The massive expenditure for war is not a political issue for most Republican or Democratic politicians in the USA. 

While measures that cover a range of programs designed to help working people and address climate change and will cost $3.5 trillion over ten years have become contested debating points, over the same decade, the ten-year cost of $7.7 trillion for the military budget gets passed with very little criticism, despite Biden having reduced America’s military presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Among the many industries that are blamed for being damaging to the health of people and the planet is the food processing corporations. 

The foods we consume are a major driver of global heating, contributing similar amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as the UK energy system. Meat and dairy are responsible for more than three-quarters of this impact. Without meaningful reductions in meat and dairy intake, there is little chance of meeting emissions reduction targets, both at national and international levels. From a climate crisis perspective, the Climate Change Committee – the body tasked with monitoring and providing advice on greenhouse gas emissions – recommends a 20% reduction in the consumption of beef, lamb, and dairy in support of the government’s target of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. However, the committee’s own report admits that this level of reduction might be too low, and an independent scientific analysis suggested that beef, lamb and pork intake would have to decline by 89%, poultry intake by 66% and dairy intake by 61% for the UK’s food emissions to be in line with limiting global heating to under 2C.

The public health case for reducing meat consumption is similarly strong – tens of thousands of avoidable deaths from cardiovascular diseases and cancers have been linked to red and processed meat consumption in the UK. Yet, despite this public and environmental health emergency, policymakers appear unwilling to take meaningful steps that would help create a healthier, more sustainable food system. Recommended targets and policies continue to be woefully inadequate. The actual recommendation of the Eatwell Guide is even more misleading. Its target value of 70g a day would mean having a serving of red and processed meat five times a week would be totally fine, much in contrast to the current scientific understanding. A comprehensive review of the scientific literature on healthy eating suggested limiting red and processed meat intake to below one serving a week (14g a day), five times below the current recommendation. Updating national dietary guidelines to reflect the latest scientific evidence would therefore be a critical first step for reducing the 30,000 annual deaths associated with red and processed meat consumption in the UK.

Intensive industrial-style livestock farming has featured in numerous criticisms of the global food system. At least eight types of bird flu, all of which can kill humans, are circulating around the world’s factory farms – and they could be worse than Covid-19.

 Scientific evidence from the £150bn-a-year poultry and livestock industries shows that stressful, crowded conditions of factory farming drive the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases, and act as an “epidemiological bridge” between wildlife and human infections. UN bodies, academics and epidemiologists recognise the link between the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses and increasingly intensive poultry farming.

Rob Wallace, an American virologist argues that the new strains of flu emerging are adapting to industrial poultry production. With more than 20 billion chickens and nearly 700 million pigs being farmed at any one time, Wallace says the chances of new flu strains and variants emerging and spilling over to humans are high.

 Sam Sheppard, a biologist at Bath University, says overuse of antibiotics, overcrowding and the genetic similarity between animals provide ideal conditions for many bacteria, viruses and other pathogens to merge, mutate, spread and then jump into humans.

Marius Gilbert, an epidemiologist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, and others have shown how bird flu is linked to the rapid intensification of poultry farming, which is now making bird flu viruses more dangerous.

Michael Greger, author of the book Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, argues that there have been three eras of human disease: first, when we started to domesticate animals about 10,000 years ago and were infected with their diseases, such as measles and chickenpox; then in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Industrial Revolution led to epidemics of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer; and now, because of the agricultural intensification that is leading to zoonotic, or animal-borne, diseases such as bird flu, salmonella, Mers, Nipah and Covid-19.

“In evolutionary terms, rearing poultry, cattle and pigs in high-intensity, crowded, confined, entirely unnatural conditions may be the most profound alteration of the human-animal relationship in 10,000 years,” he says “We are seeing an unprecedented explosion in outbreaks of new bird flu viruses, which historically have presented the greatest pandemic risk and certainly have the potential to be worse than Covid.”

Since African Swine Fever (ASF) was confirmed in the Americas more than two months ago, the deadly pig disease is now on six continents. The virus is an almost certain death sentence for pigs. The US pork industry – worth $23bn (£17bn) a year – is in a panic, Latin America is on alert, and pork producers in the Dominican Republic and Haiti are haunted by memories of the US-funded eradication of their entire pork population when ASF last hit more than 40 years ago.

Enough chewing the fat, UK politicians: we must stop eating so much red meat | Marco Springmann | The Guardian

Factory farms of disease: how industrial chicken production is breeding the next pandemic | Global health | The Guardian

The US has a silent pig pandemic on its doorstep once again | African Swine Fever | The Guardian

South Korea ranks third in highest annual working hours and as of 2015 it was third in workplace deaths among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

Over 40 percent of all workers are considered “irregular workers,”  many of these irregular workers labor in the gig economy, being beholden to tech giants’ apps.

With an economy and society dominated by corporate conglomerates known as chaebol, South Korean people face increasingly bleak prospects. 

The top 10 percent of earners claimed 45 percent of total income in 2016.

 Real estate speculation has led to a housing crisis, and privatization in education and health care are expanding disparities.

On October 20, at least half a million workers in South Korea — from across the construction, transportation, service, and other sectors — are expected to walk off their jobs in a one-day general strike. 

The strike will also be accompanied by mass demonstrations in urban centers and rural farmlands, culminating in a national all-people’s mobilization in January 2022.

 The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s largest labor union umbrella with 1.1 million members, is organizing these mobilizations in a broad-based front with South Korea’s urban poor and farmers. The KCTU said its members from Seoul, the surrounding Gyeonggi Province and the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, will gather in the capital to hold a massive rally.

The three major goals are the abolition of nonregular workers, a full revision of the Labor Standards Act; job security for workers in industries in transition; and increased government support for housing, education, medical care and transportation.

“We have continuously called upon the government to resolve labour issues for workers who suffered the most from Covid-19, but the government tried to muzzle us without giving an answer,” the KCTU said, accusing the government of attempting to restrict freedom of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.

 Foodbank’s annual Hunger Report, released on Wednesday as part of Anti-Poverty Week, suggests the number of people going hungry in Australia has increased since the coronavirus welfare supplement and job keeper payments were withdrawn.

An estimated 1.2 million children in Australia went hungry in the past year, while one in six adults also faced severe food insecurity, the new report says.

It found 17% of respondents could be “categorised as being severely food insecure”, meaning they have “multiple disruptions to their eating patterns and are forced to reduce their food intake”.

“These individuals and families are often forced to eat smaller meals to make the food last longer or skip meals altogether,” the report said.

Brianna Casey, the chief executive of Foodbank Australia, said incomes levels and the cost of living were a big part of the problem.

“Whether you’re struggling in unemployment or underemployment, or the structural supports we have in Australia are not meeting your needs, we know income levels are contributing to food insecurity in Australia,” she said.

The report found one in three people who were struggling to meet their food needs were “new to this situation”.

More than 1m children in Australia went hungry in past year, report suggests | Australia news | The Guardian

The  latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing that a record 2.9 percent of the workforce quit their jobs in August, which is equivalent to 4.3 million resignations.

If such a high rate of resignations were occurring at a time when jobs were plentiful, it might be seen as a sign of a booming economy where workers have their pick of offers. But the same labor report showed that job openings have also declined.

 A new Harris Poll of people with employment found that more than half of workers want to leave their jobs. Many cite uncaring employers and a lack of scheduling flexibility as reasons for wanting to quit. In other words, millions of American workers have simply had enough.

Jack Kelly, senior contributor to Forbes.com, a pro-corporate news outlet, has defined the trend as, “a sort of workers’ revolution and uprising against bad bosses and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff.”  Kelly goes on to say, “The quitters are making a powerful, positive and self-affirming statement saying that they won’t take the abusive behavior any longer.”

There is now also a growing willingness by unionized workers to go on strike.  Actual strikes or calls for such are coming so thick and fast that former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich has dubbed the situation “an unofficial general strike.”

Workers are flexing their power and corporate America is worried.

Union representation remains extremely low across the United States—the result of decades of concerted corporate-led efforts to undermine the bargaining power of workers. Today only about 12 percent of workers are in a union.

Workers have more leverage when acting as a collective bargaining unit than as individuals. Take Nabisco workers who went on strike in five states this summer. Mondelez International, Nabisco’s parent company, saw record profits during the pandemic with surging sales of its snack foods. So flush was the company with cash that it compensated its CEO with a whopping $16.8 million annual pay and spent $1.5 billion on stock buybacks earlier this year. Meanwhile, the average worker salary was an appallingly low $31,000 a year. Many Nabisco jobs were sent across the border to Mexico, where the company was able to further drive down labor costs.

After weeks on the picket line, striking Nabisco workers, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, returned to work having won modest retroactive raises of 2.25 percent, $5,000 bonuses and increased employer contributions to their retirement plans. The company, which reported a 12 percent increase in revenue earlier this year, can well afford this and more.

Another example of how union organizing made a concrete difference to working conditions is a new contract that 7,000 drug store workers at Rite Aid and CVS stores in Los Angeles just ratified. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 negotiated a nearly 10 percent pay raise for workers as well as improved benefits and safety standards.

 Business groups are lobbying Democrats to weaken pro-labor measures. 

Why Record Numbers of Workers Are Quitting and Striking (pressenza.com)

 British households will be £1,000 worse off next year from a cost of living squeeze created by rising energy prices and shortages of workers and supplies caused by Covid and Brexit, the thinktank Resolution Foundation said. 

It warned that higher levels of inflation would weigh down workers’ earnings next year, contributing to a hit to the average household income in Britain at a time when the government is cutting benefits and raising taxes. Average household disposable income, after adjusting for inflation, would be about 2% lower by the end of 2022.

“Higher inflation reduces the amount of goods and services that households are able to afford, eroding the real value of incomes,” the Foundation explained.

 On top of the inflation, many households would also have to reckon with cuts to universal credit, while workers and businesses must budget for planned national insurance tax increases.

 A “cost of living crunch” was brewing from the combined impact of inflation, tax rises and cuts, the thinktank said: “Together with a £13bn raid on household incomes from increases in NICs [National Insurance contributions], and sharp cuts to universal credit, there will be major headwinds to families’ spending power in the coming months.”

British households will be £1,000 worse off next year, thinktank warns | Household bills | The Guardian

The statistics keep on coming showing the increasing disparity of wealth accumulated by the mega-rich at a time when most people are experiencing increased hardship due to the Covid pandemic. 

A new report released by Americans for Tax Fairness  (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reveal the 70% surge of wealth among America’s richest individuals since March of 2020 has resulted in approximately 130 new billionaires.

There are now 745 people with “10-figure bank accounts” compared to the 614 that existed when the pandemic first hit.

Those 745 billionaires now hold $5 trillion in collective wealth, having added $2.1 trillion since Covid-19 struck.

The $5 trillion in collective wealth, which the groups note is “two-thirds more than the $3 trillion in wealth held by the bottom 50% of U.S. households.”

The new analysis notes, explains that most of these huge billionaires’ gains will go untaxed under current rules and will disappear entirely for tax purposes when they’re passed onto the next generation. 

 Good news for billionaires but over the past 19 months almost 89 million Americans have lost jobs, over 44.9 million have been sickened by the virus, and over 724,000 have died from it. 

ATF executive director Frank Clemente, said, “This growth of billionaire wealth is unfathomable, immoral, and indefensible in good times let alone during a pandemic when so many have struggled with unemployment, illness, and death.” 

‘Indefensible’: US Billionaires Became $2.1 Trillion Richer in 19 Months of Pandemic (commondreams.org)

How long will it be before all those critical voices understand that it is not the tax rules that are at fault but capitalism itself? 

 According to the report jointly released by Food Price for Nutrition, Tufts University and the World Food Program the burden of diseases is increasing worldwide due to lack of healthy food. Many people are deprived of nutritious food due to unaffordable food. 300 million people, or 40 percent of the world’s population, do not have enough money to eat nutritious food. A report released by Oxfam on the Hunger Virus Multiplex expressed concern about the global problem of hunger, with around 11 people dying of starvation every minute worldwide.

The report estimates the price of a meal plate in 168 countries and found that the cheapest original dish costs 0. 0.71.  This dish does not include the cost of cooking.  However, this plate does not meet the nutritional needs of the diet.  If protein-rich red meat is included in this plate, its price will increase by 0 1.03.  Similarly, the price of this plate will increase by 1. 1.07 when chicken is included and by 30 1.30 if fish is included.

The report says the international poverty line standard is 1. 1.90 per day but poor families cannot afford to spend that much on meals.  In a quarter of countries where food is not very cheap, the price of a cheap plate is about 6 percent or more of the average daily income.  Eating cooked food increases the price by 20 percent.  If meat is included in the diet, the price increases by 10 percent.  In such a situation, people do not have the ability to buy healthy food.

A recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021” estimates that 81.1 million people will face starvation in 2020.  In other words, every tenth person in the world is hungry. 

 Another report jointly released on July 12 by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Program and the World Health Organization explains 3 billion people worldwide are deprived of food due to inflation, poverty and unavailability of healthy food, economic inequality.  The report says that the problem of malnutrition among five-year-olds in Africa and Asia has become very serious. More than half of the world’s hunger victims live in Asia. 

 India is ranked 101st in the recently released Global Hunger Index for 116 countries. Pakistan 92nd, Bangladesh 76th and Nepal equal 76th. 

This blog will weep no crocodile tears over the death of Colin Powell. 

Powell knowingly duped many into believing the conspiracy that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction and that an armed invasion was required to disarm Iraq. As a veteran of the Vietnam War where one of his roles was to apply damage control limitation to the events of the My Lai massacre of innocent peasants, Powell was skilled at the strategy being practised of destroying a village to save the village. 

Powell served as the convenient camouflage for the US and UK policy of regime change and well before the actual invasion was launched the justifications presented by him at the United Nations had been shown to be false and misleading. There was no mistaken or misinterpreted intelligence. 

Colin Powell deliberately deceived the United Nations and his only regret was that he was later found out to be lying. 

He actively and directly contributed to the death and suffering of millions and is one of those politicians largely responsible for the tragic consequences that our fellow workers are still experiencing today in the region.

This blog does not mourn his passing in the slightest. 

In response to British plans to create an independent state of Malaysia out of its colonial possessions, Indonesia’s left-leaning President Sukarno launched “Konfrontasi”, or Confrontation, an undeclared war that included military incursions over the border into East Malaysia. Sukarno, like many Indonesians, including the PKI, believed the creation of a Malaysian federation was unwarranted regional interference by the British to maintain their colonial dominance. The British were forced to dedicate huge military and intelligence resources to help the emergent Malaysia counter these Konfrontasi intrusions. British policy was to bring an end to the conflict. But the UK’s objectives did not end there.

Like its US and Australian allies, Britain feared a communist Indonesia. The PKI had three million members and was close to Mao’s China. In Washington, the fall of the Indonesia “domino” into the communist camp was seen as a greater threat than the potential loss of Vietnam.

Sukarno’s non-aligned nationalism, anti-colonialism and growing ties to China were viewed as a threat, one that would be lessened if the president and his foreign minister Subandrio were removed from their posts and the PKI’s influence in Indonesia diminished – most plausibly through the actions of the largely anti-communist Indonesian army. In mid-1965 the opportunity arrived. A secret leftwing group, later called the “30 September movement”, coalesced in Indonesia, convinced, with some justification, that the army was planning to overthrow Sukarno and suppress the PKI.

 It is estimated that at least 500,000 people (some estimates go to three million) linked to the Indonesia Communist party (PKI) were eliminated between 1965 and 1966 in one of the most brutal massacres of the post-war 20th century. The campaign of mass murder, now known to have been orchestrated by the Indonesian army, was later described by the CIA as one of the worst mass murders of the century.

Recently declassified Foreign Office documents show British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians,  including army generals, to “cut out” the “communist cancer”. As the massacres started in October 1965 British officials called for “the PKI and all communist organisations” to “be eliminated”. The nation, they warned, would be in danger “as long as the communist leaders are at large and their rank and file are allowed to go unpunished”.  In 1965 specialist propagandists from the Foreign Office’s information research department (IRD) were sent to Singapore to produce black propaganda to undermine Sukarno’s regime. It produced a newsletter purporting to be produced by Indonesian émigrés and targeted at prominent and influential individuals, including army generals. It also operated a radio station broadcasting into Indonesia.

The propaganda advised that “procrastination and half-hearted measures can only lead to… our ultimate and complete destruction”. Over the following weeks, massacres of alleged PKI members, few if any with any involvement in the attempted coup, and other leftists spread across the archipelago. There can be little doubt that British diplomats became aware of what was happening. Not only could GCHQ intercept and read Indonesian government communications, but its Chai Keng monitoring station in Singapore enabled the British to trace the progress of army units involved in suppressing the PKI.

It was policy  “to conceal the fact that the butcheries have taken place with the encouragement of the generals”, in the hope that the generals “will do us better than the old gang”.

The then “coordinator of political warfare”, a Foreign Office propaganda specialist called Norman Reddaway, considered the downfall of Sukarno to be one of Britain’s greatest propaganda victories. In a letter written years later he said “the discrediting of Sukarno was quickly successful. His Confrontasi was costing us about £250,000,000 a year. It was countered and abolished at minimal cost by IRD research and techniques in six months.”

The outcome of the turmoil was a brutal and corrupt 32-year military dictatorship whose legacy shapes Indonesia to this day.

Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists | Indonesia | The Guardian