Australia has seen its lowest birthrate in more than a decade.

In 2020, there were 295,796 babies born to 291,712 mothers. This represents a fall from 66 women per 1,000 giving birth in 2007 to 56 per 1,000 in 2020.

There has also been an increase in the average age of first-time mothers, from 28.3 years in 2010 to 29.6 years in 2020. The average age of all mothers has continued to increase over time, with mothers now giving birth at an average age of 30.9 years, up from 30 years in 2010.

It also shows there was a decline in the proportion of teenage mothers, from 3.8% in 2010 to 1.8% in 2020. Two in every seven mothers aged 35 or over were giving birth for the first time.

Australian birthrate falls to lowest in over a decade | Australia news | The Guardian

  Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro supports heavy-handed tactics by police in their fight against organized crime, and has said gangsters should “die like cockroaches.”

 Rio de Janeiro‘s civil and military police regularly carry out deadly raids in the city’s sprawling favelas.

At least 18 people died, one police officer, 16 alleged criminals and a female bystander, on Thursday when police raided the Alemao complex to take down an alleged criminal organization. The operation involved around 400 officers, four aircraft and 10 armoured vehicles.

“There are signs of major human rights violations, and the possibility of this being one of the operations with the highest number of deaths in Rio de Janeiro,” the state public defender’s office said in a statement.

After the raid, locals could be seen bundling injured people into the back of vehicles to be taken to hospital as police watched. Gilberto Santiago Lopes, from the Anacrim Human Rights Commission, said police refused to help.

“We had to carry them away in a beverage truck, and then flag a local resident in their car to take them to hospital,” he said. “The police don’t aim to arrest them, they aim to kill them, so if they’re injured, they think they don’t deserve help.”

“We’re scared to live here,” one local screamed after the raid. “Where are we? Afghanistan? In a war? In Iraq? If they want a war, send them to Iraq.”

At least 18 people killed in police raid in a Rio de Janeiro’s Alemao favelas (france24.com)

An  assessment by Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD, is one of the most dire yet.  The assessment applies to seven member states of IGAD, from Djibouti to Uganda.

More than 50 million people across the East Africa are expected to face acute food insecurity this year. 300,000 in Somalia and South Sudan are projected to be under full-blown famine conditions.

There is a risk of famine in eight areas of Somalia through September “in the event of widespread crop and livestock production failures, spiraling food costs, and in the absence of scaled-up humanitarian assistance,” the assessment by IGAD said.

Three million people face “emergency and catastrophic levels of hunger, risking death,” the International Rescue Committee said in a statement, noting that “people have already started dying from starvation and the window to prevent mass deaths is rapidly closing.”

The number of people going hungry in Somalia due to drought has nearly doubled since the start of the year, according to the IRC, which saw a 265% increase in admissions for children under 5 with severe malnutrition at just one clinic in Mogadishu between April and May.

Even if the new U.S. funding is fulfilled, “the humanitarian response plan for the region would be funded at 40% of the assessed need,” the group warned. “After just over three months, the $1.9 billion appeal for the humanitarian response in Ukraine was 85% funded — a demonstration of the capacity for resource mobilization when the political will exists.”

East Africa bloc says 50 million face acute food insecurity (sfgate.com)

 “Unprecedented price surges mean that for many people across the world, the food that they could afford yesterday is no longer attainable today,” said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Programme, in a statement. “This cost-of-living crisis is tipping millions of people into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed and with that, the threat of increased social unrest grows by the day.”

People around the world are facing increasing pressures on their day-to-day lives. 

According to the United Nations, more than 70 million people in developing countries have been pushed into poverty in the three months since March due to the spike in food, fuel and fertilizer prices.

Even in richer nations, household budgets are feeling the squeeze. In May, the World Economic Forum found one in four people were struggling financially across 11 developed countries.

A Civil Unrest Index by data analytics firm Verisk found 75 countries will likely see protests this year.

Almost half of Haitians are short of food, with hunger set to worsen with inflation at 26%.

Pakistan is facing a deepening economic crisis with inflation surging to 21.3% in June. Fuel prices have risen by about 90% since May after the government scrapped subsidies in a bid to cut its surging deficit and resume an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme. At the end of June, Pakistan’s central bank held only enough reserves for roughly six weeks of required imports.

Argentina is grappling with inflation at more than 60%, and spiking gas import costs. It struck a $45 billion debt deal with the IMF earlier this year, but many Argentines believe it will lead to a rise in poverty and have taken to the streets to demand its rollback.

Tunisia has seen inflation hit a record 8.1%. This has prompted protests – including a nationwide strike in June by the largest trade union which opposes government plans to freeze wages and cut subsidies as part of the deal to secure the $4 billion loan from the IMF.

In Kenya, inflation is running at a five-year high of nearly 8%, driven by jumps in the price of staples such as wheat flour, cooking oil and petrol. Kenya is also facing the worst drought in more than 40 years, creating widespread hunger and leaving it even more dependent on costly imports.

Inflation is triggering chaos worldwide. Where are the hotspots? (trust.org)

 China’s much-heralded Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is already the world’s biggest, having given more than 2,000 power plants a taste of emissions trading, regulating about 4.5 billion tonnes of annual CO2 output from the power industry. Nearly 200 million tonnes of carbon changed hands in the first year of operations at a total value of 8.5 billion yuan ($1.26bn).

A year on, “In terms of the impact, in terms of environmental gains, clearly it’s been limited,” said Matt Gray, co-founder of TransitionZero, a climate think-tank.

Fraud remains one of the greatest challenges and China has yet to fully address it, according to Shawn He, a Beijing-based lawyer who advises firms on carbon compliance. “I’m afraid the penalties for such malpractices … are too small to intimidate.”

A year on, China’s CO2 market fails to drive big emission cuts | Climate Crisis | Al Jazeera

 Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being blamed for the food crises that have arisen across much of the world. 

A March 2022 World Bank report refers to the food security crisis as a “food price crisis,” emphasizing that it’s not caused by shortage of food. The two major factors they have identified as driving the crisis are, “profiteering by major grain trading agribusinesses, which have already shown dramatic increases in profitability in January-March 2022 as they have raised their prices without being questioned, as everyone assumes that this is the result of war-driven supply shortages. The other is financial speculation in wheat futures markets, which can drive up prices even in spot markets.”

Global stocks of rice, wheat, and maize – the world’s three major staples – remain historically high. For wheat, the commodity most affected by the war, stocks remain well above levels during the 2007-2008 food price crisis. Estimates also suggest that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.” 

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) monthly ‘Cereal Supply and Demand Brief’ confirms this. The FAO’s forecast for global cereal production in 2022 has been raised by 7 million tonnes in July from the previous month and is now pegged at 2,792 million tonnes and is only 0.6 percent short of the output for the same period in 2021. According to the FAO, the shortfall caused by the Russia-Ukraine war has not impacted global wheat stocks much, thanks to higher-than-normal harvests.

An assessment by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), too confirms that there is currently no risk of global food supply shortages. The IPES too identifies it as a “food price crisis,” but goes on to identify the causes. Stating that “the failure to reform food systems has allowed the war in Ukraine to spark a third global food price crisis in 15 years,” the report points to “fundamental flaws in global food systems – such as heavy reliance on food imports and excessive commodity speculation – for escalating food insecurity sparked by the Ukraine invasion,” adding that “these flaws were exposed, but not corrected, after previous food price spikes in 2007-8.”

An analysis of global wheat prices by economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh reinforces this. Examining FAO data and projections from May 2021, much before the Russia-Ukraine war commenced, they find that the estimated global production of wheat in 2022 is likely to be lower than in 2021 by less than 1%, but around 2% higher than the average of 2018-20. Similarly, global trade in wheat is also projected to fall slightly when compared to 2021, but it will still remain higher than in 2018-20.

Navdanya, an organization founded by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, goes even further: it points to the evidence outlined above and says that the present crisis is the direct outcome of a broken global food system that exists primarily to serve agribusiness giants.”

The report, titled Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design, traces the crisis to excessive financial speculation, increased commodity future pricing and increased volatility in the market, all of it adding up to bigger gains for corporate players, even as it drives up food prices globally. As Shiva puts it, “what the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has once again laid bare is just how fragile globalized food systems are, and how quickly a fluctuation in the market goes on to detrimentally affect the poorest. The current globalized, industrial agrifood system creates hunger by design.”

 Rolling Stone magazine report summed it up, “this crisis… is in some sense artificial, given that it is not driven by any actual shortage of food in the world,” adding, “Commodity traders make money off wild price swings, shippers make money off people desperate for grain, fertilizer manufacturers make money off farmers desperate to maximize their yields, and proto-fascist politicians are happy to exploit rising food prices as evidence of the failure of democracy.”

Taken from here

No Russian Roulette: The Hunger Emergency And The Global Corporate System | Countercurrents

 Formed in 1984 during the military dictatorship (1964–85), the Landless Workers’ Movement ( Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) grew out of agricultural workers’ and peasants’ occupations of latifúndios, gigantic estates held by wealthy individuals and corporations. Over the past four decades, these farmers have taken control of millions of hectares of land across Brazil, forming the largest social movement in Latin America.

Approximately 500,000 households live in these MST-led occupations, meaning that the MST has organised about 2 million people into its ranks. The settlements’ residents organise themselves through various democratic structures, create schools for their children and community kitchens for the indigent and develop techniques for agroecological farming towards fulfilling their own needs and for sale in the marketplace. The MST is now rooted in the social landscape of Brazil, from the Amazon in the north to Arroio Chuí, Brazil’s southernmost point.

The central concept for the MST to elaborate this theory is agrarian reform. According to one of the members of the MST’s national coordination, Neuri Rossetto, this reform project fights “for an agricultural model centred on the production of healthy food for the Brazilian population alongside the struggle to democratise land ownership.”

Around 100,000 families live on encampments (acampamentos), which are occupations of fallow land to which they have not been given formal access; 400,000 families live on settlements (assentamentos), whose land they now hold by right through liberal provisions in Chapter III of the country’s 1988 Constitution, Article 184, which states that the government can “expropriate, on account of social interest, for purposes of agrarian reform, rural property that does not perform a social function.”

However, it is important to note that the Brazilian state nonetheless attempts to evict families from these legal encampments.

The MST organises peasants to improve not only their control over land, but also over agricultural production, including by avoiding toxic chemicals which destroy both the workers’ land and health. This project is now linked to an interest amongst consumers for food whose components do not harm them and whose production does not destroy the planet. The possibility of uniting the majority of the country’s 212 million people in pursuit of agrarian reform galvanises the MST.

Is the MST a social movement or a political party?

Neuri explains:

“We are aware of the responsibilities and the need to improve our political forces, both in their organisational and ideological senses, in order to have a greater influence in the class struggle. However, we do not claim to assume the role of a political party in its strict sense, as we believe that this political instrument is beyond our scope. This does not mean to say that we have a supra-partisan or non-partisan stance. We believe that the articulation of working-class movements, trade unions, and political parties is fundamental in the construction of another sociability which is alternative and contrary to the bourgeois order. … [W]e do not underestimate the importance and strength of political action and popular mobilisations as an educating element for the subaltern classes. The popular masses learn and educate themselves in popular mobilisations. There, in the mass movement, lies the political strength of the organisation; this is where the political-ideological level of the masses is raised.”

In other words, the MST is part of a process to build the organisational and ideological strength of the peasantry and it works alongside trade union movements and other organisations to create a political project for social emancipation. The MST has participated in building the Popular Project for Brazil (Projeto Brasil Popular), which, as Neuri says, “aims to consolidate a historic bloc that promotes anti-capitalist, emancipatory struggles and immediate economic gains that meet the needs and interests of the working class.” Advancing the confidence and power of the working class and peasantry is, therefore, central to the MST’s activity. 

Taken from here

Will the Morning Come? – Consortium News

Inside the coat of arms: the Wolf’s Hook, superimposed upon the waves of the Sea of Azov. The white circle represents the Black Sun. The Wolf’s Hook and the Black Sun are classical Nazi symbols. In the background: the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.

Radical nationalists, including fascists and Nazis, play a significant role in the war in Ukraine and an even more significant role in the propaganda war. Putin justifies his attack on Ukraine as a crusade to ‘de-Nazify’ the country, while some pro-Ukrainian propagandists describe the Putin regime as fascist.[1]

In a recent book,[2] journalist Michael Colborne sorts truth out from lies and myths concerning the Azov Movement, in recent years the most salient structure on the Ukrainian nationalist right. The movement originated as a military formation — a battalion, then a regiment fighting pro-Russian forces in the Donbas – but has evolved into a multifaceted complex, encompassing a political party (the National Corps), social centers, sports and youth clubs, military training camps, special projects, and publishing houses. 

Writers seeking to play down the importance of the radical right in Ukraine point out that Azov – like its predecessors, Right Sector and the Freedom Party – has done very poorly in elections. If Ukraine were a stable democracy at peace, that might be a clinching argument. But it is not. Several factors give Azov influence out of all proportion to its electoral weight. The ethos of wartime national unity and the reputation of Azov men as brave fighters shield the movement from criticism, while the patronage of some oligarchs and government ministers provides access to resources and facilitates the use and threat of violence to intimidate opponents. 

Under conditions of peace, Azov and other ultra-nationalist groups would soon be relegated to the margins of Ukrainian politics. It is a product of war and flourishes in war. However many men Azov may have lost in the defense of Mariupol, I expect it will soon replenish its ranks. If Putin is really invading Ukraine for the purpose of de-Nazification, which is doubtful, he could hardly have chosen any more counterproductive way of doing so. 

The Russian radical right has also taken an active part in the war, providing many of the volunteers who have gone to fight in the Donbas since 2014. Although the Putin regime has harassed or banned some Russian nationalist groups, it has collaborated with others, depending to a large extent on the attitude taken by the groups themselves toward the regime. Thus, Alexander Dugin and Eduard Limonov, former co-leaders of the National Bolshevik Party, went separate ways: Dugin demonstrated loyalty to Putin and acquired influence within the regime, while Limonov took the path of opposition. According to Colborne, the Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists is one of the groups close to the Kremlin, on whose behalf it has committed at least ten murders, including those of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009.   

In their mutual accusations of Nazism and fascism, both sides are ‘pots calling the kettle black.’

Remarkably, quite a few radical Russian nationalists opposed to Putin have chosen to defect to Ukraine. It is estimated that 3,000 of the volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side come from Russia. Several men who used to be prominent on Russia’s far right – for example, Alexei Levkin, founder of the Hitlerite cult Wotanjugend – have been granted Ukrainian citizenship and are now associated with the Azov Movement. Olena Semenyaka, international secretary of the National Corps and an Azov ideologist, used to belong to Dugin’s Eurasianist Movement (though she was born and grew up in Ukraine). 

Russian and Ukrainian radical nationalists compete for the same niche in world politics, as the center of resistance to recent developments in the West that they perceive as ‘decadent’ – ideas of human and especially minority rights, multiculturalism and multiracialism, tolerance of homosexuality, non-Christian religions, and even atheism, women’s liberation, rejection of sex roles, etc. Ukrainian and most Russian nationalists believe in ‘Europe’ – not, however, today’s Europe but the Europe of yesteryear, when Europe was unambiguously ‘white’ and ‘Christian.’ 

Nevertheless, neither Russia nor Ukraine are ideally placed to fill this niche. Russia is still a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state – neither ‘white’ nor ‘Christian’ enough for purists. This is what gives the alternative ‘Eurasianist’ identity a certain appeal in Russia. In Ukraine – and also in some other countries of the Central-East European region, like Poland and Hungary – the old Europe is still preserved intact. ‘The heart of Europe beats in the East.’ And yet geopolitically Ukraine is allied with and wholly dependent on the ‘decadent’ Europe of the West. The fight with Russia is the top priority, but later Ukraine will have to disentangle itself from – unless it can help to revive — this ‘decadent’ Europe.[3] 

The European radical right nowadays believes in a united though not homogenized Europe, as conceived by thinkers of the French New Right. ‘No more brother wars!’ is a popular slogan. And yet Russian and Ukrainian fighters in the current war find themselves trapped in just such a ‘brother war’!

Notes

[1] See: Alexander J. Motyl, ‘Putin’s Russia as a fascist political system,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2016), 49 (1), 25-36. Professor Motyl recently reaffirmed his view: ‘Alexander Motyl: Yes, Putin and Russia are fascist. How they meet the textbook definition,’ The Conversation, March 31, 2022. For opposing assessments, see: Marlene Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist?: Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press, 2021); Andreas Umland, ‘Is Putin’s Russia Really “Fascist”? A Response to Alexander Motyl’.  

[2] From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2022). 

[3] See interview with Michael Colborne, March 29, 2022.

Ukraine: nationalists at war – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

 It was reported in 2019 that thousands of Mexicans were crossing the border to donate blood as often as twice a week, earning as much as $400 per month. Selling blood has been illegal in Mexico since 1987. The Mexican nationals selling their blood previously entered the U.S. on what are known as B-1 or B-2 visas, documents that allow visitors to shop, do business or visit tourist sites.

Since the United States blocked Mexicans from entering the country to sell their blood, the two global pharmaceutical companies, Grifols and CSL, that operate the largest number of plasma clinics along the border say they have seen a sharp drop in supply.

 Around the world, millions of refugees and migrants in vulnerable situations, such as low-skilled migrant workers, face poorer health outcomes than their host communities, especially where living and working conditions are sub-standard, according to the first WHO World report on the health of refugees and migrants. 

For example, a recent meta-analysis of more than 17 million participants from 16 countries across five WHO regions found that, compared with non-migrant workers, migrant workers were less likely to use health services and more likely to have an occupational injury. Evidence also showed that a significant number of the 169 million migrant workers globally are engaged in dirty, dangerous, and demanding jobs and are at greater risk of occupational accidents, injuries, and work-related health problems than their non-migrant counterparts, conditions exacerbated by their often limited or restricted access to and use of health services.

“Today there are some one billion migrants globally, about one in eight people. The experience of migration is a key determinant of health and wellbeing, and refugees and migrants remain among the most vulnerable and neglected members of many societies,” said Dr Tedros, Director-General World Health Organization. “This report is the first to offer a global review of refugee and migrant health; it calls for urgent and collective action to ensure they can access health care services that are sensitive to their needs. It also illustrates the pressing need to address the root causes of ill health and to radically reorient health systems to respond to a world increasingly in motion.”

“Health does not begin or end at a country’s border. Migratory status should therefore not be a discriminatory factor but a policy driver on which to build and strengthen healthcare and social and financial protection. We must reorient existing health systems into integrated and inclusive health services for refugees and migrants, in line with the principles of primary health care and universal health coverage,” said Dr Santino Severoni, Director of WHO’s Health and Migration Programme.

World report on the health of refugees and migrants – World | ReliefWeb

WHO Report

https://tinyurl.com/3ep89t54