Research revealed that basic benefits given to low-income households are at least £140 a month below the real cost of food, energy and everyday basics.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the food bank network the Trussell Trust said inadequate benefits were the main driver of the explosion in destitution and food bank use in recent months.

The two charities have calculated the weekly cost of a basic existence to be £120 for a single adult and £200 for a couple, based on a basket of goods and services including food, energy, travel, mobile phone and internet use, as well as smaller items such as toothpaste and washing-up liquid.

By comparison, even after April’s 10.1% benefits uprating, the universal credit standard allowance – the portion of the monthly benefit payment meant to cover basic living costs – will be £85 a week for a single adult aged over 25 (£35 less than the charities’ estimates) and £134 a week for a couple (a £66 gap).

In reality, more than half of households on universal credit receive even less than the basic £85 rate because of monthly caps and benefit deductions amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds a year, the charities say. A single adult facing deductions would typically see their basic rate allowance drop from £85 to £64 a week.

The charities have been increasingly alarmed by the unprecedented scale and depth of poverty witnessed in food banks, warm rooms and advice agencies this winter. Millions of low-income households have been left unable to afford even bare essentials as the cost of energy and food has rocketed, leading to overstretched welfare emergency services and shocking examples of extreme hardship.

They say the cost of living crisis has exposed a disastrous long-term erosion of benefits, whose value has fallen to a 40-year low in real terms as a result of freezes and cuts. This has led to rampant food insecurity, children turning up at school hungry, and the phenomenon of disabled people risking their health because they cannot afford energy bills.

A typical worker losing their job can see their income fall off a cliff when they claim unemployment benefits; universal credit replaces just 13% of average earnings.

The JRF chief executive, Paul Kissack, explained that the “so-called” welfare safety net had floated completely free from the economic reality of people’s lives. 

“With millions of low-income households going without essentials like food and heating, and food bank use at record levels, it is plain the system is failing,” he said.

The Trussell Trust chief executive, Emma Revie, said that even when its food banks helped vulnerable clients to claim their full benefit entitlements, in many cases their newly enhanced incomes still did not cover their basic living costs. 

“People have cut and cut, but you cannot budget if your budget isn’t enough,” she said.

UK benefits fall short of minimum living cost by £140 a month, charities say | Poverty | The Guardian

 On a global scale, meat consumption continues to rise: It has multiplied by almost five over the past 60 years, growing from 71 million tonnes in 1961 to 339 million tonnes in 2021, according to statistics from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This production has massive consequences for climate change: The livestock sector is responsible for 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions derived from human activities and half of the emissions of the agricultural sector worldwide.

In France, a mere quarter of the population describes itself as flexitarian, eating meat only occasionally, while 2.2 percent describes itself as vegetarian.

 Agricultural economist Carine Barbier, a researcher for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and The International Research Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED) explained, “It’s the principal cause of dietary-related greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the whole food industry already represents 25 percent of French emissions, this includes the entire process, from the production to our plates as well as imports. Animal farming alone represents 9 percent of total emissions.”

Due to emissions of three types of greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide and methane – into the atmosphere, animal husbandry is costing the planet dearly. “CO2 emissions come from the use of fossil fuel for transportation, namely imports, (and) the use of machinery in agriculture as well as in the food processing industry and large retail outlets,” the expert explained. Nitrous oxide (N2O), on the other hand, “comes from the use of mineral nitrogen fertilisers in fields”, and methane is produced by the digestive system of cattle. Although not as well known as carbon dioxide, the latter two gases are not less harmful: N2O reflects 300 times as much heat as CO2 while methane reflects 28 times as much.

“Therefore we have to differentiate between ruminants, swine and poultry”, Barbier said. “Due to their particular digestive system, ruminants have a larger impact on the climate.” According to the French Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME), a kilogram of beef represents around 14 kilograms of CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which includes CO2, nitrous oxide and methane, 10 times that of poultry.

On top of its climate impact, animal farming is also responsible for detrimental effects on the environment. According to a 2015 report by the Physics Institution, livestock production accounts for 78 percent of terrestrial biodiversity loss, 80 percent of soil acidification and atmospheric pollution as well as 73 percent of water pollution.

“We also have to cut down on imports of animal feed. I’m thinking of, for example, soybean meal imported from Brazil that leans heavily on transport. Currently, transportation represents more than one-fifth of the food industry’s carbon footprint,” Barbier continued. “Why not return to crop-livestock systems in which farmers grow most of what the animals need by themselves?” But to make further progress in transforming large-scale farming methods, “it’s absolutely necessary to start reducing herd sizes”, Barbier insisted. These practical changes would set into motion a virtuous cycle. “For example, by cutting back on meat in our diets and decreasing cereal fodder and oil and protein crops used in animal feed, we would increase the area of arable land that we can use to grow crops for human consumption,” she added.

In addition to purely ecological thinking, she also advanced several nutritional arguments. “In any case, we consume too much protein, around 80 percent more than what we need,” the expert continued, pointing to oft-illustrated cardiovascular risks linked to overconsumption of meat. In 2019, a commission formed by the medical journal The Lancet estimated that Europeans should cut their red meat consumption by 77 percent while doubling fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes in order to respect the limits of Earth’s resources and to maintain their own health. “Reducing our consumption to reflect our real needs will considerably decrease the carbon footprint of our diets.”

“If we stick to the most moderate scenario, then we need to cut down two-thirds of our meat consumption and half that of milk products”, she explained. “By no means do we seek to remove meat completely from the entire population’s plates. It is a question of developing our diet and animal-farming practices to reach carbon neutrality.

‘A wake-up call for the industry’: Meat production in France under scrutiny amid climate change (france24.com)

 

The former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has warned that the world’s largest fund to help developing nations weather the climate crisis remains an “empty shell”, despite decades of promises by rich nations.

“We need to see a massive acceleration in mobilising trillions of dollars needed to keep the world from climate collapse,” he said.

International climate finance from rich to poor countries is between five and 10 times short of what is needed, according to the UN. In 2020, money set aside to help poorer countries adapt to climate breakdown amounted to $29bn – far below the $340bn a year that could be needed by 2030. The largest such fund, the Green Climate Fund, stands at $11.4bn. 

Rich countries have also been accused by NGOs of misleading accounting and issuing loans instead of grants.

At Cop15 in Copenhagen, rich countries promised to provide $100bn of climate finance a year every year for developing countries by 2020. However, Ban said: “After 14 years, nothing has been happening.”

Ban, is an advocate for smallholder farmers, who in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia produce 80% of the food but receive only 1.7% of climate finance. “This is irrational,” he said.

“What an injustice. If we want a world free of hunger while adapting to climate change, we need to put smallholder farmers at its centre.”

‘We have no time to lose’: Ban Ki-moon criticises climate finance delays | Global development | The Guardian

 Sales of U.S. military equipment to foreign governments rose 49% to $205.6 billion. Sales approved included $13.9 billion worth of F-15ID fighter jets to Indonesia, $6.9 billion worth of Multi-Mission Surface Combatant ships to Greece, and $6 billion worth of M1A2 Abrams tanks to Poland.

There are two major ways foreign governments purchase arms from U.S. companies: direct commercial sales negotiated between a government and a company, and foreign military sales in which a foreign government typically contacts a Defense Department official at the U.S. embassy in its capital. 

The direct military sales by U.S. companies rose 48.6% to $153.7 billion in fiscal 2022 from $103 billion in fiscal 2021, while sales arranged through the U.S. government rose 49.1% to $51.9 billion in 2022 from $34.8 billion the prior year. 

U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022 | Reuters

  Russia is selling its military products to more than 50 countries. 

“We have a stable portfolio of export orders, which amounted to $50-$55 billion of US dollars (over 3 trillion rubles). The tendency remains approximately the same at present,” the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSVTS) has told TASS.

Russia sells its military products to over 50 states, demand stable — federal service – Military & Defense – TASS

 “Ukraine is certainly not seen here as something with a clear moral tale to tell. When brown or black people get bombed or shocked-and-awed, it does not matter, but with white people it is supposed to be different.” Arundhati Roy 

 

“Corresponding disasters every night on the TV

Sickening reality keep gripping me in its guts

All my friends talk and joke and laugh about Armageddon

But like a nightmare it’s still waiting there

At the end of each and every day”

War Baby, Tom Robinson.

It becomes more dire every day. How do you cope? Immersion in sports and soap operas?

Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Edward L. Bernays. Propaganda 1928

 

Karl Marx had an explanation: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

 Education or indoctrination into becoming a wage slave?

‘I learned our Government must be strong;

It’s always right and never wrong;

Our leaders are the finest men

And we elect them again and again’

Pete Seeger

 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

‘Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori’ – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

From a Latin Ode by the Roman, Horace.

First World War poet, Wilfred Owen knocked that one out of the park:

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.”

 

NUCLEOMITUPHOBIA  is anxiety or a phobia in the face of a potential future nuclear holocaust.

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.

On a Saturday in January, 2018, anyone with a Hawaiian telephone number received this message:

‘Ballistic Missile threat inbound to Hawaii

Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.’

 It was. The text had been sent as “accidentality”

 Donovan’s 1965 anti-Vietnam song, The War Drags On still resonates today.

Last night, poor Dan had a nightmare it seems

One kept occurrin’ and reoccurrin’ in his dreams

Cities full of people burnin’, screamin’, shoutin’ loud

And right there overhead, a great orange mushroom cloud

And there’s no more war

For there’s no, no more world.

Heavy Metal bands were on the ball too.

 

Black Sabbath’s War Pigs. 1970

“Politicians hide themselves away

They only started the war

Why should they go out to fight?

They leave that role to the poor, yeah’

 

Iron Maiden said, hold my beer:  Two Minutes to Midnight.  1984

‘As the mad men play on words

And make us all dance to their song

To the tune of starving millions

To make a better kind of gun ‘

 

The  Edwin Starr timeless classic, War, What is it good for? poses a question:

‘They say we must fight to keep our freedom but there’s got to be a better way,

War, What is it good for? You tell me (nothing)

Stand up and shout it  (nothing)’

Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s,  When Two Tribes Go To War official video had it right, Let the “leaders” fight it out amongst themselves. Reagan and Chernenko were featured in the video. Better still, let’s abolish leaders along with capitalism.

 In August 1914, the Socialist Party of Great Britain Executive Committee said:

  Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good will and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism

THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

 Clifford Slapper wrote in the Socialist Standard, July 1984 of the Greenham Common Peace Camp:

 ‘Perhaps they don’t know, or don’t care, that socialists alone have opposed every single war this century, not just before they began, but during and after them too, even where this meant incarceration in prison for many of our members during both World Wars. We do not sneer at the opposition to war of millions of our fellow workers. But how is this opposition to be turned into a practical movement, which will be effective in ending all war?’

 

‘Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one

If you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

Bob Dylan. The Times They Are A-Changin

Capitalism is on notice that the revolution will happen. Socialists work toward a peaceful transition from capitalism to a global sane society which is dependent upon us all  ‘getting together.’ Capitalist, the choice is yours…

‘Hand out the arms and ammo

We’re going to blast our way through here

We’ve got to get together sooner or later

Because the revolution’s here and you know it’s right.’

Thunder Clap Newman. Something In The Air.

Dave C.

 

 

 A former US ambassador, Daniel Kurtzer, who served in Tel Aviv during the George W Bush administration,  accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government of breaking a written agreement with Washington by legalising a group of hardline nationalist and religious settlements in the West Bank.

 He warned that some ministers in Netanyahu’s new coalition are not interested in a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

 He called on the Biden administration to be more proactive in stopping Israel’s “creeping annexation” of the West Bank.

Kurtzer said he is also concerned about Israel’s plans to press ahead with building settlements in an area just outside Jerusalem known as E1.

“If Israel builds there as they want to build, it would effectively cut the West Bank in two,” he said.

The retroactive authorisation of the nine so-called outposts earlier this month, alongside plans to build thousands of new homes in larger West Bank settlements, is a further blow to a deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

“It’s also a significant violation of a commitment that the Israeli government made in writing to the American government back in 2004 when, in a letter to the then Bush administration, Israel undertook to dismantle illegal outposts, illegal settlements,” he said. “Now you’ve come full circle. Not only are they not dismantling these illegal outposts, but they’re trying to legalise them ex post facto. And there have been many that have been built since that time so that the number is really quite significant.”

“If Israel is still interested in a peace process, it’s going to have to stop a number of the actions that it’s it’s taking. It’s going to have to start doing some things that it’s not doing,” he said.

Former US ambassador accuses Israel of ‘creeping annexation’ of the West Bank | Israel | The Guardian

 When it comes to nationalistic zeal, there is nothing at all with which socialists can identify, for both are abstractions that have imbued the workers of the region with a false consciousness that prevents them identifying their real interests.

The label Ukrainian or Russian camouflage the bigger and more permanent label of ‘working class’, a label most caught up in the present crisis could, if challenged, identify with.

 And as the warring camps continue to vent their hatreds we can only maintain that there is more that unites them as members of that exploited majority, with the same basic needs and desires than can ever divide them along religious or national lines. For the real conflict is yet to be waged – that between ourselves, the exploited, and the master class – though with ideas, not rifles and cannon.

As socialists, we side with no leaders or any  faction, taking no sides in their wars over territory; for we have the insight to see where disagreements over resources, such as oil and water, and artificial borders lead and in whose interests such conflicts are waged. Our thoughts lie with the exploited majority – the common folk – who continue to pay the price of power politics, and eagerly await the day when they have the chance, along with their counterparts the world over, to at last vote for themselves and, more, in their own interests, a world devoid of Putins, Bidens, and Zelenkys and the misery their games bring.

Once we recognise that as a class we have shared basic needs and desires, suffering the same privations because of our less privileged position in the relations of production, and unite in defiance of that minority intent on maintaining the status quo and its bellicose insanity, we need never fear the horror of war again.

As socialists we certainly do not need to re-define our war. The war we must fight to end the insanity and horror capitalism would bring us into is the class war. And this can not be fought with missiles, but something more powerful – our minds, our imagination, our solidarity and preparedness to unite as the majority exploited class and to wrest control of the planet from the madmen before it is to late.

As socialists, as observers of international affairs and commentators on the way they impinge upon the lives of our fellow workers, we are well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote the interests of their corporate backers. Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever. To believe the arguments of the likes of Biden and Putin is to disarm yourself intellectually – for it is at times like the present, when the media is dancing to the tunes of governments, when the trumpets of jingoism, patriotism and reaction are sounding, that we need to be fighting the war of ideas with a little more gusto.

Nationalist conflict has raged for many long years around the globe. What, in all honesty, have any of the victors gained? What is the ‘independence’ they yearn after, if it means being trapped within borders – artificial constructs, no, prisons – inside of the bigger prison of capitalism?

The solution to the ongoing insanity, we insist, remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious cooperation of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity – socialism.

Are you with us? Don’t take too long to think of a reply – the doomsday clock really is ticking.

  Pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine.

“Moderna’s revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries,” Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna’s earnings report. “Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries.” 

Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company’s only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.

Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at Global Justice Now, said, “History will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company’s refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly.” He added, “Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine.” Bierley continued, “Moderna’s pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine’s development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine…”

Moderna’s 2022 Windfall a ‘Scandalous’ Result of Pandemic Profiteering, Campaigners Say (commondreams.org)