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

 Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said she would not publish five reports or research on the benefit cap, deaths of benefits claimants, the impact of universal credit (UC), and benefit sanctions, and that she had no plans to publish two further reports on unpaid carers and work capability assessments although her Conservative predecessors as secretary of state had promised to publish several of the reports.

Ken Butler, a policy adviser at Disability Rights UK, said: “We’re not talking about just one report and one subject. We’re talking about a whole swathe of reports about important aspects of the system. The DWP are operating behind a wall of secrecy.” he continued, “We’re being told this isn’t a priority at the moment and basically being dismissed,” Butler said. “When you’re moving two million disabled people on to a new benefit all these issues are really relevant…”

“Thérèse Coffey has set out to minimise the evidence published by the department and a consequence of this is that public trust in the department has been badly damaged,” said Stephen Timms, the chairman of the Commons work and pensions select committee.

British minister accused of trying to hide reports on impact of Tory welfare reforms | Benefits | The Guardian

 Energy bills will cost more than two month’s wages next year.

The monthly take-home pay for the average worker will be £2,054 next year, based on Bank of England forecasts, while the annual cost of energy is predicted to be £4,200.

The TUC calls the cost of living crisis this winter an “emergency of pandemic scale”.

About 4 million domestic customers use prepayment meters, while their price cap is around 2% higher than for direct debit customers.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said: “It’s outrageous that people on prepayment meters have to pay more for their energy. Why should those with the least have to pay more to heat their homes and put the lights on? This is unjustifiable and morally wrong.”

UK energy bills ‘set to cost two month’s wages’, ministers warned | Energy industry | The Guardian

The World Health Organization calls the rise in drug resistance to TB one of the world’s most urgent and difficult challenges, requiring more effective treatments. 

“ We’re winning sometimes,” says Dr Vijay Vinayak Chavan, from the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières clinic in Mumbai, which specialises in treating drug-resistant TB. “But we’re a little behind, most of the time.”

India, which has the highest burden of TB in the world, wants to eliminate the disease by 2025. Its national guidelines promise free tests and treatment, and specialist antibiotics for patients diagnosed with drug-resistant TB.

However, many doctors particularly in the private sector, which treats 60% of the country’s TB patients often fail to redirect patients towards these free services, leaving many people undiagnosed, receiving inadequate care, or dropping out of treatment regimens because of high out-of-pocket costs.

“There is a huge gap between what the guidelines say and what happens on the ground in terms of access,” says Leena Menghaney, a lawyer specialising in public health. “Patients are falling through the cracks, and some of them are losing their lives in that process.”

The Joint Effort for Elimination of Tuberculosis (Jeet) project, launched in 2018, aimed to bridge this gap by training private healthcare providers to direct patients towards the free national TB programme, and help find cases in high-burden communities. As a result, the number of registered TB cases across the country increased by 30% between 2017 and 2019.

“Because there is free diagnosis, because there are free medications and many facilities are there, the uptake of diagnostic services is improving,” says Dr Vaishali Venu, of the NGO Doctors For You.

All patients with multi-drug-resistant TB should be given bedaquiline, a relatively new antibiotic. However, data acquired from the public health department in Mumbai, where drug-resistant cases are steadily rising, showed that only half of patients in the city received it.

A big reason for this is price: a six-month course of bedaquiline costs the government about $350 (£290) a patient, because of a patent held by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. Another recommended drug, delamanid, is patented by the Japanese firm Otsuka Pharmaceutical and costs $1,200 a head.

“The government’s response to this situation of a patent monopoly is just to ration it, to give it to as few people as possible,” says Menghaney, who recommends that delamanid is taken alongside bedaquiline to ensure a complete recovery without the risk of relapses and new drug resistance. “By just offering bedaquiline in Mumbai, you could be driving bedaquiline resistance itself,” she warns.

Data from the MSF clinic in Mumbai showed a rise in multi-drug-resistant cases in people who had previously been treated with bedaquiline. This is alarming, says Chavan, because when it comes to severe cases, after bedaquiline “we don’t have any drugs left”.

Meera Yadav was first diagnosed with TB in 2013, but the treatment she was given did not work and she became drug resistant. She lost a lung, and Yadav’s husband, fearing that their infant son would contract TB, put her out of the family home. For five years she barely left her second-storey home.  Today the flat is where the 32-year-old coordinates her fight for better treatment and awareness of the disease.

“What TB patients suffer and the challenges they face has to be documented. As an activist I have to fight,” says Yadav who now campaigns for better treatment, filed a lawsuit against the government, demanding that it override the patents of the two drugs, which it can do under a World Trade Organization agreement. In cases of extreme risk to public health, national governments can issue a compulsory licence allowing local drugmakers to produce cheap generics. “If I had been given both drugs [at the beginning], maybe now my right lung would still be there,” she says.

‘Patients are falling through the cracks’: drug costs hinder India’s response to TB | Global development | The Guardian

Recently I watched two documentaries about conditions in nursing homes for the elderly in the United States and in Canada:

[1] VICE News, How Nursing Homes Hide Profits While Elderly Suffer;

[2] CBC News, Nursing home hidden camera investigation: Understaffed and overworked. 

One of the main chains of nursing homes in the US, with facilities in 28 states, is Life Care Centers of America (LCCA). Its founder, chairman, CEO, and sole owner is Forrest Preston. His net worth has been reported variously as $1.2 billion, $2.1 billion, or $3.2 billion.

How Preston has managed to make so much money is somewhat of a mystery, because all LCCA’s published accounts show only a very narrow margin between revenue and expenditure. The clue to the mystery lies in ‘creative accounting.’ ‘Expenses’ include large sums paid to other companies that also turn out to be wholly owned by Preston, who is therefore merely moving money from one pocket to another. Only secret ‘consolidated financial statements’ clearly show what is going on.

In 2006 Preston told employees to send Medicare fraudulent claims for reimbursement. In 2016, after whistleblowers exposed the scheme, LCCA settled the resulting government lawsuit for $145 million — evidently only a small fraction of the amount stolen. As usual in such cases, the company did not admit any wrongdoing. Preston never saw the inside of a prison. Prison is strictly for small-time thieves.  

In terms of suffering knowingly inflicted, however, massive theft of public funds is not Preston’s worst crime. His worst crime is the deliberate understaffing of his nursing homes in order to increase profits. Too few staff are hired. Patient-staff ratios are too high. This means that staff are overworked and prone to errors and accidents while even the most urgent needs of patients are often neglected. 

For example, patients may be left in bed for long periods in wet and even soiled diapers. Unable to get the timely help they need to continue breathing, especially at night when understaffing is especially severe, they may die alone of asphyxia. Some patients suffering from dementia are violent and delusional. They can assault other patients (and staff too). When this happens staff are rarely on hand to intervene.    

Admittedly, Preston is far from the only culprit. Such deliberate understaffing seems to be standard practice in the care industry – not only in nursing homes for the elderly but also in institutions for care of the physically and intellectually disabled and the mentally ill. And the situation in many other countries, despite varying arrangements for the provision of care, is as bad as in the United States.

In the US, provision of care, although largely funded through government programs, is ‘outsourced’ to private companies. Government regulation of such companies is in practice very weak. It is hard to imagine any arrangement more susceptible to abuse. 

In Canada, by contrast, care facilities are run directly by provincial governments. Yet there is still severe understaffing, with the resulting neglect. Understaffing may not be deliberate, but wages and conditions are just too poor to attract and keep enough staff. Basically it is a matter of allocating sufficient funds.

In Ontario workers at nursing homes came together with relatives of patients to campaign for improved staffing. In the runup to the provincial elections, Progressive Conservative governor Doug Ford claimed to support their cause, but once re-elected he evaded the issue. He did promise to expand care facilities, but in the absence of other measures this would make the staffing situation even worse. Any activists who naively took Ford at his word had forgotten his record as a politician always ready to cut social spending on behalf of his capitalist masters:

Immediately after taking office in 2018, Ford proposed to cut 3,475 Ontario teaching jobs over four years to save $292 million a year. Ford also cancelled the Green Ontario Fund residential rebate program, which included a $100 million fund for public school repair, free prescriptions for people aged under 25 years, and an initiative to add indigenous peoples content to school curriculum, and eliminated free tuition for low-income students.

Wikipedia

In a socialist society, it will be possible to devote a large share of the human energy released by automation and demilitarization to care for those who need it – both to the full staffing of special facilities and to assistance for people who choose to care for their elderly or disabled relatives at home. 

Stephen Shenfield

Nursing homes: understaffing and neglect – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

 2.35 million people in India are HIV-positive. About 1.5 million people are on antiretroviral therapy, far lower than the World Health Organization’s “90-90-90 target” – under which 90% of people with HIV are diagnosed, 90% are on ARV treatment, and 90% are no longer infectious. In 2019, an estimated 58,900 Aids-related deaths were reported in the country.

India says it aims to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.

Up to 500,000 people have not been able to get hold of free ARVs from government health centres and hospitals over the past five months, they say, as the country experiences stock shortages of key drugs. 

ARVs that are available in privately run pharmacies and shops can be prohibitively expensive. Some people have been given alternative drugs, but others have stopped taking any medication.

“Does the government even realise that at least 500,000, or one-third of the patients, are affected by this? Some adults are being given 11 doses of paediatric medicine to compensate,” said Loon Gangte, president of the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+), an NGO that works to improve the treatment and facilities for people living with HIV and Aids. “We only demand an uninterrupted monthly supply. This treatment is our right.”

Kedar Nath, a 30-year-old street vendor taking part in the protest, said he has not taken his ARVs on several occasions over the past two months. He cannot afford the £50 a month it would cost to buy the drugs on the open market.

“I have been taking these drugs for the last 13 years. They have helped me continue with my life despite the virus in my body. But the recent shortage has turned my life upside down since I can neither find the strength to work, nor have any savings to live off,” he said.

India’s HIV patients say shortages leaving hundreds of thousands without drugs | Global development | The Guardian

 Haiti is trapped in a hunger and security crisis. 

4.5 million people experiencing acute food insecurity (IPC3 or higher).

Haiti is currently experiencing a major economic crisis, with inflation at 26%, making it difficult for families to afford food and other essentials, or to sell crops at local markets.

Across the country, hunger is becoming a norm for children, many of whom have no idea if they will get food tomorrow. Malnutrition can cause stunting, impede mental and physical development, increase the risk of contracting deadly diseases, and ultimately cause death.

Entha, a 7-year-old girl from the southwest region of Haiti, lost her home, crops and belongings in last year´s earthquake. 

Entha explains, “When I don’t eat, I don’t feel good because that makes me sad. I can’t go play anymore. It’s because I am hungry…”

Perpetue Vendredi, Director of Programme Operations, Save the Children in Haiti, said, “In the past 12 months we have seen a worrying trend of hunger increasing across Haiti. Increasing numbers of hunger cases is becoming a great challenge for children and their families; more help is needed…The humanitarian response is still woefully underfunded as this crisis has been largely ignored as other global events have taken over…Children and their families are in desperate need of food, nutrition, health, safe water, sanitation and hygiene, and social protection and livelihoods support to prevent widespread malnutrition, illness, starvation, and death…”

Haiti: Hunger, economic crisis stall recovery a year after devastating earthquake – Haiti | ReliefWeb

 Further to an earlier post on the forced labor of detained immigrants, another story has emerged of inmates resisting their exploitation.

At two federal detention centers in California, more than 50 immigrant workers are on strike over unsafe working conditions and low wages. California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, is currently investigating working conditions at the Golden State Annex U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, near Bakersfield, where workers have been on strike since June 6.

“We are being exploited for our labor and are being paid $1 per day to clean the dormitories,” said strikers at a central California detention center.

Detainees at a second ICE facility, Mesa Verde, have been on strike since April 28. The facilities are operated by the GEO Group, one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S. GEO also operates facilities in the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. The company brought in $2.26 billion in revenue last year.

Detained workers, known as “housing porters,” participate in a supposedly volunteer working program while locked up. They use their earnings to pay for the exorbitant cost of phone calls and commissary items like dental floss and tortillas.

“They are compelled to do this,” says Alan Benjamin, a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council who heard directly from striking workers during a call with the labor council. “It’s not voluntary; it’s compulsory work, without proper sanitation and equipment.” The pitifully low pay in the detention centers “depresses everybody’s wages,” said Benjamin. “In the case of these two facilities, it’s just outrageous because they’ve eliminated jobs of cleaning personnel, and said, ‘well, we have free labor from these people. Let them do it. And [the detainees] said, no, we’re not a free labor pool.”

“Raul” has been detained at Golden State Annex since December 2021. He came to the United States from Mexico at the age of five along with his parents and siblings. He told Labor Notes from behind bars that he’s striking over the paltry pay of $1 a day for eight-hour shifts and hazardous working conditions.

“The $1-a-day pay isn’t enough to eat,” he said, adding his earnings total $5 a week, which are used for commissary items and phone calls. “A video call costs about $2.50 for 15 minutes and a bag of beans is about $2.” Raul said the prices in immigration facilities are higher—and wages lower—than those of federally run prisons too. At an ICE detention center, Raul said, they’re getting paid $20 a month while at a federally-run prison they could get paid about $200 a month for their labor. “They have the same vendor for the commissary for prison and ICE, but food is cheaper in prison,” he says. “A pack of beef is $4.50, and here it’s almost $6. We want them to drop the commissary prices.”

A 149-page research report published by the ACLU last month states that inmates are paid an average minimum of 13 cents an hour and average maximum of 52 cents an hour for jobs like laundry or cleaning bathrooms. Jobs in California’s state-owned correctional facilities pay between 35 cents an hour to $1 an hour, according to the report.

As the strike continues, GEO is retaliating against the detained workers. Two strikers have been placed in solitary confinement for engaging in a group demonstration.

Another common scare tactic is threatening detained workers about how their behavior while in lock up will look before a judge ruling on their pending immmigration cases. “The judge will find out you aren’t obeying rules and if you’re not obeying rules in here what will make them think you’ll obey rules out there?” said Raul, recounting a common fear-mongering tactic used by prison guards. To combat these tactics, he and the other detainees do everything as a group to ensure no one is singled out as a ring-leader. “We all speak up and when we speak to the officers we go as a group.”

Immigrant Detainees Strike Over $1 a Day Pay, Working Conditions | Labor Notes