Putin’s purpose for the invasion of Ukraine was of furthering Russia’s imperialistic ambitions. Little different from Tsarist Russia’s expansionist policies. We think there is nothing particularly unusual about the method Putin chose; he is merely typical of the long line of atrocities which have been inflicted by one capitalist power after another in their respective endeavours to monopolise markets and extend their spheres of influence and plunder resources. Needless to say, in these adventures, it has been the working class who have done the fighting; it is working-class lives which have been thus offered up as sacrifices in the interests of international capitalism. The war in Ukraine reminds us that we are living with globalised capitalism. The war is of a global nature and not just a domestic war. Tragically most workers still look to a beneficial national government for the amelioration of their conditions. However, as long as the social conditions of capitalism exist, and minority ownership of the means of production and distribution, competition to be the minority will all too often turn to war. Be it the benevolent liberal democratic state with a mixed economy, a free-market economy or a government of nationalized industry free of foreign influence, this has ever been the case. World socialism will destroy the social conditions that create poverty and war.

Organisations that seek to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty do not touch the root of the matter it is merely trifling with the effects of a particular system of society known as capitalism. Once again we see how capitalism cannot develop an effective means of preventing war. The mission of the Socialist Party, however, is to lay bare the general trend of capitalist development; to point out unceasingly that, so long as the system lasts, warfare and its accompanying atrocities will be repeated; that they are effects which spring from the very roots of the capitalist system, because they are grounded in the soil of competitive rivalry for world’s markets, trade routes, etc. The only remedy is to remove the cause, capitalism, and replace it with the world cooperative commonwealth, where poverty will give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

When governments and political commentators urge the workers of the world to do all that is possible to apply a boycott of all things Russian until its troops are completely withdrawn from Ukraine they are only confusing the issue by suggesting impossible things as remedies for a rotten system. Fancy the workers, of the countries referred to boycotting Russian goods. The workers will always endeavour to obtain the best value for their money. It is one of the guiding principles of the capitalist system to strive for the best value obtainable in the ordinary course of exchange—i.e., buying and selling. If applies equally to the workers as it does to the capitalist. The worker receives wages and expends them to the very best advantage—i.e., in the purchase of the best value in the shape of the necessaries of life. It matters not to working people whether the goods they buy are Russian or Chinese — they seek the best value for money. Such pious sentiments melt in the air when they come into contact with the force of the exchange economy.

The Socialist Party tell the workers that they must overthrow the system which makes possible the misery and suffering to their class, which causes wars and the horrors arising from it, famines, atrocities, starvation in the midst of plenty, and all the countless evils which beset the worker to-day. Further,it claims to have found the remedy. We say it consists of ceaselessly striving to acquire an understanding of the forces at work, and the economic laws which govern the capitalist system.

The Socialist Party declares that no interest is at stake in this conflict which justifies the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood, and it extends its fraternal greetings to the workers of all countries and calls upon them to unite in the greater struggle for the establishment of socialism, a system of society in which the ever-increasing poverty, misery, terror and bloodshed of capitalism shall be forever banished from the planet. Our goal is clearly the creation of a new class-free, frontier-free, money-free society of common ownership; a society we call ‘socialism’. And our strategy for achieving this goal is for more and more of our fellow workers to understand and consciously aim for this new form of society until the point of critical mass is reached where replacing capitalism with socialism is a real, concrete task for the working class. 

Fellow workers, as a counter-blast to confusion, get down to the solid work of understanding your class position, which socialist knowledge alone makes clear. “Who would be free, must strike the blow.” Put not your trust in people of any party who are going to get freedom for you. 

Millions have fought for civil and human rights, and battled for equality to women, for immigrants, for the LGBTQ communities and for all the poor and vulnerable. They have campaigned to protect our planet from environmental harm. They have marched in the streets, petitioned and lobbied politicians. People have been beaten and even killed in their struggle. All to no avail.

The masters of the world live by a code: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” 

We live in an age of oligarchs, demagogues and aspiring autocrats, an era of bigotry and white nationalism with ruthless attacks on our limited liberties. Capitalist ideologues blame the victims for all the social problems as they embark upon policies of dismantling the safety nets of the welfare state and deny any responsibility for the increased immiseration of working people.

Sparked by the capitalist war on the working class, workers employed in the formal economy, the informal economy, working in the cities and the countryside or doing unwaged labour have entered the global political stage in an astonishing array of movements. These offer much by creatively developing new structural forms and organising strategies. The demands of the impoverished class for food, housing, education, healthcare and an opportunity to contribute to society are summed up as the demand for a cooperative society. Revolutionary socialists are unwilling to allow capitalism to set the horizon for what can be envisioned or struggled for. Understanding the ways that workplaces and communities are interrelated leads to more effective modes of organising and more possibilities. 

The Socialist Party claim that the reason the working class are unable to obtain a decent standard of life is that the wealth the workers produce is owned by the employing class.

The capitalists own the means of wealth production, land, factories, machinery, means of transportation, etc., and allow the workers to produce further wealth and give them in return just sufficient of the necessaries of life to keep them alive to produce more wealth. The masters will only allow the workers to use the means of production when they can sell the commodities the workers produce at a profit.

If the capitalist cannot sell these commodities they close the factories. The workers are then unable to sell their working power, and unless they can obtain relief from charity or insurance, they are forced to go without the necessities of life.

If the working class could obtain access to the means of wealth production, they could produce more than sufficient to keep every member of the community in comfort. The working class by supporting socialism would obtain control of the political machinery and use it to take the means of wealth production from the present owners. The community would then have the means to give every person the full benefit of the enormous amount of wealth that is produced by modern methods of production.

Despondency and despair are not an option, despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges. We are fighting for not just ourselves but for our children and their children. We cannot turn our backs on future generations. There is too much at stake. 

Frederick Douglass stated that “knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” 

Helen Keller in a letter to a Nazi youth explained: “History hasn’t taught you anything if you think you can kill ideas. The tyrants tried to do so often in the past, but the ideas revolted against them and destroyed them.”

Solidarity must go beyond words and appeals. We must go beyond capitalism and its nation-states. Our World Socialist Movement must become the World Party of Social Revolution. We have to determine our own collective future. We must connect vital human needs, desires and hopes in a way that will persuade people to assert their voices and actions in the building of a new mass movement for a democratic socialist society. We call for a new vision of what kind of society we want, along with the mass movement capable of delivering our vision. We reject the notion of a small group deciding on a “party line.” That approach is discredited elitist vanguardism.

As Eugene Debs reminded us all:

 “Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.”

We in the Socialist Party face the future with confidence. Nothing can be accomplished until working people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such a vision, to educate and win them over to the cooperative, socialist answer to their problems is the task of our organisation.

We call upon all fellow workers to unite around the practical demands to secure humanity’s imperilled future.

 Dozens of African migrants died trying to scale a fence separating Morocco and Spanish territory in an attempt to enter the “Spanish” enclave of Melilla. Geographically, Melilla is part of Africa, but it belongs to Spain. As such, it is part of the European Union. For migrants and asylum seekers, trying to climb the fences separating the African continent from the EU is worth the risk. Once in the EU, in this case, Melilla, European and human-rights laws apply. It doesn’t matter how you arrived.

Following the Melilla deaths, there were no warm sentiments of solidarity from politicians. Instead, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at the NATO summit reaffirmed the need to secure Spain’s borders and asked for support in doing so.

Compare this with the welcome offered to Ukrainians by Spain and other EU nations. They bent over backwards to provide housing, free movement, and access to education facilities and the job market. The Africans and Ukrainians are equally deserving of humane treatment. Ukrainians received it while the Africans did not. 

Skin colour determines who lives and who dies. This is why it’s known as Fortress Europe. When it comes to migration, Black lives don’t matter. There was no safe route for those people to apply for asylum legally. In their eyes, the better option was placing their trust in human traffickers rather than a system that privileges white migration.

Border forces are brutal and essentially operate as thugs in uniform, usually spoiling for some kind of “action” – unless you’re white. The system isn’t broken. It’s working as it was designed.

Taken from here

The color of migration policy around the world | Opinion – Alternet.org

 “The difference between a Tucker Carlson monologue and a white supremacist mass murderer’s manifesto is the Tucker Carlson monologue gets aired in prime-time on the nation’s most-watched cable news network,” –  Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters

 Although one of the world’s most high-profile humanitarian crises, Yemen is now severely underfunded and at risk of joining the long list of countries neglected by world leaders. Donors had pledged less than a quarter of the aid needed by these war-ravaged communities to simply survive.

Each year, the Norwegian Refugee Council publishes its report on the top ten most neglected displacement crises in the world. For the coming year, this list will likely see a race to the bottom as previously headline-hitting crises such as Yemen and Syria become increasingly overshadowed by the needs in Europe, driven by the war in Ukraine. 

The response to the devastating war in Ukraine has demonstrated the gap between the immense support that can be generated when the international community rallies behind a crisis, and the daily reality for millions of people suffering in silence and on the brink of being forgotten.

In a matter of hours, the UN’s Ukraine appeal was almost fully funded, politicians mobilised, the public around the world donated record amounts, and newspapers ran front page after front page reporting the horrors of the unfolding war.

This strong reaction to a conflict happening within Europe which has uprooted 14 million people, and has vast global consequences, is human and understandable. 

But seldom has the selectivity of the world’s attention been so striking.

 Ukrainians bear striking similarities to those Yemenis, Syrian refugees in Jordan, or Afghans who have fled to Iran. These people and the millions of others chronically ignored around the world have also been forced from their homes and they all deserve support. There is no hierarchy of human suffering. The glaring gap between the response to the Ukraine crisis and the meagre support offered to many of the world’s neglected crises is undeniable.

The number of people displaced around the world has reached 100 million – a record high.

Countries must avoid devastating cuts to their humanitarian budgets as we have seen in the UK, or redistributing already limited funding away from crises countries to support the local hosting of Ukrainians as we have seen in Sweden, Denmark and in Norway. Instead, it is imperative that the world’s richest nations – which have the ability to fully fund all UN humanitarian appeals overnight if they wish – increase their support across the board. Aid must be allocated based on need rather than based on perceived national interest or the level of media coverage.

Adapted and abridged from here

Ukraine response shows what’s possible for world’s most neglected (trust.org)

Inside the coat of arms: the Wolf’s Hook, superimposed upon the waves of the Sea of Azov. The white circle represents the Black Sun. The Wolf’s Hook and the Black Sun are classical Nazi symbols. In the background: the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.

Radical nationalists, including fascists and Nazis, play a significant role in the war in Ukraine and an even more significant role in the propaganda war. Putin justifies his attack on Ukraine as a crusade to ‘de-Nazify’ the country, while some pro-Ukrainian propagandists describe the Putin regime as fascist.[1]

In a recent book,[2] journalist Michael Colborne sorts truth out from lies and myths concerning the Azov Movement, in recent years the most salient structure on the Ukrainian nationalist right. The movement originated as a military formation — a battalion, then a regiment fighting pro-Russian forces in the Donbas – but has evolved into a multifaceted complex, encompassing a political party (the National Corps), social centers, sports and youth clubs, military training camps, special projects, and publishing houses. 

Writers seeking to play down the importance of the radical right in Ukraine point out that Azov – like its predecessors, Right Sector and the Freedom Party – has done very poorly in elections. If Ukraine were a stable democracy at peace, that might be a clinching argument. But it is not. Several factors give Azov influence out of all proportion to its electoral weight. The ethos of wartime national unity and the reputation of Azov men as brave fighters shield the movement from criticism, while the patronage of some oligarchs and government ministers provides access to resources and facilitates the use and threat of violence to intimidate opponents. 

Under conditions of peace, Azov and other ultra-nationalist groups would soon be relegated to the margins of Ukrainian politics. It is a product of war and flourishes in war. However many men Azov may have lost in the defense of Mariupol, I expect it will soon replenish its ranks. If Putin is really invading Ukraine for the purpose of de-Nazification, which is doubtful, he could hardly have chosen any more counterproductive way of doing so. 

The Russian radical right has also taken an active part in the war, providing many of the volunteers who have gone to fight in the Donbas since 2014. Although the Putin regime has harassed or banned some Russian nationalist groups, it has collaborated with others, depending to a large extent on the attitude taken by the groups themselves toward the regime. Thus, Alexander Dugin and Eduard Limonov, former co-leaders of the National Bolshevik Party, went separate ways: Dugin demonstrated loyalty to Putin and acquired influence within the regime, while Limonov took the path of opposition. According to Colborne, the Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists is one of the groups close to the Kremlin, on whose behalf it has committed at least ten murders, including those of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009.   

In their mutual accusations of Nazism and fascism, both sides are ‘pots calling the kettle black.’

Remarkably, quite a few radical Russian nationalists opposed to Putin have chosen to defect to Ukraine. It is estimated that 3,000 of the volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side come from Russia. Several men who used to be prominent on Russia’s far right – for example, Alexei Levkin, founder of the Hitlerite cult Wotanjugend – have been granted Ukrainian citizenship and are now associated with the Azov Movement. Olena Semenyaka, international secretary of the National Corps and an Azov ideologist, used to belong to Dugin’s Eurasianist Movement (though she was born and grew up in Ukraine). 

Russian and Ukrainian radical nationalists compete for the same niche in world politics, as the center of resistance to recent developments in the West that they perceive as ‘decadent’ – ideas of human and especially minority rights, multiculturalism and multiracialism, tolerance of homosexuality, non-Christian religions, and even atheism, women’s liberation, rejection of sex roles, etc. Ukrainian and most Russian nationalists believe in ‘Europe’ – not, however, today’s Europe but the Europe of yesteryear, when Europe was unambiguously ‘white’ and ‘Christian.’ 

Nevertheless, neither Russia nor Ukraine are ideally placed to fill this niche. Russia is still a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state – neither ‘white’ nor ‘Christian’ enough for purists. This is what gives the alternative ‘Eurasianist’ identity a certain appeal in Russia. In Ukraine – and also in some other countries of the Central-East European region, like Poland and Hungary – the old Europe is still preserved intact. ‘The heart of Europe beats in the East.’ And yet geopolitically Ukraine is allied with and wholly dependent on the ‘decadent’ Europe of the West. The fight with Russia is the top priority, but later Ukraine will have to disentangle itself from – unless it can help to revive — this ‘decadent’ Europe.[3] 

The European radical right nowadays believes in a united though not homogenized Europe, as conceived by thinkers of the French New Right. ‘No more brother wars!’ is a popular slogan. And yet Russian and Ukrainian fighters in the current war find themselves trapped in just such a ‘brother war’!

Notes

[1] See: Alexander J. Motyl, ‘Putin’s Russia as a fascist political system,’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2016), 49 (1), 25-36. Professor Motyl recently reaffirmed his view: ‘Alexander Motyl: Yes, Putin and Russia are fascist. How they meet the textbook definition,’ The Conversation, March 31, 2022. For opposing assessments, see: Marlene Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist?: Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Cornell University Press, 2021); Andreas Umland, ‘Is Putin’s Russia Really “Fascist”? A Response to Alexander Motyl’.  

[2] From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2022). 

[3] See interview with Michael Colborne, March 29, 2022.

Ukraine: nationalists at war – World Socialist Party US (wspus.org)

 Formed in 1984 during the military dictatorship (1964–85), the Landless Workers’ Movement ( Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) grew out of agricultural workers’ and peasants’ occupations of latifúndios, gigantic estates held by wealthy individuals and corporations. Over the past four decades, these farmers have taken control of millions of hectares of land across Brazil, forming the largest social movement in Latin America.

Approximately 500,000 households live in these MST-led occupations, meaning that the MST has organised about 2 million people into its ranks. The settlements’ residents organise themselves through various democratic structures, create schools for their children and community kitchens for the indigent and develop techniques for agroecological farming towards fulfilling their own needs and for sale in the marketplace. The MST is now rooted in the social landscape of Brazil, from the Amazon in the north to Arroio Chuí, Brazil’s southernmost point.

The central concept for the MST to elaborate this theory is agrarian reform. According to one of the members of the MST’s national coordination, Neuri Rossetto, this reform project fights “for an agricultural model centred on the production of healthy food for the Brazilian population alongside the struggle to democratise land ownership.”

Around 100,000 families live on encampments (acampamentos), which are occupations of fallow land to which they have not been given formal access; 400,000 families live on settlements (assentamentos), whose land they now hold by right through liberal provisions in Chapter III of the country’s 1988 Constitution, Article 184, which states that the government can “expropriate, on account of social interest, for purposes of agrarian reform, rural property that does not perform a social function.”

However, it is important to note that the Brazilian state nonetheless attempts to evict families from these legal encampments.

The MST organises peasants to improve not only their control over land, but also over agricultural production, including by avoiding toxic chemicals which destroy both the workers’ land and health. This project is now linked to an interest amongst consumers for food whose components do not harm them and whose production does not destroy the planet. The possibility of uniting the majority of the country’s 212 million people in pursuit of agrarian reform galvanises the MST.

Is the MST a social movement or a political party?

Neuri explains:

“We are aware of the responsibilities and the need to improve our political forces, both in their organisational and ideological senses, in order to have a greater influence in the class struggle. However, we do not claim to assume the role of a political party in its strict sense, as we believe that this political instrument is beyond our scope. This does not mean to say that we have a supra-partisan or non-partisan stance. We believe that the articulation of working-class movements, trade unions, and political parties is fundamental in the construction of another sociability which is alternative and contrary to the bourgeois order. … [W]e do not underestimate the importance and strength of political action and popular mobilisations as an educating element for the subaltern classes. The popular masses learn and educate themselves in popular mobilisations. There, in the mass movement, lies the political strength of the organisation; this is where the political-ideological level of the masses is raised.”

In other words, the MST is part of a process to build the organisational and ideological strength of the peasantry and it works alongside trade union movements and other organisations to create a political project for social emancipation. The MST has participated in building the Popular Project for Brazil (Projeto Brasil Popular), which, as Neuri says, “aims to consolidate a historic bloc that promotes anti-capitalist, emancipatory struggles and immediate economic gains that meet the needs and interests of the working class.” Advancing the confidence and power of the working class and peasantry is, therefore, central to the MST’s activity. 

Taken from here

Will the Morning Come? – Consortium News

 Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being blamed for the food crises that have arisen across much of the world. 

A March 2022 World Bank report refers to the food security crisis as a “food price crisis,” emphasizing that it’s not caused by shortage of food. The two major factors they have identified as driving the crisis are, “profiteering by major grain trading agribusinesses, which have already shown dramatic increases in profitability in January-March 2022 as they have raised their prices without being questioned, as everyone assumes that this is the result of war-driven supply shortages. The other is financial speculation in wheat futures markets, which can drive up prices even in spot markets.”

Global stocks of rice, wheat, and maize – the world’s three major staples – remain historically high. For wheat, the commodity most affected by the war, stocks remain well above levels during the 2007-2008 food price crisis. Estimates also suggest that about three-quarters of Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports had already been delivered before the war started.” 

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) monthly ‘Cereal Supply and Demand Brief’ confirms this. The FAO’s forecast for global cereal production in 2022 has been raised by 7 million tonnes in July from the previous month and is now pegged at 2,792 million tonnes and is only 0.6 percent short of the output for the same period in 2021. According to the FAO, the shortfall caused by the Russia-Ukraine war has not impacted global wheat stocks much, thanks to higher-than-normal harvests.

An assessment by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES), too confirms that there is currently no risk of global food supply shortages. The IPES too identifies it as a “food price crisis,” but goes on to identify the causes. Stating that “the failure to reform food systems has allowed the war in Ukraine to spark a third global food price crisis in 15 years,” the report points to “fundamental flaws in global food systems – such as heavy reliance on food imports and excessive commodity speculation – for escalating food insecurity sparked by the Ukraine invasion,” adding that “these flaws were exposed, but not corrected, after previous food price spikes in 2007-8.”

An analysis of global wheat prices by economists C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh reinforces this. Examining FAO data and projections from May 2021, much before the Russia-Ukraine war commenced, they find that the estimated global production of wheat in 2022 is likely to be lower than in 2021 by less than 1%, but around 2% higher than the average of 2018-20. Similarly, global trade in wheat is also projected to fall slightly when compared to 2021, but it will still remain higher than in 2018-20.

Navdanya, an organization founded by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, goes even further: it points to the evidence outlined above and says that the present crisis is the direct outcome of a broken global food system that exists primarily to serve agribusiness giants.”

The report, titled Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design, traces the crisis to excessive financial speculation, increased commodity future pricing and increased volatility in the market, all of it adding up to bigger gains for corporate players, even as it drives up food prices globally. As Shiva puts it, “what the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has once again laid bare is just how fragile globalized food systems are, and how quickly a fluctuation in the market goes on to detrimentally affect the poorest. The current globalized, industrial agrifood system creates hunger by design.”

 Rolling Stone magazine report summed it up, “this crisis… is in some sense artificial, given that it is not driven by any actual shortage of food in the world,” adding, “Commodity traders make money off wild price swings, shippers make money off people desperate for grain, fertilizer manufacturers make money off farmers desperate to maximize their yields, and proto-fascist politicians are happy to exploit rising food prices as evidence of the failure of democracy.”

Taken from here

No Russian Roulette: The Hunger Emergency And The Global Corporate System | Countercurrents

 China’s much-heralded Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is already the world’s biggest, having given more than 2,000 power plants a taste of emissions trading, regulating about 4.5 billion tonnes of annual CO2 output from the power industry. Nearly 200 million tonnes of carbon changed hands in the first year of operations at a total value of 8.5 billion yuan ($1.26bn).

A year on, “In terms of the impact, in terms of environmental gains, clearly it’s been limited,” said Matt Gray, co-founder of TransitionZero, a climate think-tank.

Fraud remains one of the greatest challenges and China has yet to fully address it, according to Shawn He, a Beijing-based lawyer who advises firms on carbon compliance. “I’m afraid the penalties for such malpractices … are too small to intimidate.”

A year on, China’s CO2 market fails to drive big emission cuts | Climate Crisis | Al Jazeera

 “Unprecedented price surges mean that for many people across the world, the food that they could afford yesterday is no longer attainable today,” said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Programme, in a statement. “This cost-of-living crisis is tipping millions of people into poverty and even starvation at breathtaking speed and with that, the threat of increased social unrest grows by the day.”

People around the world are facing increasing pressures on their day-to-day lives. 

According to the United Nations, more than 70 million people in developing countries have been pushed into poverty in the three months since March due to the spike in food, fuel and fertilizer prices.

Even in richer nations, household budgets are feeling the squeeze. In May, the World Economic Forum found one in four people were struggling financially across 11 developed countries.

A Civil Unrest Index by data analytics firm Verisk found 75 countries will likely see protests this year.

Almost half of Haitians are short of food, with hunger set to worsen with inflation at 26%.

Pakistan is facing a deepening economic crisis with inflation surging to 21.3% in June. Fuel prices have risen by about 90% since May after the government scrapped subsidies in a bid to cut its surging deficit and resume an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme. At the end of June, Pakistan’s central bank held only enough reserves for roughly six weeks of required imports.

Argentina is grappling with inflation at more than 60%, and spiking gas import costs. It struck a $45 billion debt deal with the IMF earlier this year, but many Argentines believe it will lead to a rise in poverty and have taken to the streets to demand its rollback.

Tunisia has seen inflation hit a record 8.1%. This has prompted protests – including a nationwide strike in June by the largest trade union which opposes government plans to freeze wages and cut subsidies as part of the deal to secure the $4 billion loan from the IMF.

In Kenya, inflation is running at a five-year high of nearly 8%, driven by jumps in the price of staples such as wheat flour, cooking oil and petrol. Kenya is also facing the worst drought in more than 40 years, creating widespread hunger and leaving it even more dependent on costly imports.

Inflation is triggering chaos worldwide. Where are the hotspots? (trust.org)