Food Insecurity

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According to a new United Nations report, global rates of hunger and malnutrition are on the rise. The report estimates that in 2019, 690 million people – 8.9 per cent of the world’s population – were undernourished. It predicts that this number will exceed 840 million by 2030.
If you also include the number of people who the UN describes as food insecure, meaning that they have trouble getting access to food, over 2 billion people worldwide suffer. This includes people in wealthy, middle-income and low-income countries.
The report further confirms that women are more likely to face moderate to severe food insecurity than men, and that little progress has been achieved on this front in the past several years. 
Overall, its findings warn that eradicating hunger by 2030 – one of the UN’s main “Sustainable Development Goals” – looks increasingly unlikely.
Covid-19 has only made matters worse: the report estimates that the unfolding pandemic and its accompanying economic recession will push an additional 83 million to 132 million people into undernourishment. But based on independent experts to the UN on hunger, access to food and malnutrition it’s clear that the virus is only accelerating existing trends. It is not driving the rising numbers of hungry and food-insecure people. People who live at the current global poverty level of $1.90 per day cannot feasibly secure access to a healthy diet, even under the most optimistic scenarios.
One thing everyone agrees on is that a plant-heavy diet is best for human health and the planet. But if prices for fruits and vegetables are too low, then farmers can’t make a living, and will grow something more lucrative or quit farming altogether. And costs eventually go up for consumers as the supply dwindles. Conversely, if the price is too high, then most people can’t afford healthy food and will resort to eating whatever they can afford – often, cheap processed foods.
As research has shown, today and in the past, people’s access to food is usually determined by how much power is concentrated in the hands of the few. One current example is meatpacking plants. To keep prices low, people work shoulder-to-shoulder processing meat at an incredible speed. 

Workers Power

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Under American law, employers are required to listen to their workers only when they have a labor union, but just 11.6% of American workers are represented by unions. As for the other 88.4% of workers, employers don’t have to listen to their views on anything – not safety, not pay, not anything else.  The whole notion of “worker voice” is rarely discussed.



 A 2018 MIT study shows that American workers very much want a voice on the job. Ninety three per cent want a say on job safety, with 50.8% wanting “a lot of say” and 23.5% “unlimited say” on safety. A hefty majority also wants a lot of say on job security, being treated with respect, and anti-discrimination and harassment policies. The MIT study also found that 50% of non-union, non-managerial workers said they wished they had a union.



 There is huge focus on America’s income and wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has hurt Black Americans especially, but there is not nearly enough focus on how the weakened voice of workers has contributed to that inequality. It is no coincidence that the US has the weakest worker voice of any industrial nation, and also the greatest income inequality.  A stronger voice for workers reduces inequality by pushing for higher pay, more generous social security and pension benefits, higher taxes on the rich and greater restraints on executive pay. 



 Two IMF economists have argued that “the decline in unionization” (and the accompanying decline in worker voice and bargaining power) “explains about half of the rise in incomes for the richest 10%” in advanced industrial nations and about half the increase in those nations’ main measure of income inequality.



 Weak worker voice fuels not just economic inequality, but also political inequality. “The views of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution” receive “no weight at all in the voting decisions of their senators”, according to research by the political scientist Larry Bartels.



 By 80% to 17%, Americans want Congress to enact nationwide paid parental leave, yet the US remains the only wealthy country that doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave to all workers.



 A big reason workers are largely ignored in Washington: corporations donated $2.8bn in the 2017-18 election cycle, sixteen times as much as the $171m contributed by labor. Moreover, business spent $3bn on lobbying in Washington last year, 60 times as much as the $49m spent by labor.



 In May, workers at a McDonald’s in San Francisco said that when they asked their employer for masks, they were told to use coffee filters instead. In April, at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, a workers’ representative saw only two hand sanitizers for the facility’s 5,000 employees. A Walmart worker in New Orleans said in April that several cashiers were sent home without pay for refusing managers’ orders to stop wearing masks, after some shoppers interpreted it as a sign they had Covid-19. Some financially stretched retail workers say they were all but forced to go to work sick because their companies didn’t give paid sick leave for Covid-19 unless they first had a test showing they had contracted the virus, and in many places it was extremely hard to get tested. Alarmed about the spread of Covid-19, health officials in Colorado criticized the JBS meatpacking company for having a “work while sick” culture. At a Mom’s Organic Market in Philadelphia, workers voiced alarm that their store was experiencing abnormally high sales volume, but little was being done to limit the crowding.



 If companies paid more attention to their workers’ concerns about safety, would a staggering 890 workers at the Tyson pork plant in Logansport, Indiana, have contracted Covid-19? Would more than 780 workers at the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota? Would eight workers have died at JBS’s beef-processing plant in Greeley, Colorado?



 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/24/covid-19-workers-dangers-unions

When is a relief break a real break?

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Warehouse workers at Sports Direct, the retail chain controlled by the billionaire Mike Ashley, appear to be receiving pay below the national minimum wage, according to expert analysis by the Guardian.

The Guardian placed an undercover reporter inside the same Shirebrook, Derbyshire, warehouse during two weeks in late June and early July, where an estimated 3,000-4,000 workers distribute goods for Frasers Group, the holding company that also includes retailers such as Flannels, Jack Wills and USC.
The reporter recorded how warehouse staff at the group were unable to leave the building during their 30-minute unpaid breaks – a practice some employment law experts say should count as paid working time and, if correct, would push Shirebrook’s effective hourly wage rates below the legal minimum of £8.72 to about £8.20. 
The Guardian’s undercover reporter asked three separate direct supervisors if he could leave the warehouse during his daily break. All three said this was impossible and that the break should be spent in a staff canteen or on the smoking terrace.
One said: “It’s not possible. Only in an emergency. There is no security to search you at the door to allow you out. Think about it, if all 2,000 on a shift left we might not get them back.”
The law says workers are entitled to spend rest breaks away from their workstation if they have one, and breaks do not generally count as working time and therefore do not have to be paid under national minimum wage law. However, legal experts say that is only the case if a worker is able to spend the break how he or she wishes.
Zoe Lagadec, principal at Mulberry’s employment law solicitors, said: “If the workers are not able to use their unpaid rest break freely and for their own purposes, then this time should be deemed working time and should be paid. These workers cannot be said to have taken rest away from their place of work if they are prohibited from leaving the warehouse during their only break during the working day. Given that the workers are paid only three pence above the national minimum wage, this unpaid period of working time would breach the NMW regulations as the rate would fall below it for the whole relevant period.”
Another minimum wage expert, who has experience of HM Revenue & Customs investigations, said: “I have been involved in many inquiries where HMRC’s interpretation is that if you are not free to do what and go where you wish during your break then it will be counted as working time. In your example at Sports Direct a daily 30-minute unpaid break would result in a minimum wage breach.”

The Pandemic and Pregnancy

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Rates of unplanned pregnancies have fallen around the world, according to new data published by health research organisation the Guttmacher Institute and the UN Human Reproduction Programme (HRP) on Wednesday. Global rates of unintended pregnancies have fallen from 79 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 in 1990 to 64 in 2019.
There are concerns that decades of progress in reducing the numbers risk being undone by Covid-19, as lockdown restrictions hamper health services.
Zara Ahmed, a senior policy manager at Guttmacher, warned : “Covid-19 could reverse those declines due to challenges with the supply chain, diversion of providers to the response and lack of access to health facilities during lockdown.”
In April, Guttmacher predicted that just a 10% decline in services in poorer countries as a result of coronavirus restrictions could result in 15 million more unplanned pregnancies, 168,000 more newborn deaths, 28,000 more maternal deaths, and 3 million more unsafe abortions.
Guttmacher and HRP’s latest research, published in Lancet Global Health, found that women in the poorest countries were nearly three times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy as women in the wealthiest countries – 93 per 1,000 women in low-income countries compared with 34 in wealthy states.
Europe and North America had the lowest number of unplanned pregnancies (35 per 1,000 women), while sub-Saharan Africa had the highest (91). Women in sub-Saharan Africa are among the least likely to have access to family planning.
The research also revealed that 61% of unplanned pregnancies globally in 2015–19 resulted in an abortion, up from 51% in 1990. Despite a slight fall in abortion rates in the early 2000s, rates had increased over the past 15 years. Researchers said the trend could reflect increased access to abortion or “a stronger motivation to avoid unintended births”.
The majority of terminations occurred in countries where abortion is banned or restricted, researchers found, which meant they were more likely to be conducted unsafely. At least 22,800 women are estimated to die from an unsafe abortion each year.
Ahmed said even where it was legal some countries had deemed abortion not to be an essential service during the pandemic and had restricted services. “These service gaps could result in some individuals not being able to access abortion care at all, while others are forced to seek unsafe abortions,” she said.
The World Health Organization estimates that 270 million women who want modern contraceptives have no access to them. 

The Inequality of COVID-19

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The poorest areas of England have suffered more than twice as many deaths from coronavirus as the richest, a new analysis shows.
The mortality rate was 139.6 per 100,000 in England’s most deprived parts – compared with 63.4 deaths in the most prosperous, the Office for National Statistics found.
The pattern was similar in Wales, at 119.1 deaths per 100,000 people in the poorest areas, against 63.5 in the richest.
The figures also reveal that London has been hit by far the hardest, with 141.8 deaths involving Covid-19 per 100,000 residents – 30 per cent higher than the next worst region, the North West.
Nine of the ten local authorities with the highest death rates are in the capital, led by Brent (216.6 deaths per 100,000), Newham (201.6) and Haringey (185.1).

The Duty of Scientists

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Hardly a day passes but some new statement is issued by frantic scientists, urging humanity to realise the threat which the climate emergency represents to its future. While they glumly warn us of the danger; they optimistically urge some sort of international collaboration to prevent global warming. Of this hope under capitalism, it is a waste of time to write about. The notion that the climate crises can become less of a threat if all nations jointly cooperate is quaint. It is as if one believed thieves are more honourable than the other.


The scientist has always been an especially respected and revered figure, Such stereotypes are not undeserved despite the fact that many scientists have sold their services to corporations but regardless there may perhaps still been a higher devotion to humanity among scientists than among most other professional groups. The scientist was supposed to stick to his own field and not be concerned with social problems; and most of them conformed to this pattern. The role of the scientist was simply that of one who made possible by his discoveries great advances for mankind. Whether mankind properly utilised these discoveries was not the scientists’ business.


Discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology could be utilized for construction or destruction, to be utilised for good or evil in accordance with man’s skill at social organisation. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the bulk of the scientists hoped they would be used to make man’s life better. The attitude of socialists has been similar. We hailed scientific discoveries as signs of human progress, despite the possibility that such discoveries might later be misused – and we believe they were right, too. for without such discoveries a society of plenty and leisure such as socialists want would be impossible from the very start.


However, today, scientific bodies are NOT engaged in projects which was socially “neutral,” and the value of which would be determined by the use to which it was later put. The time is past when the scientists could divorce themselves from common social concerns; The scientist can no longer remain a folk-hero but become a responsible member of society. Scientists who live up to this standard must learn that the security and well-being of all humanity, depends on the triumph of socialism. Otherwise they will merely be complicit as mankind fall further into an abyss where more terrible things to come. Every human being who desires to put an end to this society of war and starvation, must find his or her place in assembling a revolutionary world socialist movement,

Poland and International Law

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The U.N. Refugee Agency urged Poland to help people fleeing war and persecution after Europe’s human rights court ruled Warsaw had broken an international convention by denying asylum procedures to refugees.



 Critics of the government say it is shirking its humanitarian responsibilities, exploiting anti-migrant feeling in Europe and pandering to populist sentiment at home.



  The European Court of Human Rights, hearing lawsuits brought by a total of 13 Russians, said Poland had violated the European Convention on Human Rights by denying them the possibility of applying for international protection. States have an obligation under international law to protect those who seek asylum by permitting them access to territory and safe reception, the UNHCR refugee agency said in a statement.



 “People fleeing war, violence and persecution need protection,” said Anne-Marie Deutschlander, UN Refugee Agency head for Europe. “Refusal to grant them entry at the border, without properly assessing their claims, is in dichotomy with the country’s obligations.”



 “It seems that after the European refugee crisis, the Polish government decided that acting against refugees will help it in opinion polls, hence such policy was conducted,” Jacek Bialas, lawyer at Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights said.



 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-un-poland-refugees/poland-should-help-those-fleeing-persecution-u-n-says-idUKKCN24P1JG

Pandemic – Red Cross Warnings

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The coronavirus crisis could spark huge waves of fresh migration once borders reopen, the head of the Red Cross has warned. It comes as the WHO’s chief accused the US of making “untrue” and “unacceptable” claims against the global health body.
The head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Jagan Chapagain, said he was deeply concerned about the secondary effects of the pandemic, as border closures and Covid-19 restrictions have driven millions into poverty.



“Increasingly we are seeing in many countries the impacts on the livelihoods and the food situation,” he said in an interview. 
Many people are already faced with the choice of risking exposure to the novel coronavirus or going hungry, Chapagain said, warning that the desperation being generated could have far-reaching consequences.
 “What we hear is that many people who are losing livelihoods, once the borders start opening, will feel compelled to move,” he said. “We should not be surprised if there is a massive impact on migration in the coming months and years.”
Potential migrants could feel that their chances of survival are better “on the other side of the sea,” Chapagain said without indicating any particular destination. People will base their decision to move on “the availability of [Covid-19] vaccines. If people see that the vaccine is say, for example, available in Europe but not in Africa, what happens?”


Chapagain also condemned efforts in some countries to secure vaccines for their own people first: “The virus crosses the border, so it is pretty short-sighted to think that I vaccinate my people but leave everybody else without vaccination, and we will still be safe,” he said.

Our Plastic World

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Plastic waste flowing into the oceans is expected to nearly triple in volume in the next 20 years, while efforts to stem the tide have so far made barely a dent in the tsunami of waste, research shows. 



 An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic is destined for our environment – both land and water – by 2040, unless worldwide action is taken. If current trends continue, the amount of plastic waste polluting the oceans will grow to 29m tonnes a year by 2040, the equivalent of 50kg for every metre of coastline in the world.



 Dr Ian Kane, from the University of Manchester, who was part of a team that calculated the amount of micro-plastic in the seabed, described the picture the researchers had painted as “horrifying”.



  Simon Reddy, international environment director at the Pew Charitable Trusts, which led the research. “All the initiatives to date make very little difference. There is no silver bullet, there is no solution that can simply be applied – lots of policies are wanted. You need innovation and systems change.” Reddy called on governments and investors to curb the planned expansion of plastic production. “Without this, the supply of large quantities of cheap virgin plastic to the market may undermine reduction and substitution efforts and threaten the economic viability of recycling, while making it even harder to close the collection gap between waste produced and waste collected for disposal.”



 Dr Costas Velis from the University of Leeds said the number was “staggering” but that we had “the technology and the opportunity to stem the tide”.



 More stringent measures could produce a drastic reduction in waste, according to the researchers. These include improving waste collection, particularly in the developing world, and recycling more waste, as well as investing in alternative materials and better product design to reduce the amount of plastic used.  An estimated 2 billion people in the Global South have no access to proper waste management. 



 “They have to just get rid of all their rubbish, so they have no choice but to burn or dump it,” said Dr Velis.



 The 11 million waste pickers – people who collect and sell reusable materials in low-income countries  often lack basic employment rights and safe working conditions.  Although waste pickers and other workers in informal waste management systems are responsible for about 60% of global plastic recycling, “their contribution to preventing ocean plastic pollution has largely gone unrecognised and underpaid”, said Reddy.



 Dr Velis said: “Waste pickers are the unsung heroes of recycling – without whom the mass of plastic entering the aquatic environment would be considerably greater.” He added that policies to support them and make their work safer were a vital part of solving this problem.



 Alice Horton, a scientist at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, who was not involved in the research, said reducing plastic waste was cost-effective. “Even the toughest management approaches proposed [in the paper] will still lead to a cumulative increase in plastic pollution with in the environment,”



 Prof Jamie Woodward, from the University of Manchester, pointed out “There are parallels with the climate change problem in that business as usual will be disastrous. We need to radically change our behaviour.”



 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53521001

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/23/plastic-waste-entering-oceans-triple-20-years-research

No Cash for Encouraging the Vote

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The Republican coronavirus stimulus plan revealed it does not propose a single dollar in election assistance funding. The Republican plan obtained by the New York Times Thursday doesn’t mention election funding directly, but it does note that the GOP relief package will propose “no additional money for state/local governments.”

Voting rights advocates say the election assistance money is necessary to help states expand vote-by-mail and ensure that in-person polling places are adequately equipped and prepared to safely hold a general election amid a pandemic. Failing to approve election funding could drive down turnout in November by limiting voters’ ballot options in an environment where it is potentially dangerous to vote in person.

“It is outrageous that this proposal contains not one penny to help states conduct safe elections during a global pandemic,” Sean Eldridge, founder and president of Stand Up America, said in a statement. “Policymakers should be doing everything they can to ensure voters are not forced to risk their health to cast their ballot. Instead,” Eldridge said, “it seems Mitch McConnell is doing everything he can to suppress the vote by putting voters in danger.”


“Democrats in both chambers cannot allow Republicans to threaten the foundation of our democracy—and they must use every piece of available leverage to ensure election funding is included in a final brokered deal,” said Eldridge. “Nothing less than our democracy is at stake.”


Stand Up America and other voting rights groups are demanding that Congress approve $3.6 billion in election assistance funding—a fraction of the $21.3 billion the GOP plan proposes handing to the Pentagon on top of the agency’s likely $740.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2021.


Trump’s repeated and baseless attacks on mail-in voting as well as his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the 2020 election have added urgency to ensure a safe and fair contest. 


Voter suppression, electoral roll purges, the closing of thousands of polling places, hindering the postal delivery service, and the fear of the coronavirus  will scare many people away.


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