A SONG OF REVOLUTION

You toilers of the world, arise!

To bravely speed the day,

When all your forces organise

King Capital to slay,

And from the master class you’ll wrest

The Powers of the State,

Which, wielded in your interest,

Your class emancipate.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

Your lot in life is darkest gloom;

You sow and others reap.

And want and mis’ry are your doom,

While idlers treasures heap.

Why have they riches, you distress,

Though you all wealth have wrought?

It is because the few possess

The earth, while you have nought.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

While you an idle class maintain

For pittances you’ll toil.

To own your products you must gain

Possession of the soil

And of all means the workers need

To found the Commonwealth,

And thus enable all to lead

Full lives of peace and health.

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

Arise! the message to proclaim,

The message full of cheer:

That Labour’s freedom is your aim,

That brighter days are near.

To men exhausted by the fray,

To women in despair,

To children wanting food and play,

To all the message bear

There sounds above the class war din

The battle-cry we use:

Unite! you have a world to win,

Your chains alone to lose.”

 Words & Music by H. J. Neumann

One in five students at Russell Group universities are considering dropping out because of the cost of living crisis, and a quarter are regularly going without food and other essentials, the Observer can reveal.

In the largest study of its kind, new research by the Russell Group Students’ Unions – which represents 24 of Britain’s most elite higher education institutions, including Oxbridge, UCL and Edinburgh – for the first time lays bare the devastating impact soaring prices are having on all but the richest students.

More than half of those surveyed said their academic performance had suffered as a result of the cost of living crisis. Students reported having to take on additional paid work to cover costs, concentration issues caused by poor nourishment and financial stress, and skipping lectures because they couldn’t afford travel fares.

Researchers said unless urgent action is taken, the damage being done by the crisis could lead to universities being “only open to the most privileged” – undoing decades of progress on broadening higher education access.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/12/one-in-five-students-at-top-universities-consider-dropping-out-over-cost-of-living

 There’s a good explanation of why the Silicon Valley Bank failed here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-00086586

“Silicon Valley Bank has been bleeding deposits as the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised borrowing costs to fight inflation. Higher interest rates bludgeoned many of the tech businesses that had deposited their money with the bank. As venture capitalists retreated from offering companies fresh infusions of capital to sustain their businesses, startups needed to burn through the cash in their accounts to stay afloat. Deposits the bank had on hand have fallen steadily over the last several months, according to S&P Global Ratings. Higher rates also meant more investments offered an attractive yield, leading some clients to pull out their deposits and put them elsewhere.”

To try to compensate for this, the Bank sold off its holding of government and other bonds. Unfortunately for them, rising interest rates meant that the price of bonds went down and they couldn’t raise enough. And they went bust.

“When banks run into trouble, they can be forced to sell off investment assets, typically U.S. government debt and mortgage-backed securities, that they purchased to earn a return on their customers’ deposits. As interest rates climb, the price of those older securities fall — which means the banks sell those investments at a loss.”

If banks could, as some claim, simply create money to lend “out of thin air” and get interest on it, why would losing deposits make any difference? 

If a bank was short of money, all it would have to do would be create some more to lend and get the money as interest on them.

That this didn’t happen shows that banks cannot create money out of nothing but are only financial intermediaries borrowing money at one rate of interest to cover loans at a higher rate.

Our theory of the nature of banking stands confirmed. 

New wealth can only be created by humans applying their mental and physical energies to change the form of materials that originally came from nature, not by banks practising magic or financial alchemy.

ALB

For more see: The Magic Money Myth – worldsocialism.org/spgb

 Saudi oil giant Aramco has announced a record profit of $161.1bn (£134bn) for 2022.

The name “Department of Defense” is itself a gross distortion since there is not an inch of American soil that needs to be defended against an external enemy. The US government maintains a global military presence without precedent in history, with more than 700 US bases worldwide.

The USA unveiled a $1 trillion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, the largest ever proposed spending on the military. 

Besides $842 billion for the Pentagon, which will undoubtedly be pushed even higher in Congress, there is $24 billion for the Department of Energy, which maintains the US nuclear arsenal, and $20 billion for military-related programs in the State Department, CIA and other agencies, bringing the total official military spending to $886 billion. The $842 billion requested for this year could rise past the $900 billion mark once Congress and lobbyists for the weapons manufacturers have their say.

To this must be added the real cost of the war in Ukraine, which is listed as only $6 billion for the 2024 fiscal year, which begins October 1. In the previous fiscal year, the Biden administration requested $6.9 billion but ended up spending $114 billion. 

The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon are among nearly 200 signatories to a letter calling on governments to “never again” allow “profiteering and nationalism” to come before the needs of humanity, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The letter urges world leaders to support a pandemic accord that is currently under negotiation at the WHO and treat publicly funded medicines as “global common goods … used to maximise the public benefit, not private profits”.

Current and former presidents and ministers, Nobel laureates, faith leaders, heads of civil society organisations and health experts say Covid-19 vaccines and treatments had been developed with public funding but that pharmaceutical companies had exploited them to “fuel extraordinary profits”. Instead of distributing vaccines, tests and treatments based on need, companies sold doses to the “richest countries with the deepest pockets”, the letter says.

This inequity led to 1.3m preventable deaths worldwide – one every 24 seconds – in the first year of the Covid vaccine rollout alone, according to analysis based on a study published in the Lancet. “That those lives were not saved is a scar on the world’s conscience,” the letter continues.

Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand said even though publicly funded science had contributed to the success of Covid-19 vaccines, they weren’t treated as global common goods. “Rather, nationalism and profiteering around vaccines resulted in a catastrophic moral and public health failure which denied equitable access to all.”

President José Manuel Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste said: “In the Covid-19 pandemic, those of us in low- and middle-income countries were pushed to the back of the line for vaccines and denied access to the benefits of new technologies. Three years on, we must say ‘never again’ to this injustice that has undermined the safety of people in every country.”

 Even today, many low-income countries cannot access affordable treatments or tests. They say it is reminiscent of the response to the HIV and Aids epidemic, where millions died as expensive treatments were unaffordable for people in much of the world.

The letter calls for the removal of intellectual property barriers that prevent the sharing of scientific knowledge and technology and for governments to support and invest in research and development. 

It also calls on governments to provide support for the WHO’s mRNA hub, which is sharing vaccine technology with producers in 15 low- and middle-income countries.

‘Profiteering’ of Covid pandemic must never be repeated, world figures warn | Global development | The Guardian

 The number of shoplifting crimes in Poland increased by almost a third in 2022, newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on Thursday, citing police data.

Statistics showed that the number of thefts increased by as much as 31.1% on an annual basis, to over 32,000 cases. Out of 16 Polish regions, only Lublin reportedly did not record an increase in such crimes.

The rise in theft is “a clear signal of trouble on the market,” the president of the Polish Trade and Distribution Organization Renata Juszkiewicz was quoted as saying. Soaring prices have been pushing people to commit such crimes, she suggested, adding that it is “a huge challenge” for stores while prompting further increases in operating costs.

The report indicated that food was stolen most of all, followed by luxury items such as expensive perfumes and spirits, as well as small electronics.

The Polish economy slowed in 2022 amid soaring inflation and a plunge in consumer spending brought on by the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine and the impact of sanctions on Russia. Official statistics show that inflation accelerated in the beginning of 2023, with consumer prices jumping 17.2% in January from a year ago. Economists are forecasting that inflation will continue to rise, with Poland projected to have one of the EU’s highest rates this year.

The governor of Poland’s central bank, Adam Glapinski, said he expects the country to avoid a recession, although there may be temporary fluctuations in the first quarter of the year.

RT 11\3\23

Dave C

 The number of shoplifting crimes in Poland increased by almost a third in 2022, newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on Thursday, citing police data.

Statistics showed that the number of thefts increased by as much as 31.1% on an annual basis, to over 32,000 cases. Out of 16 Polish regions, only Lublin reportedly did not record an increase in such crimes.

The rise in theft is “a clear signal of trouble on the market,” the president of the Polish Trade and Distribution Organization Renata Juszkiewicz was quoted as saying. Soaring prices have been pushing people to commit such crimes, she suggested, adding that it is “a huge challenge” for stores while prompting further increases in operating costs.

The report indicated that food was stolen most of all, followed by luxury items such as expensive perfumes and spirits, as well as small electronics.

The Polish economy slowed in 2022 amid soaring inflation and a plunge in consumer spending brought on by the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine and the impact of sanctions on Russia. Official statistics show that inflation accelerated in the beginning of 2023, with consumer prices jumping 17.2% in January from a year ago. Economists are forecasting that inflation will continue to rise, with Poland projected to have one of the EU’s highest rates this year.

The governor of Poland’s central bank, Adam Glapinski, said he expects the country to avoid a recession, although there may be temporary fluctuations in the first quarter of the year.

RT 11\3\23

Dave C

 The appeal is obvious. We can all be “carbon neutral” and offset our CO2 emissions, cancelling out the damage we do to the planet by protecting a threatened rainforest.

The claim is often based on carbon credits approved by Verra, the world’s leading certifier for the $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market. Disney, Gucci and Shell are just some of the names that use them, and they are presented as a “nature-based solution”. However, there are big questions about the ability of offsetting to play even a minor role in climate change and biodiversity loss mitigation.

Verra has said it will phase out and replace its rainforest offsets programme by mid-2025 after an investigation found it was flawed,  potentially allowing tens of millions of worthless carbon credits to be issued and sold to companies in the meantime.

The investigation indicated that many claims based on the rainforest credits, which are generated by predicting deforestation that would have happened in the absence of the conservation projects, were largely meaningless, putting organisations that buy the offsets at risk of greenwashing.

Biggest carbon credit certifier to replace its rainforest offsets scheme | Carbon offsetting | The Guardian

 Up until January 24th 2023.The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock stood at 100 seconds to midnight.

On that date it was changed to ninety seconds to midnight.

Brigadier General Ripper is an unhinged United States Air Force general who orders a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in,.

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film. 

 How many Brigadier General Jack D Ripper’s are there in the U S Military, or the State Department, or the White House in the present day? Or in the equivalent centres of power in other capitalist / state capitalist entities?

‘The US government will work to improve its nuclear forces, a senior military commander has said, pledging to bolster America’s arsenal on land, in the air, and at sea in response to “rogue” actions by North Korea.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Air Force General Anthony Cotton spoke of the need to strengthen the nation’s nuclear arsenal to meet “challenges” from the likes of Pyongyang and other rival states.

“North Korea conducted an unprecedented number of missile launches in 2022 and its new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), referred to as KN-28, highlight that the security challenge continues to grow,” he said. “To ensure our continued ability to serve as the bedrock of integrated deterrence, we are recapitalizing every leg of the nuclear triad, and the nuclear command control and communication systems.”

The ‘triad’ refers to the three primary methods of delivery for US nuclear weapons, including land-based missile silos, long-range strategic bomber aircraft, and nuclear-armed submarines. 

Cotton went on to accuse North Korea of acting as a “rogue” nation which “poses a threat to the United States and our allies,” stressing that Washington must continue to improve its “effective and credible nuclear deterrent.”

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have soared over the last year, with the DPRK conducting a record number of weapons tests amid a flurry of joint US-South Korean war games. Military activity has continued into 2023, with Pyongyang firing off missiles as Washington and Seoul press on with multiple rounds of exercises, including a recent drill involving a US nuclear-capable bomber.

North Korea has repeatedly condemned such drills as rehearsals for an invasion, and insists it has every right to carry out missile launches and develop its own “deterrent” forces. However, US officials continue to press Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arsenal, with State Department spokesman Ned Price vowing on Thursday to impose increased “costs” on the DPRK until it “changes its approach” and abandons its weapons. Though Price called for “dialogue and diplomacy” with North Korea, so far President Joe Biden appears to have made no effort to sit down with the country’s leadership or hold a new round of talks to deescalate the tensions.’

RT 10\3\23

Dave C.