And here’s the last batch of recordings from September –

FAQ Socialism and Morality – Paddy Shannon, 16th September 2020

Does religion matter to socialists pt.1 – Howard Moss, 18th September 2020

Does religion matter to socialists pt.2

Socialism and Art pt.1 – Carla Dee, 25th September 2020

Socialism and Art pt.2

FAQ Desert-island books for socialists – Paddy Shannon, 30th September 2020

 Marginalised ethnic minority groups in conflict-plagued regions of Myanmar, will be excluded in their homelands from the vote in next month’s national elections.

 Nearly two million people will now be disenfranchised by the election commission which has announced a long list of constituencies where voting will not take place. 

More than a million voters will be disenfranchised in Rakhine alone as well as hundreds of thousands in other states across the country — notably in Shan, Kachin and Karen.

The election commission is wholly appointed by the government.

The commission is “blatantly denying minorities representation”, said Kyaw Win of Burma Human Rights Network.

Purdue Pharma, the company that makes OxyContin and other potentially addictive prescription opioids, has agreed to plead guilty to three felony counts and reached a settlement potentially worth at least $8.3 billion with the Justice Department. The deal could clear the way for Purdue to transform from a profit-seeking privately held company into a public trust that serves the public good.

Rather than attempting to get profit-making companies to do the right thing, or hoping that a single ethically marketed drug could win out,  the proposed transformation of Purdue would legally require a major pharmaceutical manufacturer to make public health a higher priority than shareholder profits.

This would, at least in theory, serve two important goals.

First, by legally defining the company’s obligations to public health rather than to shareholders, it would eliminate the kinds of abuses that can result from the pursuit of profit such as marketing that encourages unnecessary or improper use.

Second, by providing addiction treatment at no cost, it would increase access to health care to the sorts of patients – addicted, poor and lacking adequate health insurance – typically ill served or even ignored in today’s system.

But by all accounts, the new trust would still be a for-profit entity. 

Indeed, profits from continued sales of pain medicines like OxyContin and addiction treatment medications like buprenorphine and naloxone – estimated by Purdue to be up to $8 billion per year – are crucial as the “payment” Purdue is offering to compensate the public for the company’s share of the costs of the opioid crisis.

 In the Purdue settlement, it would have to pursue profits just like the old Purdue. And since all pharmaceutical companies officially declare themselves to be dedicated to serving the public good, how different would it really be? The new trust would still be Purdue Pharma, a company with a well-entrenched culture of maximizing sales and profits.

History does not offer much assurance that isolated public-sector and nonprofit drug-makers can make a big difference in a pharmaceutical system designed for and powered by profit.

https://theconversation.com/oxycontin-maker-purdue-pharma-may-settle-legal-claims-with-a-new-public-trust-that-would-still-be-dedicated-to-profit-148604

  As of October 1, about 7000 protests had occurred this year (roughly 25 a day), according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflicts.

Unlike before, these protests have by and large not taken place in right-wing opposition strongholds nor necessarily demanded the removal of President Nicolas Maduro.

Instead, they have focused on demands around access to basic services — electricity, domestic gas, water — and occurred in areas that traditionally voted for former socialist president Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor. Differing from the “protests of the rich” of past years, Unitary Chavista Socialist League (LUCHAS) spokesperson Stalin Pérez Borges told Green Left Venezuela is witnessing a rise in “protests of the poor, driven by the difficult situation people face.” Their targets, in most cases, have been officials aligned with Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

United Left general coordinator Feliz Velasquez agrees. These protests were “very different from the protests we had in Venezuela in 2014 or 2017, which were violent protests seeking to bring down the government.

“Today, what we have are largely peaceful protests by popular sectors, organised sectors, including in some cases entire small communities, that, faced with the crisis affecting basic services, have decided to protest.”

Neglected for decades by traditional parties, Venezuela’s countryside became — alongside the barrios — Chávez’s strongest base of support. Life there was radically transformed under Chávez pro-poor Bolivarian revolution through the rapid expansion of education, healthcare and basic services. Important initiatives in promoting cooperatives, communes and community-owned productive enterprises also took root. However, eight years after his death, it is here where the reversals of the revolution have been felt the most.  In regional towns, residents can often go days without basic services. Fed up with this situation, popular movements are taking to the streets.

Along with basic services, there is also the issue of workers’ wages. September registered a daily average of nine protests or strikes demanding better wages. Hyperinflation, another weapon alongside sanctions in the economic war against Venezuela, has meant workers’ wages have plummeted, leaving most essential goods out of reach for the majority.

“Right now, Venezuela has the lowest wages in the world,” Velasquez said. “A teacher, a professional, a university academic does not earn more than $2-3 a month, which of course creates a lot of hardship when a kilo of rice can cost $1.”

Velazquez — whose organisation is part of an alliance of left parties and movements running candidates against the PSUV in the coming election — believes there has been a shift in the government’s approach between Chávez and Maduro. “Chávez always sought consultation, debate. He always asked people to present proposals for overcoming problems and was willing to correct mistakes, learn together with the people.

“The style of government we have now is very different”, he said. The Maduro government has an “aristocratic vision of doing politics, where the government thinks they are the owners of the truth, that they are a government of the best, for the rest.”

“This vision of politics has led them to discredit the views and opinions of other political movements, to ignore peoples’ needs and demands.”

From

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/venezuela-could-rebellion-ranks-signal-end-maduro

Our revolution has not yet been made. Unfortunately, a large socialist party remains more a long range aspiration than an immediate realistic possibility. The absence of a viable socialist movement in the U.S. today is an indisputable and depressing fact. For all the weakness of the socialist movement, an administration run by the corrupt Republican Party and a White House staffed by Trump and Pence, what could be more utopian and absurd as even a beginning of a solution to America’s problems. By comparison, socialists are eminently practical and realistic men and women.

The truth is that the ailment afflicting America is not the president who leads it but is capitalism, and the difference between the two parties is that the Democrats will complain of symptoms, while the Republicans outright deny they are sick. Neither can provide the cure. Most of the major problems with America, and the world, can be traced back to capitalism, an economic system in which a society’s means of production are primarily controlled by private individuals hoping to make a profit. It is a system that has devastated our planet, created massive income inequality and left us unprepared for crises such as the coronavirus pandemic. The problem with capitalism is that it is built on the need for private enterprises to make money, no matter what. Wealthy Democrats and Republicans cross party-lines with their financing. their campaigns. It is standard practice for corporations to donate to both parties and both candidates. These corporate lobbyist funds are not really contributions. They are investments or bribes with an expected return of access to shape policy. It is a corrupt electoral system that closes down choices, obliges citizens to vote against their conscience and allows money to control people

There have been many attempts before in the United States towards a break-up of the two party system yet none have not been successful. The American presidential elections have once again rendered proof of the paradox of a politically backward working class in a highly developed industrial country. People are taught not to vote FOR what they believe but AGAINST an individual.  An unpopular policy once identified with an individual can be continued by replacing the individual, keeping the policy with modifications.

Nevertheless it would be incorrect to conclude that there are not any tendencies of a left–wing drift of the American workers. No one could fail to notice the enormous discontentment as revealed by the elections, and revealed clearly also in the recent protest movement and demonstrations. Yet they are still harnessed within the usual traditional channels, flowing from one capitalist party to another. There will be a few workers who are urging their fellow-workers to abstain from voting for any candidates whatsoever. Their slogan is the slogan of the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) in this campaign: BOYCOTT THE ELECTIONS! A party that promises you that a new president or a new term will bring solutions to your problems is deceiving you. The World Socialist Party must push aside all secondary and reformist distinctions, and pose directly the central issue: the class struggle for for socialism. Our success in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes or offices won, but in the extent and the depth to which they have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the attention of our fellow-workers.

Unlike  the platforms, programs, and agitation of the other political parties the WSPUS remain consistent in our case for socialism. Demagogy means the adaptation of policy and propaganda to the prejudices of the audience to which it is hoped to appeal, without regard to the truth or correctness or workability of the given policy and propaganda. Demagogy is thus the exploitation of ignorance. It is in direct contrast to principled politics, which always tells the truth both about what is at present, what will probably be, and about what it proposes as solution. Principled politics, thus, instead of exploiting, combats ignorance; instead of pandering to prejudices and building on them, is the practice of the WSPUS. The demagogy of the other parties is not accidental. All their promises of betterment, of peace, prosperity and security, are necessarily demagogic since none of these is  possible under capitalism. That is why only a program of revolutionary struggle AGAINST capitalism can be anything other than demagogy. Each party in its different way presents a program which revolves within the orbit of capitalism, which presupposes the continued existence of capitalism. It follows there from that each of these parties is basically dedicated, however indirectly, to the maintenance and defense of capitalism. They differ profoundly, it is true, in the ways and means they propose; in their social composition; in the manner and direction of the “appeal” which they make. But these differences drop to insignificance before this basic similarity.

The Republican Party appears, on the whole, in this campaign as the party of open, traditional reaction. Its leaders make clear that what the Republicans propose is a return to the good old Reagan days. The future of capitalism and profits, they would like to believe, lies in real Americanism, in rugged individualism, competition, no government “interference” in business, no compromise with labor. They want to pursue increased profits in their own unhampered way.

The Democratic party differs – in words at any rate. Equally devoted to the preservation of capitalism and the fullest possible capitalist prosperity (i.e., profits), the Democratic politicians believe that the methods of reaction is no longer appropriate to protect profits or to keep the people in order. They advocate an “enlightened” capitalism, tempering harsh exploitation with fine phrases about human rights and public duty, with the aim to pacify people with promises, while oiling the wheels of capitalism. Through such means the Democrats have indeed won the temporary allegiance of a substantial majority of working people. 

“Progressive Biden or reaction Trump” chorus the liberal media. The difference between Trump and Biden is not between what is reactionary and progressive: they BOTH are unequivocal representatives of the reactionary capitalist class, both sworn to uphold the present social order; they differ only in their versions of the most effective means for guaranteeing success. For the worker, the choice between them is, at the most, no more important than the choice between the assembly line at Ford’s or at Chrysler’s.

All the specious talk that the “main issue” in the campaign is the “judicial tyranny” of the Supreme Court or the “encroachments of the Federal government” or any of a thousand others are entirely subordinate to the basic CLASS issue, to the issue of capitalism versus socialism. It is not the Federal government or the Supreme Court which are the particular enemies, but capitalism as a whole and its entire state apparatus.

 What is the role and purpose of the American president? To stabilize the system of exploitation and maintain the economic power of the class that owns and controls the means of production. It is well to remember that.

Once again, as has happened so many times in American history, the issue of political corruption in the highest echelons of the government has come to the fore. It is of no use for the World Socialist Party of the United States to simply join the cacophony of loud and discordant voices calling for removal of Trump and his accomplices in government and accuse them of of criminal misconduct. Our concern is to reveal the relationship of crime and corruption to capitalism in general. The goal of the WSPUS is to tear away the veil of secrecy and factional politics and bring out the real issue.

Biden and Trump who are respectively the chosen or self–appointed spokesmen for their political parties may have widely different opinions on many issues but upon economic questions affecting the present social order they are at one. They represent the capitalist system and they stand or fall with capitalism. The issues which divide the capitalist political camps are merely quarrels between rival groups of capitalists over the division of the spoils which they have expropriated from the workers. As workers, we are no more interested in the outcome of these political squabbles than we would if two hold–up men had robbed us and then fell-out over the split of the haul. What are the issues about which the Republicans and Democrats are fighting? Do they mean anything to you?

The lords of Big Business are seeking ways and means to undermine and destroy the workers’ own organizations, the trade unions. They want to convert the workers into helpless serfs, unable to defend their hard-won rights and living standards. To defend itself with its united power in every field where it is attacked, labor must break for all time with the capitalist political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and every type of boss politician. There are no “friends of labor” in the capitalist parties. The capitalists control the media. They control the politicians. They control the schools, colleges, and churches. They let you vote because they know that through their control of the means of information they can make you vote for what they want, and that no matter which way you vote, their right to rob you will be protected. The government is merely a big machine to help the capitalists keep their system of private ownership of the industries and natural resources, through which you are oppressed and exploited. The government is built to do the work of the capitalists. The laws which are made protect the capitalist interests. The government protects the capitalists no matter which party is in power. It cannot help you. It is intended only to hold you down, so that the capitalists can continue to make big profit for themselves out of your work. 

Choose between the trickster Trump or the shyster Biden. All capitalist politicians lie – they have no other choice. Both capitalist parties have amply earned the contempt of the people. Workers cannot rely on the capitalist system, the capitalist government or a piece of legislation by capitalist politicians to solve the basic evils of the private profit system. So long as the capitalists are permitted to rule, so long will there be unemployment, war, terrorism, food insecurity and police brutality.

No capitalist politician dares to lift a finger to challenge the Wall St. Corporate wealth controls the government of this nation. The corporations will continue to write our laws to please its share-owners and investors. The World Socialist Party intends to supplant corporate wealth by common wealth. That means common ownership by the people and democratic control by their communities. There is no hope for a new and better world except through the achievement of socialism, a world of peace, freedom and plenty for all.

The World Socialist Party calls upon fellow-workers to join us in the overthrow of capitalism through capturing the powers of government and transferring the ownership of the world from capitalism to socialism. It points out the staggering burden of militarism, the colossal fraud and  indescribably corruption of capitalist business, the cant, the chicanery, and the hypocrisy of capitalist society. Our aim is not to reform the evils of the day, but to abolish the social system that produces them, that is why the World Socialist Party is organized. It is the party, not of reform, but of revolution.

 Boycott the election! Refuse to vote for the capitalist fools who oppress and murder the workers. Refuse to vote for the fake progressives who mislead the workers and betray them when they get into office. 

Tropical forest and peatland areas bigger than the Netherlands have burned in Indonesia in the past five years, Greenpeace has said, lambasting President Joko Widodo’s government for allowing the pulpwood and palm oil sector to act with impunity despite bearing “considerable responsibility” for the fire crisis. Indonesia, which has the biggest forests outside the Amazon and the Congo, is the world’s largest producer of palm oil and each year fires are linked to slash-and-burn practices used to clear areas for palm oil cultivation.

In a new report on Thursday, the prominent environmental group said some 4.4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of land have burned in Indonesia between 2015 and 2019. Despite government promises to punish companies found to be deliberately burning concessions – particularly in the aftermath of the 2015 crisis that caused trans-boundary haze, affecting tens of millions of people across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – “palm oil and pulp firms continue to operate with few or no sanctions”, Greenpeace said. There has been no action against eight of the 10 palm oil companies with the largest burned areas in their concessions from 2015 to 2019, despite fires burning in multiple years within their concessions, it added.

 Indonesia’s government and legislators recently passed a new law that dismantles environmental protections, Greenpeace said. The “omnibus” Job Creation law, drafted with the involvement of the plantation sector approved by parliament earlier this month, weakens liability for environmental crimes, the group said, as the “palm oil and pulp sectors will be relieved of responsibility for prior damage they have inflicted on Indonesia’s peatlands”. The law will also protect the plantation sector from future liability for damage to the environment and fires in their concessions, the report said.

“Palm oil and pulp multinationals have practically set the rules in recent decades. Year after year they have broken the law by allowing forests to go up in flames, yet they evade justice and go unpunished,” said Kiki Taufik, global head of Greenpeace Southeast Asia Forest campaign. “Measures like the pro-business ‘Omnibus Law’ that ignore people and see nature as a bottomless resource to be extracted for short-term profit, can only have a catastrophic outcome for human health, human rights and the climate,” he added.

Three of the five companies, Greenpeace said, had the largest burned areas in their concessions from 2015 to 2019 are suppliers to Indonesia’s biggest conglomerate, Sinar Mas Group, and one of the country’s largest pulp and paper companies, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP).

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/22/area-burned-in-indonesia-fires-greater-than-the-netherlands

 FAQ Conspiracy theories Paddy Shannon, 2nd September 2020

Why not reformism? pt.1 Keith Graham, 4th September 2020

Why not reformism? pt.2 Keith Graham, 4th September 2020

FAQ Is propaganda different from marketing Paddy Shannon, 9th September 2020

Roadmap to Socialism Binay Sarkar, 11th September 2020

 Following the abolition of slavery in 1888, Brazilian authorities refused to implement any kind of public policy to integrate Black people into society. Instead, over the course of the 20th century, they carefully constructed a narrative in which Brazil is cast as a rare haven where people of all races are able to live in harmony. 

As a result, despite Black and mixed-race Brazilians suffering the worst of police violence, having limited access to education, making up some 64 percent of the unemployed, having limited representation in prominent decision-making bodies, and being almost three times as likely to be victims of homicide, most of the Brazilian population remained convinced there is effectively no racism in their country.

 That there is now a higher number of Black candidates contesting the elections and that the political parties are obligated to spend some money on their campaigns does not necessarily mean the upcoming municipal elections are going to lead to more diversity, let alone racial justice.

While the total number of Black and mixed-race candidates is now higher than the total number of white candidates when it comes to mayoral elections – the position that holds the most power – white people still dominate the lists. Indeed, of the 19,100 people who registered to run for mayor in the upcoming election, only 35 percent are Black – this in a country where 56.2 percent of the general population identify as Black.

The high number of Black city council candidates do not guarantee more racially diverse city councils either. In the Brazilian electoral system, not only the votes received by an individual candidate but also the total number of votes received by all of a political party’s registered candidates influence the outcome of an election. So it is possible for a popular candidate to fail to be elected solely due to the overall poor performance of his or her party. Knowing this, Brazilian parties often register a high number of candidates for each contested seat, just to gain a few more votes that can prove decisive in a tight election. Because of this, many fear that Black candidates running for a position in the municipal elections will only help their party’s strongest candidates (many of whom are white) to get elected, but fail to gain a seat themselves.

A Supreme Court’s decision in August obliges political parties to spend a proportional percentage of the public money they receive on the campaigns of their Black candidates, it does not instruct them to divide that money equally between these candidates. This means a party with 30 percent Black candidates can lawfully spend 30 percent of the public funds it receives on a single Black candidate’s campaign, and completely ignore the rest. This would result in a few strong Black candidates gaining office, with the overall racial makeup of councils across the country not changing significantly.

 There is one issue that categorically demonstrates that racial justice is not yet within the grasp of Brazilians. A significant percentage of the “Black” candidates running for a seat in the municipal elections, many of whom are already holding office or well-known public figures, only publicly acknowledged their Blackness in the run-up to this election. According to a survey of the 107 “Black” candidates running for the mayorship of a Brazilian state capital in the 2020 elections, 23 had claimed to be white in a previous election. If the candidates who changed their race in the run-up to the election were to be counted as white, the percentage of Black Brazilians running for a mayorship this year would decline to 26.4 percent. The percentage of white mayoral candidates, meanwhile, would jump to 73 percent.

 The introduction of women’s quotas failed to significantly increase the number of women in elected office in Brazil. There is little reason to believe the cosmetic increase in the number of Black candidates in this year’s municipal election or the Supreme Court’s recent decision to force political parties to give some Black candidates more public funds would yield more successful results.

There is no guarantee candidates who declared themselves to be Black in the run-up to the election would be willing to contribute to the fight against racism, sexism and other injustices once they are in office. In the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, for example, the Minister of Human Rights, Damares Alves, is a woman, but she does not consider herself a feminist and opposes women’s right to abortion. Sergio Camargo, the Black president of the Palmares Foundation, a government-funded institute tasked with promoting and protecting Afro-Brazilian culture, meanwhile, denies the existence of racism in Brazil and has described Black rights activists as “damned scum”.

 The Brazilian far right has learned how to use the diversity discourse of the left to its electoral advantage. Being forced to acknowledge the issue of race that it for decades chose to completely ignore, it is now finding ways to manipulate the public thirst for racial justice to further its own conservative and destructive agendas.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/10/22/diversity-in-brazil-is-still-just-an-illusion/

 The UK’s means-tested system of unemployment benefits, which operate as a “bare minimum” safety net, has failed to provide sufficient support to hundreds of thousands of people during the pandemic.

Thousands of middle-income professionals who have lost their job during the pandemic have reported turning to food banks, going into debt and suffering from stress and anxiety after they were turned down for universal credit, research reveals. The majority were turned down because access to benefits in the UK is subject to household “wealth tests”. Some 45% were ineligible because they or their partner earned too much, and 23% because they had savings above a £16,000 threshold.

The study, by the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Benefits at a Social Distance project, found nearly three-quarters were surprised when they were refused benefits, or said it was “unfair”. Many are probably to have had little interaction with the benefit system prior to the pandemic.

The study found nearly half the people rejected for unemployment benefits between March and July reported increased financial strains, while more than half reported problems with mental health, and around one in six said they had struggled to afford food.

At least 290,000 people were turned down for benefits – about one in 10 of all claims made for universal credit during the period – leaving many with little or no state support as they faced often huge reductions in household income.

Roughly half those rejected were graduates, and a third were in professional or managerial jobs, the study found. Over half reported losing at least 25% of their household income. Nearly two-thirds said they were unsure how they would cope financially when they heard they did not qualify for benefits.

Nearly two-thirds of unsuccessful claimants reported poor mental health or high anxiety as a result. Nearly half reported at least one of the following: falling behind on housing costs or bills; not being able to afford daily fresh fruit and vegetables; and being hungry and not eating.

Most had used savings or borrowed money on credit cards to tide them over. Around 4% reported using food banks. Pre-Covid studies show that most food bank users prior to the pandemic were destitute and reliant on benefits.

The £16,000 savings cap in particular proved unpopular, with many people complaining that money set aside for tax bills, mortgage deposits and retirement funds deprived them of benefits support, penalising them at a time of crisis not of their own making.

Although many turned down for universal credit are middle-income households, researchers have also found that around a quarter of the 3 million successful new claimants were also in professional jobs, suggesting the pandemic has brought many middle-class people into intimate contact with the UK benefit system for the first time.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/22/thousands-of-people-refused-universal-credit-turning-to-food-banks