surplus-value gave rise to the imperialism underlying modern war. For capital to grow to maturity it must break down national boundaries and seek the world for its sphere of activity and gratification. Hence the conflicts between national groups of capitalists are represented by their respective governments backed by armed force.

The phrase, “the workshop of the world”, at one time so aptly applied to this country, indicates an ideological landmark, not merely in the economic history and development of England, but also in that of the other leading capitalist powers. Those who were once the customers of “the world’s workshop” became, in the very nature of the capitalist process, its competitors for markets, trade routes, spheres of influence, and the occupation of strategic positions, or the acquisition of raw materials. The real issue before the working class of the world is one of ending its exploitation and all that such entails.

If the present war is allowed to run its course until one or other of the combatants is crushed, are we likely to witness, if we are still alive, the downfall of the autocratic form of government in Russia or the restoration of some form of democratic social life in Ukraine?  

The Russian workers must, it seems, be the means of effecting the downfall of the Putin government.

For ourselves, we, as socialists, would render them any service which would assist in their accomplishing the overthrow of their despotic ruling gang if only to gain for them the immediate means of being able to give expression to their social and political aspirations without fear of being murdered or placed in a concentration camp.

Until the working-class movement in Russia or anywhere else can gain the means of emerging from underground into the daylight, their chances of finally freeing themselves from capitalism through socialism are well-nigh hopeless. To assist in the war against Russia is not the way by which this can be accomplished, we should be slaughtering the very people we desire to liberate from the yoke of the oligarch dictatorship. Moreover, our action then would assist Putin and his accomplices to bury still deeper the opposition to his rule. We find no valid reason for the support of this war, as we found none for in previous wars, which left us, of the Socialist Party, more isolated in our opposition than we are today.

 “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

 “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres