The media has drawn attention to ex-RAF personnel accepting contracts to work for China.

Yet in the USA  at least 15 retired American generals and admirals have worked as paid consultants for Saudi Arabia’s ministry of defense since 2016.

“Saudi Arabia’s paid advisers have included retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, who led the National Security Agency under Obama and President George W. Bush,” the Post reported. Other ex-servicemembers named in the Post story as paid consultants to the Saudi defense ministry include retired Air Force Brig. Gen. John Doucette and retired Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry. Some clearly support military operations, such as “battle trainer,” while others are far more general, including descriptions like ‘consultant’ or ‘advisor.'”

“Congress permits retired troops as well as reservists to work for foreign governments if they first obtain approval from their branch of the armed forces and the State Department,” the newspaper pointed out. “But the U.S. government has fought to keep the hirings secret. For years, it withheld virtually all information about the practice, including which countries employ the most retired U.S. service members and how much money is at stake.”

“More than 500 retired U.S. military personnel—including scores of generals and admirals—have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments” such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, and Kuwait, mostly with the official approval of U.S. military branches. “Records show they rarely reject a job request,” the Post found.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump loyalist raked in nearly $450,000 in payments from Turkey and Russia in 2015 without receiving clearance from U.S. officials.

“Saudi planes literally couldn’t fly if it weren’t for American technicians,” U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna said in an interview last week. 

Defying Pentagon Secrecy, Reporting Exposes Retired US Generals on Saudi Payroll (commondreams.org)

 As the UK’s cost of living crisis deepened, nearly one in five low-income families experienced food insecurity in September, meaning more people went hungry than during the chaotic first weeks of the Covid lockdown, the Food Foundation charity said.

Hunger levels have more than doubled since January, according to the foundation’s latest tracker, with nearly 10 million adults and 4 million children unable to eat regular meals last month.

Public health expert Sir Michael Marmot called the rise in hunger “alarming”, and told the Guardian it would have damaging health consequences for society’s worst off, including increased occurrences of stress, mental illness, obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Millions forced to skip meals as UK cost of living crisis deepens | Poverty | The Guardian

  Seven million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2015 amid an ongoing economic and political crisis, according to new UN data. More than half of them face challenges accessing food, housing, and stable employment. But despite the difficulties facing them abroad, the flow of Venezuelans fleeing turmoil in their homeland has not let up.

More than 80% of those who have left Venezuela are living in Latin America and the Caribbean, in countries which often already struggle to provide health and education to their own nationals.  Colombia is hosting 2.48m Venezuelans.

The UN’s Special Representative for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela, Eduardo Stein, has said that half of all Venezuelan refugees and migrants cannot afford three meals a day and lack access to safe and dignified housing.

 The war in Ukraine, and the resulting rise in the cost of living, has plunged millions more children into poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in recent months, warns a study by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It claims that while children make up 25% of the population, they account for nearly 40% of the 10.6 million additional people in poverty this year. The report covers 22 countries.  

“Children are bearing the heaviest burden of the economic crisis caused by the war in Ukraine,” Unicef said. The increase in child poverty in Eastern Europe and Central Asia could result in an additional 4,500 children dying before their first birthday and 117,000 more children dropping out of school in 2022 alone, UNICEF warns.

The conflict “and rising inflation have driven an additional four million children across eastern Europe and Central Asia into poverty, a 19 percent increase since 2021”.

“Russia accounts for nearly three-quarters of the total increase in the number of children living in poverty due to the Ukraine war and a cost-of-living crisis across the region, with an additional 2.8 million children now living in households below the poverty line,” Unicef reported.

“Ukraine is home to half a million additional children living in poverty, the second largest share,” Unicef said.

Romania followed closely behind, with a further 110,000 children in poverty.

UNICEF: 4m more children in poverty in eastern Europe and Russia due to war and inflation | Euronews

 For many, childhood poverty lasts a lifetime. One in three children born and raised in poverty will live their adult lives in poverty, leading to an intergenerational cycle of hardship and deprivation. 

The impact of the war in Ukraine and subsequent economic downturn on child poverty in eastern Europe | UNICEF Europe and Central Asia

Global warming first came to wide public attention in the late 1980s. A crucial turning point was the presentation that climate scientist James Hansen made to Congress in 1988. At that time a large majority of Americans proved receptive to the idea of climate change. A poll conducted in 1992 showed 88% of respondents believing that global warming was ‘a serious problem.’ The near-consensus encompassed both major parties, with Republican as well as Democratic politicians open to proposals for preventive action. 

By 1997, however, only a minority of respondents considered global warming a serious problem — 42% (with only 28% supporting immediate action). What had happened to shatter what had seemed an emerging consensus? In his book The Petroleum Papers Geoff Dembicki argues that the decisive factor was a massive campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Global Climate Coalition and generously funded by fossil fuel interests – above all, by Exxon and Koch Industries. 

Public recognition of climate science grew again in the early 2000s, but a renewed effort by the deniers reversed this process. Global warming lost its status as a bipartisan issue: since Trump won the presidency in 2016 the Republican Party has been monolithically denialist (at least in public).

There are various degrees of denialism. The very idea that the climate is changing may be ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. Or climate change may be acknowledged but attributed wholly to natural causes. Or it may be claimed that climate change is too uncertain to justify costly action. 

Denialism in the broad sense of denying truths that commercial interests find inconvenient is nothing new. The same ‘Public Relations’ firms and consultants who now deny global warming were previously employed by the tobacco companies to deny the harm that smoking does to health. Liars for hire have followed the same basic playbook ever since Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays created the PR industry in the 1920s. True, the stakes have risen – from the lungs of smokers to the ‘lungs’ of the planet. 

What do executives believe?

What do the executives and capitalists who fund the denialist campaign themselves believe? We cannot rely on their public statements, as these reflect not their personal beliefs about reality but calculations of corporate advantage.

Some oil companies – British Petroleum, for instance – recently changed their tune. They evidently concluded that it may be advantageous to pay lip service to climate science. At the same time they secretly continue to fund climate denialists. The rationale for such apparently inconsistent behavior may be that different kinds of propaganda are required for different audiences. 

They may be thinking along the following lines: ‘The more people remain unconcerned about global warming the better for us. But denying climate change can only anger those who are deeply committed to alarmist ideas. To placate them we must agree that fossil fuels will have to be given up eventually and claim that we are earnestly working toward an energy transition. That will give us at least a few more years of business as usual.’ 

Executives, I suspect, care very little if at all about what is true. They care about what is profitable. Those who have fought their way to the top of corporate hierarchies are a very select group. They have undergone selection not only for performance as profit-makers but also for loyalty to the culture of profit-making. An employee lower down the hierarchy who even raises an issue of ethics or scientific truth — or anything else that may get in the way of the pursuit of profit – risks summary dismissal.

Very occasionally a top executive experiences a shock that temporarily diverts him from the single-minded pursuit of profit. This is what happened to Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide Corporation, in December 1984, in the wake of a leak of poisonous gas from an insecticide plant owned by the company’s Indian subsidiary in the city of Bhopal. Some 15-20,000 people were killed and half a million survivors suffered blindness, respiratory problems, and other effects. Anderson declared that he felt responsible and intended to devote the rest of his career to righting the wrong done. This immediately set alarm bells ringing. Had he persisted in his new resolve, he would surely have been ousted by one means or another. Against the advice of colleagues he set off for India to investigate, only to be arrested on arrival. The US government had to intervene to rescue him. After this episode he seems to have calmed down. He retired in 1986.  

It may be argued that over the long term climate change threatens profit-making along with all other human activities. There will be no profits to be made if the Earth turns into a second Venus. However, the time horizon of capital is short – a decade or two at most. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes expressed a typical capitalist sentiment when in response to an appeal to consider the long term he observed: ‘In the long term we are all dead.’ 

The case of Rupert Murdoch

What about the media tycoons who control what millions of people read in the newspapers, hear on the radio, and watch on TV? What do they believe? What orders do they give to their underlings?

One such tycoon is Rupert Murdoch. His vast media empire includes Fox News, News Corp, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post in the United States, The Australianand The Daily Telegraph in Australia, and Sky News and The Sun in Britain. For many years all these outlets were dismissive of climate change. 

In 2006 and 2007, however, under the influence of his son James and especially his environmentally aware daughter-in-law Kathryn, Murdoch had a change of heart. He told his media to start taking climate change seriously. Some, like The Sun, adapted easily to the new line. Others resisted. 

The people at Fox News were particularly reluctant to promote what they regarded as ‘fake science.’ Murdoch expressed confidence that he could persuade them. What may well have happened instead is that they persuaded him, or perhaps he fell out with Kathryn, but in any case he gradually started to entertain doubts about climate change. 

In 2014, flying over an icy seascape in the North Atlantic, he tweeted that the view was hardly consistent with the idea of global warming. Unfortunately, no one was with him to say: ‘Yes, there’s still plenty of ice out there, but not as much as there was. And the ice is much thinner than it used to be.’ 

It also confused him that ‘the Arctic is shrinking while Antarctica is expanding.’ Again, no one was at hand to explain to him that more snow was falling over Antarctica due to increased precipitation; there too temperatures were rising but not yet enough to turn the snow into rain. 

Murdoch is a highly educated man – he graduated from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) – but he never acquired an understanding of science or the ability to assess evidence in a scientific manner. It is fairly safe to assume that he is not in the habit of reading scientific reports. He needs to see climate change with his own eyes – for example, to watch the Greenland ice cap melting. 

It seems odd to discuss the family dynamics and mode of thought of a single individual at such length. But if that individual happens to own as many mass media outlets as Rupert Murdoch does, then such things can actually make a great difference to the world. That is one of the consequences of the immense concentration of wealth and power.

Source. Geoff Dembicki, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. Greystone Books, 2022

STEPHEN SHENFIELD

Global warming first came to wide public attention in the late 1980s. A crucial turning point was the presentation that climate scientist James Hansen made to Congress in 1988. At that time a large majority of Americans proved receptive to the idea of climate change. A poll conducted in 1992 showed 88% of respondents believing that global warming was ‘a serious problem.’ The near-consensus encompassed both major parties, with Republican as well as Democratic politicians open to proposals for preventive action. 

By 1997, however, only a minority of respondents considered global warming a serious problem — 42% (with only 28% supporting immediate action). What had happened to shatter what had seemed an emerging consensus? In his book The Petroleum Papers Geoff Dembicki argues that the decisive factor was a massive campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the Global Climate Coalition and generously funded by fossil fuel interests – above all, by Exxon and Koch Industries. 

Public recognition of climate science grew again in the early 2000s, but a renewed effort by the deniers reversed this process. Global warming lost its status as a bipartisan issue: since Trump won the presidency in 2016 the Republican Party has been monolithically denialist (at least in public).

There are various degrees of denialism. The very idea that the climate is changing may be ridiculed or dismissed out of hand. Or climate change may be acknowledged but attributed wholly to natural causes. Or it may be claimed that climate change is too uncertain to justify costly action. 

Denialism in the broad sense of denying truths that commercial interests find inconvenient is nothing new. The same ‘Public Relations’ firms and consultants who now deny global warming were previously employed by the tobacco companies to deny the harm that smoking does to health. Liars for hire have followed the same basic playbook ever since Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays created the PR industry in the 1920s. True, the stakes have risen – from the lungs of smokers to the ‘lungs’ of the planet. 

What do executives believe?

What do the executives and capitalists who fund the denialist campaign themselves believe? We cannot rely on their public statements, as these reflect not their personal beliefs about reality but calculations of corporate advantage.

Some oil companies – British Petroleum, for instance – recently changed their tune. They evidently concluded that it may be advantageous to pay lip service to climate science. At the same time they secretly continue to fund climate denialists. The rationale for such apparently inconsistent behavior may be that different kinds of propaganda are required for different audiences. 

They may be thinking along the following lines: ‘The more people remain unconcerned about global warming the better for us. But denying climate change can only anger those who are deeply committed to alarmist ideas. To placate them we must agree that fossil fuels will have to be given up eventually and claim that we are earnestly working toward an energy transition. That will give us at least a few more years of business as usual.’ 

Executives, I suspect, care very little if at all about what is true. They care about what is profitable. Those who have fought their way to the top of corporate hierarchies are a very select group. They have undergone selection not only for performance as profit-makers but also for loyalty to the culture of profit-making. An employee lower down the hierarchy who even raises an issue of ethics or scientific truth — or anything else that may get in the way of the pursuit of profit – risks summary dismissal.

Very occasionally a top executive experiences a shock that temporarily diverts him from the single-minded pursuit of profit. This is what happened to Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide Corporation, in December 1984, in the wake of a leak of poisonous gas from an insecticide plant owned by the company’s Indian subsidiary in the city of Bhopal. Some 15-20,000 people were killed and half a million survivors suffered blindness, respiratory problems, and other effects. Anderson declared that he felt responsible and intended to devote the rest of his career to righting the wrong done. This immediately set alarm bells ringing. Had he persisted in his new resolve, he would surely have been ousted by one means or another. Against the advice of colleagues he set off for India to investigate, only to be arrested on arrival. The US government had to intervene to rescue him. After this episode he seems to have calmed down. He retired in 1986.  

It may be argued that over the long term climate change threatens profit-making along with all other human activities. There will be no profits to be made if the Earth turns into a second Venus. However, the time horizon of capital is short – a decade or two at most. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes expressed a typical capitalist sentiment when in response to an appeal to consider the long term he observed: ‘In the long term we are all dead.’ 

The case of Rupert Murdoch

What about the media tycoons who control what millions of people read in the newspapers, hear on the radio, and watch on TV? What do they believe? What orders do they give to their underlings?

One such tycoon is Rupert Murdoch. His vast media empire includes Fox News, News Corp, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post in the United States, The Australianand The Daily Telegraph in Australia, and Sky News and The Sun in Britain. For many years all these outlets were dismissive of climate change. 

In 2006 and 2007, however, under the influence of his son James and especially his environmentally aware daughter-in-law Kathryn, Murdoch had a change of heart. He told his media to start taking climate change seriously. Some, like The Sun, adapted easily to the new line. Others resisted. 

The people at Fox News were particularly reluctant to promote what they regarded as ‘fake science.’ Murdoch expressed confidence that he could persuade them. What may well have happened instead is that they persuaded him, or perhaps he fell out with Kathryn, but in any case he gradually started to entertain doubts about climate change. 

In 2014, flying over an icy seascape in the North Atlantic, he tweeted that the view was hardly consistent with the idea of global warming. Unfortunately, no one was with him to say: ‘Yes, there’s still plenty of ice out there, but not as much as there was. And the ice is much thinner than it used to be.’ 

It also confused him that ‘the Arctic is shrinking while Antarctica is expanding.’ Again, no one was at hand to explain to him that more snow was falling over Antarctica due to increased precipitation; there too temperatures were rising but not yet enough to turn the snow into rain. 

Murdoch is a highly educated man – he graduated from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) – but he never acquired an understanding of science or the ability to assess evidence in a scientific manner. It is fairly safe to assume that he is not in the habit of reading scientific reports. He needs to see climate change with his own eyes – for example, to watch the Greenland ice cap melting. 

It seems odd to discuss the family dynamics and mode of thought of a single individual at such length. But if that individual happens to own as many mass media outlets as Rupert Murdoch does, then such things can actually make a great difference to the world. That is one of the consequences of the immense concentration of wealth and power.

Source. Geoff Dembicki, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. Greystone Books, 2022

STEPHEN SHENFIELD

 Lebanon’s economy has been in freefall with its currency losing more than 90% of its value, fuelling inflation, wiping out savings, and pushing almost three in four of the nation’s 6.7 million people into poverty. 

Lebanese youngsters are paying a high price, with the U.N. estimating that one in 10 of the children pulled from school this past year have been put to work instead. That’s 30,000 children estimated to have dropped out of school this past academic year as parents opt to send children to work or keep them home to save on school fees.  

Many parents could not pay the bills, and the cost of transport and stationery supplies rose by at least 40% last year – even if lessons were free. Education costs mount up very quickly. School clothes is an example of hidden expenses.

 The World Bank said 5% of all private schools closed between 2018 and 2021, as money pressures hit every stratum of society. In the 2020–2021 academic year, 55,000 students shifted from private to public schools, adding extra pressure on an already cash-strapped state sector.

The right to education is enshrined in the constitution and Lebanon  also signed the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to provide quality education. Yet the reality on the ground has undermined that goal.

School’s out – forever? Lebanese pull plug on education | Context

Quick quiz

On Monday 17 October Jeremy Hunt had us scrambling to consult the Socialist Standard subscriber list* because we couldn’t believe that he had put the same argument as the SPGB, declaring loud and clear that ‘No government can control markets’ (bbc.in/3yMdtml).

We quibble with the accuracy of what he went on to say ‘…but every government can give certainty about the sustainability of public finances’ (think pandemics / ‘surprise’ wars, etc.) but it’s not our job to argue about the way the capitalist class funds state functions.

The fact is that markets eventually control any government that attempts to administer these state functions. Those markets in turn are governed by the capitalists’ drive for profit, and when Hunt talks about maintaining or restoring confidence, he means that the capitalists need reassurance that states won’t hinder that drive.

Workers should remember this when reformist parties (right or left) promise to introduce order to the system. They won’t. They’re liars or they’re deluded.

*Turns out he isn’t a subscriber, yet.