Finland was recently rated Europe’s most resistant nation to fake news and it is where critical thinking has become a core, cross-subject component of the school national curriculum. The curriculum was devised by the Finnish government after 2014, when the country was first targeted with fake news stories by its Russian neighbour, and the government realised it had moved into the post-fact age.

Students learn how easy it is to lie with statistics. In art, they see how an image’s meaning can be manipulated. In history, they analyse notable propaganda campaigns, while Finnish language teachers show the many ways in which words can be used to confuse, mislead and deceive.

Kari Kivinen, head teacher, points out you can start when children are very young, “Fairytales work well. Take the wily fox who always cheats the other animals with his sly words. That’s not a bad metaphor for a certain kind of politician, is it?”

He wants his pupils to ask questions such as: who produced this information, and why? Where was it published? What does it really say? Who is it aimed at? What is it based on? Is there evidence for it, or is this just someone’s opinion? Is it verifiable elsewhere?

“The goal is active, responsible citizens and voters,” Kivinen said. “Thinking critically, fact-checking, interpreting and evaluating all the information you receive, wherever it appears, is crucial. We’ve made it a core part of what we teach, across all subjects.”

Fake news, Kivinen said, is not a great term, especially for children. Far more useful are three distinct categories: misinformation, or “mistakes”; disinformation, or “lies” and “hoaxes”, which are false and spread deliberately to deceive; and mal-information, or “gossip”, which may perhaps be correct but is intended to harm.

“Even quite young children can grasp this,” he said. “They love being detectives. If you also get them questioning real-life journalists and politicians about what matters to them, run mock debates and real school elections, ask them to write accurate and fake reports on them…democracy, and the threats to it, start to mean something.”

Priya, 16, said education was “the best way to fight it. The problem is, anyone can publish anything. There’s not much a government can do when they’re faced with big multinationals like Google or Facebook, and if it does too much it’s censorship. So yes, education is what’s most effective.”

How Finland starts its fight against fake news in primary schools | Finland | The Guardian

Most land does not belong to those who toil on it.

According to National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data, 60% of the country’s population has right over only 5% of land; whereas 10% of the population has control over 55% of the land. 

The 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census shows that 56% of households in rural India do not own any agricultural land. The NSSO 2013 revealed that top 7.18% of households own more than 46.71% of the land.

 By the end of 2019, at least 690 million people went hungry. Now millions more of people continue to suffer acute food insecurity as they face the consequences of the pandemic. Lockdown policies and quarantines have affected all stages of food supply, resulting in a steep rise in food prices and widespread food insecurity.

 As of October 2020, a staggering seven million people have died of hunger. Pandemic-related hunger also led to the deaths of 10,000 more children each month over the first year of the health crisis. 

Landlessness has been exacerbated by large-scale land deals and acquisitions – land grabs led by corporations have dispossessed and displaced farmers from the land they till. Millions of hectares of land planted with staples, grains, and other food crops, as well as indigenous lands, and public lands were land grabbed and converted into plantations, extractive mining projects, and farms devoted to export cash crops. 

Governments have become willing accomplices in these land grabs through public-private partnerships that take away land, water, and other natural resources from the people. Profits keep pouring into the pockets of the few as the majority of peasants and their families endure worsening landlessness and land grabs amid a pandemic. 

Land to the tillers for genuine food system change | Countercurrents

Big Pharma once more exposed itself as an industry filled by socio-paths who will overlook unnecessary deaths if they make sufficient profit and yet escape the full consequences of their criminal behaviour. 

A French court has fined, Servier,  one of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical firms €2.7m (£2.3m) after finding it guilty of deception and manslaughter over a pill linked to the deaths of up to 2,000 people and thousands more left with debilitating cardiovascular problems. Its former executive Jean-Philippe Seta was sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of four years. Magistrates accused Servier of having “knowingly concealed the medication’s true characteristics” from the 1970s and hidden medical studies unfavourable to the product, perpetrating a long-term fraud.

The French medicines agency, accused of failing to act quickly enough on warnings about the drug, was fined €303,000. The scandal, forced the resignation of the head of France’s public health agency and sparked outrage about the lobbying power of French pharmaceutical companies.

 Servier is accused of covering up fatal side-effects of the widely prescribed drug Mediator, an amphetamine derivative licensed as a diabetes treatment, but was widely prescribed as an appetite suppressant to help people lose weight.

“Despite knowing of the risks incurred for many years, … they [Servier] never took the necessary measures and thus were guilty of deceit,” said the president of the criminal court, Sylvie Daunis.

As many as 5 million people took the drug between 1976 and November 2009 when it was withdrawn in France, long after it was banned in Spain and Italy. It was never authourised in the UK or US.

French pharma firm found guilty over medical scandal in which up to 2,000 died | France | The Guardian

  Thousands of Syrians will no longer receive legal support, leaving many “in utter destitution” without documents they need to work, travel or return home, after the British government pulled £4m in funding from a charity programme, run by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), supporting refugees and internally displaced Syrians.

 Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the NRC, said: “This cut means we need to stop legal and protection assistance for 65,000 displaced people in Syria and Lebanon. Syrian children will no longer get help to get birth certificates, students and schoolchildren will no longer get help to get exam or training documents and we can no longer help people with housing, land and property rights.” It could also lead to people having to stay longer in camps, he said. “For some people, who hoped to be integrated into Lebanon, that hope has gone,” Egeland said. “It’s utter destitution when you are paperless.”

The cuts runs counter to the UK’s ideals and interests, he said. “The UK has been a champion of legal advice for refugees for many years, so that people can one day return to working life as productive citizens.”

Bahia Zrikem, of NRC, said staff had reported increased child labour, and families reduced to eating two meals a day. “Humanitarian needs are increasing, not falling” she said. A decade of conflict has left more than 90% of Syrians in poverty, 12.4 million facing food insecurity and 12.2 million without access to clean water.

One executive of a development charity said: “It’s no exaggeration to say there is an atmosphere of fear in the aid sector at the moment. The cuts are going to cost thousands of lives and yet we are being pressured by some quarters of the FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office] to not discuss them publicly as it could compromise ongoing funding decisions. You can dress it up in legalese, but it feels as though the sector is being silenced in order that these cuts can be forced through with little or no scrutiny. The public have a right to know about the damage this decision will do, and the thousands of lives they will cost.”

Stephanie Draper, chief executive of Bond, the NGO network, described reports that people were being warned against speaking out as “very concerning”. “Policymakers and the public need to understand the serious implications of this political decision,” she said.

British aid cuts to leave tens of thousands of Syrians ‘paperless’ | Aid | The Guardian

 Roughly 12% of American households with children reported not having enough to eat in February.

Advocates said the pandemic made clear that welfare programs too often set up barriers for those who need help the most.

“It was frustrating, it was burdensome, and it made an already difficult situation even more difficult for many people,” said Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University.

Much federal aid is filtered through state governments, and caseloads have varied considerably from state to state. Lawmakers loosened guidelines to make it easier for people to qualify for assistance, allowing states to screen applicants over the phone or internet, rather than in person. Still, the ranks of the hungry in the United States have grown.

Kentucky boosted the number of participants in the Women, Infants and Children food assistance program by 21% between February and November, while participation dropped by 17% in Arkansas, government figures show. Likewise, participation in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program rose by 74% in Indiana between February and September and dropped by 37% in Mississippi.

 Congress created the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program in March 2020. With most school buildings shut, lawmakers opted to give roughly 30 million low-income students debit cards worth up to $400 to cover the cost of the free meals they had been getting at school. The Brookings Institution think tank estimates the initiative reduced child hunger by roughly a third during the spring and summer, and experts view it as a surprising success. But as with other programs, success varied considerably by state. Some, like Michigan and Indiana, were able to get benefits to eligible children within weeks. Others took months. Tennessee, like 20 other states, required families who were not already enrolled in other welfare programs to fill out an application. That proved to be a major barrier for many families who lacked internet access or, did not know the benefit was available.

As the program was due to expire at the end of September, 240,000 children – a third of those eligible – still had not gotten benefit cards. The state mailed those cards to schools for families to pick up, but 60,000 of them were sent back unclaimed. No applications were needed for a second round of benefits in the Fall. Congress renewed the program in October, but then-President Donald Trump’s administration did not provide clear guidelines on who should qualify, as some schools had returned to in-person learning. Lawmakers provided clearer guidance in December, but as of this month only 29 states had been approved to distribute benefits that should have gone out months ago.

In Tennessee, officials are saying the new round of benefit cards will go out soon. This time, those qualified will not have to fill out an application.

Oatmeal yes, eggs no: Gaps emerge in U.S. anti-hunger push for children | Reuters

 Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on high-profile international sporting events in a PR bid to bolster its reputation. The figures acquired only apply to deals between entities controlled by the Saudi state, such as the organisation Visit Saudi and NEOM, the body overseeing construction of a futuristic $500bn city in the desert, but not individual members of the Saudi royal family, meaning the $1.5bn figure is very likely a great underestimation of the true scale of the Kingdom’s investments in sports.

 The Saudi rulers have invested millions across the sporting world, the report by the human rights organisation Grant Liberty says, from chess championships to golf, tennis and $60m alone on the Saudi Cup, the world’s richest horse-racing event with prize money of $20m.

They include $145m in a three-year deal with the Spanish Football Association, and $15m in appearance fees for a single Saudi International men’s golf tournament. It also includes $33m to host the Saudi Arabian Masters snooker tournament in the Kingdom, and $100m for the boxing match known as “Clash on the Dunes” between Andy Ruiz Jr and Anthony Joshua in 2019. Saudi Arabia also cut a $500m 10-year deal with World Wrestling Entertainment in 2014, one where female performers were banned from appearing until two years ago.

 The Saudis have now also entered pending bids for forthcoming events, including $200m for the Tyson Fury Vs Joshua boxing match set to take place later this year, and $180m in sponsorship for Real Madrid through the Qiddiya project, a tourism and entertainment megaproject in Riyadh under the umbrella of “Vision 2030”.

The report details the Saudi Arabian Kingdom’s $650m ten-year deal with Formula One, whose world championships begin this Sunday and for the first time will include a race in the port city of Jeddah.

Grant Liberty’s terms Saudi Arabia’s investments in such spectacles  and extravaganzas as  “sportswashing”  to obscure its dismal human rights record, and tout itself as a new  tourist destination.

“Saudi Arabia is trying to use the good reputation of the world’s best loved sports stars to obscure a human rights record of brutality, torture and murder,” said Grant Liberty’s Lucy Rae, who accused Saudi Arabia of “committing human rights abuses on an industrial scale. The world’s leading sports stars might not have asked to be part of a cynical marketing plan to distract the world from the brutality – but that’s what is happening,” she added.

 Deals which failed to come to fruition because of indignant outcries, include a $6m offer to footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to be the face of the Kingdom’s tourism body Visit Saudi and an attempted $400m takeover-bid for Newcastle United.

Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on ‘sportswashing’, report reveals | Saudi Arabia | The Guardian

A standoff between British Gas  and the GMB trade union will come to a head on 1 April, when scores of the engineers responsible for servicing and repairing office and home boilers will be forced to accept longer working hours or lose their jobs entirely. Hundreds of engineers could be dismissed in this bitter nine-month long “fire and rehire” battle.

British Gas set out the fire and rehire plans last summer to “streamline” its employment contracts and increase productivity. Trade unions said the plan amounted to “bullying” by threatening to “set fire to jobs, terms and conditions”.“For the last nine months it has been the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. The pressure we’re under is terrible,” says one veteran British Gas engineer. “Honestly, it’s made me ill. It’s made everybody ill. We just can’t understand how badly we’ve been treated – why?”

 This strike was not about money, it was about time. Under the new terms, full-time engineers would be required to work an extra three hours a week, 40 hours in total, and would not be paid a higher rate to work when required on weekends and public holidays.

“A kick in the teeth is probably the best way to put it,” says Ciara Arrowsmith, 37, who resigned from British Gas in protest last month after 13 years as a service and repair engineer. “It just became a really toxic atmosphere. I felt completely betrayed and it wasn’t good for my mental health. I had to go on to medication…”

For workers at British Gas, faced with a choice between working for less and unemployment, there are less than three days left to decide.

‘A kick in the teeth’: British Gas engineers face losing their jobs or longer working hours | Centrica | The Guardian

 Shanna Swan is a professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai school of medicine in New York City, studying fertility trends. In 2017 she documented how average sperm counts among western men have more than halved in the past 40 years.

“People are recognising we have a reproductive health crisis, but they say it’s because of delayed childbearing, choice or lifestyle – it can’t be chemical. I want people to recognise it can. I am not saying other factors aren’t involved. But I am saying chemicals play a major causal role. It is difficult to use that word, “cause”, but it’s a body of evidence. We have mechanisms, animal studies, and multiple human studies.”

 “If you follow the curve from the 2017 sperm-decline meta-analysis, it predicts that by 2045 we will have a median sperm count of zero. It is speculative to extrapolate, but there is also no evidence that it is tapering off. This means that most couples may have to use assisted reproduction.”

Shanna Swan: ‘Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045’ | Fertility problems | The Guardian

Michael Barton who was head of crime operations for policing nationally, and chief constable of Durham constabulary until 2019, plus, Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Greater Manchester police and former vice-chair of the police chiefs’ body warned that new protest laws move Britain dangerously in the direction of “paramilitary policing” and that UK ministers are “flexing their muscles via their police forces” like repressive regimes around the world.

 They told the Guardian they held deep concerns about the dangers the new laws posed for civil liberties already reeling from a year of emergency Covid laws. The police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, currently passing through parliament, will afford new powers to officers to tackle protests, including measures aimed at static protests and a new offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”, which is in part defined as causing “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”. Police will be able to impose a start and finish time and set noise limits at static protests and apply these rules to a demonstration by just one person.

Barton said the move represented a change in the British style of policing by consent, with officers being “citizens in uniform” who are part of their communities and not above them “because police officers are telling people what to do, not negotiating with them”. He added: “I don’t see anything wrong with the current laws. Protests sometimes means people are inconvenienced.”

Barton said: “I’m not in favour of even more restrictive measures. Surely after an historically unprecedented year-long curfew, in peacetime, the government could show some common sense and gratitude for such incredible forbearance to allow civil liberties to once again flourish. Or are they happy to be linked to the repressive regimes currently flexing their muscles via their police forces?

“Fortunately, in the UK we are not a paramilitary-style police force. But these powers dangerously edge in that direction. Police chiefs will be seen as the arbiters of what is and is not allowed when it comes to protest. Democracies thrive on protest. This government has condemned what has happened in the Ukraine but those same protesters would fall foul of our new laws.”

Fahy, another former senior policing leader, said the proposed protest laws were a mistake and posed a danger for policing. He said lessons from the past suggested danger, citing the quashing this week of 1970s convictions of trade union activists including the actor Ricky Tomlinson as a warning from history.

He explained, “It is short-term and politically driven,” he said. “It is a reaction to what happened with Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter [protests], in the same way Ricky Tomlinson was a reaction to the industrial strife of the 1970s. Policing was drawn into a particular stance and pose. “It reminds me of the miners’ strike when policing was mobilised for a political reason. It took policing a long time to recover. Policing should be very careful not to be drawn into the situation of being arbiters of which protests can go ahead, and become stuck in the middle. The policing of protest can cause long-term damage.” Fahy added: “Policing is not always about the majority, sometimes it is about protecting rights of the minority. I’m not sure a mature democracy should have the police deciding which protests should go ahead.”

Metropolitan police were accused of heavy-handed tactics at a vigil on Clapham Common, London, in memory of 33-year-old Sarah Everard. In Bristol, riot police were deployed in what was seen by many as an over-reaction to the situation. While in Manchester, Kill the Bill protesters were forcibly removed and arrested  in a peaceful blockage of the tram system

Protest laws move UK towards paramilitary policing, says former chief | Police | The Guardian

 The United States of America is victim of its own propaganda. Since being founded, the USA has always depicted itself as a beacon of democracy and liberty, a land of opportunity and hope where a person can accomplish rags to riches through hard work and initiative. For many the American Dream is viewed as a reality and can we be surprised that the Statue of Liberty’s inscription is taken literally:

The impoverished peoples in countries south of the United States suffering deprivations unimaginable to the majority of Americans have sought escape from failed nation-states, crime ridden societies and the encroaching effects of climate change to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. 

However, rather than a welcome, they meet with a wall, not just the physical one Trump tried to build but a wall of indifference and outright rejection. Political commentators declare that America can no longer afford to accept any more newcomers, no matter how ‘deserving’ or contrary to international treaties it has signed up to. The present pandemic is even being used as justification to turn away the needy and the vulnerable. The change of president has brought a superficial change of policy at the southern border but it has not departed from being one of deterrence, albeit Biden’s approach is ‘softer’ than Trump’s draconian hard attitude. Biden remains attached to the belief that the solution is better management to slow down and reverse the flow of peoples wishing to make the USA their new home. He still does not treat the migration of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans as a genuine humanitarian crisis where the proper response would be to facilitate and expedite the reception of these desperate people. America has dealt with mass migrations in the past such as the Dustbowl and the Black exodus from the Southern states, not to mention the influx of European migrants arriving at Ellis Island. The United States is now far better placed to allocate the necessary resources.

A common argument made by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, but even by some on the liberal left, is that the United States is full, that it is already an over-crowded country and no longer able to take any extra people. Such claims are providing ‘intellectual’ succor to the mass-murderer, Patrick Crusius, who targeted Hispanics and killed 23 at El Paso in Texas.

But just how many is too many? 

Using 2019 figures and the present migrant bottleneck US state of Texas as an example

There is approximately 7,268,730,000 people on the planet. The land-mass of Texas is 268,820 square miles (7,494,271,488,000 square feet). If we divide 7,494,271,488,000 square feet by 7,268,730,000 people, we get 1,031 square feet per person. This is enough space for everyone on earth to live in a town-house while altogether fitting on a landmass the size of Texas. And we’re not even accounting for the average four-person family who would most likely share a home. 

Of course, there are large tracts of Texas uninhabitable and we have not included the necessary space for the resources to support such a population. This is just to give an idea of how it isn’t actual space that is lacking but to show that America is not running out of room any time soon.

Again, we can compare actual density of the United States by taking the example of New York City which is far and away the most populous city in the U.S., home to an estimated 8.5 million people in 2016. More people live in this one city than in the entire states of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, Vermont, and the District of Columbia combined. For sure, New York City is rather crammed, but it is certainly not an uncomfortable place to live in terms of space as many New Yorkers would affirm. Besides, many cities in other countries are far more densely populated.

New York City consists of five boroughs spanning five counties, the most densely populated of which is New York County. This county, which consists principally of the island of Manhattan, is far and away the most densely populated county in the U.S., housing 72,000 people per square mile. At that population density, the entire population of the United States could reside in the tiny State of Connecticut. Brooklyn has slightly less than half the population density of Manhattan. The top four most densely populated counties in America are all in New York City.

If all Americans lived at the same population density as the average population density of all five of New York City’s boroughs (approximately 28,000 people per square mile), we’d all fit comfortably in the combined area of Delaware and Maryland.

Or we can take the 10 million plus residents who call Los Angeles County home. If you are familiar with Los Angeles County, you know that life at this level of urbanization is not too uncomfortable nor unbearable, providing ample parks and open spaces. At a similar population density of Los Angeles County, the entire U.S. population could fit inside the state of New Mexico.

Again, in reality we would still need to figure in access to adequate water resources and would need much more land area to account for agricultural purposes, public services, transportation and, of course, sustainability and conservation. But, this is merely another thought experiment to demonstrate that if America has enough room to fit its entire population comfortably into an area the size of New Mexico, the US has enough space for far many more people from outside its borders unlike what the anti-immigration lobby assert. 

If truth is to be said, the USA’s fertility rate is falling below the replacement rate for the existing population and only because of immigration has an actual population decline been avoided and a future demographic problem averted. Rather than US politicians reacting with sanctions to turn away arrivals, for the health and wealth of the nation, they should be welcoming many more newcomers. 

Numbers don’t matter, the type of system matters. It is not overpopulation that is the problem but the chronic underproduction that is a built in feature of capitalism. The ‘overpopulation problem’ is really a misuse of resources problem. Capitalism, as a system of rationing via the market, is justified in people’s minds by a belief in scarcity. ‘There isn’t enough to go round’, so we must be restricted in what we are allowed to consume. It has become a cliché to speak of, ’this overcrowded country.’ 

We should not give the impression that everything is easy, that a massive expansion of available resources is a simple matter. For one thing, there maybe environmental implications. But a socialist society is the best-equipped to handle these implications and to strike a balance. Not only is capitalism in effect a system of artificial scarcity, it is also a system of organised waste. Socialist society will use the resources of the Earth to ensure that every man, woman and child is amply fed, clothed and sheltered. Capitalism cannot do this — it does not exist for this purpose.

I end by quoting the great American socialist Eugene V. Debs:

If Socialism, international, revolutionary Socialism, does not stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and uncompromisingly for the working class and for the exploited and oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a snare. Let those desert us who will because we refuse to shut the international door in the faces of their own brethren; we will be none the weaker but all the stronger for their going, for they evidently have no clear conception of the international solidarity, are wholly lacking in the revolutionary spirit, and have no proper place in the Socialist movement while they entertain such aristocratic notions of their own assumed superiority.

Sources

Texas accommodating the world’s population: Overpopulation Is A Myth | We Are Change

NYC and LA population densities: Overpopulation? Is America Running Out of Space to Live? No. Here’s Why | LifeNews.com

The Debs quotation comes from the July 1910 issue of International Socialist Review. For an account of the development of Debs’ views on immigration, see this blog post.

Taken from the World Socialist Party of the United State website

Immigrants: how many is too many? | World Socialist Party of the US (wspus.org)