Thousands of residents have fled flooded communities and swollen rivers in the Philippine capital, Manila, and outlying provinces after days of torrential monsoon rains. The northern Philippines has been swamped by days of monsoon rains that flooded low-lying villages and set off minor landslides. Officials say they are struggling to open more emergency shelters.  In the city of Marikina in the capital region, nearly 15,000 residents were evacuated to safety overnight as waters rose alarmingly in a major river.

Marikina mayor, Marcelino Teodoro blamed years of illegal logging in nearby mountains and heavy siltation in the Marikina River for constant flooding in his city.

 Extreme weather events have hit nearly all corners of the globe in recent weeks, bringing floods to China, India and Western Europe and heat waves to North America and Russia’s Siberia, highlighting fears about the impact of climate change. The Philippines is hit by about 20 tropical storms a year but a warmer Pacific Ocean will make storms more powerful and bring heavier rain, meteorologists say.

The Philippines is also suffering one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19 in Asia and has tightened curbs to prevent the spread of the more infectious Delta variant. 

With more than 1.54mn cases and 27,131 deaths, the Philippines has the second-highest number of Covid-19 infections and fatalities in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia. Authorities are struggling to allow social distancing among the displaced residents and prevent evacuation camps from turning into epicentres of Covid-19 infections

  316 people are shot every day in the U.S.A  and 106 of them die.

To get a full picture of the gun violence epidemic, many experts say it’s important to look at not just the number of people killed but those who have survived gunshots and will likely need support for years to come.

  316 people are shot every day in the U.S.A  and 106 of them die.

To get a full picture of the gun violence epidemic, many experts say it’s important to look at not just the number of people killed but those who have survived gunshots and will likely need support for years to come.

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’

Venue: Fircroft College, Birmingham

Dates: 14th-16th July 2000

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’ – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

Transferred from tape cassettes. Some of the discussion sections are of very poor quality. The worst parts have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

1 An Evening With William Morris – Edwin Walters (14th July 2000)

2 The Utopian Tradition – Steve Coleman (15th July 2000)

3 Morris and the Romantic Movement – Ron Cook (15th July 2000)

4 The Stateless Society – Richard Headicar (15th July 2000)

5 A Dream of John Ball – Adam Buick (16th July 2000)

6 From Nowhere to Somewhere – Paddy Shannon and Stan Parker (16th July 2000)

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’

Venue: Fircroft College, Birmingham

Dates: 14th-16th July 2000

Summer School 2000 – ‘William Morris’ – spgb.net (worldsocialism.org)

Transferred from tape cassettes. Some of the discussion sections are of very poor quality. The worst parts have been deleted and replaced with 2 seconds of silence.

1 An Evening With William Morris – Edwin Walters (14th July 2000)

2 The Utopian Tradition – Steve Coleman (15th July 2000)

3 Morris and the Romantic Movement – Ron Cook (15th July 2000)

4 The Stateless Society – Richard Headicar (15th July 2000)

5 A Dream of John Ball – Adam Buick (16th July 2000)

6 From Nowhere to Somewhere – Paddy Shannon and Stan Parker (16th July 2000)

 Breaking the Silence (BtS), an Israeli charity staffed by IDF  veterans, said its new publication shows that the Israeli military is increasingly part of sustaining an “ecosystem of violence” in the Palestinian occupied territories because they provide a “cloak of protection” for the settlers who are becoming more aggressive. Israel’s security forces are complicit in a “drastic surge” in violence committed by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

BtS’s advocacy director, Ori Givati, their new report, shows “that there is no action nor will from the government or the military to stop settlers from attacking”. He explained that “This is part of a very well-planned strategic mission of the settlers to take over more and more of Palestinian land,” he said.

He said that “Settler violence is not committed in a vacuum. They are the biggest criminal enterprise in Israel, and not only are they immune from repercussions but they receive embracement from the military and government.”

BtS said its report illustrates the impunity of violent settlers to legal consequence, the lack of clear orders for soldiers regarding managing settlers and what the group calls the “duplicitous relationship’” between settlers and soldiers, “at times nurturing close relationship with the soldiers, and at the next moment enacting violence towards them”.

Data from the United Nations and, separately, data collated by Israeli rights group B’Tselem, shows a marked increase in violent incidents committed by Israeli settlers compared with previous years.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) shows that more Palestinians were injured either by settlers or members of the Israeli security forces in attacks in the first six months of this year than in the whole of 2020. This was almost on par with the yearly total in 2019.

According to B’Tselem, they have logged a 33 per cent increase in attacks during the first six months of 2021 compared with the same period last year. The group said this was “enacted with an increasingly open cooperation by Israel’s security forces and with the full backing of Israeli authorities”.

 B’Tselem told The Independent. “This violence is a constant element of Israel’s apartheid regime, aspiring to remove Palestinians from their lands in order to facilitate their takeover,” it added.

According to Israeli monitoring group Peace Now, the surge in violence also tallies with a spike in settlement expansion in the West Bank – in particular, the soaring numbers of outposts.

“Settlers see themselves as a state within a state,” the former captain said. “Some of them openly talk about arming militia groups in order to fight the Israeli army if they ever change policy and try to enforce the laws against the Palestinians against them.”

 Thousands of Hungarians have joined the annual Budapest Pride march to support LGBTQ people and protest against a law that limits teaching about homosexuality and transgender issues in schools.

Demonstrators at the march through the streets of central Budapest on Saturday said the legislation was divisive. Organisers said in a statement the rally would show opposition to “power-hungry politicians” and reject intimidation of LGBTQ people.

“Instead of protecting minorities, the Fidesz-Christian Democrat government is using laws to make members of the LGBTQ community outcasts in their own country,” they said.

Populist Victor Orbán owes much of his success to a tough line on immigration but that issue has receded from the political agenda, so his focus has shifted to gender and sexuality.

 Adding to the woes of Lebanon is a report from the United Nations that has warned that more than four million people in Lebanon, including one million refugees, risk losing access to safe water.

“UNICEF estimates that most water pumping will gradually cease across the country in the next four to six weeks.”

The UN agency said that maintenance costs incurred in US dollars, funding shortages and the parallel collapse of the power grid were rapidly destroying the water sector.

UNICEF said that should the public water supply system collapse, water costs could jump by 200 percent a month as water would be secured from private water suppliers.

The UN agency said it needed $40m a year to secure the minimum levels of fuel, chlorine, spare parts and maintenance required to keep critical systems operational.

“Unless urgent action is taken, hospitals, schools and essential public facilities will be unable to function,” UNICEF Representative in Lebanon, Yukie Mokuo, said.

Lebanon’s economic meltdown has propelled more than half of its population into poverty and seen its currency lose more than 90 percent of its value in less than two years. The financial crisis has translated into severe shortages of basic goods such as fuel and medicine as dollars run dry. The Lebanese pound, which for years was pegged to the US dollar, has lost more than 90 percent of its value over the past 18 months. Electricity in most places is barely available an hour a day while the fuel needed to power generators is also in short supply. Basic medicines have been missing from pharmacy shelves for months and private hospitals warned on Thursday they were “hours away” from losing all power supply.

Millions of Lebanese risk losing access to safe water: UNICEF | Middle East News | Al Jazeera

 Is it a coincidence or evidence of a global pattern?

The monsoon season in India lasts from June to September each year.

Torrential downpours have lashed India’s western coast in recent days, leaving dozens missing near the financial capital of Mumbai and causing the worst floods in decades in the resort state of Goa and  Maharashtra.

“People have lost virtually everything,” said Goa’s health minister, Vishwajit Rane, adding the state had not seen such heavy rains in half a century.

In Maharashtra, major rivers are at risk of bursting their banks. Some 90,000 people have been evacuated so far in the state.

Roxy Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, said the monsoon flooding was “unprecedented, but not unexpected”. He tweeted: “We already see a threefold rise in widespread extreme rains that cause floods across India.”

The climate crisis is making India’s monsoons stronger, according to a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report published in April that forecast dire consequences for food, farming and the economy affecting nearly a fifth of the world’s population.

India floods: rescuers search for survivors among mud and debris | India | The Guardian

 About 9 million Americans are estimated to have lost work due to the pandemic but received no unemployment benefits.

Millions of workers experienced severe problems in receiving benefits throughout the pandemic. Workers across America faced long delays in receiving unemployment benefits as state systems were quickly overwhelmed with the mass influx of applications that caused months-long backlogs. Meanwhile, workers who made errors on their applications had missing records or had their claims flagged had their benefits stopped – and often had difficulty restarting them once problems were resolved.

The impacts were detrimental to workers around the US, who fell behind on rent or mortgage or car payments, experienced utility shutoffs and relied on food banks and assistance programs to feed themselves and their families.

‘My savings were gone’: millions who lost work during Covid faced benefit system chaos | US news | The Guardian