Paying the True Costs of Living

Jonathan Engel

We’re in trouble. We as in the people of the Earth, which is all the people there are, notwithstanding theories of extraterrestrials munching their popcorn equivalents while watching us flail about. Our planet is only so big and has only so much in the way of natural resources to offer us. Think of The Giving Tree. As we cruise to a 7.7 Billion human population, the rest of the Earth and its species aren’t doing so hot (anthropological climate change aside), with a few notable exceptions such as starlings, cockroaches, and rats. This represents one of the unquantified costs of living, the impact of our increasing population and activities on the global ecosystem. Not to mention the ever decreasing EROEI (energy return on energy invested) that is signalling the end of capitalism as we know it. Gulp!

For example, flying insect biomass has been found to have decreased by over 75% in Germany over the past 27 years. Insects are one of the foundations of our ecological house, with some 10 quintillion (1 with 19 zeroes after it) bugs in existence on Earth at any given time. Well, maybe 2.5 quintillion these days. Regardless, the fate of these lowly arthropods is an indicator of the fate of higher organism and our fate as well. Other animals eat these bugs and are themselves eaten, the whole circle of life thing. Such as in Britain where farmland birds have declined by 50% since 1970. The world has been made aware of hive collapse syndrome in our hard working bees for hire which pollinate so many of our food crops. But what about all those wild bugs that pollinate for free? Can we lose 75% of them and maintain a functioning ecosystem? 85%? 95%? How to quantify the cost of losing so many insects and reliant species? The good news is that we’re going to get a front row seat to the answer to that question, or at least our kids will. That is also the bad news.

Are flying insects like bees going to continue their decline? I’ll take the under.

More good news. Some wonks took the time to figure out one of modern American life’s most mysterious unquantified costs of living. The subsidy that the American military and our wide-ranging and almost unfathomable spending on military intervention, bases on foreign soil, hardware, proxy wars, our own endless wars, black ops, drone strikes on weddings, and other misadventures represents for the fossil fuel industry. Oil in particular. The results are a little bit murky and imperfectly bounded by a vast network of assumptions, much like the military industrial complex itself, but best guess is that American military expenditures represent a subsidy of over $30 per barrel of oil consumed in the US, nearly $1 of hidden costs per gallon of gas. How’s that for country living? Now I don’t know about you, but as much as I disagree with the way America has played the bull in the china shop of the world for the past few decades, breaking things willy-nilly, goring innocent shoppers, and otherwise making a nuisance of ourselves, I’d be a lot more comfortable with the whole system if Americans had to pay this cost directly, every day, at the pump. This would be a regressive tax, meaning it would hit everyone equally and thus the poorest the hardest, those least able to accommodate a significant increase in the cost of fuel, but maybe that would be a good thing. George W. Bush said it best when he said “I encourage you all to go shopping more” in a speech discussing the way the American citizenry should respond to the escalating so-called GWOT (Global War on Terror). Basically, shut up and never mind what we’re doing over here. If Americans at large had to face and pay out of pocket directly for what our military industrial complex was doing to the rest of the world perhaps we’d rise above the Kardashian-powered bread and circuses we’ve been lulled into a soma-like stupor on and start paying attention and demand accountability. This is a cost of living we need to acknowledge, then face and halt the terrible shit that has been going on in our names before we can move forward. Because as the steadily declining EROIE mentioned earlier is showing us, business as usual with fossil fuels is going to get rough. We can’t afford to oppress the populaces and secure the resources of oil-rich states for our use forever, both morally and economically.

The sun is setting on cheap energy. (CREDIT: Zbynek Burival on Unsplash)

As I’ve written before, we have been making terrible choices on what to subsidize, what to value, and what not to value from an economic and ecological point of view for the past few centuries. Water, for example, is being used as if an infinite resource. We’re pumping it up from aquifers faster than it can be replenished, diverting rivers like the Colorado for irrigation to the point that they dry up, and polluting all of it as fast as we can. In the American heartland, Kansas, for example, studies of the vast underground water source that is the Ogallala Aquifer show that in order to sustainably draw water we need to cut our usage by 80%. Otherwise we will see the peaking and slow collapse of industrial agriculture in the region by 2040. Which will be bad. Any improvements in efficiency of use and reduction in withdrawals will help but the point is we need to change how we feed ourselves and a great way to do that is through economic incentives, like pricing water use such that growing water-intensive crops in arid climates, using wasteful flood or spray irrigation, and letting +40% of water leak in transit are no longer acceptable. Because in the long run, they are not.

Mobile phones? Think about all the hyperventilating about rare earth metals, lithium, copper and other esoteric ingredients that go into our electronic masters, ahem, I mean mobile phones. These resources are extracted largely in bad places, or maybe more accurately in places kept bad, and thus enable further militaristic saber rattling, Kleptocracies, and trade wars. Yet, we throw away about 150 Million mobile phones in the US alone per year. Which basically means that every man, woman, and child in our fair nation gets a new phone every other year. Preposterous. Wasteful. Unconscionable. This kind of e-waste is the fastest growing source of waste in the world. As someone who considers fixing, reusing, and otherwise maintaining the things I buy to be a diverting hobby I have had my phone for over 4 years, which hasn’t been easy. As anyone who has done such an anti-American thing can tell you, the problem is battery life or rather the lack of it as the phones age. Every phone has a custom battery cell inside it, and nearly every phone makes it very difficult to get to that battery, and importantly these one-of-a-kind batteries are only produced for the very brief blink of time that these specific phones are produced. So if you need a new battery for a 4 year old phone, and you will, you are forced to deconstruct your phone as carefully as possible and place a NOS (new old stock) battery into the phone with unknown result. Because rechargeable lithium batteries begin dying the day they are born, much like humans. So a battery that has been sitting on a shelf for 4 years may not be much better than the battery that has been sitting in your phone for 4 years. It’s a crap shoot. This simple example highlights a problem with our modern life. We value new, flashy, better-marketed things over sustainable, responsible things and thus far we have not had to face the consequences and pay the true cost of this proclivity. But we could have both. If we price mobile phones designed with non-standard, non-serviceable batteries with a surcharge for their inevitable life in a landfill we can push the needle on this state of mind just a bit. If we teach our kids to value conservation and reuse over consumerism, help them overcome the marketing deluge to consume newer and better stuff (phones included) we can shift this tide even further. Maybe. Thus far we’ve been burying this cost of living, literally, but our attitudes on consumption are punishing poor people the world over, and before long we’ll be feeling the hurt too.

Is it any surprise that we have such awful outcomes from such awful incentives? We have built a world where it is acceptable to sweep ugly costs under the proverbial rug. Where making sure as many costs as possible are externalized to the commons is a business model. Enabling us to devour a 1000 calorie, 1800 L of water and 10 lbs of carbon dioxide hamburger loaded with antibiotic-raised high density feedlot beef fed on a diet of heavily irrigated, herbicided, pesticided, and subsidized alfalfa and corn, on a bun made from intensively irrigated grains tainted with glyphosate sprayed to ease harvest, all farmed and shipped with fossil fuels at prices kept low by our world spanning military. For $3.99, with a 32oz corn syrup-based soft drink and 800 calories of fries too. Who are you to resist? We have built a world where monocultural industrial scale farming has created vast swathes of land nearly devoid of insect life through pesticides and herbicides. We have allowed our government to pour 70% of all direct (non-military) energy subsidies, incentives, research funding, and tax breaks into the fossil fuel industry. It is no wonder we are awash in cheap, unhealthy food, driving our SUVs everywhere, breathing polluted air, drinking tainted water and sweating flabbily in a warming world. And all these things are related. Water, oil, insects, phones, the military. We value saving a buck now over a breath of fresh air tomorrow. Considering the costs of our choices for how we live is complicated, unpleasant, and it is just easier to sit back and Netflix-binge while munching engineered, hyper-palatable GMO snacks. I contend that facing and paying the true costs of our way of life, while painful, will lead to a happier, more connected, and sustainable way of life. For studies show it is your interactions, relationships with those around you, not your candy crush score or how much money you saved on groceries, that most directly impact your happiness. A life of awareness and engagement with our community and taking joy in our place in it. Sounds good to me.

New York City affordable housing crisis continues to worsen

Philip Guelpa

A new report issued by the office of the New York City comptroller, Scott Stringer, documents the staggering decline in the availability of affordable housing in the United States’ largest city.

Based on data from the US Census Bureau’s 2017 Housing and Vacancy Survey, the report found that, between 2005 and 2017, close to half a million (425,492) housing units with rents of $900 per month or less, which is considered affordable in New York City, were lost. In 2005, nearly three quarters of rental apartments went for $900 in 2017 dollars.

Over the same dozen-year period, the number of high-rent units, above $2,700 per month, rose by more than 111,000, a fourfold increase.

Part of this transfer of housing availability from the working class to the wealthy elite was due to the shift of 88,518 units out of the rent stabilization program, in accordance with its provisions, allowing landlords to raise rents to market rates. Every year, thousands more units fall out of the program. It is estimated that, over the past two decades, between 100,000 and 300,000 units have been deregulated while even those remaining in the program are allowed annual rent increases.

These figures, along with the persistently high number of homeless people in the city—more than 60,000 in shelters each night, more than a third of them children, and thousands more on the streets—demonstrate the utter failure of two-term, supposedly progressive Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to fulfill his campaign slogan of addressing the city’s gaping economic divide, the “Tale of Two Cities” as he framed it.

The shelter population has increased by nearly 10,000 during de Blasio’s tenure.

De Blasio, in office since 2014, had initially pledged to “create or preserve” 200,000 affordable housing units within 10 years. Last November, he raised the goal to 300,000 by 2026, four years after the end of his second term. Even if accomplished, this would represent a shortfall of over 100,000 compared with the loss documented in the comptroller’s report. And that does not factor in the city’s population growth. From 1999 to 2014, New York’s population grew by about 14 percent, while the housing stock increased by only 9 percent.

By his own account, the mayor has so far claimed to have achieved a total of only 34,500 units built and 77,651 preserved during his roughly four and a half years in office, an average of about 25,000 per year. Based on the data in the Stringer report, an average of more than 35,000 affordable units were lost each year during the period of the study. Clearly, de Blasio’s efforts are grossly inadequate given the actual net loss of affordable housing.

De Blasio and his Republican predecessor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, have both relied on a variety of schemes, “mandatory inclusionary housing” and 421-a tax abatement, for example, that are supposed to incentivize wealthy developers to include a percentage of affordable housing units in their projects. The results, including inferior “poor door” housing in which low-income tenants are excluded from the amenities provided for the wealthier occupants of the same building, have been meager, at best, for the working class, but highly lucrative for the developers.

De Blasio’s mandatory inclusionary housing program, which relaxes zoning requirements allowing developers to build larger projects, and provides other incentives, has been severely criticized for promoting gentrification of working-class neighborhoods. The program is designed to maintain profitability for the developers by skewing the quotas of units for different income levels.

Given the city’s extreme income disparities, by employing city-wide income statistics in its quota calculations to determine what percentage of the total number of units will be allocated to each income bracket, the poorest segments of the population are most severely impacted. Significant numbers of residents are thereby forced out of their neighborhoods, exacerbating the housing and homelessness crisis even more. Furthermore, the program has a sunset provision, meaning that the allocation of lower-income units will expire, allowing rents to be raised to market rates.

The guiding principle of this and all such programs is the maximization of profit for the developers and major landlords. Construction of luxury housing catering to the city’s wealthy elite brings a much higher return than building to meet the needs of the working class. Hence the inverse trends in the availability of affordable versus market-rate housing revealed in the Stringer report.

The immense and growing income gap between the working class and the city’s elite is reflected in the cost of housing for the working poor. According to Stringer, “Thirty percent of people in homeless shelters have jobs but the rent is too high.” Half the city’s low-income renters, those earning less than $28,000 a year for a family of three, more than 600,000 households, pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing, qualifying them as “extremely rent burdened”.

The city’s public housing system, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), home to 400,000 low- and moderate-income tenants, was once considered a success in providing affordable working-class housing. It is now in a deplorable state due to decades of budget cutting and neglect. Tens of billions of dollars are needed for repairs and upgrades, only a fraction of which the city and state have so far pledged.

The pressure on housing costs is not only hitting renters. Home foreclosures in New York City reached an eight-year high in 2017. There was a 79 percent year-on-year increase in the third quarter of 2017 alone. And the trend continues. The first quarter of 2018 saw a 31 percent increase in foreclosures over the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the city’s wealthy are doing quite well. About 70 billionaires and 389,000 millionaires live in New York City, the home of Wall Street. A new report by the New York State comptroller indicates that the average Wall Street salary rose by 13 percent in 2017 to $422,500, the highest compensation since 2008. By contrast, the city’s median household income is only in the range of $50,000 to $60,000. In 2017, the median income rose by only 1.8 percent.

A major effort is needed to address the affordable housing crisis. The resources exist to support a massive program of repair, renovation, and new construction to meet the housing needs of the city’s working population. This wealth is, however, held by a tiny elite who have no intention of employing it for the general good.

Only a workers’ government implementing a socialist program of expropriation of this wealth can solve the housing crisis in New York and around the world. The Socialist Equality Party calls for the formation of workplace and neighborhood committees to link individual struggles on a national and international basis.

What’s behind Amazon’s plan to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour?

Jerry White 

With great fanfare on Tuesday, Amazon announced it will raise the minimum wage it pays to 250,000 workers and 100,000 seasonal temps to $15 an hour. In the United Kingdom, the company is raising the wages of 40,000 permanent and temporary workers to £10.50 (US $13.69) an hour in London and £9.50 (US $12.39) across the rest of the country.

The wage increases, which will go into effect for Amazon and Whole Foods workers on November 1, are a response to the deep opposition of Amazon workers to the poverty level wages and brutal working conditions at the giant retail and logistics company. The growing militancy of Amazon workers is, moreover, part of a wider sentiment among workers in the US and internationally, who after a decade of declining real wages since the 2008 financial crash are determined to fight for substantial improvements.

The pay increase, however, is minimal and will do little to improve the living standards of Amazon workers. The median Amazon worker was paid $28,446 last year, according to company filings, which comes out to about $13.68 an hour. An increase to $15.00 an hour—$1.32 more for the median worker—would amount to a yearly wage of $30,000. This is 120 percent of the official poverty rate for a family of four and will do little to help workers keep their heads above water, particularly in urban centers with higher costs of living.

Internal company documents available to Amazon workers make clear that the raise will be accompanied by the elimination of various incentive bonuses and other programs, which workers rely on to help with bills and car payments. This includes all or parts of the Variable Compensation Plan (VCP) and MyReward bonuses based on attendance and site performance goals. Also cut is the limited stock vesting program, known as the Restricted Stock Units (RSU) plan.

“We are phasing out the incentive pay component and the $15 will be simple minimum with no targets required,” one message from the company to workers said. Another read, “We will be phasing out the RSU grant program for stock which would vest in 2020 and 2021 … replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019.”

According to Amazon, full-time workers at its US fulfillment centers already make an average hourly wage of over $15 an hour, including stock and incentive bonuses. It is not clear, therefore, if workers will see any net benefit from the much-promoted raise.

“At first, I thought, $15 an hour, that’s a start. But when you do the math, it does not add up to very much,” Shannon Allen, a worker from Amazon’s fulfillment center in Haslet, Texas, who became homeless after suffering a serious workplace injury, told the International Amazon Workers Voice.

“There will be a raise, but they are taking away our bonus at the end of the month and the stocks we were entitled to. Workers are still not getting medical treatment after getting injured. Workers are still starving. Workers are still homeless. What about the workers in India? Are they going to get $15 too or are they still going to be getting $267 a month? I would love to know that,” Allen said.

The move by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was carefully orchestrated with the Democratic Party to bolster the image of the company. Last month, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation, called the Bezos Act, to tax corporations for what their low-wage workers receive in government health-care benefits or food stamps.

“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do and decided we want to lead,” Bezos said in a statement Tuesday. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.” Bezos said the company would also lobby for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which has not increased from $7.25 in a decade.

Sanders, right on cue, hailed the move, saying, “Today I want to give credit where credit is due, and that is that Mr. Bezos and Amazon have done the right thing. This is a significant step forward for many thousands of Amazon employees.”

Sanders added, “Not only does this make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees, it also sends a message to the fast food industry, the airline industry and the retail industry in general that the time is now to begin paying workers a living wage.”

To call $15 a “living wage” is ludicrous. The average hourly wage in manufacturing four decades ago would be the equivalent of $23 an hour in 2018 dollars. The $15 mark advocated by Sanders and the union- and Democratic Party-aligned “Fight for $15” campaign has increasingly become the new norm, including in the auto industry.

The billionaire CEO is not being motivated by high ideals but by cold, hard cash considerations. With the official unemployment rate falling to the lowest level in nearly two decades, large employers like Amazon are increasingly competing for workers, particularly for the upcoming holiday rush. In January, Walmart raised its minimum wage to $11. Facebook boosted its minimum wage for janitorial staff, food-service workers and other contractors to $15 an hour and Costco pays $14 an hour. Target, which plans to hire 120,000 temporary workers this holiday season is paying $12 an hour and offering a chance at $500 gift cards.

Amazon’s move takes place after the company’s proposal last month for 2 to 4 percent raises was met with disgust from workers. “It wasn’t enough at all,” one part-time worker in San Bernardino, California, told Bezos’ Washington Postabout a 40-cent increase that would raise her pay to $13.15. “The HR manager in the room was like, ‘Aren’t you excited? Come on, clap!’ We started a slow clap, with no emotions on our faces. A 3 percent raise in four years—it feels like damage control.”

After a four-decade decline in real wages, workers are earning barely enough to subsist. If some employers are raising wages it is because they need workers in their factories to pump profits out of them. Analysts have already said the meager raise will have no negative effect on the bottom line of the company whose market capitalization reached $1 trillion last month.

Nor will it make a dent on Jeff Bezos, whose net worth increased to $165 billion earlier this summer making him the richest man in modern history. If this wealth was divided equally among Amazon’s global employees, each would get a check for $300,000.

Whatever raise is given to Amazon workers will be more than made up through ever greater exploitation, higher pace, and more workplace injuries. The company already uses electronic devices to monitor productivity and time workers during their bathroom breaks and now new technology is being tested that will use sound pulses to redirect a worker’s hand if he moves it in the wrong direction while moving items from a bin to a delivery box.

It is well worth examining what Bezos is doing from the standpoint of history. More than a century ago another corporate magnate, Henry Ford, more than doubled the wages of his workers, raising them to $5 per day, from about $2.38 a day. The move was not motivated by a sudden burst of generosity from Ford, then the richest man in the world.

Instead, Ford wanted to lower the turnover rate at his Highland Park, Michigan, factory where workers were leaving in droves because of brutal speed up on the new assembly lines. Ford was also alarmed by the growing support for socialist and labor organizers. After introducing the new wage in 1914, his profits doubled, and Ford declared two years later, “The payment of $5 a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made.”

Under conditions of growing class conflict in the US and around the world and the growth of socialist and anti-capitalist sentiment, Sanders and the Democratic Party would have workers believe that they can improve their conditions, not through collective struggle, but through appeals to the magnanimity of billionaires like Bezos.

But securing the right to good-paying and safe jobs will not be possible without building a powerful movement of the working class and carrying out a frontal assault on the entrenched wealth and political power of the corporate and financial oligarchy. To initiate this, the International Amazon Workers Voice is fighting for the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independent of the corporate-controlled unions and political parties. This must be combined with a political struggle by workers to overthrow the economic and political dictatorship of the capitalist exploiters, expropriate their fortunes, and transform giant corporations like Amazon into public enterprises, collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class.

UK nurses vote to remove Royal College of Nursing leadership after pay deal sellout

Ajanta Silva 

Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) passed a historic no-confidence resolution against the union’s leadership by a huge majority of those voting last week. The resolution received 11,156 (78.1 percent) votes in favour, 3,124 (21.9 percent) against, with 1,112 members abstaining.

The resolution presented by Danielle Tiplady, a nurse and Labour Party activist from London, called on the RCN’s leadership Council “to stand down.” The vote was announced last Friday at an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) in Birmingham, which the RCN was forced to convene after more than 1,000 members signed a petition demanding it—as the implications of a sellout pay deal agreed in March became clear.

The low standing of the RCN bureaucracy was also manifest in the very low ballot turnout. Only 3.47 percent of the 435,000 members voted, with the vast majority of rank-and-file members disengaged from the union and viewing its leadership with contempt.

In a failed attempt to head off a growing rebellion, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary, Janet Davies, stepped down in August and the Council set up “an independent external review into the processes and communication of the 2018 Pay Deal.” This is a ruse, as the leadership insisted that the pay deal would not be revisited.

In March, 13 trade unions out of 14 agreed to a derisory rise of 6.5 percent over three years, after health workers suffered a 14 percent pay cut over the last eight years under the austerity measures of Tory-led governments. The Retail Price Index inflation for the next three years is estimated at 9.6 percent, meaning the deal is in fact a cut in real wages.

The de-facto pay cut was sold “as the best deal in eight years” by the unions. But when workers checked their pay packets, they discovered pay rises as low as 12 pence. Many received a meagre increase of 1.5 percent, not even the 3 percent promised, with the rest of the first year increase delayed until after the annual incremental date.

At the EGM, the RCN Council was challenged by members who queued up to demand their removal. Geoff from Scotland said, “We were told that we were going to be listened to. … I have been raising issues…and this council has been organising against people like me who speak. We have been told that we were a ‘certain type of people.’… I have been told that I was Momentum. I don’t even belong to the Labour Party.”

He denounced the RCN leadership for sending Scottish members an e-mail portraying opposition voices as putting at risk what has been a “proudly non-party political organisation” representing members whatever their opinion or backgrounds.

Samantha, a newly qualified nurse, said, “I have been a member of the RCN since I started university. … The only thing that tempted me to stay after the pay deal was announced was the petition because I perhaps had an opportunity to help to change the direction of this organisation. I’m proud to say that I am one of the 1,017 who signed the petition.”

Referring to Maria Trewern, the chair of Council, Samantha said, “I heard you speak of acknowledgement, apologies, recognition of some errors. … Your actions have spoken so loudly I am unable to hear what you are saying. I trusted you and I’m afraid that my trust has gone.”

An NHS worker from the south of England said of the RCN leaders, “They lied to us. They misled us. Eight years of austerity and attacks on our pay terms and conditions is not only an indictment against the RCN leadership, but against all the health unions. They colluded with the government to implement these attacks.”

NHS FightBack, established by the Socialist Equality Party, called for a “yes” vote in its statement “Vote ‘yes’ on resolution to force out Royal College of Nursing leadership! Build rank-and-file committees!”

This call was taken up by the worker who said, “We are here to fight against this. We need to take matters into our own hands. No more back door skulduggery. We cannot stop by just getting rid of some leaders. We need to build rank-and-file committees to unite workers in the public sector facing the same ruthless attacks.”

Answering a question from a member on whether the RCN would reopen the pay deal, Tom Sanford from the RCN leadership replied, “No, we don’t believe that the pay deal can be reopened, because we believe that the other trade unions involved in negotiating the deal would not cooperate.”

In other words, so rotten is the entire union bureaucracy that RCN members and all health workers will have to suffer what is a pro-management agreement that cuts wages.

The other health unions have not only refused to issue an apology to their memberships, but Unison Assistant General Secretary Christina McAnea denounced Davies for having done so, stating that that the RCN general secretary “had neither read nor understood the offer. It’s unfortunate that one person’s seeming lack of understanding has unleashed such an unhelpful and completely unnecessary wave of confusion for NHS staff.”

McAnea is aware that the union bureaucracy are sitting on a powder keg. Such is the level of anger at the sellout, the latest of many, that if their own members had a chance to vote, they too would kick out the union leaders.

None of the RCN’s top officials have stood down since the ballot and the EGM, issuing a statement that they would not yet accept the vote until it had been verified this week. The statement explains that “Council members and the College are now considering the next steps to be taken as RCN Council enters a period of transition.”

The RCN’s Council’s defiance of the will of the membership is evidence that the unions are not organisations representing the interests of workers but, as the pay deal shows, hostile bodies that fight only on behalf of the employers.

The vote against the RCN leaders is an important first step, but the fight is far from over. RCN members must demand the resignation of the entire Council membership and that the March pay deal be declared void. This must be fought for in a united offensive by all health workers, with the struggle to win decent pay and conditions made the focal point in opposition to the ongoing destruction and privatisation of the NHS.

To carry out a struggle, nurses and health care workers cannot allow themselves to be subordinated to the operations of the unions. NHS FightBack urges the formation of rank-and-file committees of action, independently of the unions, to organise and coordinate opposition.

Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme (CADFP) for African-Born Researchers in US and Canada 2019/2020

Application Deadline: 9th December, 2018

Offered annually? Twice in the year

Eligible Countries: African-born academics currently living in the United States and Canada and working in higher education.

To be taken at (country): Fellows will engage in educational projects proposed and hosted by faculty of public or private higher education institutions in the following CCNY partner countries: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda

About the Award: The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme (CADFP) is a scholar fellowship programme for educational projects at African higher education institutions for African researchers in diaspora. Offered by IIE in partnership with the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), the programme is funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). In the first two years of the programme, the CADFP supported 110 short-term faculty fellowships for African-born academics. In October 2015, additional funding was secured from CCNY to support up to 140 fellowships. The programme exemplifies CCNY’s enduring commitment to higher education in Africa. IIE manages and administers the programme, including applications, project requests and fellowships.

Eligible Project Activities: 

• curriculum co-development
• research collaboration
• graduate student mentoring and training

Type: Research, Fellowship

Eligibility: To be eligible for the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme:

• One CADFP-funded project visit by a Diaspora Fellow of 14 to 90 days is proposed during program period. Project visit date parameters follow
• Diaspora Scholar was born in Africa, lives in and works at accredited higher education institution in United States or Canada and holds terminal degree. Diaspora Scholar application includes letter of reference from administrator at level of dean or higher from home institution, scholar curriculum vitae and biodata page from scholar passport.
• Project request is from an accredited public or private higher education institution in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda or Tanzania.
• Project request includes a letter of support from dean or higher from prospective host institution.
• Project request indicates either a specific Diaspora scholar or the areas of expertise sought in a Diaspora scholar collaborator. Scholar application and host institution project request are submitted and complete by applicable deadline.

Selection Criteria of Project: 

• Specific activities are proposed to collaborate on research, curriculum co-development and/or graduate student teaching, training and mentoring.
• Strong project concept and rationale are provided; project demonstrates innovation.
• Project Request clearly indicates what has been done by the institution on the proposed topic(s), the resources of the host institution, the problem to address, the goals of what to change or improve, the gaps and the anticipated specific role of the Diaspora Fellow in the proposed activities.
• Clear mission of what the host institution wants to accomplish through project visit is articulated, and justification is provided on reasons to partner in the effort with a Diaspora scholar.
• The proposed scholar’s discipline, subfields, areas of expertise, experience and motivation for applying are well-suited to the success and impact of the project.
• Evidence of relevant experience by the proposed scholar in each requested project activity is demonstrated.
• The proposed project must have the potential for impact
• If potential impact of longer term project will take more time to be realized or evaluated, explanation is provided on how initial impact of project visit will be measured or how it is expected to contribute to larger goals.

Value of Fellowship: For the fellowship, the African Diaspora Fellow will receive

• a $200/day stipend
• visa costs
• limited health insurance coverage
• round-trip international air travel and ground transportation costs to and from home and the U.S. or Canadian airport.

Duration of Fellowship: Fourteen to Ninety days

How to Apply: Go here to apply

See the Review Criteria and the How to Apply for African Institutions links for further information.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme (CADFP)

Global Giving Accelerator 2018 for Young Entrepreneurs

Application Deadline: 15th October 2018

Eligible Countries: All

About the Award: The GlobalGiving Accelerator is a virtual training program and crowdfunding campaign that will help you take your fundraising to the next level. Following an optional two-week training curriculum, you’ll be entered into an Accelerator campaign where you’ll raise at least $5,000 total from a minimum of 40 different donors in order to graduate and secure a permanent fundraising spot on the GlobalGiving platform.
The GlobalGiving Accelerator is an opportunity for you and your organization to build skills, access tools, and grow your base of supporters to achieve crowdfunding success. When you graduate, your organization becomes a permanent member of GlobalGiving, and you’ll have access to all the tools, training, and one-on-one support available in the GlobalGiving community.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: Any registered nonprofit (anywhere in the world!) is eligible to apply.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• GlobalGiving will provide $20,000 in matching funding and bonus prizes for participating organizations.
• You will be supported as you reach out to your own networks, and tell your story in new and compelling ways. Donors can give in USD or GBP, helping you reach your supporters in the US, the UK, and beyond. You will also be provided with matching incentives for your donors, and bonus prizes for the most successful participants.
• Many other benefits

How to Apply: The first step is to complete the online application. Our next deadline to submit applications is October 15, 2018 but we accept applications at any time!

Visit Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Global Giving

World Veterinary Association (WVA) Veterinary Student Scholarship Program for Students from Developing Countries 2019

Application Deadline: 1st January 2019, 12:00 pm (Brussels time)

Eligible Countries: Countries in Latin America, Africa, North Africa/Middle East and Asia/Oceania.

To Be Taken At (Country): Belgium

About the Award: Following the successful delivery of the MSD Animal Health/WVA Veterinary Student Scholarship Program 2016, and 2017, MSD Animal Health and WVA agreed to continue the successful collaboration and to launch the 2018 Veterinary Student Scholarship Program to include 41 scholarships of US$ 5,000 (of a total of $205,000) to be granted to selected students from countries in the regions of Latin America (16 grants), Africa (10 grants), North Africa/Middle East (10 grants) and Asia/Oceania (5 grants).

Field of Study: Veterinary Medicine

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Citizen of one of the countries under the grant coverage.
• Second or Third year veterinary students (accomplishment of first year exams).
• Currently enrolled and in good standing at a recognized school of veterinary medicine in their country.

The applications will be reviewed by the WVA Review Committee. The announcement of the selected students will occur during the World Veterinary Association Congress in San Jose, Costa Rica over 27-30 April 2019.

Number of Awards: 41

• Latin America (16 grants),
• Africa (10 grants),
• North Africa/Middle East (10 grants) and
• Asia/Oceania (5 grants).

Value of Award:  US$ 5000 each

How to Apply:Completed application must be submitted by 1st January 2019, 12:00 pm (Brussels time)towva_assistant@worldvet.org
The application form can be downloaded by clicking on the following links: English, French and Spanish.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: World Veterinary Association (WVA)

Is China-led Belt and Road Initiative Afraid of Competition?

Gerry Brown

Hardly a day goes by without some lies about Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) being concocted and disseminated by the empire’s propaganda arm, also known as corporate media. In the first 2 or 3 years after BRI was launched, western press and politicians fabricated the narrative that Beijing sought to export its excess production capacity and establish/widen its spheres of influence with the BRI. Since last year, accusations of China springing debt traps and neo-colonizing unsuspecting Third World nations have become the mantra of western corporate media. Lately, they are spinning tales of BRI unravelling and coming unglued.

As the lies and propaganda are exposed for what they are and gaining little traction, the empire and its vassals from Japan and India to EU are ganging up to counter BRI with their own versions of New Silk Road.

The Asia-Africa Growth Corridor or AAGC proposed by Japan and India was unveiled with great fanfare by BRI-sceptic Modi last year. To date, there has not been any tangible sign of AAGC getting off the ground. It looks like AAGC is merely a publicity stunt to stroke the ego of India’s Modi and Japan’s Abe.

Last week, the US announced talks on a tie up between its Overseas Private Investment Corporation or OPIC and India’s counterpart. This came after the US Congress passed a bill to revamp and expand the funding cap of OPIC to $60 billion. The US had earlier entered into agreements with Japan and Australia on a partnership to take on China-led BRI. Japan International Cooperation Agency or JICA has a war chest of $110 billion and an annual budget of $12 billion. Australia has no equivalent development finance agency; AusAid administers some of the overseas assistance under $1 billion a year. India operates bilateral aid focused on South Asia through the Development Partnership Cooperation with a yearly budget below $2 billion. In fact, India receives much more foreign aid and international project financing than it gives to its South Asian neighbours. All told, the four countries or QUAD have way shallower pockets (under $200 billion, with JICA’s interest in infrastructures being peripheral) than China’s commitment of at least $1 trillion to BRI.

After years of griping about BRI not being a level playing field for EU businesses, Brussels recently rolled out “Connectivity Strategy” linking Europe and Asia. The document is long on motherhood statements such as sustainability, environmental friendliness and labour rights – straight out of the empire’s lexicon – but woefully short on funding details. EU’s complaint about Chinese-funded projects not being open to public bidding is disingenuous and fatuous . Which country would lend tens of billions of dollars at concessionary rates and bear the risk of default, and then put the projects funded by it up for public tender? (The terms of such contracts are actually quite unfavorable compared with privatized build-operate-transfer concessions.) No one has stopped or prevented EU from doing the same!

All the concerns about sustainability and environmental friendliness are unfounded. First of all, Beijing is sincere and serious about building a Green Silk Road. For the record, China is the global leader in Green Finance. To date, the Chinese market has issued more than $30 billion in Green Bonds, the most in the world. Second, the use of gas in lieu of coal for power generation can’t be done in all cases, especially when there’s no gas supply at reasonable prices and there is an acute shortage of power. That’s the case in Mindanao Island in the Philippines and in Pakistan. To insist on gas-powered plants in such circumstances is like asking a person trapped in a famine to have a balanced diet and not to eat high-carbs food that’s available, but go hungry (and die!) until meat and vegetables arrive. Third, to put its money where its mouth is, China is building and funding the world’s largest solar farm in a desert in Pakistan that can generate 1,000 Megawatts of power enough for 320,000 households. The project forms part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC for short.

The zero-sum mentality of the empire and its vassals is in full display. Instead of joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB and participating in BRI to help develop trade and the economy in Eurasia – the US, Japan and India have opted to stay out, and now start their own schemes to counteract BRI.

China isn’t concerned or afraid of the competition. On the contrary, China welcomes it if that doesn’t morph into or turn out to be disruption or outright sabotage. The fact of the matter is Asia’s need for infrastructures and their financing are HUGE! The Japan-controlled Asian Development Bank or ADB published a report in February last year on the subject.

According to the ADB report, Developing Asia (developing countries in Asia ) excluding China has infrastructure needs of $13 trillion in the 15 years to 2030, or $870 BILLION PER YEAR. The infrastructure financing shortfall excluding China is more than half a trillion dollars EACH YEAR! In other words, AIIB’s $100 billion dollars in capital is no more than a drop in a big bucket. Even with China’s multi-year commitment of $1 trillion, the gaping hole is far from filled. Multilateral Development Assistance accounts for a paltry 2.5% of total infrastructure needs! The ADB counts on fiscal reforms in Developing Asia and private investors to bridge the yawning gulf . That’s akin to a new government or administration banking on the elusive or self-deceiving “savings through increased efficiency and waste elimination” to balance the budget!

In summary, the infrastructure needs in Asia are so massive that even the Chinese commitment of $1 trillion to BRI can scarcely meet. The zero-sum mentality of the Imperium to counter the BRI is therefore plain stupid and diabolical.

Chemical Deceit

Evaggelos Vallianatos

A friend recently put me in touch with Janet Brown (not her real name). This is a woman from Chicago who had the misfortune of renting an apartment that had been sprayed with the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos. Dow/DuPont produces this deleterious substance.

In late August 2018, Janet Brown visited me and we spent several hours talking. Her real education started in the poisoned apartment in Chicago.

She had read my book, Poison Spring. She wanted to talk.

A poisoned apartment

Our discussion was mostly about pesticides and the Environmental Protection Agency, which “regulates” toxic pesticides like chlorpyrifos. I told Janet Brown a few of my EPA stories. And she told me her astonishing story.

Janet Brown grew up in Illinois. She got married to a doctor. She had hopes of becoming a doctor herself. However, the poisoned apartment blew up in her face, causing a tsunami of psychological and health adversities and pain.

The tragedy took place in the 1990s. Janet Brown gave birth to two children. The apartment landlord informed her he was spraying the apartment. He did that for a decade.

The effects of chlorpyrifos poisoning were devastating to her and her children. She had trouble staying awake. She was confused, ill, and endured chronic and savage headaches. The children screamed for days and months. They could barely crawl, walk and talk. Experts said autism explained their hyperactivity, inability to pay attention,  low self-esteem, and aggressive behavior.

This tyranny of disease, the perpetual anguish of the mother, and the ceaseless pain of the children: their constant humiliations in school, the incomprehensible anger and hidden violence boiling over at home and everywhere else, teenagers unable to sign their name or find their shoes – all but annihilated their future.

In 2000, Janet Brown started suspecting the chemical sprayings of her apartment was probably responsible for the maladies of her children.

She saw a headline in a newspaper linking indoor use of chlorpyrifos and children’s health. The article said that a crevice treatment with chlorpyrifos put so much poison in the air that exposed children inhaled hundreds of times more chlorpyrifos than the amount EPA considered “safe.”

She called the Poison Control Center, only to be told there was nothing to worry about. Chlorpyrifos was “safe.”

At that moment, Janet Brown panicked. She rushed her children to the emergency room of a hospital. She was lucky. The doctor on duty had just taken training in chemical warfare. He told her to stop immediately the spaying of chlorpyrifos in her home. Chlorpyrifos, he told her, was a chemical warfare agent.

The light of truth

This sudden confrontation with the truth, rather than the façade of pesticide safety, started Janet Brown to healing herself. She decided she was going to get a formal education in public health and devote her life to teaching and informing people of the dangers of pesticides.

She stopped the chlorpyrifos spraying of her home. But chlorpyrifos remained, its deadly molecules locked into the teeth of her children.

I listened carefully to this extraordinary story. Unfortunately, there are probably millions of people with similar tales of deceit and personal pain. They trust advertisements and the government, only to discover an abyss of a difference between the promise and the real thing.

We concluded America’s “environmental protection” had degenerated to immoral policies satisfying the rich and powerful. I explained to her that the heavy layers of scientists, administrators, Congressional and White House officials form an almost impenetrable cover for the lobbyists and owners of toxins like chlorpyrifos. The more dangerous the chemical, the more formidable the phalanx of lobbyists.

Why were countless Americans, including this mother, being deceived and poisoned? Why did the EPA register this nerve gas, especially, for indoor use?

In 2011, scientists at Columbia University published a study of hundreds of infants that had been exposed to chlorpyrifos before birth. The study concluded that the higher the exposure of the pregnant mothers to chlorpyrifos, the larger the decrease in “cognitive functioning” of the baby. In other words, this chemical, like all organophosphates, affects the brain and intelligence of human beings.

No doubt, EPA and DowDuPont knew of this Columbia study and more important than that: they were certain chlorpyrifos was an organophosphate chemical, which, by definition, is a dangerous nerve poison. They are equally responsible for harming victims like Janet Brown and her two children. So, why did American scientists fail to raise their voice against this chemical weapon?

The companies spraying such deleterious stuff should be put out of business.

Self-reliance and the common good

However, with president Trump, don’t expect any relief from the top. On the contrary, things will get worse. That’s the nature of oligarchies. The business oligarchs (of America and the world) are under the delusion that money will even buy them health, even in an unhealthy environment and polluted world.

Any relief we experience will, ultimately, be relief from us.

Stop buying conventional food contaminated by pesticides. Support organic farmers. They don’t use toxic synthetic petrochemicals and nerve poisons. Be alert and decode the secret danger hiding in the  advertisements for chemicals.

We need to educate ourselves about farming and what farmers spray the crops we eat. In fact, ask: do we need sprays in the raising of our food? Industrialized farming depends on chlorpyrifos-like substances and massive machinery. It’s no longer family farming. Is that good for America?

In the 1860s, President Lincoln founded the US Department of Agriculture as the people’s department. Now USDA is the department of agribusiness. Is that good for America?

Chlorpyrifos is on its way to extinction because a panel of federal judges agreed with scientific evidence the chemical is causing “neurodevelopmental damage” to children. In August 9, 2018, they ordered EPA to ban Chlorpyrifos. Yet the Trump Justice Department wants to reinstate the nerve poison. It demanded the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals of 22 judges reconsider the banning of chlorpyrifos.

Chlorpyrifos, the tragedy of Janet Brown, and the insistence of the Trump administration to keep the neurotoxin in its deadly path of poisoning children ought to become lessons of why we must be better informed about almost everything, especially things affecting our health. Americans, especially young women, should be outraged by this act of callousness by the Trump administration.

Read the label carefully. Ask questions. Be active in the politics of your hometown and state, including the politics of the country. That’s good for your health — and democracy.

Under no circumstances should we negotiate the integrity of our health and the health of the natural world.

Drought In Thar, Pakistan And The Lives of Hindu Minorities

Chander Kolhi

Tharparkar is a district of Sindh province in Pakistan where Hindus live in majority. Most of them are Bheels, Meghwar, Kolhi, Jogis and other marginalized communities within Hindus. The life status of these communities is extremely bad   because of lack of good governance in this desert. Tharparkar is a deserted area which is why the life of most of the residents of Tharparkar merely depends on the rainfall during a year which is often expected to fall from June to mid-August. Sindh; a province of Pakistan is mainly divided into Northern and Southern Sindh in which Tharparkar is situated in Southern Sindh with some issues based on human rights violation i.e., land grabbing, abduction  suicide of young generation due to lack of employment etc. Tharparkar is divided into seven Talukas i.e., Nagarparkar, Diplo, Chhachhro, Mithi, Dahli, Islamkot and Kaloi consisting a total population of about two million.Pakistan’s first largest minority in terms of population dwell there with a total of more than 60% of the total population of Tharparkar. The accurate figures of Tharparkar as per its census are not shared by the Bureau of Statistics therefore quoting here the figures of 1998 census;the total population of this district as per 1998 census is 914,291 with 45% ratio of females. Out of this total population as per Bureau of Statistics 95.64% dwell in rural areas with the overall literacy ratio of 18.3% only.

The life for human beings in rural Tharparkar is a misery in which any facility is not completely available in this region whether it is health, education, water, mobile phone signals, proper public transportation or the roads to transport. An area  of about 2600 villages in Tharparkar from a total areas of 22,000 square kilometers among which more than 70% villages has no facilities which are basic for life.

Majority of the people of Tharparkar from rural areas and marginalized groups have to migrate each year due to low rains and less agriculture production to barrage areas where agriculture is available to earn a meal for them and food for their livestock. It is very difficult for people to live without rains in Tharparkar as the economic conditions of the people of Tharparkar from rural areas are not admirable and most of them are unemployed due to less employment opportunities and zero concentration by the government. This year the drought has been declared by Sindh government in Tharparkar which is a huge problem for them. People have started migration to barrage areas with their livestock for a shorter period of two to three months to cover their needs of food for themselves and their livestock.

While interviewing some residents of Tharparkar it was informed by them that majority of the migrants to barrage areas from Thar desert are accompanied by their children and families; lock their houses and move to Badin, Hyderabad and Nawabshah, Mirpurkhas and Sanghar districts of Sindh province where water and agriculture is available. A few of the migrants from this desert move to barrage areas to earn bread and after a very short period of a month they leave their families back and then move back to the same areas or other with their livestock to make life easier for their family; they do so for the security of their families.

As per statistics of residents by NGOs a total of 1.3 million people live in Tharparkar district in the areas which are close to Indian border where the life is too difficult with rains as well; there has always been an issue of less transportation, zero medical health facilities and of course limited educational opportunities for children.

Those who migrate to barrage areas leaving Tharparkar to fulfill their needs of  starvation and save money for the year also have to suffer in barrage areas as the education of their children is neglected and these children start to contribute their parents in the cultivation of crops and collecting grass for their livestock so they leave their interest of education forever and turns back. Schools in these areas have the policy to educate a child on behalf of a certificate which they often don’t have and are deprived of their classes.Cases of rape with young Hindu girls and their abduction are also reported several times by their land lords or their companions; many of these cases go unreported as they feel fear of loosing their honor; second girl or police does not file a complaint and some of the cases which are reported are later on closed by parents due to life threats. The government of Pakistan and other law enforcing agencies must think on it for a permanent solution to secure the rights of minorities. The World is working on Sustainable Development Goals which should also be our priority to make Pakistan a safe place for religious minorities living there since Pakistan was founded.