map of millionaires

1. The United States is home to the most billionaires in the world, and they acquired their wealth in a nearly even split on the spectrum. As it stands, 32.1 % of the prosperous are company founders, 28.9 % inherited the cash, and 26.8 % are involved in the financial sector. The exceptions are the executives (8.4%) and those who are connected through political resources (3.8%). According to HowMuch, this is probably due to the U.S. gov’s hands-off strategy when it comes to business.

2. Europe is fairly diverse, too. A huge number of billionaires in Germany came into their wealth through inheritance (64.7 %), but about a quarter of them are company founders. It’s similar in France, with 51.2 % having inherited their goods, while 37.2 % run businesses.

3. China’s billionaires are mainly self-made. In the world’s second-largest economy, the map indicates there’s a serious opportunity for growth in business. Almost half of the billionaires are company founders, while 25% are executives. Furthermore, the number of Chinese billionaires has increased quickly.

4. Many South American billionaires are heirs to the fortune. Nearly half of Brazil’s billionaires inherited their money, and that trend prevails in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela too.

5. Not one billionaire in Russia inherited his or her fortune. On the other hand, Russian billionaires mainly came into their cash mainly by means of political and resource-related ventures (64%).

Are you a Christian?

 ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?

 1. You actually know a lot less than many Atheists and Agnostics do about the bible, Christianity and church history, but still call yourself a Christian.

 2. You define 0.001% a high sucess rate, when it comes to answering prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works, and you think that the remaining 99.99% failure was simply the will of God.

 3. While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around the floor, "speaking in tongues," may be all the evidence you need.

 4. You believe that the entire population of this planet, with the exception of those who share your belief (though, excluding those in rival sects) will spend eternity in an infinite hell of suffering. Yet you consider your religion, the most tolerant and loving.

5. You are willing to spend your life looking for loopholes in the scientifically established age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by pre-historic tribesmen sitting in their tents and suggesting that the Earth is a few generations old.

6. You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about Gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who came to give birth to a man-god, who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

7.  Your face turns purple when you hear the atrocities attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch, when hearing about God/Jehovah, slaughtering all the babies in Egypt, in "Exodus" and ordering the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and animals.

8.  You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Trinity god.

9.  You feel insulted and dehumanised when scientists say that people evolved from lesser life forms, but you have no problem believing we were created from dirt.

10.  You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of your god.

Mutual Aid (video)

Atheism (music video)

Trump Quotes as in Futurama (video)

The New Poor

The “new poor” tend to live in households where there is someone in work. Only a third of children below the government’s absolute poverty line now live in a workless household – two thirds of those classified as poor are poor despite the fact that at least one of their parents is in work.

In key respects middle income families with children now more closely resemble poor families than in the past. Half are now renters rather than owner occupiers and, while poorer families have become less reliant on benefits as employment has risen, middle- income households with children now get 30% of their income from benefits and tax credits, up from 22% 20 years ago. Mothers’ earnings are increasingly important for households with children. For middle-income children the fraction of household income coming from women’s earnings rose from less than a fifth in 1994–95 to more than a quarter in 2014–15; and it doubled from 7% to 15% for the poorest fifth.

Europe is sinking into a protracted period of deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair as a result of austerity policies adopted in response to the debt and currency crisis of the past four years, according to an extensive study from the Red Cross. Mass unemployment – especially among the young, 120 million Europeans living in or at risk of poverty – increased waves of illegal immigration clashing with rising xenophobia in the host countries, growing risks of social unrest and political instability estimated to be two to three times higher than most other parts of the world, greater levels of insecurity among the traditional middle classes – all combine to make a European future more uncertain than at any time in the postwar era. "Many from the middle class have spiralled down to poverty…” it said. European Union official figures report that 24% of its non-poor population (122m citizens) are currently at risk of descending into poverty or social exclusion. This means that they were either at risk of income poverty (their disposable income was below their national at-risk-of-poverty threshold), severely materially deprived and/or living in households with low work rates.

A study by the German Institute for Economic Research in 2013 found that 40 percent of income inequality in Germany could be explained by family background.

There is hope

When researchers started looking at whether countries could expand their populations and economies without using up more of the Earth's limited natural resources, they expected the answer to be “no”. But their findings suggest it can be done. A set of maps released this week show that people’s impact on the environment has been rising at a rate slower than that of economic and population growth. 

While the world's population grew 23 percent and its economy 153 percent between 1993 and 2009, the global footprint of humans grew only 9 percent, calculated a team of researchers from the University of Northern British Columbia, the University of Queensland, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and six other universities.

Oscar Venter of the University of Northern British Columbia, the lead author of the study published in Nature Communications, called the results "encouraging...It means we are becoming more efficient in how we use natural resources," he said. 

http://news.trust.org/item/20160824145746-t3iay

An empty catch?

Most Scottish fishermen voted in favor of Brexit arguing it would give them greater control over fishing rights. However, that may have been all wishful thinking.

Europe's largest white fish market is in Peterhead. Last year sales in Peterhead totalled some £180 million (215 million euros, $240 million). 2016 is on course to be even busier. Nevertheless, fishing here has been in decline for decades. An estimated 450 vessels fished out of the tight, granite-hewn port when the UK joined the EU in 1975, now that figure is around 100. Many in Peterhead blame the European Union for their industry's decline. Most Scottish fishermen supported Brexit. After decades of EU rule, they want much greater control over fishing. Trawlerman Jimmy Buchan has spent more than four decades fishing from Peterhead. During that time, he says, the Common Fisheries Policy has given foreign fleets unfettered access to Scottish waters, decimating the local fishing industry. For Buchan, Brexit "is a great opportunity we have long waited for."

But this will come at a price. Since 2007, Scotland's fishing industry has received £77 million from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. Later this year, a £49 million redevelopment of Peterhead port will begin, partly funded by the European Union.

\

http://www.dw.com/en/scottish-fishermen-could-be-sold-down-the-river/a-19527580

Plutocracy 1 - Repression (video)

Plutocracy 2 - Solidarity (video)

Marxist theory (video)

Marx and Alienation (video)

A PROSPEROUS HAPPY FUTURE?

With future generations facing ecological catastrophe within decades, some believe that the best thing they can do for their offspring is not to have them at all. In Ireland one in five women, either by choice or circumstance, will never become mothers. Birthrates have plummeted in Greece. Marked declines in fertility rates have been measured since 2009 across most of Europe, the US and Australia.

Children born in 2016 will still be in their early 30s by midcentury and likely by then to be facing their own decisions about parenthood. For those paying attention to environmental science 2050 has a deeply ominous ring. Carbon-dioxide levels will by then have more than doubled since preindustrial times, on current trends, locking in dangerous climate change for millenniums. And acidification, pollution and overfishing are on track to have rendered much of the world’s oceans almost lifeless in the same timeframe.

Too much food

America’s cheese surplus had reached a 30-year high while dairy producers’ revenue had declined by 35 percent in the last two years.

To reduce milk supply in 1985, the government paid farmers $1.5 billion to slaughter their cows. In 2016 the U.S. Department of Agriculture moved to help dairy farmers once again by spending $20 million to get 11 million pounds of excess cheese off the market, sending it to food banks.

Quote of the Day

 “There is no outside existential threat to Israel, the only real existential threat is internal division. Internal division…can lead us to civil war.” explained Tamir Pardo, former Mossad chief. The former head of the national Israeli intelligence agency warned that soon Israelis could cross a “certain line in its division and hatred” that could spill over into “a phenomenon like a civil war.”

Biofuels - False Solution

Biofuels are no better for the environment than petroleum-based fuel, says Joe DeCicco, research professor at the University of Michigan Energy Institute. DeCicco authored a new study on the viability of ethanol-producing crops. There is carbon in ethanol, he says, which means that carbon dioxide will still be emitted from the car despite the fuel substitution. Coupled with the emissions from increased crop production to produce the fuel itself, biofuels actually make matters worse, says DeCicco.

“Biofuels are a false solution,” says DeCicco, ”but we need to reduce those emissions.”

There are other options, DeCicco says, such as growing more trees, which pull carbon out of the environment naturally, or electric cars, which do less environmental damage even when adjusted for the effect of power plants. Hydrogen fuel is being explored.

“There’s a lot of energy that goes into growing corn, but then the output that you get isn’t that great,” says Nick Schroeck, Director of the Transnational Environmental Law Clinic and Assistant Clinical Professor at Wayne State University.

http://wdet.org/posts/2016/08/26/83781-the-effectiveness-of-biofuels-and-green-technology-policy/

Agroecology as the key

The industrialized food system, studies have shown, is linked to greenhouse gas emissions, algal blooms, pesticide pollution, soil erosion and biodiversity loss, to name a few ecological troubles. Add to this a long list of social ills, from escalating rates of obesity to the demise of the family farmer and deadening of rural landscapes and rural economies across much of the U.S.

In 2010, the National Academies of Science updated its seminal 1989 publication “Alternative Agriculture” with a fresh look at the state of food and farming in America. Its expert panel concluded, “Growing awareness of unintended impacts associated with some agricultural production practices has led to heightened societal expectations for improved environmental, community, labor, and animal welfare standards in agriculture.”

Yet that growing awareness and those heightened expectations haven’t led to alternative agricultural systems becoming the norm. Organic farming has made some headway, but many organic growers have been forced to imitate industrial farming: grow bigger, resort to monocultures instead of truly diversified fields, and sell to large supermarkets — forgoing many of the benefits alternative agricultural systems offer, such as natural pest control, pollination from native bees, and a smaller production scale conducive to family farmers and local food economies. How can more wholesome food production methods such as agroecology become conventional instead of alternative? The good news is, agroecology is already beginning to make headway.

Agroecology is already a thriving science. Universities with agroecology departments and training programs, journals dedicated to agroecology research and international societies such as the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecologyshow that agroecology science is increasingly accepted around the world, at least within research communities. Still, a criticism sometimes levied at agroecologists is that their science is more ideological than empirical, more aspirational than applicable.

Agroecologists can bolster the empirical basis of their science. A long-running criticism of agroecological farming is that it cannot possibly “feed the world.” However, research is still only beginning to establish “agroecological yield.” University of California, Berkeley scientists are showing that organic systems can lag behind conventional systems by just 19 percent when it comes to productivity, and just 8 or 9 percent when farmers alternate crops year-to-year or grow several crops together in their fields. In other words, adding more agroecological practices results in yields that are significantly better than “bare-bones” organic. And this is the case even though organic and agroecological research has been systematically underfunded. With further research into agroecology on tap, industrial food supporters will find it harder to refute evidence that agroecology is yield competitive.

Olivier De Schutter, former U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, says that agroecology is an essential part of achieving the right to food globally. Agroecology can enable societies around the world to make rapid progress in meeting the needs of many vulnerable peoples while maintaining the ecological and social foundations of food systems. Many governments are now beginning to introduce anti-poverty programs aimed at those without sufficient food, such as Brazil’s Zero Hunger policy, which connects family farms with schools in some regions.

Meanwhile, La Via Campesina, a global peasant coalition, is demonstrating the practical, civic and political legitimacy of a new moral moment for agroecology. Formed in 1993 in response to free trade and globalization, LVC has grown into the largest social movement on the planet with an estimated 250 million smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fishers and indigenous peoples in 164 organizations from 73 countries. Agroecology has become an important tenet of the LVC movement, which says, “Agroecology is the answer to how to transform and repair our material reality in a food system and rural world that has been devastated by industrial food production and its so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. We see agroecology as a key form of resistance to an economic system that puts profit before life.”

Most Americans still accept industrial food practices as credible and authoritative, and in doing so consent to the use and existence of such practices. But movements are underway to change that. With a focus on what’s right about agroecology, not just what’s wrong with industrial agriculture, we can turn the alternative into the everyday and the undervalued into the legitimate — and give agroecology the credibility and authority it well deserves.

http://www.alternet.org/food/what-would-it-take-mainstream-alternative-agriculture

Veggies for the environment

Germany is home to 83 million people. But that isn't the country's total population: It's also home to about 27 million pigs, 12.6 million cattle, and nearly 40 million egg-producing hens. Their lives are very hard. Many of these animals live their lives densely crammed together in industrial-scale agri-production facilities, under conditions that cause chronic distress to the animals - and would likely cause distress to many a meat- and egg-eater if they knew more about how factory-farmed food animals live out their lives.

The economics of meat, milk and egg production provide incentives for factory farms to grow to enormous sizes, with as many animals packed into as small a space as possible. In addition to causing endless distress to the animals, factory farms also produce a great stink, and they're a source of mountains of excrement that can pollute nearby waters, depending on how they're disposed of.

Filipino Poverty

40% OF Filipinos are “trapped in a vicious cycle” of slipping in and out of poverty whenever they are affected by external shocks, despite the fact that the Philippines has been enjoying a strong, sustained economic growth over the past several years.

A study by the Asian Institute of Management Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness explained “At present, the benefits of recent economic successes are yet to be broadly felt, especially among the poor and disenfranchised in society.”

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/809494/4-of-10-filipinos-caught-in-vicious-cycle-of-poverty

Profits or safety

Socialists have often shown that capitalism causes an immense waste of resources. An article in the shipping industry newspaper Freighting World, illustrates the point. Captain F. L. Cox points out that because airline passengers can buy cheap alcohol, most aeroplanes are priced to carry a much greater weight than is desirable. A Boeing 747, for instance, could have over 500 bottles of spirits in the passenger compartment. Captain Cox points out that this extra weight causes the following problems:

1. Fire hazard. Most spirits would be classified under IATA rules as combustible liquids, some as flammable liquids. Fire would spread more readily after an accident.

2. Deceleration hazard. Violent deceleration can result in bottle missiles flying through the cabin. In one accident, where the aircraft was a total loss, all passengers were safe except for one whose death was thought to have been caused by a flying bottle.

3. Rescue hazard. Broken glass in the cabin is dangerous to both the passengers and rescue personnel after an accident.

4. Security risk. A hijacker has tried to use a broken bottle as a weapon.

5. Passenger comfort. A) congestion of packages in the cabin; B) extra risk of intoxication and disorderly conduct.

6. Fuel wastage. Extra fuel has to be used in carrying duty-free goods. While only a small proportion of the total fuel load, it is still an unnecessary waste. More travellers return with the type of spirit popular in their own homeland: and it was probably manufactured there in the first place. (our emphasis)

So it can clearly be seen that one minor feature of the present insecure system—the urge to buy cheap booze as an advantage of overseas travel—is responsible for serious social difficulties which could be eradicated tomorrow if the workers woke up to the idea of a society without buying and selling.

Red Robot (video)

We don't need money

Even though money has been around for a long time, humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years longer, and it may be a mistake to imagine that modern economics reflects some sort of primordial human nature. 

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (video)

Celtic V Israel

Scottish police urged fans to not bring Palestinian flags, threatening them with arrest. Under Scottish law anyone found guilty of inciting “hatred against a group of persons based on their membership (or presumed membership) of a group,” could be detained. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) forbids political statement displays at football matches. Prior to showdown, fans had been warned that any political protest inside the stadium would result in repercussions from the governing authority, which could lead to fines or even Celtic Park stadium closure. UEFA fined Celtic two years ago when fans waved Palestinian flags at a game against Iceland’s KR Reykjavik. UEFA’s Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Committee took action based on Article 16 (2) (e), which forbids political, ideological and religious messages at sports events.

The Celtic fans went ahead to display Palestinian flags at the match.  

Sabocat

Where We Stand

Where We Stand

1. For a worldwide society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and the consequent abolition of the whole market economy, the wages system, money and the political state, with free access to goods and services according to individual wants.

2. Only within this framework can people live in harmony with each other and the world about them, and have the opportunity to fulfil their human potential, as individuals and as a community.

3. Socialism involves major changes in everyday life—in education, work, the family—as well as in the ownership and control of the means of production; the new, free, non­authoritarian social relationships being formed in the course of the struggle for socialism.

4. Socialism can only be established by the revolutionary transformation of society through the conscious action of the working class, democratically organised in all areas of political, economic and social activity.

5. The working class are all those who have no ownership and no control of the means of production, either directly or indirectly, on a wage or salary, and so includes office, shop and farm workers as well as industrial workers, and their dependents.

6. The working class gains the knowledge, confidence, and democratic organisation necessary to carry out the socialist revolution in the course of their struggle to assert their needs, in every sphere of social activity, against the profit-seeking needs of capital and its functionaries, the ruling class.

7. The task of socialists is to encourage, both by revolutionary propaganda and, where appropriate, active participation, working class struggle, with a view to the emergence of socialist consciousness, the democratic self­organisation of the working class and the militant defence of working class living standards.

8. An organisation of revolutionary socialists must always maintain its independent identity and must not itself put forward any programme of reforms to be implemented by the capitalist state.

9. Anti­racism and anti­sexism must form an important part of socialist propaganda and other activity. A revolutionary socialist alternative must be built to counter the divisive separatist ideologies of black nationalism and radical feminism.

10. Socialists must oppose all governments as representing capitalist and ruling class interests, including those of state capitalist Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba and other such places.

11. Socialists must oppose reformist movements which seek government power to modify capitalism, or which rely on the capitalist state to deal with working class problems.

12. Socialists must oppose the ideology of state capitalism propounded by Bolsheviks (Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist) and Social­Democrats.

13. Socialists must oppose all imperialism, and also so­called “national liberation” movements as reactionary movements seeking to establish new ruling classes in power and to re­divide the world into different, but equally irrelevant frontiers.

14. Socialists must oppose all wars as conflicts between rival ruling classes over capitalist interests not worth the sacrifice of a single working class life.

15. An organisation of revolutionary socialists must be a fully democratic and free association of people, and must always be on guard against the emergence of forms of organisation and relationships that help perpetuate capitalism.

October/November 1973

The Lie We Live (video)

The kidney-snatchers

More than 200,000 people in India need a new kidney every year. But only 2 percent to 3 percent of this demand is met, as legal organ donations are rare largely because of ignorance and a cultural reticence.

Commercial trade in organs is illegal in India, and only close relatives are allowed to donate to someone in need. Donations must be approved by a special committee at each hospital, that includes social workers and a state official. The chronic shortage has fuelled a thriving black-market trade of illegal transplants and trafficking in organs as desperately ill people often turn to middlemen, agreeing to pay sums of 1 million rupees ($14,900) or more for a kidney.

Police in Mumbai said they suspect a criminal gang which preys on poor people for their organs is behind a kidney transplant racket at a top hospital, the latest such case in India where a shortage of organs is fuelling a black-market trade. "We are looking into the involvement of a criminal gang that finds poor people and makes false documents for them and takes them to hospitals posing as relatives," a police spokesman said.

A kidney transplant at the Hiranandani Hospital in a suburb of India's financial capital, was stopped last week after the hospital was tipped off that the donor's documents were fake. One hospital employee and six other people have been arrested in connection to the case, which has prompted the police to look into past transplants at the hospital. Last month a hospital in New Delhi said it was duped by traffickers into removing the kidneys of victims believing they were relatives of needy patients.

Middlemen scout villages and small towns for potential donors, who they sometimes lure with false promises of a job in the city. Many people who give up a kidney are poor and illiterate, and get only a fraction of the money with the middleman pocketing the rest. Other cases in recent years have involved foreigners coming to India for illegal transplants, and men being trafficked from Nepal to be donors.

http://news.trust.org/item/20160719114815-lb9ml/

Only profits not planet or people

Since 1980, the wealthiest Americans have seen their incomes quadruple, while those of the others have flat-lined. As a result, the United States has higher levels of mental illness, infant mortality, divorce, obesity, violence, incarceration, and substance abuse than all other countries north of the equator. “In more unequal societies,” Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett wrote, “people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese, and murder rates may be many times higher.” Consider these two statistics: the United States makes up 5 percent of the world’s population, but consume 25 percent of its resources and we incarcerate 25 percent of its prison population.

Large corporations shell out $6 billion annually to employ 35,000 D.C. lobbyists to protect their wealth. Such game rigging has bred cynicism and pessimism among the body politic, and as a result, the US has the lowest voter turnout of the world’s 40 industrial democracies. The 1% pours more money and accrues more power. According to the National Opinion Research Center, levels of trust in the United States have fallen from 60 percent in 1960 to less than 40 percent in 2004.

Buying and Selling Life

Hundreds of cancer physicians recently took to the pages of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings to angrily protest the fact that with the cost of cancer medicines now averaging over $100,000, one in five of their patients can't afford to fill their prescriptions. The physicians are not the only ones who are angry. A Kaiser Health Tracking poll last year showed that 72 percent of Americans felt that drug prices were unreasonable, and even more believe drug companies put profits before people.

Prostate cancer is the third most common form of cancer in the US, affecting nearly 3 million men and causing over 26,000 deaths annually. Xtandi is used to treat what is known as castration-resistant prostate cancer, a relapse of the disease that is both more deadly and more treatment-resistant than early stages of the cancer.

All of which has been very good news for patent owners Astellas Pharma and Xtandi's co-developer, the biopharmaceutical company Medivation. Global sales of the drug in 2015 were $1.87 billion. The US market accounts for the majority of Xtandi revenues, with Medicare alone paying $633 million in 2015, at a rate of over $100,000 per Xtandi patient per year. Thanks to price increases and an aging population, those sales numbers have climbed steadily upward, and there is every reason to believe the trend will continue. The discovery of Xtandi was conducted at UCLA, which earlier this year sold its rights to the drug for over a half-billion dollars, the largest technology transfer deal in University of California history. Astellas and Medivation hold the monopoly patent on Xtandi until at least 2027.

 http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37111-the-100-000-per-year-pill-how-us-health-agencies-choose-pharma-over-patients

Reforming Capitalism

Proportionally speaking, Americans living in poverty pay more for basic necessities. On energy bills, the poorest 20 percent of Americans spend more than seven times the share of their income than do the wealthiest. Dividing American incomes into three, households in the bottom third spend twice the portion of their incomes on transportation than the top third. High housing costs are hurting everyone—but they’re hurting poor Americans the most. The more you spend, the less you save, and the harder it is to climb up rungs on the economic ladder. Jobs and job-training programs are often heralded as the answer to poverty—but so long as the costs of living continue to rise faster than wages, better-paying work won’t break this vicious cycle.

According to the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-based urban policy think-tank, major U.S. cities could cut their poverty levels by 25 percent in large part by reducing household transportation costs, energy and water bills, and food expenditures. Focused job-creation is also necessary, and called for. But as the report makes clear, jobs alone can’t get to that magic number without measures aimed at keeping more cash in the pockets of the poor.

To take one example, in Philadelphia, reducing poverty by 25 percent would mean 100,000 people stepping above the poverty line. To bridge that gap, Philadelphia would have to get a rough total of $476 million into the pockets of those citizens through expense reductions and income increases. The plan would have to respond to demographics, too: Philadelphians who live in female-headed households and who don’t work are most likely to live in poverty.

For Philadelphia, the biggest-ticket poverty-reduction item is expanding transportation access, with goals to reduce the need for workers at every income tier to drive alone, and to open up jobs previously too hard to get to. Relying on the CNT’s Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, the CNT estimates that if Philadelphia grew the number of jobs accessible by a 30-minute transit ride by 12 percent, that could translate into roughly 4,700 newly accessible jobs for people living in poverty. That could chip away at about a third of that $476 million target. According to the agenda, the city could accomplish this by increasing transit service, or with softer options such as rideshare and employer shuttles, like Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus’ GO BMNC program.

Philadelphians would also feel cost savings by leaving their cars at home. “A 20 percent decrease in auto travel could save a low-income household [an average] $490 per year in Philadelphia,” says Jen McGraw, a sustainability specialist with the CNT. “Multiplied across 40,000 households, that could be $20 million a year in expense reductions for low-income households.”

That number (and this is a little unclear in the agenda) shows up in the third-biggest-ticket item on the agenda: household-expense reduction. “A city cannot just give every resident more money”—universal basic income is still a long way away in the U.S.—“but it can help them cut down on bills and save,” the report reads. For Philadelphia, according to the CNT’s analysis, stronger efficiency education and rebate programs could save low-income residents 20 percent on energy and water bills, which could add up to $180 per month. In addition to transportation, telecom, and even food savings through increased self-sufficiency programs, that could bring down the poverty gap by another $85 million.

Most of the other strategies that CNT calls for fall under the category of good old-fashioned job creation, with a careful focus on sectors that could benefit the city in multiple ways, such as green infrastructure, resource efficiency, childcare entrepreneurship, and waste-recycling solutions. Notice that all of these areas of productivity focus on providing more cost-effective basic services, which could then indirectly cut down monthly bills for individuals. But it is striking that, largely as a result of direct cuts to expenses, nearly a quarter of Philadelphia’s $476 million target could be met.

And that’s without really touching the issue of housing, the top cost faced by most poor Americans.

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2016/08/poverty-reduction-cost-of-living-center-for-neighborhood-technology/494348/

The only omission to this cure, and it is the elephant in the room, employers will accordingly cut wages, as they always have done when the cost of living drops. 

Olympic Records Broken

Just days before the August 5 opening of Rio Olympics, protesters in Angra dos Reis, a coastal town about 100 miles south of Rio de Janeiro, blocked an Olympic procession, seizing and extinguishing the Olympic torch before being driven back by police firing teargas and rubber bullets. Protesters carried banners reading: “Workers of Angra dos Reis will not pay for the crisis” and “Torch of shame.” The protest is emblematic of the conditions of extreme economic and political crisis, as well as rising social unrest, that are wracking Brazil as it prepares to host the first Olympic Games ever held in Latin America. Angra dos Reis is a coastal gateway to expensive resorts and beach mansions of the wealthy from Brazil and around the world. It is also the site of a Petrobras oil refinery and nuclear power plant. The majority of its residents are working class and poor, living in precarious housing on hillsides that have seen repeated disastrous mudslides. The hostility to the Olympic Games, however, is not unique to this one town.

Brazil’s official unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2016 rose to 11.3 percent, a 38.7 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, average wages have also fallen sharply, down 4.2 percent since last year. Growing working class anger over these conditions may impinge on the Olympics themselves. Rio de Janeiro public transport workers have threatened to go on strike on the eve of the games if their demand for a nearly 10 percent wage hike is not met.

Rio de Janeiro has been turned into an armed camp in advance of the Oympic Games, with 88,000 armed troops, military police and other security personnel deployed in its streets. In the run-up to the games, the government has announced a series of “terror” arrests of individuals charged with links to foreign terrorist organizations. The substance of these allegations appears flimsy in the extreme, in some cases consisting of nothing more than having visited a web site. This phony anti-terror campaign has provided the Temer government the opportunity to implement a recently passed draconian anti-terror law.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/07/31/a-week-before-rio-games-protesters-extinguish-olympic-flame/

Capitalism and Mental Health (video)

Ahmed by Lowekey (music video)

Slave labour

The Mandatory Work Activity required 120,000 people to work a 30-hour week unpaid to receive their £73 benefit. Nando's, Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, WH Smith, Poundstretcher, Cash Converters, Boots, DHL and Superdrug were among the 534 employers found to have been using the free labour of benefit claimants. Councils who participated included Essex, Whitby, Leicester, Scarborough, Fenland, Thurrock, Hartlepool and Rochford. The scheme was criticised by the Work and Pensions Select Committee when it was introduced in 2011 and was later scrapped by the government in 2015.

The Court of Appeal overturned the Department for Work and Pension's attempt to keep the names a secret at an estimated cost of tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

The Lesser Evil

Introducing the socialists (video)

Carl Sagan (video)

Altruism is best

Altruism has more of an evolutionary advantage than selfishness. Scientists say they have proved that doing good things for no personal gain can have an evolutionary advantage in the long run. Altruism is real and developed because it confers an evolutionary advantage that is ultimately greater than the benefits of selfishness, an international team of mathematicians claims to have proved.

Dr Tim Rogers, a co-author of a paper about the new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, said:

 “If you have two groups of people, one of whom was very altruistic and another group that was more selfish, it’s the altruistic, more social guys, who are better able to survive the bad winter or the drought…But if it’s always better to cheat, why doesn’t everybody cheat? The answer is it brings you bad luck, in a sense…altruistic behaviour is favoured by chance when the benefits of cheating are sufficiently small compared to a, how well the population would do without any cheats, and b, the typical size of random fluctuations in the population.”

The paper could have significant real-world implications.

“Our research suggests if society goes down a more selfish route, then it’s going to be less able to do well and survive the harsh realities of the world we live in,” Dr Rogers said. “Take the behaviour of the banks leading up to the [2008 financial] crisis … people were able to cash in on bad decisions before the big event that triggered the crash in the system.” The bankers were partly influenced by the desire to get annual bonuses. “That short-term thinking means they are not exposed yet to the random fluctuations that would drive the increase in altruism,” Dr Rogers said. He pointed to a suggestion that it might be better if bankers’ bonuses were delayed by a number of years and said this could “help even out that sense of taking really short-term, instantaneous gains” and promote more responsible behaviour.

Food slavery (video)

The Spectacle

Changing nations (video)

Inequality (video)

Living Utopia (video)

AUSTRALIA HAS PLENTY OF ROOM

Migration routes (video)

Resource Based Economy (video)

The Fungal Infection Threat

Prof Neil Gow, from the University of Aberdeen, said  "Most people know about mild fungal infections, but nobody's ever died from athlete's foot. However, a million people die a year from fungal infections”

Fungal infections kill more people than malaria or breast cancer but are not considered a priority. There are no vaccines and there is a "pressing need" for new treatments.

There are more than five million types of fungi, but only three major groups cause the majority of deaths in people:

 Aspergillus - which affects the lungs

Cryptococcus - which mainly attacks the brain

Candida - which infects mucosal membranes including in the mouth and genitals

A new strain of Candida auris  infection was first detected in 2009 in Japan, but has since been discovered across Asia and parts of south America. Public Health England said "Candida auris appears to be unlike other pathogenic yeast species in its propensity for transmission between hospital patients" and warned it was resistant to the first choice anti-fungal drugs, fluconazole, amphotericin B and caspofungin. U.S. public health officials are urging doctors and nurses to be on the lookout for the dangerous pathogen, which can be fatal in 30 percent to 60 percent of infected patients. Common yeast infections can be identified through conventional testing, but the specialized, molecular detection methods necessary for identifying C. auris are not available to all hospitals.

Facts on Migration

 Fact: In a survey of 15 European countries, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that, for every 1 per cent increase in the country’s population caused by immigration, its GDP grew between 1.25 and 1.5 per cent.

Fact: The World Bank estimates that if immigrants increased the workforce of wealthy countries by 3 per cent, that would boost world GDP by $356 billion by 2025. Further, a meta-analysis of several independent mathematical models suggests that removing all barriers to immigration would increase world GDP by between 50 and 150 per cent.

Fact: Just 3.3 per cent of the world’s population are migrants, little more than in 1990. Even within the EU, where citizens are free to live wherever they want, only 2.8 per cent reside outside their own country. “The idea that, without border controls, everyone moves is contradicted by the evidence,” says Phillippe Legrain of the London School of Economics. “Sweden is 6 times richer than Romania and, despite free movement within the EU being permissible, Romania is not depopulated.”

Fact: According to the ILO, low skilled migrants do “dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs, which locals do not want – crop picking, care work, cleaning.” Meanwhile highly skilled migrants fill chronic labour shortages in healthcare, education and IT. Nearly a third of UK doctors and 13 per cent of nurses are foreign born. The NHS would collapse without immigrants. What of the strain “they” put on services? Not borne out by evidence. Immigrants go where there are jobs, not benefits.

Fact: The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, which represents 34 of the world’s richest nations, calculates that its immigrants on average pay as much in taxes as they take in benefits. Research suggests that EU workers in the UK take less in benefits than native Brits do. Based on recent numbers, Britain should conservatively expect 140,000 net immigrants a year for the next 50 years.

Fact: The Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s fiscal watchdog, calculates that if that number doubled, it would cut UK government debt by almost a third while stopping immigration would increase our debt by almost 50 per cent.

Fact: Immigrants largely aren’t to blame for housing and school place shortages. These are just as much a direct result of government cuts, underinvestment and austerity. The global economic crash wasn’t caused by immigrants, either.

Ignorant of history

At its height in 1922, the British empire governed a fifth of the world's population and a quarter of the world's total land area. A YouGov poll has found 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialism. 43 per cent believed the British Empire was a good thing.

1. Boer concentration camps

During the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the British rounded up around a sixth of the Boer population - mainly women and children - and detained them in camps, which were overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of disease, with scant food rations. Of the 107,000 people interned in the camps, 27,927 Boers died, along with an unknown number of black Africans.

2. Amritsar massacre

When peaceful protesters defied a government order and demonstrated against British colonial rule in Amritsar, India, on 13 April 1919, they were blocked inside the walled Jallianwala Gardens and fired upon by Gurkha soldiers.  The soldiers, under the orders of Brigadier Reginald Dyer, kept firing until they ran out of ammunition, killing between 379 and 1,000 protesters and injuring another 1,100 within 10 minutes.  Brigadier Dyer was later lauded a hero by the British public, who raised £26,000 for him as a thank you.

3. Partitioning of India

In 1947, Cyril Radcliffe was tasked with drawing the border between India and the newly created state of Pakistan over the course of a single lunch. After Cyril Radcliffe split the subcontinent along religious lines, uprooting over 10 million people, Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India were forced to escape their homes as the situation quickly descended into violence. Some estimates suggest up to one million people lost their lives in sectarian killings.

4. Mau Mau Uprising

Thousands of elderly Kenyans, who claim British colonial forces mistreated, raped and tortured them during the Mau Mau Uprising (1951-1960), have launched a £200m damages claim against the UK Government. Members of the Kikuyu tribe were detained in camps, since described as "Britain's gulags" or concentration camps, where they allege they were systematically tortured and suffered serious sexual assault. Estimates of the deaths vary widely: historian David Anderson estimates there were 20,000, whereas Caroline Elkins believes up to 100,000 could have died.

5. Famines in India

Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India. In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal. Talking about the Bengal famine in 1943, Churchill said: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html

Indian Poverty

There is no future if we cover up climate change

The idea that climate change is a vast global conspiracy -- involving everyone from Nasa and the British Met Office to Chinese government scientists and – has persisted in the United States to an alarming degree.

So much so that more than 180 members of Congress are believed to be climate deniers, including Senator Jim Inhofe, who once tossed a snowball to the presiding officer in February, saying: “You know what this is? It’s a snowball, from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable.” Washington DC gets an average of about 12cm (5 inches) of snow in February.

Now 31 major scientific organisations in the US – including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics – have signed a joint letter to Congress urging them to accept that climate change is real and action needs to be taken.

“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver,” they write. “This conclusion is based on multiple independent lines of evidence and the vast body of peer-reviewed science. There is strong evidence that ongoing climate change is having broad negative impacts on society, including the global economy, natural resources, and human health. For the United States, climate change impacts include greater threats of extreme weather events, sea level rise, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, heat waves, wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems. The severity of climate change impacts is increasing and is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.”

The letter adds that to reduce the risk of the “most severe” impacts of climate change, “greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced”.

“In addition, adaptation is necessary to address unavoidable consequences for human health and safety, food security, water availability, and national security, among others,” the signatories say.

Mental Slavery

How to vote in the EU Referendum

Immigration fact

EU Referendum

Refugee numbers

No More Borders, No More Lines (music video)

Refugees (video)

terrorist or sick?

food sources

Rich India (video)

Wiping who off the map?

We all remember when Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allegedly said Israel should “be wiped off the map." We now have an official Israeli map that is wiping off historic Christian and Muslim sites from a tourist map.

The City of David archaeological park located in the heart of a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, managed by Elad, a private political organisation that facilitates the purchase and takeover of Palestinian homes in the Old City and occupied East Jerusalem in an effort to increase Jewish settlement, features prominently, in large, bold red letters, on the Israeli tourism ministry's official Old City map, which is distributed free of charge at official tourist information centres in Jerusalem. The City of David is easily spotted, but the neighbourhood of Silwan that surrounds it is not labelled. Palestinian communities, including At-Tur, Wadi al-Joz and Issawiya do not appear, but the settlement of Maale Har Hazeitim is labelled with the Star of David.

But the nearby al-Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, a 14-hectare compound that comprises Islam's third holiest site, al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as the Dome of the Rock, is only referred to by its Jewish name: the Temple Mount. There is no room on the list of the numbered sites for the Church of St Anne or the Church of the Redeemer, although the latter is on the map with a tiny, hard to find name. Palestinian neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls are absent on the map, apart from Ras al-Amud, while Jewish-only settlements built in those neighbourhoods are represented.

Betty Herschman, director of international relations and advocacy at Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights NGO that gives tours of East Jerusalem to diplomats and other parties, explained This map, in addition to erasing important Muslim and Christian holy sites in the Old City, completely erases entire neighbourhoods around the historic basin, supplanting them not only with Hebrew names but with the names of settlements." These settlements, added Herschman, are built by radical settlers within the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods; namely, Bet Orot, a community of 150 settlers living in the Palestinian neighbourhood of At-Tur, that does not even appear on the map. "The map is legitimising private settlement around the historic basin. This is a form of consolidating Israeli control of arguably the epicentre of the most critical point of Jerusalem - which is itself the epicentre of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So there are extremely important political consequences involved."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-removes-key-sites-jerusalem-city-map-160605110610513.html

Social Rebirth (video)

Population density for the dense

Population density

What over-population?

Overpopulation is blamed for the destruction of the planet, yet have we ever thought of pointing fingers at the unsustainable practices WE continue to perform in the name of “profit” despite the many existing alternatives? It is not a question of the number of people inhabiting our planet, it is a question of the laws of capitalism. The truth is, if we all shifted towards an earth-friendly lifestyle and designed sustainable cities that would allow for self-sufficiency and collaboration for the good of all, we would no longer be considered a threat to the planet. We would work with nature and not against it. We are a part of nature after all and it is about time we stop feeling guilty for existing. What we should be critical of are our actions and destructive system we continue to uphold – not our species itself – which can all be changed if we stop pretending we are separate from nature and each other.

Overpopulation describes a situation where the number of people exhausts the resources in a closed environment such that it can no longer support that population. Our over-crowded cities or poor developing countries are not closed environments. The economic laws of capitalism prevents food from being transported to where it is needed, or distributed to those who are hungry, “overpopulation” is not to blame.  Hunger is a problem in many parts of the world, but it is not caused by the number of people. Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world’s current food supply. Enough grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories per day – 1,500 more calories per day than recommended by the Food and Drug Administration.

The world currently produces enough food to feed 10 billion people, and there are only 7 billion of us. That is, with 7 billion human minds at work, we produce enough food for 10 billion human bodies. Imagine how much food we can produce with 3 billion extra pairs of hands and 3 billion more minds. There is no reason to think that we are running out of human ingenuity.  If anything, a larger population means more opportunities for the kind of scientific collaboration and increased specialization that results in such scientific leaps forward. Human knowledge can be passed on through the written and spoken word in ways that evolutionary or biological advantages can’t be. If we built this world, what makes us believe we cannot build something different? As of now, we use most of our manpower, creativity and intelligence to build weapons of war, unsustainable technologies and meaningless products. We mostly unite forces for military action. We waste incredible human potential inside of small cubicles for tasks that could be automated, or that serve no higher purpose.

What if we used all of our manpower, creativity and intelligence for the betterment of all life instead of using it solely to empower the few at the top? What if we united forces not for war and destruction, but for peace and creation? What if we instead used this same potential to create sustainable technologies, beneficial products and harmonious systems that would allow humanity and the earth to thrive? Imagine if we united as a people, stopped complying and created a more beautiful world—not because of some piece of paper we would get in return but, because it only makes sense.

We are growing, but definitely not at an exponential rate. In fact, our rates of growth are declining. Between 1950 and 2000, the world population grew at a rate of 1.76%. Between 2000 and 2050, it is expected to grow by 0.77 percent. So yes, because 0.77 is greater than zero, it is a positive growth rate, and the world population will continue to grow. Most of this growth will come from developing countries—their life expectancies are expected to shoot up in the next 50 years, contributing to their population growth. Africa’s growth is not something to worry about.

Europe’s decline, however, is something to worry about. A UN report titled “World Population to 2300” paints a picture of Europe’s future if European fertility rates don’t rise above current levels: “The European Union, which has recently expanded to encompass 452-455 million people (according to 2000-2005 figures) would fall by 2300 to only 59 million. About half the countries of Europe would lose 95 per cent or more of their population, and such countries as the Russian Federation and Italy would have only 1 per cent of their population left.”  In other words, the French, German, Italians and British will virtually cease to exist.  48% of all people live in a country with below-replacement fertility.

Every man, woman, and child on earth could each have 5 acres of land. Every man, woman, and child on earth could each have a half acre of arable land. If we wanted to squeeze close, everyone in the world could stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the island of Zanzibar. Many believe that overpopulation is a question of lack of space. It isn’t. Today, there is approximately 7,268,730,000 people on earth. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 square miles (7,494,271,488,000 square feet). If we divide 7,494,271,488,000 square feet by 7,268,730,000 people, we get 1031 square feet per person. This is enough space for everyone on earth to live in a townhouse while altogether fitting on a landmass the size of Texas. And we’re not even accounting for the average four-person family who would most likely share a home! We’re not saying that creating such a massive subdivision would be a smart, sustainable or practical thing to do. Cramming together a population that continues to over-consume, waste and poison the environment the way we currently do would be a recipe for disaster. This is just to give an idea of how it isn’t space itself that is lacking.

The urban population is on the rise. Since 2008, more than half of humanity has become urbanized. The reason is because there are more opportunities to make money in the city than in the countryside. A city is crowded because people come from miles and miles away to move there, not because of wreck-less reproduction and overpopulation.

The world is abundant of resources and could provide for everyone’s need, yet every year rich countries waste more that 220 million tons of food. All the world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.

Meanwhile, the poor still starve to death – not because resources are scarce, but because they don’t have the money or have rights to enough land. In those countries where the poorest 20 % of the population earned a smaller percentage of a nation’s total income, they had less to eat. In other words, poverty and inequality cause hunger, not overpopulation. Africa has enormous still unexploited potential to grow food, with theoretical grain yields 25 to 35% higher than maximum potential yields in Europe or North America. Beyond yield potential, ample arable land awaits future use. In Chad, for example, only 10% of the farm land rated as having no serious production constraints is actually farmed. In countries notorious for famines like Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Mali, the area of unused good quality farm land is many times greater than the area actually farmed.

Don’t think people starve because the world is overpopulated. The world isn’t overpopulated at all. It’s just very badly managed. It is easy to blame some so-called “natural” phenomena that requires artificial measures such as GMOs to “solve world hunger” or population reduction plans, but how about criticizing the actual values behind our system and ways in which it promotes inequality for the benefit of the few? How about questioning the belief that opportunities and abundance can only exist where money flows, when we live on a spacious planet that could provide for everyone if we were to use it intelligently?

Alternatives to unsustainable agricultural practices do exist. The success of organic farmers in the U.S. gives an idea of the possibilities. Cuba’s success in overcoming a food crisis through self-reliance and sustainable, virtually pesticide-free agriculture is another great example. Environmentally sound agricultural alternatives can be more productive than environmentally destructive ones. Permaculture is a great example. Sustainable housing and city planning is also an alternative that should be globally implemented instead of simply pointing fingers at a growing population. The possibilities are endless. Sustainable housing and city planning is not only a great idea for the planet, it would solve all hunger problems we face today. For example, every home is outfitted with one or two greenhouses that grow crops year-round, no matter the climate. This means that people can feed themselves with only the plants growing inside their own house. A fish pond and/or chicken coop can also be built into Earthships for a constant source of meat and eggs. Hunger is NOT just an “inevitable” part of life.

The Overpopulation Myth (video)

Meat your fate

“Meat production is one of the single most destructive industries on the planet, and our diets are putting enormous pressure on wild species who are already in harm’s way,” Jennifer Molidor Ph.D, senior food campaigner for Center for Biological Diversity explained. “Our population and the demand for meat is increasing while at the same time the impact of our food choices is also growing to the point where it not only threatens wildlife and the environment but also food security and our ability to produce food.”

The Mega-Mergers

Agro-chemical giants, Dow and Dupont plan to combine.