Low-income countries are struggling to protect themselves against climate change, officials and experts have told the BBC. Organisations representing 90 countries say that their plans to prevent damage have already been outpaced by climate-induced disasters, which are intensifying and happening more regularly.

“Our existing plans are not enough to protect our people,” says Sonam Wangdi, chair of the UN’s Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group on climate change.

 Dr Hugh Saddler,  an honorary associate professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy,  in research published by the think tank, the Australia Institute, ranked the performance of 23 OECD countries and Russia on eight climate measures, including share of electricity from non-fossil fuels, per capita emissions from transport and overall emissions intensity of each economy.

He found Australia was ranked 20th or worse in seven of the eight categories. In relative terms, it had not improved in any category since 2005 and had gone backwards compared to other developed countries in four.

“Despite the last decade of growth in solar and wind energy, fossil fuels still dominate Australia’s energy sector and its rate of electrification – that is getting off coal, oil and gas for energy – is one of the worst in the OECD,” Saddler said.

Saddler explained his research showed the government’s “so-called gas-fired economic recovery”, under which the Coalition has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to fossil fuel power and opening up new gas basins, was “absolutely counter to the needs of Australia’s energy system transition”.

He pointed out that, “Over the past 15 years, Australia has squandered its golden opportunity to decouple its energy sector from fossil fuels, unlike so many other OECD countries,” he said. “As a result, Australians are left with high-polluting and inefficient power, heating, housing and transport. This also drives up our cost of living and drives down our energy productivity.”

He found all of Australia’s emissions reductions since 2005 have been due to farming activities, mainly due to a large fall in the amount of “land-clearing”. In basic terms, the annual destruction of forests and other ecosystems for agriculture and timber collection decreased over the decade from 2007 to 2017 – it still happens, but at a slower rate. Saddler’s report said if this change in how land was used was excluded from national emissions accounts Australia’s emissions had increased by 7% since 2005. 

“Large one-off reductions in land-clearing are in no way evidence of a trend towards the decarbonisation of the Australian economy,” the report said. “For the purposes of international comparison, it is important to note that most other developed countries have no capacity to benefit from large reductions in land-clearing for the simple reason that they cleared most of their land centuries ago.”

Findings included:

Australia had the second-most emissions-intensive energy system after Poland, a big coal producer.

It achieved the second smallest increase in energy productivity across the 15 years, ahead of only Portugal. This is despite federal and state energy ministers releasing a national energy productivity plan in 2015.

It has significantly increased its share of wind and solar energy but other countries have moved faster – it slipped from 13th (in 2005) to 14th (in 2019) on a ranking of the share of electricity from new renewable energy generation.

It was one of only three countries to have increased total energy combustion emissions.

Prior to Covid-19, it had the third-highest per capita transport emissions, behind the US and Canada. Both North American countries reduced per capita transport emissions faster between 2005 and 2019 than Australia.

Australia ‘lagging at the back of the pack’ of OECD countries on climate action, analysis finds | Environment | The Guardian

 

In the middle of the pain of the pandemic last year and having cut humanitarian foreign aid, the UK government chose to announce a nearly 17 billion pound increase in military spending spread over four years.

Challenging the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, in March, the government announced it would raise the cap on the number of warheads the country possessed by a staggering 40 percent, and that it would no longer make public the number of operational nuclear weapons that it controlled.

The U.K. recently sent an aircraft carrier and broader naval strike group into the South China Sea. 

This follows another naval deployment when the U.K. sent a navy strike force into the waters off Crimea — territory illegally annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014  to show Britain’s sympathy for Ukrainian claims to sovereignty over Crimea.  A confrontation came horrifyingly close after Russia scrambled fighter jets and navy vessels reportedly fired warning shots at the approaching British ships.

Britain is now the only G7 country cutting rather than increasing its international aid commitments. 

It is, at the same time, spending more on its military than any other G7 member apart from the United States, making it the fifth-highest military spender on the planet. 

In 2020, Germany spent 1.4 percent of its GDP on its military, and France, itself in the middle of a significant military build-up, spent 2.1 percent. Britain, by contrast, spent 2.2 percent.

The UK Is Embarking on Largest Military Spending Hike Since the Cold War (truthout.org)

 That India performs much worse on stunting than countries poorer than it. India has one of the highest rates of child stunting in the world: more than a third of its children under five years are short enough for their age to be counted as “stunted” under the World Health Organisation’s guidelines. This is more than the stunting rate in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world.

Researchers have theorised that it has to do with unhygienic conditions found in India due to the prevalence of open defecation as well as the fact that daughters are mistreated in India compared to sons.

Along with hygiene and gender, a third factor might be making India’s rates of stunting shoot up: caste and communal discrimination.

A new paper by Ashwini Deshpande, professor of economics at Ashoka University and Rajesh Ramachandran, a post-doctoral researcher at the faculty of economics at Heidelberg University, finds that stunting varies starkly when it comes to caste and community in India.

Most research till now has compared India as a whole in trying to determine why it lagged other countries so severely when it came to child health. Contrary to the all-India trend, upper-caste Hindus actually have stunting rates (26%) lower than sub-Saharan African children. However, Indian children from Dalit and Adivasi communities (Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe) have stunting rates significantly higher than those of African children. A similar trend holds for Other Backward Classes, a vast group of castes in between upper castes and Dalits in the social order. for Dalit children, their rates of stunting sharply increase in relation to the practice of untouchability.

Casteism and communalism: Why Indian children are shorter than even their counterparts in Africa (scroll.in)

 About 42 percent of Argentina’s 19 million people live below the poverty line, with unemployment at 10.2 percent amid an economic downturn worsened by COVID-19.

Tens of thousands of Argentinians have protested across the country over poverty and unemployment as an economic crisis worsened by the coronavirus pandemic continues to hit working people hard. Protests also took place in Buenos Aires and other parts of the country, including in Argentina’s second city of Cordoba and the western city of Mendoza.

The soup kitchens are seeing whole families coming to eat and many of the children have to be attended to by health professionals because they are malnourished.

“If you don’t protest, if you don’t make noise, they won’t listen to you. You can’t achieve much by staying silent,” said Estela Avila, 59, who is the president of a new union called Asociación de Trabajadoras del Hogar y Afines (Association of Household and Related Workers).

  We must brace ourselves for ever-rising sea levels: extreme weather, drought, famine — all of which, according to the World Bank, could result in 143-million climate refugees by 2050.

The largest single U.S. emitter of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is the Pentagon, the Department of Defense.

Brown University’s Cost of War Project reports America’s military’s GHG exceed those of many industrialized nations, such as Denmark, Sweden and Portugal, with the “War on Terror” alone producing 1,267 million metric tons of GHG’s, the carbon equivalent of a 12-million pound mountain of coal. One B-52 Stratofortress, Boeing’s long-range bomber, consumes as much fuel in an hour as the average car driver uses in seven years.

The Pentagon Is Killing Us – Consortiumnews

 Amaranth is a pseudocereal – not a grain, but a seed, like quinoa and buckwheat – indigenous to Mesoamerica, but also grown in China, India, south-east Asia, west Africa and the Caribbean.  It is a complete protein with all nine essential amino acids, amaranth is a highly nutritious source of manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and antioxidant

 Before the Spanish arrived in the Americas, the Aztecs and Maya cultivated amaranth as an excellent source of proteins, but also for ceremonial purposes. When Spanish conquistadors arrived on the continent in the 16th century, they threatened to cut off the hands of anyone who grew the crop, fearing that the Indigenous Americans’ spiritual connection to plants and the land might undermine Christianity. Yet, farmers continued secretly growing amaranth, which sprouted up like a weed in their fields – even as far north as the modern-day United States. Although the Spanish outlawed amaranth when they arrived in Central America, Mexico and the south-western United States, Indigenous farmers preserved the seeds – which grew with remarkable resilience.

“This is a plant that could feed the world,” say its eager advocates.

Seed exchanges, including those in New Mexico and California, are part of a larger movement to reclaim Indigenous food systems amid growing recognition of their sustainability and resilience in a time of climate crisis and industrialized agriculture.

“Supporting Indigenous people coming together to share knowledge” is vital to the land back movement, a campaign to re-establish Indigenous stewardship of Native land, and liberation of Native peoples, Tsosie-Peña said. “Our food, our ability to feed ourselves, is the foundation of our freedom and sovereignty as land-based peoples.” Tsosie-Peña says “planting it today feels like an act of resistance”. Re-establishing relationships with other Indigenous communities across international borders is part of a “larger movement of self-determination of Indigenous peoples”, she says, to return to the “alternative economies that existed before capitalism, that existed before the United States”.

Maria Aurelia Xitumul echoes Tsosie-Peña. “The goal is to share experiences, not necessarily generate income, like capitalists. What we want is for the whole world to produce their own food,” she said. “For the seeds, distance doesn’t exist. Borders don’t exist.”

‘It could feed the world’: amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization | Environment | The Guardian

 

What we doYearly

By the end of the last week of February, we hold our Spring School and Annual Conference and in the last week of October, we hold our Autumn School and Membership Meeting and a Public Meeting as well. Over and above, in cases of important events, we do have rules about holding Special Party Conference, Special Membership Meeting and Party Vote as necessary.

 

Monthly

The Executive Committee meets usually at 5 PM on a pre-decided date of a month. 

 

Weekly

Every Sunday from 5 PM to 8 PM we sit in our Study Circle and Discussion Meetings. Agenda and subjects cover all theories of knowledge and information which include mainly: historical materialist analyses of the evolution of human life and society, economics, Marxian theories, books and articles written by Marx and Engels and other socialists, Leninism, words and work of leftist parties, reform or revolution, and all various books and journals, organization and activities of our party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. 

 

All our programmes are open to all. In the Public Meetings too after the completion of the speech by the speaker the listeners are allowed sufficient time to discuss a question/answer session. Why waste time? Contact over the phone, know our whereabouts and come up in any of our events. Persons eager to know us in detail are welcome!

Democracy in action

How do you organise a political party without leaders or followers? Come and find out. We’ve been doing just that since our inauguration in March 1995 drawing heritage from the Socialist Party of Great Britain that began in 1904.

 

Our party’s policies are decided by a secret ballot of all our members following full discussion and debate at our Autumn Membership Meeting and Annual Conference.

 

In the same way, the members of the Executive Committee and party officers are elected directly by the membership as a whole. Members of party committees are nominated by branches with subsequent appointment by the EC.

 

In between party conferences, it is the work of the Executive Committee to coordinate the party’s activities in line with decisions made at past conferences and party polls.

 In common with other parties of the WSM, the WSP (India) was formed as a revolutionary party opposed to Leninism and seeking to win control of the state by parliamentary means in order to abolish it and establish socialism on a worldwide scale.



Since then the party remains the only World Socialist Party in Asia.

We have no secrets

 

All of our meetings, without exception, are open to anyone.

 

Come and see how we are organising for a world of universal ownership and democratic control. A world free from the tyranny of classes, nations, the state, leaders, money, wage and war.

 

You’ll be most welcome.

Website The World Socialist Party (India) (worldsocialistpartyindia.org)

Facebook The World Socialist Party (India) – หน้าหลัก | Facebook

257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block (East),

Kolkata – 700086

Tel: 033-2425-0208,

Email: wspindia@hotmail.com

Our aim is to build a movement working towards socialism, a democratic society based upon co-operation and production for use, a world community without national borders. An end to buying and selling and money, where goods will be voluntarily produced and services voluntarily supplied to meet people’s needs. People will freely take the things they need. 

The World Socialist Party (India) is an organisation of equals with no leaders.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.” – Marx

● Change the world with Socialism!

● Capitalism means legal plunder based on wage-slavery; end capitalism!

● If capitalism exists, so exist exploitation, plunder, war, terrorism and pollution; end capitalism!

● Stop production for profit, start production for use to save the environment and our species from the risk of universal death!

● Wage-slavery or starvation death – these are not alternatives, but two-pronged terrorism!

● End wage-slavery to end starvation death!

● End employment to end unemployment!

● End employment with universal ownership via universal suffrage!

● Throw away election manifestos; just win Socialism!

● Abundance for all – that is Socialism. Principle: From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.

● Socialism needs you – you need Socialism; recognise Socialism – vote only for Socialism!

● Elect mandated MPs for Socialism only!

● Inscribe on the banner: “the annulation of all property and territorial rights; all that is on and in the Earth becomes the common heritage of the whole human race”.

● Establish universal ownership world-over by organising the working class worldwide!

● Emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

● Join us to develop the independent leader-free democratic organisation of the working class!

● Religion and Socialism exclude each other.

● Indiscriminate construction of factories during capitalism’s decadence brings little ‘development’ with more unemployment, poverty and pollution.

● Take the road of cooperation for life to end competition for a living!

● Workers have no country; you have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to win; workers of the world unite!

ONE WORLD, ONE PEOPLE 

 A vast superyacht built for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been sold for almost £200m and is now available to rent for anyone with for about £1m a week, a life of luxury on the high seas. The 126-metre Octopus was the world’s largest yacht when she was built for Allen in 2003

The eight-deck Octopus has 13 guest suites, including a private owner’s deck. There is also a cinema, a gym, a spa, a basketball court, a pool (which converts into a dancefloor) and a pizza oven. The onboard recording studio has been used by Mick Jagger, Bono,  It features not one but two helicopters, two submarines and space for seven tenders and a large SUV. The yacht has quarters for up to 63 crew.

Secret buyer nabs Microsoft grandee’s superyacht for £200m | Microsoft | The Guardian

 Virgin Galactic has reopened ticket sales for its space flights at a starting price of $450,000 a seat. Prospective customers will have the option to buy single seats, friends and family packages, or reserve the whole plane.