Thursday, December 31, 2020
New Year greetings
For members of the World Socialist Movement every year so far has been an annus horribilus. The good news for 2021 is that the president of the world’s foremost super-power will not be Donald Trump. The bad news is that it will be Joe Biden.
As the new year begins according to tradition it is necessary to make plans for a new life. At the start of another new year it working people look backwards to the past and forward towards the future, taking stock of what has already been accomplished and of the work that lies before us on the path to our full and complete emancipation. The past year has been a year of fear for many. Let us make 2021 the year of awakening and hope for all humanity and that we will overthrow capitalism to establish a free, equal and humane society in the next new year
Despite the weaknesses our movement may have our brightest hope for the coming new year is that our work to bring about world socialism can be consolidated and expanded. In 2021 we hope that by our common efforts shall win over many more fellow-workers to the socialist message. The WSM reaches out our hand of comradeship and extend our new year’s greeting to all our co-workers in every part of the world.
Socialist Sonnet No. 14
New Year Revolution
Cycle of the year is almost complete,
A moment to assume Janus and view
What has passed, for from the old comes the new;
Time now to make what is obscured discrete.
Pandemic has made nonsense of borders,
There being no safe, superior nation,
And it has been free cooperation,
Not competition, that’s met Covid’s disorders.
Capital’s shortcomings have been laid bare:
Health of one depends on the health of all,
Wealth of one prospers with the wealth of all,
While exclusive profit is shared despair.
Janus looks forward and can surely see
How folk might choose a better way to be.
D. A.
Asia's Rich
Many of the world's wealthiest individuals have seen their fortunes soar in 2020. Asia has now a new richest person.
Zhong Shanshan has seen his wealth surge $7bn (£5.1bn) this year, helping him leapfrog India's Mukesh Ambani and China's Jack Ma.
His is worth $77.8bn, making him the world's 11th richest person
In India, Ambani saw his fortune surge $18.3bn to $76.9bn
The politics of poisoned food
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the country every year and 35,000 people die — up from 23,000 in 2013.
Compared to UK farmers, US farmers use more than five times as much per kilogramme of meat produced, and eight times more for beef and turkey meat. 10 antibiotics banned in Britain are used to promote animal growth or kill parasites on US factory farms rearing cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys. Carbadox possesses carcinogenic properties and the potential for residues in pig meat. The US Food and Drug Administration has been facing strong opposition from the industry for four years over its attempts to ban this antibiotic in pig production. According to the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT) carbadox should be banned immediately due to the risk.
Simply banning hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken would not be enough to protect UK consumers if a trade deal is agreed between the UK and the US.
There are long-term antibiotic-resistance concerns about the other drugs used. They relate to the compromising of antibiotics identified as having the potential to treat hospital superbugs, cure cancer and even, in one case, treat Covid-19. Routine use creates the ideal conditions for the development of antibiotic resistance. Daily use of low-level antibiotics is far more likely to lead to antibiotic resistance than short treatments at full levels, if and when disease occurs
US beef cattle, pigs and turkeys are also fed a growth additive called ractopamine, which is banned in the UK, EU, Russia and China on food-safety grounds because of concern about “possible detrimental impacts on heart and cardiovascular health, from residues of the drug in meat and offal”. Russian regulators have linked ractopamine with shorter human lifespans.
The UK has adopted into law an EU ban on the import and production of meat using growth promoting hormones but is expected to come under pressure to drop the ban to sign trade deals. EU propose to ban all preventative use of antibiotics in animals from 2022.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Armaments for Autocracies
The US state department has approved the sale of $290m in GBU-39 smart bombs to Saudi Arabia as part of a flurry of arms deals with Middle Eastern dictatorships in the last weeks of the Trump administration.
On the same day, the agency also announced approvals for the sale of H-64E Apache Helicopters worth $4bn to Kuwait.
$104m in defensive equipment against missile attack for the plane of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as well as $65.6m in precision targeting equipment for Egyptian warplanes.
US approves sale of $290m in bombs to Saudi Arabia | US news | The Guardian
US Justice for the Chagossians?
1,500 people were made to leave the Chagos Islands, in the Indian Ocean. The UK, which owned the land, had leased the largest island, Diego Garcia, to the US to build a huge military base.
In the 1970s, the UK gave the Mauritian government £4.65m to distribute to the Chagossians in compensation, but no money was paid to people sent to the Seychelles. Travel brochures depict the Seychelles as an island paradise, an oasis of golden beaches and crystal clear waters. But for Chagossians, it has been a place of discrimination, poverty and homelessness. Chagossians in the Seychelles were taunted by the locals, told to go back to where they came from. They were called anara, which meant uncivilised, dirty and unvaccinated.
In 2016, the British government unveiled a £40m support package for community projects for Chagossians living in the UK, Mauritius and Seychelles, to be paid over a decade. So far less than 2% of this fund has been distributed.
Having failed to achieve justice from the UK, some islanders have now taken legal action in the US. They are filing a new petition through the US Foreign Claims Act, which awards compensation for noncombatants’ injury, death or property damage by US military personnel overseas.
“Based on the 2019 UN ruling there is an illegal occupation of the Chagos Islands,” says Jonathan Levy, a US-based lawyer representing the Chagossians in the petition. “We’re saying to the government: you owe damages to the Chagossian people for operating a military base on their property.”
In October, the US Department of the Air Force rebuffed a first attempt, stating: “It has been determined that payment of the claims is not in the interests of the US government.” However, the legal team is planning a new legal action after president-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.
“The incoming Biden administration seeks to change US foreign policy, and the Chagos archipelago is a good place to begin by recognising the claims of the Chagossians to their property and land and by paying a small restitution, given the immense value the rent-free use of Diego Garcia has provided the United States for the past five decades,” says Levy.
'What about justice?': Chagos Islanders pin their hopes on Biden | Global development | The Guardian
Fact of the Day
On this day in 1936, one of the first sit-down strikes in the United States began.
Autoworkers occupy the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One in Flint, Michigan began striking to win recognition for the United Auto Workers (UAW). They also wanted to make the company stop sending work to non-union plants and to establish a fair minimum wage scale, a grievance system and a set of procedures that would help protect assembly-line workers from injury.
At 8pm on December 30, the Flint Plant’s night shift simply stopped working. They locked themselves in and sat down.
“She’s ours!” one worker shouted.
In all, the strike lasted 44 days.
#FreeAssange
Julian Assange’s extradition hearings have been a brazen example of the US government’s corruption. Rather than honoring a real journalist for exposing the war crimes of our military-industrial complex, many government officials instead call for Assange to be punished for heroically informing their constituents of these atrocities. Of course, that’d only come as a surprise to someone naive enough to think most government officials have their constituents’ best interest at heart, rather than the best interest of corporations such as those involved in our military-industrial complex, represented by lobbyists who grease the palms of those same government officials. If anyone was still under that illusion before, I hope this case will be their much-needed wake-up call.
I’m sure many of you reading this are familiar with Julian Assange, but for those that aren’t, I’ll do my best to bring you up to speed. Assange is credited as being the founder of WikiLeaks, which is easily the most prominent news leaks website to have existed so far. Though their website launched on October 4, 2006, they didn’t post their first document until about two months later, in December. They had a few high-profile leaks prior to 2010, but they didn’t become a household name until April 5 of that year, when they released a video they titled Collateral Murder, in which a crew of US Army pilots flying Apache helicopters fire on a group of civilians, including two Reuters journalists, both of whom died as a result.[1] In the week following the video’s release, WikiLeaks became the search term with the most significant growth worldwide during that week, according to Google Insights.[2]
That video, along with a slew of other leaks, was later revealed to have been provided to WikiLeaks by former US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who at that time was still going by their birth name, Bradley Manning. Manning was arrested for those leaks on May 26, 2010,[3] and was ultimately incarcerated for almost seven years before President Barack Obama commuted their sentence. After leaking Manning’s material, US authorities began investigating WikiLeaks and Assange himself to prosecute them under the Espionage Act of 1917. Despite this, WikiLeaks continued publishing more damning leaks, some of which helped spark what’s known as the Arab Spring. What began to signal a downward shift in WikiLeaks’ momentum was criminal charges levied at Assange after visiting Stockholm, Sweden, in August 2010.
Original Charge
I’ve read two different accounts of the initial incident that ultimately lead to Assange’s extradition hearings, both of which agree on the bulk of events, but with some slightly different details causing each to paint the situation in a very different light. I’ll start with the first account, then follow up with some details from the second account that fill in some questionable gaps.
The story mainly involves Julian Assange, of course, as well as two women: Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilen. Anna Ardin was press secretary at the time of the Religious Social Democrats of Sweden, commonly referred to as “the Brotherhood Movement,” which is an offshoot of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Ardin organized a conference, held in Stockholm on August 14, 2010, at which Assange was invited to speak.[4] When Assange landed in Stockholm on August 11, Ardin offered him to stay at her apartment while visiting family for a couple of days. Ardin got back home on August 13, and she and Assange had sex that night, both admitting that Assange had worn a condom and that it broke. Assange delivered his speech the next day, and Ardin threw a party at her apartment that night in his honor.
Sofia Wilen had sex with Assange the night of August 16 and again the following morning. He wore a condom the first time, but not the second time. On August 18, Wilen called Ardin and told her she had unprotected sex with Assange, saying she was afraid she might have contracted an STD or become pregnant. On August 20, both women filed criminal charges against Assange: Ardin alleging that he deliberately broke the condom when they had sex and Wilen alleging that he refused to wear a condom the second time they had sex. The first account claims that Swedish authorities questioned Assange, the case was initially closed, then he was told he could leave the country, but that in November 2010, the case was reopened by a special prosecutor who wanted to question him over two counts of sexual molestation, one count of unlawful coercion, and one count of “lesser-degree rape.” Assange denied the allegations and said he was happy to be questioned in Britain.
The first account claims that Assange was being accused of continuing to have sex with the women after they’d withdrawn consent, but the second account gives more details that I feel make way more sense, given the charges. Firstly, Ardin recounts her and Assange’s intercourse as being overly aggressive,[5] which could explain why they hadn’t had sex a single other time, even though he slept in her bed for another week afterward. Secondly, Wilen alleged that Assange began having sex with her the second time while she was half asleep, without a condom on, after he’d reluctantly worn one the first time. Wilen said she’d never had sex without a condom before, and even one of her ex-boyfriend’s told the police that they’d never once in two and a half years had sex without a condom since it was unthinkable for her. Wilen contacted Ardin and Ardin contacted a mutual colleague of her and Assange, the co-ordinator of the Swedish WikiLeaks group at that time, Donald Boström, asking Boström to persuade Assange to take an STD test, but Assange refused to do so, even after being told that Wilen would go to the police if he didn’t. Ardin and Wilen went to the police on August 20, thinking they would merely force Assange to take an STD test, but instead, police told them they couldn’t simply tell him to do that, and the statements had to be given to the prosecutor.
The second account confirms that police interviewed Assange and set him free afterward; however, he left Sweden in late September and never returned to attend another interview that’d been scheduled with the prosecutor on October 14 out of fear his arrest could ultimately lead to a US extradition, leading the Swedish police to issue an international arrest warrant for him on November 20. Assange turned himself in to the British police on December 8 and attended his first Swedish extradition hearing, being remanded in custody. At the second hearing on December 16, Assange was granted bail by the High Court and released after his supporters paid £240,000 in cash and sureties. A further hearing on February 24, 2011, ruled that Assange should be extradited to Sweden, and it seems like he must’ve appealed that decision a couple of times, since the High Court upheld it on November 2, 2011, and so did the Supreme Court on May 30, 2012.
Asylum
Still being a native Australian citizen at the time, Assange naturally sought the help of the Australian government, but a letter from Australia’s Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, clarified that his country wouldn’t seek to involve itself in any international exchanges regarding his future,[6] basically leaving Assange to fend for himself. Assange decided to seek Asylum from Ecuador instead, and on June 19, 2012, the Ecuadorian foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, announced that Assange had applied for political asylum, that the Ecuadorian government was considering the request, and that Assange was staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.[7] The UK Government then sent a letter claiming they had the legal right to raid the embassy, based on one of their laws, but Patiño said that’d violate the Vienna convention.[8] Ecuador officially granted Assange asylum on August 16,[9] with President Rafel Correa saying the next day that Assange could stay at the embassy indefinitely.[10]
Swedish chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, sent an email to the English Crown Prosecution Service on October 18, 2013, informing them that she intended to lift the detention order and withdraw the European arrest warrant, but the CPS tried to dissuade her from doing so.[11] On February 5, 2016, the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention by the UK and Swedish Governments since December 7, 2010, including his time in prison, on conditional bail and in the Ecuadorian embassy, saying Assange should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation,[12] but the UK government rejected the claim.[13] On May 19, 2017, prosecutor Ny officially revoked Assange’s arrest warrant, adding that they could still resume the investigation if he visited Sweden before August 2020,[14] but Assange announced he’d stay in the embassy anyway since the UK government still wanted him for breaching bail.[15]
Arrest
Now, this is where things start to get more interesting. LenÃn Moreno, formerly Rafael Correa’s Vice President, became President of Ecuador on May 24, 2017. It’s also worth noting that in February 2018, Assange brought two legal actions, arguing that Britain should drop its arrest warrant for him since it had become useless, but in both cases, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot ruled the arrest warrant should remain in place.[16][17] Remember her name.
US Vice president Mike Pence visited Moreno on June 27, 2018.[18] We can make an educated guess what they discussed since Moreno started saying he wanted Assange out of the embassy the very next month,[19] and rules seem to have become more strict for Assange not too long afterward, since he filed a lawsuit over them, which an Ecuador judge dismissed in October.[20] Two US House Representatives also practically threatened Moreno to give up Assange on October 16.[21] There’s 0 chance this was a coincidence since the US Justice Department accidentally revealed on November 15 that they’d secretly issued a sealed indictment for Assange,[22] which was later found to have been returned earlier that year on March 6, just two days before the statute of limitations on that charge expired.[23] Moreno’s final straw appears to have been the INA Papers, which he believes Assange had a hand in leaking since they sparked a congressional corruption probe into Moreno after they were released on February 19, 2019.[24]
I’ll give some quick info on Manning since they briefly re-enter the story around this time. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for their part in the leaks, announcing they’d start being referred to as Chelsea Manning the next day, serving that time until President Obama commuted Manning’s sentence and released them on May 17, 2017.[25] The US District Court issued a subpoena for Manning on January 22, 2019, which asked them to appear in court on February 5 – later moved to March 5 – to testify against Assange,[26] but Manning refused to do so, landing them in jail for contempt of court on March 8.[27] Manning was released on May 9 due to the grand jury’s term expiring, but immediately received another subpoena demanding their testimony to a new grand jury on May 16.[28] Manning again refused to testify and was subsequently ordered back to jail that same day,[29] being incarcerated until March 12, 2020, having attempted suicide the day before.[30]
Now, onto the arrest that landed Assange back in British custody. UK authorities were allowed to enter the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Assange on April 11, 2019,[31] almost certainly in connection with an IMF loan, aside from US pressure and a personal vendetta on Moreno’s part.[32] The judge quickly found Assange guilty the same day of breaching Britain’s Bail Act of 1976,[33] and authorities immediately rearrested him for a US extradition request,[34] the indictment for which was officially unsealed the same day as well, the charge being Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion, alleging that Assange conspired with Manning to attempt to crack a government computer password.[35] Sweden also reopened Assange’s rape case following his arrest.[36] On May 1, 2019, Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks at HM Prison Belmarsh for breaching bail,[37] with the judge saying he’d only have to do half of that with good behavior.[38]
US Extradition Hearings
Assange’s first US extradition hearing was held the very next day, on May 2.[39] On May 23, the US government indicted Assange for 17 new charges related to the Espionage Act, being: Conspiracy To Obtain and Disclose National Defense Information, seven counts of Obtaining National Defense Information, and nine counts of Disclosure of National Defense Information,[40] bringing his total number of charges to 18.[41] At least two US news outlets acknowledged that Assange’s publication of the leaks was virtually indistinguishable from what other journalists have done across the world, including the US of course,[42][43] and it’s noteworthy that this is the first time the US Justice Department’s used the Espionage Act to charge a third party with publishing classified information, not just the government leaker for providing it.[44] Despite this clear violation of journalistic freedom, the UK’s then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, signed the US extradition order on June 12.[45]
Now for a real shocker. Emma Arbuthnot – the same judge who, after Assange’s Swedish arrest warrant was dropped, ruled twice that his British arrest warrant should remain in place – initially presided over Assange’s extradition hearings but stepped down sometime in late 2019 after his lawyer argued that Arbuthnot had a glaring conflict of interest and should recuse herself since her husband, James Arbuthnot, was personally impacted by WikiLeaks[46] and is heavily connected to groups that have a vested interest in Assange’s extradition.[47] Vanessa Baraitser was then appointed as the new presiding judge, but Arbuthnot remained the supervising legal figure “responsible for… supporting and guiding” Baraitser.[48] Baraitser announced on September 3 that she wouldn’t allow Assange to be released after his prison term for breaching bail ended on September 22 since she believed he would abscond again.[49] One more critical update from 2019: Sweden dropped Assange’s rape investigation again on November 19, since the evidence by then had weakened too much.[50]
Allow me to clarify: Assange completed his prison term for breaching bail on September 22, and the rape investigation for which bail had been granted in the first place was dropped on November 19, so since then, Assange has solely been incarcerated for a US extradition request, the indictment for which has 18 charges, 17 of those being for obtaining and publishing classified information – acts which are standard practice for journalists. Assange’s final charge of Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion for allegedly conspiring with Manning to crack a government computer password not only didn’t happen, but also: 1) it couldn’t have happened, since Manning only gave Assange a portion of the password hash and it literally would’ve been impossible for him to crack the password without the rest, and 2) it didn’t need to happen, since Manning had already sent Assange all of the leaks besides the State Department cables, which Manning already had full access to without the password.[51] For the cherry on top: extradition for political offenses is illegal due to a US-UK treaty.[52]
Judge Vanessa Baraitser announced at Assange’s latest hearing on October 1, 2020, that she’d issue his extradition decision on January 4, 2021, at 10 AM GMT.[53] She has a 96% extradition rate. Make no mistake: Assange will be extradited – far from the first illegal action in this case – and he could potentially be given life in prison for exposing US war crimes – journalism if it exists at all. Considering this, some have called on President Donald Trump to pardon Assange. A reporter asked if Trump would pardon Assange at a conference, and he said he’d “look into it,” after which Assange’s fiancee, Stella Moris, posted a tweet asking Trump to pardon him as well.[54] Unfortunately, Trump has yet to issue a pardon for Assange but has recently pardoned four war criminals,[55] among others.
Conclusion
Assange’s indictment is an attack on freedom of the press. If he’s convicted, the US Justice Department will have the green light to incarcerate any journalist they feel steps too far out of line. If you see a journalist, political pundit, or politician who claims to understand this case – especially one that claims to be a “progressive,” or any form of socialist, communist, or anarchist – and they aren’t explicitly calling for Assange’s freedom: they’re a grifter. There’s no way around this. A journalist is being indicted for journalism. There’s no nuance to this situation. US Intelligence may not have gone through with plans to murder Assange,[56] but his conviction could easily murder investigative journalism itself.
Jordan Levi
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007,_Baghdad_airstrike
[3] https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange-sweden
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/20/julian-assange-asylum-ecuador-embassy-live
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/aug/16/julian-assange-ecuador-embassy-asylum
[9] https://www.webcitation.org/69xdGRSLN?url=http://www.mmrree.gob.ec/2012/com042.asp
[12] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17012&LangID=E
[14] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39973864
[15] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/sweden-drops-julian-assange-rape-investigation/
[16] https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/julian-assange-ruling/
[17] https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/julian-assange-arrest-warrant-ruling-2/
[19] https://www.pressherald.com/2018/07/27/ecuador-wants-assange-out-of-asylum-but-safe/
[20] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46027963
[22] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/16/us/politics/julian-assange-indictment-wikileaks.html
[23] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/europe/julian-assange-wikileaks-ecuador-embassy.html
[25] https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-chelsea-manning-tells-abc-news-past-affect/story?id=47452624
[26] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/chelsea-manning-subpoena.html
[27] https://apnews.com/article/569631f2b11c400cac05a29e0853624b
[29] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/us/chelsea-manning-jail.html
[31] https://edition.cnn.com/uk/live-news/julian-assange-arrest-dle-gbr-intl/index.html
[32] https://therealnews.com/ecuadorian-presidents-motives-for-surrendering-assange-vengeance-imf-loan
[35] https://www.chicagotribune.com/la-fg-britain-julian-assange-arrested-20190411-story.html
[36] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wikileaks-assange-sweden-idUSKCN1VU0IG
[37] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48118908
[38] https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of-hhj-deborah-taylor-r-v-assange/
[40] https://www.wsj.com/articles/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-charged-with-17-new-counts-11558641695
[41] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/wikileaks-founder-charged-superseding-indictment
[42] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/us/politics/assange-indictment.html
[43] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/julian-assange-charged-publishing-classified-us-info-1213366
[45] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jun/13/julian-assange-sajid-javid-signs-us-extradition-order
[50] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50473792
[51] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/assange-extradition-cfaa-hacking/
[53] https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/wikileaks-assange-won-t-get-u-s-extradition-ruling-this-year-1.5128583
[54] https://twitter.com/StellaMoris1/status/1331933971207380992
The Future Climate Refugee Crisis
The full consequences of the climate crises remains one of speculation although many authorities have sufficient data to make educated informed guesses.
ActionAid International and Climate Action Network South Asia said in a report that he growing impacts of climate change have already pushed more than 18 million people to migrate within South Asian countries, but that could more than triple in three decades if global warming continues on its current path, researchers warned on Friday.
63 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 in the region as rising seas and rivers swallow villages, and drought-hit land no longer supports crops. Many will head from rural areas to towns and cities in their own countries, in search of work, he said. There they often end up living in slum areas exposed to flooding and with very limited access to social services, doing precarious jobs in the informal economy such as rickshaw-pulling, construction labouring or sweat-shops. The projection does not include those who will be forced to flee sudden disasters such as floods and cyclones and so is likely an under-estimate. It builds on research published in 2018 by the World Bank, which said unchecked climate change could cause more than 140 million people to move within their countries' borders by 2050 in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. The new report, which used an updated version of the same methodology, raises the original 2050 projection for South Asian migration by about half, adding in new data on sea level rise, as well as the effects of ecosystem losses and droughts.
Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid said the situation could become "catastrophic".
"Policy makers in the Global North and the Global South are not yet waking up to this reality," Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "They are not realising the scale of the problem, and how we are going to deal with it."
The new figures show the largest number of people are expected to migrate by 2050 in India, at more than 45 million. But the country with the sharpest projected rise in migration is Bangladesh, with a seven-fold increase from today.
People are already been hit by worsening climate pressures.
Insulting the flag
Hong Kong student activist Tony Chung has been sentenced to four months in prison for insulting the Chinese flag during a protest in May last year. The court heard Mr Chung had undermined the dignity of the national flag by pulling at it, breaking the flag pole, and throwing the flag in the air.
'Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.' - Arundhati Roy, Indian author and activist
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Capital Accumulation and its Consequence
Capitalism favors profit over the ecological integrity of the land that provides the resources for production, and treats the environment as a dumping ground for byproducts and waste. Capitalism is the driving force of ecological destruction. Carbon emissions already released into the atmosphere will continue to warm the planet for years to come. Although a certain level of climate change is guaranteed, it is still possible, through radical action in the coming decade, to give our descendants a better chance at a decent life: to lessen the possibility that they will inherit the hell-scape environment we currently are on course for. The way to solve the environmental emergency, of which climate change is only one aspect, is to replace capitalism with a different social and economic model. Its foundations is a grow-or-die system. Capitalism is threatening the future of humanity.
Capital accumulation creates profits for a small percentage of the population instead of the vast majority of us who do the work to make those profits possible. This has resulted in a system in which eight men have as much wealth as the 3.6 billion people that make up half the world.
Leading the pack is Elon Musk whose wealth is up by triple digits, $127 billion, in just one freaking year. His gain alone would be good enough to make him the world’s third wealthiest individual after Bezos and Gates. His net worth is now $155 billion. If Musk continues on the path he has been on during the year, he will soon be number one, and could be the first to reach a trillion. On a typical single day in 2020, Musk’s wealth increased by almost $348 million which comes to $14.5 million every hour, $241,628 every minute, or $4,027 every second.
The total gains of the 1%, as of the third quarter of 2020, came to $1.47 trillion. The net gains of the wealthiest big 10 alone are 21.7% of the entire gain of the roughly 3.3 million wealthiest in the USA. Those holding positions 11-20 have wealth of about half the amount of the top 10, $502.2B, with gains for the year so far of almost $54.9 billion, a figure that would be $70 billion when excluding their colleagues who lost wealth. The total wealth of the top twenty comes in at $1.544 trillion. This amount represents 65.4% of the total wealth of the poorest half of the U.S. population who, as of the end of the third quarter of 2020, held wealth worth $2.36 trillion. The wealth of the 10 wealthiest individuals comes to 44% of the wealth of the poorest 50%, roughly 165.5 million people.
Australia and Insecure Employment
Australia has experienced the biggest expansion of casual employment in the country’s history, according to new analysis that suggests the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been “starkly unequal”.
And the Australia Institute, which carried out the analysis, has argued the government’s planned industrial relations changes will only “reinforce the growing dominance of insecure work in the labour market”.
It says casual jobs accounted for 60% of all waged jobs created since May, while part-time work accounted for nearly three-quarters of all new jobs.
Meanwhile “very insecure positions” – including in the gig economy – were responsible for the rebound in self-employment.
The early months of the pandemic “highlighted stark fissures in Australia’s labour market”, with casual workers losing employment eight times faster than those in permanent jobs.
The report points to an “encouraging” rebound in employment after May – replacing over 80% of the jobs lost in the initial downturn - but it says this turnaround has been dominated by insecure positions.
“Casual employment grew by over 400,000 positions between May and November – an average of 2,200 new casual jobs per day,” the report says. “That is by far the biggest expansion of casual employment in Australia’s history..."
While pre-pandemic employment levels have recovered for workers over 35, younger workers are still suffering significant job losses.
Women suffered disproportionate job losses when the pandemic arrived, and that gender gap had yet to be closed.
“Women’s employment, unemployment, underemployment and participation all remain significantly weaker than for men.”
According to the Centre for Future Work, employment remains lower than before the pandemic in some other occupations, including community and personal services, sales workers and labourers.
“These uneven occupational effects have exacerbated inequality: those who lost work, on average, earned less and experienced greater job insecurity before the pandemic,” it says.
“Some industries are still experiencing lower employment than before the pandemic hit, including hospitality, information and communications, and arts and recreation.
“Job losses in manufacturing continue to worsen, despite the recovery in the rest of the economy after May – belying the government’s pledge to strengthen domestic manufacturing after the pandemic.”
The government introduced an industrial relations bill to parliament just before the Christmas break. The Centre for Future Work says the government’s bill would liberalise casual work and allow permanent part-time workers to be treated like casuals.
“These measures will accelerate the surge of insecure work – and ensure that the next economic shock will have even more unequal effects than this one did,” the report says.