Filipino Politics

In the Philippines,  many of the 182 party-list groups in the 2019 elections may be classified as:
(1) those with links to political dynasties or officials already elected in other positions; 
(2) those representing special business interests; and
(3) those with questionable advocacy and nominees.

The party-list system has been bastardized and corrupted, becoming an extension of the political dynasties in many provinces and undermining its original goal of providing representation to marginalized sectors such as workers, farmers, women, youth and indigenous people’s among others.

See full article at:
https://blogwatch.tv/2018/11/party-list/

Sweated Slave Labour

Major corporations who claim to be committed to tackling the threat of forced labor often tell "fairytales" that belie workplace exploitation and shirk responsibility for cleaning up their supply chains, according to academics and activists.

From tea and chocolate makers to hotels, many companies sign up to anti-slavery certification schemes or codes of conduct at the expense of taking direct action to engage with their workers and stamp out abuse.

Such initiatives are often sub-standard and fail to combat worker exploitation despite being widely hailed by the private sector, said Genevieve LeBaron, a politics professor and anti-slavery academic at Britain's Sheffield University. A study by LeBaron found some Indian tea plantations stamped slavery-free by groups such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance were abusing and underpaying workers.

"The stories that companies are telling us about efforts to fight forced labour in supply chains are ... basically fairytales," she explained. Certification schemes improve corporates' reputations and give the impression that the problem of forced labor in supply chains is slowly disappearing - so that we don't push for the alternatives that would challenge the status quo." Workers should be paid the so-called "living wage", have job security and the power to exert their labor rights, she added.

Anti-slavery certification schemes, accolades and awards are hardly reliable indicators for the public when choosing between companies, according to Neha Mira, a trafficking expert with the U.S.-based workers' rights charity Solidarity Center.

"The same time as you're giving a gold star to a company, they're firing workers for trying to organise in the workplace ... or women for getting pregnant at work," she said.

About 25 million people are estimated to be trapped in forced labor, a $150 billion a year crime, from farms to factories, the United Nations says.

http://news.trust.org/item/20181104105401-ibglv/

Caravans and Coffee

Weaknesses in the rule of law, and a climate of criminality and violence are not the only drivers pushing Hondurans to join the migrant caravan now headed towards the United States, but they mask an even bigger problem – massive economic inequality.

One in five Hondurans in rural areas lives in extreme poverty, earning less than $1.90 per day. Throughout the country, unemployment is rife – with the root of this problem lying in the decline of coffee farming. Coffee accounts for 10 percent of Honduras’ GDP, but with prices are in freefall and crops decimated by rusts linked to warmer temperatures brought on by climate change, Hondurans are seeing their livelihoods wiped out.

With an estimated 400 million cups of coffee drunk in the U.S. alone every day, coffee companies are seeing their businesses boom. But farmers are not getting a livelihood in the form of fair prices. Since the start of the decade, global coffee prices have fallen 40 percent. In an attempt to protect their profits, the big coffee roasters and sellers are passing the burden of falling prices onto farmers, leaving them caught in a debt spiral and having to borrow money to make it through to harvest. A lack of access to banking services forces farmers to borrow from local money lenders at extortionate rates, pushing them further into debt.

Faced with mounting costs they can’t cover, some farmers are leaving their crops to rot in their fields, as the cost of harvesting is too high. Those that decide to harvest have to cut costs, and they do this by reducing the salaries of the seasonal workers that keep their farms going for three to four months of the year.  1.5 million jobs are created during coffee season. When coffee prices were good, a coffee picker would expect to make $10 a day. But at the moment, workers are being paid only half that – far below the $8.50 a day minimum wage, which is set by the Honduran government’s Labor Ministry.

Faced with such a big drop in their income, many coffee pickers are forced to look for work elsewhere. But with high crime and high unemployment in Honduras’ towns and cities limiting access to paid work, many see leaving as their only option.

Farmers must be able to make a living income from their coffee. If big coffee companies pay farmers a fair price, they can support large numbers of families with decent access to nutritious food, education, public safety and housing in Honduras, and help them to stay in their communities.

http://news.trust.org/item/20181104170436-03tcm/

The American Midterm Elections

Capitalist politics is the art of maintaining class rule, the rule of the capitalist class over the working class. One answer is presented by the Democrats to the problem of maintaining that rule is given by reformists. Far from undermining the social order, they leave it intact,  understanding that there are circumstances in which the social interests of the ruling class demand “sacrifices” from it in the form of concessions of one degree or another to the working class. More often than not, indeed, as a rule, these concessions are made as an anticipatory blunting of sharper demands or else as a partial, legal sanctioning of gains already achieved. Irksome and irritating though these concessions may be to the ruling class, it prefers to make the gesture of granting them rather than to have an angry mobilized, battling working class.

The other answer to the problem is given by the Republicans: Concessions? What the rabble needs are a good dose of a police-state! And what we need is a strong government, a strongman in charge, determined enough to deal summarily with subversive forces;  to reduce the social services to a minimum, to relieve the wealthy of the burden of taxation; and run the political machine of the state without interfering in matters of wages and hours and markets and management. If malcontents try to stir up trouble, let them be dealt with by force.

Capitalist politics are either variation of one of these two courses.

 There are millions of voters who do not see the Democrats and Republicans as representing the same corporate rulers but view the Democrats’ rhetorical support for the common people as sincere, and supporting these Democrats as practical and realistic, though far from perfect.  The winner-take-all system determines that every vote not cast for the Democrats is one less vote for the Democrats and thus the equivalent of one more vote for the Republicans. The content of the “lesser of two evils” line is exactly what the name implies – choosing the lesser evil within the existing social system. Objectively, this is a line of unity with the employing owning class, in support of their state. This line says that since the problem is urgent, the immediate alternative is between the lesser of two evils. There are two types of people who pursue this line. There are people who don’t understand the real alternative to capitalism is socialism. For them to pick the lesser evil is progressive,   to the extent that they think it is anti-racist, and pro-working class. For so-called socialists to follow this strategy is, however, totally incorrect. By not pointing out the true alternative to capitalism, they betray their duty to the working class.

 However, the goal of economic justice cannot be reconciled with the ever-growing polarisation of income and wealth under capitalism. The goal of an ecological steady-state between society and nature cannot be reconciled with capitalism. The goal of peace cannot be reconciled with capitalism’s competitive struggle for markets, resources, and cheap labor. As long as the radical progressives hold to their goals they will confront capitalism’s structural barriers to their realization. That self-styled realists in the Democrat Party downplay or oppose anti-capitalist demands should not be surprising. Working people must reject the “lesser evil” argument  – there is no such thing when the choice is between mumps and measles. The “lesser evil” fallacy serves only to underestimate the danger of the poison you pick and keeps the masses chained to the political system of two parties.
 The WSPUS strategy is based on the fundamental idea of working class self-emancipation. This means that working people can generate the power they need to change the world only through collective self-mobilization and class self-organization. It implies that the only way they can develop the consciousness required is by acting collectively to confront the power of capital and the State. From this, socialists draw the conclusion that the goal of must be to contribute to the building of mass movements of workers since such movements offer the only viable way to transform consciousness and, it is hoped, to make a socialist revolution. 

A political commitment to self-emancipation means opposition to working inside and attempting to use the Democratic Party in order to secure progressive change, for the practical reason that attempting to do so is incompatible with building a socialist movement. Political action, if it is to promote socialist consciousness and organization, must be based on the principle of the needs of the class struggle. It must include a program of struggle expressing the everyday needs of the workers but more than that, it must pose the issue of class against class and the socialist solution. That kind of political action can never be achieved by entering or supporting any capitalist party. To support the Democratic Party as a “lesser evil” is to deceive the people and to sow confusion, demoralization, and defeatism among workers. The Democratic Party is not a lesser evil, despite its occasional liberal rhetoric  “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Anyone who doesn’t tell these truths about the Democratic Party, along with similar truths about the Republicans, doesn’t deserve the name of socialist. The Democrats and Republicans are hopelessly sold to the Big Busines interests and cannot be reformed. The working class should not support any of the mid-term candidates, as none offer any program which would substantially benefit the working people of the United States. The choice between the Democrats and the Republicans is described as one between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Both are stout champions of capitalism. Both are friends of industrialists and financiers.

The Democratic Party systematically oppose class struggle because it threatens the profits and property of the capitalist class. The  Democratic Party has moved ever further to the right under the hammer blows of capital. Employers have carried on an ever more vicious offensive against labor to restore profitability. Meanwhile, extremist pro-capitalist forces have increasingly dominated the Republican Party. Furthermore, electing a "progressive" Democrat in the mid-term elections can in no way be counted on to cut short the continuing drift to the right. Just the opposite. As long as the balance of political discourse continues to shift toward capital and the right, the Democrats will follow. Shifting the balance of class forces to a more favorable direction can only be accomplished by building militant mass movements and reviving the working-class movement. Every socialist is now thinking and asking: How can the socialist forces be unified and strengthened? Not voting in elections is not a matter of principle. The working class can utilize the electoral arena as part of its struggle for socialism.  Voting when none of the candidates offer any alternative for the masses would only strengthen the two-party system and hold back the process of forging a political trend independent of the ruling class. By not voting for any candidate in the mid-term election, working people will register their rejection of the big business candidates. The Democrats are just as driven to cut back the gains of the working class as the Republicans; they just use a somewhat different approach. And they get away with their attacks more easily than the Republicans because the liberal and the intellectual misleaders are in bed with them who work overtime to minimize protest against a Democrat government. An economic crisis is about to erupt with devastating fury upon the U.S. working class. History shows that Black and Latino workers will be hit the hardest. But white workers will be hit hard and also be looking for a way out. Inevitably, the ruling class will attempt to divide the working class through an even more naked racist anti-immigrant offensive.

 Our fellow-workers have been blindly and self-defeatingly following the policy of the “lesser evil,” considering that it is “smart” practical politics to choose between the two capitalist politicians periodically presented by the Democrats and Republicans, plumping for the one that was “least worst” and then congratulating themselves on defeating the “main danger” only to discover another “main danger” on their hands.

The WSPUS seeks to eradicate poverty and racism root and branch; we believe that for this to happen capitalism must be overthrown. Socialist revolution is the only way to end the inequalities and inequities. There is an increasing contempt for politicians, bureaucrats and the like throughout the working class. What is missing is an alternative. Liberation is only possible through socialist revolution. This means that united action must be lead not by the elite but by the only class capable of making such a revolution, the working class. Present society is rotten ripe for revolution and we should chart an independent course and unwaveringly travel on it. This is the only way that workers can gain the initiative in the struggle instead of tailing after the rapidly changing events and dance to the tune of the enemy.

Support for the small revolutionary party, then, like the WSPUS which has no candidates? Yes, yes. A vote of confidence in it and of confidence in the revolutionary tomorrow. A vote in the form of closer solidarity with it. A vote in the form of adherence to its ranks, so that the dozens and hundreds of today may be the thousands and hundreds of thousands they must number tomorrow.

Trump, the corporation's best friend

 The New York Times finds that "corporate wrongdoers" have seen a massive drop in financial penalties with Trump.

Comparing the first 20 months of the Trump administration with the last 20 months of the Obama administration the findings were that:

There were $5 billion in penalties imposed and illicit profits ordered returned by the SEC under Obama but just $1.9 billion under the Trump administration, marking a 62 percent decline. 

Corporate penalties from the Justice Department's criminal prosecutions dropped from $14.15 billion under Obama to $3.93 billion under Trump, marking a 72 percent drop

Buying political power

It is a record for a congressional midterm cycle. Candidates, political parties and outside groups are set to spend more than $5.2 billion on House and Senate contests combined, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

The spending in California’s 25th district, a region stretching north and east of Los Angeles into the high desert of the Antelope Valley, stands out even during the most expensive congressional elections in U.S. history. The contest has drawn more than $26 million in spending by candidates and outside groups since January 2017. It leads the 10 priciest House races, where a total of $238 million has been spent. Democrats and their allies in the 10 costliest House races spent $142 million to Republicans’ $96 million.

The fight for the Senate is even costlier.

In Florida, Republican Rick Scott’s contest against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson is the most expensive Senate race. The candidates and their allies have spent nearly $160 million. Nelson’s campaign spent about $25 million while outside groups splashed out $45 million supporting him or opposing Scott, who spent nearly $67 million. Outside groups spent $22 million supporting him and opposing Nelson.

Missouri’s Senate race between Democrat Claire McCaskill and Republican Josh Hawley is second most expensive at roughly $108 million. Texas is third at about $100 million.

The Democratic share of spending for the House swelled to 60 percent this year, from 44 percent in 2014, the previous midterm elections.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-money/non-stop-ads-and-robocalls-welcome-to-americas-costliest-election-idUSKCN1N90B8

Over-population?

Italy is planning to entice women into having more children by offering families free farmland if they have a third child. If the scheme is implemented, parents who have a third child between 2019 and 2021 would be given plots of state-owned farmland to run for 20 years. They would also be offered zero-interest loans of up to £175,000 if they chose to buy their first home next to their new smallholding. 

The initiative purportedly aims to increase the country’s flagging birth rate, which is the lowest in Europe. Last year, only 464,000 births were registered in Italy, which was a 2 per cent decline from 2016 and a record low. 

“They say that Italians have few children and that something is needed to turn the trend around,” agriculture minister Gian Marco Centinaio said. “That’s why the ministry wants to contribute, favouring rural areas in particular, where people still have children.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italy-far-right-free-land-third-child-family-government-matteo-salvini-birth-rate-children-a8616781.html

US Disenfranchisement

Millions of Americans will be barred from casting ballots in Tuesday's midterm elections due to state-level electoral rules. Rules vary widely by state, with some like Maine and New Hampshire allowing inmates to vote. But in places such as Kentucky, Iowa, Virginia and Florida, any conviction -- even for a minor offense like possession of marijuana -- results in lifelong disenfranchisement.

Nearly six million Americans are excluded from voting because they are imprisoned, on parole or awaiting sentencing.

1.5 million Floridians are disenfranchised

African-Americans, who are overrepresented in the US penal system, are four times more likely to be unable to vote than the rest of the population.

There is no national identity card in the United States, with each state defining what documents can be used as identification at the polling station. And according to the American Civil Liberties Union, an influential civil rights organization, several states have imposed restrictive rules since 2010.

North Dakota has since 2016 required its residents to present a document with proof of a street address. But the state is home to thousands of Native Americans who live on reservations in rural areas with but a single post office box.

In Georgia, the data voters provide when registering at the polls have since 2017 been compared to those given when applying for a driver's license or social security number. If there are discrepancies, authorities might refuse the registration.  53,000 applications are currently pending, 70 percent of which belong to African-Americans.

https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/restrictive-rules-keep-millions-americans-voting-doc-1aj3cq3

We need a revolution

Modern slavery is increasingly seen as a major global issue - with an estimated 40 million people enslaved - but there is growing debate on the best ways to achieve a U.N. target of ending the $150 billion a year crime by 2030. About 20 million people globally were estimated in 2016 to be forced to work - excluding victims of the sex trade - yet there were only 1,038 prosecutions worldwide for labor trafficking that year. This would represent one prosecution for every 19,270 victims of forced labor.

The world will not end modern-day slavery by focusing on legal action alone and should back a workers' rights "revolution" to protect people from exploitation and forced labor, lawyers, academics and campaigners told a conference.

Governments regard modern slavery and trafficking mainly as a criminal matter rather than as a human rights and labor issue, yet have secured very few prosecutions for forced labor, several experts told an annual conference at U.S.-based Yale University.

Countries must instead concentrate on ensuring workers have labor rights and the power to organise and collectively demand better pay and conditions, said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Washington-based Human Trafficking Legal Center (HTLC).

"Forced labor cases are expensive, lengthy and demand a lot of political will," Vandenberg told the conference on slavery. "We need to move to something revolutionary ... not more law but more organising, workers' rights and power to the people."

"We're not looking to prosecute slavery; we're looking to end it," said Laura Germino, anti-slavery director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida farm workers alliance. "We're not looking to prosecute slavery; we're looking to end it," said Laura Germino, anti-slavery director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a Florida farm workers alliance.

Countless workers in the growing so-called gig economy - who lack fixed contracts and operate on a self-employed basis entitling them to only basic protections - risk being left behind, said Eileen Boris, a professor at California University.

"Independent contractors have less freedom than traditional workers and are facing more exploitation because of the nature of the job market," she said.

http://news.trust.org/item/20181103192323-xyfyj/

All well-meaning good intentions but the SOYMB blog wonders if all those experts understand what is meant by wage-slavery

Japan seeks more migrants

Japan is a fascinating example of what can happen to a developed country that does not want immigration.

The country's birth rate dropped below 2.1 - replacement level - all the way back in the mid-1970s. It now stands at around 1.4. Add in the world's longest life expectancy (85.5) and you have a problem.

Japan has gradually been letting in more foreign workers. It's clear Japan needs foreign labour. Businesses in Japan have long argued for changes to immigration rules to recruit workers from other countries. Japan has restrictive immigration laws and accepts few workers from other countries. The Japanese market, however, under current severe labour conditions, is in dire need of more foreign laborers, experts attested.

Japan's cabinet has approved draft legislation to loosen the country's immigration rules. The relaxed laws would create two new visa categories to allow foreigners in sectors with labour shortages to enter the country. The new rules could allow blue-collar workers in the construction, farming and healthcare sectors to work there. Workers in the first visa category will be allowed to work in the country for five years, and bring their families if they have a certain level of skill and some proficiency in Japanese. Workers with a higher level of skills would qualify for the second visa category and would eventually be allowed to apply for residency.

 Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said, "We want to create a country where foreigners feel that they want to live and work."

The government is eyeing the acceptance of some 40,000 foreign workers under two planned visa categories in the year after their introduction, it was learned on Saturday. In the first five years, Japan is expected to accept a total of 250,000 foreign nationals with the new work visas, government sources said. The government plans to set no ceiling on the acceptance of foreign workers under the new system, according to the sources. 

As of October 2017, about 1.28 million foreign nationals worked in Japan. Rengo, known officially as the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, also said it is imperative that the government first ensure the rights of foreign workers already working in Japan before widening the doors of immigration. It pointed to some cases in Japan where foreign trainees have been forced to work exceedingly long hours, work under dangerous conditions and in roles they were not expecting and have suffered other such work-related abuses.

State-Owned Football?

The global reach of soccer has turned the sport into a financial behemoth, with funds flooding in from TV rights as well as gate receipts and other sources. Revenues at European clubs have tripled since 2000, according to a UEFA report published in January, and reached 18.5 billion euros in 2016. That dwarfs America’s largest professional sport, the National Football League, which some analysts estimate has annual revenue of about $14 billion (11 billion euros). The European game’s popularity is increasing in the United States, which is due to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

But clubs also face huge outlays, particularly in acquiring star players, who can cost tens of millions of euros in transfer fees – the sum paid by one club to another to release a player from a contract so that they can change clubs. On top of their purchase cost, star players can command wages running to hundreds of thousands of euros a week.

With many clubs racking up hefty losses, UEFA introduced its Financial Fair Play rules in 2010 and began evaluating clubs in 2013. The rules broadly require club spending not to exceed revenue from television rights, gate receipts, competition prize money and sponsorship. Since 2015, clubs have been allowed to lose no more than 30 million euros over three seasons, on the grounds that they should not simply be funded by big debts or super-rich owners. Before that, when UEFA was phasing in the rules, clubs were allowed to lose up to 45 million euros over two years.

The aim is to sustain viable competition between a wide range of European clubs over the long term.  Rules require clubs wishing to participate in UEFA competitions to submit information about their finances for monitoring. In 2013, UEFA’s investigatory arm, part of its Club Financial Control Body, began to question elements of accounts submitted by Man City and Paris St. Germain.

Man City is part of City Football Group, which is majority-owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, half-brother of the ruler of Abu Dhabi. The sheikh is a deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and has a soccer empire that also includes clubs in the United States, Australia and Uruguay. For many years, Manchester City played in the shadow of its more successful local rival, Manchester United, and struggled to stay in Britain’s top soccer league. Then, in 2008, Sheikh Mansour of the United Arab Emirates took control of Man City and began to transform it. With expensive new star players, the club went on to top the Premier League three times over the past decade.

According to the final preliminary view report by the investigatory chamber of UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body, Sheikh Mansour had “significant influence” over two of Man City’s Abu Dhabi sponsors. The report found that the amount being paid for those sponsorships was three times their market value.

UEFA’s investigatory arm determined that Man City had made losses of 233 million euros during the two-year period ended in May 31, 2013, when the club made adjustments the investigators required, including judging key sponsorship contracts at market values determined by the experts, according to the chief investigator’s report. That was 188 million of losses more than was allowable under UEFA’s rules, the report said.

Paris St. Germain is owned by Qatar Sports Investments, a state-backed body founded by the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. His country is currently spending billions of dollars in preparation for hosting the next FIFA World Cup in 2022.

Under UEFA’s “Financial Fair Play” rules, clubs must be transparent about revenues and broadly balance them against expenditure. The rules are designed to encourage clubs to live within their means and prevent the sport’s richest owners from crushing their rivals, killing the vibrant competition that pulls in fans. The regulations include a limit on the losses clubs can incur. They are intended, among other things, to prevent clubs running up big debts or receiving unlimited amounts of money through inflated sponsorship deals with organisations related to the owners. In short, related-party sponsors should not pay more than the market rate to support a club.

In the cases of Man City and Paris St. Germain, UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB), which oversees Financial Fair Play rules, accepted that the clubs could receive income from Emirati and Qatari sponsors that was far in excess of the market value estimated by independent experts hired by UEFA to assess the deals, according to investigatory reports, settlement agreements and other documents. UEFA’s investigators concluded that key sponsors were related to the club owners, the documents show.

With Paris St. Germain, UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body allowed the club to value its sponsorship deal with the Qatar Tourism Authority, a government agency, at 100 million euros a year. Yet independent experts advising the CFCB told it the market value of the QTA sponsorship was only a few million euros a year or less, the documents show.

With Man City, UEFA’s control body allowed the club to book three times more income from some Abu Dhabi sponsors than independent experts deemed the sponsorship deals were worth – about an extra 20 million pounds a year.

These arrangements helped to boost the clubs’ income, enabling them to comply with UEFA rules that limit the losses clubs are allowed to incur. That, in turn, helped the clubs to spend tens of millions more on players than they otherwise would have been able to do.

The head of the Spanish football league, Javier Tebas, last year alleged that Man City and Paris St. Germain had received “state aid” that “distorts European competitions and creates an inflationary spiral that is irreparably harming the football industry.” Last month, Tebas reiterated to Reuters that sponsorship deals from state-backed entities that were above market values were detrimental to others. “It’s about the effect it has in distorting the market of footballers on a European level,” he said.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/soccer-files-fairplay/

Germany's Mini-Jobs

Germany likes to boast of its low unemployment rate, but the number of people who are either underemployed or must take a Mini-Job on top of their regular employment to make ends meet is increasing at a significant rate.

Each year, tens of thousands more Germans are underemployed or have to take a second part-time job to make ends meet. Opposition politicians fear the state is subsidizing greedy employers.

"The number of Mini-Jobs is growing and regular jobs are being replaced," said Left party politician Susanne Ferschl. "The often well-educated marginally employed cannot live off this wage and are dependent on government support. So the state is subsidizing companies that save on wages through mini jobs."

One in five Germans has a "Mini-Job," a name for a type of marginal employment in which pay €450 ($512) or less a month.  The number of Germans precariously employed in this fashion have increased by at least 50,000 in a single year. 

The Rheinische Post newspaper reported that, despite the introduction of a minimum wage in Germany in 2015, employers have continued to take advantage of the fact that no taxes have to be paid on wages €450 or under. At the end of March 2018, 7.6 million of the 32.7 million jobs in which social security contributions were being paid were classed as marginal employment. That represents a 35 percent increase in the proportion of jobs that were classed as marginal 15 years ago. On top of this, about 8.5 percent of full-time employees in Germany also have a Mini-Job — or about 2.8 million people, which is 1 million more than ten years ago. Marginal employment is especially prevalent amongst retirees who find their pension barely covering their expenses. In the past six years, the number of marginally employed pensioners has risen by 27 percent.

https://www.dw.com/en/one-in-five-working-germans-is-marginally-employed/a-46144633

Neglecting the young and vulnerable

Only 20 unaccompanied children have been allowed into the UK under a scheme begun more than two years ago to resettle 3,000 vulnerable refugee children from conflict zones in the Middle East and north Africa.

Figures obtained by the Observer reveal the paltry number of minors permitted to come to the UK under the Home Office’s Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme (VCRS), announced in April 2016. This is the only way for unaccompanied youngsters from outside Europe to legally move to the UK.

Separate new figures also reveal an “incredibly low” take-up under the Dubs amendment, which was also launched in April 2016 but is geared to allowing unaccompanied child refugees from Europe into the UK. The Dubs scheme would resettle around 3,000 children but ministers controversially set a limit of 480, despite councils saying they could find space for far more. However, new figures revealed in a parliamentary answer show less than half that number – 220 – have been transferred to the UK.

The two sets of new data show the UK has accepted 240 unaccompanied refugee children in the past 30 months, fewer than the number of child refugees – around 300 – estimated to have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean in 2017.

Alf Dubs, the Labour peer, is calling on the government to accept 10,000 vulnerable children over the next decade, explained: “This represents just three children a year in each local authority. As other countries close their doors, Britain has an opportunity to show global leadership on the protection of child refugees.”

The sluggish response of the UK government is, say refugee charities, compounded by the deteriorating conditions of the camps in Europe that children are currently living in. Safe Passage estimates that in Italy alone, at least 7,000 unaccompanied children have run away from the care of the authorities. “We are working with children in desperate situations: some are street homeless, and many are living in camps with their lives on hold,” said  Beth Gardiner-Smith of the charity Safe Passage.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/03/uk-admits-only-20-unaccompanied-child-refugees-in-two-years

Neglecting our elderly and vulnerable

Less than half of the UK’s local authorities offer meals on wheels services to elderly and vulnerable people, according to new research into the impact of cuts on local government.

The north of England, which has seen the highest cuts to local authorities’ budgets since 2010, is also the worst area for meals on wheels. Just 13% of councils in the north-west provide the service, while 17% in the north-east do.

In the east of England and London, nearly one in three councils have cut their meals on wheels services in the last few years, according to the figures. In Yorkshire and the Humber, nearly one in four have.

All councils in Northern Ireland provided meals on wheels services up until 2016, but one in five have stopped doing so in the past two years.

Meals-on wheels services are seen by campaigners as a crucial way to ensure that vulnerable older people are provided with a hot meal and human contact on a daily basis. The reductions are caused by the government’s cuts to adult social care budgets, according to NACC. The Local Government Association estimates that adult social care faces a £3.5bn funding gap by 2025.

Neel Radia, NACC chair, said meals on wheels are about more than food provision.

“For many older and vulnerable people, the meals on wheels delivery might be the only friendly face they see from one day to the next. Meals on wheels already provides this vital contact. But when it comes to concrete action to support this efficient and beneficial service, we only see shrinking budgets."

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/03/less-than-half-of-councils-still-offering-meals-on-wheels

For our Future

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report warning that we have about 12 years — until 2030 — before global warming reaches a catastrophic level. The report concludes, that the world can’t allow global temperatures to warm past 1.5 degrees Celsius, or there will be serious consequences to pay unless we take drastic action, but we’re already all set to get there.

The IPCC predicts an increased risk of devastating climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food, water, security, and economic growth. As sea levels and global temperatures rise, low-lying communities will disappear and heat-related deaths will increase, along with diseases like dengue fever and malaria. Areas that cease to be inhabitable by humans will fuel an accelerated refugee crisis, while resources like agriculture and crops will be decimated in key areas impacted by climate change.

There’s a message of hope: We do have a little bit of time to save the planet. And it’s going to take all of us to do it. We now desperately need a system change. The Paris Climate Agreement isn’t going to be enough — we need massive, mobilization of people and resources. We need a socialism. Its establishment will mean we get a living, healthy planet.

The possible destruction of the world is a grim reality unless the social system of capitalism is abolished and replaced by socialism, the society of all the people. Let them understand that when climate scientists talk about the destruction of the world, they are not joking at all. The urgency of the global warming crisis makes the environmental movement a crucial arena for the Socialist Party. Environmentalists are mistaken to believe they can ignore the socialist analysis of capitalism. To be unaware of the relationship between production, the expansion of the market and accumulation of capital and the logic of profit dooms the ecology movement to failure. Too often they have accused corporations of being irrational in their policies but not understand that businesses are following the rationality of the capitalist system, with its shortsightedness of maximising profit while minimising costs which is inherent within commodity production. It would be fruitless to seek capitalism to replace its own reason for being. Without a clear understanding of capitalism and socialism, the environmental movement can not bring about the fundamental solutions needed to resolve the enormity of climate change. We face enormous threats of environmental destruction and we can only shape our own destiny by embracing socialism, a cooperative commonwealth of associated producers. To paraphrase, ecologists have only interpreted the world, it is for us all to change it. The capitalist system is in direct conflict with the laws of  Nature. Capitalism, first of all, is based on the principle of private property of privileged few "owning" the earth for the purpose of exploiting it for profit and their gain.

Some eco-warriors are genuinely critical of capitalism and its destruction of the environment and are seeking an alternative to the dominant economic theories and models used to justify it. However, many of these critics of capitalism within the ecological movement share a dismissive and misguided attitude towards socialism. They fail to appreciate how the Socialist Party’s arguments about a future society gels with ecological ideas of sustainable development.  Our technology is so developed that we can create new society where we can all share in the fruits of the planet with future harvests assured. The Socialist Party has never opposed the tremendous achievements that science and technology have contributed to society. But under capitalism, it has been used and developed in an irrational and unplanned manner which has resulted in many catastrophes.

According to socialist economic ideas, profit is extracted from workers’ labour when the capitalists pay them less than the value of what they produce. The portion of the value of the product that the capitalist keeps is called surplus value. The amount of surplus value that the capitalist can keep varies with the level of organisation of the workers, and with their level of privilege within the world labour pool. But the working class can never be paid the full value of their labour under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extracting surplus value from their labour. But part of the value of a product comes not just from the labour put into it, but also from the natural resources used to make the product and which is extracted from the planet.

If mankind’s production and consumption is done within the natural limits of the earth’s bounty, then the supply is indeed endless. But this cannot happen under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extracting profit not only from the workers but also from the Earth with no purpose other than to make profits. In other words, this system cannot be reformed. It is based on the destruction of the earth and the exploitation of the people. There is no such thing as green capitalism. This is why all activists within the environmental movement must also be socialists.  The purpose of the socialist revolution is to create a more efficient and egalitarian way to produce and distribute wealth. One of the principles of socialism is "production for use, not for profit."  Socialism means organising society in a manner that is in harmony with the way that nature is organised.

A socialist movement in the hands of working people can bring fundamental change to the capitalist system for it is working people who have their hands on both the machinery of government and manufacture. This system cannot be halted by violence. It is ruthless beyond the capacity of any to resist by force. The only way stopping it is through understanding and knowledge culminating in political action.  Those in the ecology movement must begin placing their actions in the larger context of social revolution, not green reformism The destruction of the environment has now reached calamitous proportions. The ‘Greenhouse Effect’, and the wanton destruction of forests is inevitable in a society dominated by blind market forces. The inherent contradictions, antagonisms and the competition of national and business interests make capitalism absolutely incapable of developing the immense renewable energy sources that exist or even introduce adequate safeguards against the harmful effects of pollution. Only a socialist society, a society without classes, without war, without competition, without unemployment, and without poverty can properly utilise the harnessing of sustainable non-polluting power.

Now the bad news

What should be the biggest news in the media is the UN report stating that we have 12 years left to limit a full-on climate change catastrophe. Impacts of human-caused climate disruption across the planet are becoming increasingly stark.

To avoid this fate, we would need to spend those 12 years curbing global emissions dramatically. Essentially, there would need to be a government-mandated plan across the globe that would enable us to limit warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade (1.5°C) rather than the 2°C goal of the 2015 Paris climate talks. Eliminating that extra .5 of warming would save tens of millions of people from sea level rise inundation, and hundreds of millions from water scarcity and a myriad of other catastrophic impacts. 

Limiting warming to 1.5°C would, scientists have said, require a radical rethinking of virtually every facet of modern society, including an abandonment of our entire fossil-fuel based economy. However, currently, we are headed for at least a 3°C increase by 2100, with no mass government mobilization in sight. The Trump administration is aware of and accepts a projected 7-degree rise in global temperatures by just 2100. 

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society,” Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the US Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002 told The Washington Post. “And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it.” The Trump administration’s stance on climate change is essentially that we’re doomed, so what’s the point in cutting greenhouse gas emissions?

Another recent study in a paper published August 31 in the journal Science warned that for each degree of rise in global temperature, insect-driven losses to the staple crops of rice, wheat and corn increase by 10-25 percent. Given we are already at 1.1°C warming, we are already seeing these losses, which are sure to increase. 

“In 2016, the United Nations estimated that at least 815 million people worldwide don’t get enough to eat,” the University of Washington Press wrote of the study. “Corn, rice and wheat are staple crops for about 4 billion people, and account for about two-thirds of the food energy intake, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.”

Scientists are also deeply concerned about the fact that non-pest insect numbers are declining rapidly. Bees, moths, butterflies, ladybugs and other insects are far less abundant, and scientists around the world warn that these insects are crucial to as much as 80 percent of all the food we eat. “You have total ecosystem collapse if you lose your insects,” University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy told the AP. “How much worse can it get than that?” A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that global insects are in a crisis, and the problem is even more widespread than previously realized. While previous studies had revealed a 45 percent decrease in invertebrates like bees and beetles in the last 35 years and another study showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the last few decades in German nature preserves, the new study shows a startling loss of insects now extending into the Americas. The report cites climate change as the cause. “This is one of the most disturbing articles I have ever read,” David Wagner, an expert in invertebrate conservation at the University of Connecticut told The Washington Post of the study.

Another recent study, also in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that more than 300 species of mammals have been driven to extinction by human activities. The study showed that even if humans ceased destroying wilderness areas and ended poaching and pollution within 50 years, and extinction rates fell back to normal levels, 5-7 million years would be required for the natural world to recover from what we have done to it. “We are doing something that will last millions of years beyond us,” Matt Davis, a research leader at Aarhus University in Denmark, told The Guardian. “It shows the severity of what we are in right now. We’re entering what could be an extinction on the scale of what killed the dinosaurs. That is pretty scary. We are starting to cut down the whole tree, including the branch we are sitting on right now.”

A recent study of Antarctic ice sheets shows them to be far more sensitive to temperature increases than previously believed. The study showed that when global temperatures were only slightly warmer than they are currently, sea levels were 20-30 feet higher than they are right now. “It doesn’t need to be a very big warming, as long as it stays 2 degrees warmer for a sufficient time, this is the end game,” David Wilson, a geologist at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the new research told The Washington Post.

Equally disturbingly, lakes in the Arctic are literally bubbling and hissing: They are releasing methane in large quantities as the ground underneath them thaws. Methane is a greenhouse gas 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide on a 10-year timescale, and the widespread release of methane was a key driver of the Permian Mass Extinction event which annihilated more than 90 percent of life on Earth. Meanwhile, the Arctic sea ice is melting rapidly. Ice extent reached its annual minimum recently, which is normally when the ice would begin reforming rapidly, particularly right in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. Instead, the ice continued to decline.  A recent report showed that coastal erosion in the Arctic is intensifying climate change. As the coast there eroded during the end of the last glacial period (20,000 years ago), dramatic amounts of the frozen CO2 were released into the atmosphere. Now, this feedback loop — with climate change causing melting, melting causing CO2 release, and CO2 release exacerbating climate change — is beginning to occur again.

The era of mass climate migration has begun. n the low-lying coastal nation of Bangladesh, an entire country already beset by regular flooding, there is now an ongoing rural exodus into cities that is literally reshaping the country. With 163 million people, Bangladesh is the world’s most populous delta. There, riverbank erosion alone displaces between 50,000-200,000 people annually, and the capital city of Dhaka is absorbing between 300,000-400,000 people — mostly climate migrants — each year.

One study showed that by the end of this century, sea level rise alone could displace 13 million people, six million of those in Florida alone. That number doesn’t include people fleeing drought and wildfire-prone areas, nor those having to move for lack of water, or ensuing violence. Making matters worse, another leading climate scientist warned that 15-20 feet of sea level rise is possible within the next 70 years. That amount of sea level rise would mean the end of, literally, every major coastal city on Earth. The number of people displaced would be in the hundreds of millions, as New York City, Boston, Miami, Lagos, Jakarta, Shanghai, Mumbai, New Orleans, vast swaths of Boston, and Ho Chi Min City would all be underwater.

In Australia, an ongoing drought is hotter and drier than anything people in the impacted areas have ever known, and it is getting worse. “It’s quite unusual to get over 40C here but this last summer and the last couple of summers have been so scorchingly hot,” a sheep farmer there told The Guardian. “You can see the water being sucked out of the dams, sucked out of the soil, sucked out of my life and you can’t plan for that.”

Trump’s EPA has abandoned restrictions against hydrofluorocarbons, a chemical that has been linked to climate change. OPEC announced it is predicting a massive increase in oil production over the next five years — enough so that it will offset CO2 reductions from electric cars. On that note, it was recently exposed that the state of Texas, already the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses in the US, has approved 43 petrochemical projects along the Gulf Coast since 2012 — projects that add millions of tons more of greenhouse gas pollution.

Taken from here

https://truthout.org/articles/new-un-report-warns-of-impending-catastrophe-as-world-warms-glaciers-melt/