The War Business

In his January 2016 State of the Union Address, President Obama smugly boasted that “We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined.” According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2014 (the most recent year for full figures) the US was responsible for 34 per cent of the world’s military spending.  It spent three times as much as China and over seven times as much as Russia. It having been calculated that each of the many thousands of armed forces personnel in Afghanistan “cost an average of an eye-popping $2.1 million” a year.

Obama’s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter gave a speech on defense affairs at the Economic Club in Washington, which is proud of the fact that it provides “a forum for prominent business and government leaders who have influenced economic and public policy both here and abroad. Members represent over 600 businesses and organizations [in Washington, DC] that are at the forefront of the private sector economy.” Carter told the Economic Club that “the Pentagon would seek a $582.7 billion budget next year and reshape spending priorities to reflect a new strategic environment marked by Russian assertiveness and the rise of Islamic State.” In his speech Carter said that “the Pentagon plans to spend about $2 billion over the next five years to buy more Raytheon Company Tomahawk missiles and upgrade their capabilities, bringing the inventory of the missiles to above 4,000.”  At midday on February 2, Raytheon shares stood at 123.47.  By 4 p.m. next day they had increased to 128.07.

After this chat to the Club of “prominent leaders” of military-focused commercial enterprises, Reuters reported that Mr Carter “flew to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California to get updates on new high-end weapons being developed and tested there, including precision Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles built by Lockheed Martin Corp. He said the [defense] department would spend nearly $1 billion over the next five years to buy the new missiles.” The effect of the announcement on Lockheed’s shares was intriguing. At 10 a.m. on February 2, just before the Carter statement, they were at 208.87 — and by 2.30 p.m. on February 3 they had gone up to 213.53.  

Carter had been “a consultant to defense contractors and when he went back to the Pentagon in 2009, he had to get a special waiver because of his work for companies like Mitre Corp, and Global Technology Partners, a defense consulting firm. As The Washington Times points out, that background seems to conflict with the president’s pledge to block the revolving door between federal employees and special-interest groups.” Mr Carter was a Senior Partner in Global Technology, which “is a specialized group of investment professionals who have formed a strategic relationship with DLJ Merchant Banking Partners to acquire and invest in technology, defense, aerospace and related businesses worldwide.”

Carter was reported as saying that “the Pentagon would ask for $3.4 billion to boost military training and exercises aimed at reassuring European countries concerned about Russia, which seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and has worried NATO allies with its strategic bomber flights.” He ignores his own spokesman’s proud declaration that “We conduct B-52 [strategic nuclear bomber] flights in international air space [around China] all the time,” and that the US operation “Polar Growl” of B-52 jaunts is aimed explicitly against Russia in “demonstrating the credible and flexible ability of our strategic bomber force,” and “saw B-52s complete simultaneous,  round-trip sorties from Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, to the Arctic and North Sea regions.”

The Pentagon is indulging in confrontational military “assertiveness” all around the world, in every region and ocean, operating from hundreds of military bases that are thousands of miles away from the borders of the United States. It is welcome news for the big spenders on military equipment in Washington where members of the Economic Club will be rejoicing in their wealth and ever-increasing profits. 

Taken from here 

The Poor Die Younger

It has long been established that people who earn lower incomes live measurably shorter lives than their better-off counterparts. New findings indicate that the “longevity gap” between the rich and the poor in the United States has grown dramatically wider in recent years. 

Researchers Barry Bosworth, Gary Burtless, and Kan Zhang analyzed data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, Social Security Administration, and Health and Retirement Study to provide details about the incomes and lives of over 100,000 men and women born between 1910 and 1950. According to their findings, “the mortality differential is growing over time.”

The average life expectancy of men who were born in 1920, survived to age 50 and are at the top 10 percent of earners is 79.3 years. Their counterparts in the bottom 10 percent are expected on average to live five years fewer, the study finds.

In 1940 and you find a longevity gap of 12 years between the top and bottom 10 percent.

In 1950, now a 14-year difference in life expectancy.

It's no different for female populations. Among women born in 1920 who survived to age 50, the longevity gap was 4.7 years. That widened to a gulf of 13 years for those born in 1950.

For the lowest earners, average life expectancy is barely improving. Researchers found that the bottom 10 percent of male earners born in 1920 are expected to live to 72.9 years. That same demographic born in 1950 is expected live to the age of 73.6 on average. Women in the lowest income group, meanwhile, made “no gain at all” in life expectancy, the researchers concluded. Top earners, in contrast, saw an improvement of 6.4 years. The Brookings study does not include an in-depth analysis of race, other studies show a profound life expectancy gap between white and black people in the United States. One study published by Health Affairs in 2014 found that the gulf has diminished slightly between 1990 and 2009. However, it remains wide: at 5.4 years for males and 3.8 years for females.

From Here

‘EU’ DE COLOGNE OR BRUSSEL SPR‘OUT’? (weekly poem)

‘EU’ DE COLOGNE OR BRUSSEL SPR‘OUT’?

David Cameron hopes with the conclusion of his

E.U. deal that he will come up smelling of roses.

The day is won - the deal is done,

Big Dave has pulled it off;

Who else could ‘win’ for the U.K.,

Than Britain’s Eton toff?

With ‘peace for our time’ there will be, (1)

Prosperity for all;

Although the migrants still can breach,

The Bard’s defensive wall. (2)

But we’ll retain our sovereignty,

In all that that may mean;              

The House of Lords, The Carlton Club,

The Stock Exchange, the Queen.

The man on Clapham’s Omnibus,

Will dine at Number Ten;

In the same way he’s always done,

For years since way back when.

Dave’s deal will benefit us all;

His ersatz E.U. Blitz,

Means migrants will get slightly less,

Of our crap Benefits.

The New Jerusalem’s at hand,

Foretold by William Blake;

Where in or out of the E.U.

The few still own the cake!

(1) Neville Chamberlain’s statement made less

than a year before World War Two commenced.

(2) William Shakespeare: Richard 11, Act 2, Scene 1.

Cameron has failed to amend the E.U.’s free movement of labour policies.

© Richard Layton

Who pollutes the water?

Environment America have revealed who the largest polluters of American waterways are. Environment America's recent analysis specifically addresses releases into waterways, and excludes air pollution and landfill sources.

AK Steel Holding Corp took first place.

Tyson Foods came a very close second.

The Department of Defense (DOD), is the third largest water polluter in America, having dumped some 63,335,653 pounds of poison into waterways from 2010-2014. Amongst the many potentially deadly substances released by DOD are chemicals, rocket fuel and toxic sewage - but it's the carcinogenic and mutagenic radioactive isotopes let loose by its nuclear munition plants that make DOD's emissions exceptionally dangerous. The Department's myriad facilities, dedicated steadfastly to perpetuating ongoing participation in the nuclear bomb game, have been leaking and leeching lethal radiation from the dawn of the nuclear age, to the present day.

It is us and them

The 1% elite worked have trouble believing that others cannot be as successful as they are. The cannot accept that money, fame and power are not always motivators they are claimed to be.

Most rich people only spend time with others in the same high income bracke and so they may be oblivious to the economic pain of the poor and the middle incomed. Their offspring aren’t saddled with huge college debts; they aren’t deciding whether or not to have a medical procedure because of a $5,000 insurance deductible; they weren’t forced to take a job at a much lower salary than the one they held before being laid off; and they probably aren’t worrying how they’ll survive in retirement on meager savings and Social Security. Real household income (adjusted for inflation) has declined in the years between 2000 and 2015. In 2011, it even dipped as much as $5,000 below 2000 levels (though it has rebounded from that lowest point). Most people lack any sense of job security, let alone hope for improved income. The 1% live a comfortable, safe life, they don’t feel the frustration experienced by the less lucky when dealing with the daily hassles of under-funded schools, lousy public transport, environmental hazards and crumbling infrastructure.

Does the 1% notice the endless wars except the high dividends it offers in their armament investment portfolios. Do they care that their stocks and shares in war industries kills and injures innocent people? More than half of the discretionary spending in the 2015 federal budget went to defense and homeland security. Contrast that to the five percent of the budget that went to the State Department and foreign aid, or the two percent that went to science and NASA. The 1% profit from the military-industrial complex. It is just “the way things work.” It’s just “business as usual.” But in 2015, $3.2 billion dollars were spent lobbying Congress. There’s no doubt that corporations and groups don’t spend those billions on lobbying without thinking about their return on investment. More than  nine in ten Americans agree that money corrupts politics.

Fostering mental well-being?

Mental health care is so poor and underfunded that "lives are being ruined", a review  by a taskforce set up by NHS England said. Too many people were not getting help or when they did it was often inadequate. Those with severe problems suffer 15-20 years shorter life expectancy. Suicide is rising following many years of decline.

 25% of us in any year can expect to be diagnosed with a mental health issue. 75% receive no help. One in five mothers suffer mental health problems during pregnancy or in the first year after childbirth.

 10% of children and young people have a diagnosable mental health problem. Yet the average waiting time for a child to see a mental health practitioner is 21 weeks.

The Socialist Party has little doubt that the worsening mental health of the population is a result of the double pincer movement of a) an increasingly pressurised, ruthless and isolating capitalist system and b) the running down of the services that used to be there to pick up the pieces.

“For too many, especially black, Asian and minority ethnic people, their first experience of mental health care comes when they are detained under the Mental Health Act, often with police involvement, followed by a long stay in hospital,” Farmer and the taskforce’s vice-chair, Jacqui Dyer, a counsellor, mental health service user and carer, state in the report’s foreword.

ILO questions the UK's new anti-union laws

The International Labour Organisation requests that UK ministers re-look at proposals to lift ban on agency workers replacing those who are on strike. The trade union bill, which is currently going through the House of Lords, represents the biggest crackdown on trade union rights for 30 years. It includes plans to introduce a threshold of 50% turnout for industrial action ballots and, for important public sector services, a requirement that at least 40% of all eligible voters vote in favour of action. It also proposes to lift the ban on using agency workers to replace permanent staff during strikes.

The International Labour Organisation, calls for the government to review proposals to allow agency workers to replace strikers and asks that it only permits the use of replacements in industrial action in “essential services”. The government announced that fire, health, education, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning sectors would be deemed essential public services in the bill and therefore be subject to the 40% requirement. However, the ILO is asking the government to modify the bill to ensure that this rule does not apply to education and transport services.

The ILO also called on the government to modernise the procedural rules for balloting set out in the bill, which include the requirement that voting must be done by post only. The Conservatives have claimed that electronic voting is a security risk, while unions argue that postal voting is expensive and time consuming.

The Future is Bleak

Despite at least one adult working full time, millions of households cannot make ends meet, Joseph Rowntree Foundation reports.  Living standards have declined since 2008 despite the economy’s return to growth, the anti-poverty charity said, warning that families with children are at particular risk of a life in poverty.

The report found that 2.6 million households, or 60% of those where the total income is below the charity’s minimum income standard [MIS is determined by asking members of the public to define what is needed to “live to an adequate level”], included at least one working adult. About 600,000 households were living below the MIS – despite every adult being in full-time employment.

The threshold is £16,850 for a single person, £25,600 for a lone parent with one child and £36,060 for a single breadwinner with two children. Approximately 11.6 million people in the UK live below the MIS, the charity found, 28% of those the charity analyses. In 2008, prior to the banking crisis, approximately 21% fell below that level.

The report concluded: “Overall, the risk of falling short of a decent living standard has increased sharply since 2008-09. An improving economy alone is not guaranteed to reverse this rise.” The JRF said its findings showed that “the economic security of many working families is not assured in the recovery”, despite record numbers of people in work. “Cuts in benefits have outweighed improved job prospects to contribute to an increase in the risk of having too little income to meet the MIS,” the foundation said.

It warned that the picture for households with children was looking bleaker. Anyone living in a family with children has seen their risk of falling below the MIS watermark increase by a third since the previous report, it said. That means that 40% now live below the MIS – 2 million more than in 2008-09.

No change in Bahrain

Bahrain’s anti-regime protesters took to the streets as "Come to Revolution" campaign picks up speed ahead of the fifth anniversary of the country's popular revolution. Protesters staged a rally in the northern village of Musalla amid tight security and voiced their readiness to mark the anniversary of the uprising that engulfed their country on February 14, 2011. The protesters were holding photos of jailed political activists. Since mid-February 2011, thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations on an almost daily basis in the kingdom, calling for the Al Khalifah monarchy to relinquish power. Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others injured or arrested in the ongoing heavy-handed crackdown on peaceful rallies.

Britain has been bankrolling a Bahraini police watchdog that failed to investigate torture allegations regarding a young political activist on death row in the Gulf state. The funding forms part of a broader £2.1 million (US$3 million) scheme to improve Bahrain’s criminal justice system and was sparked by Britain’s close strategic ties to the kingdom. Those with concerns about detainees’ treatment in Bahrain have been encouraged by the British government to contact the Gulf state’s police ombudsman. But the British-funded watchdog’s failure to investigate a complaint lodged by the family of a political activist on death row has brought its reputation into disrepute. Human Rights Watch warned that credible allegations of abuse and torture of detainees in Bahrain undercuts claims that the state’s criminal justice system is improving. The group said that new institutions in the Gulf state are “sham reforms,” and demanded to know how Bahrain and Britain’s governments could possibly claim they were protecting prisoners from abuse during interrogation.

British arms sales to Bahrain have increased significantly over the past five years, while in the  background abuse claims have continued. Between February 2011 and September 2015, the UK has done deals with Bahrain worth £45m, covering arms such as machine guns, assault rifles and anti-armour ammunition, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) organisation. The total for the three years prior to the uprising was £6m. Saudi Arabia also sent UK-supplied armoured vehicles to Bahrain to safeguard infrastructure, allowing the Bahraini monarchy violently to repress the pro-democracy opposition movement, led by the country’s Shia majority. Doctors who treated protesters were tortured.

In 2014, the UK agreed to open a naval base in Bahrain as a result of a defence agreement. Construction began last November, with Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, celebrating the deal in a photocall with the Bahraini foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. The pair held brand new shovels as they laid the cornerstone of HMS Juffair, the first major naval base east of the Suez Canal opened by Britain since 1971.

A Bahraini human rights group lodged a complaint with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development against Fifa over Sheikh Salman al-Khalifa’s candidacy for the football governing body’s presidency. In the complaintthe campaign group Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) alleged that Sheikh Salman committed numerous human rights abuses while president of the Bahrain Football Association. The central allegation concerns the persecution and arrest of footballers who took part in pro-democracy protests. In 2011, Sheikh Salman reportedly chaired a special committee that led to the jailing of more than 150 athletes, coaches and referees. “All the evidence suggests that Sheikh Salman was involved in the government crackdown on free expression and human rights,” said Husain Abdulla, executive director of ADHRB. “This raises serious concerns about his ability to protect the athletes who would be under his care as president of Fifa.”

Yemen is real

In one of the sitcom Friends episodes Chandler attempts to evade an on-and-off girlfriend by telling her he’s been transferred to Yemen. It's the furthest place he can think of, where she can’t possibly follow him. Joey remarks, “Yemen, that actually sounds like a real country.”

It perhaps explains why few care about Yemen and why it has become a forgotten war. This is a complicated civil which makes the simplistic sound-bites and one-minute analysis of the news-rooms difficult so it is often reduced to a proxy war between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran. It lacks the clear good guy versus bad guy story-line so isn’t very popular in the search for a television audience. The media, insteads, gravitates towards the bigger regional conflicts in Syria, Iraq or Libya, whose impact on the West is so much clearer to define. Many expressed sympathy for the besieged Syrian town of Aleppo but how many know of Taiz, where in late November UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said 200,000 civilians were living under a “virtual state of siege.”

 Ali Abdullah Saleh ruled the country for 33 years and had been battling a Shiite Houthi rebellion since 2004, being forced out in 2011 amid a power struggle with opposition leaders and their tribal militias, as the country was rocked by months of popular demonstrations against his rule. His replacement, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is the internationally recognised president of Yemen, but he has been effectively ousted when the Houthi rebels took the capital in January last year. That he was once the leader of a united Yemen and sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States is his main claim to legitimacy, but he also happens to be allied on the side of southern separatists, anti-Houthi tribal leaders and Sunni Islamists. The Houthis are often portrayed as proxies Iran, they have their own grievances, leaders, and decision-makers. Confusingly, they are now also backed by Saleh, their former enemy. Islamist groups have meanwhile taken advantage of the chaos to gain new territory. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and so-called Islamic State are both now present in the strategically important southern port of Aden.

UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year were at a record high – 2.8 billion pounds ($4.2 billion) in the first three quarters alone. That’s dwarfed by US sales. Since September 2014, Obama’s administration has informed Congress of arms sales to Saudi Arabia totaling more than $21 billion. Some members of Congress have spoken out against a proposed $1.29 billion deal on air-to-ground munitions because of how they might be used in Yemen, but the sale appears poised to go ahead.

The World Health Organization counts more than 6,000 conflict related deaths in the last 11 months. Given that Yemen’s health system is decimated – there’s a lack of supplies, not to mention 69 facilities damaged or destroyed – and 14.1 million Yemenis lack sufficient access to healthcare, it’s safe to say the real number is higher. 19.3 million people lack access to clean water or sanitation, and almost 320,000 children are severely malnourished.

OCHCR, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, recorded 318 civilian casualties in January: 118 killed, 200 injured. This brings estimated civilian casualties since March 2015 to 8,437: 2,913 civilians killed, 5,524 injured. By comparison, after a year of conflict in Syria, the UN was reporting 7,500 deaths.

Some day not so far in the future people will be asking why the world didn't we pay more attention to Yemen? Why didn't we take it more seriously when it had a chance to do something?

 To answer Joey, Yemen is a real country and its people are real flesh and blood, too.

Taken from here  

Sanders - The Churchillian

Bernie Sanders was asked "The world has seen many great leaders in history. Can you name two leaders, one American and one foreign, who would influence your foreign policy decisions?"

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the American leader who had influenced him and the foreign leader was Winston Churchill.

“Winston Churchill's politics were not my politics. He was kind of a conservative guy in many respects. But nobody can deny that as a wartime leader, he rallied the British people when they stood virtually alone against the Nazi juggernaut and rallied them and eventually won an extraordinary victory.”

Churchill’s contribution to the war effort cheered by Sanders was to help contribute to the 1943 Bengal famine, which Churchill later callously exacerbated, leading to the fatal starvation of around 3 million people. Churchill exported huge amounts of food from India to Britain and various war theaters, despite being repeatedly warned that continued exhaustion of India’s food supplies would lead to famine. Churchill's government insisted that India continue exporting grain even as Bengal was collapsing into starvation, shipping out 260,000 tons of rice in the fiscal year 1942-'43. Grain imports that could have eased the devastation were diverted elsewhere, to feed Britain and create stockpiles that could be used to feed Europeans in the event they were liberated from Nazi rule. He declined offers of wheat from the United States and Canada, and had Australian ships carrying wheat bypass India and travel straight to Europe.

"I hate Indians," Churchill told his secretary of state for India, Leopold Amery. "They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." Amery accused Churchill of having a "Hitler-like attitude" toward Indians, but Churchill was unmoved. Amery recorded in his diary Churchill saying that “the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks.” He even seemed to view the catastrophic famine as a reasonable punishment for India's high birthrate, telling his war cabinet that the famine was Indians' own fault for "breeding like rabbits." Approximately 3 million Indians died in the famine.

During World War II, at the same time that he was rallying the British public with the inspirational speeches cited by Senator Sanders, Churchill produced a secret memorandum that made clear his desire to “drench” German cities with poison gas so that “most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention.” “I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by the particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across,” he explained. Churchill didn’t get his wish, but he did get to play a hand in another World War Two atrocity that would arguably come to be most associated with his name: the carpet bombing of Germany. Churchill’s bombing of German cities, part of the “extraordinary victory” celebrated by Sanders, deliberately made no distinction between combatants and civilians and killed around 400,000 civilians. Dresden has become the most notorious instance of this, though by no means is it the only one. As World War II drew to a close, Britain indiscriminately bombarded the city with more than 4,500 tons of explosives, reducing the city to smoldering rubble and ash and killing between 18-25,000 people. The bombing turned the city streets into bubbling, molten tar and created a fiery vortex that sucked in everything around it.

It was Churchill, more than any other politician, who pushed for the disastrous campaign  against the Bolsheviks following the first world war. Taking a large British fleet and 1,600 men as Britain struggled to find the money to rebuild, he attempted to restore the Russian aristocracy to power.

 In the 1920s, as the British secretary of state for war, Churchill created the notorious "Black and Tans," in Ireland, a paramilitary militia that he recruited to maintain British control and suppress the Irish nationalists. 

In the Middle East Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes... to spread a lively terror". On the Palestinian issue in 1937 he had gone on to explain in a little more detail his views on the worth of subject peoples in his submission to the Palestine Commission, arguing:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes... to spread a lively terror"

It was Churchill, more than any other politician, who pushed for the disastrous campaign in favour of the Whites against the Bolsheviks following the great war. Taking a large British fleet and 1,600 men as Britain struggled to find the money to rebuild, he attempted to restore the Russian aristocracy to power

He claimed that the fascism of Benito Mussolini had "rendered a service to the whole world", showing as it had "a way to combat subversive forces" and explained that “If I had been an Italian I am sure I should have been whole-heartedly with you in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism... Italy has provided the necessary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protection against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism.”

He was also an admirer of Hitler "I have always said that if Britain were defeated in a war I hoped we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations.”

While leading the UK in the 1950s, Churchill was responsible for other crimes. One of these was the CIA- and MI6-engineered coup in Iran, which saw the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq overthrown in 1953 after he nationalized British oil holdings in the country. Churchill had approved the plan and later told the main agent in the plot that he “would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture.” This was the same coup that Sanders denounced earlier in the debate as an example of how the United States should not act on the world stage. 

In the same decade, Churchill also presided over the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, which saw at least 11,000 killed and many thousands more tortured. Rebels, including Obama’s grandfather, were rounded up in concentration camps that make Abu Ghraib look like Disneyworld. Harvard historian Catherine Elkins has described them as "Britain's gulags." Those imprisoned in the camps were subjected to torture, including sexual violence like castration and rape. Records show that Churchill's government was well aware of what was happening but failed to stop it, even as it received reports of detainees being burned alive during interrogations.

Nor should we forget it was Churchill who sent in the troops to break a coal miners strike. During the General Strike Churchill started printing the British Gazette whose sole aim was to print lies about the strike and spread ruling class propaganda. During the General Strike, Churchill was reported to have suggested that machine guns should be used on the striking miners.

Henry Kissinger may have too much blood on his hands to be a friend of Sanders but Churchill’s hands are also very much drenched in blood to be a person to admire which makes many wonder about Sanders and his knowledge of history.  Churchill was a war-criminal. 

The Return of the Dustbowl

When it comes to the environment, the bad news seems to never end. In the course of the most arid years, each acre of farmland can lose up to 70 tons of soil and then, wherever the dust is dumped, it can smother the crops it lands on. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, the most remote area of the state, recent rainfall has been so meagre that fears have been kindled of a return to the apocalyptic "Dust Bowl" scenes of the 1930s. Back then, agriculture collapsed and thousands of people left.

Gary McManus, the Oklahoma State Climatologist, told the BBC: "The drought right now is the worst in decades especially in western Oklahoma. This has had a big economic impact on our economy - if you look at agriculture in 2011-12 alone there were $2bn losses from crops and cattle." He highlights rainfall statistics for the weather station in Boise City in the midst of one of the hardest-hit areas, Cimarron County, where the total from October 1 2010 to June 12 2014 was just 43 inches. By comparison, over the same period in the 1930s, a time of extraordinary hardship, Boise City received only 41.62 inches of rain.

Dr Renee McPherson of the University of Oklahoma, author of the Great Plains chapter of the recent National Climate Assessment says the region experiences very large climate variability but that models suggest there will be a rise in maximum temperatures this century. That could increase evaporation from the ground and transpiration from plants.

"We're less sure of what will happen to our precipitation patterns, but even if they stay the same, we'll see increased drying with those increased temperatures," she explained. "We aren't sure what the droughts will look like in future - whether they'll be longer - but we feel that because of the increasing temperature they will be intensified."

US scientists have modelled how a 1930s-like "dustbowl" drought might impact American agriculture today, and found it to be just as damaging. A repeat of 1930s weather today would lead to a 40% loss in maize production. In a 2-degree warmer world, it becomes a 65% reduction, the team projects.

"And what we see at higher temperatures is that these crops - maize and also soy - are so sensitive that an average year come mid-century could be as bad as 1936, even with normal precipitation," explained Joshua Elliott, from the University of Chicago's Computation Institute.

Looking at the production of the major grains - rice, wheat, maize and soybeans - the taskforce's scientists found that the chances of a one-in-100-year production disruption was likely to increase to a one-in-30-year event by 2040.  One factor that does not help is the way that production of some of these important crops is highly concentrated. The US, for example, is the leading producer in the world for maize, with most of it grown in just Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Illinois. But Dr Elliott said this concentration would have to be broken up, that a different and more varied approach would be needed if more extreme weather became the norm in the decades ahead. Maize might be better grown further north than the traditional Midwest states, he suggested. "It's most likely they will have to start growing other crops. "Maybe by mid to late century, Iowa will be known as the cotton state rather than the corn state, because cotton will basically have been eradicated out of much of the southern states because the temperature thresholds will have blown way past what cotton can handle there.

Tim Benton from the UK's Global Food Security Programme said  "Rather than seeing bad years as something that's rare and unlikely, we should go into each season with an expectation that 'average weather' doesn't exist anymore. It's either too hot, or too wet, or too cold or too dry. An average summer is very difficult to find these days."

The NHS and “junior doctors”

A comment from our forum that is worth repeating 

The government is doing its best to dismantle all state services and the NHS is no exception.  There have been some good articles on this subject in The Canary recently.

Also, I don’t know if anyone listens to James O’Brian on LBC, but he has spent a lot of time on his radio phone in to discuss this, with many “junior” doctors interviewed.  A “junior” doctor is nothing of the kind, it can be a hospital doctor with 20-30 years’ experience – it just means that he or she has not reached consultant level.  They are the backbone of the hospital service, and are the doctors we all come into contact with when we visit hospital.

From The Canary, re the new contract that have just been forced on doctors 

“The contract redefines Saturday work from 7am-5pm as ‘social hours’- with no pay increase, but offers a 30% premium for junior doctors who work more than one in four Saturdays. Hunt also announced he would lift basic pay from an 11% rise to a 13.5% rise. However, junior doctors called the rise a “cynical attempt” to “manipulate the figures”, claiming it would in fact amount to a real-terms pay cut of 26%, because of extra hours worked.”…….

“However, there is a gaping hole in Hunt’s claim that his imposed contract will bring safer services for patients. The Nuffield Trust thinktank has found:

While the number of patients attending hospital as an emergency is growing by 3.6% a year, hospitals are only receiving 1% more money a year to treat them.

This is entirely unsustainable. The Conservative government’s austerity programme is a threat to the safety of patients, and the imposed contract does nothing to address the gaping hole in funding.

The Department of Health just received an emergency bailout of £205m, but even this is taken from the budget for 2016-17. The Tories are deliberately setting the NHS on course to crash and burn, so the private sector can swoop in and ‘save the day’. Indeed, public dissatisfaction levels with the NHS are at the highest level for 30 years. This is all part of the plan.”

All this is very frightening, combined with the attack on trade union rights, access to legal aid and increased court fees, etc., etc.

The cattle voted to carry on with the slaughterhouse in the last election; but the figures I saw recently were that only 66% of the electorate voted, with only 24% voting for the Tories.

Some democracy.

Drying out?

Around two-thirds of the world population suffer from sever freshwater scarcity, a situation far more dangerous than previously thought, a new study published in the journal Science Advances, by two scientists from the University of Twente in Netherlands. "Water scarcity has become a global problem affecting us all," stated study co-author Arjen Hoekstra, a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Four billion people across the globe live under conditions of sever water shortage for at least one month of the year, adding that half of these people live in India and China. 500 million people live in regions where water consumption is twice as much as the amount received through precipitation during the entire year, leaving them highly vulnerable as natural underground reservoirs increasingly run down. Many countries, including Pakistan, Iran, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, are living on borrowed time, as their natural underground reservoirs of freshwater are increasingly depleting. The research further revealed that water problem in Yemen is very acute as the impoverished country of the Arabian Peninsula could run out of water within a few years.

The United States is far from immune to the problem, with 130 million people affected by water scarcity for at least one month a year, mostly in the states of Texas, California, and Florida. And among the rivers the study notes that are fully or nearly depleted before reaching their end is the Colorado River in the West.

"The water table is dropping all over the world," Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at the time. "There's not an infinite supply of water. We need to get our heads together on how we manage groundwater," Famiglietti added,"because we’re running out of it."

“Taking a shorter shower is not the answer” to the global problem, said professor Arjen Hoekstra, since just one to four percent of a person’s water footprint is in the home, while 25 percent is via meat consumption. “It takes over 15,000 liters of water to make one kilogram of beef, with almost all of that used to irrigate the crops fed to the cattle,” he explained.

The fact is this. There more than enough water to support life on this planet and several times over. There is not enough water to support the industrial scale consumption and pollution of the same. Drawing up water from the Earth so that desert areas can be greened to grow food, using and polluting fresh water as happened to the Flint River, using water for fracking and returning it to the ground as poisoned are all wastes of a precious resource. Added to this denuding lands of forests, blowing up mountains to get at coal, destruction of wetlands so as to plant crops or build homes or to get at tar sands underneath wastes yet more of that water as natural processes of retention of the same are destroyed. Then we got smokestacks emitting toxins so even the rain that falls from the sky is contaminated. Aquifers are not refilling because agriculture and industry uses the water before it can get to the aquifier. Water evaporates on falling due to lack of tree cover. Water washes away in rivers and streams because of hardened and compacted soil not allowing it to be absorbed into the ground. Water is wasted on things like Golf courses and people are moving in great numbers to areas that do not have the rainfall to support their numbers. It is poisoned by industrial practices such as fracking. It is used to flush away sewage and all manner of toxins and chemicals.

None of this a scarcity issue. It all an issue of misuse and of consumption for things not really needed. If it was truly scarce society would not treat it with such a callous disregard. It is important to recognize the difference between scarcity and misuse. There an agenda to privatize the world's stock of fresh water. Those in power use the meme of scarcity so as to advance the notion that if a financial cost be assigned to the consumer for use of water the market will help allocate that water in the most efficient manner. Capitalism itself is predicated on churning profits through scarcity. The scarcer a resource in demand the more profit to be made. We must by all means address the issues of water misuse. We must NOT use the market and privatization as a cure. While water was not distributed equally around the globe there was more than enough to support all of that life as there is today. It is not scarce. It can support life in its abundance. It is misused by industry

Gasping for fresh air

More than 5.5 million people worldwide are dying prematurely every year as a result of air pollution, according to new research. The main culprit is the emission of small particles from power plants, factories, vehicle exhausts and from the burning of coal and wood. Breathing in tiny liquid or solid particles can increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, respiratory complaints and even cancer. Most of these deaths are occurring in the rapidly developing economies of China and India.

According to the study, air pollution causes more deaths than other risk factors like malnutrition, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, and unsafe sex. The Global Burden of Disease Project puts it as the fourth greatest risk behind high blood pressure, dietary risks and smoking.

"In Beijing or Delhi on a bad air pollution day, the number of fine particles (known as PM2.5) can be higher than 300 micrograms per cubic metre," explained Dan Greenbaum from the Health Effects Institute, in Boston, US. "The number should be about 25 or 35 micrograms."

In China, there are said to be about 1.6 million deaths a year. In China, the dominant factor is particle emissions from coal burning. The project calculates this source alone is responsible for more than 360,000 deaths every year. Even though China has targets to restrict coal combustion and emissions in the future, it may struggle to bring down the number of deaths because it is acquiring an aging population and these citizens are naturally more susceptible to the illnesses associated with poor air quality.

In India, it is roughly 1.3 million deaths. In India, the problem that draws particular attention is the practice of burning wood, dung, crop residues and other materials for cooking and heating. This "indoor pollution" causes far more deaths than "outdoor pollution". Looking at the broad economic trends in India the country runs the risk of having even poorer air quality in the future. Chandra Venkataraman, from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, in Mumbai, warned: "Despite proposed emissions control, there is significant growth in the demand for electricity as well as industrial production. So, through to 2050, this growth overshadows the emissions controls (in our projections) and will lead to an increase in future air pollutant emissions in 2050 in India."

Drug dealers and the profits

GlaxoSmithKline has been fined £37.6m by Britain’s competition authority, the Competition & Markets Authority, for anti-competitive behaviour in relation to its antidepressant Seroxat. The pharmaceutical firm had paid generic drug-makers more than £50m between 2001 and 2004 in return for them delaying the launch of cheaper versions of the drug. The generic drugmakers involved, Generics UK Limited (GUK) and Alpharma, were also fined, bringing the total penalties imposed to £45m. GUK’s former parent Merck was fined £5.8m and further penalties of £1.5m were imposed on Alpharma and its parent Actavis.

The “pay-for-delay” agreements “potentially deprived the NHS of the significant price falls that generally result from generic competition”. In this case, when generic copies did come on to the market at the end of 2003, average prices dropped by more than 70% in two years. In the UK, 4.2m prescriptions were issued for Seroxat in 2000 and sales exceeded £90m in 2001.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/12/glaxosmithkline-fined-anti-competitive-behaviour-seroxat

Buying off the politician

In the United States, children go hungry. The American people are suffering. Yet this is not a poor country. The top 0.1 percent of Americans are sitting on as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. Long have the powerful few profited from the poor majority. Exploitation is a highly profitable business. Corporate profits are at an 85-year high, while workers' pay is at a 65-year low.

US legislators and corporate executives are tied together. A handful of individuals and their corporations openly spend millions in political campaign contributions (and millions more anonymously in dark money), as well as $2.6 billion every year to lobby Congress (more than the Senate and House budget combined). Corporate executives profit from this investment in corporate welfare (subsidies, grants, incentives, tax breaks and tax loopholes), the preservation of the destructive status quo, and beneficial (or the lack of detrimental) legislation that their lobbyists actually help to write. Corporations have an inordinate amount of control over what legislation gets passed, and since, as one survey shows, big business is only concerned with protecting "the company against changes in government policy," and improving their "ability to compete by seeking favorable changes in government policy," the laws that CEOs want are often terrible for the rest of the country. Corporations are concerned with their bottom line, not people, and so are the bills for which they lobby for.

The Harvard University Center for Ethics reports, "Institutional corruption is, sadly, alive and well in Congress." This is starkly evident in the new 2016 spending bill that gives $400 billion in tax favors to big business.

Walmart is the largest employer in the United States, with 2.2 million individuals on its payroll, yet the company only pays a (brand-new) minimum wage of $10 per hour. If you work 40 hours every week of the year (12 months of nonstop full-time work) that wage adds up to a paltry $20,800, a salary below the poverty line for a family of three. You cannot earn a living off this. In 2014 alone, Walmart gave $2,366,629 in political campaign contributions, and spent $7 million on lobbying. Twenty-seven members of Congress hold investments in the company, and 84 out of 103 (81 percent) of Walmart lobbyists have previously held government jobs. The company is also freely evading $19 billion in taxes, and receiving $23 million a year (or $1 billion throughout its 42-year history) in government tax breaks, free land, infrastructure assistance, low-cost financing and outright grants - a figure Good Jobs First notes might "very well be the tip of the iceberg." Walmart pays its workers abysmally, abuses its employees and hurts small “mom and pop” and the family farmer businesses - but it has close ties with Congress, and that makes all the difference.

Since 1989, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the two largest for-profit prison companies in the United States, have given nearly $10 million in political donations and spent almost $25 million on lobbying. In 2013-14, 78 percent of GEO Group lobbyists and 63 percent of CCA lobbyists previously held government jobs. These private prison companies are for-profit in the cruelest sense of the phrase: They lobby for harsher sentencing on nonviolent crimes through three-strikes laws, mandatory sentencing and truth-in-sentencing laws (the abolishment or reduction of parole), and push for new anti-immigrant laws to put more immigrants behind bars. The effects of this lobbying, donating and revolving are clear. GEO Group and CCA receive millions in government subsidies each year. Congress now has a quota for how many human beings must be locked in a tiny room per day: at least 34,000 immigrants, a number that continues to grow each year, eventhough the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has leveled off. If the beds are not filled, the government still must pay the corporation, to the further detriment of the taxpayer. In Arizona, 30 of the 36 state legislators who co-sponsored an (unsuccessful) immigration law to put even more people in detention received campaign donations from private prison corporations like GEO Group and CCA. When Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, GEO Group got a $110 million government contract to build another private prison; GEO has donated almost $40,000 to Rubio's campaigns throughout his political career, the highest amount in career money the company has ever donated to any US senator. Such "parasitic relationships" have allowed the private prison industry to pull in $2 billion in yearly profits.

In 2014, pharmaceutical giant Amgen Inc. gave $1.83 million in political campaign contributions, and, in 2013, spent $9.12 million on lobbying. Twelve members of Congress hold company shares, and 78 out of 93 Amgen lobbyists have previously held government jobs.

In 2013, Amgen received a $500 million financial gift from Congress when a handful of legislative aides slipped a provision into the final fiscal bill, allowing Amgen to evade Medicare cost-cutting controls for two more years. The change was supported by Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), all of whom have political and financial ties to Amgen, receiving $68,000, $59,000 and $73,000, from 2007 to 2013, respectively. Another pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, spent $10,140,000 on lobbying in 2013, and gave $2,217,066 in political campaign contributions in 2014, while 40 members of Congress hold shares in the company, and 48 out of 84 Pfizer lobbyists in 2013-14 previously held government jobs. This company has been allowed to evade $69 billion in taxes. Americans are paying more for their prescription drugs than any other wealthy country on earth (helping to keep us sicker and dying younger than people of other wealthy nations) to the further profit of large pharmaceutical corporations. Unlike any other rich countries Congress does not regulate predatory pricing practices.

In 2014, through PACs and individuals, JPMorgan Chase gave $1.4 million in campaign donations to lawmakers, TPG Capital gave $1.3 million, Wells Fargo gave $2.6 million ($6 million on lobbying), Citigroup spent $2.5 million ($5 million on lobbying), Bank of America gave almost $3 million ($2.7 million on lobbying), Goldman Sachs gave $4.7 million ($3.4 million on lobbying) etc.

Wells Fargo is the fourth-most popular stock in Congress, and JPMorgan Chase is the ninth. General Electric, the company that paid zero taxes in 2010 and helped crash the economy in 2007, is the most popular stockholding in Congress, with $967,038 being the minimum Democratic investment and $1,392,475, the minimum Republican investment in 2014, the last year data is available. GE spent nearly $4 million in political campaign contributions during the 2014 election cycle, and over $15 million in political lobbying. The company has $110 billion stashed offshore, and is taxed at an effective rate of 4 percent - 31 points lower than what it actually owes the IRS. Wall Street CEOs are collecting millions while threatening to crash our economy yet again (JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are all on the Financial Stability Board's 2015 "too-big-to-fail" list). Meanwhile, Americans are still suffering from the last crash - and Congress, while receiving campaign donations from and investing in Wall Street, is doing nothing to curb their growth. Congress has yet to pass true Wall Street reform.

If the person benefiting from the status quo is trying to convince you that things should stay the same, take a close look at who is filling his or her pockets.

From here

Fyffes are not an ethical company

The Irish-based banana company Fyffes has been accused of having “no respect” for workers’ rights, amid allegations that staff on Central American fruit plantations are being mistreated.

 GMB’s international officer Bert Schouwenburg, said: “Fyffes is an appalling employer that cares nothing for its workers who toil in boiling heat to produce the fruit that makes the company’s profit. They have no respect for domestic or international law governing workers’ rights and must be brought to book.”

The GMB trade union called for Fyffes to be thrown out of the Ethical Trade Initiative, which promotes labour rights, over reports of abuses by subsidiaries in Costa Rica and Honduras. In one case, 14 workers on a melon plantation, which is 60%-owned by Fyffes’ subsidiary Suragroh were allegedly hospitalised after being poisoned by noxious chemicals. The GMB said the female workers had not been given safety gear to protect them while handling fruit.

 It said workers had also reported that they were not being paid the minimum wage, were denied extra pay for overtime and Sundays and were not given public holidays. Workers were also illegally charged for transport to the fields where they work. When they tried to form a trade union branch in January 2016, the GMB said, four members were abducted, threatened and held for 24 hours until they renounced membership.

In Costa Rica, Fyffes’ Anexco pineapple subsidiary was accused of running “a purge” of union members

The Titanic Class Struggle

Bernie Sanders recently featured on a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch based on the theme of the inequality of the 1912 Titanic sinking.

The Titanic carried enough lifeboats for only 52% of its passengers, and judging by which passengers got a seat, class clearly mattered. Some 62% of first-class passengers found places in the boats, compared with 41% of second-class passengers, and 25% of steerage (or third-class) passengers. The crew fared even worse, with just 24% saved.

As Walter Lord, author of the classic account of the Titanic disaster A Night to Remember, observed, the famous “women and children first” rule of the sea only went so far. “In first class, just one child was lost,” Lord noted in a later book, “…while in third class, 52 out of 79 children were lost—about the same percentage as first class men.”

Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon, a Scottish aristocrat and his fashion designer wife. They and their secretary left the Titanic in a lifeboat that held just 12 people, despite having a capacity of 40. Sir Cosmo was later accused of bribing the crew to row away from the sinking ship as well as not to turn back and rescue other victims. Their lifeboat was mocked in the press as the “Money Boat.” Lady Duff Gordon as they watched the ship disappear beneath the waves, with some 1,500 children, women, and men still aboard, lamented to her secretary, “There is your beautiful nightdress gone.”

For more information about the rich V the poor on the Titanic read ‘The Class Struggle Aboard the Titanic’ 

Indian slums are not created by rural migrants

Across the globe half the population live in urban areas whereas in India it is around 30 per cent and it has grown from around 11 per cent in the first census after independence. It is a misconception that migrants from rural areas carry poverty to urban areas.

Planning Commission Prof. S.R. Hashim, in a talk on ‘Policy perspectives of Urbanisation in India’ at the Andhra University Department of Economics dismissed the popular myth that poverty is brought to cities by the migrants. Prof. Hashim said that urban poverty is a creation of the city itself. The slums in the city are a consequence of land prices and non-availability of affordable housing for the low income group and it is not a result of migrant work force. For the migrants there is no shortage of work in urban areas and more often the migrants do better than those who are established in the same agglomeration, he explained. Transportation is the biggest limitation to size of the city.

He explained that throughout the history civilisations have grown around urban centres. Urban agglomerates are centres of knowledge creation, fine arts and crafts have developed in urban centres. Knowledge develops in clusters and not in isolation. The area of interaction is larger in urban areas and this is beneficial to nurturing culture, civilisation and the people.

World Socialism Party (India)

Email: wspindia@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/

Rural Poverty in Ireland

As the Irish election approaches we should remind ourselves of some of the social problems.

There are approximately 336,000 people in rural Ireland living in poverty. This means that over 336,000 people in rural Ireland are surviving on incomes of less than €10,786 per annum.

The poverty rate in rural Ireland is 4.5 percentage points higher than in urban areas.

Disposable income in the Border, Midlands and Western region was 16% lower than for those living in the Southern and Eastern regions. It also possesses the highest poverty rates, the highest deprivation rates, as well as the lowest median income in the State.

http://www.leitrimobserver.ie/news/local-news/202591/Border-regions--at-highest-risk.html

We Shall Fight, Comrade (music video)

We Shall Fight, Comrade
"We shall fight, comrade, for the unhappy times
We shall fight, comrade, for the bottled-up desires
We shall gather up, comrade, the fragments of our lives
The hammer still falls on the bare anvil
Furrows are still made in the clayey soil
Is it our duty to fight?
We shall forget this question
And fight, comrade
We swear by our crushed desires
We swear by our hopes turned to ashes
We swear by our horny hands
We shall fight, comrade
We shall fight
Until Veeru the goatherd
Has to drink goat piss
Until those who till the land
Cannot inhale the fragrance of mustard blossoms
Until the swollen-eyed school teacher’s husband
Does not return from the war front
Until the police constables are duty bound
To strangulate their own brethren
Until the babus keep writing on their files
In human blood
We shall fight
Until there are reasons for us to fight
If we don’t have the gun, we shall have the sword
If we don’t have the sword, we shall have the passion
If we don’t know the art, we shall have the reason
And we shall fight, comrade…
We shall fight
Because one gets nothing without a fight
We shall fight
Wondering why we did not fight until now
We shall fight
To acknowledge our guilt
To keep alive the memory of those who died fighting
We shall fight, comrade…"



World Socialism Party (India)
Email: wspindia@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org/


We Shall Fight, We Shall Win

Fact of the Day (2)

Matt Brittin, the President of Google’s European, Middle Eastern and African arm, told the Public Accounts Committee that he was not sure what his basic salary even was. 

Asked five times to clarify, the technology giant boss said he would look the amount up after the session – apparently unable to provide even a “ballpark figure”.

Fact of the Day (1)

OECD figures that show that of European countries,  the UK ranked 18th with 531 applications for political asylum per million population, between January and November 2015.

Covering up the abuse

The Catholic church is telling newly appointed bishops in a training document that “According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse, and that only victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police. The special commission created by Pope Francis, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, had appeared to play no role in the training programme, even though it is supposed to be developing “best practices” to prevent and deal with clerical abuse. The committee’s position is that reporting abuse to civil authorities was a “moral obligation, whether the civil law requires it or not”.

The training guidelines were written by a controversial French monsignor and psychotherapist, Tony Anatrella, who serves as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family. The French monsignor is best known for championing views on “gender theory”, the controversial belief that increasing acceptance of homosexuality in western countries is creating “serious problems” for children who are being exposed to “radical notions of sexual orientation”. The guidelines reflect Anatrella’s views on homosexuality. They also downplay the seriousness of the Catholic church’s legacy of systemic child abuse.

SNAP, a US-based advocacy group for abuse said the news proved that the church had not substantially changed.  “It’s infuriating, and dangerous, that so many believe the myth that bishops are changing how they deal with abuse and that so little attention is paid when evidence to the contrary – like this disclosure by Allen – emerges,” the group said in a statement.