76% of South Koreans believe the nation should develop and deploy its own nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent.

 Many in the South have been alarmed at the perceived fragility of the security alliance that has tied the US to Seoul since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.  Questions have grown about Washington’s commitment to the alliance as trade rivalries have increased. 

While in power, President Donald Trump strong-armed Seoul into sharply increasing the amount it paid to keep US troops in the South by threatening to withdraw US forces from the peninsula.

   The US has taken a firmer stance on imports of South Korean electric vehicles and is shifting away from a long reliance on Korean semiconductor manufacturers. 

 “The fact that the US does not subsidize Korean electric vehicles and tries to compete in the semiconductors industry is creating anxiety for South Korea,” explained politics Professor Hyobin Lee at Chungnam National University. “South Koreans do not trust the nuclear umbrella provided by the US.” She added, “How can we trust someone for protection if they treat us as a competitor?” 

The sense is that if Washington cannot be trusted on trade, then how can Seoul be absolutely certain US forces will be committed in the event of another invasion from the North or a threat to South Korea from China? 

Some are placing their support behind a homegrown nuclear capability. They say it would permit Seoul to rely less heavily on the defensive umbrella provided by the US, enable a drawdown of US military personnel and ensure that South Koreans made decisions for themselves on matters of national security.  The acquisition of nuclear weapons was once a topic for the political fringe but has now become a mainstream element of security discussions.   

Another reason for that support is a concept called “unwanted use theory.”  According to the theory, as the credibility of US power and preparedness to use nuclear weapons from bases in South Korea increases, that paradoxically makes the South more of a target for its regional rivals, either as a pre-emptive strike or in retaliation.  

President Yoon Suk-yeol in January said his nation might need to acquire a nuclear capability or, at the very least, play a more active role in managing US weapons that could be reintroduced to the South, seeking a return of tactical nuclear weapons or nuclear sharing.

if South Korea were to try to create its own nuclear deterrent, it would take less than one year to develop a weapon.  Any such decision would also mean Seoul would be abandoning its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

South Korea: Why support for nukes is on the rise – DW – 02/17/2023

 The World Socialist Movement is against any war between peoples and has opposed, oppose and always will oppose war. The socialists’ role  is to carry on proclaiming that there is but one war of emancipation: the one waged in every country by the oppressed against the oppressor, by the exploited against the exploiter. Our task is to summon wage-slaves to revolt against their masters. To all soldiers from every country convinced that they are fighting for justice and freedom, we explain that their heroism and their valour serves only to perpetuate hatred, tyranny and misery. 

The World Socialist Movement  reaffirms its allegiance to the principle of internationalism and working-class solidarity the world over, and proclaims its unalterable opposition to all war. Whether they have been wars of aggression or have been represented as wars of “defence,” they have always been made by the ruling classes and fought by working people.  We call upon the workers of all nationa to refuse support to their governments in their wars. 

Wars bring wealth and power to the capitalist and pain and suffering to the worker. Wars breed nationalist unreason and race hatred. In support of the capitalists we will not willingly sacrifice a single life or shed a drop of blood. Modern wars as a rule have been caused by the commercial and financial rivalry and intrigues of the capitalist interest in the different countries. The death and destruction which is now convulsing unfortunate Ukraine was caused by the conflict of capitalist interests. The acute competition between the Western powers and Russia, their distrust of one another and the fear of the others rising power has led to the madness of war. This war is a war of the capitalist class, worldwide.

It is not a war to advance the cause of democracy. Democracy can never be imposed upon any country by a foreign power by force of arms. War is an inevitable product of the capitalist system. No capitalist power can prosper within its own borders atone; it must expand or suffer paralyzing economic crisis; to survive, it must get new markets abroad, new sources of raw materials, new fields of investment, new spheres of influence. When it is blocked from securing or consolidating these objectives by the economic or political power of another nation, it will eventually resort to military means.

It is not enough to point an accusing finger at the politicians who are running the government  or the greedy CEOs. Their individual avarice and lust for power are important factors but not the decisive ones. In the first place, they are not acting on their own; they are the representatives and administrators of their class, the capitalist class. Without the consent of their class they would never dare embark on such a dangerous venture as war. War represents a terrible risk for them yet they are driven to desperate measures for resolving international disputes not merely by some quirk in their individual or collective minds or hearts, but by the very needs of the capitalist system itself. 

If we don’t say it’s a class war, a war of the oppressor against the oppressed, of the exploiters against the exploited, of the capitalists against the workers and oppressed people of the world, then we are not telling the whole truth.

The end of wars will come with the establishment of socialism the world over. In a rational world cooperative there would of course be no war over raw materials, which would be accessible to all and collectively used for the common welfare. But a world dominated by capitalism is not a rational world. It’s a world whose very fate is based on such conflicts as the competition for raw materials. it’s a dog-eat-dog system, where each dog is ready to undergo some suffering himself in order to remain or become the top dog, and where all the dogs are indifferent to the welfare of canines as a whole.

You can’t end war without ending its cause, capitalism. The World Socialist Movement calls upon all workers to join it in its struggle to reach its goal of a new society in which peace, fraternity and harmony will prevail. 

 Extreme weather events in Central America are becoming more frequent and more severe, far outpacing resilience and recovery. In Guatemala hurricanes and tropical storms, as well as droughts and El Niño and La Niña weather pattern changes, are intensifying. Guatemala is prone to sudden-onset climate events, including 12 hurricanes and tropical storms over the past 20 years. Hurricane Mitch (1998), Tropical Storm Stan (2005). Tropical Storm Agatha (2010) alone cost Guatemala more than $2.4 billion in damages. But slow-onset events, particularly drought, have also been a challenge for the country.   

From 2012 to 2016, Guatemala experienced one of the worst droughts in the country’s history. In 2012, drought affected more than 80 percent of the country. The drought ruined half of the maize and bean crops, causing an estimated loss of around $10 million. In 2014, another prolonged drought struck, which prompted the government of Guatemala to declare a state of emergency. The drought negatively impacted 70 to 80 percent of basic food crops.

Some 236,000 families, or around 1.1 million people, were directly affected. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reported that in late 2018, poor households in the “Dry Corridor” of the country “were still working to recover from indebtedness and lost assets” from the 2014 drought.  

The region of Chiquimula is in what is called the region’s “Dry Corridor,” and faces frequent drought. Many of its communities also were hit hard by hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020 and tropical storm Celia in 2022.  .Almost 70 percent of the total population—290,638 people—were affected in some way. Infrastructure and agriculture were hit particularly hard.

Eta and Iota displaced hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. The storms triggered massive landslides and flooding that wrought destruction and affected more than 2.4 million people in Guatemala. It is likely that the prolonged drought meant that soil was too dry to sufficiently absorb water that resulted in flash floods. More than 300,000 people were evacuated in the face of the storms, with more than 230,000 remaining displaced in the short-term. While the number of displaced people has dropped dramatically, homes are still badly damaged or destroyed.  

Eta and Iota also took a toll on food security, damaging 130,000 cultivated hectares, including maize, bean, plantain, banana, tomatoes, onion, broccoli, cardamom, and coffee. According to the World Food Program (WFP), the hurricane damage exacerbated food insecurity for 1.8 million already-food-insecure Guatemalans. Eta and Iota also damaged homes, livestock, water systems, and infrastructure, such as schools and health centers, making recovery slow-going.

People in the area faced significant losses and are still struggling to recover. Crop failures affected their livelihood and triggered food insecurity. The storms destroyed people’s homes, forcing them to try to rebuild or relocate without the proper resources to do so.

Matters are worse in rural, poor, and indigenous areas, where government support is traditionally lacking and where the absence of land titles makes it difficult for those who do not own their land to rebuild.  

Two years on from Eta and Iota, people in the area still need significant support—and more must be done to prepare for future such climate hazards. Two years on from Eta and Iota, families in affected communities still need support to rebuild their homes and meet basic needs, including food aid. Half of the people Refugees International interviewed had been unable to return to their homes. These communities tend to rely on a patchwork mix of efforts—from municipalities, NGOs, community support, and remittances—to piece together some semblance of recovery. But affected communities are typically left with a series of untenable options: they can rebuild in hazard-prone areas; move to areas with higher rents than they can afford; or remain in a protracted state of displacement.  

Climate change has made hurricanes and droughts in Guatemala more intense. It has induced anomalously warm ocean and air temperatures, supercharging Atlantic hurricanes to become stronger, wetter, and prone to stalling over land longer. These changing conditions have also induced more “rapid intensification” of hurricanes, or an increase in rotational wind speeds of 35 mph or more within a 24-hour period. Eta and Iota both embodied these climate-charged features, with Eta intensifying at a particularly exceptional rate. In addition, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists find El Niño and El Niña weather patterns have already been changing, and that droughts induced by the 2015–2016 El Niño were partially attributable to human influences. 

Two years after Eta and Iota, Guatemalans continue to deal with the aftershocks. Families in Chiquimula are still struggling with issues of shelter, poverty, and food insecurity. Many of them remain in a state of displacement or are at risk of displacement. The government of Guatemala has not stepped up to meet their needs, and the international community has not either.

Two Years after Eta and Iota: Displaced and Forgotten in Guatemala — Refugees International

 At least 18 people, including a child, have been found dead in Bulgaria in an abandoned lorry near the capital Sofia. Those discovered were from Afghanistan and were being smuggled to Serbia.

“There has been a lack of oxygen to those who were locked in this truck. They were freezing, wet, they have not eaten for several days.”

In the UK, five anti-migrant demonstrations are happening over this weekend and being promoted by the far-right groups Britain First and Patriotic Alternative.

“I fled Syria because of fear of death in my country and now I’m living in fear here,” said one asylum seeker.

One asylum seeker at the hotel in Dunstable said: “We are in a dangerous situation. We are at risk and are scared to go outside the hotel. Everyone is in stress…”

 The head of UNAids, Winnie Byanyima, has strongly criticised pharmaceutical giants for prioritising profits over saving lives, and warned that “racist” inequalities are undermining progress towards ending Aids, especially in Africa.

“The World Trade Organization rules allow lifesaving medications to be traded in the same way we could trade luxury goods. They allow pharmaceutical companies to set the price wherever they want, hoard their technologies and reap billions at the cost of lives,” she said.

The injectable drug cabotegravir, for instance – administered every two months and considered the most effective form of prevention – is only available in high-income countries like the UK and the US, and even there remains largely unaffordable. Last year, Zimbabwe became the first African country to approve the drug for use, but with the country in economic crisis the drug remains effectively unavailable.

Such policies expose racial inequalities and discrimination in health, she said. “To me, that’s racism, even though people don’t want to call it out: valuing the profit of a few people, who happen to be white, over the lives of black and brown people around the world.”

 “For Africa, the lesson was: you must have the capacity to produce yourself.”

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than half of all new infections, with women and marginalised groups facing higher new infection rates. 

Aids-related illnesses were the leading cause of mortality among African women, and adolescent girls and young women were three times more likely than men to get HIV.

Marginalised groups on the continent, including sex workers, gay men and transgender people, accounted for a large proportion of new infections in 2021. 

Thirty-two African countries have laws criminalising same-sex relations, and this often stops LGBTQ+ people accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Gay men in countries with the most severe anti-LGBTQ+ laws were more than three times less likely to know their HIV status than their counterparts in countries with the least restrictive laws,

Kenya spends up to five times more on debt servicing than it does on health.

Big pharma must value African lives above profits, warns head of UNAids | Global development | The Guardian

 The World Food Programme (WFP) said it has been forced to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by 17% and has warned of “unconscionable” further cuts in April as a result of dwindling international donations. It needs $125m (£104m) urgently to avoid further cuts.

UN officials Tom Andrews and Michael Fakhri explained in a statement, “If these cuts are made, they will be imposed on vulnerable people who are already food insecure. Acute malnutrition levels remain high and chronic malnutrition is pervasive among the Rohingya refugee population in Bangladesh, with more than a third of children stunted and underweight.”

Close to a million Rohingya live in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Bangladesh and are almost completely reliant on food aid as they are not allowed to work or freely travel beyond the camps. Rohingya refugees say the food they receive is already very limited, forcing them to survive on staples such as rice and lentils, which do not provide all the nutrition they need.

Mohammed Zonaid, a Rohingya youth activist, said that the international community’s failure to provide a solution for his people has left them dependent on food aid, as they are unable to return to Myanmar.

“If they were to cut off this support, we would face immense difficulties that are beyond imagination. I implore the global community to step forward and support us in finding a permanent solution to the Rohingya crisis, and to continue providing us with the food assistance that we need until we are able to stand on our own feet.” 

UN warns of ‘unconscionable’ cuts to Rohingya food rations as donations fall | Global development | The Guardian

  El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are home to at least 9.3 million people in need.

They are facing a challenging reality due to humanitarian impacts related to disasters and the effects of climate change, including the impact of La Niña, high food insecurity, recurring violence plus lack of basic services such as health and education.

 “These issues come against a common backdrop of structural poverty, inequality, economic challenges and limited emergency response capacities,” said Ramesh Rajasingham, Head and Representative of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). “Such conditions are driving more and more people in Northern Central America to move within and across borders. Moreover, people on the move from all over the continent and, in fact, the world, are now regularly crossing through the sub-region.”

 There are at least 7.8 million people experiencing Crisis (IPC Phase 3) or worse levels of food insecurity across the three countries. Some 3.4 million people require water, sanitation and hygiene assistance and 1.25 million people have education needs, while 4.8 million people have protection needs, including from gender-based violence (GBV).

Humanitarians seek $505 million to assist 4.9 million people in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in 2023 – Honduras | ReliefWeb

  The FTSE 100, tracks the 100 largest companies listed on the London stock-exchange and it hit a new all-time high at over 8,000 points on Thursday. 

FTSE 100 dividends are forecast to hit a record high this year, with shareholders expected to receive £85.8bn, up from £79.1bn in 2022.

Share buybacks, where companies acquire and cancel their own share as a way of returning cash to investors, rose during 2022.

In Ukraine, as in any war, normal democratic practices such as strikes and the right to peacefully protest are suspended. However, it has not stopped at those.

In March, at the very start of the war, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) passed a law — On the Organisation of Labour Relations During Martial Law — which meant that certain extreme forms of liberalisation and relaxation of labour rules became a legal reality. It included several provisions which fundamentally undermined the labour rights of those who had been working at the frontlines since the start of the invasion. By allowing employers to unilaterally cancel the provisions of collective agreements without justification, this law destroyed the foundations of trade unionism.

Another law, “On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Optimisation of Employment Relations” was adopted in July 2022, released employers from the obligation to pay an average salary to employees mobilised for the defence of their country.

In the summer of 2022, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law substantially reducing the labour rights of those working for small and medium-sized enterprises (up to 250 employees). This law established a separate regime to regulate labour relations in these enterprises, where an individual employment contract was defined as the main document regulating labour relations. In other words, the employee had to personally negotiate all the specifics of their employment directly with the employer. Yet labour law was created precisely for the collective protection of workers because it is impossible to effectively negotiate all employment terms and conditions with massive corporations and the like.

Another innovation adopted during martial law was the introduction into domestic practice of “non-fixed-hour contracts,” known in the West as “zero-hour contracts.” This type of contract does not define standard working hours and the employee becomes a “call-to-action person.” In 2021, 1-in-5 Ukrainians worked in the informal sector, with no employment rights and no safeguards. The law is intended to regulate the work of freelancers, but in fact, it is applicable to any type of worker.

These legal changes contradict Ukraine’s ambitions of European integration. Article 296 of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU states:

“a Party shall not weaken or reduce the environmental or labour protection afforded by its laws to encourage trade or investment, by waiving or otherwise derogating from, or offering to waive or otherwise derogate from, its laws, regulations or standards, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties.”

The war cannot be used to justify stripping workers of their rights.

A full-scale attack on Ukraine’s labour rights – Democracy and society | IPS Journal (ips-journal.eu)

Researchers from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Chatham House, said, the world is at risk of descending into a climate “doom loop”. Its report said that simply coping with the escalating impacts of the climate crisis could draw resources and focus away from the efforts to slash carbon emissions, making the situation even worse.

The damage caused by global heating across the globe is increasingly clear, and recovering from climate disasters is already costing billions of dollars. Furthermore, these disasters can cause cascading problems including water, food and energy crises, as well as increased migration and conflict, all draining countries’ resources.

A current example of the impact of the climate crisis complicating efforts to reduce emissions and other actions was the debate over whether keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5C – the international goal – was still possible. Those arguing 1.5C was still possible risked perpetuating complacency that today’s slow pace of action was sufficient, the researchers said, while those arguing it was not possible risked supporting fatalism that little that could now be done, or “extreme approaches” such as geoengineering.

The report said: “This is a doom loop: the consequences of the climate crisis draw focus and resources from tackling its causes, leading to higher temperatures and ecological loss, which then create more severe consequences, diverting even more attention and resources, and so on.”

Avoiding a doom loop required a more honest acceptance by politicians of the great risks posed by the climate crisis, the researchers said, including the looming prospect of tipping points and of the huge scale of the economic and societal transformation required to end global heating. 

“We’ve entered, sadly, a new chapter in the climate and ecological crisis,” said Laurie Laybourn, an associate fellow at IPPR. “The phoney war is coming to an end and the real consequences now present us with difficult decisions…” 

“The thing I’m most concerned about is that we’re not factoring in the cascading risks to societies,” said Laybourn. “It’s not just the big city-smashing storms we should be concerned about, it’s the consequences that ripple through our globalised systems. For the UK, it may not necessarily be the sheer cost of responding to disasters that’s the biggest distraction. It could be that it has to deal at the same time with a food price shock and resurgent nativism, playing off fears about so-called climate refugees,” he added.

Laybourn said, greener transport was not simply about switching to electric vehicles, but about better public transport and redesigned cities that meant people were closer to the jobs, education and healthcare they needed. 

Unfairness in climate policy could drive the doom loop, Laybourn said, because if people felt unaffordable changes were being forced on them they would reject the need for a green transition. But, he added: “If you have fairness at the heart of things, it can instead be a virtuous circle, if you’re in a situation where people recognise that switching to a heat pump and having better insulation will be better for them regardless of the climate crisis.”

It noted that Africa’s economy was already losing up to 15% of GDP a year to the worsening effects of global heating.

World risks descending into a climate ‘doom loop’, warn thinktanks | Climate crisis | The Guardian