Recycling on the cheap

More than 800 large ships are broken up each year, the vast majority on Asian beaches. Owners can earn an extra $1m to $4m (£740,000 to £2.96m) per ship when selling to Asian yards via cash buyers, instead of opting for recycling yards with higher standards," says Ingvild Jenssen, director of Shipbreaking Platform, a Brussels-based coalition of environmental, human rights and labour groups. “No one forces the industry to send ships to be dismantled there. They choose to send them,” she says.

Chittagong is now the world’s largest shipbreaking centre, last year recycling 230 ships and generating 10m tonnes of steel – up to 60% of all the steel used in Bangladesh. Most of the workers migrate from rural areas. Hired out in gangs, they live in overcrowded shacks close to the yards. 

“Chittagong is the cheapest place to scrap ships but the price is suffering. Nine men have died here this year. Nobody feels responsible for these men’s lives,” says Muhammed Ali Shahin, Bangladesh coordinator of Shipbreaking Platform. The law offers little protection, he says. “EU laws stop EU-flagged ships being broken up on Asian beaches, but because owners can easily ‘reflag’ ships it has little strength.”

Pressed by labour groups, the UN’s International Maritime Organisation passed the Hong Kong Convention (HKC) in 2009. This demands that ship owners and states do not pose a risk to human health, safety and the environment. But, says Shipbreaking Platform, it does not stop the beaching of vessels, which is blamed for most accidents, and it is unlikely to come into force for years because it requires 15 states, and 40% of world merchant shipping, to have signed up.

New legal action is needed, say environmentalists and unions, because of the steady number of deaths and injuries to workers. On one level, shipbreaking is one of the world’s “greenest” industries, with every nut, bolt and sheet of metal on a ship being recycled. It also employs hundreds of thousands of people in some of the world’s poorest countries. But, say critics, owners knowingly cause suffering to workers by sending their ships to be recycled on Asian beaches. British-based companies have sent 28 ships to be beached in the past two years, including six to Chittagong. 

“Shipowners shield themselves from responsibility through the use of cash buyers. These scrap dealers sell off the ships for the highest price offered,” says Ingvild Jenssen, “All ships that end up on the beaches of Bangladesh, Pakistan or India pass through cash buyers, and all sales to cash buyers are clearly scrap deals where the higher price paid indicates that the vessel will be beached.”

An S.D.P. Curio. (A satire, 1909)

From the October 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A surprising discovery has been recently made in an old, old Roman camp at Elslack, near Skipton. It was a volume shaped like an exercise book, made of that inferior kind of paper which stamped it at once as reminiscent of the twentieth century. In some strange way it had become mingled with the potteries and coins of the old camp, perhaps left there by some twentieth-century explorer. A thorough examination proved it to be an old minute book belonging to the Burnleigh Branch of the Social Democratic Party, and as luckily a specialist in things historical is now investigating the wobbling and bewildering policy of this one-time well-known party it will perchance be of valuable historical interest. I write a few extracts culled at random from this mysterious volume.

The Secretary, Mr. I. Dirving, read the minutes of previous meeting. Twenty-five members present. Questions were invited on the minutes. Tertullian inquired about the antics of Mominsen, who had recently joined the Tariff Reformers (these being one of the side-tracking sects of that time). Was it true that this Mominsen had been cheekily saying that he had as much right to advocate Tariff Reform as a palliative as other Socialists had Free Imports? Another member remarked that Mominsen was gulling the workers by a deliberate distortion of the word “palliative,” for was not Socialism itself a palliative?

Arising out of the minutes Euselrius enquired as to the truth in the report of a member mentioned having tried to form a suicide club, consisting of those members of the branch who were Conscious Pessimists,and uttered in unison an amount of commonplace pseudo-philosophic pessimism anent the impossibility of cultivating the working class—not including in the phrase “working class,” of course, the members named. He was informed that the allegation was an S.P.G.B. calumny and that one S.P.G.B. firebrand, in particular, was persistently commenting on the alleged indifference of certain S.D.Peers because they had, after a few years’ experience of reform agitation been “fed up” with it. Many other members of the branch had also been charged by the same clique with holding a foolish fatalism and with being like those Eastern philosophers mentioned by Gibbon who “sat motionless year after year absorbed in the contemplation of their own navels.”

Celsus questioned about members of the branch sitting on the directive board of the Co-operative Society, whether the Society was a revolutionary body, and could members improve working-class conditions by being on the picnic or library committees of the society. He was told that fine work had been done by our members, that margarine was being bought shillings a cwt cheaper owing to the exertions of one of our members, and that Mr. H. G. Wells' great work, “New Worlds for Old," had been placed on the library shelves.

Origen asked the secretary if they could not obtain more uniformity in their speakers, that one week the speaker would condemn palliatives and the four following weeks perhaps the lecturers would speak of reforms with laudation. It was pointed out that the action of a certain organisation made it imperative that occasionally we have speakers who would put the straight position, but it would be seen to at election times that the more extreme men were silenced in some way.

Arising from the correspondence a member said it was sad to think the Sunday morning discussion class was to be abandoned, and what was the reason? Answered that the previous year had seen a successful choir and cycling club, but that for some incomprehensible reason the discussion class had been a complete fiasco. Besides, a discussion class attracted a certain sententious type of individual not possessed of the sweet reasonableness of the choir members. They saw the dilemma. The wreckers or blackleg Socialists would attend and argue indefinitely, while their own members were apathetic toward politics. It had, however, been definitely decided to form a class for the study of botany; a dart club was also to be originated. He believed, said the secretary, their comrades at Sarle Hyke boasted the finest dart team in the Kingdom.

Augustine questioned on the matter of Socialist councillor Harry Lee Henry being on the committee of the Guild of Help, an organisation formed for the economic distribution of alms. The secretary said that the Guild of Help was a non-party organisation, witness the fact that both Liberal and Tory were connected with it. The larger a material platform, remarked the chairman, the more it would accommodate, but the larger a mental platform the smaller the number it would hold. As an organisation they must be tolerant so as to attract all and sundry to the fold.

Epictetus said: arising from this point, had their candidates come to any agreement on the reform question? It was answered that one was opposed to secular education, another to compulsory evening schools, another to proportional representation, but they had united on the common ground of a complete abolition of the smoke nuisance, and incidentally on the question of Socialism.

Lucian asked could they not amalgamate with the I.L P. in the town and thus prevent confusion in the minds of the workers. They had a common aim, Socialism, and agreed on the desirability of working with the trade union forces. Why not present a united front to the enemy? Answer: the S.D.P. as an organisation refused to join the National Labour Party, but locally individual branches had a free hand. Just as a general on the field of battle must adapt his tactics in different parts of the field to varying requirements, must sometimes practice contradictory tactics at one and the same time, may both be traitor and patriot, cautious tactician and daring fighter; just as in logic a thing can both be and not be—

Here the manuscript ends.

John A. Dawson

That's Different (Short Story 1909)

A Short Story from the September 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A man with an ax flew by Socrates, chasing another man:

"Stop him! Stop him !” cried he of the weapon. "He’s a murderer! ”

But the old sage wasn’t taking any chances and jogged on imperturbably.

"You fool! ” quoth he of the ax. "Why didn’t you stop him? He’s a murderer, I tell you! ”

"A murderer! What’s a murderer? ”

"Fool! One that kills, of course.”

"Ah! a butcher.”

"No, idiot! That’s different. One that kills a man.”

"Oh! Ah, a soldier.”

"No! No! That’s different altogether. One that kills a man in times of peace! ”

“A hangman! ”

"No! No ! No! That’s different. One that kills a man in his house! ”

"A doctor, then! ”

"No! No! No! No! No! That’s different.” 

Running along after him (2,000 years after) comes another man with flaming eyes: ‘‘Stop him! Stop him!” he cries, pointing to something he sees, or thinks he sees, ahead of him. "Stop him! He’s a Socialist! "

"A Socialist! What’s a Socialist? ”

"Why a believer in state industries, of course.”

"Oh, I see ? The railways, post offices, customs, drains, and all that.”

"No, that's different! I mean competing against private enterprise.”

"Oh! schools, universities, and the like.”

"No! No! That’s different. I mean state trading. The fellows that expect everything done for them by the state! A loafer that wants to share the earnings of the industrious workers! ”

“Ah! Ah! A nobleman who has inherited land.”

"No! No! That’s different. I mean—.” 

From the Sydney Bulletin.

The Fossil Fuel Addiction

Every year since 1971, more than 80% of all our energy has come from fossil fuels. That’s still true today, which is surprising for two reasons. Most nuclear power plants came online between 1971 and 1990, and most renewable energy farms were built in the last 10 years. We’ve added so many more non-fossil-fuel energy sources in the past 45 years, and yet it doesn’t seem to be at all reflected in the figures.

Most of the world’s clean-energy sources are used to generate electricity. But electricity forms only 25% of the world’s energy consumption. Second, as the rich world moved towards a cleaner energy mix, much of the poor world was just starting to gain access to modern forms of energy. Inevitably, they chose the cheapest option, which was and remains fossil fuels.

We’re using much more clean energy than we used to. But the world’s energy demand has grown so steeply that we’re also using a lot more fossil fuels than in the past.

Between 2014 and 2016, the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions remained flat. It seemed like just maybe the world had figured out a way to keep growing without emitting more, possibly thanks to clean-energy use. Unfortunately, new projections suggest we’re going to finish 2017 with more emissions than 2016. That’s because the rich world is not cutting its emissions fast enough, and the poor world continues to grow rapidly. 

No welfare state for 4 billion

More than half of the global population – some four billion people – have no social security protection, the UN International Labour Organization (ILO) highlights.

ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said, "The lack of social protection leaves people vulnerable to ill-health, poverty, inequality and social exclusion throughout their lifecycle. Denying this human right to four billion people worldwide is a significant obstacle to economic and social development.” Mr. Ryder explained that social security protection is a basic human right, and “when people don’t have it, governments reap the benefits.” 

Only 45 per cent of the global population have access to at least one social benefit, and only 29 per cent have comprehensive protection.

In rural areas 56 per cent of people lack health coverage, compared to 22 per cent in towns and cities.

The Libyan Deal

Thousands of African migrants trying to get to Europe end up trapped in Libya. Often they endure abuse, and some are sold into slavery.  At last week's summit of European Union and African leaders in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a top African Union official said there could be as many as 700,000 Africans stranded in Libya.

The summit concluded with a plan to evacuate refugees stranded in Libya.

 "Amnesty International has been documenting the situation of migrants and refugees in Libya for years," said Franziska Vilmar, who works on asylum law and policy at the German branch of Amnesty International. She accuses the European Union of having turned a blind eye to events in Libya for a long time and not having done anything to alleviate the disastrous conditions for people living in the camps. "For months now, the EU has been training and funding the Libyan coast guard, whose involvement in human trafficking is murky," Vilmar said. "The Libyan coast guard rescues people in distress and takes them back to the camps where they face the threat of torture, rape and abuse." The medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders has also criticized the leaders of EU countries for this.

Vilmar does not believe that the plan put forth by the African Union and the EU can be implemented in its current form.  "I think it is unrealistic because the government neither runs all the camps nor does it have influence over them." Many such facilities are in the hands of militias: "That means it is practically impossible to get everyone out of there."

Cecile Pouilly, the spokesperson for the refugee agency of the United Nations, confirmed that. "There are camps to which we have no access because they are in the hands of criminal groups."

In Vilmar's view, the European Union is avoiding responsibility for its own policies by cooperating with countries such as Libya that do not offer adequate protection or applications for asylum to displaced people. By closing Europe's borders, Vilmar said, the EU is forcing displaced people to seek other routes to the bloc, with increasingly cruel consequences. "In Libya, the cooperation between the coast guard and human traffickers is a blooming business that will do even better when the European Union isolates itself," Vilmar said. "I don't think the evacuations will change that."

Joseph Teye, a migration expert at the University of Ghana's Center for Migration Studies, said the reasons behind young people's desire to make the illegal sea journey were numerous and complex.
"The root causes are many — the poverty, misconception, policy and institutional problems… and also the strict visa regimes of developed countries are among some of the causes," he said, adding that developed countries could help by "opening their doors more to regulated migration. Migration is not bad. We see it as something good, but it has to be managed," he said.

"When you work more and earn less, sometimes you suffocate," one migrant, Yunis Sola, said. "You feel like moving because if… I can work for one hour somewhere else and get more dollars, that perception will push me to go out there," 

We pay for the clean-ups - they get the profits

Trump’s administration announced Friday that it won’t require mining companies to prove they have the financial wherewithal to clean up their pollution, despite an industry legacy of abandoned mines that have fouled waterways across the U.S.A.

Externalized costs are costs of production that someone else pays. 

 Mining groups pushed back against a proposal under former President Barack Obama to make companies set aside money for future cleanup costs. The proposal applied to hard-rock mining, which includes precious metals, copper, iron, lead and other ores. Coal mines already were required to provide assurances that they’ll pay for cleanups under a 1977 federal law. Hard-rock mining companies would have faced a combined $7.1 billion financial obligation under the dropped rule, costing them up to $171 million annually to set aside sufficient funds to pay for future cleanups, according to an EPA analysis. Hard-rock mines in the U.S. produced about $26.6 billion worth of metals in 2015.

The U.S. mining industry has a long history of abandoning contaminated sites and leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups. Thousands of shuttered mines leak contaminated water into rivers, streams and other waterways, including hundreds of cases in which the EPA has intervened, sometimes at huge expense.

The EPA spent $1.1 billion on cleanup work at abandoned hard-rock mining and processing sites across the U.S. from 2010 to 2014. Since 1980, at least 52 mines and mine processing sites using modern techniques had spills or other releases of pollution, according to documents released by the EPA last year. In 2015, an EPA cleanup team accidentally triggered a 3-million gallon spill of contaminated water from Colorado’s inactive Gold King mine, tainting rivers in three states with heavy metals including arsenic and lead.

The US Senate also passed a bill allowing oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The 19.6-million acre refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of the most pristine areas in the United States and is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife. Billions of barrels of crude oil lie beneath grounds in the refuge known as the "1002 area".

Jamie Williams, President of The Wilderness Society said, "It’s outrageous that the oil lobby and their allies in Congress are trying to destroy the crown jewel of America’s wildlife refuge system after nearly four decades of bipartisan support for protecting it."

https://www.apnews.com/cb2e928657fa44379b3ed696b492d40e/US-officials-drop-mining-cleanup-rule-after-industry-objects

Fact of the Day

The wealthiest 10% of households have five times the wealth of the bottom 50%.

Half of households in Britain now have just an average of just £3,200 in net property, pension and financial wealth, while the top 10% hold an average of £1.32 million.

Top 10% of households nearly 900 times wealthier than poorest 10%

The UN investigates inequality in the US

The United Nations monitor, The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, a New York University law professor on extreme poverty and human rights,  has embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the US to hold the world’s richest nation to account for the hardships endured by America’s most vulnerable citizens. It will focus on several of the social and economic barriers that render the American dream merely a pipe dream to millions – from homelessness in California to racial discrimination in the Deep South, cumulative neglect in Puerto Rico and the decline of industrial jobs in West Virginia. As well as sky-high house prices and gentrification fueling a homelessness crisis in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco

The USA fails to recognize fundamental social and economic rights such as the right to healthcare, a roof over your head or food to keep hunger at bay. The federal government has consistently refused to sign up to the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights – arguing that these matters are best left to individual states. Such an emphasis on states’ rights has spawned a patchwork of provision for low-income families across the country. Republican-controlled states in the Deep South provide relatively little help to those struggling from unemployment and lack of ready cash

41 million Americans officially in poverty according to the US Census Bureau (other estimates put that figure much higher).  In its 2016 state of the nation review, the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality placed the US rank at the bottom of the league table of 10 well-off countries, in terms of the extent of its income and wealth inequality. It also found that the US hit rock bottom in terms of the safety net it offers struggling families, and is one of the worst offenders in terms of the ability of low-income families to lift themselves out of poverty – a stark contrast to the much-vaunted myth of the American dream.

“Despite great wealth in the US, there also exists great poverty and inequality,” Alston said before the start of the visit.  However, Alston is reserving his comments until the end of the tour. 

David Grusky, director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Stanford, said globalization combined with a host of domestic policies have generated a vast gulf between rich and poor. “The US has an extraordinary ability to naturalize and accept the extreme poverty that exists even in the context of such extreme wealth.” 

The Trump administration in its first year has taken a radically hostile approach towards communities in need. He has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to abolish Obamacare in a move that would deprive millions of low-income families of healthcare insurance, was widely criticized for his lackluster response to the hurricane disaster in Puerto Rico that has left thousands homeless and without power, and is currently pushing a tax reform that would benefit one group above all others: the super rich.

 In his previous role as UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Alston blamed the Obama administration and the CIA for killing many innocent civilians in attacks he said were of dubious international legality.

Plastic Pollution

Between 4.8 million tonnes and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean every year, 80 percent of it from land sources due to inadequate waste management. Plastic pollution is everywhere; even a tiny uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean far from human contact had 18 tonnes of plastic washed up on it. Plastic waste was found at 36,000 feet in depth – the deepest spot in the ocean in the Mariana trench,

Joachim Spangenberg of Germany’s Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research called the “political economy” of pollution, where vested-interest lobbies profit by externalizing costs of production and discharging unwanted waste into the environment. 

 Anti-plastic campaigners are up against a global plastic industry worth 654 billion dollars by 2020. Dow Chemicals, Du Pont, BASF, ExxonMobil, and Bayer are key players invested in the sector. According to the Worldwatch Institute, plastic production is increasing 4-5 percent annually.

Certain countries have banned microplastics, some have banned plastic bags. Kenya, Rwanda and Bangladesh, for example, are recognised global leaders on plastic pollution.

Plastic aside, land-based sources pump in the maximum waste and pollutants into oceans and coastal waters, mostly through rivers. Farming, food and agro-industry, fisheries and aquaculture, oil and energy sector, waste, wastewater, packaging sector, extractives and pharmaceuticals are major sources.

In coastal regions where 37 percent of the global population lives, these pollutants can stunt neurological development, cause heart and kidney disease, cancer, sterility and hormonal disruption.

Among the little know impacts on marine creatures, ingestion of microplastics (size less than 5 mm) by fish can affect female fertility and grow reproductive tissue in male fish causing their feminization. Chemicals in plastic cause thyroid disorder in whales, physiological stress, liver cancer, and endocrine dysfunction, says UNEP’s 2017 pollution report.

"If action is not taken today, we’re lining ourselves up for the ultimate cost – the destruction of our oceans – down the line." Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment, explained.

Yemen - the war MPs forgot about

An emergency debate called by Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, the former International Development Secretary, to raise concerns about the “almighty catastrophe of biblical proportions” that he said was unfolding in the country was attended by only around 30 of Parliament’s 650 MPs.  

During the debate, Mitchell told MPs: “There is rapidly rising concern in Britain about what is happening in Yemen and the part that Britain is playing in this crisis. There is deep concern that an almighty catastrophe of biblical proportions is unfolding in Yemen before our eyes, and a considerable fear that Britain is dangerously complicit in it.”

He said Saudi authorities were preventing aid shipments of food and medicine from entering Yemen. 

“At least seven whole cities have run out of clean water and sanitation and aid agencies are unable to get food to starving families”, he said. “The destruction of clean water and sanitation facilities is directly responsible for the outbreak earlier this year of cholera affecting nearly one million people. Yemen is a country ravaged by medieval diseases and on the precipice of famine. With rapidly dwindling food and fuel stocks and the dire humanitarian situation pushing at least seven million people into famine, it is now vital that there is unimpeded access for both humanitarian and commercial cargo.”

Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, commented, “It is regrettable in many ways that the House is not packed today. On too many occasions the war in Yemen has been described as a forgotten war, and indeed it is.”  She described the situation in Yemen as “the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis” and said the UK was partly to blame for the disaster and called on the Government to clamp down on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is bombing Yemen.

West London Branch Meeting (5/12)

Tuesday, 5 December
 8:00pm
Committee Room, 
Chiswick Town Hall, 
Heathfield Terrace, 
London W4 4JN

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, more popularly known as the SPGB even though, despite Militant, it now prefers Socialist Party is the longest surviving political party in Britain calling itself socialist. The Socialist Party has always regarded itself as being in the Marxist tradition, fully subscribing to the labour theory of value and the materialist conception of history. 

The Socialist Party is not the socialist "party" that Marx (or even our Declaration of Principles) envisages, ie the working class as a whole organised politically for socialism. That will come later. At the moment, we can be described as only a socialist propaganda or socialist education organisation and can't be anything else (and nor would it try to be, at the moment). Possibly, we might be the embryo of the future mass "socialist party" or a contributing element. But who cares? As long as such a party does eventually emerges. At some stage, for whatever reason, socialist consciousness will reach a "critical mass", at which point it will just snowball and carry people along with it. It may even come about without people actually giving it the label of socialism.

The Socialist Party has never been so arrogant as to claim that we're the only socialists and that anybody not in it is not a socialist. There are socialists outside the Socialist Party, and some of them are organised in different groups. That doesn't mean that we are not opposed to the organisations they have formed, but we are not opposed to them because we think they represent some section of the capitalist class. We are opposed to them because we disagree with what they are proposing the working class should do to get socialism -- and of course, the opposite is the case too: they're opposed to what we propose. Nearly all the others who stand for a class-free, state-free, money-free, wage-free society are anti-parliamentary. 

For ourselves, using the existing historically-evolved mechanism of political democracy (the ballot box and parliament) is the best and safest way for a socialist-minded working class majority to get to socialism. For them, it's anathema. For us, some of the alternatives they suggest (armed insurrection or a general strike) are anathema. We all present our respective proposals for working-class action to get socialism and, while criticising each other's proposals, not challenging each other's socialist credentials.

Clause 7 of our principles does commit our organisation to "there can only be one socialist party" in any country in the sense of only one party aiming at the winning of control of political power by the working class to establish socialism. How could there be more than one socialist party in any country trying to win political power for socialism? It just doesn't make sense. When more and more people are coming to want socialism, a mass socialist movement will emerge to dwarf all the small groups and grouplets that exist today. If this situation were to arise then unity and fusion would be the order of the day.  

The Failure of Reformism

The board of the government's Social Mobility Commission has stood down in protest at the lack of progress towards a "fairer Britain".

Milburn told the Observer: "The worst position in politics is to set out a proposition that you're going to heal social divisions and then do nothing about it. It's almost better never to say you'll do anything about it...

"In America for 30 years real average earnings have remained flat. Now here the Chancellor is predicting that will last for 20 years.

"That has a consequence for people, but a political consequence as well. It means more anger, more resentment and creates a breeding ground for populism."

Paying the Landlord

Tenants paid an average of 27% of their gross salary to their landlord in England in 2016, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows.

 In London, tenants spent nearly half (49%) of their salary on rent.

A prince on the make

The brother of the king of Belgium has claimed the government is violating his human rights after the prime minister moved to cut his annual €308,000 (£280,000) government endowment by up to 15% – which would in effect “deprive him and his family of all livelihoods” 

The Belgium prime minister called a meeting with Prince Laurent, younger sibling to King Philippe, in response to his unauthorised appearance in full naval uniform at a Chinese state celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Red Army. Laurent sent a sick note to excuse himself from the meeting about the incident, the latest in a series of unapproved events with foreign dignitaries. Laurent’s previous diplomatic freelancing has involved jetting off to see President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who, after 16 years in power, refuses to stand down on the grounds that the country cannot afford elections.  He also enjoyed frequent visits to Libya between 2008 and 2010, where he had been hoping to go into business with one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons. Laurent was given a final warning last December after he went on an unauthorised visit to see the prime minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The prince’s lawyer went on the attack, claiming the government’s attempts to limit his meetings with the representatives of foreign states amounted to a breach of article 8 of the European convention on human rights as it would force him into “social isolation”. The letter adds that the questioning of the prince’s endowment in the media has caused “great uncertainty for the prince and his family, contrary to fundamental rights”, and the state should now offer some “social security or pension rights”. The cut would in effect “deprive him and his family of all livelihoods” 

Last year Laurent was forced to repay €16,000 to the Belgian state for claiming expenses for a ski holiday, supermarket bills and the school fees of his three children.

The youngest son of the former king and queen Albert II and Paola has previously taken to Belgian television to attack his family, with whom he is barely on speaking terms, claiming they are like the Stasi secret police and have sought to sabotage his career. “My family has never supported me,” he complained.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/belgian-prince-laurent-human-rights-breached-pay-cut

The Bible-Pushers

Just a couple of blocks from Capitol Hill the brand new $500 million Museum of the Bible has had its grand opening.  The opening gala was held at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. The cheapest ticket was $2,500.

 The museum possesses eight floors and 430,000 square feet. It has the Milk and Honey café plus a restaurant called Manna.

Visitors can see the Burning Bush (or at least the replica)

At the gift shop, you can buy a $1,250 leather foot stool shaped like a rhinoceros (because rhinos were on Noah’s Ark, of course) or a $125,000 bejeweled pomegranate made of Jerusalem stone (the Song of Solomon: “I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates”) as well as key chains, caps and T-shirts, frankincense and myrrh body wash.

 Its corporate backer is Hobby Lobby — the very rich, closely held craft store chain controlled by the Christian conservative Green family — and another principal backer the National Christian Foundation, a donor-advised fund “that supports key soldiers in the national battle for conservative Christian values.”  The foundation, self-mandated to “advance God’s kingdom,” has given millions to churches and others, counting among its grantees opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. As for the billionaire Green family, their craft-store empire gained notoriety when it won a Supreme Court ruling allowing it to deny on religious grounds Obamacare coverage of contraception for its employees. They were recently  fined $3 million in fines and forced to turn over thousands of antiquities smuggled out of Iraq.

Hobby Lobby CEO David Green backed Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential candidacy but endorsed Trump in the general election, and his son, museum chair and Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “We are seeing that the current administration with President Trump is a friend of religious freedom and has taken steps to strengthen and confirm that we are a nation that values the freedoms our founders gave us.”

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
- Seneca

From https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/right-wing-hijacks-bible-museum

Libya - A Problem Predicted

For the hundreds of thousands fleeing war-torn and poverty-struck areas in Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe is seen as the safe haven. However, for those who fail to reach Europe they face the dire consequence of being detained by Libyan authorities, as part of an EU-deal with the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) penned in February. This deal entails the Libyan coastguard stopping migrant vessels leaving Libya, an arrangement criticised as ‘inhuman’ by the UN. Europe has had a clear geopolitical aim: to repel migrants, rather than aid them. It used Libya, a destabilised nation of rival governments as a dumping ground, to rid itself of migrants. It had no regard for the human rights of those in need of sanctuary.

Vulnerable migrants are brutally tortured, abused and sexually assaulted by Libyan authorities in detention camps, or are sold into slavery by people-smugglers. Migrants are treated like cattle, sold for as little as four hundred dollars, moved from one slave-master to another.  An Italian doctor Pietro Bartolo called the detention camps ‘concentration' camps. “You must realise that in Libya, black people are not considered human beings, they’re seen as inferior, you can do whatever you want to them,” Bartolo explained.

The terrible humanitarian conditions were not unforeseen. Soon after the deal with Libya was agreed the German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel warned that thousands of men, women and children would face “catastrophic conditions”.

Amnesty International researcher Matteo De Bellis explained that “The EU’s determination to keep people out of Europe means it is ready to have migrants and refugees stuck in hellish conditions in detention camps in Libya, where they face horrific human rights abuses, including torture.”


Amnesty International researcher Matteo De Bellis said:

“The EU’s determination to keep people out of Europe means it is ready to have migrants and refugees stuck in hellish conditions in detention camps in Libya, where they face horrific human rights abuses, including torture,”

Now, belatedly migrants will be evacuated. In an African Union-European Union summit in Ivory Coast migrants will be sent mainly back to their home countries. Nigeria had already made a unilateral move to repatriate migrants, with 240 voluntarily flown home on Tuesday night. Ghana also repatriated more than 100 of its citizens detained in Libya. The French President, Macron said the "extreme emergency operation" had been agreed by nine countries, including France, Germany, Chad and Niger. Libya's UN-backed administration joined the agreement, but has only limited control over the territory, raising questions about how it will work in practice. The Libyan government is still largely incapable of controlling any migrant detention centres or camps overseen by militias.

"We have agreed, along with the EU and the UN, to set up a task force for repatriating at least 3,800 people," said AU Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat. "But it's just one camp … the Libyan government tells us that there are 42 in all. There are definitely more than that. There are estimates of 400,000 to 700,000 African migrants in Libya."


Adapted from here
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/28/the-eu-created-libyas-migrant-abuses-now-it-must-address-them/

Life after death is physically impossible

Dr. Sean Carroll, a cosmologist and physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, states “the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood” and everything happens within the realms of possibility.

He says for there to be an afterlife, consciousness would need to be something that is entirely separated from our physical body – which it is not. Rather, consciousness at the very basic level is a series of atoms and electrons which essentially give us our mind. The laws of the universe do not allow these particles to operate after our physical demise, according to Dr Carroll

He said: “Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there's no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.”

 Dr Carroll points to the Quantum Field Theory (QFT). In simple terms, the QFT is the belief there is one field for each type of particle. For example, all the photons in the universe are on one level, and all the electrons too have their own field, and for every other type of particle too.

Dr Carroll explains if life continued in some capacity after death, tests on the quantum field would have revealed "spirit particles" and "spirit forces”.

Dr Carroll writes in the Scientific American: “If it's really nothing but atoms and the known forces, there is clearly no way for the soul to survive death. Believing in life after death, to put it mildly, requires physics beyond the Standard Model. Most importantly, we need some way for that ‘new physics’ to interact with the atoms that we do have. Within QFT, there can't be a new collection of ‘spirit particles’ and ‘spirit forces’ that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments.”

Once this is accepted by all scientists, Dr Carroll says, then they can truly begin to understand how the human mind operated. He said: “There's no reason to be agnostic about ideas that are dramatically incompatible with everything we know about modern science. Once we get over any reluctance to face reality on this issue, we can get down to the much more interesting questions of how human beings and consciousness really work.”

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/848991/life-after-death-what-happens-when-you-die-quantum-physics

The Nowhere Man and Woman

Sometimes referred to as "legal ghosts", stateless people are not recognised as nationals by any country. They live deprived of basic rights most people take for granted.

The charity Asylum Aid estimates several thousand stateless people are living in Britain, often at risk of destitution, exploitation and prolonged detention. Some were born in countries that do not recognise them as nationals, others have fled war or rights abuses, or are victims of trafficking. Britain is one of only a handful of countries to have set up a procedure to identify stateless people, and provide them with a route to legal residency.  But Asylum Aid said there was a backlog of applications, and even those recognised as stateless faced difficulties acquiring British citizenship.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) has launched an ambitious campaign to end the plight of some 10 million stateless people worldwide by 2024.  

Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, the UNHCR's representative in Britain, said "For people without a nationality, life is on hold." 

American photographer Greg Constantine has spent a decade photographing stateless communities around the world including the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Roma in Europe and the Bidoon in Kuwait. He said the isolation experienced by stateless people in Britain was unlike anything he had seen before.

"What for me was so eye-opening was the sheer sense of rejection and isolation that stateless people in the UK expressed to me," Greg explains. "And how paralyzing that feeling was for them in their day to day lives."

Constantine was particularly moved by a bright young Bidoon man who was keen to study and have a career.

"I'm trying to apply for work but I'm not allowed," the man says in a caption accompanying a photo of his shadow. "I want to go to university ... but I'm not allowed. I've tried to get a driver's license, but I'm not allowed." The man said he had spent years in limbo in Britain, which has refused him asylum but cannot deport him because Kuwait has rejected him as a citizen. "It is like a spider web," he added. "I am trapped and any move I make, I get stuck even more."

Constantine said most of the stateless people he met had been detained, sometimes multiple times. One man had spent three and a half years locked up. Others were homeless - one had ended up living in a forest. Constantine said one of the most tragic aspects of statelessness was the way it destroyed a person's self-worth.

 A 27-year-old Kurdish woman born in Syria described how "You are not seen as a person. I felt like I didn't exist because I was not recognised anywhere."

 A man describes his feelings of entrapment as life passes him by. "I'm like a bird in a cage," he says. "All I can do is watch."

http://news.trust.org/item/20171130111534-q3y3m/

The Last Act of Parliament

 “It is hereby decreed, that what is now known as the private ownership of the land and means of wealth, production and distribution is hereby abolished, now and for ever more.
  “In substitution thereof, there shall be instituted as what shall be known as the common ownership of the aforesaid land and means of wealth production and distribution.
 "Furthermore it is hereby decreed that the aforesaid land and means of wealth production and distribution shall remain under Common Ownership and shall be democratically controlled by and on behalf of the whole of the community, regardless of their colour or sex.”

Cluster Bombs to Continue

The US Pentagon will indefinitely delay a ban on the use of older types of cluster bombs due to take effect on Jan. 1, 2019, officials said, arguing that safety improvements in munitions technology failed to advance enough to replace older stockpiles. It was unclear at what point in the future the Pentagon might be required to stop using its existing stockpiles,

Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter bomblets across a wide area, but sometimes fail to explode and are difficult to locate and remove. That can lead to civilian deaths and injuries long after conflicts end. A memo, which is expected to be signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Thursday, called cluster munitions "legitimate weapons with clear military utility."