Mexico is facing its worst water crisis in 30 years as reservoirs serving about 23 million people dry up. The climate crisis has caused consistently hotter summers, and this year’s La Niña weather patterns created the perfect conditions for severe drought. More than half of Mexico is suffering from drought, and the national water authority, Conagua, declared a state of emergency in four northern states. Several cities have now reached the point of critical water scarcity when water supplies ran out.

While drought grips Mexican cities like Monterrey with people lining up with buckets for brackish water Coca-Cola and other firms are still extracting groundwater. The drought in North Mexico means taps run dry. People cannot afford bottled water so water tankers (pipas)  are the only way to deliver water to homes and businesses. Monterrey is facing a “sanitary crisis” as those who cannot afford bottled water drink unclean water from the pipas.

Anger is growing that beverage companies with bottling plants, including Coca Cola and Heineken, are extracting billions of litres of water from public reservoirs. Several brewers and soft drinks companies have factories in the city, and these use about 60 times the amount consumed by the city’s population, nearly 90bn litres a year in total, and over half of that – nearly 50bn litres a year (or 50m cubic metres) – is water from public reservoirs. activists have popularised the phrase: activists have popularised the phrase: “No es sequía, es saqueo” (“It’s not drought, it’s plunder”) 

Jaime Noyola, director of the Alliance of Users of Public Services, says his organisation predicted the crisis months ago. The public-interest group regularly protests outside government buildings. They allege that local leaders, including the governor of Nuevo León state, Samuel García, are directly profiting from drinks companies’ water use.

“From the behaviour of the companies, we don’t see anything that indicates they will give up water voluntarily,” Noyola says. “And on the part of the local and state government, there’s a crisis of ineptitude, and they blame everyone but themselves.”

Though a group of drinks companies, including Arca Continental and Coca-Cola, have collectively pledged to give up 28% of the water they use while the drought continues, the companies did not mention lowering prices of the essential drinking water they sell.

“How do you assign a price to water? It’s a human right,” says Noyola. “But these companies, namely Coca-Cola, in selling bottled water as the only potable water source, have made their product obligatory. Now water costs nearly as much as gasoline.” 

Mexico is the world’s largest per-capita consumer of bottled water. Noyola adds: “Even if they stop production, they are still selling their products while people are suffering and infections are spreading [from people drinking water from the pipas].”

The water crisis has sparked protests and violence along class lines, as wealthier areas are given higher water quotas than poorer areas, and still have tap water for up to 12 hours a day. On 16 July, residents of two impoverished Monterrey suburbs learned that a portion of the remaining water from a nearby reservoir would be diverted to the city. In response, they blocked a highway with a barricade of cars, tyres, rocks and tree branches, stalling traffic for two days. Then they burned the water pipes.

“I won’t be surprised if people get together and start hijacking the pipas,” Noyola says.

‘It’s plunder’: Mexico desperate for water while drinks companies use billions of litres | Global development | The Guardian

The American labor movement is experiencing a resurgence, with an increase in the popularity of unions and of workers organizing.

An August 2021 poll conducted by Gallup found support for labor unions at their highest point in the US since 1965, with 68% support in the US. Labor unions were the only institution for whom Americans’ approval did not decline over the past year, in a June poll on confidence for 16 major US institutions.

During the first three-quarters of the fiscal year, the National Labor Relations reported an increase of union election petitions by 58%, up to 1,892 from 1,197.

But the corporate pushback in America has been fierce, and has come amid allegations of union-busting, and brutal campaigns to try and discourage workers from organizing.

US sees union boom despite big companies’ aggressive opposition | US unions | The Guardian

The American labor movement is experiencing a resurgence, with an increase in the popularity of unions and of workers organizing.

An August 2021 poll conducted by Gallup found support for labor unions at their highest point in the US since 1965, with 68% support in the US. Labor unions were the only institution for whom Americans’ approval did not decline over the past year, in a June poll on confidence for 16 major US institutions.

During the first three-quarters of the fiscal year, the National Labor Relations reported an increase of union election petitions by 58%, up to 1,892 from 1,197.

But the corporate pushback in America has been fierce, and has come amid allegations of union-busting, and brutal campaigns to try and discourage workers from organizing.

US sees union boom despite big companies’ aggressive opposition | US unions | The Guardian

 Gaza’s Hamas rulers have imposed a slew of new taxes even though  Gaza’s 2.3 million people are suffering not only from a 15-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade, but also from a new jump in prices caused by global supply-chain issues and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With tens of thousands of civil servants to support, as well as its heavy spending on its military wing, it is no surprise that Hamas is seeking new sources of revenue. The government offers few services in exchange, and most aid and relief projects are covered by the international community. The funds help Hamas operate a government and powerful armed wing.

 New taxes have been placed on imported clothes and office supplies just ahead of the new school year, sparking limited but rare protests in the impoverished coastal strip. The list also includes a tax of about $3 on pair of jeans, and $230 on a ton of plastic folders used to store papers. Demand for these items increases ahead of the school year.

 Planned taxes on items like packaged nuts, with an import tariff of 2,000 shekels (nearly $600) per ton. In the past, nuts were imported tax free. The tariff on a ton of toilet paper rose from $90 to $580. 

It is the latest steps are part of a series of taxes targeting a wide array of sectors, from street vendors selling hot drinks to restaurants, home building and cars.

Earlier this month, about two dozen members of the clothes merchants’ union expressed their frustration in public. They stood inside the building housing their union in Gaza City and held new pairs of jeans, with the price tags still on them, in the air for about half an hour. Two days later, the merchants gathered outside the offices of Hamas lawmakers. Police prevented the media from filming and ordered the protest to stop after allowing representatives of the union inside to talk to the lawmakers.

Seeking new funds, Hamas raises taxes in impoverished Gaza | AP News

 Yields of key crops in Europe will be sharply down this year owing to heatwaves and droughts, exacerbating the impacts of the Ukraine war on food prices.

Maize, sunflower and soya bean yields are forecast by the EU to drop by about 8% to 9% due to hot weather across the continent. Supplies of cooking oil and maize were already under pressure, as Ukraine is a major producer and its exports have been blocked by Russia.

Large parts of Europe have been afflicted by drought and hot weather in recent weeks, including Spain, southern France, central and northern Italy, central Germany, northern Romania and eastern Hungary. Cereal yields are down about 2% overall, compared with the five-year average.  Drought and heat stress in many regions coincided with the flowering stage for key crops, and water reservoirs in many places are at levels too low to meet the demand for irrigation.

Falls in Europe’s crop yields due to heatwaves could worsen price rises | Farming | The Guardian

Society has entered one of its darkest phases now. The world is paralysed. The capitalist class is facing a deep economical and political crisis and is seeking a solution.  Some workers believe that the only way to improve the current situation is to promote nationalism and identify nationalism as the only road to freedom. Voices of nationalism have spread all over but nationalism is in fact the obstacle to human progress.

A nation sacrifices its people in wars. If it wins, only those industrialists and politicians can enjoy the fruit of success. If it is defeated, people have to suffer to rebuild the wealth of their rulers. Nationalism is a monster that kills their fathers, mothers sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. The world has had enough and far more than enough of war. We are reminded every day of the inroads that war is making on our lives—less food,  curtailment of our liberties. Worst of all is the loss of the hope of a better world.  We are in the middle of an economic crisis, a health crisis, an energy crisis, a labour crisis. The standard of living, we are told, must go down and we are exhorted to work harder and longer. This fear of the future is not due to any fault or weakness of the working people but simply and solely to the policy of governments and businesses.

 Nationalism will not bring security but to misery. It strengthens the state and helps the capitalists plunder the poor. It restricts our freedom; it forces us to fight against our peace-loving nature; it encourages us to compete with people of other nations while we are supposed to help each other. Working people have absolutely nothing to gain from war. Only peace is in our interest. The class war is sole effective guarantor of peace between peoples. It is this war of the classes that we must concentrate upon, and in that connection the war against false values, against evil institutions, against all social atrocities. 

They are really not against war and are not for the overthrow of the system that produces war; they are not really for peace and are not for the overthrow of the system which makes peace impossible. For the capitalist, it does not matter whether he produces guns or butter so long as he produces profit.

Since the war in Ukraine began, the Western media have been used to prove the barbarity, the cruelty, and the oppression of Russian militarism. Conservatives and radicals alike are giving their support to the Ukrainians for no other reason than to help crush that militarism, in the presence of which, they say, there can be no peace in Europe. As long as the class society continue to exist there can be no long-term guarantee that humanity will ever achieve permanent peace. For the bankers and industrialists, for the armament manufacturers  and food speculators, – for all the capitalist vultures who feast on the bloody war, – opportunity to coin billions out of human carnage has arrived again. To camouflage the real character of this merciless plundering and unprecedented pilfering of the people’s pockets, the bankers and bosses have termed the Ukrainian war one of self-determination and national defence

The Socialist Party is for the triumph of peace and fraternity among all human beings. It seeks to end all oppression and of all exploitation of man by man. It has always taught that the workers of all countries are brothers and sisters and that the enemy is the exploiter, whether born alongside us or in a far-off country, whether speaking the same language or another. Capitalism is war; socialism is peace. We believe that there is no fundamental cause for people to quarrel with each other. We believe that international disputes do not originate with ordinary working men and women, but are instigated by the few who profit from prejudice and conflict. The Socialist Party’s energies have always been directed towards the elimination of the causes of war. Our battle cry is and will remain ‘War on war!’

‘Ordinary’ folk in ordinary situations don’t have enemies. We may know people who hold opinions we don’t share or like, and we may meet people whom we don’t want to have as friends but personal enemies are rare. Most people have no desire to deliberately kill another human being. Even personal disagreements and feuds rarely conclude so drastically.

 Our most dangerous enemies the world over are the insidious, manufactured histories refashioned and spun in favour of the storyteller to keep us onside and supportive of foreign policies. Part-truths, withheld information and fake news as opposed to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the norm. The “gratitude” of the ruling class for whom war is fought and won has a quick expiry date.

 A war veteran hopes for the end of all wars as promised in “the war to end all wars” and the new recruit what he has been told, that he one of the ones to finally put the world to rights. Both are disappointed as actual history shows again and again. A world without conflict  can be achieved by the world’s citizens in general agreement that they are no longer prepared to pay the price that has been demanded of them for so long.

It is the duty of the military of each country concerned is ordered, along with the other armed services, to carry out its function as the protector of the foreign interests of its native capitalist class. Not that the protection of capitalist interests will be the reason given for hurling masses of young men, mostly members of the working class, into bloody conflict against other masses of young men, similarly mainly workers. The various propaganda machines will manufacture high-sounding excuses. The war is a fight for “democracy over autocracy”, for “breathing-space”, to defend “the rights of small nations”. Augmented now by hosts of wartime conscripts the task for each army is to wreak what havoc, destruction and death it can upon the armies of the “enemy” countries. For no other reason than that they have been ordered to do so by their respective governments, man kills man so that his masters’ trading interests are furthered or at least protected from damage.

Capitalism is a system whose roots are embedded in military conflict whether under a Labour Government just as much as a Conservative Government. The frenzied scramble for markets and sources of supply, as well as trade routes, culminates in a war when threats and diplomatic jiggery–pokery fail to give sections of the capitalists, in their internal strife, the sought-for supremacy in the limited markets of the world. When the struggle for markets has reached the peak of frantic intensity the shadow of war becomes ominous; capitalists will not lose the privilege of reaping the results of the exploitation of workers without the resort to armed conflict, particularly as these same workers may be persuaded to risk their lives in their masters’ battles. Terrible though the prospects of war are, the capitalist class of the world do not hesitate; in spite of the threat of nuclear missile, so you may be assured that they will not hesitate, as the present concentration on large scale means of destruction makes clearly evident. That the world’s leaders are still prepared to continue their nuclear logic , that they are continually prepared to wipe out millions of their fellow humans to further the interests of a minority should shatter any illusions the future we have will proceed on a different course. While we contemplate the wars, the conflicts and the horrors our masters have in store for us this coming century, it is also important to remember that we as a class hold the power to prevent the same from coming about. The profit motive kills all human feelings and excuses the most fiendish brutality.

There is only one solution to the problem of war, the removal of its cause. War arises out of the private property basis of capitalism, which drives capitalist sections into conflict over the disposal of the wealth produced by the worker. This conflict will only disappear when the workers of the world take possession of the means of production and distribute products freely wherever they are needed. Then there will not be markets to fight for because buying and selling will have been abolished. Socialism is the only solution to the problem of war in the modern world.

As for the workers of Ukraine they will rapidly find that they have just changed one set of rulers for another no matter who prevails in the war. We are not ruled by force or coercion, but by consent. The Putins and the Zelenskyys of this world can only do the things they do because we vote them in, thus legitimising their actions, however detrimental they may be to our interests. War and conflict and all the terrors we dare to imagine only come to pass because we refuse to join together as a class to express our class interests.

 Two new talks have been uploaded to the Party website:

The Ideas of Rutger Bregman

Paul Bennett, 15th July 2022

Human Nature

Richard Field, 22nd July 2022

 Sri Lanka’s food inflation soars to a staggering 80 percent in June 2022.

An alarming 6.3 million people (about 3 in 10 households) are now food insecure.   Of this number, 66,000 people are severely food insecure

The majority of households (61 percent) are regularly using food-based coping strategies such as eating less preferred, less nutritious food and cutting back on food portions. 

About 6.7 million people are not consuming adequate diets and 5.3 million people are reducing the number of meals eaten.

While urban households are depleting savings to cope for now, rural populations are already turning to credit in order to purchase food and other essentials.

An alarming increase in high-risk child protection incidents such as sexual assault, physical abuse, and child negligence have been reported in at least four districts, namely: Moneragala, Nuwara Eliya, Batticoloa and Mullaitivu. 

WFP Sri Lanka Country Brief, June 2022 – Sri Lanka | ReliefWeb

Palestinian authorities are systematically mistreating and torturing Palestinians in detention, including critics and opponents, Human Rights Watch said today in a parallel report submitted jointly to the United Nations Committee Against Torture with the Palestinian rights group Lawyers for Justice. 

More than a year after the PA beat to death prominent activist and critic Nizar Banat while he was in custody and violently dispersed people demanding justice for his death, including rounding up scores for peaceful protesting, no one has been held to account. Prosecutors brought charges against 14 accused security officers, but critics say the authorities are moving too slowly and are biased, including in a June 21 decision by military prosecutors to release the accused for 12 days.

“More than a year after beating to death Nizar Banat, the Palestinian Authority continues to arrest and torture critics and opponents,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “Systematic abuse by the PA and Hamas forms a critical part of the repression of the Palestinian people.”

In the months that followed Banat’s death, PA police forces violently dispersed popular protests demanding justice and rounded up scores of people for peacefully protesting.

The death in custody of Banat and rounding up of demonstrators in the weeks that followed reflects the Palestinian authorities’ systematic practice of arbitrary arrest and torture with impunity, Human Rights Watch said. PA and Hamas security forces routinely taunt and threaten detainees, use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions, as Human Rights Watch and Lawyers for Justice lay out in their parallel report.  

Palestinian authorities have consistently failed to hold security forces accountable, as documented in the parallel report.

In 2021, the ICHR received 252 complaints of torture and ill-treatment and 279 of arbitrary arrest against PA authorities in the West Bank and 193 complaints of torture and ill-treatment and 97 of arbitrary arrest against Hamas authorities in Gaza. Hamas authorities have also executed 28 people in Gaza since seizing political control in June 2007, in a context in which  due process violations, coercion, and torture are prevalent, and have summarily executed scores of other people without any judicial process, often on accusations of collaboration with Israel.

Palestinian authorities should abide by the international human rights treaties they have acceded to and end grave abuses and endemic impunity by holding those responsible to account.

The parallel Human Rights Watch and Lawyers for Justice report also covers mistreatment and torture by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and impunity for these abuses. Despite more than 1,300 complaints of torture filed with Israel’s Justice Ministry since 2001 stemming from acts allegedly carried out by Israeli authorities in Israel or the West Bank, including painful shackling, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures, these complaints have only resulted in two criminal investigations and no indictments over the past 20 years, according to the Israeli rights group Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. As part of its duties under the Convention Against Torture to “prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction,” the State of Palestine should cease all security coordination with the Israeli army that contributes to facilitating torture and other grave abuses, and stop handing over Palestinians, as long as there remains a real risk of torture and other prohibited ill-treatment for those handed over, Human Rights Watch said.

“Many governments say they want to support the rule of law in Palestine and yet year after year continue to fund police forces that actively undermine it,” Shakir said. “Purported concerns over the fragility of Palestinian institutions and other tired excuses should no longer stand in the way. Donor governments should cut ties to abusive Palestinian police and security forces and center their Palestine and Israel policies on human rights.”

Palestine: Impunity for Arbitrary Arrests, Torture | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)