Almost two-thirds of the world’s ocean lies outside national boundaries. These are the “high seas”. Not only does a healthy ocean provide half of the oxygen we breathe, it represents 95% of the planet’s biosphere, soaks up carbon dioxide and is Earth’s largest carbon sink.

Liz Karan, who leads high seas protection work at the Pew Charitable Trusts explained, “A healthy ocean is critical for having life on the planet – including human life.”

The high seas are more susceptible than coastal seas to exploitation. Currently, all countries can navigate, fish (or overfish) and carry out scientific research on the high seas practically at will. Only 1.2% of it is protected, and the increasing reach of fishing and shipping vessels, the threat of deep-sea mining, and new activities, such as “bioprospecting” of marine species, mean they are being threatened like never before.

The Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, (BBNJ) – are the fifth round of negotiations, which ended last August without agreement. The current round of talks began last week and will end on 3 March.

 The talks are critical to enforcing the 30×30 pledge from the UN biodiversity conference in December: a promise to protect 30% of the ocean (as well as 30% of the land) by 2030. Without a high seas treaty, scientists and environmentalists agree the 30×30 pledge will fail, for the simple reason that no legal mechanism exists for establishing protected marine areas on the high seas – rendering any promises to do so meaningless.

“Heavily subsidised, industrial fishers seek to exploit and profit from ocean resources that, by law, belong to everyone,” said Jess Rattle, a senior global oceans expert for WWF who is leading the NGO’s team at the negotiations.

Greenpeace warned Monday that nations are “once again stalling” as they enter the final week of talks on the United Nations Ocean Treaty, a pact the environmental group says would “safeguard marine life and be the biggest conservation victory for a generation” if negotiators get it right.

Laura Meller, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic, lamented that “negotiations have been going around in circles, progressing at a snail’s pace, and this is reflected in the new draft treaty text.”

‘One of the most important talks no one has heard of’: why the high seas treaty matters | Oceans | The Guardian

‘Time Is Up’: Greenpeace Warns Global Ocean Treaty Under Threat of Failure (commondreams.org)

  There is no single, clear, sustainable alternative to jet fuel that could support the current level of flying. The UK would have to devote half its farmland or more than double its total renewable electricity supply to make enough aviation fuel to meet its ambitions for “jet zero”, or net zero flying, a report published on Tuesday by the Royal Society stated. 

Scientists say that while the government and aviation industry have set a target of 2050 to balance out emissions, huge challenges remain around the availability, costs and impacts of alternative fuels, as well as the need for new types of planes and airport infrastructure around the world to allow the most probable long-term solutions.

Significant further research and investment would be needed, the scientists say, to address questions across four fuel types – green hydrogen (made from water using renewable energy), biofuels (energy crops and waste), ammonia and synthetic fuels or e-fuels.

Producing enough biofuels would require about half of UK agricultural land, while other feedstocks such as municipal waste could only contribute “a very small fraction” of the jet fuel requirements, they report.

Making sufficient green hydrogen or ammonia to power future planes would require well over double today’s entire UK renewable electricity generation capacity. E-fuels or synthetic fuels – which are made by capturing and converting carbon dioxide from the air – would require five to eight times today’s UK capacity.

Dr Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University, said: “The term SAF [sustainable aviation fuel] is quite nebulous…”

Scientists pour cold water on UK aviation’s net zero ambitions | Airline industry | The Guardian

 War casts the darkest of shadows over all — civilians as well as combatants. The Socialist Party shares nothing in common with those that preach peace but continue to prepare for war.  Under the cloak of patriotism and national interest, millions of workers are thrown against each other in battle. They do not know that they are fighting to defend or to extend the interests of the class that lives by robbing them of the fruits of their labour. For the working class in all countries every death, every wound and every hour of suffering is in vain. War solves no working-class problems, and from a working-class point of view, is a war crime in itself. Our attitude is in line with the interests of the working class.

Capitalism is a system of society which produces goods incidentally. Fundamentally its aim is the amassing of surplus value. Productivity and profit are interchangeable and synonymous terms. There is a complete divorce of production and consumption. Production is earned out for profit and not for use. Thus we have the exploitation of the majority of society as a means to enrich a small minority—the capitalist class. Capitalism is contradictory and anti-social. Governments of all countries seek to maintain this social relationship of owner and non-owners, buyer and seller. Each is struggling for the monopoly. Commercial rivalries set capitalist states and empires one against the other. The class which has property and privilege must maintain armed forces to protect their property and to make secure the social system which affords them their privileges. 

The moment war is declared the majority of the people, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, and conscripted in all parts of their lives, for the destruction of other people. Symbols of patriotism become the dominant feature of the media. Loyalty becomes the sole test for citizenship. Anything pertaining to the enemy becomes taboo. All the activities of society are linked together as fast as possible for the central purpose of making a military offensive or national defence.

Patriotism groups people according to their land of origin, as decided by the vicissitudes of history; within every country, thanks to the patriotic link, rich and poor unite against the foreigner. Socialism groups working people, poor against rich, class against class, without taking into account the differences of race and language, and over and above the frontiers traced by history. Patriotism in every nation masks class antagonisms to the great benefit of the ruling class; through it, they prolong and facilitate its domination. It is good, it is useful, it is indispensable for rulers that workers of every country consider the rich who exploit them, not as enemies, but as friends, allies and even brothers.  Workers who give their lives for their country are duped.

The Socialist Party looks at war in a fundamentally different way from people with other political persuasions. We contend that war in the modern world is caused by the workings of capitalism with its struggles over trade, investments, oil and other resources. The workers of the world have an identity of interest and have nothing at stake in the thieves’ quarrels of their masters. The working class owns none of the resources; they have nothing to fight for and everything to gain by uniting to end the system that enslaves them and produces wars and other terrible problems. Working people have no country. The differences which exist between nations are all superficial differences. There is only one war which is worthy and that is class war, social revolution.

Under capitalism, it is the owners of capital who decide the object of production, and that is not consumption but the creation of profits. That is the nub of the whole problem. To produce for use today presupposes the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. Without common ownership, a planned economy is an impossibility.

So long as capitalism exists, so long as capitalism rules, so long as the state is in the hands of the capitalists, so long as the capitalists hold power, then so long will there be wars.

 War is a vital necessity for the ruling class. To cover up its murder, capitalism has always raised the cry for freedom. Wage slavery is capitalism’s freedom for the working class. 

The Socialist Party rejects the plea of the “left” that national liberation is worth dying for. This amounts to workers killing each other to determine who shall be their future exploiters. Nationalism is a divisive anti-working class concept. Capitalism is the cause of war. To abolish war we must abolish capitalism. This is the whole crux of the matter. Many on the left support war and take one side or the other, thus lending themselves to the shedding of working-class blood for the profits of the capitalist class.

The establishment of socialism demands the unity and co-operation of the workers of the world. Such unity and cooperation can only arise from socialist understanding, which means a clear recognition of the need to change society. To establish a system without frontiers or armed forces, where the scramble for trade and profits no longer exists. The resources of the earth, instead of being a class monopoly used to exploit and destroy, will be commonly owned and used solely to satisfy human needs.

 A report by the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a thinktank, showed that spending plans outlined at the autumn statement in November included cuts to public services worth £1,000 a household by 2027-28. 

It warned that Rishi Sunak’s government is hiding £28bn of “stealth cuts” to public services over the next five years. 

 In the autumn statement, the government promised to increase spending by 1% a year after inflation. However, this was underpinned by Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, which had assumed inflation would fall below zero.

The thinktank said this was unlikely to happen because the Bank of England would be expected to intervene to keep inflation close to its 2% target rate. NEF said that if inflation remained close to 2%, this would imply real-terms cuts – not growth – to spending worth £28bn.

NEF said that if inflation remained close to 2%, this would imply real-terms cuts – not growth – to spending worth £28bn.

Alfie Stirling, the chief economist and director of research at NEF, said the government was “exploiting a curious feature of the OBR’s forecast” to make its promise. “It allowed the chancellor to play smoke and mirrors with the future of public services last autumn,” he said.

UK government is hiding £28bn of ‘stealth cuts’ to public services, says report | Economics | The Guardian

 The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.’

Karl Marx  and Friedrich Engels: ‘The Manifesto of the Communist Party.’

Capitalism (and State Capitalism) is Global. Its damaging effects affect everyone. The present  pandemic of inflation across various countries is no exception to the rule  that capitalism impacts negatively on the working class and especially the poor.

 

Charles Dickens character, Mr Micawber, who is always hoping that something will turn up, epitomises the everyday struggles that millions face.

 

‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.’ Inflation causes the  annual expenditure to increase with nothing to show for it or, for a belt tightening that disproportionately affects those least able to weather the effects of continually rising costs.

 

The mental health implications caused by the stress of ever more expensive day-to-day living are another of capitalism’s horrors.

 

Japan is the latest country to face these head-on.

 

“More than half of Japanese households have experienced worsening living standards as a result of soaring inflation, the latest survey conducted by the Bank of Japan has shown.

In its quarterly report, the BOJ said 53% of people surveyed admitted that their wealth had slumped last year compared to 2021, while only 3.7% said their livelihood had improved. This is the highest percentage of households reporting financial problems in almost 13 years.

The report indicates that consumers will be unwilling to increase their spending without growth in wages as a record 63% of respondents named inflation as a decisive factor for their spending activity this year.

Data shows that price growth is spreading across various sectors of the Japanese economy and companies are passing on the burden of rising costs in energy, food and raw materials to households. Aside from utility bills, prices rose for a broad range of goods from fried chicken to smartphones and air conditioners in a sign of mounting inflationary pressure.

In December, price growth in Tokyo exceeded forecasts and reached 4% for the first time since 1982, data from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs showed.

The Bank of Japan also expects that prices will continue to rise and has doubled its inflation forecast for the coming year to a record 10%.”

RT 13\2\23

Dave C.

 “Through their most notorious organs of science, such as Dr. Ure, Professor Senior, and other sages of that stamp, the middle class had predicted, and to their heart’s content proved, that any legal restriction of the hours of labour must sound the death knell of British industry, which, vampire like, could but live by sucking blood, and children’s blood, too…Yet the lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies…. they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour.,..To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes.”

Karl Marx, Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association. 1864

The 1833 Factory Act and the 1842 Mines Act began to ameliorate  the ages that children could be exploited and restricted the hours they could work.

The  1878 Factory Act prohibited work anywhere before the age of 10.The 1880 Education Act made it compulsory  for children up to ten years old  to go to school This  then became up to twelve years old.

Child labour laws were not enshrined in the United States until The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

A piece in RT by Bradley Blankenship, 24\2\23, examines the efforts by American capitalists to reintroduce child labour.

“Amid an ongoing push for higher wages by US workers, including union-building efforts and a national railway strike that was averted last December, some states are finding ways to undercut the working class.

One method, as Business Insider reports, is for the US to start allowing children aged 14-17 into the workforce. The federal government has said this practice is already increasing in an illicit fashion, too.

In the last month, Republican lawmakers in Iowa and  Minnesota have introduced legislation that would allow exceptions to existing child labour regulations. This is aimed at ameliorating the ongoing labour shortage in the US, which is also plaguing other countries, predominantly in the West.

The proposed bills in these states would allow children to work more hours and “protect employers from liabilities due to sickness or accidents,” which could help specific industries like construction and meatpacking that are being hit hard in these states.

The federal government also create a new rule in January allowing people wishing to be professional truck drivers to obtain their Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) at the age of 18 instead of 21. This was done because, as CNN reports, “the head of the American Trucking Associations said the industry needed about 80,000 more drivers.”

Minnesota wants to see 16 and 17-year-olds allowed to work in construction, which can be a dangerous job. Iowa wants to see even younger children allowed to work in their meat-packing plants.”

Dave C.

 The Israeli rights groups Peace Now and B’Tselem also described the attacks as a settler “pogrom” supported by the Israeli government.

300 attacks, including shootings and arson in the Nablus area of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say, in what has been described as a “pogrom”

37-year-old Palestinian, Samih al-Aqtash was shot and killed by settlers protected by the Israeli army in the village of Zaatara south of Nablus.

390 Palestinians were injured across the villages of Huwara, Zaatara, Burin and Asira al-Qibliya.

Stabbings and attacks with metal rods and rocks, and one person in hospital with a fractured skull after being beaten in the head with a rock. Another was beaten with a metal rod to the face, 30 Palestinian homes and 100 cars were set on fire by settlers.

Video shows the attacks taking place under the protection or in coordination with the Israeli army, sometimes with soldiers and settlers shooting side by side.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/27/unprecedented-israeli-settlers-wreak-havoc-on-occupied-nablus

Jordan hosted a meeting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Aqaba attended by Egypt and the United States, called in order to discuss steps to de-escalate tensions.

The closing statement of the Aqaba summit, said: “The Government of Israel and the Palestinian National Authority confirmed their joint readiness and commitment to immediately work to end unilateral measures for a period of 3-6 months. This includes an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorisation of any outposts for six months,”

After the statement was announced, Netanyahu said that there “will not be any freeze” with regards to settlement construction.

“The building and authorisation in Judea and Samaria will continue according to the original planning and building schedule, with no change,” he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank.

A number of top ministers in Israel also confirmed that the Israeli government will not temporarily halt the announcement of new illegal settlement units.

Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, who headed the Israeli delegation at the summit, said “Contrary to reports and tweets about the meeting in Jordan, there is no change in Israeli policy,”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, “…there will not be a freeze on construction and development in settlements, not even for one day,”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/27/403

“The speed and efficiency in which settlers take over Palestinian lands by building farming outposts is coupled with a lot of violence,” Dror Etkes, Kerem Navot founder and settlement researcher, told Al Jazeera.

According to the latest United Nations figures, 2022 recorded the highest number of settler-related incidents since the international organisation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs started monitoring them in 2006.

Etkes said that the establishment of outposts is usually associated with a huge amount of violence…Israeli human rights group Yesh-Din data from 2005 to 2022 show that 93 percent of all investigations into ideologically motivated crime in the West Bank are closed without an indictment.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/27/israeli-settler-outposts-threaten-palestinian-bedouins

Israeli group B’Tselem summed it up.

“This isn’t ‘loss of control.’ This is exactly what Israeli control looks like. The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it…”

 Nothing demonstrates the destructive waste of the capitalist system more than the work of vast numbers of people in the arms industries and in the armed forces. On a world scale, many millions of people are involved both directly and indirectly in war machines. As well as the numbers in the armed services every branch of industry, manufacture, communications and transport has been used to mine and process every kind of material for the production of the missiles, fighter aircraft, bombers, warships, tanks, guns, bombs, shells, bullets and much more, all of which make up the military in capitalist states. 

In itself, the use of armed forces together with people in industry and manufacture for armaments production and the use of materials, represents a great waste but the purpose of war resources is to inflict death and destruction, which leads to further waste. This results in a socially insane circle of destruction which accumulates. We shall never know how many people were killed as a result of war since the beginning of the 20th Century. With each contestant inflating their enemies numbers whilst minimising their own, official figures are unreliable.

War objectives include the destruction of industrial, chemical and manufacturing installations with their machinery and equipment. Targets also include communications systems such as railways, roads, bridges, ports, power facilities and communication networks. Towns and cities have become prime targets. Creating terror, causing destruction and killing civilians have become acceptable battle tactics.

War happens in the modern world between rival capitalist states in pursuit of strategic economic objectives. These include an ability to maintain trade from a position of strength, access to and control of important materials (such as oil), access to and control of important trade routes, the retention and expansion of economic and political spheres of influence. These objectives of war are an extension of the economic objectives of capitalist production, which are to maintain a monopoly of ownership and control of the production process and an ability to trade, as a basis for the accumulation of capital. Therefore, because modern war is inherent in the national economic rivalries of the capitalist system, it can be rightly said to represent a vast waste of human and material resources, together with bringing about unimaginable misery and suffering. This waste and destruction would not happen in a system in which all humanity shared a common interest in co-operating to produce for their mutual needs. In a world socialist system,  the material assets of the entire planet would be for the benefit of all people.

 Wars are not  undertaken out of any sentimental reasons. War is the product of commercial conflicts; the aim of war – to impose upon the enemy those economic conditions one considers necessary for oneself. All possible pretexts for war are applied, but their actual causes are always questions of economics. Outward causes may seem credible to the media. One is “defending” oneself, or fighting nobly for the independence of a country, the third is defending the interests of “civilization”, purely out of idealism, against “barbarians”. 

In reality, however, all fight for the interests of a handful of magnates. In almost all the wars of recent decades, as in former times, both sides considered themselves the attacked. Whether defence or the necessity of a strategic position is alleged as the cause of war, whether treaties must be violated or similar reasons play a part – in the long run everything has its origin in business interests. For the simple but decisive reason that trade is the heart’s blood of a nation-state.

Every belligerent state contends:

1. That it is conducting a defensive war and is fighting for the just cause.

2. That it is conducting a fight for the freedom and civilization of all peoples.

3. That it is striving for a lasting peace.

4. That it is bending all efforts and will fight until the enemy has been conclusively beaten.’

5. That it will be the victor, beyond a doubt.

6. That it is forging ahead victoriously and has only slight losses to record.

7. That the bombs of its hit only the military institutions of the enemy and always with great success.

8. That its pilots and its artillery are far better than the pilots and artillery of the enemy.

9. That at this very moment, it is planning great measures which promise absolute success.

10. That the good Lord is on its side.

And every belligerent state further contends:

1. That the enemy wanted the war and was preparing for it long ago.

2. That the enemy began the war and attacked “us”.

3. That the enemy is conducting a war of conquest and wants to dominate the world.

4. That the enemy is trampling underfoot the rights of the people.

5. That the enemy has violated the neutrality of the small states and threatens the neutrality of other small states.

6. That the enemy is conducting the war with barbarous means.

7. That the enemy uses outlawed weapons

8. That the enemy is misusing the Red Cross.

9. That the enemy mistreats prisoners of war.

10. That the enemy violates women, murders and plunders.

11. That the military courts of the enemy are a mockery of the law.

12. That the enemy kills prisoners of war

13. That the enemy bombards open cities, kills women and children, but does not do “us” the slightest military damage thereby.

14. That the attack of the enemy is always nipped in the bud or else is beaten back with great losses for the enemy.

15. That the enemy is using chemical or biological bombs.

16. That the enemy is a pirate on the high seas.

17. That the enemy is needlessly preventing neutral trade.

18. That the reports of the enemy are lies through and through, and calumnies to boot.

19. That the enemy is trying to influence the neutrals by means of lies, threats and bribery.

20. That the enemy is egging the neutral states on to war – to their greatest misfortune.

21. That the enemy is suffering from a lack of money, rising living costs, industrial crises.

22. That the war loans and credits of the enemy are subscribed only by means of deception.

23. That epidemics are ravaging the enemy.

24. That strikes and domestic disturbances are the rule in the land of the enemy.

25. That the enemy’s ministers and generals are resigning.

26. That the enemy is war-weary. 

This list could on and on. What people find nn their nation’s media, is all the same thing everywhere, the same methods everywhere, the same “technique” for the deception of “its” people, everywhere.

A just war is impossible, just as impossible as a “just” struggle between thieves for the division of their loot.

 The USA has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world, but with diminishing safety standards. The rail-roads are almost exclusively used for freight and are owned and maintained by a handful of private transport giants, which together spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political lobbying.

Rail workers and unions have complained about mass layoffs and a declining culture of safety. Much of this has been blamed on the widespread adoption of so-called Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which improves efficiency, but according to its detractors, is just a blunt cost-cutting measure that sacrifices safety for profits. Since 2017, railroads have slashed their workforce by 30%. workers warned that lax safety standards would eventually lead to a catastrophic derailment.

 Overworked rail workers are given barely enough time to walk the length of the train when inspecting carriages, with trains getting longer and more haphazardly assembled, inspection points being closed, and a culture of fear instilled in the much-diminished workforce.

Ohio chemical spill draws focus on railroad dangers – DW – 02/24/2023

 “The UK government needs to “take command” of local food production, the deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) said on Saturday, warning that an ongoing shortage of fruit and vegetables across the country could be just the “tip of the iceberg.”

According to Tom Bradshaw, the deficit of some fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes and cucumbers, has been caused by volatility arising from geopolitical events, and climate change, which is putting intense pressure on supply chains.

“What we saw last summer with 40°C heat is climate change in action,” Bradshaw told Times Radio, adding that the weather had exacerbated a supply-chain crisis triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Bradshaw also said geopolitical tensions have driven up inflation, particularly energy inflation, to unprecedented levels, leaving UK farmers struggling to meet energy costs.

Moreover, Britain has been facing the additional challenge of “repositioning” itself with trading partners since the 2016 Brexit referendum, the union chief said.

He noted that the country’s exit from EU structures, in which it had favourable trade relations, has inevitably inflicted damage on its own cross-border trade.

“It’s really interesting that before Brexit we didn’t used to source anything, or very little, from Morocco but we’ve been forced to go further afield and now these climatic shocks becoming more prevalent have had a real impact on the food available on our shelves today,” Bradshaw concluded.”

RT 26\2\23

Dave C.