It is reported that, ‘Energy prices across the EU have been surging, raising the prospect of higher household bills as the bloc prepares for another winter with drastically reduced Russian natural gas supplies.

The cost of electricity in Italy jumped nearly 30% in the week from August 21 to August 27, reaching €138 per megawatt hour (MWh).

According to estimates by research group Nomisma Energia, starting from October 1, Italian families could face a 7% to 10% hike in their electricity bills. It cited rising gas prices as the major cause, as Italy is one of the most natural gas-dependent countries in the EU.

The president of Nomisma Energia, Davide Tabarelli, warned on Tuesday that “if prices remain at these levels, it is inevitable that they will be reflected in an increase in future electricity bills.”

According to Tabarelli, as quoted by Italy 24 Press News, “projections for next winter indicate international prices are 40% higher than current ones and, if they materialize, gas tariffs for the winter could be 20% higher than current levels.”

Elsewhere in the EU, energy costs have also continued to climb, with the average wholesale electricity price in Estonia rocketing by 93% to €153.39 per MWh in the last week. Prices in both Latvia and Lithuania soared 23% to €142.58 per MWh.

Electricity prices in the EU surged last year following the bloc’s decision to heavily restrict Russian oil and gas and fully ban coal supplies, as part of its sanctions policy.

France, which was once a net power exporter to the EU, had to rely heavily on electricity imports from neighbouring countries last winter. Many of its nuclear power plants, which accounted for 70% of the country’s electricity output, have been offline for maintenance. On Monday, Paris extended permission for power generating companies to burn more coal in the coming months, in order to prevent shortages this winter’.

The 22nd August is designated by the United Nations, ‘Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief’.

‘There are continuing acts of intolerance and violence based on religion or belief against individuals, including against persons belonging to religious communities and religious minorities around the world, and the number and intensity of such incidents, which are often of a criminal nature and may have international characteristics, are increasing’.

https://www.un.org/en/observances/religious-based-violence-victims-day

In 2020 the day was designated, by various ex-Muslim organisations, ‘International Apostasy Day’.

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is calling for people to ‘doodle on religious texts’ and post the results to social media for the purpose of, ‘ defending freedom of expression and the right to apostasy and blasphemy by subverting religious texts’.

They comment, ‘Whilst we might not agree with burning Qurans and books (usually associated with a long history of state and religious censorship against dissent), we nonetheless recognise the right of individuals to express their abhorrence to bad ideas and the persecution and murder of freethinkers and apostates.

On Apostasy Day, join us in celebrating blasphemy and apostasy as rights by subverting and doodling on the Quran, Bible, Torah, the Vedas or any other religious texts to proclaim. It is important to reiterate that burning, murdering, torturing, persecuting human beings are violence and hate, not burning the Quran or religious texts’. Further, ‘Ideas are not sacred, human beings are’.

The Socialist Party’s views on religion are a matter of public record or can be easily ascertained by reference to articles in the Socialist Standard or to Party pamphlets.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/socialism-and-religion/

How the Gods Were Made by John Keracherhttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/how-the-gods-were-made-by-john-keracher/

‘The fundamental idea of religion is a belief in the persistence of life after death. Originally, and in essence throughout, religion is a belief in the existence of supernatural beings, and the observance of rites and ceremonies in order to avert their anger or gain their goodwill. “Corpse worship,” as it has been tersely called, “is the protoplasm of religion.”’. (SaR)

The right to peaceful protest of any kind should be sacrosanct (no pun intended). Unfortunately there are many examples where this is not, and has not been, the case. The actions called for by CEMB does appear to be the equivalent of tying a firecracker to a cat’s tail.

Whilst not decrying the motives, or the right of anyone to participate in this protest, it has to be asked, what will this achieve? It seems highly unlikely that those to whom these texts, rightly or wrongly, holds some value, will feel compelled to renounce their inculcated beliefs because of this.

Is the defacing of religious texts, or of any book, a pointless exercise? Put simply, yes. The obvious solution to religious fanaticism of any kind, can only be the general realisation that religions are a form of dominance over the masses that benefit those pushing the fairy tales as a means of power over the various adherents. And that the social system which continues to encourage the divisions caused between various religious groups and organisations profit the asset-owning class, not the vast majority who give up the possibility of the material gains that come from living in a money-free, class-free society.

When capitalism is replaced by Socialism religion will have had its day.

As Karl Marx wrote, ‘The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to Nature’. Capital Volume One.

That actions have consequences, and not necessarily the ones intended, is lately demonstrated by the recent events in Sweden which have led to that State instantiating a raise in the level of threats facing the country from ‘high threat’ to ‘heightened threat’.

The Swedish prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson said, ‘“There is no reason to intentionally offend someone else, because it actually risks threatening Sweden. Calm and realising the seriousness of the situation is my message.”

Addressing future planned Qur’an burnings, he said the government was looking at its public order laws, but also cautioned: “Everything that is legal isn’t [necessarily] appropriate”’.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/17/sweden-raises-terrorist-threat-level-after-quran-burnings.

It’s reported that, ‘Spanish authorities are sounding the alarm over olive oil prices, which continue to rise and may eventually turn this Mediterranean staple into a “gourmet product,” the newspaper El Mundo reported, citing sources in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Olive oil from Andalusia soared to €8.20 ($8.90) per liter last week, marking the highest price ever recorded for Spanish olive oil, according to data from Mintec, representing a 115% year-on-year increase. Meanwhile, the price surge continues.

“The market takes it for granted that prices will keep rising until at least the end of the year,” the outlet noted, adding that extra virgin prices are expected to reach €10 per bottle by autumn.

Shelf prices for olive oil in a number of Spanish supermarkets have already surged to €8.50 per litre making the product almost unaffordable for middle-class households, the outlet said.

The Spanish olive oil sector is currently grappling with mounting concerns regarding availability in the coming months following the severe drought that Spain has been experiencing since last summer.

In the agricultural year of 2022-2023, olive oil output in Spain more than halved to 675,000 tons, representing a 54.7% slump year-on-year. This made the country’s current output volume the worst so far this century, the outlet wrote, citing data from the Agriculture Ministry.

The July report from the Spanish government also revealed a significant reduction in stocks, which declined by approximately 73,000 to 75,000 metric tons last month’.

It’s reported that, ‘Food prices in Spain soared by 30.8% in July compared to the same month in 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19, El Mundo reported on Friday, citing the latest data from analytics firm Funcas.

Overall prices more than doubled in the EU’s fourth largest economy, surging by 54.4% over the past two decades, figures show. Food prices alone surged by 79.3% over the same period.

Among the products that saw the steepest price rises over the past year were sugar (44.2%), potatoes (38.8%), rice (22%), canned fruits (19.4%) and confectionery (18.2%). Milk rose by 17.6%, pork by 15.8%, eggs by 12.8%, and fresh fruits by 11.6% in the same period, according to the data.

Olive oil jumped by 115% year-on-year, marking the highest price increase ever, according to data from Mintec.

Spanish food inflation was driven by a number of factors, such as soaring energy, fuel, and fertilizer prices, as well as a shrinking supply of certain commodities on the global market, Funcas said.

A prolonged drought, which Spain has been experiencing since last summer, also contributed to the rising food prices. Severe weather conditions are now threatening the global olive oil supply, with prices spiking around the world. 

In the coming months the price surge will continue in Spain, according to El Mundo, with overall inflation expected to reach 5% in December’.

George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM was first published in England on 17th August, 1945.

(9) Animal Farm (HD Remastered) English – YouTube

 George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’. This is a good and amusing satire on the process that has taken place in Russia since 1917 up to the time of writing, 1945. Orwell portrays the 1917 Revolution by a rebellion of the animals on a farm in which they turn out the human owner and take over the farm themselves. The pigs take on the leadership of the new order and the old boar, Comrade Napoleon, by astute manoeuvring called “tactics” becomes the great chief. The process of hoodwinking the working animals whilst steering the rebellion away from its original course until the animals are dumbfounded to find that they are working harder and are poorer fed than in pre-rebellion days and that in all other respects the system is the same as ever, is well described.

“Comrade Napoleon” is, of course, a caricature of Stalin, whilst ex-comrade Snowball, represents Trotsky. Other characters are easily identified. There is the horse, Boxer, who has a cure for all problems by working harder and whose motto is “Comrade Napoleon is always right.” He finally works himself to a weak and useless condition, and the pigs send him off to the knacker’s yard.

In the space of a couple of hours reading, George Orwell has described by his satire what other writers have failed to describe as adequately in hundreds of stodgy pages. His animal characters are often wise but funny, instance the donkey, Benjamin, who has lived for many years and who, when told that God had given him his tail to whisk away the flies, replied that he could well do without the tail and the flies. Good for the holiday, both of them. Just as good if you have had the holiday or even if you do not get one.

W. Waters

Any improvement in workers standards of living is a positive. Lenin’s scorn that the working class are only capable of achieving a trade union level of conscientiousness and that they need a vanguard party to lead them, like a sheepdog shepherding the sheep, is wrong. The struggle to achieve a level playing playing field will only be over when workers realise that that their best interests are attained through real socialism.

‘The Teamsters and UPS (have) reached a tentative five-year contract agreement that union negotiators hailed as a “historic” victory, likely averting what would have been the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history.

In a statement, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien said that “we demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it.”

“UPS has put $30 billion in new money on the table as a direct result of these negotiations,” said O’Brien. “We’ve changed the game, battling it out day and night to make sure our members won an agreement that pays strong wages, rewards their labor, and doesn’t require a single concession. This contract sets a new standard in the labor movement and raises the bar for all workers.”

According to the union, which represents roughly 340,000 workers, the tentative contract includes “historic wage increases” for full- and part-time UPS Teamsters, new health and safety protections such as in-cab air conditioning for larger delivery vehicles, an end to forced overtime on scheduled days off, and the creation of 7,500 new union jobs.

Under the new agreement, full- and part-time UPS workers would receive a $2.75-per-hour wage boost this year and a $7.50-per-hour raise over the course of the contract.

UPS CEO Carol Tomé described the contract agreement as “a win-win-win.”

Rank-and-file union members still must approve the deal. If they don’t, there will be a strike following the voting period, Teamsters leaders said.

Voting is set to begin on August 3 and end on August 22.

“UPS came dangerously close to putting itself on strike, but we kept firm on our demands,” said Teamsters general secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman. “In my more than 40 years in Louisville representing members at Worldport—the largest UPS hub in the country—I have never seen a national contract that levels the playing field for workers so dramatically as this one.”

“The agreement puts more money in our members’ pockets and establishes a full range of new protections for them on the job,” Zuckerman added. “We stayed focused on our members and fought like hell to get everything that full-time and part-time UPS Teamsters deserve.”

The tentative bargaining agreement was reached less than a week before the current contract was set to expire’.

Last month, 97% of UPS workers represented by the Teamsters voted to authorize a strike if there was no acceptable deal with management by the end of July.

Sen Bernie Sanders. (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, applauded the Teamsters for “negotiating a strong pro-worker contract with UPS.”

“This is what progressive, grass-roots union leadership is all about,” the senator wrote. “This is a major victory for the American working class. Let’s keep going.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ups-strike-teamsters

From the Socialist Standard, April 1981

‘The unions are a necessary weapon that they help to prevent employers from keeping wages down too much but, because of the nature of capitalism, they are strictly limited in what they can achieve for their members. Their proper sphere of activity is that of defending workers’ conditions and standards of living, not in helping the capitalist class to administer their system. However, there is little point in leftists bewailing “betrayal” by the union leaders, for the unions can only be as good (as active, as militant, as democratic) as their members. In the absence of a class-conscious working class, trade unionists have the unions they deserve’.

Paul Bennett

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/trade-unions-and-state-1981.html

It’s reported that: ‘Prices for food and beverages sold in French supermarkets soared 13.1% in July on an annualized basis, according to the latest data published by the national statistics bureau INSEE.

In particular, prices of meat and drinks rose by 11.3% and 10.1% respectively, while other food products saw price increases of up to 15%. Meanwhile, the cost to French consumers of cleaning and personal care products increased by 9.4%.

The annual inflation rate in France stood at 4.3% last month, down from a record 4.5% increase marked in June, remaining in line with preliminary estimates and marking the lowest since February 2022. Inflation reportedly eased due to declines in energy prices and to more moderate increases in the prices of food and manufactured products.

Last month, the French government sent a 2024 spending plan to parliament that calls for a €4.2 billion ($4.7 billion) cut in outlays, marking the first reduction in nearly ten years. Paris is planning to spend €428.8 billion in 2024 as the nation is targeting a budget deficit of 4.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2024, down from a goal of 4.9% this year.

The aim is to bring that below 3%, the limit set under European Union rules, by the end of the second term of President Emmanuel Macron in 2027.

The spending cut comes on top of an urgent need to reduce the sovereign debt, which reached 111.6% of the nation’s GDP. The austerity measures are expected to ensure the reduction of public debt to 108.3% of the economy by 2027’.

Lest we forget – Peterloo

200 years ago, working people in Manchester and surrounding towns were becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for political reform. They were angry about the fact that most of the population could not vote, that corruption was rife, and that urban areas were grossly under-represented in Parliament.



50-60,000 people arrived at St Peter’s Fields on 16 August 1819 to hear radical Henry Hunt campaign for parliamentary reform. When Hunt began to speak the Manchester Yeomanry were sent in try to arrest him, and attacked anybody who got in its way. The sabre-wielding cavalrymen charged into the crowd. At least 11 people were killed and 400 injured. Estimates of the final death toll vary widely and the true number will never be known.



The events were dubbed Peterloo, an ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place four years previously was one of many brutal battles in capitalism’s ongoing class war. Peterloo is an event which deserves to remembered — especially by those who claim that the British working class has no ‘revolutionary’ tradition.



William Hulton was the magistrate who gave the order for troops to violently disperse the peaceful, pro-democracy protest. Hulton was born into a family of wealthy landowners. 

Seven years before Peterloo, as a justice of the peace, Hulton had already sentenced four Luddites to death for setting fire to a weaving mill in Westhoughton, near Bolton. One of those hanged was just 12-year-old.

Eleven of the leaders were arrested by the troops. They were charged with conspiracy and illegal assembly. Hunt was sentenced to two and half years in prison, Middleton weaver, Samuel Bamford, and others to one year.

 In an atmosphere of government repression and provocation stretching back a quarter of a century, there can be no doubt that the massacre fitted in with the strategy of the ruling class. The use of state power against those who were unprepared simply to accept their lot continued.

 Depicting Peterloo as an aberration, out of character with British values, obscures the reality that this was business as usual, at home and abroad, then and now.

 Peterloo was just one particularly brutal battle in the class war of capitalism — which still persists today. And there should be few workers with any doubts as to which side they should be fighting on.

Reposted from SOYMB, 16 August, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh_pikNlEp4

It’s reported that ,’The unemployment rate in Britain has reached its highest level in nearly two years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on Tuesday, adding that the spike was mainly driven by an increase in the number of people unemployed for up to six months.

According to the ONS, the number out of work increased to 4.2% compared to 4% recorded in the three months to the end of May, as the amount of job vacancies dropped by 66,000 to 1.02 million.

Meanwhile, wages have risen, with private-sector wage growth increasing to 8.2%, more than a key measure of inflation. Average weekly earnings, excluding bonuses, hit an annual growth rate of 7.8%, reaching record highs.

However, the growth was outpaced by the rate of price rises in Britain, meaning an effective pay cut for its working population.

The country remains in the grips of a severe cost-of-living crisis, with a higher inflation rate than other major European countries. Annual inflation in the UK currently stands at 7.9%, the highest among G7 nations’.