UK – “utterly hypocritical” – UN rapporteur on extreme poverty

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The United Nations’ poverty expert Philip Alston said that globally “the most vulnerable have been short-changed or excluded” by official responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The policies of many states reflect a social Darwinism philosophy that prioritises the economic interests of the wealthiest while doing little for those who are hard at work providing essential services or unable to support themselves,” Alston said, warning that the pandemic could push more than half a billion additional people into poverty globally. “Governments have shut down entire countries without making even minimal efforts to ensure people can get by,” he said. “Many in poverty live day to day, with no savings or surplus food. And of course, homeless people cannot simply stay home.”
He highlighted how the most vulnerable populations had been neglected, which “forces them to continue working in unsafe conditions, putting everyone’s health at risk.” And he warned that, while some nations were seeing curves flattening, the virus was “poised to wreak havoc in poorer countries”.
“As for the UK,” Alston told the Guardian, “my thoughts of course hark back to the sense of how utterly hypocritical it is now to abandon ‘austerity’ with such alacrity, after all the harm and misery caused to individuals and the fatal weakening of the community’s capacity to cope and respond over the past 10 years. And of course, many of the worst and most damaging aspects of ‘austerity’ cannot and will not be undone. The damage caused to community cohesion and to the social infrastructure are likely to prove permanent.”
“This pandemic has exposed the bankruptcy of social support systems in many countries.” Alston said. “While some governments have embraced far-ranging measures previously dismissed as unrealistic, most programmes have been short-term, stop-gap measures that merely buy time rather than address the immense challenges that will continue well into the future. Now is the time for deep structural reforms that will protect populations as a whole and will build resilience in the face of an uncertain future.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/26/uk-coronavirus-response-utterly-hypocritical-says-un-poverty-expert

Russian Wheat Restrictions

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The world risks being cut off from Russian wheat.  Russia has already burned through the entire quota. It will halt grain shipments to all but four former Soviet neighbors once the last cargo booked leaves the country.



While the ban will only last until farmers start harvesting in July, some other nearby nations have also restricted grain exports, threatening to reroute global trade and fuelling worries about food shortages and higher prices. Countries from Egypt to Turkey are trying to load up on imports while they still can, and Russian shippers have been feeding that demand. The window has closed fast.  In just a few weeks, shippers booked out all of the 7 million-ton quota set through June. Egypt is taking an unusual step of importing a large amount of wheat during its own harvest to ensure it has enough to feed its population, many of whom live in poverty.  Plus, the collapse in the energy market will likely take its toll on the economies of wheat importers like Algeria and Nigeria, which derive large amounts of income from oil.



There has been “a flurry of activity” recently, said Andrey Sizov Jr., managing director at consultant SovEcon in Moscow. “Buyers want to stock up because they realize they may not have the chance to do it later.”



Russia last imposed an outright ban in 2010 after drought destroyed crops. Some researchers saw it as an indirect contributor to the Arab Spring uprisings. The memories of past food shortages have restarted the debate about food nationalism. Organizations such as the United Nations and European Union said the risk of social and political unrest is rising again as the pandemic spurs discontent, and urged against unjustified measures that could hurt food security and raise prices.



 Drought is threatening crops across the region. If conditions in the Black Sea deteriorate further, that could prompt buyers around the world to stock up on supplies even more in the coming weeks, SovEcon said.

“The probability of that scenario is growing, given the current weather,” SovEcon’s Sizov said.



https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/exports-russian-wheat-dry-stoking-food-security-concerns-200426172340195.html

India’s Farming Crisis

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India’s nationwide lockdown has confined a record 1.3 billion Indians to their homes since Mar. 24, and one of the hardest hit communities has been that of Indian farmers. Crashing prices and transport bottlenecks due to the lockdown has resulted in the media filled withimages of Indian farmers standing amidst swathes of rotting vegetables, fruits and grain. March and April mark the peak harvesting season in India when crops like wheat, chickpea, barley, flax seed, pea, potato, mustard plant, cotton and millet are reaped and sold. But the current pandemic means this cannot happen. Nearly 700 million people of the country’s 1.3 billion rely directly or indirectly on an agriculture-derived livelihood. Agriculture and allied sectors sector contribute 16.5 percent to the country’s $2.6 trillion GDP, according to the Indian government’s Economic Survey 2019-20. As per International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) statistics, the share of agriculture in India’s total workforce was 43.9 percent in 2018. Of the total agricultural workforce in India, 45.1 percent are cultivators (farmers with land or self-employed in agriculture) and the rest, 54.9 percent, are agricultural labour (or landless), as per the Pocket Book of Agricultural Statistics of 2017.



“We take our produce to the mandi (market) but there are hardly any buyers these days. I was forced to sell four quintals of chilli at Rs 10 per kg as against a normal price of Rs 40. But I was desperate to clinch the deal, else the transportation cost of bringing all that produce back would have broken my back,” Lekhi Ram, a smallholder farmer from Khairpur village of west Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, told IPS.  Unable to harvest his crop in time, Ram’s neighbour, also a smallholder, set his fields on fire.  The leftover vegetables were fed to the sheep and goats. 



“We were hoping to reap a rich harvest of rabi (spring) crops due to a good spell of rains. But God clearly had other plans,” Balbir Singh Rajewal, President of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in Punjab, a representative organisation for small farmers that protects their interests, told IPS. “Urban demand has been minimal during the lockdown. Even online grocery stores, whose orders we normally can’t cope with, have stopped calling.” Grain farmers with larger land holdings are experiencing greater struggles under the combined effects of low demand and acute paucity of migrant farm labour. This has severely interrupted agricultural patterns especially harvesting activities in the northwest northern breadbasket states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana where wheat and pulses are grown, said Rajewal.



Farmer suicides have been reported from some villages. 



According to Jagdish Singh, President, Bhartiya Kisan Union, Madhya Pradesh, a representative body of 0.3 million farmers, bureaucratic apathy has hurt farmers most.

“We didn’t get any combined harvesters from Punjab due to transport restrictions due to which we weren’t able to harvest our grain on time. Lack of farm labour and bad weather last week only made things worse.”  Singh rues the state government made no efforts to operate local mandis to enable farmers to sell whatever grain they were able to harvest.
Transportation has proved to be an issue. Keeping supply chains functioning seamlessly will be vital for future food security, warn experts, for which farmers must have continued access to markets. According to Pravin Paithankar, president of the Maharashtra Heavy Vehicle and Inter-State Container Operators’ Association, as urban areas are reporting more coronavirus cases than rural ones, truck drivers and container operators are preferring to stay in their villages.
“They won’t be back until May-June,” Paithankar told IPS.
The current crisis will also have a domino effect on agricultural output during the kharif (winter) season as good quality seeds, fertilisers and other inputs are not available, a senior official of Uttar Pradesh’s food, civil supplies and consumer affairs department.
 Indian Institute of Technology (Gandhinagar) scientists who analysed 150 years of drought data have highlighted in a report that 2 to 3 million deaths in the Bengal famine of 1943 were due to food supply disruptions—not lack of food availability. According to the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), among other middle income countries India has an above-average score of 65.5 out of 100 when it comes to sustainable agriculture.



Empty shelves for America?

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Tyson Foods, one of America’s largest meat producers, has warned “the food supply chain is breaking” amid the pandemic. The company cautioned “there will be limited supply of products” until it can reopen closed facilities. Tyson has closed or reduced production at several facilities throughout the US, including a pork-processing plant in Iowa, where several workers tested positive for the virus. Tyson plants in Texas and Indiana also closed. Other facilities, including a Smithfield Foods pork plant in South Dakota, and a JBS beef plant in Wisconsin, have announced temporary shutdowns.



 “As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” John Tyson, Tyson’s board chairman, wrote. Tyson warned that “farmers across the nation simply will not have anywhere to sell their livestock to be processed”, further sounding the alarm on the threat to the nation’s food supply chain.



 The USDA had been criticized for the millions of pounds of food rotting while the country’s food banks became increasingly depleted due to high demand amid the economic dive. USDA waited more than a month to “make its first significant move to buy up surplus fruits and vegetables,” Politico reported. The agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, drew fire for the lag in response to the pandemic compared with other federal agencies.



 According to the United Food and Commercial Workers International Unions at least 10 meatpacking workers and three food processing workers have died from the coronavirus and at least 5,000 meatpacking workers and 1,500 food processing workers have been directly affected. Tyson, among others, faced growing criticism for subpar standards in protecting workers, including a lack of adequate gear. The company had faced backlash for slow response to worker safety, including only requiring employees to wear company-supplied masks since mid-April.



 Experts have warned it could be a matter of weeks before consumers feel the effect of shutdowns with meat shortages at grocery stores.



 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/27/tyson-foods-coronavirus-food-supply-chain



An Infodemic

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“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned.

The WHO defines an infodemic as “an over-abundance of information, some accurate and some not, that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it”. 

The current infodemic has been worsened by the global scale of the health crisis and by the contributions of social media influencers and some world leaders. Brasil’s Bolsonaro has dismissed Covid-19 as a “fantasy” and a “small flu”, even as cases have been overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Latin America’s largest country. He recently also fired his health minister and joined protests in the capital Brasilia against shutdown measures imposed by governors.

According to a study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Oxford Internet Institute entitled, Types, claims and sources of Covid-19 misinformation, “false information spread by politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures” accounted for 69 percent of total engagement on social media, even though their claims made up just 20 percent of those included in the study’s sample.
With 78.4 million followers on Twitter and a TV audience that sometimes surpasses 10 million viewers for his daily briefings, Trump is one of the world’s leading global influencers. 

https://www.france24.com/en/20200426-conspiracy-theories-and-fake-news-fighting-the-covid-19-infodemic



War or Peace?

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Global military expenditure reached $1.9 trillion  in 2019, the highest annual sum in real terms since 1988. That sum marked an increase of 3.6% over 2018, the largest annual increase since 2010, according to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).



Of the 15 countries in the world with the highest defense budgets, six are NATO members: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Their combined military expenditure makes up for almost half of the world’s total figure. In 2019, the total military expenditure of NATO’s 29 member states was some $1.04 trillion. According to the SIPRI report, in 2019 the US was responsible for 38% of global military expenditure, totaling $732 billion. The increase over its 2018 budget alone amounted to the equivalent of Germany’s total expenditure in 2019. Experts  see the increase as a response to China, which ranks in second place after the US when it comes to military spending. Beijing’s budget contributed 14% of global military expenditure in 2019 and rose by more than 5% to $261 billion. China has been increasing its military expenditure steadily since 1994, but its budget has jumped by 85% since 2010. However, in terms of percentage of GDP, this has not changed considerably and almost always lies at 1.9%.



Max Mutschler from the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC), a peace and conflict research institute explained, “Military expenditure is based on worst-case scenarios.” He told DW that while the public often perceives economic conflict between states to be in the foreground, the threat of military conflict remains very present in the background.



“With regard to the tension between the US and China, we do not know if there will be an armed conflict or not. So the militaries in both countries are preparing for this eventuality, and they’re very good when it comes to lobbying for more funds,” he said.



On the Asian continent, the military expenditure of  nuclear power India, is also considerable, rising last year by almost 7% to $71.1 billion.



“The tension with neighboring countries Pakistan and China are the main reasons that the Indian government has increased its expenditure so dramatically,” said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher with SIPRI.

Saudi Arabia lies well ahead of other Middle Eastern countries, spending $61.9 billion in 2019.



Military expenditure in other countries pales by comparison to the global top spenders. South American states spent “only” $53 billion in 2019, and Brazil alone was responsible for half of that.



Southeast Asian countries totaled around $41 billion.



 And the entire continent of Africa spent some $42 billion.  Uganda, for example, increased its budget by 52%.



The COVID-19 pandemic shows that we’ve got our  priorities wrong. Keeping citizens safe is the greatest responsibility of any society. Citizens can only enjoy free, dignified lives when they are secure and prosperous. Since 2003, the world witnessed the SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks. Nations, in others words, had ample time to prepare for the possibility of a pandemic. But governments  got their priorities wrong and invested billions in arms rather than readying for a potential pandemic disaster.  Increased military spending led to states diverting money away from health care systems, infrastructure networks and environmental protection measures. It is a fact long recognised and acknowledged even by capitalist politicians.

Former US President, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, said in 1953: 



“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Nation-states have failed to recognize the biggest threats to our safety: pandemics, climate change

and environmental destruction and prefer to guard their global trade routes or raw material sources. The pandemic we are facing has made very clear just how globalized our world is today. Something happening in far-away countries can swiftly spread and affect people across the globe. Globalization cannot be wished away. It is here to stay. That means the global community must cooperate not compete and enter into conflict. Only then can our world become a safe place for all and we see the end of armies and armament industries.



The Nationalism of Vaccines

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The war on COVID-19 is haunted by lessons from the fight against another virus a decade ago. In the spring of 2009, the H1N1 swine flu virus emerged in the United States and Mexico and spread worldwide. Within weeks, the World Health Organization(WHO) declared it the first pandemic since 1968.
Wealthier governments that had provisional contracts with vaccine makers immediately exercised them, “effectively monopolizing the global vaccine supply,” according to Richard Hatchett, who managed U.S. pandemic flu policy under George W. Bush and returned to advise Obama during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Hatchett now heads the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). The U.S. alone ordered 250 million doses, and Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and Britain all had vaccine. 
Under pressure from the WHO, those countries ultimately committed to share 10% of their stockpiles with poorer nations. But due to production and distribution snarls, only about 77 million doses were shipped – far less than needed – and only after the disease had peaked in many regions.  If an effective vaccine emerges for the new coronavirus, a replay is possible, experts say. None of the global health authorities believes there will be sufficient supplies to satisfy the immediate demand. Governments will be under tremendous pressure to immunize their own citizenry and get life back to normal, so hoarding remains a serious risk. 



Ronald St. John, a physician who has held government posts on infectious disease control in the United States and Canada, expects a similar scenario with vaccines. “There is going to be a lot of self-interest in terms of the production,” he said. 



In the United States, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a federal agency that funds disease-fighting technology, explicitly gives preference to vaccine projects promising U.S. production capacity.

“We’re asking the American taxpayer to give a lot” to the vaccine effort, so it’s important to ensure U.S. access to any successful vaccine, said Bright, BARDA’s recent chief. 

Many other governments are pouring money into vaccine initiatives with expectations that they will be first in line if a viable vaccine emerges. 
Arcturus Therapeutics, a San Diego biotech, is receiving up to $10 million (8 million pounds) from the Singapore government to develop its mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine candidate in partnership with the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School. If the vaccine is approved, Singapore gets first access, said Arcturus CEO Joseph Payne. Everything after that, he said, goes to “whoever pays for it.”

“Arcturus is not responsible for the ethics of distribution – governments are – but in order for governments to get the vaccine, they need to pay for it,” Payne said. “The country that will win is the country that stockpiles multiple vaccines at risk.”
In China, a major global producer of vaccines, the government is backing several coronavirus vaccine projects, raising the prospect it will inoculate its 1.4 billion people first.
The World Health Organization announced a “landmark collaboration” across the international community to raise $8 billion to accelerate the coronavirus vaccine development and ensure equitable access worldwide to any successful vaccine. Countries across Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas announced their participation, but the United States and China, two of the world’s biggest pharma forces, did not.
“There will be no U.S. official participation,” a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva told Reuters



Yuan Qiong, senior legal and policy advisor at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Access Campaign explained “There shouldn’t be any patent monopoly and profiteering out of this pandemic.” 











Rohingya Boat People

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The Bangladesh government has refused to allow some 500 Rohingya refugee women, men and children, fleeing Mayanmar and now stranded on board two fishing trawlers in the Bay of Bengal and who are believed to have been at sea for weeks to come ashore.



Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told Al Jazeera that the Rohingya refugees are “not Bangladesh’s responsibility.”



The two trawlers have already been refused safe harbour by Malaysia.



Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the government of Bangladesh should immediately allow stranded refugees ashore and provide them with the necessary food, water, and healthcare.

“Bangladesh has shouldered a heavy burden as the result of the Myanmar military’s atrocity crimes, but this is no excuse to push boatloads of refugees out to sea to die,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at HRW. “Bangladesh should continue to help those at grave risk and preserve the international goodwill it has gained in recent years for helping the Rohingya.” It is believed that most of the Rohingya refugees on board the trawlers had left refugee camps in Bangladesh in an attempt to reach Malaysia, according to HRW.
HRW also said that “all countries, including Malaysia and Thailand, have the responsibility under international law to respond to boats in distress, enact or coordinate rescue operations within their search and rescue operations, and not to push back asylum seekers risking their lives at sea.”
Amnesty International last week called on Southeast Asian governments to launch immediate search and rescue operations for potentially hundreds more Rohingya refugees languishing at sea.
“All countries in the region have a responsibility to ensure the seas do not become graveyards for people seeking safety. Bangladesh cannot be left to address this situation alone. The fact that it is upholding its own obligations is not an excuse for others to abandon theirs,” said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia director at Amnesty International.



Norway’s Arctic Oil

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The Norwegian government on Friday proposed an extension southwards of the so-called ice edge boundary, which marks the edge of the Arctic beyond which firms are barred from drilling for oil. But the plans stay just northerly enough to exclude areas for which licenses have already been granted — going against the advice issued by the government’s own scientists. 
Greenpeace said the government had set a “completely arbitrary and unscientific border” in order to put the interests of the oil industry ahead of the science. 
“The Norwegian government is acting like Donald Trump; ignoring scientific advice. The government is letting the Arctic and the climate down. Now the parliament must take responsibility,” Frode Pleym, the head of Greenpeace in Norway, told The Independent. Pleym said it was “high time” Norway transitioned away from fossil fuels in order to protect the climate and ultimately jobs. “Oil is rapidly becoming a part of the past and Norway’s oil exposed economy is suffering,” he said. “It is unacceptable to put the short-term interest of big oil before science, nature and people. Norway’s green credentials are at stake if this decision stands.”
Anthony Field, Arctic expert at WWF, accused the Norwegian government of choosing “oil drilling over nature”.
“Oil companies are seeking to profit from the exploitation of the region’s oil reserves. But not only would general operations have a negative impact, an accident at the edge of the sea ice would be disastrous for this vitally important ecosystem because of the sensitivity of key species to oil,” he said. “We want all oil companies – including British ones – to stop their exploration in this sensitive ecological region.”



Making money from death and suffering

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UK arms sales to repressive regimes increased by £1bn last year compared with 2018. The increase, of more than 300%, has been condemned by arms control campaigners, who accuse the government of putting profits before human rights.
In 2019 the UK sold £1.3bn worth of weapons to 26 of the 48 countries that are classed as “not free” by Freedom House, the US government-funded pro-democracy institution. This was compared with just £310m in 2018. Business is brisk among those countries which the Foreign Office itself identifies as having poor human rights records.



In 2018, the UK sold £173m worth of arms to states on the Foreign Office list of “human rights priority countries” – nations identified as having human rights issues. But last year this increased to £849m, an increase of 390%.
Andrew Smith, of Campaign Against Arms Trade, said: “The UK government is always telling us how robust its arms export controls supposedly are, but these figures make clear that nothing could be further from the truth. The UK arms industry is dominated by human rights abusers, despots and dictatorships. The figures may be good for the arms dealers, but these weapons could be used in atrocities and abuses for years to come.”
2019 was a lucrative year in terms of licences to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and UAE. The increase could have been significantly larger. A court ruling freezing arms sales to Saudi Arabia had a considerable impact on UK exports to the kingdom in the second half of last year.
And the figures do not include open licences which allow the export of an unlimited number of consignments over a fixed period, typically between three and five years.
In 2018, the Observer revealed that, for the previous five years, the UK had been selling missiles and bombs to the Saudis under the open licence system.
“These sales are only possible because of the complicity of the UK government, which has consistently put arms company profits ahead of human rights,” Smith said. “UK-made fighter jets and bombs are doing terrible damage in Yemen. The war has killed tens of thousands of people and depleted the healthcare system in a time of crisis.”






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