Author: ajohnstone

The peril and the promise of the pandemic

Uncategorised No Comments



 COVID-19 has fed the right-wing and nationalism espousing the politics of paranoia, stoking fear against foreigners. There has been well documented outbreaks of xenophobia. It may be a symptom of the pandemic which may well endure as the virus dissipates.



Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán declared “There is a logical connection between the two [migration and coronavirus] as both spread with movement.” While Trump  plays the same blame game calling the disease the “Chinese virus” 


But Trump’s been here before. On the campaign trail in 2015, he was asserting that “ tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border” because of migrants crossing the Mexican border.


 Right-wing protesters, including militia members brandishing firearms, have begun taking to the streets to urge the end of the stay-at-home restrictions.


In Brazil, right populist Jair Bolsonaro has painted himself as a protector of the poor. “We cannot harm the neediest – they have no way of staying at home for very long without going out to seek their sustenance.” In India, Hindu nationalists have been touting cow urine as a cure for Covid-19 and accusing Muslims of spreading COVID-19 through their mosques.


Indian author and political commentator, Arundhati Roy, is one of many who recognises both the peril and the promise of the moment. 


“I think what has happened is COVID-19 has exposed things about India that all of us knew,” Roy said. “We are suffering, not just from COVID, but from a crisis of hatred, from a crisis of hunger.” She accused the Indian government of exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims. She said that this alleged strategy on the part of the Hindu nationalist government would “dovetail with this illness to create something which the world should really keep its eyes on.” 


She went as far to say that: “The situation is approaching genocidal” explaining that “The whole of the organization, the RSS to which Modi belongs, which is the mother ship of the BJP, has long said that India should be a Hindu nation. Its ideologues have likened the Muslims of India to the Jews of Germany. And if you look at the way in which they are using COVID, it was very much like typhus was used against the Jews to get ghettoize them, to stigmatize them.”


She further explained, “…coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”


It is now necessary to use best practice and to wisely apply science and technology to survive. It is time to  contemplate a social change. It is time for socialism.







We are all “us.”

Uncategorised No Comments


There is a danger emerging that the pandemic will make people nostalgic for normalcy instead of becoming radicalised. Socialists must do their utmost to ensure a return-to-normal and business-as-usual isn’t acceptable. The capitalist world is in turmoil and its fakery has been shown. The political sea change doesn’t mean a sudden conversion to  socialism but it has exposed the frailty and flaws of the capitalist system of production for profit and not to satisfy peoples needs. There will have to be many positive and substantial shifts in public attitudes but it is hard think of a return to the “old normal.” Our everyday lives have been impacted and we have acquired new definitions of who are the key workers and the “essential” industries. The coronavirus has exposed the racial and class disparities in society. The pandemic has in some countries resulted in a nationalist feeding frenzy, just at the time we require global cooperation.



We are experiencing the most profound social, economic and political change in the way we view the world. Some are now suggesting that we replace capitalism with a somewhat better brand of capitalism, reforms which would prove to short-lived, and certainly not target the real problem — capitalism itself. People are being presented with a choice. Reform the unreformable, or create a world based on human need and environmental stability instead of private profits and inequality? It is a question to be answered by all the world’s peoples. The global coronavirus crisis has now given further credence to the socialist alternative hitherto ridiculed and ignored.



Amid this pandemic, we see signs of distrust and fear leading to increased authoritarianism,  xenophobia, and injustice. But there are also good grounds for optimism. Better get to work. Our time is running out. This planet-wide virus, tragic as it is, has the potential to galvanize attitudes of multitudes. Our visions and actions are the building blocks of the world we deeply wish for. Without the belief in the possibilities of progress of social evolution, working people will continue to endure the suffering and stagnation that surely lies ahead.



Camouflaging their Class

Uncategorised No Comments

As the top 1% of the population pulls economically further ahead from the rest, elites, it would appear, are keen to stress their “ordinariness” as they become increasingly sensitive to public opinion, and afraid of being labelled “snobbish, self-interested and out of touch”.



Researchers examining entries in Who’s Who and Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs  found a correlation between elites embracing the more common pursuits of football and pop music at the same time as rising inequality. Over the 120-year period, they found a significant shift from traditional aristocratic pursuits, such as hunting and opera, to more “everyman” interests of family and pets. The trend was particularly marked in the past 30 years.



The research  by Dr Sam Friedman, an associate professor at the department of sociology at the London School of Economics, and Dr Aaron Reeves, a senior research fellow at Oxford University’s department of social policy and intervention found elites were more recently adopting a blend of the highbrow and ordinary, suggesting an attempt to find commonality with the rest of the population, while still signifying their eliteness.



It was most clear from the 1990s onwards, said Friedman, “coinciding neatly with the continuing rise of the top 1%. Of course, this is only an association. Yet, we would speculate that these patterns may be connected. Put simply, as elites have pulled away economically, there is mounting evidence that they are increasingly insecure about their moral legitimacy, and increasingly sensitive to public concern they are snobbish, self-interested and out of touch.”



How elites presented their cultural lives had become a key PR battleground, he said. “Performing ordinariness may provide a very effective means of shoring up authenticity in an era of rising inequality.”



Friedman likened it to Boris Johnson declaring his hobby of making model buses during last year’s Conservative leadership campaign, “when he actually enjoys incredibly highbrow painting and Greek literature”, which he chose not to talk about.

Reeves said it mattered what people played on Desert Island Discs, which was an even more public performance of cultural identity. “Tony Blair famously convened a focus group – as he did for many things – to help him calculate what to play,” he said. Reeves said: “The move towards mundane and everyday leisure pursuits doesn’t necessarily mean elites are actually becoming ordinary, of course.”More, it revealed how they wished to present themselves. Researchers found traditional aristocratic recreations, like horse-riding and polo, were still mentioned alongside the more commonplace.



Elites were, perhaps, trying to forge a sense of commonality and connection, added Friedman. “And the way they do that is to try to cultivate a cultural profile that they feel looks like the ‘everyman’…”



Who’s Who has just 0.05% of the UK population featured.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2020/apr/16/study-whos-who-suggests-elite-keen-to-convey-ordinariness




Flint – Not Forgotten

Uncategorised No Comments
VICE have published an “astounding” and “important” exclusive report on how Rick Snyder, a Republican who served as Michigan’s governor from 2011 to 2019, “knew about Flint’s toxic water—and lied about it.”




The report, based on a year-and-a-half investigation, comes almost six years after an emergency manager appointed by Snyder switched Flint’s water supply from Detroit’s system to the Flint River. Since that move on April 25, 2014, city residents have endured health consequences resulting from a deadly Legionella pneumophila bacterial outbreak and exposure to heavy metals and cancer-causing contaminants. The waterborne bacterial disease may have killed at least 115 people in 2014 and 2015, and potentially more whose pneumonia wasn’t officially considered Legionnaires’ disease, the illness caused by Legionella. In addition to the outbreak, Flint’s water supply was contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, harmful bacteria, carcinogens, and other toxic components. This wreaked havoc on Flint residents, leaving them with a laundry list of illnesses, including kidney and liver problems, severe bone and muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems, loss of teeth, autoimmune diseases, neurological deficiencies, miscarriages, Parkinson’s disease, severe fatigue, seizures, and volatile mood disorders. Beyond this, the long-term effects of heavy-metal poisoning takes years to develop, meaning many ill residents’ conditions are worsening as the years go on.


VICE reveals a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint’s deadly water from going public—while there was still time to save lives—and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines. The report detailed actions of local and state officials both leading up to and during the public health crisis, which continues today. VICE noted that with Flint about to enter its sixth year of the water crisis, “the clock for justice is also ticking.” Unless the Republican-controlled state legislature intervenes, the statute of limitations for filing new felony misconduct-in-office charges will run out next week. 


Karen Weaver, then-mayor of Flint,  told VICE that the governor’s office repeatedly dangled “a pot of money for different things” and pressured her to publicly claim that the city’s water was safe. The outlet reported that “after repeated attempts by the Snyder administration to get Mayor Weaver to cooperate proved unsuccessful, the promised funding suddenly became unavailable.”




The report highlighted a few findings from the Flint criminal investigation documents:


Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.


Snyder had knowledge of the Legionella outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, six months after the water switch—and 16 months earlier than he claimed to have learned of the deadly outbreak in testimony under oath before Congress.


Communication among Snyder, his top officials, and the state health department spiked in October 2014 around the same time state environmental and health officials traded emails and calls about the Legionella outbreak in Flint.



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/04/16/flint-water-crisis-enters-sixth-year-astounding-report-exposes-lies-ex-gov-rick

Food Rots While People Go Hungry

Uncategorised No Comments
U.S. food pantries have faced unprecedented demand while billions of dollars in produce has gone to waste due to supply chain disruptions from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Farmers, without their usual foodservice markets, are being forced to dump milk, eggs, and produce—even while there is an urgent, unprecedented need at food banks. And while there are efforts underway to address the gap between production and distribution, in between are many questions about how our food supply and distribution systems are set up—or not—to respond to disruption.



 About $5 billion of fresh fruits and vegetables have already gone to waste, The Hill reported, citing the industry trade group Produce Marketing Association. 



 The group’s CEO Cathy Burns said that “there’s product literally wasting on the ground and then you have a whole population of people that are in dire need of nutritious foods. We have hundreds of thousands of farmers sitting on product,” said Burns. “Because they don’t have the financial means to ship and distribute it throughout the country, there is good, nutritious food going to waste while there are thousands of people going hungry.”



 Coronavirus-related lockdowns and business closures this year have led to “staggering” levels of job loss, roughly 22 million people have applied for unemployment insurance since mid-March. Those job and income losses have driven up demand for assistance from U.S. food banks and soup kitchens. In recent days, social media have been filled with images of people seeking help from food banks.



“This year, the COVID-19 crisis is driving more of our neighbors into food insecurity and putting a strain on food banks to provide more meals,” Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said. “Never has the charitable food system faced such tremendous challenge, and we need all the resources we can get to help our neighbors during this terrible time.”



Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the United States, has a national network of 200 food banks. A recent survey of those food banks found that through April 1, 98% saw an increase in demand, 59% had less inventory, 67% needed more volunteers, 95% had higher operational expenses, and 37% faced “an immediate critical funding shortfall.”



“The only thing we can do is ration and give families less,” Eric Cooper, president of a food bank in San Antonio said of the rising demand for food aid. “I would challenge our federal government to put systems in place that allow for wasted food to go to families we are feeding. It’s unconscionable.”



Food distribution is falling apart, as is the medical equipment supply chain. It is time to do things differently. These developments should push people towards a fundamental rethink of how things are done. Tragically,  working people remain blind to other possibilities. The combination of both tradional and innovative farming techniques can feed the world, the internet enables global cooperation, robots will free people from the drudgery of physical and mental effort to benefit all.

India’s forgotten health workers

Uncategorised No Comments
900,000 female community health workers are on the frontline as part of India’s battle against Covid-19. But they are poorly paid, ill-prepared and vulnerable to attacks and social stigma.



“The government is paying us 1,000 rupees ($13; £10) a month for corona-related work. That is 30 rupees daily for putting our life in danger.” says Alka Nalawade, a community health worker in the western state of Maharashtra. “The value of our life is just 30 rupees [less than $1], according to the government,” she adds. Ms Nalawade is among the state’s 70,000 Ashas, short for Accredited Social Health Activists. She is a single mother, and has been doing this job for 10 years now in Pawarwadi village, where she lives.  Ms Nalawade says, the compensation does not reflect the dangers she and her colleagues face.

Ashas are drawn from local and largely rural communities, and are a crucial element in India’s primary and community health programmes. They go door-to-door educating people about maternal and child health, contraception, immunisation and sanitation, as well as enrolling them in health programmes and monitoring the results. Their role in the fight against Covid-19 is not that different – they visit the homes they have been assigned, educate families about isolation, and monitor people for symptoms of the virus. But the risk is far greater than anything they have faced before. For one, they don’t have the right gear, including masks or sanitiser. 
Several Ashas told the BBC that they use cotton masks which they wash daily so they can re-use them – and for sanitiser, they have a bottle of spirit that they mix with water. One of them, Karuna Shinde, says she carries a scarf with her, which she uses to cover her face. 
Rajendra Yadravkar, Maharashtra’s junior health minister explains, “Ashas have been putting their lives in danger on a meagre salary. They should be protected. It’s the government’s responsibility to support them.”
They also face stigma for simply trying to do their job – people often stop them from entering their homes and make them stand outside while answering their questions for fear that the Ashas may infect them.
“We are working for the people, but if the same people are going to behave with us this way, what are we supposed to do?” asks Ms Nalawade.
The women also complain that they receive little recognition for their efforts.
“Nobody even mentions our work,” says Anjana Wankhede. “From the prime minister to the chief minister, everybody only praises doctors and police.”
She says that’s unfair since the government relies on the data that Ashas collect daily.
“We visit each and every household and provide these numbers to the government. The government talks based on these numbers, but they don’t talk about the Ashas who collect the numbers.”






Share-holders in clover

Uncategorised No Comments
Britain’s biggest companies handed out almost half a trillion pounds in dividends and share buybacks in the years before the coronavirus crisis struck, according to a report warning that the scale of the pay-outs has undermined their resilience.



According to research from the Common Wealth thinktank, around £400bn was paid in dividends and £61bn of cash returned to investors in share buybacks between 2011 and 2018 by the 100 biggest UK companies.

Analysing dividends for the 100 largest non-financial, UK-domiciled firms on a database managed by the credit ratings agency Moody’s, it found that payouts had steadily risen since 2011 and were equivalent to 68% of the companies’ net profits.



The study also found that 700 executives at 86 of the companies held a collective £6bn in shares at their firms, representing nearly £8.5m per director.



Mathew Lawrence, an academic, said: “Shifts in ownership and company rules have turned the corporation into an engine of wealth extraction for senior management and shareholders. Companies have become less resilient and more unequal as a result.”



As expected though the only proposals being offered is not system change but to “transform ownership to make business democratic and sustainable” – to fix capitalism, an impossible task rather than do away with it.



 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/400bn-paid-in-dividends-by-uk-companies-before-coronavirus-crisis

“They only care about their money.”

Uncategorised No Comments
Smithfield Foods pork-processing plant located in her town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The factory – a massive, eight-story white box perched on the banks of the Big Sioux River – is the ninth-largest hog-processing facility in the US. When running at full capacity, it processes 19,500 freshly-slaughtered hogs per day, slicing, grinding and smoking them into millions of pounds of bacon, hot dogs and spiral-cut hams. With 3,700 workers, it is also the fourth-largest employer in the city. 



 On 15 April, Smithfield finally closed under pressure from the South Dakota governor’s office, the plant had become the number one hotspot in the US, with a cluster of 644 confirmed cases among Smithfield employees and people who contracted it from them. In total, Smithfield-related infections account for 55% of the caseload in the state.



The Smithfield pork plant, located in a Republican-led state that is one of five in the US that has not issued any kind of shelter-in-place order, has become a microcosm illustrating the socioeconomic disparities laid bare by the global pandemic. While many white-collar workers around the country are sheltering in place and working from home, food industry workers like the employees at Smithfield are deemed “essential” and must remain on the front lines. 



The workforce at Smithfield is made up largely of immigrants and refugees from places like Burma, Ethiopia, Nepal, Congo and El Salvador. There are 80 different languages spoken in the plant. Estimates of the mean hourly wage range from $14-16 an hour. Those hours are long, the work is gruelling, and standing on a production line often means being less than a foot away from your co-workers on either side.



If employees were to quit, they would be ineligible for unemployment. Advocates are hearing from visa-holders who fret that even if they were to apply for unemployment, they might be considered “public charges” which could render them ineligible for permanent residency under a new rule enacted by the Trump administration last year. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (Cares) Act excludes anyone living in a mixed-status household with an undocumented family member. 



“They do not qualify for anything,” said Taneeza Islam, the executive director of South Dakota Voices for Peace and an immigration lawyer. “Their choice is between putting food on the table, and going to work and getting exposed.”



The BBC spoke to half a dozen current and former Smithfield employees who say that while they were afraid to continue going to work, deciding between employment and their health has been an impossible choice. 



“I have a lot of bills. My baby’s coming soon – I have to work,” said one 25-year-old employee whose wife is eight months pregnant. “If I get a positive, I’m really worried I can’t save my wife.” 



“Smithfield – they don’t care about employees,” said Neela. “They only care about their money.”



According to Smithfield employees, their union representatives, and advocates for the immigrant community in Sioux Falls, the outbreak that led to the plant closure was avoidable. They allege early requests for personal protective equipment were ignored, that sick workers were incentivised to continue working, and that information regarding the spread of the virus was kept from them, even when they were at risk of exposing family and the broader public.



According to Kooper Caraway, president of the Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, union officials approached management at Smithfield in early March to request multiple measures to increase worker safety, including staggering shifts and lunch schedules, which can pack 500 workers into the factory cafeteria at once. He said they also requested personal protective gear like masks and overcoats, temperature-checking at the doors and sanitation stations.



“This was before anyone at the plant tested positive,” said Caraway. “Management dragged their feet, didn’t take worker demands seriously.”



“If the federal government wants the company to stay open, then whose responsibility is it to make sure these companies are doing what they have to do to keep them safe?” said Nancy Reynoza, founder of Que Pasa Sioux Falls, a Spanish-language news source who said she’s been hearing from distraught Smithfield workers for weeks.



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52311877





TV Streaming Steaming Ahead

Uncategorised No Comments
Netflix has become a more valuable company than the US oil giant ExxonMobil , as the streaming service benefits from increased viewing of television and films during coronavirus lockdowns.



Shares in Netflix moved 5% higher in early trading on Wall Street on Thursday to a new record high of $448 (£360), taking its market value to $196bn. 
At the same time ExxonMobil’s share price fell 3% to $39.30, giving it a market capitalisation of $166bn as the price of oil slumped. As recently as 2013 the company was the most valuable in the world, but is now worth about 13% as much as tech titans Apple and Microsoft.
Netflix was boosted by lockdown measures were imposed around the world. Rivals, such as Amazon’s Prime Video, with an estimated 118 million users, and Disney’s new streaming service, also benefited from new users.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/16/netflix-now-worth-more-than-exxonmobil-as-value-reaches-187bn

Saving the Street Childen

Uncategorised No Comments
For millions of street children, coronavirus restrictions have made access to food, water and shelter even more precarious. A global total of 100 million street children is often quoted, but the true number is believed to be much higher. As the pandemic takes hold across the globe, few groups are as vulnerable as the children who rely on the streets for food and shelter, who risk being further stigmatised and criminalised when cities lock down. Another fear is that the virus could drive homeless children back to families where they are at risk of abuse. Fear is mounting.



A teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach. The police have told us they don’t want to see us around after 7pm. Are we going to die of hunger instead of coronavirus?”



Bokey Anchola, country director for Glad’s House, an NGO working with hard to reach young people in Kenya. “Street children are having a rough time during the curfew. Food and water are a real problem as hotels and eating places where they would normally get food have closed down. Movement is restricted.” 



The closure of eating places, drop-in centres and feeding services, as well as the limits on movement, are just some aspects of a terrifying scenario for street children during the pandemic.  As small businesses have shut up shop in the lockdown, jobs that earned street dwellers a pittance, like carrying goods in markets or selling food to drivers, have vanished. Pavement dwellers are ordered to stay in makeshift structures and can not look for food. 



 Megan Lees-McCowan, head of Africa programmes at Street Child, said she feared Covid-19 would drive more children to the streets across Africa as schools shut and desperate families looked for alternative incomes.

“For us, there is also the spectre of the past,” said Lees-McCowan, recalling how during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, some children were abandoned by destitute families, and shunned by communities that suspected they carried the disease.



  Duncan Ross, CEO of UK-based StreetInvest, says: “The vulnerability of this group will go up [in the crisis], their need for services will go up and isolation won’t protect them. The danger is that many people see them even more as diseased and criminal. Anecdotally, this is already happening.”



In South Africa, private security firms hired to clear the streets were taking homeless youth to temporary shelters that lack qualified workers to look after them. Mpendulo Nyembe and his team at uMthombo in Durban,  citing one encounter between a group of 11 youth and heavily armed guards. 

“They are terrified. We are terrified. The people dealing with them have no idea who these children are, of their backgrounds.”



“People’s survival is suddenly in jeopardy. Many families that live on the streets have been there for generations. They have no stocks and could starve,” says Paul Sunder Singh, founder of NGO Karunalaya in Chennai, India.



https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/15/will-we-die-of-hunger-how-covid-19-lockdowns-imperil-street-children

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

All content on this website CC BY-ND 4.0 with additional translation permissions

MENU

Navigation