Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives, said: “Basic justice demands that those most responsible for causing the climate crisis should financially support those who are suffering most on the frontline of climate change.”

 The rich countries accept vulnerable countries face a “life or death situation”. Wealthy nations were supposed to provide US$100bn a year by 2020, a target has been missed. 

The US share of this, based on its past emissions, would be $40bn yet it provided only $7.6bn in 2020, the latest year for which data is available. Australia and Canada gave only about a third of the funding indicated by the analysis, while the UK fell $1.4bn short. The funding from Japan and France was largely in loans which often already carry high levels of debt.

Nasheed explained, “Currently we face a debt crisis because so many of the assets that we took loans to pay for are being destroyed by climate change. Ease the debt burden and we can all play our part.” Countries such as his have already collectively suffered $500bn in losses because of climate impact.

Nafkote Dabi, the climate change policy lead at Oxfam International, said: “This new analysis shows rich countries continue to fail to deliver their long-standing pledge of $100bn a year. The failure is all the more stark when you consider that the $100bn is minuscule compared to what is required to address the climate crisis…”

 The Cop26 president, Alok Sharma said trillions of dollars would be needed overall.

Revealed: US and UK fall billions short of ‘fair share’ of climate funding | Climate finance | The Guardian

The super-rich emits greenhouse gases at a level equivalent to the whole of France from their investments in carbon-intensive businesses.

Examining the carbon impact of the investments of 125 billionaires, the  report by Oxfam found they had a collective $2.4tn stake in 183 companies. 

On average each billionaire’s investment emissions produced 3m tonnes of CO2 a year; a million times more than the average emissions of 2.76 tonnes of CO2 for those living in the bottom 90% of earners. 

In total, the 125 members of the super-rich emitted 393m tonnes of CO2 a year – equivalent to the emissions of France, which has a population of 67 million.

The investments were held in the consumer industry, energy and materials, with an average of 14% of their investments in polluting industries, such as fossil fuels and cement. There was only one renewable energy company in the sample. Studies show that 50-70% of emissions from the super rich come from their investments.

 The report said that almost four million people would have to go vegan to offset the emissions of each of the billionaires.

Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s chief executive, said: “We need Cop27 to expose and change the role that big corporates and their rich investors are playing in profiting from the pollution that is driving the global climate crisis. It is people in low income countries who’ve done the least to cause it who are suffering the most – as we are seeing with the devastating drought in east Africa and catastrophic floods in Pakistan.” He explained,“The role of the super-rich in super-charging climate change is rarely discussed. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long.”

Super-rich’s carbon investment emissions ‘equivalent to whole of France’ | Greenhouse gas emissions | The Guardian

Clearsprings Ready Homes manages asylum seeker accommodation.

Profits for the year ending 31 January 2022 was £28 million, an increase of £24 million on the previous year.

The three directors share of dividends rose from £7m to £27,987,262.

Its annual report states ‘Demand for accommodation for asylum seekers has remained high throughout the year. This has been driven by an ever-increasing influx of asylum applicants to the UK due to high levels of political and economic turmoil in many countries.’

As Arthur Daly would say, ‘nice little earner’.

Asylum seekers in hotels receive £8.24 a week.

Folkestone and Hythe Councillor, Connor McConville, said, ‘Clearsprings are a company purely focused on maximising profit. They have no regard for providing humanitarian service.’

bit.ly/3DBQmwj

The prospects of the Canadian economy taking an upswing is, to say the least, gloomy. Economists say Canada is headed for a recession and it’s going to hit earlier and harder and last longer than previously forecast. Most economists agree that a recession is inevitable, thanks to the Bank of Canada’s decision to hike interest rates at a fast pace. Doug Porter, the top economist for the Bank of Montreal, said the next recession is due to start early in 2023 and last for a year and a half. Of course capitalism being the unpredictable system that it is, these prophets of gloom and doom could be wrong and how exactly does Mr. Porter know when it will end? One thing is for sure; recession or not, life for the working class in Canada won’t be easy. 

Canada’s largest city, Toronto is in a terrible state. Emergency shelters are bursting at the seams, Public Housing is falling apart and the transit system is struggling to maintain its service. All this has been exacerbated by the province’s decision to stop contributing to many of the expenses it used to share with municipal governments. The situation was made worse by the pandemic which caused many workers to work from home so there was less coming in from transit fares. The law does not allow Toronto to run an operating deficit even in times of crisis. So what is the solution within capitalism? We don’t know if there is one, though it’s possible the city may contract out some services, thereby causing redundancies. Yet if anyone were suggest a society without money they would be thought of as nuts. 

On October 1 six provinces — Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador — raised their minimum legal wage. Other provinces have pay hikes scheduled over the coming months to reach the benchmark level of $15 an hour. This comes as the cost of living soars, with Canada’s annual inflation rate reaching a 40 year high in recent months. The problem is its too-little-too-late. For years reformers have fought for this hike and now they’ve got it, it’s just not enough. According to Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, ‘it really needs to be $20 an hour or more when we look at inflation and the cost of food and housing.’ In other words, no matter how hard unions and reformers try, due to the effects of capitalism all their best efforts don’t add up to much.

So this was the deal concerning affordable daycare. In the first year of the federal government’s five-year agreement, parents had been promised a 25% rebate on fees, retroactive to April 1, followed by a 50% cut by the end of this year, with fees reduced to an average of $10 a day by 2026. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But you know what? It’s not so simple, because we live under capitalism and its bedrock economic law – the pursuit of profit — will screw anything up. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has removed limits on profit making by day-care owners who receive federal funding. Private day care owners have said that removing red tape and restrictions on profit making are essential if they are going to remain in business. At present there is a stand-off between Ottawa and Ontario, as thousands of Ontario families wait for promised fee reductions. Another crazy situation caused by the effects of crapitalism. 

Stats-Canada’s latest report, issued on October 3, informs us that economic pressures pushed households to lose wealth as asset values declined amid the turmoil in the financial and housing markets, while interests rates and inflation increased. The average household net worth in the second quarter of 2022 was $940,560, down $65,400 from the first quarter. The debt-to-asset ratio increased for all age groups. The ratio measures the net worth by subtracting debts from someone’s assets. If debt increases and asset worth declines, then obviously net worth takes a hit and equally obviously it’s the working class who get hit the hardest. The least wealthy saw their average net worth drop by 12% from the first to second quarter, more than double the rate of the wealthier households. Should we be surprised? 

Recent months have seen one heck of a stink concerning Hockey Canada. Earlier this year, a victim of sexual assault filed a $3.55 million lawsuit against it, which was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. It has since come to light that a multimillion dollar fund was used to settle the lawsuit stemming from a 2018 sexual assault involving eight members of the junior national hockey team. Hockey Canada conducted an investigation but was unable to determine which players were involved. Various MPs are angry about the way the sporting bodies have handled the matter, particularly Liberal Hedy Fry, who complained about a ‘sweep-it-under-the-rug culture at Hockey Canada.’ Since then it has been revealed the fund was used to settle nine sex abuse claims against Hockey Canada going back to 1989. At the time of writing the federal government is conducting a review headed by Supreme Court Judge Thomas Cromwell and has frozen its funding to Hockey Canada, as have some private sponsors. In a socialist society mental health will have improved to such an extent that sexual violence will rarely occur and when it does both victim and perpetrator will receive the help they require. There will be no need to sweep it under a rug. 

In British Columbia the capitalist class is chopping down ancient cedars, many worth more than $20,000, at an alarming rate. More than 20,000 hectares of Haida forests are cut down each year, according to the University of British Columbia. This is screwing up the Haida Gwaii tribe something rotten, because they now have to drive hours to find old-growth cedars healthy enough to harvest for totem poles, canoes, boxes, masks, and weaving. Aerial photos show hectares of stumps scarring the landscape. Deforestation is getting close to watersheds that spawn salmon. Stocks of the fish, the main source of food for the Haida, are vanishing. As one Haida said: ‘The devastation of our land intensifies the trauma of our people.’ The capitalist class have shown scant regard for aboriginals anywhere if it stops them making a profit. If trees are worth $20,000, they ain’t gonna stop now. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on October 7 that his government would permanently ban leaders of Iran’s theocratic regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for human rights abuses. All this is in the wake of their murder of a young woman for wearing her headgear wrong. He also announced new economic and immigration sanctions. Deputy PM Chrystia Freedland said: ‘The Iranian regime is a state sponsor of terrorism. It is repressive, theocratic and misogynist.’ You could’ve fooled me, gal! It’s true that many political supporters of capitalism sincerely care about human rights, but let’s not kid ourselves: the capitalist class as a whole don’t give a rat’s behind about them. They would like the working class kept in its place, exploited without any means of protest. They know it won’t work like that, they have to give a little to keep a lot and what civil-rights the working class have anywhere are the fruit of tenacious struggle. There is only one solution — a society where such rights are a given. 

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh said he has a plan to take on the new Progressive Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre at the next federal election. If he became PM, Singh promises to appoint a task force that would boost workers’ pay by cutting taxes and clawbacks on each extra dollar people earn, position Canada as the best place to invest, hire and make stuff, help the working poor and middle class by cracking down on tax dodging and evasion and simplifying Canada’s tax system; which is a lot of promises for a single sentence. All this is in response to all the great things Poilievre said he would do for the working class. The funniest thing in all this nonsense is the comment made by NDP national director Anne McGrath: ‘’It’s going to be an amazing contrast, like this really, really important contrast between the two.’ How could it be a contrast if they both want to administrate capitalism? 

The number of people who need better housing in Metro Vancouver has increased by more than 20,000 over the past decade, according to a census conducted by the Simon Fraser University’s city program. The term Core Housing Need refers to people who live in homes that stretch their budgets, are inadequate or unsuitable for them. Ten years back Metro Vancouver had 145,000 living in such conditions. Now the number has swollen to 166,000. This does not include the homeless. The program’s director, Andy Yan, said: ’The Vancouver region has not built enough housing for certain income brackets and in part I blame the speculators’ lust for profits.’ 

On October 21 Trudeau and several members of his cabinet traveled across Canada to mark the new legislation to freeze the sale of handguns. This is the government’s latest effort to restrict the sale of firearms. The freeze is part of bill C-21, now making its way through Parliament, which would make it harder to buy any kind of gun at all. The bill changes maximum penalties for some gun crimes and also creates new crimes. One must wonder what good it will do considering that last year 85% of the handguns the police captured that were used in crime in Canada were made in the US. In a masterpiece of understatement, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said: ‘C-21 is only part of the solution to the problem of gun violence in Canada.’ There is only one solution, buddy, and it won’t be found within capitalism. 

The Ontario elections of October 24 yielded few surprises. John Tory was re-elected in Toronto and Bonnie Crombie in Mississauga. Ex-NDP leader Andrea Horwath was elected Mayor in Hamilton, though the vote was close. The only slight surprise was Patrick Browns win in Brampton, considering the scandal and controversy that followed him until election night. What was not surprising is the low voter turnout, which overall was 43.5%. The general feeling is of mistrust and contempt for politicians. This may be a step in the right direction, but there’s a long way to go before the working class realize that the fault lies not with the politicians but with the crazy unworkable system they are attempting to run. 

Socialist Party of Canada

News from Canada: November 2022 – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

 شنبه ۱۵ اکتبر ۲۰۲۲

صدای انقلاب ایران

 “هیچ قدرتی در زمین نمی تواند ایده ایی را که زمانش فرارسیده متوقف سازد” ویکتور هوگو

تقریبا یک ماه از قیام در سراسر کشور مردم ایران گذشته است. مقاومت بی نظیر بر ضد حکومت قویا مسلح و مجرم جمهوری اسلامی صفحه ایی جدید در مبارزه تاریخی بر علیه سرکوب می باشد. سرکوب ها و بیرحمی های رژیم اخبار جدیدی برای هیچ کس نیستند.  از زمان تاسیس خشنش در تعاقب انقلاب ۱۹۷۹، پاسخ جمهوری اسلامی به همه درگیریهای اجتماعی همیشه سرکوب، یعنی زندانی کردن و کشتن تظاهرکنندگان بوده است.

لیکن، تظاهرات اخیر نشان داده اند که ترس نمی تواند بیشتر از این از پیوستن مردم ایران به جنبش های متنوع اجتماعی که در حال رشد کردن در جامعه هستند بشود. زنان در صف جلویی انتقال ترس به خشم هستند. چیزی که به مقاومت فزاینده بر ضد خشونت دولتی و بنیادگرایی مذهبی می گذرد، قول دوران جدیدی را می دهد.   

چیزی که شما شاهد آن در ایران هستید دارای تاریخ طولانی مقاومت  بر ضد یک رژیم مذهبی که درانقلاب سال ۱۹۷۹قدرت را با خشونت و سنگدلی در دست گرفت می باشد …” الهام هومینفر، دستیار پروفسر تندرستی  جهانی دانشگاه شمال غربی توضیح داد. از انقلاب ۱۹۷۹، زنان به طور قانونی و رسمی شهر وندان درجه دوم شده اند،  به طریقی که قبلا چنین نبود. قبل از ۱۹۷۹ ما تعداد بسیاری نا برابری های زن و مرد در ایران داشتیم، ولی این نابرابری آپارتا ید جدید بود…”

ما نبایستی تحت تاثیراشک های کروکدیل حکومت های غربی که سعی به تشویق برای نا آرامی و نارضایتی برای منافع خودشان دارند قرار گیریم. آن تنها به، به اصطلاح ضد امپریالیست ها مستمسکی ارایه می دهد که هم چون طوطی تبلیغات جمهوری اسلامی را که معترضان تنها عروسک های اسرائیل، عربستان سعودی و ایالات متحده هستند تکرار کنند.

در تضاد با آنان جنبش جهانی سوسیالیستی همبستگی اش را با زنان و مردان ایران ارایه می دهد و پشتیبان مبارزه آنان برای به زیر کشیدن یوغ آیت الله ها ست.

خشونت وسیله ایی موثر یک اقلیت برای ماندن در قدرت می باشد. ولی وقتی اکثریت به سمت انقلاب حرکت می کنند، خشونت دولت قادر نخواهد بود برای مدت طولانی ایی آنان را عقب نگه دارد .    

عشق من و تو                                نمی خواهی بدونی که آب از سر گذشته

عشق منو رد میکنی                                           با من چرا  قهر می کنی

من با تو قهرم                                نمی خواهی بدونی که آب از سر گذشته

عشق من و تو نمیخواهی بدونی                                   که میم لا م برنگشته

 من با تو قهرم                                 نمی خواهی بدونی پوپولیسم زنده گشته

عشق من و تو                                   نمی خواهی بدونی که اسلام بر نگشته

کارل مارکس شهرم                    نمی خواهی بدونی که مارکسیسم زنده گشته   

عشق من و تو                                    نمی خواهی بدونی که اسلام در گذشته

استاد شهرم  نمی خواهی بدونی                        که کارل مارکس زنده گشته    

استاد دهراست  نمی خواهی بدونی                               که نامش زنده گشته   

A translation of an earlier SOYMB post

SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK: The voice of the Iranian revolution

 More than 1.4 million people have been displaced by conflict in Myanmar — including 520,000 children — with 1.1 million forced to flee since the beginning of the political crisis and escalation of violence in February 2021.

The figures do not include the half a million Rohingya children who have been living in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh for more than five years.

Save the Children warned that the Myanmar crisis is one of the most underfunded humanitarian crises globally.

Olivier Franchi, Save the Children’s Asia Programmes Director, said: “People don’t just take the decision to leave their homes lightly — this rapid escalation in children having to flee is down to the very real everyday threats to their lives from fighting in Myanmar.”

Number of children forced from homes in Myanmar crosses half million mark – Save the Children – Myanmar | ReliefWeb

 More than one in four children with care worker parents are growing up in poverty, according to the TUC. 220,000 children – 28.4% – with at least one social care worker as a parent were in poverty and said the number was on course to rise to nearly 300,000 by the end of this parliament unless action was taken to improve pay and conditions in the sector.

The TUC said one in five key worker households, or 19%, have children living in poverty, with poverty especially prevalent in families where parents are nurses and public transport workers.

 50,000 children (25%) with public transport workers as parents are growing up in poverty and more than 100,000 children (10.8%) with teaching staff as parents are living in poverty.

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said “Our amazing key workers risked their lives to get us through the pandemic. The very least they deserve is to be able to provide for their families. But many have been trapped in poverty and abandoned by this government…We can’t be a country where bankers are allowed to help themselves to bigger bonuses, while nurses and care staff are forced to use food banks…”

The TUC predicted that child poverty rates among key worker households would worsen unless action was taken to improve pay and conditions, after ministers announced another year of real-terms pay cuts for millions of key workers in the public sector.

 Public sector earnings have fallen in real terms by 4.3% since the financial crisis, with some professions experiencing falls of as much as 13%.

One in four children of UK care workers living in poverty, TUC finds | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

From the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Autumn Keynote delivered by Arudhati Roy at the Conway Hall on September 30, 2022.

“The dangerous brinkmanship being played out in the Ukraine is being somewhat obscured by the noise of propaganda on both sides. But history’s clock could very well be racing towards sunset.

The various points of view on the war also involve some pretty tortuous yoga asanas – some pretty drastic seeing and unseeing – depending on where you have decided to place yourself. Many on the Left cannot find it in themselves to call out Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. They believe that Ukrainian outrage against Russia has been entirely confected and cultivated by Western Imperialism. That the Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s never happened. They deny that millions of Ukrainians – the historian Timothy Snyder estimates five million – died in the famine of the early 1930’s under Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization.

They see Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war against an existential threat to itself by NATO. That’s not untrue. The fact that Russia does face a very serious threat is hard to deny. The hitch is that that the “defensive” war is being fought offensively on Ukrainian soil and against the Ukrainian people. 

When the Cold War ended, demilitarisation and nuclear disarmament should have begun. Instead, NATO did the opposite. It amassed more weapons, fought more wars and used the territory of its allies and proxies for the aggressive and provocative forward deployment of troops and missiles. If Russia had done through proxies in Europe or the US what NATO is doing to it, there is little doubt that we would be seeing the moral arguments and western media coverage turned inside out. 

None of this makes Vladimir Putin a revolutionary anti-imperialist or a democrat of any kind. None of it alters the fact that he believes in an overtly fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-Homosexual, Christian nationalist ideology (which ironically, he calls “de-Nazification”) propounded by his two favourite ideologues, Alexander Dugin and Alexander Prokhanov. 

His claim about Ukraine, Crimea and Belarus being inseparable territories that made up Ancient Rus, a theory based on the millennial myth of the Christian baptism of its leader Volodymyr/Valdemar in Crimea in AD 988, has been (correctly) met with hilarity…

…Ordinary people in Europe are gearing up to face the harsh winter that is nearly upon them, with very little or no heating, as Russia, in response to economic sanctions, threatens to shut off their gas supply. As Ukrainians fight on with relentless courage, and the chances of a negotiated settlement fade away, anxiety is building over the possibility of the war expanding and escalating. Putin has announced the ‘partial mobilisation’, whatever that means, of 300,000 military reservists. Perhaps for now the US is far away enough and safe enough, but all of Europe, Russia and much of Asia could become the theatre of a war unlike any the world has ever seen. A war in which there can’t be a winner.

Isn’t it time for everybody to step back? Isn’t it time to begin a real conversation about complete nuclear disarmament?

God forbid, Russia resorts to using US logic for turning to nuclear weapons…

…Where are we headed? Even those of us who stand squarely with the Ukrainian people against the Russian invasion of their country cannot help but marvel at the difference in tone and tenor of the Western Media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine and the breathless admiration with which it covered the US and NATO’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, which killed hundreds of thousands of people. This January, Tony Blair, the most passionate purveyor of the fake news about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, which was used to justify the invasion, and President George Bush Jr.’s most enthusiastic ally in the invasion, was ordered Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the senior most British order of chivalry…

…Between nuclear hawks and mining corporations, it’s a race to the bottom…

…In every line I write, every word I speak, what I’m really saying is, We are not Zero. You haven’t defeated us.

For millions in the world with their backs to the wall, these debates about hope and despair are a luxury. Even here, underneath the reek of wealth in the city of London, a visitor can sense a sort of tense, vibrating unease, like the rumble beneath your feet as a train approaches the platform.

None of this will matter in the event of a nuclear war. That will simply end us. It’s time for the two sides to step back. And for the rest of the world to step in. Armageddon doesn’t contain a clause for second chances.

Arundhati Roy on Things that Can and Cannot Be Said: The Dismantling of the World as We Know It (thewire.in)

 Humans require insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas to regulate glucose in the blood, to live.

A study by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the City University of New York’s Hunter College and Public Citizen, found that 1.3 million Americans rationed insulin due to the high costs of insulin in 2021. 

That number represents an estimated 16.5% of the US population with diabetes.

Black insulin users were more likely to report rationing insulin, at 23.2%.

The study found insulin rationing was most commonly reported by those without health insurance coverage and individuals under the age of 65 not eligible for Medicare. 

One vial of Humalog cost $21 (£18) in 1999 and jumped to $332 (£287) in 2019. US prices for insulin have soared in recent decades. Yet prices have remained relatively the same and at a fraction of US prices in every other industrialized nation.

Without health insurance over-the-counter insulin can costs more than $1,000 (£865) a month. Even with health insurance coverage, insulin still costs a few hundred dollars every month,

Because you can’t afford the $100 (£86), that’s insulin rationing. You’re withholding a vital hormone for life.  When somebody is rationing, it’s simply because the pharmaceutical companies are putting their profits over patients’ lives.

Diabetes is currently the seventh-leading cause of death in the US, though a 2017 study suggests the number of Americans dying from diabetes is much higher due to diabetes frequently being overlooked in causes of death. 

More than a million Americans ration insulin due to the high cost of the drug | Diabetes | The Guardian