The Kent Miners’ Festival is back on Saturday and Sunday 27th to 28th August (from 10am), and Kent & Sussex branch has booked a pitch in the heritage and community exhibitors marquee.

 Not often that this blog has very much positive to say about the UK military but this is an exception.

Gen Sir John McColl, who served in Afghanistan as the first head of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, and other ministers should “hang their heads in shame” in regard to the treatment of Afghan refugees.

Two RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals. The MoD sources accused other parts of Whitehall of “struggling” to know what to do, and failing to put adequate plans in place.

Britain’s original evacuation of Afghans was “random” and at times dogs had been prioritised over people, he said, adding: “The system was broken when we withdrew from Kabul last year and it remains broken. It was a source of shame then and it continues to be a source of shame.”

Sources at the MoD said that about 1,050 people who were brought out of Afghanistan under Arap were currently in hotels in Pakistan, awaiting processing and transportation to the UK or another destination.

About 6,200 people – including some 1,200 “principals” who worked for the UK, and typically four to five members of their families – are currently understood to be eligible for relocation under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), one of two government programmes. The figure includes some who are still in Afghanistan and others who have made it out, more often than not to Pakistan, though Afghans have also attempted to cross the border into Iran, where the strained relationship between Britain and the regime in Tehran complicates the ability to help people. The Arap scheme has brought more than 10,100 eligible Afghans to the UK while another, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme (ACRS), will allow up to 20,000 to settle in Britain.

However, there has been strong criticism that the UK has effectively abandoned many Afghans to persecution and execution under the Taliban for the crime of having worked with British forces and officials.

Nine expert groups on Afghanistan criticised the British government’s resettlement schemes as “unjustifiably restrictive”. They said it was deeply concerning that the government was currently not offering a safe route for many Afghan women and girls or to oppressed minority groups.

UK treatment of Afghan refugees ‘continues to be source of shame’ | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

  The pay of the top 1% of earners across the UK – those already on more than £170,000 a year – is rising at an average annualised rate of 9.1%.

At the same time, those in the lowest 10% – those earning below £8,000 a year – have seen their pay rise by just 1.3%. 

the rate of inflation, currently at a 40-year high of 9.4% and forecast by the Bank of England to hit 13% in the coming months. 

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, says such stories are familiar up and down the country. “Working people are at breaking point, having been left at the mercy of soaring bills after a decade of standstill wages and universal credit cuts. But for the wealthiest, it’s business as usual. It’s not just pay at the top that is soaring. Bonuses in the City are at a record high and dividend payouts to shareholders are booming. Without urgent action, the cost of living crisis will deepen the class divide in this country even further.”

‘Some people must be earning millions’: inequality in the UK’s highest-earning constituency | Inequality | The Guardian

 Vast swaths of the continental US will be experiencing prolonged and dangerous heatwaves by the middle of the century, with the heat index in some areas above 100F (38C) for weeks on end, according to a new study .

Almost two-thirds of Americans, who live in mostly southern and central states, will be at risk from the critical temperature increases, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the non-profit First Street Foundation, which used current trends to predict the number of extreme heat days 30 years into the future.

“A changing environment means higher temperatures and changing humidity, creating conditions which exacerbate the effects of extreme heat,” the study reports.

“We’re talking about taking summer, which is already hot, and expanding it for months,” the director of the Houston Healthy Cities program for the Nature Conservancy in Texas, Jaime González, told the Post. “That’s going to cause all sorts of disruptions to everyday life.”

It means as many as 100 million Americans will be living in an “extreme” heat zone that the foundation believes will see the heat index exceed 125F on at least one day of each year, and most probably more.

“While the experience of heat may vary from community to community, there are certain health effects from heat that cannot be ignored.”

Weeks of heat above 100F will be the norm in much of US by 2053, study finds | US news | The Guardian

 A 60-year-old woman in England’s poorest areas typically has the same level of illness as a woman 16 years older in the richest areas, a study into health inequalities has found.

Women in England’s poorest places are diagnosed with a long-term illness at the age of 40 on average, whereas that does not happen to those in the most prosperous places until 48.

Impoverished women spend 43.6 years, or 52% of their lifespan, beset by diagnosed illness, while for their best-off peers it is 41 years, or 46% of their life cycle.

In addition, women from the most deprived backgrounds die on average at 83.6 years old, more than five years sooner than the 88.8-year life expectancy of well-off women.

“In human terms, these stark disparities show that at the age of 40, the average woman living in the poorest areas in England is already being treated for her first long-term illness. This condition means discomfort, a worse quality of life and additional visits to the GP, medication or hospital, depending on what it is. At the other end of the spectrum, the average 40-year-old woman will live a further eight years – about 10% of her life – without diminished quality of life through illness,” Researcher Toby Watt said. “Throughout the rest of her life the impoverished 40-year-old is more likely to have breathing difficulties from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, experience alcohol problems, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and suffer a heart attack or stroke at younger ages. If she makes it to 80, which is less likely, she will still be receiving treatment for and living with more severe illness than her wealthier counterparts.”

At 60 a man living in the most deprived 10% of the country typically has the burden of ill-health experienced by a counterpart in the wealthiest 10% at the age of 70.

The poorest men are expected to spend 42.7 years free of disease, whereas it is much longer among the best-off 10% of the population – 49.2 years. And their life expectancy is 78.3 years, compared with 87.1 for the richest.

He and his team found that inequalities in the burden of disease start in childhood and persist and change in nature through adulthood into older age. However, they are largely explicable over the life cycle by just a handful of illnesses: chronic pain, diabetes, severe breathing problems, anxiety, depression, strokes, heart attacks and drink-related problems.

Poorest women in England have same ill health at 60 as richest at 76 – study | Health | The Guardian

 £60m of food has been wasted on farms because of a labour shortage, according to the National Farmers’ Union, which found at least £22m of fruit and vegetables had been wasted so far this year.

Tom Bradshaw, the union’s deputy president, said: “It’s nothing short of a travesty that quality, nutritious food is being wasted at a time when families across the country are already struggling to make ends meet because of soaring living costs.

Brexit has reduced access to temporary workers coming in from the EU. Up to 38,000 visas have been made available under this year’s seasonal workers scheme, which offers short-term visas to those helping with food production. However, the farming industry say it needs 70,000 alone. Less than 4% of seasonal workers come from the UK, as those permanently living here and seeking work often do not live close to farms and may find it difficult to move for seasonal work and live in temporary accommodation. More than two-thirds of farm workers come via the seasonal workers scheme.

The latest concerns over UK fruit and vegetables follows fears for the potato crop, with half of England’s expected to fail because it cannot be irrigated. Even crops that are usually drought-tolerant, such as maize, have been failing. Milk production is also down nationally because of a lack of food for cows.

Up to £60m in UK crops left to rot owing to lack of workers, says NFU | Farming | The Guardian

 Afghans are struggling with many crises. There is the devastation brought about by decades of war. Climate change has led to droughts across large parts of the country for three years. Elsewhere, it has caused flooding or unseasonal snowfall in the middle of June. This year, the country suffered another major earthquake.

More than a million children are severely malnourished and half of Afghanistan’s population (20 million people) is going hungry. Since January, 13,000 newborns have died from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases, 95% of people lack enough to eat, and 3.5M children need nutritional support.

“Hell on Earth” is how David Beasley, the executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) described the situation in Afghanistan.

The  think tank International Crisis Group fears that “hunger and hardship following the Taliban takeover could kill more Afghan people than all the bombs and bullets of the last two decades.”

Nora Hassanien, acting country director in Afghanistan for the humanitarian organization Save the Children, told DW of “desperate families” who were having to resort to increasingly extreme and harmful coping strategies. “That includes selling their children”

The health sector is collapsing. 

Samira Sayed Rahman, who works for the aid organization International Rescue Committee (IRC), told DW what she saw when she visited a hospital in the eastern province of Paktia: There were not enough doctors, not enough nurses. “The doctors we spoke with have not been paid for the past six months,” she said. “The wards were full of women cradling malnourished children. In the neonatal unit, three babies had to share an incubator.”

 But the biggest challenge, according to Rahman from the IRC, is the suspension of payments from abroad.

For 20 years, the international community covered three-quarters of public expenditure. A plethora of development projects saw roads, schools and hospitals built and provided for their upkeep. But after the Taliban took power, the flow of money was cut off overnight.

“There were about 400,000 people employed in the public sector, plus about 200,000 in the security sector,” Rahman explained. “Many of these jobs have disappeared; unemployment is higher than ever and so is inflation.”

When it comes to hunger in Afghanistan, Rahman is convinced that: “This crisis is man-made; it was caused by the international community.” 

Nora Hassanien of Save the Children shares that assessment, adding: “No amount of humanitarian aid will really solve the problem here. It needs a bigger-picture solution.”

This is also the view of the International Crisis Group. The think tank’s Afghanistan specialist Graeme Smith wrote: “Pulling back from the precipice of a more profound disaster will require ending the country’s isolation, attracting development aid, and persuading Western and regional governments to help with economic recovery.”

The goal of these sanctions is the economic isolation of Afghanistan, according to Conrad Schetter from the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). 

“The Afghans have been catapulted back into a subsistence economy.” 

Human Rights Watch Director Kenneth Roth writes that aid isn’t enough without a functioning banking system that is not hamstrung by sanctions. Without access to its foreign exchange reserves, the central bank is very limited in the extent to which it can perform its role in the Afghan economy. Sanctions and the lack of foreign currency make transferring money to Afghanistan nearly impossible.

In theory, special permits can be used for humanitarian purposes. In practice, however, they are very difficult to obtain.

A spokesman from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) described the “non-functioning banking sector, which makes it difficult to get money to Afghanistan at all,” as “a major challenge in implementing the plans.”

Humanitarian groups must therefore adopt unconventional methods. In an interview with DW, Elke Gottschalk, regional director for Asia for the German aid organization Welthungerhilfe, described how money transfers must be processed through alternative channels, called hawala networks. It works like this: Welthungerhilfe transfers money to the account of a hawala dealer, known as a hawaladar, in a third country. “This agent then makes sure that money arrives in Kabul — in cash. We count it, then it can be used.” The International Rescue Committee is also reliant on the hawala system, Samira Sayed Rahman confirmed. However, this is “not a reliable and sustainable method.” 

The administrator of the United Nations Development Program, Achim Steiner, made his position clear. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in May, he said, ‘We cannot abandon 40 million Afghans simply on the principle of moral outrage.”

Afghanistan is starving and the West is partly to blame | Asia | An in-depth look at news from across the continent | DW | 14.08.2022

 There is a shortage of bread in Lebanon and when it is available, it is very expensive. For weeks, people have been having to queue for hours at bakeries. Despite state subsidies, a package of six flatbreads officially costs 13,000 Lebanese pounds (ca. €8.50 or $8.80). On the black market, it often goes for at least twice that.

There had been a glimmer of hope when it was reported that the Razoni, the first ship to set off from Ukraine after Moscow and Kyiv struck their deal last month to establish a grain corridor, was on its way to Lebanon. However, before arriving at its destination in Tripoli, the second-largest city in the country, the ship was turned away with 26,000 tons of grain. The official explanation is that the buyer no longer wanted the cargo because it was five months too late. Furthermore, the president of the Food Import Association of Lebanon, Hani Bushali, told German news agency DPA that the country needed wheat, not corn. It appears that the corn was originally intended as animal feed.

In many countries, it is wheat that is the number one staple food. Despite this several of the subsequent ships that left Ukraine were loaded with corn or sunflower meal.

The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) set up by the UN to facilitate the implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative did not respond to an inquiry by DW as to why this was the case. In its FAQs about the initiative, the UN states: “The shipping companies decide on the movement of their vessels based on commercial activity and procedures. The Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul authorizes the movement of vessels in and out of the Black Sea based on the requests it receives from the Ukrainian port authorities.” Only some of the shipments are intended for the UN World Food Program to alleviate hunger around the world, but the JCC has no say in where the rest of the grain should be delivered. Turkey, Britain, Ireland and South Korea are just some of the possible destinations.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a briefing this week that these were “commercial transactions” and it was only normal that the ships “go where the contract stipulates that they go.” 

Ukraine: No smooth sailing for grain via the Black Sea | Europe | News and current affairs from around the continent | DW | 13.08.2022

Another war in Europe brings unimaginable horrors which will fall chiefly on the working people. The lessons of the  past have so far been but faintly grasped by workers. Once a war is upon us, bid farewell to civil “liberties,” to the relative freedom of speech for the rule of the “patriot” is imposed and the fortunes of the profiteers guaranteed.  

Capitalism only knows the law of the jungle,“woe to the weak,” and in the fight for markets advantage is on the side of the big battalions of finance, industry and the armed forces. Capitalism is in its nature predatory and aggressive. It will always fight for markets, and in the fight it will always aggravate and exploit the differences of language, religion and custom in order to reap some economic advantage at the expense of rivals. Capitalism cannot but breed national hatreds. Not until capitalism has been abolished will world peace become a reality.

Capitalism as an economic system causes antagonism between capitalists, today organised in colossal cartels and corporations. These conflicts of economic interest often lead to war. We have seen the most senseless acts of violence and depravity on all sides in an orgy of blood-letting, fatal and otherwise, and we have lived with the foulest hypocrisy of selective condemnation on all sides — hypocrisy that is as aggressive, vicious and futile as the activities it condemns.

As socialists we recognise what passes for democracy in capitalism simply as a weapon useful to a socialist-conscious working class in the establishment of socialism; as a political condition that, from a working-class standpoint, is superior to its alternatives insofar as it permits the organisation of our class for the democratic conquest of political power and the abolition of government of people and establishment of a democratic system of such administrative controls as are required to secure the material basis of a full and happy life for all. We have no “moral” standpoint on the question — we don’t consider, for example, that a soldier, invested with the support of millions has any more “right” to use arms in the service of capitalism than has any terrorist supported by a few thousand people. Our political “morality” is based, like all political “morality”, on the needs of our class and if we reject the idea of minority violence or violence at all, it is simply because our socialist objective can only be achieved by the conscious act of a majority of socialists.

It will also be noticed that the capitalist is never at a loss for an excuse for refusing workers’ demands. If Britain were at war the excuse would be the war and the need to make sacrifices for it. As Britain is not at war then the reason is still the same,  the excuse is the need to make sacrifices for peace, for armaments for some possible future war, or to capture foreign markets.  The workers who are already suffering from a long-existing rise in the cost of living are told they must wait, pending the development of the corporative conscience. They are told that they are selfish but it will not be overlooked  that the concerns making huge profits did not have to wait, even when the workers get their promised rise, some at least of them will have to work longer hours for it. Haven’t we all heard a lot lately about the nearly extinct rich, bled white by taxation?

In Britain and the USA, parties supposedly representing the interests of working people have got to explain why they receive financial support from big business, the exploiters of the workers. There is an answer, a simple answer — complicated for the working class by the same mad social conditioning that allows them to babble idiocies about violence, that answer is socialism; the establishment of a society of production for use, a society where the resources of nature and the mental and physical skills of people will combine, not to produce things for sale and profit, but produce an abundance of the things we require sufficient to permit of free and equal access to our needs. Only in such a society will the material basis of division and dissension, that has erupted into conflict, can be finally banished. Eventually, the world’s workers will respond to capitalism’s inhumanities to the extent that they understand and desire the socialist alternative – production for use and the end of exchange relationships. Then socialist ideas will be prevalent.

Workers at Starbucks have held over 55 different strikes in at least 17 states in the US in recent months over the company’s aggressive opposition to a wave of unionization.

The Starbucks Workers United union have created a $1m strike fund in June 2022 to support Starbucks workers through their strikes and several relief funds have been established for strikes and to support workers who have lost their jobs.

Over 75 workers have been fired in retaliation for union organizing this year, and hundreds of allegations of misconduct by Starbucks related to the union campaign are currently under review at the National Labor Relations Board, including claims of shutting down stores to bust unions, firing workers and intimidating and threatening workers from unionizing. 

Amid the wave of union elections at Starbucks, the company has rolled out new wage increases and benefits corporate-wide, but has withheld the new pay increases and benefits from unionized workers despite the calls from these workers to enact these changes for them as they push for the company to negotiate a first contract with the unionized stores.

Starbucks workers hold strikes in at least 17 states amid union drive | US unions | The Guardian