One fifth of world’s youth not in employment, education or training

Jean Shaoul

According to the latest Global Employment Trends for Youth (GET for Youth) report, published by the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), a massive 256 million (20.4 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion youth population) were not in employment, education or training (NEET).

The NEET rate for young men was 13.1 percent, while the rate for young women was twice as high at 28.1 percent, meaning that two out of three NEETs are young women. NEET status is also a much more permanent situation for young women than for young men. It is higher in rural areas than in urban areas and in low-income countries than in high-income countries.

Global Employment Trends for Youth (GET for Youth) report, published by the UN’s International Labour Organisation [Photo: International Labour Organization]

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) tries to paint the best picture it can of the grim future for the youth, pointing to a general recovery in youth unemployment following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—a measure that ignores the widespread casual labour and hawking that forms the “employment” of most people in low-income countries. But this recovery was not universal. The youth unemployment rate in 2023 in the Arab States, East Asia and South-East Asia and the Pacific was higher than in 2019. Furthermore, while youth unemployment had continued rising in the Arab States, this increase was a reversal for the Asian sub-regions that had previously seen economic growth and jobs for youth.

The reality for most youth around the world, if they do find work, is one of having to scratch a living rather than having a secure job and decent work. That so many their just share of the distribution of the world’s wealth created by the international working class and condemned to a life of grinding poverty, is a searing indictment of the capitalist system of production for private profit that has attained an unprecedented level of global integration.

The ILO cannot help but note somewhat lamely, “With uncertain times ahead, the well-being of youth is a growing concern.” It points out that due to the COVID-19 pandemic few countries had met their Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 8.6 that called on countries to “By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training.”

The NEET rate of 20.4 percent in 2023 was only marginally better than 2015’s rate of 21.3 percent, with progress stalling even before the pandemic. Moreover, the global figure masks enormous regional variations. While NEET rates have improved in some regions, several regions that already had some of the world’s highest rates are showing a regressive trend—the Arab States (33.2 percent NEET), North Africa (31.2 percent), South Asia (25 percent) and Sub-Saharan Africa (20 percent).

The unemployed in the youth NEET rate include both the unemployed and those outside the labour force (OLF)—neither working nor looking for work (the OLF inactive NEET status). It is the OLF inactive that represents the largest share of youth unemployment and is particularly pronounced among young women.

The ILO expects the youth NEET rate to remain at 20.4 percent in 2024 and 2025 and to increase in three sub-regions where they have been relatively low: East Asia, Eastern Europe and North America. In South Asia, where rates were already among the world’s highest, youth NEET rates are expected to rise to 26.6 percent in 2025, with only slight improvements for the Arab States and North Africa.

Surveys show that many young people are anxious about the economy and their job prospects, amid fears about losing their jobs, job stability, a lower standard of living than their parents, the lack of opportunities and a decline in the general level of happiness, in the regions marked by grinding poverty, savage worker exploitation and gaping social inequality.

There are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years, accounting for 16 percent of the 8 billion global population. By 2030—the target date for the SDG Target 8.6—the number of youths is expected to approach 1.3 billion. Young people will form an ever-larger proportion of the world’s workforce, currently around 3 billion that rose from 1.2 billion in 1980 as part of the transition from “farm to factory.”

The largest population of youth (60 percent) is concentrated in Asia and the Pacific. Around 90 percent live in low-income countries where they make up a large proportion of the population. By 2025, one third of global youth will be in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa has the youngest population worldwide, with 60 percent of its 1.25 billion population under the age of 24, 40 percent under the age of 15 and less than three percent above 65, a savage index of the low life expectancy. In 2023, in sub-Saharan Africa around three in four working young adults were in precarious forms of work; one in three earned less than the median wage; and more than one in two eked out an existence in the agricultural sector.

These conditions testify to the powder keg that is Africa and indeed vast parts of the world. As the ILO says, “How African countries will create decent jobs for so many labour market entrants is a matter of global concern.”

The United Nations says, “As youth are increasingly demanding more just, equitable and progressive opportunities and solutions in their societies, the need to address the multifaceted challenges faced by young people (such as access to education, health, employment and gender equality) have become more pressing than ever.”

The concerns of these institutions set up by US imperialism and its European allies in the wake of World War II to regulate international affairs in their interests is not with the atrocious conditions that young people are forced to endure. Rather, they fear the threat this poses to the stability of capitalist rule as the authorities lose control over the sprawling slums and shanty towns to be seen across the “developing world.”

Youth-led protests have broken out in several African countries over recent months calling for political change. For weeks, young people in Kenya took to the streets in protests against the rampant corruption and high taxes levied by President William Ruto’s regime. In Uganda, mass protests against the soaring cost of living, poverty and government corruption in July were violently suppressed by police after President Yoweri Museveni warned that those thinking of such protests “were playing with fire.”

Protesters block the busy Nairobi -Mombasa highway in the Mlolongo area, Nairobi, Kenya., July 2, 2024 [AP Photo/Brian Inganga]

Earlier this month, young people hit the streets across Nigeria to protest the soaring cost of living, the removal of the electricity subsidy, high unemployment and the rampant corruption of President Bola Tinubu’s government. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo warned that Africa was staring at the abyss. Speaking in an interview with CNN affiliate Citizen TV, he said, “All over Africa, we are… sitting on a keg of gunpowder,” adding, “There’s virtually no exception (country) in Africa where the youth are not angry. They are unemployed… unempowered and they see nothing other than hopelessness.” Obasanjo warned that “if no adequate attention is paid to the needs of the youth in Africa… it will be very ugly for all of us.”

As he was speaking, mass protests by students in Bangladesh over job quotas and rising social inequality prompted the military to bundle long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina out of the country in a bid to stabilise bourgeois rule.

38 Amazonian indigenous leaders murdered in Peru from 2013 to 2024

Cesar Uco

Between 2013 and 2024, 38 leaders of Amazonian indigenous peoples in Peru were assassinated by mafias associated with illegal mining, logging and drug trafficking. Organizations advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples have reported similar widespread atrocities in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil.

The Awajún people living in Peru's Cenepa River basin protest the contamination caused by illegal gold mining [Photo by Andina / CC BY 4.0]

Last month Mariano Ikasama, the leader of the Amazonian Kakataibo community, who was known for his work as a human rights defender, was found dead with signs of torture in the Ucayali region after being missing for 23 days.

The Peruvian newspaper La República reported the April 19, 2024 shooting of Victorio Dariquebe, the 61-year old park ranger of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve in the Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru, which borders Brazil and Bolivia.

The assassination of Amazonian leaders in Peru has been accompanied by the recent killing of three non-indigenous environmental activists, who were targeted for their work in protecting Amazonian forests and natural reserves against illegal gold mining in rivers and deforestation.

Indigenous peoples are waging a struggle to preserve the largest ecosystem on the planet: the basin of the mighty Amazon River, estimated at some 5.5 million km2 – with 750,000 km2 in Peru.

In Peru, there are 2,439 indigenous communities associated with 109 federations and nine organizations under the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Rainforest of Peru (Aidesep), as well as the autonomous territories of Awajún, Ese Eja Nation, and Shipibos. These communities safeguard over 18 million hectares of critical forest land.

In June, the Awajún attempted to block illegal mining in the Amazonas department by blocking the Comainas River with a cordon of canoes. Known as Defenders of Diversity, they are committed to protecting their land and resources. Their website says:

Over the past few decades, … large-scale projects like infrastructure development, extractive industries, and the cultivation of coffee and palm oil have been causing significant damage to the Amazon region. … This has resulted in the destruction of native flora and fauna, as well as the traditional ways of life that have adapted to this environment and lived in harmony with it. … The survival of these communities, along with the knowledge and practices they have developed over hundreds of years, is crucial in the fight against climate change.

In the department of Madre de Dios, where Victorio Dariquebe was murdered, the Andean Amazon Mining Project (MAAP) reports that gold mining in the region is harming local fauna, flora, and indigenous communities.

The MAAP report highlights deforestation, river contamination, and adverse effects on public health. MAAP estimates that 23,881 hectares were deforested in Madre de Dios between 2021 and September 2023.

Aidesep, explains the profound significance of the Amazon basin for global ecological balance:

“Given their vast extension, Peruvian forests constitute an important carbon reserve on a global scale. Forests generate climate resilience and ensure the provision of fundamental ecosystem services, such as water, and resources for food sustainability.”

It is clear, therefore, that the attack on the Amazonian peoples’ way of life and the destruction of their habitat has much wider repercussions.

Indigenous leaders have declared a state of emergency, accusing the Peruvian government of neglecting their requests for a study on the Amazon region’s environmental quality. They also hold the government responsible for the serious crimes committed against their communities.

A rare instance of justice occurred on September 1, 2014, when four out of the five defendants accused of killing four Asháninka leaders in Ucayali were sentenced to 28 years and three months in prison. The case shed considerable light on the severity of unpunished crimes in the region.

Peru is a country where 13.1 percent of children under five years of age suffer from chronic malnutrition in general and 42.4 percent are affected by anemia. These 2023 figures for the country as a whole would without a doubt be much higher among children in indigenous communities in the Amazon.

Poverty and oppression, particularly of children in indigenous communities, is extreme. They have high school dropout rates, and are exploited by mafias who force them to work for low wages in gold mines along the rivers.

Girls in these communities face sexual abuse and forced prostitution, resulting in high incidence of rape cases and HIV transmission. The Peruvian Minister of Education Moran Quero has crassly attributed the rape of 500 Awajún girls to “cultural practice.”

The Peruvian government engages in little more than handwringing when it comes to oppression of these communities, because it defends the powerful capitalist interests that profit off of the illegal mining, logging and drug trafficking that plague the Amazon region.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro did not even bother to hide his initiatives to uproot indigenous communities in the Amazon. According to Sage Journals Home:

Under the ultraconservative Bolsonaro government, the State has been taken over by elites with rural and extractive capital who plan on exploiting the Amazon rain forest at any cost and see indigenous peoples as an obstacle to their goal. The military also has a noteworthy position in this offensive, which strikes at the heart of what are considered human rights.

The organization Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL 2020) referred to Bolsonaro’s policies as one “without indigenous people,” that is, genocide.

Bolsonaro’s successor, Workers Party (PT) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, announced with great fanfare his intention to pursue a new policy in the Amazon region dedicated to protecting the environment and the indigenous populations. While his government has managed to reduce the rate of deforestation by half, the area controlled by illegal mining actually increased by seven percent last year.

With environmental and indigenous agencies confronting scant resources, the Amazonas mission has largely been delegated to the Brazilian military, which has a long record of oppressing indigenous populations. This includes the massacre of nearly 10,000 indigenous people in the Amazonas region under the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

Franco-Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram app, arrested in Paris

Alex Lantier

On Saturday, French border guards and military police arrested 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram encrypted messaging app, in transit at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. Durov was jailed as a flight risk and charged with 12 crimes involving narcotics trade, child pornography, organized crime and providing unauthorized cryptographic services.

Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov on Aug. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File) [AP Photo]

French President Emmanuel Macron took to Twitter yesterday to defend the arrest, warning against “false information” on Durov’s arrest. He claimed, “The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter.”

In reality, the arrest and jailing of Durov is transparently politically motivated, reactionary and lacks any substantial legal foundation. It aims to assist the NATO powers in their war with Russia in Ukraine and pave the way for escalated attacks on democratic rights, including Internet privacy and freedom of information, in the countries where Telegram’s 900 million users are located. These include above all countries in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and India.

In particular, officials of NATO governments and of the far-right Ukrainian regime have repeatedly called to ban the app, which is very popular in Ukraine, accusing it of being a conduit for “Russian propaganda” that cuts across their war against Russia.

Durov is a Russian citizen who left Russia in 2014 to live in Dubai and acquired French citizenship after coming into conflict with the Kremlin over his refusal to hand over information from the VKontakte social network to Russian state authorities. He was arrested on Saturday at Le Bourget Airport in the company of his bodyguard and his assistant, Julia Vavilova, who were both left free.

The 12 charges he faces stem from an initial investigation secretly launched against Durov by the French Office on violence against minors (Ofmin). None of the charges target Durov’s own conduct but instead involve the argument that Durov is personally responsible for alleged criminal activity by others using the Telegram app. This concocted legal argument has led to what Le Monde confessed was a “world premiere” in terms of the arrest of executives of major social media.

Immediately after the arrest, a French police investigator gloated to TF1 news: “[Durov] screwed up tonight. We don’t know why. … Was he just transiting through France? Anyway, now we have him in the bag.”

Another said Durov would not be allowed to leave jail even after the initial investigative detention ends tomorrow: “Pavel Durov will end up in provisional detention, that is certain. On his platform, he allowed people to commit an incalculable number of crimes and misdemeanors which he did not try to moderate or cooperate with us about.”

The coverage in both Russian and pro-NATO media makes clear, however, that the arrest is bound up with NATO’s prosecution of the war with Russia and attempts to limit popular opposition to the war, both in Ukraine and internationally.

Russian media are publicly worrying that the arrest and detention of Durov could have a devastating impact on the operations of Russian forces in Ukraine, who extensively use Telegram. “Telegram might become a tool of Nato, if Pavel Durov is forced to obey the French intelligence services,” Moskovsky Komsomolets declared. “Telegram chats contain a huge amount of vitally important, strategic information. … If Telegram crashes, how is [our army] going to fight?”

University of Maastricht Professor Marielle Wijermars commented to France24: “Telegram is widely used in the army and the political establishment for communications; and it is evident that many Russian officials must fear that France will pressure Telegram’s boss to get access to their communications.”

Telegram has also emerged from the outset of the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine in 2022 as a source of information and footage of the war, unfiltered by NATO and Ukrainian media, notably on the massive losses of Ukrainian troops and NATO equipment. The availability of this information, refuting false official narratives of the Ukrainian army’s supposed victories against Russia, soon attracted the hostility of NATO governments and pro-NATO media.

“As the war in Ukraine rages, the messaging app Telegram has emerged as the go-to place for unfiltered live war updates,” US National Public Radio noted in 2022, complaining that it risked inciting opposition to the NATO war. “Telegram, which does little policing of its content, has also become a hub for Russian propaganda and misinformation. Many pro-Kremlin channels have become popular ...”

Particularly this year, amid mounting opposition in the Ukrainian population to the war, officials of the far-right regime in Kiev demanded that Telegram be silenced. Ukrainian officials did not ultimately dare take this step, since fully 72 percent of the Ukrainian population uses the app. However, they repeatedly made clear that they viewed it as a posing a critical internal political threat, particularly if Durov did not agree to censor Russian sources on Telegram.

Ukrainian military intelligence official Andriy Yusov told German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) that Telegram is a threat to “information and not only information security” of Ukraine. Ukrainian officials repeatedly complained that Telegram’s anonymity and privacy meant that their intelligence services, who are infamous for their brutal suppression of political dissent, could not identify and track down the identity of people posting materials they disliked.

Ukrainian parliamentarian Yaroslav Yurchyshyn told DW that he could support a ban on Telegram “if the cooperation with Telegram won’t work,” because “the price of such holes in information security, which allow Russian propaganda to penetrate into Ukrainian information products easily, is very high in our country. A matter of life and death for our citizens.”

It is not concocted allegations of supposed complicity in child pornography, but the NATO powers’ war against Russian forces in Ukraine and their attempt to censor news of that war to limit opposition in Ukraine and in the NATO countries, that drove Durov’s arrest. The arrest targets not only opposition to war in Ukraine but also in the NATO imperialist countries. Macron’s call to send troops to Ukraine to wage war with Russia is also massively unpopular, facing nearly 90 percent opposition in both Western Europe and the United States.

French and NATO officials also intend for the arrest of a Russian billionaire to undermine support for the war and for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia’s ruling capitalist oligarchy that emerged from the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Recently, Ukraine invaded Russia near Kursk—signaling that, despite the NATO-backed Ukrainian regime’s military reversals, NATO intends to escalate the conflict and compel a Russian surrender.

By arresting Durov, France and its NATO imperialist allies are warning Russia’s corrupt ruling elites that their overseas assets and their lives will not be safe until they fall in line with NATO policy and its plans for the dismemberment and looting of Russia.

This makes clear the utterly reactionary political forces behind the arrest of Durov and the further assault on Internet freedoms that it is setting into motion.

Scientists reveal two previously unknown mechanisms for Antarctic ice shelf melting

Frank Gaglioti

Two papers published in Nature Geoscience in June indicate that Antarctic ice shelves are melting more rapidly than previously anticipated. The papers detail two distinct mechanisms for melting that had not been incorporated into previous models for the breakup of the ice shelves. 

The ice shelves that surround most of the Antarctic coast, together with the ice sheet that covers most of the continent, have an area of 14 million square kilometres. At the thickest point, the ice sheet is 4.9 km deep. The combined shelves are estimated to hold 30 million cubic kms of ice. If they were to melt completely, they would raise sea levels by 58 meters. This would completely inundate coastal cities, and many low-lying islands would be completely submerged, affecting a large portion of the world’s population. Major cities such as Shanghai and New York would be inundated.

Map of Antarctica showing the ice shelves along its coastline.

The paper, “Tipping point in ice-sheet grounding-zone melting due to ocean water intrusion,” indicates that the ice sheets are being undermined at their grounding zone where the continental ice meets the sea ice, by warming sea water underneath the ice sheet. It was produced by Alexander Bradley, postdoctoral researcher in the Modelling Group of the Ice Dynamics and Paleoclimate team at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, and Ian Hewitt, applied mathematician at Oxford University.

The scientists used modelling techniques that determined that small temperature increases in the sea water due to global warming can undermine the ice-shelf, contributing to its collapse. The process is that the warmer water underneath the shelf produces cavities in the ice, allowing more water to seep in and further increasing the melting, producing a feedback loop. The paper identified this as a new tipping point for the breakup of the ice shelves.

The study stated: “Marine ice sheets are highly sensitive to submarine melting in their grounding zones, where they transition between grounded and floating ice. Recently published studies of the complex hydrography of grounding zones suggest that warm ocean water can intrude large distances beneath the ice sheet, with dramatic consequences for ice dynamics.”

This work means that the current models for the breakup of the ice shelves may involve a very serious underestimate.

Alex Bradley [Photo: University of Cambridge]

“[Seawater intrusion] could basically be the missing piece. We don’t really have many other good ideas. And there’s a lot of evidence that when you do include it, the amount of sea level rise the models predict could be much, much higher,” Bradley told the Guardian.

An earlier study in February 2022 by climate change and glaciology scientist Alexander Robel and his team, published in the journal The Cryosphere, “Layered seawater intrusion and melt under grounded ice” predicted that the sea water intrusion could double the rate of the ice shelf collapse.

The study reported that earlier observations found “intriguing evidence of seawater intrusion in observations of grounding lines,” but that further work was necessary.

The team carried out a simulation of the impact of the sea water intrusion using the Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM) to show that “even just a few hundred meters of basal melt caused by seawater intrusion upstream of marine ice sheet grounding lines can cause projections of marine ice sheet volume loss to be 10 %–50 % higher. Kilometers of intrusion-induced basal melt can cause projected ice sheet volume loss to more than double.”

Robel commented on Bradley’s paper for New Scientist: “That positive feedback can cause there to be much more intrusion than we thought possible. Whether that will be a tipping point that will lead to unrestrained incursion of seawater under the ice sheet—that’s probably a stretch.”

Rebecca Dell [Photo: Trinity College, Cambridge]

The second Nature Geoscience paper was produced by Assistant Professor in Glaciology Rebecca Dell, at the Scott Polar Research institute at Cambridge, under the title, “Substantial contribution of slush to meltwater area across Antarctic ice shelves.” It used artificial intelligence to examine satellite images taken between 2013 and 2021 by NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite to detect sludge pools on the ice shelves. The sludge pools are formed by melt water that also exists as pools of water. The sludge consists of waterlogged snow. The researchers observed the pools monthly.

“We can use satellite imagery to map meltwater lakes across much of Antarctica, but it’s hard to map slush, because it looks like other things, such as shadows from clouds, when viewed from a satellite. But using machine learning techniques, we can go beyond what the human eye can see and get a clearer picture of how slush might be affecting ice in Antarctica,” said Dell.

The researchers found 17,000 square km of such pools and in January at the height of the Antarctic summer over half (57 percent) of all meltwater on Antarctica’s ice shelves is held in slush, with the remaining 43 percent in meltwater lakes.

They found that the slush pools transition to water pools. The lakes are often found in areas where Antarctic ice becomes sea ice. Scientists think that the pooling of water can fracture the ice leading to the fracturing and collapse of the ice shelf.

Importantly, the researchers identified another warming effect as sludge reflects less heat back into space than does ice thus increasing the melting of the sludge into water and further undermining the sea shelves. This is not currently incorporated into models for the breakup of the ice shelves.

“This slush has never been mapped on a large scale across all of Antarctica’s large ice shelves, so over half of all surface meltwater has been ignored until now. This is potentially significant for the hydrofracture process, where the weight of meltwater can create or enlarge fractures in the ice,” said Dell.

Ice shelves perform an important role in protecting continental ice in a process called buttressing, slowing its flow. While the collapse of ice shelves is a natural process, this process has been accelerated by capitalist-induced global warming. The importance of the Nature Geoscience papers is that they explain the processes driving the disintegration of the ice shelves.

Graphic depicts the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf [Photo by Robert Rohde / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Recent collapses include the Prince Gustav ice shelf (from 1989 to 1995), Larsen A ice shelf (1995), Larsen B (2002), and Wilkins ice shelf (2008 to 2009), all from West Antarctica. In East Antarctica Conger ice shelf disintegrated in 2022 while the Cook ice shelf was partially lost in the 1970s.

Professor of Glaciology at the Northumbria University in Newcastle Hilmar Gudmuudsson and his colleagues published a comment on the collapse of the Conger ice shelf in 2022 in the Conversation. In “Conger ice shelf has collapsed: what you need to know, according to experts,” they stated, “Taken together, this series of collapses suggests that some underlying environmental conditions, such as ocean and atmosphere temperatures, are changing. It is too soon to say what triggered the collapse of the Conger ice shelf, but it appears unlikely to have been caused by melting at the surface—there are no indications of any ponds atop the ice shelf. The most recent sequence of events also preceded the record high air temperatures recorded in Antarctica on March 18.”

Antarctica has been one of the most rapidly warming areas of the world. According to the Discovering Antarctica webpage, upper ocean temperatures to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula have increased over 1°C since 1955. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is warming more rapidly than global oceans. For the globe as a whole, 2023 was the hottest year on record, on average 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels. Scientists consider 2024 may go over the record.

The effect in Antarctica of the warming ocean and atmosphere is that the amount of ice in the shelves is diminishing, particularly in west Antarctica. The amount of ice fluctuates over the year, building to a peak in the Antarctic winter (northern summer) but shrinking over summer (northern winter). 

Research published in December 2023 in Science Advances by research fellow at the Earth Observation of the Polar Regions at the University of Leeds Benjamin Davison and his team studied the shrinkage using satellite images.

Before and after satellite images show the disintegration of the Conger ice shelf in 2022. [Photo: NASA]

The study, “Annual mass budget of Antarctic ice shelves from 1997 to 2021,” pointed to the implications of the thinning of the ice shelves: “Ice shelf thinning or retreat can reduce the buttressing force provided by the ice shelf, leading to an increase in the speed of the upstream grounded ice and an increase in the ice sheet contribution to global sea level rise.”

They estimated that over the 24-year period a staggering 67,000 ± 3,200 billion tonnes or 2,680 ± 580 gigatonnes per year of fresh water were added to the Southern Ocean.

The greatest reductions were in the Thwaites, Getz, Larsen C, and Pine Island ice shelves. Although there were large increases in the mass of Filchner, Amery, and Brunt ice shelves, the study noted, “Nevertheless, ice shelf mass loss was widespread around Antarctica: 71 out of 162 ice shelves lost mass.”

The disintegration of the Antarctic ice shelves has enormous implications for the future of the world’s coastal habitations, including some of the largest cities that are threatened with inundation. Scientists have called for drastic cuts in greenhouse gasses but capitalist politicians, who are committed to safeguarding the profits of the energy giants, are completely unmoved.

While professing concern about climate change and introducing measures to cut greenhouse gasses, in 2023 President Joe Biden approved 17 new fossil fuel projects. According to the Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD) this will wipe out any gains from the reduction of emissions.

“The potential carbon emissions from 17 massive fossil fuel projects approved by the Biden administration are larger than the projected emissions reductions from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other climate policies,” the CBD report stated. In the same way governments adoption of “forever COVID” allowed 28 million people to die internationally, even though well-understood public health measures could halt the pandemic.

Parliamentary elections in Austria: Right-wing extremist FPÖ leads in the polls

Markus Salzmann

Just over a month before the election of Austria’s National Council, the country’s lower house of parliament, the various parties are competing to offer the most right-wing programme. The Austrian election campaign is dominated by incitement against refugees, war propaganda and the demand for a police state.

Under these conditions, the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leads the polls with around 30 percent. Depending on the poll, the ruling Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the opposition Social Democrats (SPÖ) are both considerably behind the FPÖ.

Trailing far behind, at about 9 percent, are the Greens, the ÖVP’s coalition partner. The right-liberal NEOS have the same level of support as the Greens. The Beer Party and the Communist Party (KPÖ) also have a chance of entering parliament.

Herbert Kickl, leader of Austrian Freedom Party (FPOE), gestures during the traditional FPOE May day event at the Urfahraner fair in Linz, Austria, Wednesday, May 01, 2024. [AP Photo/Christian Bruna]

The FPÖ, which is notorious for its despicable, racist election campaigns, is once again unrestrainedly inciting against refugees. “We need remigration,” FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl explained publicly at the presentation of the election programme. To this end, the party first wants to prevent the hitherto applicable family reunification of asylum seekers and further reduce the number of asylum applications to zero. Healthcare, social benefits and education should only be available to Austrians, according to the party.

The election programme of the right-wing extremists is aptly entitled “Fortress Austria, Fortress of Freedom.” It openly promotes ethnic nationalism and backward-looking ideology, combined with calls for internal and external rearmament, as well as massive tax cuts for companies.

Already in the European elections in June, the FPÖ became the strongest party, while the governing parties suffered severe losses. The right-wing extremists were able to win votes, especially among the young voters. But voters from the SPÖ and ÖVP also migrated to the FPÖ.

The vote gains for the right have nothing to do with mass support for a fascist program. In fact, there is a widespread rejection of such policies. Rather, it is the right-wing politics of the other parties that has been preparing the ground for the right for decades.

Since 2020, the ÖVP and Greens have been governing in Austria, largely implementing the FPÖ’s policy. Under several Green health ministers, all public health measures were dropped during the peak phase of the COVID pandemic. Spending on the military, police and intelligence services has been greatly increased, and although Austria is not a member of the military alliance, the government is fully behind the NATO war against Russia. As in Germany, the Greens are also the leading warmongers in Austria.

Vice Chancellor and Green Party leader Werner Kogler stood on stage with a Ukrainian flag at the party’s Federal Congress on the second anniversary of the start of the war and gave a vicious pro-war speech. Numerous Greens, such as National Council member Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, have long been vehemently in favour of arms deliveries to Ukraine. More and more Greens see the country’s official neutrality as an obstacle.

Werner Kogler of the Greens [Photo by BMKÖS / CC BY 2.5]

The character of the ÖVP/Green government became clear in the spring of this year. On March 21, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) announced at a press conference that more deportations had been carried out in 2023 (12,900 people) than in any year since the creation of the Federal Office for Immigration and Asylum. With egregious cynicism, he declared 2023 to be the “Year of Deportations.” He explicitly praised the “backbreaking work” of the authorities carrying out the brutal deportations and announced a stepped-up clampdown for the current year.

The People’s Party and Greens also explicitly support the genocide in Gaza. Austria was one of the few countries to vote against the UN General Assembly resolution to improve the humanitarian situation and for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Ernst-Dziedzic, like all politicians and governments that defend the genocide, justified this on the grounds of Israel’s right to self-defence.

Here, too, the government is in line with the FPÖ, a party founded by antisemites and in which Nazi positions are widely represented. Like many right-wing parties, it supports the Israeli government in its onslaught against the Palestinians.

The SPÖ, which leads the government in several federal states, is no better than the parties of the federal government. Its election campaign is also dominated by the topic of “internal security.” Under the slogan “More policemen on the street,” it calls for the personnel and material strengthening of the security forces.

In practice, the SPÖ has sufficiently demonstrated its agreement with the ÖVP and FPÖ’s policies on immigrants and refugees. For decades, the SPÖ dominated Austrian politics and carried out increasingly violent attacks on social and democratic rights.

The SPÖ supports both the war against Russia and the genocide in Gaza. The Social Democrats in the capital Vienna have expelled several younger members after they participated in a peaceful demonstration against the crimes of the Israeli government.

The question of which party will head the government after September 29 remains open. It is up to Federal President Alexander van der Bellen to assign the responsibility of forming a government. Publicly, both the ÖVP and the SPÖ exclude cooperation with the FPÖ. But since 2000, the ÖVP has twice formed a coalition with the far right in the federal government. The SPÖ has also formed coalitions with the FPÖ at the state [provincial] level.

The FPÖ currently governs in three federal states—in Salzburg together with the ÖVP, in Lower Austria together with the ÖVP and SPÖ and in Upper Austria with the ÖVP, SPÖ and Greens.

No matter which government the parties agree on in the end, they will come into sharp conflict with the population. Social tensions have intensified extremely in recent years. In the country, which has less than 10 million inhabitants, 1.5 million people are considered at risk of poverty. Some 22 percent of children fall under this category.

In the past, Vienna was considered a large city in which, due to a large supply of social housing and a relatively regulated housing market, even middle-income and low-income households could live well. But this has changed dramatically. In 2024 alone, rents in the capital rose by up to 11 percent.

Israel launches major attack on southern Lebanon

Andre Damon

Israel launched its largest attack on southern Lebanon since 2006 on Sunday, involving over 100 air force fighter jets. The Israel Defence Forces claimed that the attacks involved over 40 targets.

Israeli soldiers fire a mobile howitzer in the north of Israel, near the border with Lebanon, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. [AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg]

Shortly afterward, the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon announced that it was beginning an attack on Israeli military positions in retaliation for the assassination of Fuad Shukr, its senior military commander, in an attack on Beirut last month.

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon are part of a US-backed military escalation throughout the Middle East, with the central target being Iran. The US is simultaneously sponsoring Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of over 40,000 people.

Three people were killed in the strikes in Lebanon, while no deaths were reported inside Israel. One Israeli soldier was killed on an Israeli warship after an Israeli air defense missile exploded over it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that they “intercepted all of the drones that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in the center of the country.”

The Israeli attack was the most serious since Israel’s 34-day invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006.

US and Israeli officials had made it clear that they were in close coordination over the attacks, with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaking with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant twice over the weekend “to discuss Israeli actions to defend against attacks by Lebanese Hezbollah.” Israeli officials said they had briefed the US before carrying out the attack on Lebanon.

On Sunday, the Pentagon reported that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered two US aircraft carriers to remain in the Middle East, reversing a plan that would have sent one of them home.

US National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett endorsed Israel’s attack on Lebanon, declaring: “We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself.”

In an interview on Sunday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan added that “there was continuous communication, and we have been tracking the threat of Hezbollah attacks against Israel for some time now.”

In a statement on Sunday afternoon, Netanyahu threatened to continue attacks on Lebanon, declaring the strike was “not the end of the story.” He threatened: “We are determined to do everything we can to defend our country… whoever harms us—we harm him.”

In April, an Israeli strike killed a group of Iranian military officers meeting in Damascus, to which Iran responded with a strike on Israel with 300 missiles and drones, nearly all of which were intercepted.

In July, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr with a strike in Beirut, followed by the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at a military guesthouse in Iran.

Israel is the largest annual recipient of US foreign aid and has received $12.5 billion in weapons since October 2023. The US has provided it with dozens of advanced fighter jets, including F-35s. Earlier this month, the US approved a $20 billion arms sale to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120 mm tank ammunition, high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles. Israel is also the only state in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons.

Since October, Israel has killed nearly 500 people in southern Lebanon, more than the number of people killed in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, alongside strikes against Iran, Syria and Yemen. During the same time, nearly 50 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed by attacks from Hezbollah.

Against the backdrop of Israel’s strikes, negotiations over a possible exchange of hostages between Hamas and Israeli officials broke off on Sunday with no agreement. The discussions reportedly included CIA Director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Israel’s attack on Lebanon takes place in the context of its genocide in Gaza, which the Lancet has estimated may have killed as many as 200,000 Palestinians.

Israel’s escalation against Lebanon follows the July 24 address by Netanyahu before the US Congress. Netanyahu’s remarks were not merely a justification and defense of the Gaza genocide, but an argument for US intervention targeting Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Following the address, US Vice President Kamala Harris stated: “I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah”—an effective green light to expand the war beyond Gaza.

Israel and the United States have seized upon the events of October 7 to carry out long-held plans to reorganize the Middle East under US domination targeting Iran.

The escalating Middle East war is part of a global offensive of US imperialism throughout the world whose main targets are Russia and China, with the aim of restoring imperialist domination of the former colonies.

While the Biden administration is widely reviled for its sponsorship of the Gaza genocide, Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, has made it clear that she would only continue this policy, rejecting any limits on US support for Israel.

Increased mortgage rates push 320,000 UK adults into poverty

Dennis Moore

Figures published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have shown a dramatic increase in the number of UK adults thrown into poverty due to increased mortgage costs.

The study highlighted the damage being caused by an exploding mortgage timebomb, with those renewing their home loans, or having to take out new loans in the past two years experiencing a sharp fall in their disposable income.

Typical housing in a British city. Terraced housing in Lea Road, Wolverhampton [Photo by Roger Kidd / CC BY-SA 4.0]

This has led to some households having to pay thousands of pounds more towards additional mortgage costs, driving up poverty rates amongst mortgagors by 1.4 percentage points (ppts) between December 2021 and December 2023.

Millions of homeowners have seen a dramatic increase in borrowing costs after 14 consecutive increases in the Bank of England base rate from a record low in December 2021 of 0.1 percent, to its current rate of 5.25 percent.

In calculating the headline poverty statistics, adjustments are made for household housing costs that include mortgage interest payments. Historically these statistics have been calculated on the assumption that all households have the same interest rates and does not consider the varying and growing mortgage interest rate differences between households.

In the year 2022-23, the average interest rate was 2.3 percent meaning someone would pay interest payments of £240 per month for a household with a typical outstanding mortgage. However 10 percent of households faced an average mortgage interest rate of at least 4.7 percent, equivalent to £490 a month.

Interest rate variation is a significant factor when trying to ascertain the real numbers of those in “mortgage poverty” and those defined as in “absolute poverty”.

The increase in relative poverty, defined as households with income below 60 percent of the median, is equivalent to 320,000 more adults falling below the breadline.

The number of households with a mortgage are a third of households overall and the impact on the headline poverty rate is around 0.1ppts.

The increase in mortgage rates between December 2021 and December 2023 has pushed up the official figure to 1.4 ppts—representing 320,000 more people when measured accounting for variation. Yet official figures, which apply a single average interest rate to all households, only capture 1.0 ppts (230,000).

Though the overall impact on aggregate statistics is not high, mismeasurement of interest payments still means that individual mortgage interest payments are in some cases severely mis-measured and limit a better understanding of the impact of recent financial stocks which have resulted in soaring financial hardship.

It is estimated that most mortgagor households, after housing cost incomes are considered, are mis-measured by at least £500 a year—based on the assumption of a single mortgage interest rate.

Data from other sources suggests that adults who have seen a substantial rise in interest rates since the COVID pandemic were 2 ppts more likely to be behind on bills that those who had not—implying an additional increase of 370,000 adults that are behind on bills once all households have remortgaged at a higher interest rate.

Most households have a fixed rate mortgage and the question of variation in interest rates for individual households is a significant factor when trying to ascertain an accurate picture of the impact on household finances.

The IFS notes that those households impacted by higher food and energy prices include pensioners and those on a lower income who will typically spend more of their income on fuel and food. Yet this is also not represented in official poverty statistics.

Figures showed that accounting for higher inflation for the above households in the years 2021-22 and 2022-23, the number of people in poverty had risen by 210,000 yet had not been recorded in official statistics. This represents an overall figure of 730,000 being thrust into poverty, as against official figures showing 520,000, including 80,000 pensioners.

Department for Work and Pension (DWP) figures suggest that the number of people over the age of 66 living in deprivation stands at nearly 1 million, the highest figure since comparable records began.

The measurement of deprivation was ascertained by asking those taking part whether they had access to basic goods and services, including heating and electricity, substantial meals and a home in a good state of repair.

Of the 977,386 over 66s experiencing deprivation in 2022-23, 100,000 were living in working households and data suggests that since the pandemic the number of older people living in deprivation has risen by more than a third.

These figures conflict sharply with calls within the ruling elite to axe the triple lock on state pensions on the basis that it is too expensive a cost to the public purse. Other calls are to increase the minimum age at which people should be allowed to retire.

The triple lock was introduced in 2011-12 and increases the state pension every April in line with either the previous September’s level of inflation, the amount by which wages have increased or 2.5 percent, whichever is the highest. In April 2024, the state pension rose by 8.5 percent, the rate at which wages rose.

The IFS report highlights the fall in household incomes since the pandemic, accelerating the cost of living crisis. It shows that between 2021-22 and 2022-23 the median household income before housing costs had fallen by 0.5 percent, resulting in a 1.6 percent fall in median income between the years 2019-20/2022-23. This is equivalent to the rate of change seen between 2007-08 and 2011-12 following the global financial crisis.

Between 2019-20 to 2022-23) incomes in poorer households stagnated, while middle- and higher-income households saw little change in income.

A major factor impacting living standards was the rapid rise in inflation, driving up the prices of goods and services, between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Between those years the rate of inflation stood at more than 10 percent, higher than anything seen this century.

Persistent rises in mortgage interest rates could push up both true and measured poverty rates in 2023-24 as an increasing number of households see their fixed rate mortgage period come to an end.