The owner of JD Sports, Millets and Black Leisure, and a string of overseas sportswear chains, Peter Cowgill, has been handed almost £6m in bonuses since February last year despite the company accepting more than £100m in government support.
The retailer has already been criticised for restarting dividend payments to shareholders while retaining the government pandemic financial support. In April, after revealing that it was paying out £14m to shareholders.
The Lancet said efforts to curb the habit had been outstripped by population growth with 150 million more people smoking in the nine years from 1990, reaching an all-time high of 1.1 billion.
Smoking killed almost 8 million people in 2019 and the number of smokers rose as the habit was picked up by young people around the world.
89% of new smokers were addicted by the age of 25 but beyond that age were unlikely to start.
Just 10 countries made up two-thirds of the world’s smoking population: China, India, Indonesia, the US, Russia, Bangladesh, Japan, Turkey, Vietnam and the Philippines.
One in three tobacco smokers (341 million) live in China.
Number of smokers has reached all-time high of 1.1 billion, study finds | Smoking | The Guardian
For $25 billion dollars (3% of the U.S. annual military budget) the world could establish regional manufacturing hubs to produce eight billion coronavirus vaccine doses in less than a year.
The report compiled by Dr. Zoltán Kis, a research associate at the Centre for Process Systems Engineering at Imperial College London, and Zain Rizvi, law and policy researcher in Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, shows that with minimal investment by the wealthiest nations, enough vaccine supply could be produced to inoculate 80% of the population in low- and middle-income countries by May 2022. If present trends continue, impoverished nations in the Global South won’t be vaccinated until 2024, experts say.
“The global vaccine apartheid is a policy choice,” the People’s Vaccine Alliance tweeted. “We have the means to end it.”
Africa and Latin America have 0.17% and 2% of global vaccine production capacity, respectively, but Kis and Rizvi noted that the WHO has said: “19 manufacturers from more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have expressed interest in ramping up mRNA vaccine production.”
Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines director, said in a statement, “It will require resources and coordination, but we know this can be done. The sooner we start, the more lives we will save and the faster our world will stop unravelling.”
As Japan’s population continues to drop, with just 14.93 million children aged 14 or younger on April 1, a decline of 190,000 on the same date a year ago and the lowest annual figure since 1950, household pets are on the rise.
There are some 20 million cats and dogs registered across the country, and an additional 60,000 pets joined households in 2020.
“They are willing to spend money on giving them the best food available,” Chris Dunn, an executive of the Japan branch of the Pet Planet food company said.
Many pet owners in Japan come from middle-to-high-income households, so the surge in pet sales has been followed by the emergence of a bewildering array of accessories for animals. Pet shops in Japan often stock a diverse range of clothing for dogs, from rainwear to fancy dress outfits. In addition to leashes, collars, toys and animal beds, the most popular products are strollers for taking pets to the park.
Dunn believes that the biggest reason why people in Japan are buying pets is for psychological support, whether they are doing so consciously or not.
It is well known that the United States provides substantial aid to Israel, the degree to which the Israeli military relies on U.S. planes, bombs, and missiles is not fully appreciated.
According to statistics compiled by the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, the United States has provided Israel with $63 billion in security assistance over the past two decades, more than 90 percent of it through the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing, which provides funds to buy U.S. weaponry.
But Washington’s support for the Israeli state goes back much further. Total U.S. military and economic aid to Israel exceeds $236 billion (in inflation-adjusted 2018 dollars) since its founding — nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars.
Tyranny
The tyrant broods in his distant castle,
Plucking adversaries out of the air
To languish in the dungeons of his lair;
Every man, woman and child his vassal.
Yet, even at the zenith of his power,
Despots abroad with critical tongues
Will conceal their own by speaking his wrongs,
Each hoping to baulk their reckoning hour.
And secure they are while people can’t see
The chains that bind them to separate lands
Are being forged and re-forged by their own hands:
If they saw the links they might set themselves free.
What holds in thrall all working folk et al
Is the despotism of capital.
D.A.
For more than 50 years, Interstate 81 has cut through the heart of hard-luck Syracuse, New York, raining vehicle exhaust on its Southside neighborhood, where most residents are Black and poor. Road builders at the time were largely free to ignore environmental, historical, social or other factors, allowing them to focus on the most direct route from one point to another. More often than not, that meant routing those freeways through Black neighborhoods, where land was cheap and political opposition low.
“When they put that highway up they destroyed this community,” said David Rufus, a lifelong Southside resident who is now an organizer for the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).
Black neighborhoods were targeted even when more logical routes were available, research by the late urban historian Raymond Mohl shows. Existing long-distance highways, like the New York State Thruway, largely skirted city centers. The new interstates were built right through them.
Syracuse wasn’t the only city where Black residents were displaced by the U.S. freeway-building boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Across the country, local officials saw the proposed interstate system as a convenient way to demolish what they regarded as “slum” neighborhoods near their downtown business districts, historians say. With the federal government picking up 90% of the cost, freeway construction made it easier for politicians and business leaders to pursue their own “urban renewal” projects after residents were evicted.
University of California, Irvine law professor Joseph DiMento, an expert in the policies of the freeway-building era, explains, “The reasons they were built were heavily for removal of Blacks from certain areas.”
*In Miami, Interstate 95 was routed through Overtown, a Black neighborhood known as the “Harlem of the South,” rather than a nearby abandoned rail corridor.
*In Nashville, Interstate 40 took a noticeable swerve, bisecting the Black community of North Nashville.
*In Montgomery, Alabama, the state highway director, a high-level officer of the Ku Klux Klan, routed Interstate 85 through a neighborhood where many Black civil rights leaders lived, rather than choosing an alternate route on vacant land.
*In New Orleans and Kansas City, officials re-routed freeways from white neighborhoods to integrated or predominantly Black areas.
The road-building program ultimately displaced more than 1 million Americans, most of them low-income minorities, according to Anthony Foxx, former transportation secretary under Obama.
U.S. freeways flattened Black neighborhoods nationwide (trust.org)
The IPPR thinktank shows the UK’s poverty rate among working households last year reached a record high for this century.
Working people have come under increasing financial pressure during the last 25 years from soaring property prices, private sector rent hikes and crippling childcare costs.
An increase in relative poverty from 13% in 1996 to 17.4% of working households in the year to March 2020 illustrates the combination of low wage rises and the spiralling cost of living. Since 2010 the situation has deteriorated steadily to leave working families at the highest risk of falling into poverty since the welfare system was at its most adequate in 2004.
The report said four factors lay behind the growth in poverty:
Spiralling housing costs among low-income households.
Low wages and modest pay rises.
A social security system that has failed to keep up with rental costs.
A lack of flexible and affordable childcare.
Applying for asylum at international borders is a legal right guaranteed by the U.N. Convention on Refugees (to which the United States is a signatory) and the U.S. Refugee Act.
Since Biden took office, right–wing outlets have run non–stop sensationalist border stories depicting liberals as“soft” on immigration. Such propaganda distracts from the very real plight of asylum seekers and the vulnerable families who are trying to build better lives for themselves are depicted as a security threat to the United States, rather than the media garnering sympathy for those desperate people from the U.S. public.
Biden frequently talks about his humanity towards the migrants at the border but his actual actions have differed little from Trump’s. Biden has reopened migrant youth detention centres. Families who arrive at the border are denied entry, but unaccompanied minors pass through — tantamount to separating families on the Mexico side of the border, rather than changing the policy. Biden continued to apply Title 42, a public health statute, first used by Trump to expel migrants under a cynical pretext of controlling Covid-19. And before indignant grassroot Democrats forced him to back down, Biden also intended to maintain Trump’s low cap on refugees.
There are tens of thousands of people in rough and ready makeshift camps on the Mexico side of the border exposed to the weather and to those criminal elements seeking to take advantage of them.
Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala have deployed 18,500 troops to stem migration from Central American countries at the behest of the United States to deter the migrant caravans. The United States imposed unequal trade agreements that privilege U.S. business interests over the well-being of local Central American. The United States has legitimized and validated corrupt governments such as Honduras and the Hernández
Although it dates from the 1950s, this article puts the case against the lesser evil argument rather well and still remains relevant today.
Critics of the Labour Government are rapidly increasing in number. With daily increases in the cost of living, whilst wages climb at tortoise pace in pursuit; with the ever growing threat of war and the prospect of devastating atomic warfare; with some essential foodstuffs and other commodities being rationed down to infinitesimal quantities, the Labour Government stands accused of being the cause of it all. That is the fate of all politicians who undertake the job of capitalist government. The government of the day, whether it be Conservative, Liberal Labour or Coalition, always bears the brunt of criticism for the prevailing bad conditions. Socialists do not subscribe to this idea. They do not claim that the problems that confront the workers today arise because of the Labour Government, but rather, in spite of a Labour Government. These problems arise from the capitalist society in which we live and governments are powerless to prevent them.
This does not mean that a government has no power to affect the prevailing conditions. The outbreak of war may be advanced or postponed by a particular government policy. Governmental action can cause the meat ration to be increased or it can cause it to dwindle to an even less amount. One government might cause a few more houses to be built than would another or one government might impose import duties where another would remove them. One could introduce harsh anti-working-class legislation whilst another could repeal it. Although a capitalist government can modify, amend, adjust and generally tinker around with the problems that confront it, it is powerless to remove them.
Amongst the critics of the Labour Party are many erstwhile staunch supporters whose votes help to put that party in power. It is not in the least unusual these days to hear Labour Party supporters vehemently denouncing the government for doing things that should have been left undone and not doing things that should be done. They will readily admit the shortcomings of Labour ministers and oppose the Labour Government’s policy. They will agree that socialism is the only solution to working class problems, but—BUT—as it is not possible to establish immediately they intend to support the lesser of two evils, the Labour Party in preference to the Conservatives. “The lesser of two evils”—how often the workers have been hoodwinked by that notion! As though one capitalist political party was even a little bit preferable to another. As though there is anything to chose between them as far as the workers are concerned. As the Irishman is reputed to have said, “The only difference between them is that they are all alike.” Looking back over the years of working class struggle, under all kinds of governments, should be sufficient evidence that the workers’ position is not altered whenever there is a change of government Giving the workers the choice of two political parties, each competing for the job of administering capitalism, is like giving the Christmas goose the choice of being roasted or boiled.
If it were true that one particular party was likely to be less harmful to working class interests than another, there is still no means of telling which one it is. The German workers in 1932 selected what they considered to be the lesser evil when they elected Hindenburg as president in preference to his opponent. Hitler. But a year later Hindenburg appointed Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany and the German workers had both evils to contend with. After nearly 30 years of Labour Government in New Zealand the workers there have apparently come to the conclusion that there is a lesser evil than the Labour Government and have kicked it out. Working class supporters of the Conservative Party will, of course, claim that their party is the lesser evil. The fact of the matter is, that all capitalist governments are evils from the viewpoint of the working class, and the minor differences that exist between them are reflections of the sectional interests of the capitalist class. The promises, plans and programmes that they present at election times are only possible of fulfilment if the capitalist system allows. Whether a particular government smites the workers with a velvet gloved hand or a mailed fist depends on the capitalist needs of the moment. In times of crisis for the capitalist class it will be as ruthless with its workers as it dares and the government then in office will have to do the dirty work. If a government is at all inclined to leniency in favour of the workers, all the might of the combined sections of the capitalist class will be turned to achieve that government’s destruction. But as Labour Parties, like Conservative Parties, are parties of capitalism, they can be relied upon to serve capitalist interests in opposition to the workers. If capital needs increased production, it is the job of the existing government to see that it is increased; if capital wants wages frozen, it is the task of the government to put them in the refrigerator; if capital is forced to fight for its fields for investment and its markets, it is the job of the government to whip up the workers and send them off to kill or be killed; and if the workers embarrass capital by striking, it is the job of the government to use the troops that it controls to “preserve law and order.”
International capital will drag governments around by their ears. The Rumanian Government, just before the last world war, was re-shuffled a number of times first at the dictates of German capitalism then at the dictates of British. The members of the political organisation known as the Iron Guard were first taken into the Rumanian Government, then turned out and later brought in again. The British Government is now leaning heavily on American Capitalism. The British army will operate under an American general and the British Atlantic fleet will take its orders from an American admiral. Because American capital wills it. Just as, where British capital holds sway, there can be found native armies officered by Britons. No matter what the politicians may say, the position would not be seriously altered if any other party formed the government.
Socialism is the solution to the workers’ problems and until they establish socialism they will have to put up with capitalism and all its attendant evils. The great need is to convince the workers of the necessity for socialism and that will not be done by telling them to support a capitalist party because it is considered to be a “ lesser evil ” than some other party. By that means they will be giving support to the capitalist class to prolong this system and delay the establishment of socialism. By supporting the capitalist parties the workers are forming the tail-end of capitalist politics. Those who urge them to do that and betraying working class interests.
The workers must be urged to break completely with the political parties of capitalism, whether openly pro-capitalist like the Conservatives or avowedly pro-labour like the Labour Party. They must be brought to realise that they must join a political party, separate from and opposed to the capitalist parties. Socialism is an immediate necessity. As long as capitalism lasts there will be wars, poverty, insecurity and all the rest of the evils that flow from this system. There is no “lesser evil ” to be found by supporting any one of the capitalist parties in preference to another.
If a man is robbed by two thieves, it is in his interest to regain his property, not to take sides with one thief or the other in their differences about the share-out of their loot, even if one of them has got a kind-looking face. When he tries to get his stolen property back he will soon find that the two robbers will sink their differences and gang up to prevent him recovering his goods. They will both be vicious and he must oppose the two of them or else find himself “between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
W. Waters
hat-tip to
ALB and Darren at
Socialist Standard Past & Present (socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com)
