The World Health Organization estimates, roughly 11 billion vaccine doses will be needed to end the pandemic worldwide. 

Despite lofty pledges from rich nations to give away vaccine doses, COVID-19 vaccination in poorer countries is making little headway.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been tirelessly and relentlessly reminding rich industrialised nations of their moral obligation to provide Coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest countries and always the answer was promises made.

Of the 640 million doses scheduled to be delivered by early August, just 163 million have arrived. 

The Biden administration is spending $3.5 billion (€2.9 billion) to buy up 500 million vaccine doses from the US pharmaceutical multinational Pfizer for COVAX. The US government is to donate those advanced mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer’s German partner BioNTech to the world’s poorest nations. But, the Biden administration has said it would cut in half its $4 billion commitment to the COVAX initiative to help pay for the purchase of the Pfizer shots. But that’s money recipient countries need to get the vaccine to people in their villages, for example, to help pay for the logistics and delivery. The fact that Pfizer’s CEO is raising the price of a single dose of the COVID shot is also evidence of complete failure. 

Two major churches, have been asking German Health Minister Jens Spahn’s ministry for leftover vaccine doses. The aid groups have been carrying out vaccination campaigns in Africa for decades, for instance against Ebola and measles, and they have the necessary infrastructure.

But, Germany’s government has rejected bilateral aid through such established channels. According to a letter from the Federal Ministry of Health, because “donations to third countries regularly require the prior consent of the manufacturer.”

Opinion: Vaccine divide underscores the moral bankruptcy of the West | Opinion | DW | 06.08.2021

 Dead zones develop when fertilizers and nutrients from farmland drain into oceans or lakes, creating an algae bonanza that eventually dies and decomposes. As the algae decompose, it depletes the waters of oxygen, suffocating species that live in the area.

Studies show that fish in hypoxic waters change what they eat, which affects what people can catch. Dead zones also make commercially important species like shrimp less available in the Gulf and kill fish and crabs off the coast of the Pacific north-west.

 The fertilizer pollution has caused an estimated $2.4bn in damage to fisheries and marine habitat every year since 1980, the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a study.

Scientists recently surveyed the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico around Louisiana and Texas and what they discovered was a larger-than-average area of oxygen-depleted water – a “dead zone” where nothing can live, about 4m acres of habitat in the Gulf are unusable for fish and bottom-dwelling species.

The waters off Oregon have had hypoxic areas every year since 2002. But this was a record year in Oregon as well. In Oregon, the global climate crisis is making the problem worse: warmer waters hold less oxygen than cold waters, encouraging the growth of dead zones. In addition, as more carbon is absorbed into the oceans, the waters become more acidic – in turn making it harder for creatures like shellfish and crabs to grow their shells.

In 2001, a task force of state and federal agencies set a goal of keeping the dead zone’s five-year average to no greater than 1,900 sq miles. This summer’s dead zone is about three times larger than that. 

 “Without a significant, concentrated effort to reduce nitrogen runoff from farms and livestock operations, Gulf Coast communities will continue to bear the costs of the dead zone,” said Rebecca Boehm, an economist with the Union of Concerned Scientists food and environment program in a statement.“The dead zone has not meaningfully shrunk in the last 30 years, and we are no closer to the goals set by the Hypoxia Task Force. Policymakers need to rethink their strategy, or we will find ourselves back here next year with the same bad news.”

Dead zones spread along Oregon coast and Gulf of Mexico, study shows | Oceans | The Guardian

 Virgin Galactic has reopened ticket sales for its space flights at a starting price of $450,000 a seat. Prospective customers will have the option to buy single seats, friends and family packages, or reserve the whole plane.

 A vast superyacht built for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been sold for almost £200m and is now available to rent for anyone with for about £1m a week, a life of luxury on the high seas. The 126-metre Octopus was the world’s largest yacht when she was built for Allen in 2003

The eight-deck Octopus has 13 guest suites, including a private owner’s deck. There is also a cinema, a gym, a spa, a basketball court, a pool (which converts into a dancefloor) and a pizza oven. The onboard recording studio has been used by Mick Jagger, Bono,  It features not one but two helicopters, two submarines and space for seven tenders and a large SUV. The yacht has quarters for up to 63 crew.

Secret buyer nabs Microsoft grandee’s superyacht for £200m | Microsoft | The Guardian

What we doYearly

By the end of the last week of February, we hold our Spring School and Annual Conference and in the last week of October, we hold our Autumn School and Membership Meeting and a Public Meeting as well. Over and above, in cases of important events, we do have rules about holding Special Party Conference, Special Membership Meeting and Party Vote as necessary.

 

Monthly

The Executive Committee meets usually at 5 PM on a pre-decided date of a month. 

 

Weekly

Every Sunday from 5 PM to 8 PM we sit in our Study Circle and Discussion Meetings. Agenda and subjects cover all theories of knowledge and information which include mainly: historical materialist analyses of the evolution of human life and society, economics, Marxian theories, books and articles written by Marx and Engels and other socialists, Leninism, words and work of leftist parties, reform or revolution, and all various books and journals, organization and activities of our party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. 

 

All our programmes are open to all. In the Public Meetings too after the completion of the speech by the speaker the listeners are allowed sufficient time to discuss a question/answer session. Why waste time? Contact over the phone, know our whereabouts and come up in any of our events. Persons eager to know us in detail are welcome!

Democracy in action

How do you organise a political party without leaders or followers? Come and find out. We’ve been doing just that since our inauguration in March 1995 drawing heritage from the Socialist Party of Great Britain that began in 1904.

 

Our party’s policies are decided by a secret ballot of all our members following full discussion and debate at our Autumn Membership Meeting and Annual Conference.

 

In the same way, the members of the Executive Committee and party officers are elected directly by the membership as a whole. Members of party committees are nominated by branches with subsequent appointment by the EC.

 

In between party conferences, it is the work of the Executive Committee to coordinate the party’s activities in line with decisions made at past conferences and party polls.

 In common with other parties of the WSM, the WSP (India) was formed as a revolutionary party opposed to Leninism and seeking to win control of the state by parliamentary means in order to abolish it and establish socialism on a worldwide scale.



Since then the party remains the only World Socialist Party in Asia.

We have no secrets

 

All of our meetings, without exception, are open to anyone.

 

Come and see how we are organising for a world of universal ownership and democratic control. A world free from the tyranny of classes, nations, the state, leaders, money, wage and war.

 

You’ll be most welcome.

Website The World Socialist Party (India) (worldsocialistpartyindia.org)

Facebook The World Socialist Party (India) – หน้าหลัก | Facebook

257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East),

Kolkata – 700086

Tel: 033-2425-0208,

Email: wspindia@hotmail.com

Our aim is to build a movement working towards socialism, a democratic society based upon co-operation and production for use, a world community without national borders. An end to buying and selling and money, where goods will be voluntarily produced and services voluntarily supplied to meet people’s needs. People will freely take the things they need. 

The World Socialist Party (India) is an organisation of equals with no leaders.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.” – Marx

● Change the world with Socialism!

● Capitalism means legal plunder based on wage-slavery; end capitalism!

● If capitalism exists, so exist exploitation, plunder, war, terrorism and pollution; end capitalism!

● Stop production for profit, start production for use to save the environment and our species from the risk of universal death!

● Wage-slavery or starvation death – these are not alternatives, but two-pronged terrorism!

● End wage-slavery to end starvation death!

● End employment to end unemployment!

● End employment with universal ownership via universal suffrage!

● Throw away election manifestos; just win Socialism!

● Abundance for all – that is Socialism. Principle: From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

● Socialism needs you – you need Socialism; recognise Socialism – vote only for Socialism!

● Elect mandated MPs for Socialism only!

● Inscribe on the banner: “the annulation of all property and territorial rights; all that is on and in the Earth becomes the common heritage of the whole human race”.

● Establish universal ownership world-over by organising the working class worldwide!

● Emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

● Join us to develop the independent leader-free democratic organisation of the working class!

● Religion and Socialism exclude each other.

● Indiscriminate construction of factories during capitalism’s decadence brings little ‘development’ with more unemployment, poverty and pollution.

● Take the road of cooperation for life to end competition for a living!

● Workers have no country; you have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win; workers of the world unite!

ONE WORLD, ONE PEOPLE 

A new report from Carnegie UK shows wellbeing in England has decreased in the last year while loneliness and mistrust in the government have increased. The decline in wellbeing started before the pandemic and continued to drop as the country entered its first national lockdown in March 2020.

The charity predicts that when it reports on 2020/21 levels later this year, this decline will be even worse. 

Sarah Davidson, chief executive of Carnegie UK, said anybody who has lived through the last year and a half will have become “so aware of the fact that the things that affect our experience of life goes so much wider than simply things which are captured by by economic data. So much of what we’ve talked about during this pandemic has really reflected the complexity of our lives and the fact that things like our personal relationships, and the extent to which we can influence decisions … and even things like our access to green spaces has an impact,” she said. “All of these things actually tell you something really important about the quality of our life.”

The number of adults in England feeling lonely has been increasing since 2017 and in the last year jumped by 44%, from 2.6 million to 3.7 million. Meanwhile, trust in government is at an-all time low following a nearly 40% drop from 2018/19 to 2019/20 (from 31% to 19%).

The charity is proposing a new measure of national progress – gross domestic wellbeing, or GDWe – to measure whether life is getting better or worse. The latest GDWe score, based on ONS data, was 6.79 out of 10 for 2019/20, compared with 6.89 for 2018/19, its lowest level since 2015/16.

“We’re not saying that economic factors are not important, because they are, and the model of wellbeing that we talk about highlights the importance of balancing social, economic, environmental [and] democratic outcomes … In order to properly capture what’s important to people’s lives, you really need to measure all these things,” Davidson said. She added that this data, which shows wellbeing falling in multiple measured areas, including relationships and governance, should then be used to influence policy decisions.

Wellbeing in decline in England as loneliness rises, report shows | Health | The Guardian

 The United Nations head of climate change, Patricia Espinosa, says a little over half of all countries which signed the Paris accord have submitted updated proposals to curb emissions.

In a statement, Espinosa said, “I call on those countries that were unable to meet this deadline to redouble their efforts and honour their commitment under the agreement.”

The deadline for submissions passed on July 30. China and India who rank first and third respectively as the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases have remained silent. 

In the 2015 Paris Agreement,  signatories of the accord was given until the end of 2020 to submit their own determined targets, known as Nationally Determined Targets (NDTs). The pandemic meant that the COP 26 climate conference in Glasgow was postponed to November this year.

The amount of natural disasters appears to be have created a sense of urgency from the climate chief, with Espinosa saying, “recent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods across the globe are a dire warning that much more needs to be done, and much more quickly, to change our current pathway. This can only be achieved through more ambitious NDCs.”

Some of the worlds smaller countries are taking the Paris agreement seriously. Fifteen countries with what can be considered relatively low rates of carbon emissions submitted pledges this week. The group which includes Sri Lanka, Israel, Malawi, Barbados, Malaysia, Nigeria and Namibia, set themselves ambitious targets.

Carbon emissions: China, India miss UN deadline to update targets | News | DW | 31.07.2021

 Space Command, at RAF High Wycombe,  is the UK’s first command centre and is aimed at protecting the country’s interests in space. It will also provide command and control for all of the UK’s space capabilities, including the UK’s Space Operations Centre, RAF Fylingdales, SKYNET and others.

The UK is spending an additional £1.4bn on space capabilities over the next 10 years.

Not very long ago nurses were earning praise for their commitment and dedication during the worse of the pandemic.  Now nurses around the US are holding strikes, protesting deteriorating working conditions and severe understaffing issues.

For over four months, more than 700 nurses at the Tenet Healthcare-owned Saint Vincent hospital have been on strike, the second-longest nurses’ strike in Massachusetts’ history. The hospital has brought in replacement workers throughout the strike and have spent more than $30,000 a day on police coverage during the strike.

Dominique Muldoon, a nurse for more than 20 years at Saint Vincent’s hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains, “Most of us felt like we went from heroes to zeroes quickly.”   Nurses had worked through breaks and past scheduled shifts to try to ensure patient care. Understaffing and cuts were the “new normal” at the hospital.

Marlena Pellegrino, a nurse at Saint Vincent hospital, said, We worked through some very tumultuous times where our employer could have stepped up to assist us instead of being an obstacle in our way of trying to care for our patients.” 

In Chicago, about 300 nurses at Community First medical center held a one-day strike on 26 July over hospital failures during the pandemic and new contract negotiations.

Kathy Haff, an emergency room nurse at Community First medical center for 29 years, explained the hospital lost a significant number of nurses on staff during the pandemic, including three nurses who died from the virus, and now nurses are working severely understaffed and with inadequate equipment to perform their duties.

“They don’t appreciate us. They claim to, but they don’t. They just take advantage of us left and right,” said Haff. “We’re working at half staff basically. They don’t care that we’re short. They just keep loading us up and keep criticizing if you’re not moving fast enough. There is no appreciation. All those ‘healthcare heroes’ signs were garbage. We didn’t believe one bit of them. We’re like, yeah whatever. We’re like healthcare suckers because they didn’t protect us.”

 1,400 nurses at USC Keck hospital and USC Norris Cancer hospital in Los Angeles held a two-day strike on 13 and 14 July over understaffing and patient safety concerns.

Thousands of nurses represented by National Nurses United at hospitals throughout California and Texas held a day of action on 21 July to call attention to workplace issues highlighted by the pandemic.

Juan Anchondo, a nurse for nearly 18 years at Las Palmas medical center in El Paso, Texas, explained staffing issues at his hospital have worsened throughout the pandemic as nearby hospitals have lured workers away with bonuses and better pay, and support nurses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) left several months ago after assisting with Covid-19 surges in the region.

“People don’t take breaks,” said Anchondo. “One of the things we’re trying to negotiate is a relief break nurse…”

Kimberly Smith, an ICU nurse for 12 years at the Corpus Christi medical center in Texas, said unsafe staffing was a prevailing issue in new union contract negotiations but that these important issues to nurses have fallen by the wayside for the sake of profits and public relations campaigns asserting nurses are heroes for working on the frontlines during the pandemic and empty thank you events where nurses were given free hotdogs.

“I just want to be safe at work. I don’t need a hotdog. You’re telling me I’m a hero and how wonderful I am. Just make the working conditions safe. That’s all nurses want. We want to feel like we’re able to give the best care we can and have enough resources to do it,” said Smith, who added that nurses regularly skip breaks because there is no staff to relieve them. ‘‘Even before the pandemic the staffing wasn’t this bad. It’s been a horrible year. Nurses have passed away, are getting out of the profession, they’re retiring.”

‘We went from heroes to zeroes’: US nurses strike over work conditions | Nursing | The Guardian