Countries facing crises frequently do not appear on the radar of the world media. The suffering of those living in Lebanon, a small nation of six million, is one example of the neglect of the news outlets.

According to the World Bank Lebanon Economic Monitor, the economic and financial ranks in the top 10, possibly top 3, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century.

Lebanon, the host of a great many refugees from neighbouring conflicts, is sinking deeper into poverty. Many Lebanese blame the ruling class for the devastating, multiple crises plaguing the nation, including a dramatic currency with inflation growing to 281% between June 2019 and June 2021. An alliance of assorted religious and political factions have captured power among themselves and has come to govern almost entirely in their own interests, through a system of patronage and cronyism, enjoying years of state funding while public services fell into a state of disrepair.

There are severe shortages in medicine and fuel. Poverty has drastically increased over the past year and is now affecting about three-quarters of the total population according to the  “Multidimensional Poverty in Lebanon: Painful Reality and Uncertain Prospects” report by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). An even higher figure of 82% lives in multidimensional poverty, which takes into account factors other than income, such as access to health, education and public utilities. 

The country has also now been drawn into breaking the sanctions imposed against Iran with its fuel shortages requiring Iranian oil supplies to be delivered. Lebanon’s security agencies have been raiding petrol stations and suppliers allegedly hoarding fuel. Lebanon’s central bank subsidises medicines, fuel and wheat to keep them at the country’s official pegged rate of $1 to 1,500 Lebanese pounds. However, with its reserves is running dry.  Fuel shortages and power cuts have paralysed businesses such as restaurants, shops and industry as well as vital services like hospitals. UNICEF’s executive director, Henrietta Fore, said that ‘more than four million people face the prospect of critical water shortages or being completely cut off from safe water supply in the coming days’. The reason for the acute water shortage was that there was no longer sufficient power to run Lebanon’s pumping stations and wells. 

Lebanon has also now entered into an agreement with another diplomatic pariah, Bashar al-Assad, to facilitate the transfer of energy through Syria.

ESCWA last year, proposed for the richest 10 per cent in Lebanon, who held nearly $91 billion of wealth at the time, to fund the gap for poverty eradication by making annual contributions of 1% of their net wealth. Alas, a forlorn hope although it did not stop ESCWA Executive Secretary, Rola Dashti, repeating her call for the establishment of a social solidarity fund.

 President Michel Aoun confessed that “The foiling of every plan proposed for financial and economic recovery, or the failure to devise it in the first place, means one thing, which is that the corrupt system that is still controlling the country and the people fears accountability and penalization.” He added,  lamented that “the people are robbed and are being robbed on daily basis.”

Naturally enough, he exempted himself from his own condemnation.

 From Extinction Rebellion’s Twitter

“Just to be clear we are not a socialist movement. We do not trust any single ideology, we trust the people, chosen by sortition (like jury service) to find the best future for us all through a #CitizensAssembly A banner saying ‘socialism or extinction’ does not represent us”

XR sees talk of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ as politics while they see themselves as ‘beyond politics’ urging all people to bring pressure on governments to do more to tackle climate change.

 This means that they are basically a pressure group employing direct action and civil disobedience tactics to get capitalist governments to adopt a particular policy.

Leaving the way out to citizens assemblies is a cop-out. For all the merits of such assemblies and their potential usefulness in decision-making in a socialist society, today, most citizens will have the same ideas as they express in elections, i.e that they see no alternative to capitalism and so would come up with proposals to be implemented under capitalism.

President Xi Jinping of China intends to start regulating excessive wealth to ensure “common prosperity” within the country. 

In 2020, the richest 20% of China’s population earned more than 10 times the poorest 20%. 

 In 2018, the country’s richest 10% earned 41% of income, while the poorest 50% of the population earned only 14.4% of total income.

In 2020, the country of 1.4 billion claimed that it had achieved that goal in eight years, lifting nearly 100 million people out of extreme poverty. But experts dispute the truth of this claim, given, in part, that China’s definition of the poverty line is $1.69, compared to the World Bank’s $1.90.

 The US legal system has effectively allowed one of the country’s richest families to buy its way out of accountability for what a White House commission called “America’s national nightmare” of mass opioid addiction. Big money has a powerful and malign influence on many aspects of American life.

A New York bankruptcy court approved a deal for the dissolution of the opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma, which kicked off the opioid epidemic two decades ago with its illegal drive to sell a high-strength painkiller, OxyContin. Purdue’s owners, members of two branches of the now-notorious Sackler family, are estimated to have made more than $10bn from the drug – even as the opioid crisis claimed more than 600,000 lives, with the toll climbing higher by the year.

 The Sacklers in return for handing over only a small fraction of the money they made from OxyContin still remain one of the richest families in the country, while continuing to deny their responsibility for their role in creating the opioid crisis.

Purdue Pharma’s reputation is little better than that of a Mexican cartel. The company has twice pleaded guilty to felonies, in 2007 and last year, including lying about the risk of addiction from OxyContin, bribing doctors to prescribe it and defrauding the federal government. But that barely scratches the surface of the company’s corruption in pursuit of profit: it used its money and influence to warp the practice of medicine, compromise drug regulators and keep open the doors to mass prescribing of opioids even as evidence of an epidemic grew.

Several members of the Sackler family served on the company’s board and as senior executives, and some were directly involved in the drive to push OxyContin on unsuspecting Americans. And they happily creamed off the profits. Dr Richard Sackler, a former president and chairman of Purdue Pharma, was instrumental in persuading the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve OxyContin on the false grounds that it was less addictive than other prescription opioids. He then promised that “a blizzard of prescriptions” for the drug would bury the competition. When Sackler was asked at the bankruptcy hearing whether he, his family or his firm bore any responsibility for the opioid epidemic, he simply replied: “No”.

 Yet the bankruptcy process has granted them sweeping immunity from further civil lawsuits over the opioid crisis without acknowledgment of wrongdoing. In fact, in exchange for a payment of $4.5bn, less than half of their earnings from Purdue, the Sacklers as individuals won’t have to declare personal bankruptcy.

Georgetown university law professor, Adam Levitin, told Congress in July, the Sacklers have worked the system so that they “will actually emerge from Purdue’s bankruptcy richer than they went into it” because the payments will be spread over nearly a decade during which the family’s assets are likely to grow by more than $4.5bn.

 The agreement deprives those victimised by the Sacklers, who oversaw and profited from Purdue Pharma’s criminal behaviour, of their right to a day in court. Other critics of the decision have wondered how a bankruptcy court can grant legal immunity to people who have not declared bankruptcy.

But that is the practice that has evolved under laws, many written under the influence of corporations, that enable businesses to in effect hand-pick the judges who will handle their bankruptcy cases. The US has 375 bankruptcy judges but, as Levitin told Congress, just three oversaw the majority of cases filed by large companies last year. Purdue Pharma chose to file with one of those three, Judge Robert Drain, to decide the conditions of its bankruptcy. Although Purdue is based in Connecticut, it filed for bankruptcy in White Plains, New York, where Drain is the only bankruptcy judge. It’s unlikely to have gone unnoticed by the Sacklers’ lawyers that Drain had an unusual record of staying lawsuits against third parties who have not filed for bankruptcy.

 of Drain’s first steps was to block efforts to sue individual members of the Sackler family, even though they were separate from the Purdue bankruptcy case. Then he permitted the Sacklers to effectively hold the plaintiffs hostage by offering a stark choice between settling for a cut of the profits of misery in return for wiping the legal slate clean or facing years of court battles. States, municipalities and families desperate for money to cope with the huge social consequences of the epidemic were left with little choice but to agree, although many expressed their distaste.

Washington state’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, called the plan “morally and legally bankrupt”. Sackler and other members of his family have spent their time smearing the victims. They have claimed that OxyContin was a legal drug used illegally and that responsibility, therefore, falls on the “criminal addicts” who overdosed. As evidence of a crisis grew and doctors witnessing the devastation sounded warnings, the din of corporate money drowned them out. The quarter of a billion dollars a year the drug industry spends on lobbying bought the complicity of politicians, influenced regulators, weakened investigations by the justice department and stalled action by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Purdue used its political muscle to head off even more serious criminal charges and to keep its executives out of prison.

 No other country has experienced the same scale of opioid addiction and death, in part because corporations in other countries do not wield the same influence over the practice and regulation of medicine. Neither did Purdue act alone in this crisis. Drug distributors and pharmacies jumped on the bandwagon. Other opioid manufacturers, such as Johnson & Johnson, raked in the profits of narcotic painkiller addiction.  The drug industry kept the doors to mass prescribing of opioids open for years not because they were an effective way to treat pain but because they were hugely profitable. Those same firms are now increasingly agreeing to payouts to head off a torrent of lawsuits – but it’s hard to conclude that they regard it as anything more than the cost of doing business. Not least because, like the members of the Sackler family behind Purdue, none of them admits to having done anything wrong.

Opioids have killed 600,000 Americans. The Sacklers just got off basically scot-free | Chris McGreal | The Guardian

 Leading European banks are booking around €20bn (£17bn) a year – equivalent to 14% of their total profits – in tax havens, with Barclays, HSBC and NatWest Group among those enjoying the lowest tax rates, according to an analysis, conducted by the EU Tax Observatory, of 36 big banks required to publicly report country-by-country data on their activities.

Banks said to enjoy a particularly low effective tax rate on their profits, of less than 15%, including Barclays, HSBC and NatWest.

The use of tax havens by banks is seen by many activists as particularly egregious since more than €1.5tn in taxpayer money was used to rescue ailing banks in Europe after the 2008 financial crisis.

Tax systems around the world have been increasingly left behind in recent years by the shifting of profits by large multinationals. Tax abuse by multinationals and avoidance by rich individuals is said by the Tax Justice Network campaign group to cost nations $427bn a year in lost revenues. The percentage of profits booked in tax havens has not changed over the last seven years despite hopes that country-by-country reporting introduced in 2014 would lead to a shift in practice.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 130 countries, representing more than 90% of global GDP, backed a global minimum tax rate on multinationals of 15% last July, after an initial attempt by US president Joe Biden to secure agreement on a 21% rate. Parallel measures to limit the shifting of profits into tax havens by the world’s 100 largest companies were proposed by Biden and are now under discussion at the OECD. The proposed treaty would give governments in the countries where multinationals have headquartered the right to apply a top-up levy to ensure the full global minimum rate is paid on all income.

However, reports suggest the list of 100 companies is likely to exclude banks after lobbying by the City of London and other international financial centres.

The research names 17 countries and territories as havens for the purposes of the study: Bahamas, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Macao, Malta, Mauritius, Panama, and Qatar. Of those territories, the highest tax rate is found in Luxembourg (15%), while Bermuda, Panama, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands have a zero rate.

European banks storing €20bn a year in tax havens | Tax and spending | The Guardian

 Europe’s 25 largest banks are still failing to present comprehensive plans that address both the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, putting their sustainability pledges in doubt, research by investment campaign group ShareAction has found. It said none of the banks it reviewed were taking action across all key areas.

These are: biodiversity; exposure to high-carbon sectors; policies restricting services to sectors such as oil and gas; and linking executive pay to progress on climate issues.

Europe’s top 25 banks failing on green pledges, campaigners warn | Corporate governance | The Guardian

https://wigandiggersfestival.org/

Manchester Branch will have a stall at the Wigan Diggers Festival on Sat 11 September, starting at 11am

The festival takes place at The Wiend in the centre of Wigan. 

There’s music, food and beer, as well as political etc stalls.

 In the past, it’s generally been an enjoyable event, as well as a good way to spread socialist ideas

Comrades should feel free to come along any time during the day.

 The wealthy countries’ deals with vaccine manufacturers have limited the vaccines available to COVAX and led to vaccine hoarding.

Wealthy countries could potentially have a surplus of more than one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses available by the end of the year that is not designated as donations to poorer nations, according to a new analysis

Vaccine stock in Western countries has reached 500 million doses this month, with 360 million not earmarked for donations, according to new research by data analytics firm Airfinity. By the end of the year, these countries will have a potential of 1.2 billion surplus vaccine shots, with the overwhelming majority – 1.06 billion – not marked for donations, it said.

World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told reporters he was “really disappointed” with the scope of vaccine donations worldwide as many countries struggle to provide first and second doses to more than small fractions of their populations, while wealthier nations maintain growing vaccine stockpiles. Ghebreyesus went on to say that of the 4.8 billion vaccine doses delivered globally, 75 percent have gone to only 10 countries – while vaccine coverage in Africa is at less than two percent.

John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), who described the vaccine rollout on the continent as a “total disappointment“.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accused rich countries of committing a “moral outrage” by stockpiling COVID-19 doses while poor countries were struggling to get supplies.

“We are in a new ‘arms’ race – to get vaccines into people as quickly as possible – but this is an arms race where the West have a stranglehold on the vaccine supplies,” Brown said.

Rich countries to have 1.2bn surplus COVID vaccine doses | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera

Contrary to the entry in Wikipedia,  the World Socialist Party of New Zealand (WSPNZ) has not yet disappeared. As it is often said, the news of the demise is premature. 

Four ageing members remain and are striving to keep alive the tradition of Impossiblism which when it developed included many socialist luminaries such as Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue.

However, as things stand, with so few members, the odds are not favourable for its survival into the future. But also, as they say, while there is still breath, not all is lost and perhaps there can be a revival of a socialist organisation.

Formerly known as the Socialist Party of New Zealand and founded in 1930 although its roots go well back to the dawn of socialist ideas in these islands, the WSPNZ clings to existence in the age of the internet. A new website still at the design stage promises to be the gateway for the revival of its socialist ideas that are held to be unique and that are surprisingly modern in content despite their long history.

At one time, the WSPNZ did possess a presence and hold a certain amount of sway within New Zealand’s workers’ movement. A number of its members were significantly active within the trade unions. There were socialist stalwarts such as Ron Everson, a militant organiser in the great waterfront lockout and bitter strike of 1951.

It is perhaps true to think that politics is a young person’s game, full of idealism and hope for the future, but we witness from Noam Chomsky and Bernie Sanders that the wisdom of years should not be so easily dismissed. The WSPNZ has acquired the collective knowledge of decades of analysis. Its principles have withstood the test of time and circumstances and are held to remain valid to this day, despite all the claims to the contrary and all the efforts to refute its ideas. 

Can it rebuild?

The WSPNZ expresses a unique political position and presents interpretations of Marxism, rarely heard these days since the rise and domination of the left-wing reformist and Bolshevik parties.

Although with just four members and appealing for new people to join, not every applicant will be accepted for membership, only those who understand and wish to seek socialism and only socialism. And there is a test, albeit a rudimentary basic one, not demanding an academic’s knowledge of Marxist theory, to ensure that only committed and confirmed socialists join.

 In fact, when the WSPNZ was previously in a position to stand candidates and contest elections they insisted that they did not want the votes from those who were not in agreement with their goal of socialism and it would decline to present a platform of palliative reforms to attract voters. Now, when it could no longer offer its alternative the WSPNZ does not promote a vote for the lesser evil but advocates a spoilt ballot paper

The WSPNZ’s principled position differs, fundamentally, from every other political party, because it takes the attitude that it is necessary for the working people to understand the world they lived in. Fellow workers are faced with the problems of poverty and insecurity and can not remove these problems until it understands the cause of them. Unfortunately,  the overwhelming majority of the workers do not comprehend the capitalist system of society in which we live, and in which we are exploited. While our fellow workers continue to lack knowledge of the nature of the wages system, they will be forced to engage in never-ending struggles which merely maintain their subject status as wage-slaves.  

 But when that situation changes, they will act collectively and in unison to capture political control of Parliament. Those on the left who denounce Parliament as useless should note it controls the forces of repression, the coercive power of the armed forces and police which means any undemocratic defiance is suicidal and doomed to failure. Once in Parliament socialist delegates would be the instrument of a class conscious and informed socialist working class so there is no requirement for the role of any leadership.

As indicated by the adoption of “World” to its name the WSPNZ is a committed to the concept of world socialism being a constituent part of the World Socialist Movement (an aspiration for the time being and sadly not the reality) for the common ownership and of the means of production, opposing the various command economies of nationalisation of labour parties or the state-ownership of the former Soviet Union. The aim of the WSPNZ is the end of the private property exchange economy and all that goes with it such as buying and selling, prices and wages and money itself.

 Some New Zealanders may now recognise a similarity with the Zeitgeist Movement and the Money Free Party who are now relatively active in New Zealand although they have discarded the language of Marx to appeal to more people. The last of the WSPNZ stay true to the party’s origins. 

Wikipedia obituary of the WSPNZ may well prove right in the course of time but as long as one WSPNZ member lives,  the goal of convincing others to take up and carry the baton of world socialism has not died.

 Contact moggiegrayson@gmail.com to keep the World Socialist Party alive

The history of the SPNZ and later the WSPNZ can be read at this link

https://www.worldsocialism.org/nz/auckland/hist.htm