Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the US. Much of the rest – millions of tons of it – is dumped in the oceans each year, killing marine mammals and polluting the world. Plastic does not fully decompose; instead, it eventually breaks down into tiny bits, some of which wind up inside our bodies. The idea of creating fuel from plastic offers the comforting sense that plastics are sustainable. But the release of cancer-causing pollution is just one of several significant problems that have plagued attempts to convert discarded plastic into new things. One recent study by scientists from the Department of Energy found that the economic and environmental costs of turning old plastic into new using a process called pyrolysis were 10 to 100 times higher than those of making new plastics from fossil fuels. Chevron buys oil that another company extracts from discarded plastics through pyrolysis. 

In January 2022, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced the initiative to streamline the approval of petroleum alternatives in what a press release called “part of the Biden-Harris administration’s actions to confront the climate crisis.” While the program cleared new fuels made from plants, it also signed off on fuels made from plastics even though they themselves are petroleum-based and contribute to the release of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The EPA recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a climate-friendly initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and the Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, one out of four people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer. The one-in-four lifetime cancer risk from breathing the emissions from the Chevron jet fuel is higher even than the lifetime risk of lung cancer for current smokers.

“That kind of risk is obscene,” said Linda Birnbaum, former head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 

That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals.  The cancer burden will disproportionately fall on people who have low incomes and are Black because of the population that lives within three miles of the refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

 Maria Doa, a scientist who worked at the EPA for 30 years, reviewed the document laying out the risk. Doa, who once ran the division that managed the risks posed by chemicals, was so alarmed by the cancer threat that she initially assumed it was a typographical error. “EPA should not allow these risks in Pascagoula or anywhere,” said Doa, who now is the senior director of chemical policy at Environmental Defense Fund. In her three decades at the EPA, Doa had never seen a chemical with that high a cancer risk that the agency allowed to be released into a community without restrictions.

The fuels that Chevron plans to make at its Pascagoula refinery present serious health risks, including developmental problems in children and cancer and harm to the nervous system, reproductive system, liver, kidney, blood and spleen. Aside from the chemical that carries a 25% lifetime risk of cancer from smoke-stack emissions, another of the Chevron fuels ushered in through the program is expected to cause 1.2 cancers in 10,000 people – also far higher than the agency allows for the general population. The EPA division that screens new chemicals typically limits cancer risk from a single air pollutant to one case of cancer in a million people. The agency also calculated that air pollution from one of the fuels is expected to cause 7.1 cancers in every 1,000 workers – more than 70 times the level EPA’s new chemicals division usually considers acceptable for workers.

In addition to the chemicals released through the creation of fuels from plastics, the people living near the Chevron refinery are exposed to an array of other cancer-causing pollutants.

Scott Throwe, an air pollution specialist who worked at the EPA for 30 years,was asked  how existing regulations could protect people in this instance. Now an independent environmental consultant, Throwe said the existing testing and monitoring requirements for refineries couldn’t capture the pollution from these new plastic-based fuels because the rules were written before these chemicals existed. There is a chance that equipment designed to limit the release of other pollutants may incidentally capture some of the emissions from the new fuels, he said. But there’s no way to know whether that is happening.

Chevron said that “plastics are an essential part of modern life and plastic waste should not end up in unintended places in the environment. We are taking steps to address plastic waste and support a circular economy in which post-use plastic is recycled, reused or repurposed.”

But environmentalists say such claims are just greenwashing. The creation of fuel from plastic is in some ways worse for the climate than simply making it directly from fossil fuels. Over 99% of all plastic is derived from fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas. To produce fuel from plastics, additional fossil fuels are used to generate the heat that converts them into petrochemicals that can be used as fuel.

“It adds an extra step,” said Veena Singla, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They have to burn a lot of stuff to power the process that transforms the plastic.”

This ‘climate-friendly’ fuel comes with an astronomical cancer risk | Pollution | The Guardian

 As a result of the intense rivalry between the U.S. and Russia, the danger of a new destructive world war has increased and concern among the people has heightened. Throughout the world, as well as in this country, genuine socialists are stepping forward to champion the cause of peace. On the other hand, the media and opportunist parties are filling the air with all kinds of propaganda which serve to support one side or the other.

With the world on the brink of war, Russia is presented as the most aggressive being an expanding imperialist power trying to replace U.S. imperialism as the king of the world’s exploiters to become the top dog. Many on the left try to cover up the imperialist nature of Russia highlighting the provocations of NATO using Ukraine as a proxy. Anyone who raises a voice against both sides, rather than simply against the U.S.A and NATO is guilty of “anti-Putin” propaganda. Vice versa, when socialists point to the West’s encroachments on Russia’s spheres of influence, they are described as  “pro-Putin” apologists.

Working people see huge profits made from this war. War is horrible; it threatens the standards of living and even the existence of the working class. Our capitalist masters and their political tools are deliberately plotting and preparing to drag working people into another war. Capitalist production for profits cannot be reconciled with peace and prosperity. There can be no effective struggle against the monster of war unless it is directed towards the establishment of a society based on human needs, without profits, classes or exploitation. 

Only one party stands on that basis, the Socialist  Party. There is no other peace party. Working men and women, you have the power to change everything. Let’s begin building a world where we and our children can live in peace as free human beings without poverty and without fear. There is only one way to fight war – that is, to do away with the capitalist system, which breeds war, and replace it with an international socialist society.

Socialism or Barbarism – that is the choice before us.

 The key to all the “anti-war” activities of Marxists is the understanding that the fight against war is the fight for a socialist society. It is of little use to protest against war while tolerating a social system that breeds war. Capitalism makes war inevitable. Capitalist nations not only exploit their workers but ruthlessly invade, plunder and pillage one another. The profit system is responsible for it all. Abolish that, establish industrial democracy, produce–for–use, and the incentive to war vanishes.

In a war, the Socialist Party does take sides, but it’s a third side. It’s the side of the workers, against the owning class that exploits them now, as well as against the owning class that WANTS to exploit them. 

NOT PEOPLE AGAINST PEOPLE, BUT CLASS AGAINST CLASS.

Women “work for free for nearly two months” a year, according to fresh analysis which reveals a 15% gender pay gap that widens “dramatically” after women have children.

Women in paid employment earn on average £29,684 a year, compared with the £35,260 a year earned by men.  This meant women, on average, effectively work for free for 54 days.

The analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics found the gender divide on pay was widest for older women. Those aged between 50 and 59 suffered a pay gap of 20.8% – the equivalent of working 76 days a year for free – while women aged over 60 had a gender pay gap of 18.4%.

The TUC’s research found big variations in the gender pay gap across different industries and regions. Women working in finance and insurance suffer a 31.2% pay gap – the equivalent of 114 days, meaning they effectively work for free for nearly a third of the year.

Even in jobs that tend to be dominated by female workers, such as education and healthcare, the gender pay gap persists. In these sectors women get paid much less per hour on average than men, because they are more likely to be in part-time jobs or less senior roles.

In education, the gender pay gap is 22.2%, while in health care and social work it is 14%.

“Working women deserve equal pay. But at current rates of progress, it will take more than 20 years to close the gender pay gap,” Paul Nowak, the TUC’s general secretary, said. “That’s just not good enough. We can’t consign yet another generation of women to pay inequality.”

Joeli Brearley, founder of the campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, said: “This is a motherhood penalty. Women face maternity discrimination because they are seen as distracted and uncommitted to their jobs when they have children, whereas men actually get paid more after they have children.”

Women work two months for free, reveals TUC analysis | Business | The Guardian

Capo di Tutto Capis

Two mobsters holed up, each in his own fastness,

Like Moran on the North Side and Capone

In the South. There’s the Bear who claims to own

The East, while the one who’s tame hoods address

As the Eagle, keeps the West Side firmly

In his grip through the protection racket

He runs. Each of them knows what to expect

Straying on the other’s territory,

But both harbour an insistent desire

To encroach, snatching at their rival’s patch,

Utterly careless, in the plans they hatch,

Of bloody casualties caught in their crossfire.

Each feels exalted on his lofty perch,

Loved by his people and blessed by his Church.

D. A.

The black cloud of war darkens the sky across the world. Working peoples feel the growing danger of a new world war. The threat of global war  arises inevitably out of the very nature of capitalism — the ownership of the means of production by a small capitalist class and the complete domination of government by this class. The imminent war danger is only another expression of the fundamental crisis of the capitalist system, which continues its existence only at the cost of intensification of exploitation and oppression.

The ever-sharpening conflict between the superpowers, NATO and Russia, the continuing acts of aggression and the very real possibility of a nuclear world war is a fact which cannot be ignored. A key part of both sides preparations includes an ever-increasing effort to sway public opinion. To accomplish this they are waging an ideological and political battle of ideas which takes many forms. Beyond the more obvious back and forth saber-rattling and ranting and ravings that of politicians they all talk of  intervention to protect “our” interests. It is not Putin’s imperialism or Biden/Zelensky’s fascism (or vice versa) that means war. Rather it is the continued existence of capitalism that means war. There can be no “good”, no “peace-loving” capitalist states. The interests of the working class within any country is never under any circumstances to patriotically defend “the nation” – that is, the political executive of the class enemy – but always to fight for its overthrow. 

A feature of the present war revolves around the question of “sanctions”. The United Nations provides that when a country has been deemed the aggressor against another member state, financial and trade embargo measures shall be – following an elaborate procedure – invoked by the other member states against the aggressor nation. These measures are called “sanctions”. It is a method for turning opposition to war into support of war. All that is necessary is to call the war an “application of sanctions”. Then it becomes the duty of all “friends of peace” to support it. This, indeed, is the real meaning of the doctrine of sanctions. UN sanctions are, of course, nothing else than sanctions undertaken by the leading member states of the UN which is only the instrument of its dominant members of the Security Council.

Support of  sanctions, therefore, is exactly the same as support of sanctions applied by individual nations – e.g., by USA, UK or EU. But sanctions are war measures. They include withdrawal of financial credit, a ban on trade, various forms of boycott. To enforce them genuinely would require a blockade of the country against whom the sanctions were invoked. The probable, the almost certain outcome of such a blockade, as history has so often proved, is war – since the blockaded nation cannot accept such a measure peacefully without surrendering political sovereignty. Thus it follows that sanctions must be either ineffectual – a bluff – or they must lead to war. If they are ineffectual, support of them is certainly no aid to peace . If they lead to possible more war, support of them – no matter with what verbal reservations – means nothing else than support of war undertaken by the governments applying the sanctions.

 Advocating sanctions in any form necessarily binds the working class to the state and the class enemy, necessarily weakens the class position of the workers and thus the workers’ struggle for power, and necessarily prepares for turning the workers over to the sanction-applying government when the sanctions find their natural outcome in war. If we support sanctions, and the sanctions lead to war, then we have already by supporting the sanctions supported the war. The disastrous consequences of support of sanctions are already apparent with a global cost of living crisis.

The Socialist Party is  not afraid of war but our war is against this capitalist system and all the wars and pain that it creates. The Marxist knows that we can never “use” capitalist governments for the interests of the working class, because what these governments are is instruments to be “used” for the interests of the ruling class. On the contrary, we must always fight inexorably against governments and their actions.

 18 million people – about one-third of Myanmar’s population – need humanitarian aid this year because of civil war and the post-coup economic crisis, according to the latest United Nations estimates.

The numbers needing support continue to rise from the estimated 14 million people needing aid last year. 

More than 10,000 people were displaced by fighting in southern Kayin State in early January alone, joining more than 1.5 million IDPs across the country.

Aid workers accuse the junta of further restricting aid operations and blocking urgently needed aid from reaching millions of people. The junta is seeking to impose its authority with a new law making registration compulsory for national and international non-governmental organizations and associations and introducing criminal penalties for non-registered entities with up to five years of imprisonment.

James Rodehaver, chief of the UN Human Rights Office for South-East Asia (OHCHR) Myanmar Team, said, “These new rules could greatly diminish what operational space is left for civic organisations to deliver essential goods and services to a population that is struggling to survive.”

It is able to choke access to some areas controlled by resistance groups and ethnic armed organisations that have been fighting the military for decades. The junta has extended a state of emergency for another six months.

“Heavy fighting, including airstrikes, tight security, access restrictions, and threats against aid workers have continued unabated, particularly in the Southeast, endangering lives and hampering humanitarian operations,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

UN Hobbled by Junta and Under Pressure Over Myanmar Aid Crisis | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 “This senseless war has reverberated across the world. Higher costs of food and fuel as a result have deepened misery on a global scale, especially among those who were already the most vulnerable. This war, which is a blatant affront to the UN Charter and the whole body of international law built to protect human beings everywhere, and its vast human toll must end now. ”- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,  Volker Türk

hrmmu-civilian-casualties-24feb2022-15feb2023-ru.pdf (ohchr.org) – Report in Russian

hrmmu-civilian-casualties-24feb2022-15feb2023-ua.pdf (ohchr.org) – Report in Ukrainian

hrmmu-civilian-casualties-24feb2022-15feb2023-en.pdf (ohchr.org) – Report in English

An open letter to the prime minister, home secretary and other cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers, signed by groups including the Community Policy Forum, Refugee Council, and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, claims that the government has continually failed to “adequately address the dangers posed by Islamophobia and racism against vulnerable people seeking protection and racialised communities in the UK”.

The letter added: “With government ministers continuing to promote incendiary language labelling asylum seekers with harmful stereotypes and painting them as unworthy of sanctuary, there must be accountability for their role in normalising and tacitly endorsing the threats that asylum seekers now face.”

The letter argues that the report on the government’s counter-extremism programme Prevent by William Shawcross that the programme had focused disproportionately on the far right and not enough on Islamist extremism,  made use of “incomplete and skewed evidence to minimise the threat of the far right,” and called on the government to reject the recommendations of the Shawcross review.

The letter also referenced the far-right demonstrators who gathered in Knowsley to protest against asylum seekers who had been housed in a local hotel by the Home Office.

 “The response to the violence and intimidation directed at refugees in Knowsley has highlighted the normalised far-right hatred in the UK,” it reads.

Fizza Qureshi, the chief executive of the Migrants’ Rights Network and one of the letter’s signatories, said: “The lack of acknowledgment about the role Islamophobia and racism played in the Knowsley riot is shocking but unfortunately unsurprising. At the Migrants’ Rights Network, we have been warning about the devastating impact hostile rhetoric and ideas can have on refugees and migrants for some time, and how it has emboldened the far right…”

Government has failed to address UK’s far-right threat, says open letter | Far right | The Guardian

  The government has so far focused on addressing early retirement, with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, urging the over-50s to get off the golf course.

The sharp rise in economic inactivity – when working-age adults are neither in work nor looking for a job – is more likely to be driven by people waiting for treatment as the health service struggles to cope, as well as by people who permanently live in poorer health, according to the consultancy LCP. 

“There is a real risk of the government barking up the wrong tree when it comes to the growth in economic inactivity,” the report says.

Sir Steve Webb, the former pensions minister who co-authored the LCP report, said rising long-term sickness was much more significant.

“We were gobsmacked by what we found. It turns out there are fewer earlier retired today than at the start of the pandemic. You wouldn’t believe that from ministers’ speeches and talk of getting people back off the golf course,”

Official figures published last week showed early retirement explains none of the increase in inactivity since the start of the pandemic. While the number of people who are economically inactive is more than half a million higher than in February 2020, the number who have quit the labour market due to retirement has fallen.

The number of “long-term sick” has risen by more than 350,000 since the start of the pandemic, accounting for more than half of the growth in inactivity over that period.

“This could reflect NHS pressures as those who would otherwise have been treated or had their chronic condition better managed and able to work now find themselves ‘long-term sick’ as they wait for treatment or live permanently in poorer health,” the report says.

UK ‘barking up wrong tree’ trying to get over-50s back to work, report finds | Staff shortages | The Guardian

 To minimise the effects of its labour shortage experts have estimated that Germany would need 400,000 foreigners per year to close the widening gap within the next decade or so. 

At the moment, only about 60,000 people are coming via the government’s skilled immigration programs.

Is Germany’s skilled-labor shortage a myth? – DW – 02/21/2023