According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 10.6 million people were diagnosed with TB in 2021, a 4.5% increase on the previous year, prompting accusations that the disease has been neglected because it affects the poor.

Dr Lucica Ditiu, the executive director of the Stop TB Partnership, said: “…Despite this shockingly upward trend of TB mortality and infection rates, funding for fighting TB decreased in 2020 and 2021 from an already pathetically low level. This is infuriating and it makes me wonder why there is such a lack of investment for TB. Is it because governments do not care for their own people? Is it because the life of a person dying from TB is less important or is it because TB affects mainly poor people from poorer countries, and it is more comfortable to simply neglect them?”

Prof Jamie Triccas, a TB researcher at the University of Sydney, explained, some potential vaccines have reached late-stage trials, but the funding needed to develop them isn’t there.

According to the Treatment Action Group and the Stop TB Partnership, the total amount of global funding for tuberculosis research was $915m in 2020 – far below the $2bn goal set by the UN in 2018. Of that total, 13% of it was spent on vaccine research, while billions were invested in Covid vaccines. According to the WHO there has been decline in global spending on essential TB services from $6bn in 2019 to $5.4bn in 2021, which is less than half of the global target of $13bn.

“It is perhaps the quintessential disease of poverty and therefore does not have the political pressure and financial incentives behind it that do diseases that affect the more affluent parts of global society,” said Mel Spigelman, president of the TB Alliance.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general, said: “If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that with solidarity, determination, innovation and the equitable use of tools, we can overcome severe health threats. Let’s apply those lessons to tuberculosis.”

The main source of international funding for TB is the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which last month received $14.25bn of the $18bn it wanted to fund its work for the next three years. The UK failed to commit any money.

Global tuberculosis cases increase for the first time in 20 years | Global health | The Guardian

 At a school in the centre of Colombo, Sri Lanka, it has become common for children to faint in the middle of class. Their parents can barely afford a meal a day and they have been arriving at school quietly starving. 

“Parents can’t afford the meat, eggs and milk that children need,” says Sandarenu Amarasiri, a teacher, adding that many were also missing school because financial hardship meant they could not afford transport, uniforms and shoes.

With 90% of people relying on state handouts, child malnutrition has soared across Sri Lanka. 

According to Save the Children, two-thirds of families are now struggling to feed themselves.

 Unicef’s regional director for south Asia, George Laryea-Adjei, says that “children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from”.

In Sri Lanka’s poverty-stricken regions in the north, parents have started leaving their children in care homes as they can no longer feed them.

 Food inflation has continued to rise, hitting a record 94.9% in September according to the Colombo Consumer Price Index, meaning parents have been unable to afford even basics such as rice and dal, while vegetables and meat have become unaffordable luxuries for many households.

Despite a $2.9bn (£2.5bn) loan from the International Monetary Fund tentatively agreed last month, it has done little to ease Sri Lanka’s economic woes, with experts warning it could be years before the country is back on its feet.

Fish, milk and chicken have become distant memories, and now many families live off only rice, lentils and sambol, a simple dish made from grated coconut. 

‘Parents can’t afford meat, eggs and milk’: children bear the brunt of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis | Global development | The Guardian

 The trade union Unison collected data from 391 councils, compiled through freedom of information requests and financial statements, and found that almost nine in 10 have a predicted budget gap in the 2023/24 financial year. Unison’s investigation found that waste collections, leisure centres, nurseries and other vital services are already being cut in some local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales as they prepare for a tough year ahead. The data suggested the cumulative funding gap is to worsen to more than £5.28bn in 2024/25.

Christina McAnea, the general secretary of Unison, said, “Cash-strapped councils are having to resort to ever more desperate measures after years of austerity just to keep services going. Now the government looks set to make their predicament infinitely worse with emergency cuts to spending after the mini-budget fiasco…”

With inflation and energy prices eating into budgets, local authorities across the UK are facing a £3.2bn budget shortfall next year. With inflation and energy prices eating into budgets, local authorities across the UK are facing a record black hole that is unlikely to be plugged by central government as the Treasury is seeking to squeeze spending to make up for a £30-50bn shortfall in the public finances. 

The Local Government Association has warned Jeremy Hunt in a letter that the £3bn-plus shortfall facing councils will lead to cuts, particularly as inflation has worsened since the last local government finance settlement was announced. “Without immediate additional funding, councils will face increasingly stark decisions about which services to stop providing as rising costs hit budgets. This means not just isolated closures of individual facilities but significant cuts to services people rely on, including those to the most vulnerable in our society,” it said.

The biggest budget shortfall of £80m next year is being faced by Birmingham city council. 

Birmingham council leader Ian Ward said, “This is a perfect storm for local government and without government action, councils will have no choice but to significantly cut local services. So, if the government is truly committed to levelling up, then the chancellor’s autumn statement on 17 November must not signal a return to austerity.”

Edinburgh council reported this week it is also facing a £80m black hole, up from £70m last month, with the Labour local leader warning of “probably the worst cuts I’ve seen in my time in this council”.

Kent county council said it was increasing its projected overspend to £70m, up from £50m just three months ago, with its Conservative council leader telling colleagues: “We’ve never been looking at a projected set of pressures on this scale; no one should doubt the gravity of the situation.” It said not a single department would be immune from cuts.

In Lancashire, the council said this week that its project shortfall has almost trebled, from £30.5m to £87m. It is looking at cost-cutting measures on everything.

Wirral Council shutting nine libraries by the end of this month, with two being handed to community and church groups.

Gateshead Council looking at closing two leisures centres deemed “unaffordable” as it grapples with a £6.5m shortfall. 

Leeds city council cancelling Bonfire Night events in six locations next month to save £200,000 of non-essential spending at a time of budget pressures.

Hillingdon council planning to close all three of its nurseries, which provide more than 100 childcare places across the borough.

 Hampshire County Council planning to scrap a transport scheme that takes thousands of disabled children to school to save £1m. Home pick-ups would be replaced with drop-off points.

Norfolk county council planning to reduce access to recycling centres by closing them on Wednesdays, with its Tory council leader warning he had never dealt with funding reductions on this scale, to plug a £60m gap

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) said its councils were facing pressures “on a scale never seen”, with “painful cuts” to come.

UK councils slashing services to meet £3.2bn budget shortfall | Local government | The Guardian

Removing money from the current economic equation would strike most people as impossible, unthinkable, absolutely imponderable. Everything we do, every transaction we make, from posting a letter to sending a space probe to Mars, from birth to death and at every step in between, money has become a necessary part of getting what we require. It has become an accepted, entrenched method of acquiring anything and everything BUT it wasn’t always so and in a genuine socialist system money will be shown to have been an unnecessary, wasteful and divisive way of ordering world communities.

When initially being presented with the notion of a world without money the first imperative is the willingness to contemplate a huge paradigm shift, to put aside all familiar long-held views and preconceived notions and to enter into an adventure of discovery that there is a place for all at the table, that it doesn’t entail regression to the Dark Ages and that the welfare and progress of people doesn’t have to come at a cost to the environment.

Work is well recognised by experts in the health arena as being one of the most stressful areas of life for reasons such as long hours, extended travelling time to and from place of employment, risk of job loss, lack of security of tenure, inflexible working practices, difficulty getting release for major personal events such as bereavement, long-term illness of a spouse or partner, or even short-term care of a sick child. Loss of employment can put stress on the whole family, sinking it into debt, causing day to day difficulties with the household budget and in many cases leading to loss of the home.

Right now, worldwide, are millions of ‘would-be’ workers who are sidelined in one way or another, without employment or scratching on the edges of a black economy and in some of the more ‘developed’ countries we find many termed ‘scroungers’ in current day parlance.

Within the capitalist system there has to be a pool of workers unable to find work in order to keep the bargaining power in favour of the capitalist employers who strive to keep wage levels down, whereas if there is a shortage of suitable labour the bargaining power switches to the employees who try to force wage levels up. The fact that some ‘developed’ countries have systems which pay a percentage of workers to remain unemployed (and who receive welfare benefits) is a price the capitalists are prepared to pay to maintain the tensions in society. Encouraging the employed to think that they are the ones subsidising the benefits system maintains one fissure within the ‘working’ class whereas allowing a large number of unemployed to be without any welfare would cause too many problems for the capitalists with possibilities of mass looting, rioting and damage to their property.

There are also untold numbers of immigrants living temporarily or permanently away from home just to make a living which has become impossible in their own country especially since deregulation of the market and as a group they send billions of whatever currency back to their homelands. For every ten who make it there are hundreds who struggle endlessly seeing no progress or find they have moved into a life of indebtedness and semi-slavery.

The current situation worldwide with its high unemployment rates suits the capitalists very well, but is both punishing and divisive for the vast majority. However, w hen money is not required in exchange for work and when, instead, all contribute their skills, expertise and/or manpower in return for open access to the requirements of life then we can begin to see a different motivation enter the whole concept of the ‘work’ scenario. W hen all ‘work’ is seen as legitimate and deserving of recognition, from the humblest occupations – collecting and sorting waste, stacking shelves in our ‘stores’, keeping the utilities working even in the worst weather, repairing our shoes – to those which are perceived as more elite – heart surgeons, ground-breaking scientists or cutting-edge technicians; when all are respected or appreciated for their contribution simply by having the same right of access to our commonly produced goods humankind will have truly developed to a higher level.

In addition a moneyless world will free up millions of workers who are now tied to some very stressful occupations dealing only in (other people’s) money – banking, mortgage brokering, insurance; those occupied in the collection of rates, taxes and utility payments; those in security work such as guards and armoured truck staff engaged only in protecting and moving money and other ‘valuables’ – millions of workers who, when considered logically, currently fulfil no useful function and contribute nothing to society that improves that society. This is in no way to imply that those currently employed in such work are any less valuable than any other worker. Within the capitalist system we all have to work with what is available and what percentage of the working class can truly say that their work is exactly what they were looking for? However, in the new, socialist system, with so many extra hands on deck working hours will be considerably reduced which, with the knowledge that one’s ‘work’ is not tied to the ability to feed and clothe the family, to house them and provide all the other requirements of life, will be to remove the stress at a stroke.

With millions released from wage slavery in the now redundant financial sector and free to be a part of the production, distribution and service sectors, with the black economy, immigrants and illegals no longer a threat to paid workers (pay being redundant) there will be a huge reduction in individual necessary work time. When there is no profit incentive the emphasis will be on the production of quality goods from quality materials and no one need choose an inferior item based on cost. Providers of utilities such as electricity and gas, water and communications will be able to have sufficient workers to install, service, repair and develop their installations more efficiently and effectively. If there is work that no one is prepared to undertake then an alternative will need to be found democratically.

Without the constraints that we have today the workplace will become a different place, one of cooperation not competition where we work for the benefit of all not for the profit of a few. The lines between work and leisure may well be much more blurred than in today’s scenario. People will have time, time to be creative, to learn different and multiple skills and to enjoy the time they spend working. Leisure activities seen as hobbies now – vehicle maintenance, gardening, DIY home improvements, baking, the making of all kinds of hand-made items, giving educational and training courses – could well form part of one’s ‘work time’ in the community, bringing a greater satisfaction and contributing to individual development generally, one of the aims of socialism. With more leisure time available it is also highly likely that more ‘work’ would be created in the leisure area, whether sports complexes, theatrical and music productions and educational courses in the widest sense and with unlimited opportunities for the active participation of those who choose it.

Want to end wage slavery and unemployment? Abolish money.

Janet Surman. 

End Wage Slavery And Unemployment – Abolish Money By Janet Surman (countercurrents.org)

GLOBAL WARMING

Heatwaves have cost the global economy about $16tn since the 1990s, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.

The research calculates the financial impact of extreme heat on infrastructure, agriculture, productivity, human health and other areas.

“We have been underestimating the true economic costs we’ve suffered because of global warming so far, and we are likely underestimating the costs going out into the future,” said Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College and senior author.  

Despite having the lowest carbon emissions, it is the tropics and the global south that bear almost the entirety of the economic brunt of extreme heat. This is because they are warmer and therefore hit harder by heatwaves, and also because they are more economically vulnerable and therefore more susceptible to economic depression and the costs of adapting to the climate crisis. The study found that the world’s wealthiest regions, such as areas of Europe and North America, experienced an average 1.5% loss of GDP per capita per year due to extreme heat. By comparison, low-income regions – such as India and Indonesia – recorded a 6.7% GDP per capita loss yearly.

Christopher Callahan, a researcher at Dartmouth College and lead author of the study explained, “We know that heatwaves kill crops and cause illnesses like heat stroke, but they also have other effects such as increased interpersonal aggression, increased rates of workplace injury, and reduced mental performance.”

According to Dr Leonie Wenz, the deputy head of the research department on complexity science at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who was not involved in the study, most studies on the subject were based on averages, but these can mask the effects of local and temporary events. “They do not fully reflect how we as humans experience temperature. What really matters for us, what affects our wellbeing, our productivity, and our decisions are the extremes and the fluctuations from one day, or week, to the next.”

The bill had been footed mainly by countries that had not benefited from industrialisation, said Mankin, creating a vicious cycle.

“Low-income countries have been asked to develop and industrialise in a global economy that strategically disadvantages them,” he said. “And they’re doing so while also being hammered by the impacts of global warming that has been generated by the global north. It’s kind of a double whammy.”

Climate crisis study finds heatwaves have cost global economy $16tn | Climate crisis | The Guardian

A famine in Somalia is almost inevitable. 

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator,  has questioned why billions of dollars pledged to tackle the climate crisis have not been used to fight famine in Somalia. Griffiths said he did not know where the promised $100bn (£87bn) a year to fight the impact of global heating in poorer countries had gone.

“The truth of the matter is that we are scrambling to try to understand where the climate money is that was promised a decade ago. Where is it? Who’s holding it and who is not delivering it to places like Somalia?” said Griffiths. “…We haven’t even managed to get to them the money that we pledged nobly some time ago for exactly this kind of purpose.”

Griffiths said he had “failed” to receive an answer when he asked governments how climate financing was decided and delivered. Griffiths said climate funding could have been used to dig wells and support livelihoods in the worst-affected areas of Somalia.

Somalia’s presidential envoy for drought response, Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, pointed out that the international community was failing Somalia. “Millions of children are malnourished, many will die, and we don’t have one penny of that climate fund,”

At the UN climate change conference in 2009, rich countries pledged to give low-income states $100bn a year by 2020 to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. The Green Climate Fund was created as a way to deliver the money but has had limited impact because rich countries often channel their financing through the World Bank or regional development banks. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which monitors donor contributions to climate financing, low-income countries received 8% of the money between 2016 and 2020.

Prof Lee White, Gabon’s environment and climate change minister, said the system was flawed. Donor countries self-report contributions and there is no clear way to trace how much money has been donated and where it has been spent, he said and explaining only a fraction of the money that rich countries say they have provided reaches the Green Climate Fund and even then applications for money come with overcomplicated criteria. He added, “…it often feels the system is designed to prevent you spending the funds on anything other than developed-nation consultants.”

Kevin Watkins, a former executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, said climate and development aid needed to be integrated, “We have a development finance system… which is somewhat competitive, with big agencies scrambling for the same pot of money, which is badly coordinated, and which, in all honesty, is failing to address the real climate risk challenges for countries at the sharp end of the crisis.” 

He said Somalia was an example of low-income countries being forced to rely on humanitarian aid when they had already entered a state of crisis instead of having earlier interventions that could have solved root problems.

Climate crisis funds not reaching countries in need, senior UN official says | Global development | The Guardian

 LNG ([liquefied natural gas) which is created by cooling fracked gas to create a clear, colorless liquid, has been promoted by the oil industry as “climate-friendly.”

However, an analysis by Food & Water Watch,  titled LNG: The U.S. and E.U.’s Deal for Disaster, warned, “One year of emissions from 50 billion cubic meters (BCM) of LNG would be equivalent to yearly emissions from 100 coal plants.”

The U.S. is already the world’s biggest exporter of LNG, with exports averaging 0.32 BCM per day in the first half of this year. More than 70% of U.S. exports went to Europe this year, and while the Biden administration’s plan has promised an extra 15 BCM of LNG to Europe this year, the current pace “will triple” that pledge. Exporting 50 BCM of LNG per year would cost between $10 billion and $19 billion annually, while providing the E.U. with just 12% of its demand for gas as it faces an energy crisis. 

The same level of investment in utility-scale solar power could provide Europe with more than 540 megawatt-hours (MWh)—11% more energy than would would be provided by LNG. Onshore wind power costs are similar, providing 515 million MWh,” reads the report. “Scaling up renewables to this level would avoid over 500 million metric tons of fossil fuels, no matter if it is replaced with solar or wind. The choice is clear.”

“The White House vision for delivering gas to Europe will serve to deliver climate chaos across the globe, at a moment when we simply cannot build new fossil fuel facilities at all,” said Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/10/26/bidens-lng-export-goal-would-spell-climate-disaster-analysis-warns

 A UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO2 cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded. There is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”, the UN’s environment agency has said, and the failure to reduce carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in countries from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said.

The report found that existing carbon-cutting policies would cause 2.8C of warming, while pledged policies cut this to 2.6C. Further pledges, dependent on funding flowing from richer to poorer countries, cut this again to 2.4C.

Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said: 

“This report tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been telling us all year through deadly floods, storms and raging fires: we have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast. We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster. It is a tall, and some would say impossible, order to reform the global economy and almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, but we must try,” she said. “Every fraction of a degree matters: to vulnerable communities, to ecosystems, and to every one of us.”

Prof David King, a former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “The report is a dire warning to all countries – none of whom are doing anywhere near enough to manage the climate emergency.”

Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’ | Climate crisis | The Guardian

 Biodiversity expert John Mwangi Gicheha says the decline in species population abundance has now been validated by the newly-released Living Planet Report 2022.

“The health of planet earth is well and truly on a sharp decline, and we are not only seeing a decrease in the global population of species but a decline in their genetic diversity and a loss of species climatically determined habitats.”

This is the first ever most comprehensive report on the state of global vertebrate wildlife populations, and it makes a startling revelation: the world’s wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970.

As a measure of the state of the world’s biological diversity among population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats, the 2022 Living Planet Index analyzed approximately 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world.

By tracking trends in the abundance of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds, and amphibians worldwide since 1970, a disturbing image emerged: one million plants and animals are threatened with extinction.

Worse still, 1-2.5 percent of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have gone extinct.

Key findings include revelations that monitored freshwater populations are hardest hit as there is an alarming decline of 83 percent in the last 50 years, more than any other species groups.

The decline in freshwater population is mainly caused by habitat loss and barriers to migration routes which account for an estimated half the threat to these populations. Further, only 37 percent of rivers over 1,000 kilometres remain free-flowing in their natural state.

Against this backdrop, the report stresses that the global community is living the consequences of double crises and shows how “interlinked emergencies of human-induced climate change and the loss of biodiversity are threatening the well-being of current and future generations.”

The greatest regional decline in wildlife population is in Latin America and the Caribbean region, whose average population abundance decline is 94 percent.

Africa comes second with a 66 percent fall in its wildlife populations over the past 52 years, and across the board, the poor and marginalized remain highly vulnerable and most affected by the decline.

There was an 18 percent decline in Europe and Central Asia and a 55 percent decline in wildlife populations in the Asia Pacific.

More findings show despite mangroves being unique forests of the sea; they remain at great risk as they continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at current rates of 0.13 percent per year.

Mangrove loss is not only a loss of habitat for biodiversity, the report emphasizes, but the loss of ecosystem services for coastal communities.

Further, approximately 50 percent of warm water corals have already been lost. Even worse, a warming of 5 degrees Celsius will lead to a loss of 70 to 90 percent of warm water corals.

Overall, the global abundance of 18 of 31 oceanic sharks and rays declined by 71 percent since 1970. By 2020, three-quarters of sharks and rays were threatened with an elevated risk of extinction. 

Judy Ouya, a government official in Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry said that said consequences could no longer be ignored as they are too severe and frequent. They include loss of lives and economic assets from extreme weather conditions, deepening poverty and, severe food and water insecurity from droughts.

WWF: Global Vertebrate Wildlife Population Has Plummeted | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

From schools to now the universities Iranians are expressing their discontent with theocratic government rule. 

Students protested on Tuesday at Beheshti University and the Khaje Nasir Toosi University of Technology, both in Tehran, as well as Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, in Khuzestan province.

Despite what rights group Amnesty International has called an “unrelenting brutal crackdown”, young women and men were again protesting. “Death to the dictator” and “Death to the Revolutionary Guards”, women chanted.

 The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR) said the demonstrations so far had cost the lives of at least 141  protesters.

During the past five weeks, thousands of Iranians have protested against the theocracy in over 100 cities. 

“In challenging the mandatory hijab, they are questioning and rejecting the very essence of the rules and principles upon which the hijab is imposed,” Sanam Anderlini, native Iranian and member of the International Civil Society Action Network explained. “On one level it is about the question of choice about the hijab, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. The hijab is an integral symbol of the regime’s ‘Islamist’ identity, which embeds women’s second-class status, discrimination in the constitution and law.”

Socialists cannot make predictions about the future but we can voice our support and solidarity for fellow workers campaigning for more freedom.