Lebanon Slavery

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Some 250,000 migrant domestic workers – most from sub-Saharan African countries such as Ethiopia and Ghana, and southeast Asian countries including Nepal and the Philippines – reside in Lebanon. General Security had said in 2017 that two domestic workers die every week in Lebanon.

Domestic workers in Lebanon are legally bound to their employers through the country’s notorious kafala system, which only allows them to end their contracts with the consent of employers.

The system has led to widespread abuse, ranging from the withholding of wages, to physical and sexual assault. Camille Abousleiman, Lebanon’s former labour minister, has called it “modern-day slavery”.
Diala Haidar, a Lebanon campaigner at Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera, “The Lebanese labour law explicitly excludes domestic workers from labour protections enjoyed by other workers such as minimum wage, overtime pay, compensation for unfair dismissal, and social security. The labour law needs to be amended to recognise domestic workers as workers and grant them full labour protections.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/lebanon-arrests-suspect-putting-nigerian-worker-sale-200423135002619.html

Insect Holocaust

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The biggest assessment of global insect abundances to date shows a worrying drop of almost 25% in the last 30 years, with accelerating declines in Europe that shocked scientists.  Other experts estimate 50% of insects have been lost in the last 50 years.



  Insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals and are essential to the ecosystems humanity depends upon. They pollinate plants, are food for other creatures and recycle nature’s waste. Losses of insects are driven by habitat destruction, pesticides and light pollution.



The research, published in the journal Science, also examined how the rate of loss was changing over time. “Europe seems to be getting worse now – that is striking and shocking. But why that is, we don’t know,” said van Klink. In North America, the declines are flattening off, but at a low level.

Elsewhere, data is much more sparse. “But we know from our results that the expansion of cities is bad for insects because every place used to be more natural habitat – it is not rocket science,” said van Klink. “This is happening in east Asia and Africa at a rapid rate. In South America, there is the destruction of the Amazon. There’s absolutely no question this is bad for insects and all the other animals there. But we just don’t have the data.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/23/insect-numbers-down-25-since-1990-global-study-finds



Billionaire Bonanza

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 As the pandemic-fuelled U.S. unemployment rate approaches 15 percent, America’s billionaire class is experiencing a wealth surge.



Between March 18th and April 23th, as more than 26 million U.S. workers lost their jobs, the combined wealth of America’s billionaires increased by $308 billion, a 10.5 percent increase.  After a brief decline, the collective wealth of 614 U.S. billionaires has surpassed than their 2019 levels.




The Jeff Bezos wealth surge is unprecedented in modern financial history.  As of April 15, his fortune had increased by an estimated $25 billion since January 1, 2020. This is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of Honduras, $23.9 billion in 2018.




Between January 1, 2020 and April 10, 2020, 34 of the nation’s wealthiest 170 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by tens of millions of dollars.




Eight of these billionaires — the “pandemic profiteers” –have seen their net worth surge by over $ 1 billion.  


Billionaires that have profited off of America’s urgent need for video conferencing, include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, owner of Skype and Teams, and Eric Yaun, founder and CEO of Zoom.


Between 1990 and 2020, U.S. billionaire wealth soared 1,130 percent in 2020 dollars, an increase more than 200 times greater than the 5.37 percent growth of U.S. median wealth over this same period.


Between 1980 and 2018, the tax obligations of America’s billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, decreased a staggering 79 percent.


The billionaire share of America’s increased wealth has risen throughout the past four decades. Between 2006 and 2018, nearly 7 percent of the real increase in America’s wealth went to the country’s 400 wealthiest households.


https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/23/us-billionaire-wealth-surges-covid-19-pandemic-worsens

Big Parma Fails

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Public health experts have warned for years that the world is at risk of a major pandemic, and advocates say Big Pharma showed little interest in developing vaccines – or even antibiotic and antiviral medications — until the latest outbreak offered an opportunity to rake in public funding and turn out massive profits with minimal risk. Now that COVID-19 has spread across the planet, the industry boasts that at least 310 clinical trials for treatments and vaccines for the virus are underway across the world, including 40 in the United States.



Antibiotic and antiviral drugs are usually prescribed for short periods of time and therefore generally don’t yield blockbuster sales. The pharmaceutical industry has gradually abandoned vaccine development over the past 50 years as it focused on lifestyle drugs and treatments for chronic conditions such as cancer that are in consistent demand. Drug companies also substantially decreased their investment in treatments and vaccines for emerging infectious diseases over the past decade. In 2018, only 1 percent of the global pharmaceutical industry’s research and development spending focused on emerging infectious diseases.



Drug companies have historically pleased investors by promoting vaccine development programs during disease outbreaks, then quietly dropping them later.  Despite an outbreak raging in the Republic of Congo, the British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline recently gave up its effort to develop a vaccine for Ebola. In 2017, the  French drug maker Sanofi pulled out of a partnership with the U.S. Army to develop a vaccine for the mosquito-borne Zika virus.



“Big Pharma’s business model is one of maximizing shareholder value — and it hinges on short-term returns,” Dana Brown, director of The Next System Project, a research and development lab said. “There’s little if any gain for shareholders when companies invest in vaccine development…. A number of companies report losing money on Ebola or SARS vaccines programs.”



Last year, there were only six active clinical trials of vaccines and therapeutics for coronaviruses involving private drug companies, and all of them depend heavily on public funding. Had there been more sustained interest in the private sector, researchers would have more tools for combating the current outbreak, such as more platform technologies for vaccine development.



 “With COVID-19, the US government has eliminated many risks that often dissuade drug companies from vaccine investments,” wrote David Mitchell and Ben Wakana with Patients for Affordable Drugs in a blog post. “By bankrolling research, sponsoring clinical trials, and eliminating all liability for drug corporations, American taxpayers are heavily subsidizing drug corporations’ search for a COVID-19 vaccine.” 



Generous government incentives have turned the pandemic into a massive business opportunity, but private drug companies will only remain involved if there is money to be made. The large role of private companies in the vaccine quest raises concerns about their commitment to research as well as patient access to the vaccine itself. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) partnership has no “access provisions” requiring private companies that benefit from public funding to make the medicines they develop accessible and affordable for patients. Private companies will likely want exclusive licenses and marketing rights in exchange for their investment in COVID-19 drug development, advocates say. This could create huge shortages of a vaccine, particularly in lower-income countries.



“This is simply an instance in which a competitive, market environment is not an apt vehicle for solving the problem,” Brown said. “Only an open, collaborative approach to coronavirus vaccine development can assure a safe and effective vaccine will be made accessible to all — and it would speed up the process of discovery as well.”



https://truthout.org/articles/before-covid-19-big-pharma-was-neglecting-vaccine-and-antiviral-research/



What will be our post-pandemic future?

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 There is an argument that the greater danger than the COVID-19 pandemic is not the virus itself but the capitalist system. Humanity has all the scientific knowledge and technological tools to overcome the virus. The real problem is greed and ignorance. Many people are being encouraged not to respond with global solidarity, but instead to blame other countries, ethnic and religious minorities. Instead of politicians urging us all to develop our compassion and our generosity to help people in need, they are espousing conspiracy theories.



Much of the public fear the epidemic and seek a strong powerful charismatic leader to take over control. This makes it far easier for a dictator to do exactly that, to take over. He could easily create a totalitarian regime.



  If you have had demagogues who have been lying for years, then you have less reason to trust them in this emergency. We have witnessed a variety of populist politicians undermining experts, saying that those scientists are part of a remote elite, disconnected from the people, politicians who have been telling us things like climate change are just a hoax and you shouldn’t believe the scientific consensus. 



 We can prevent it from happening. But to prevent it from happening, we first of all have to realise the dangers. Fortunately, at this moment of crisis all over the world, we see that ordinary people are placing their trust in the scientific advice. When expert opinion warn us about other threats besides this pandemic, such as climate change and ecological collapse, we will heed their warnings with the same seriousness that we now take what they say about COVID-19. 



With the lockdown we have come to recognise who are the key essential workers and now know who is the superfluous class because of the current economic crisis.



But the capitalists are not stupid. They will endeavour to restructure their system to protect themselves. 



We can now expect to see an increase in the rate automation is implemented, with robots and Artificial Intelligence replacing working people in more and more jobs. Robots cannot get sick.



Employers have grown aware of which parts of their businesses permits employees to work remotely from home on-line and remote from fellow workers. It could result in the return to the “cottage industry” for many sectors of the economy and the possible collapse of organised labour for some.



We may also see that the supply chain being shortened and some countries deciding to repatriate manufacturing  instead of relying on off-shore factories elsewhere. It will mean ensuring that the policy of cheap labour and weak unions also continues to maintain that the same rate of profit still carries on.



 So because of automation and de-globalisation a large number of working people across the world may well

lose their jobs and security.



Adapted from here

https://www.dw.com/en/virus-itself-is-not-the-biggest-danger-says-yuval-noah-harari/a-53195552



Water World

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The number of people harmed by floods will double worldwide by 2030, according to a new analysis by the World Resources Institute, a global research group.
147 million people will be hit by floods from rivers and coasts annually by the end of the decade, compared with 72 million people just 10 years ago.
By 2050, a total of 221 million people will be at risk.
Floods are getting worse because of the climate crisis, decisions to populate high-risk areas and land sinkage from the overuse of groundwater.
The worst flooding will come in south and south-east Asia, including in Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Indonesia and China, where large populations are vulnerable.
The effects will be less dire but still increasingly serious in the US, where the risk is highest for coastal flooding. The US ranks third among countries with the most to lose from urban coastal flooding in the next 10 years, after China and Indonesia. By 2050,  half the country’s exposed population will be in just three states – Louisiana, Massachusetts and Florida.

Once in a lifetime floods could become daily occurrences for most of the US coastline, according to a separate study. That’s because hurricanes are stronger, seas are higher and rain patterns are changing, all because of global heating caused by humans.



https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/23/flooding-double-number-people-worldwide-2030

The struggle for socialism

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 Opponents of socialism frequently say as an objection that there are different kinds of socialists and different kinds of socialism. They say there are as many different kinds of socialists as there are different socialists. Socialism rests on one fundamental principle, the common ownership and democratic administration of production and distribution of wealth. State ownership is not considered as collectively owned and they are certainly not democratically administered.



We are living in an age of crises. Social transformation is slow. It can take decades to change hearts and minds. But that is time we no longer have. It is time to do more than simply march in the streets with placards and sign petitions? Socialists constantly ask ourselves how long will it take to implement an alternative, post-capitalist society. We hold out hope from understanding that achieving socialism need not be for future generations but that a radical social revolution can move fast and quickly win widespread support.



As our situation becomes more dire, the old economic imperatives no longer hold water.



Recent research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard, confirms that peaceful civil disobedience can not only be a moral choice but an effective one. She studied hundreds of grassroots resistance groups and concluded that non-violent campaigns were twice as likely to succeed as violent protests: 53 percent compared to 26 percent. 



The outcome of any struggle between them and the government will be decided in large part by public opinion. A downside to civil disobedience is the tendency of governments to increase anti-protest legislation in response. If protesters can be blamed for starting violence, that will elevate the administration and its supporters. And worse yet, it might also help legitimise harsher methods by the security forces in response. The success of non-violent resistance is partly due to strength in numbers. Such civil disobedience campaigns are more likely to be successful because they can involve people from a wider base, from all walks of life, who are not seriously risking their livelihoods or indeed their lives to participate. They can be old, young, middle and working class. They can be fence sitters.



Yet we cannot forget that despite being twice as successful as violent resistance, peaceful protest still failed 47 percent of the time. 



 Disappointment cannot lead to despondency.



Adapted from here

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/civil-disobedience-climate-revolution-200227125836559.html



The Hungry Countries

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Yemen

Even before the war in Yemen began, the country was the poorest in the Arab world.
But since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in the conflict against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in 2015, the country’s humanitarian situation has deteriorated still further.
“As conflicts become longer, more and more people become vulnerable”, the WFP’s Chief Economist and Director of Research, Assessment and Monitoring Division, Arif Husain, told the BBC. “In 2016 in Yemen, we were maybe assisting three or four million people. Today that number is 12 million.”
To make matters worse, the WFP said earlier this month it would halve aid to Houthi-controlled areas, over concerns voiced by some countries that the rebels were obstructing aid deliveries.
Yemen reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus earlier this month, with aid agencies warning that the disease could quickly overwhelm the country’s weakened health systems.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

After more than a quarter of a century of armed conflict in parts of the country, the DRC is the world’s second-largest hunger crisis, according to the WFP.
More than 15% of the country’s population are classed as “severely food insecure” – meaning that they are among 30 million people in war zones around the world who are almost completely dependent on aid. Almost $2bn is needed to secure the food supply for these populations in next three months alone, Mr Husain said.
“Those were the worst-affected people and now they’re in even more trouble,” he said.
The DRC also has 5 million internally displaced people and over half a million refugees from neighbouring countries.


In addition to the heightened risk faced by anyone living in war zones, displaced people are even more vulnerable during the coronavirus outbreak because they often lack basic hygiene facilities needed to help stop the spread of disease.
Earlier this month the spokesman for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, warned that ongoing violence in the DRC was threatening efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus there, which has so far mainly affected the capital Kinshasa.

Venezuela

Unlike the other countries on the list, Venezuela’s hunger has not been caused by conflict or environmental factors, but rather by economic hardship.
Although Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, hyperinflation in the country reached 200% in January last year, leaving a third of its people in need of assistance.
The difficulties have been compounded by a mass exodus of health workers, according to WFP.
And the problems don’t end there – around 4.8 million people (or 15% of the population) have left Venezuela in recent years, and hundreds of thousands of these migrants are facing food insecurity in neighbouring countries.

South Sudan

The world’s youngest country only gained independence from its northern neighbour, Sudan, in 2011. The move was meant to mark the end of a long-running civil war, but the country descended into violent conflict after just two years.
The WFP warns that hunger and malnutrition in South Sudan are at the most extreme levels since 2011, with almost 60% of the population struggling to find food every day.
Making the situation worse, swarms of locusts which had destroyed crops across East Africa arrived in South Sudan earlier this year.
“If Covid-19 was not a story right now, desert locusts would be the biggest story,” according to Mr Husain.
And as one of the most oil-dependent countries in the world, the country is likely to be hit hard by falling oil prices.
The country has now recorded four cases of coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Afghanistan

Another country ravaged by conflict, Afghanistan had suffered almost two decades of war when the US invaded in 2001.
Eighteen years later, more than half of the population lives below the poverty line, and over 11 million people are classed as severely food insecure by the WFP.
According to Afghan government figures there have been over 1,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
While the numbers appear low, the country has limited access to testing and the health system has suffered under decades of conflict.
There are also fears that the virus could have spread after more than 150,000 Afghans returned from virus-stricken Iran during March, while tens of thousands of others returned from Pakistan.

…and the new 130 million

In addition to areas affected by war, environmental issues or economic crises, many more low- and middle-income countries are likely to be affected by job losses and other economic difficulties caused by the spread of coronavirus in the coming months.
The problem will be made worse by similar economic pressures in countries across the world, meaning that remittances, or money being sent back from relatives abroad, will fall in these countries.
“The most important thing is an affordable treatment which must be available to everyone across the world,” Mr Husain said. “But until we get to that point, we need to make sure we do everything in our power to save lives and protect livelihoods.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52379956




Socialism – The Solidarity Economy

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Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged the need for a post-capitalist system has been evident to anyone who cared to pay attention. Those colloquially known as the 1% are committed to protecting their own interests even when it conflicts with the well-being of society as a whole. Working people who were previously struggling to survive above water who lived from pay-packet to pay-packet had been largely ignored until the lockdowns and now it is understood who are the key essential workers that keeps society running. The old norms which many found acceptable are no longer seen as inevitable. The capitalist system has nothing to offer except increased austerity and insecurity. The coronavirus crisis has revealed what was hidden obvious to everyone. It is clear that the profit motive made COVID-19 more deadly than it would have been in a socialist system.



The Socialist Party is not trying to save this dying system. We are working with determination to put an end to it and create a new world. Cooperation and mutual aid are now seen as important aspects of humanity. People are beginning to see different ways of living our lives which depend upon sharing resources and making decisions in a truly democratic process. Socialism is a model for ecological, economic and human sustainability that builds social cohesion. It’s time working people finally let go of the blind faith they have in reforms and regulatory system. Doing so will allow them to work in more meaningful solidarity for a better world.



We need to reach people in order to counter the pro-capitalist narrative that is everywhere. To build economic democracy, to create an alternative vision of how we can organize society we must talk to as many people as possible, not just to those who already agree with us. Most people who consider themselves socialists or who dislike capitalism are fooled by appeals to support ‘their’ country, ‘their’ military, ‘their’ leaders. They are told over and over and over again that ‘we’ are the good guys and that countries ‘over there’ are the ‘bad guys’. The rich and powerful have been dividing and conquering us for an awfully long time. It won’t stop until we build a powerful enough international movement of people who understand how this oppresses us.



We are living at a time when many of the inherent problem of capitalism have come to the fore. It is our moment to present the case for fundamental change. If we don’t succeed the world will continue on its current self-destructive course. People have power. Let’s use it. The only path is for people to organise for socialism. It is time to embrace the socialist idea and not step back from it.





No good news for climate change

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The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to cause the biggest fall in carbon dioxide emissions since World War Two but it will likely be short-lived and will not stop climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.



 The WMO expects a 6% drop in carbon emissions this year, an estimate on the high end of a range given by scientists, but the U.N. agency warned that it could be followed by even higher emissions growth than before the crisis. 



“This drop of emissions by 6%, that’s unfortunately short-term good news,” WMO’s Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said. “In the most likely case we will easily go back to normal next year and there might even be a boost in emissions because some industries have been stopped.”



In fact, the drop is not even enough to get the world back on track to meet the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims for global temperature rise of no more than 1.5 degree above pre-industrial levels, Taalas said. That would require at least a 7% annual drop in emissions, he added. Carbon dioxide remains in the air for centuries so falls in emmissions do not immediately impact climate and would need to be sustained over a period to eventually do so.



2015-2019 was the warmest five-year period on record, with the global average temperature up 1.1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  So far this year, global temperatures on a monthly basis have been either the warmest or second warmest on record.



Taalas added that climate change was a “different magnitude of problem” compared with COVID-19 and urged governments to tackle it in the same spirit as they have the pandemic. “To be optimistic, we would learn from this example and use the same spirit to tackle the climate problem,” he said.



https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-climate/drop-in-emissions-due-to-pandemic-wont-fix-climate-wmo-says-idUKKCN2241ED

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