Guardianship System Eased, but Saudi Arabia Still Oppresses Women

Medea Benjamin

The Saudi government announced it will be eliminating part of the male guardianship system, finally granting women the right to obtain passports and travel (if 21 years of age or over), and obtain family identification cards without the need for male authorization.

The change comes in the context of the bad publicity that Saudi Arabia has been receiving about “runaway girls,” a growing number of Saudi women who have been fleeing the country to seek asylum abroad. Several of these high-profile cases of women claiming intense gender-based repression and receiving asylum in countries like Canada have placed global scrutiny on the male guardianship system.

The latest decrees also come in the context of intense criticism of the government’s appalling treatment of women’s rights activists. In 2018, when the government announced it was lifting the ban on women drivers, it then went on to arrest the very women who had campaigned for that right. Some of these women are released pending trial; others are still languishing in prison, enduring terribly abusive conditions. When making the announcement about the easing of the guardianship system, the government made no mention of the plight of these women activists.

While the easing of the guardianship system is indeed welcome news, Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s most repressive societies for women.

Key aspects of the guardianship system are still in place. One particularly onerous restriction is that women need the permission of a male guardian to marry or divorce.

* Saudi Arabia is one of the only Muslim-majority countries that legally imposes a dress code. By law, in public places women must cover their everyday clothing with an abaya– a long cloak – and a head scarf.

* When it comes to family issues such as child custody, child support and divorce laws, they all favor men over women. Women can easily lose access to their own children when they separate from their husbands.

* In certain types of court cases, female testimony is worth half as much as male testimony.

* While Saudi women have made great gains in education, they still make up only 23% of the labor force, and they are mainly employed “women’s jobs” such as education and public health. Women are discriminated against in the hiring process, and then must endure gender segregation in the workplace.

Saudi Arabia is the most gender-segregated society in the world. The majority of public buildings have separate entrances for men and women; some even ban women from entering. Most workplaces are segregated, so are schools. The separation in restaurants has been somewhat easing, but most eating areas are still separated to keep unrelated men and women apart–with one section for “singles,” meaning men, and one for “families,” meaning women, children, and close male relatives like husbands.

* Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only Arab countries that do not have laws setting a minimum age for marriage. Child brides are still acceptable, especially among poor, rural families where girls may be married off to richer, older men.

* Regarding representation, there are no women elected at the national and provincial level, because there are no national or provincial elections. It was only in 2015 that women were granted the right to vote and to run in municipal councils, but in 2019 women still represent just 1 percent of those local seats (19 women elected and 15 appointed).

* As of 2013, women were granted 20% of the seats on the Shura Council–an appointed 150-member body that advises the king. In July 2019, women on the Shura Council introduced a proposal to have 30% women on the municipal councils, but the proposal was rejected. By law, the proposal cannot be brought up again for two years.

Saudi women have a long way to go to achieve equality. Onerous laws remain in place and conservative traditions that give men control over women will be hard to transform. The best way to do this, however, is to grant Saudi women the freedom to openly advocate for their rights. Now, these rights are “bestowed upon them” by male rulers while women who fight for their rights are jailed, tortured, fired from their jobs, and in other ways silenced. The Saudi rulers must free the women activists languishing in prison and open the system so that women can freely advocate for the society they want to live in.

Greece – Suicide or Murder?

Peter Koenig

Pundits from the left, from the right and from the center cannot stop reporting about Greece’s misery. And rightly so. Because Greece, the vast majority of her people live in deep economic hardship. No hope. Unemployment is officially at 18%, with the real figure closer to 25% or 30%; pensions have been reduced about ten times since Syriza – the Socialist Party – took power in 2015 and loaded the country with debt and austerity. In the domain of public services, everything that has any value has been privatized and sold to foreign corporations, oligarchs, or, naturally – banks. Hospitals, schools, public transportation – even some beaches – have been privatized and made unaffordable for the common people.

While the pundits – always more or less the same – keep lamenting about the Greek conditions in one form or another, none of them dares offer the only solution that could have rescued Greece (and still could) – exiting the euro zone; return to their local currency and start rebuilding Greece with a local economy, built on local currency with local public banking and with a sovereign Greek central bank deciding the monetary policy that best suits Greece, and especially Greece’s recovery program. – Why not? Why do they not talk about this obvious solution? Would they be censured in Greece, because the Greek oligarchy controls the media – as oligarchs do around the (western part of the) globe?

Instead, foreign imposed (troika: IMF, European Central Bank – ECB – and European Commission – EC; the latter mainly pushed by German and French banks – and the Rothschild clan) austerity programs have literally put a halt on imports of affordable medication, like for cancer treatments and other potentially lethal illnesses. So, common people get no longer treatment. They die like flies; a horrible expression to be used for human beings. But that’s what it comes down to for people who simply do not get the treatment they humanely deserve and would have gotten under the rights of the Greek Constitution, but do simply not get treated because they can no longer afford medication and services from privatized health services. That is the sad but true story.

As a consequence, the suicide rate is up, due to foreign imposed (but Greek government accepted) debt and austerity, annihilating hope for terminally ill patients, as well as for pensioners whose pensions do no longer allow them to live a decent life – and especially there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

Now, these same pundits add a little air of optimism to their reporting, as the rightwing New Democracy Party (ND Party) won with what they call a ‘landslide’ victory on the 7 July 2019 elections; gathering 39.6% of the votes, against only 31.53 for Syriza, the so-called socialist party, led by outgoing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who represents a tragedy that has allowed Greece to be plunged into this hopeless desolation. The ND won an absolute majority with 158 seats in the 300-member Greek parliament. Therefore, no coalition needed, no concessions required.

The new Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis (51), son of a former PM of the same party, in his victory speech on the evening of 7 July, vowed that Greece will “proudly” enter a post-bailout era of “jobs, security and growth”. He added that “a painful cycle has closed” and that Greece would “proudly raise its head again” on his watch.

We don’t know what this means for the average Greek citizen living a life of despair. What the “left” was unable to do – stopping the foreign imposed (but Greek accepted) bleeding of Greece; the strangulation of their country – will the right be able to reverse that trend? Does the right want to reverse that trend? – Does the ND want to reverse privatization, buy back airports from Germany, water supply from the EU managed “Superfund”, and repurchase the roads from foreign concessionaires, or nationalize hospitals that were sold for a pittance and – especially – get out from austerity to allow importing crucial medication to salvage the sick and dying Greek, those who currently cannot afford treatment of their cancers and other potentially deadly diseases?

That would indeed be a step towards PM Mitsotakis’ promise to end the “painful cycle” of austerity, with import of crucial medication made affordable to those in dire need, with job creation and job security – and much more – with eventually a renewed Greek pride – and Greek sovereignty. The latter would mean – finally – it’s never too late – exit the euro zone. But, that’s an illusion – a pipe-dream. Albeit – it could become a vision.

If the ND is the party of the oligarchs, the Greek oligarchs that is, those Greek who have placed literally billons of euros outside their country in (still) secret bank accounts in Switzerland, France, Lichtenstein, Luxemburg and elsewhere, including the Cayman islands and other Caribbean tax havens – hidden not only from the Greek fiscal authorities, but also impeding that these funds could, crucially, be used for investments at home, for job creation, for creation of added value in Greece – if the ND is the party of the oligarchs, they are unlikely to make the dream of the vast majority of Greek people come true.

Worse even, these Greek oligarch-billionaires call the shots in Greece – not the people, not those who according to Greek tradition and according to the Greek invention, called “democracy” (Delphi, some 2500 years ago) have democratically elected Syriza and have democratically voted against the austerity packages in July 2015. Now, that they are officially in power, they are unlikely to change their greed-driven behavior and act in favor of the Greek people. – Or will they?

Because, if they do, it may eventually also benefit them, the ND Party and its adherents – a Greece that functions like a country, with happy, healthy and content people, is a Greece that retains the worldwide esteem and respect she deserves – and will by association develop an economy that can and will compete and trade around the world, a Greece that is an equal to others, as a sovereign nation. – A dream can become a reality – it just takes visionaries.

Back to today’s reality. The Greek Bailout Referendum of July 5, 2015, was overwhelmingly rejected with 61% ‘no’ against 39% ‘yes’, meaning that almost two thirds of the Greek people would have preferred the consequences of rejecting the bailout, euphemistically called “rescue packages”, namely exiting the euro zone, and possible, but not necessarily, the European Union.

Despite the overwhelming, democratic rejection by the people, the Tsipras government reached an agreement on 13 July 2015 – only 8 days after the vote against the bailout – with the European authorities for a three-year bailout with even harsher austerity conditions than the ones rejected by voters. What went on is anybody’s guess. It looks pretty obvious, though, that “foul play” was the name of the game – which could mean anything from outright and serious (life) threats to blackmail, if Tsipras would not play the game – and this to the detriment of the people.

President Tsipras’ betrayal of the people resulted in three bailout packages since 2010 and up to end 2018, in the amount of about €310 billion (US$ 360 billion). Compare this to Hong Kong’s economy of US$ 340 billion in 2017. In that same period the Greek GDP has declined from about US$ 300 billion (€ 270 billion) in 2010 to US$ 218 billion (€ 196 billion), a reduction of 27%, hitting the middle- and lower-class people by far the hardest. This is called a rescue.

The democracy fiasco of July 2015 prompted Tsipras to call for snap elections in September 2015, hélas – he won, with a narrow margin and one of the lowest election turnouts ever in Greek postwar history; but, yes, he ‘won’. How much of it was manipulated – by now Cambridge Analytica has become a household word – so he could finish the job for the troika and the German and French banks, is pure speculation.

Today, the ND has an absolute majority in Parliament, plus the ND could ally with a number of smaller and conservative parties to pursue a “people’s dream” line policy. But they may do the opposite. Question: How much more juice is there to be sucked out of broken Greece? Of a Greece that cannot care for her people, for her desperate poor and sick, cannot provide her children with a decent education, of a Greece that belongs into the category of bankruptcy? – Yes, bankruptcy, still today, after the IMF and the gnomes of the EU and the ECB predict a moderate growth rate of some 2%? – But 2% that go to whom? – Not to the people, to be sure, but to the creditors of the €310 billion.

Already in 2011, the British Lancet stated “the Greek Ministry of Health reported that the annual suicide rate has increased by 40%”, presumably since the (imposed) crisis that started in 2008. From this date forward the suicide rate must have skyrocketed, as the overall living conditions worsened exponentially. However, precise figures can no longer be easily found.

The question remains: Is the Greek population dying increasingly from diseases that could be cured, but aren’t due to austerity- and privatization-related lack of medication and health services – and of suicide from desperation? – Is Greece committing suicide by continuing accepting austerity and privatization of vital services, instead of liberating herself from the handcuffs of the euro and very likely the stranglehold of the EU? – Or is Greece the victim of sheer murder inflicted by a greed-driven construct of money institutions and oligarchs, who are beyond morals, beyond ethics and beyond any values of humanity? You be the judge.

Is the Indian School Education system prepared for the future?

Giri Shankar K

With the increasing pace of technological advances and globalisation rapidly taking over, India is all set to become the next hub for economic growth. Adding to this is a young population with an average age of 29 years, which puts India at an advantage. But is India’s human capital prepared to face the challenge? The role of education is crucial in this aspect, and it is high time that we rethink our approach towards necessary education policies. The focus here is on basic school education as it lays the foundation for an individual’s future and career and is also facing some severe problems. India’s education system is in dire need of a change right now than ever.

The government has indeed done a great job in establishing awareness of Right to Education among the masses. Nowadays, most parents are aware of school education being compulsory for children. But what they do not realise is the real benefit and importance of availing school education. Even school going children seem to be not very invested in attending school. The reason is that schools in India do not provide enough exposure to the children and their parents in terms of the long term benefits of education. This is especially common among families from Under-Represented Groups (URGs). As a result, children enrolling to schools are dropping out, and minimal efforts are made in stopping them from doing so.

This is where the Indian schooling system has failed. It has been unable to generate interest in learning among the students. The first thing that a school should teach a child is the art of learning, and everything else follows. But mechanistic, factual and rote learning is what is being done in schools. Also, too much emphasis on academic scores and minimal focus on co-curricular and extra-curricular activities such as arts, skills and physical education have pushed us into this worrisome situation.

By making school education compulsory for children within the age bracket of 6 to 14 years, our government had thought that it had solved the problem of illiteracy in India. And to the credit of the government, it did to an extent. According to the figures indicated in NITI Aayog, adult literacy in India stands at about 74%, which is one of the lowest among developing nations but is still an improvement over the last decade. But one also needs to look at how literacy is defined – “Literates are people above the age of 7 who can both read and write”.  This is what a child graduating primary school is capable of, and as a coincidence one can observe a sharp rise in the number of dropouts right after primary school.

It also brings us to another problem, which is that even school going children are not well versed in basic literacy and numeracy skills despite graduating primary school. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018 states that almost 30% of Class 8 students cannot read a Class 2 level text, which is alarming. The situation is even worse in the case of basic numeracy skills.

In the current education system, once a student gets left behind, there is little to no hope for them to catch up with their peers. This situation is further aggravated by the fact that there are also not enough teachers to teach the students. According to ASER 2018, the Pupil to Teacher Ratio for overall India is 57.8. The government should note that this is a huge employment opportunity sitting right in front of us and take necessary actions to recruit enough teachers for the betterment of everyone.

This begs the question, Has the education system in India achieved the goal that it had set out to achieve? If enrolling children to schools is the first step in achieving literacy, it has certainly achieved that. The government has solved the problems in the accessibility of education. But will that alone suffice in building a substantial human capital for our nation?

How can this situation improve?

Now is the time to focus on improving the quality of education across India. With the rapid advancements being made in the tech industry, there has arisen a high requirement for skilled individuals more than ever. Some steps to be taken in ensuring a quality education system in India and thus a better future are,

• Introducing children to interactive and interrogative methods of learning right from their nursery phase.
• Exposing students to different career paths right from primary school.
• Maintain the Pupil to Teacher ratio at an optimal level by recruiting and training new teachers. The quality and method of teaching should also be improved. Regular training modules should be designed to check and enhance teachers performance continuously.
• Evaluation should be based on the all-round development of children and should not be a way to measure a student by their scores.

The government should realise that it still has a long way to go in ensuring quality education for all and start making investments in improving school education in India.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin.

The National Education Policy Draft 2019 does bring in some hope in this aspect, such as the Emphasis on Early Childhood Education (Age 0 to 3 and Age 3 to 8),  Focus on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, Development of a Balanced Curriculum and Focus on hiring more local teachers. The vision set by the committee for the future of school education in India seems to be bright. But how it will accomplish these goals and generate the financing required for them are not laid out and remains to be seen.

Saudi Iranian rivalry polarises Nigerian Muslims

James M. Dorsey

A recent ban on a militant, Iranian-backed Shiite group raised the spectre of the Saudi Iranian rivalry spilling onto Nigerian streets as security forces launched a manhunt to find the alleged Boko Haram operatives who killed 65 people attending a funeral.

Nigeria, Africa’s foremost oil producer, banned the Iranian-backed Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) this weekend after demonstrations in the capital Abuja to free its leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky turned violent. At least six people were killed.

“The Saudis watching the Iranians trying to break into northern Nigeria is almost like watching someone else try to befriend your best friend,” said Ini Dele-Adedeji, a Nigerian academic at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, referring to the region’s religious elites that have aligned themselves with the kingdom.

Saudi cables released in 2015 by WikiLeaks reveal concern about Iranian-funded Shiite expansion in West African and Sahel nations including Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Nigeria.

Mr. Dele-Adedji said Saudi and Iranian funding was “on the surface…about these countries helping out with ‘charitable work’ activities. But beyond that it’s also a way for those countries to almost create extensions of themselves.”

Mr. El-Zakzaky, a Sunni Muslim student activist inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, initially agitated for a repeat in his native Nigeria. When that didn’t work, Mr. El-Zakzaky went to Iran, converted to Shiism, and started wearing the white turban of a Shiite cleric.

Returning home in the 1990s, he became the leader of the Islamic Movement and turned it into a vehicle for proselytizing and gaining followers.

Things got out of hand when Nigerian troops killed hundreds of Shiites in the ancient university town of Zaria in December 2015 and arrested Mr. El-Zakzaky and hundreds of his followers. The army accused the Shiite group of attempting to kill Nigeria’s army chief-of-staff, a charge the movement denies.

Iran has been funding Mr. El-Zakzaky for years and the area of Zaria he worked in became the “mecca for the dispossessed in Nigeria,” according to Matthew Page, a former U.S. State Department specialist on Nigeria. The Islamic Movement has been receiving about $10,000 a month from Iran, he estimated.

Mr. El-Zakzaky used the money to fund soup kitchens and homeless shelters, Mr. Page said. “This was a very inexpensive way for Iran to have a toehold in Nigeria,” he said.

Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of London-based consultants Cornerstone Global Associates estimated that Mr. El-Zakzaky’s organization operates more than 300 schools, Islamic centres, a newspaper, guards and a “martyrs’ foundation.” The network is similar to welfare systems established elsewhere by Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups.

The Nigerian government first declared the Islamic Movement a security threat in 2017, comparing it with the Boko Haram insurgency, according to Nigerian diplomats.

Peregrino Brimah, a trained medical doctor who teaches biology, anatomy and physiology at colleges in New York never gave much thought while growing up in Nigeria to the fact that clerics increasingly were developing links to Saudi Arabia.

“You could see the money, the big ones were leading the good life, they ran scholarship programs. In fact, I was offered a scholarship to study at King Fahd University in Riyadh. I never thought about it until December 2015 when up to a 1,000 Shiites were killed by the military in northern Nigeria. Since I started looking at it, I’ve realized how successful, how extraordinarily successful the Wahhabis have been.” Mr. Brimah said.

He decided to stand up for Shiite rights after the incident in which the military arrested Mr. El-Zakzaky.

The Nigerian military said that it had attacked sites in Zaria after hundreds of Shia demonstrators had blocked a convoy of Nigeria’s army chief General Tukur Yusuf Buratai in an effort to kill him.

Military police said Shiites had crawled through tall grass towards General Buratai’s convoy “with the intent to attack the vehicle with [a] petrol bomb” while others “suddenly resorted to firing gunshots from the direction of the mosque.”

A phone call to Nigerian President Mohammed Buhari in which King Salman expressed his support for the government’s fight against terrorist groups was widely seen as Saudi endorsement of the military’s crackdown on the country’s Shiite minority.

The state-owned Saudi Press Agency quoted King Salman as saying that Islam condemned such “criminal acts” and that the kingdom in a reference to Iran opposed foreign interference in Nigeria.

Mr. Brimah’s defense of the Shiites has cost him dearly, illustrating the degree to which Saudi-funded ultra-conservatism and Iranian agitation has altered Nigerian society.

“I lost everything I had built on social media the minute I stood up for the Shiites. I had thousands of fans. Suddenly, I was losing 2-300 followers a day. My brother hasn’t spoken to me since. The last thing he said to me is: ‘how can you adopt Shiite ideology?’ I raised the issue in a Sunni chat forum. It became quickly clear that these attitudes were not accidental. They are the product of Saudi-sponsored teachings of serious hatred. People don’t understand what they are being taught. They rejoice when a thousand Shiites are killed. Even worse is the fact that they hate people like me who stand up for the Shiites even more than they hate the Shiite themselves,” Mr. Brimah said.

In response to Mr. Brimah’s writing about the clash, General Buratai invited him for a chat. Mr. Brimah politely declined. When Mr. Brimah reiterated his accusation, General Buratai’s spokesman, Colonel SK Usman, adopting the Saudi line of Shiites being Iranian stooges, accused the scientist of being on the Islamic republic’s payroll.

“Several of us hold you in high esteem based on perceived honesty, intellectual prowess and ability to speak your mind. That was before, but the recent incident…and subsequent events and actions by some groups and individuals such as you made one to have a rethink. I was quite aware of your concerted effort to smear the good name and reputation of the Chief of Army Staff to the extent of calling for his resignation,” Colonel Usman said in an email to Mr. Brimah that the activist shared with this writer.

General Buratai “went out of his way to write to you and even invited you for constructive engagement. But because you have dubious intents, you cleverly refused…. God indeed is very merciful for exposing you. Let me make it abundantly clear to you that your acts are not directed to the person of the Chief of Army Staff, they have far reaching implication on our national security. Please think about it and mend your ways and refund whatever funds you coveted for the campaign of calumny,” Colonel Usman said.

Mr. Brimah’s inbox has since then been inundated with anti-Shiite, anti-Iranian writings in what he believes is a military-inspired campaign.

Mr. Brimah’s predicament reflects the fallout of the Saudi Iranian rivalry in West Africa as a result of Saudi and Iranian funding that has let the genie of intolerance, discrimination and bigotry out of the bottle.

Issoufou Yahaya, in the Sahel state of Niger, recalls his student days in the 1980s when there wasn’t a single mosque on his campus. “Today, we have more mosques here than we have lecture rooms. So much has changed in such a short time,” he said.

The Western Alliance is Falling Apart

Peter Koenig

Ever since Imran Khan became the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 2018, the winds have changed. While his predecessors, though generally leaning eastwards, have often wavered between the US and the China orbit, Khan is in the process of clearly defining his alliances with the east, in particular China. This is for the good of his country, for the good of the Middle East, and eventually for the good of the world.

A few days ago, RT reported that China, in addition to the expansion of the new port in Gwadar, Balochistan, has entered agreements with Pakistan to build a military / air base in Pakistan, a new  Chinese city for some half a million people, as well as several road and railway improvement projects, including a highway connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore, reconstruction of the Karakoram Highway, linking Hasan Abdal to the Chinese border, as well as upgrading the Karachi-Peshwar main railway to be completed by the end of 2019, for trains to travel up to 160km / hour.

This rehabilitation of dilapidated Pakistani transportation infrastructure is not only expected to contribute between 2% and 3% of Pakistan’s future GDP, but it offers also another outlet for Iranian gas / hydrocarbons, other than through the Strait of Hurmuz – for example, by rail to the new port of Gwadar which, by the way, is also a new Chinese naval base. From Gwadar Iranian hydrocarbon cargos can be shipped everywhere, including to China, Africa and India.With the new China-built transportation infrastructure Iranian gas can also be shipped overland to China.

In fact, these infrastructure developments, plus several electric power production projects, still mostly fed by fossil fuel, to resolve Pakistani’s chronic energy shortage, are part of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also, called the New Silk Road. They are a central part of the new so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which was first designed in 2015 during a visit by China’s President Xi Jinping, when some 51 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) worth then some US$ 46 billion were signed. Pakistan is definitely out of the US orbit.

Today, in the CPEC implementation phase, the projects planned or under construction are estimated at over US$ 60 billion. An estimated 80% are direct investments with considerable Pakistani participation and 20% Chinese concessionary debt. Clearly, Pakistan has become a staunch ally of China – and this to the detriment of the US role in the Middle East.

Washington’s wannabe hegemony over the Middle East is fading rapidly. See also Michel Chossudovsky’s detailed analysis “US Foreign Policy in Shambles: NATO and the Middle East. How Do You Wage War Without Allies?”.

A few days ago, Germany has refused Washington’s request to take part in a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz, under the pretext to secure hydrocarbon shipments through this Iran-controlled narrow water way. In reality it is more like a new weaponizing of waterways, by controlling who ships what to whom – and applying “sanctions” by blocking or outright pirating of tankers destined for western ‘enemy’ territories.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announced last Wednesday in Warsaw, Poland, that there “cannot be a military solution” to the current crisis in the Persian Gulf and that Berlin will turn down Washington’s request to join the US, British and French operation “aimed at protecting sea traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and combating so-called “Iranian aggression.”

This idea of the Washington war hawks was conceived after Iran’s totally legal seizure of the British-flagged Stena Impero oil tanker, after it rammed an Iranian fishing boat a couple of weeks ago. However, nothing is said about the totally illegal and US-ordered British piracy of the Iranian super tanker Grace I off the coast of Gibraltar in Spanish waters (another infraction of international law), weeks earlier. While Grace I’screw in the meantime has been released, the tanker is still under British capture, but western media remain silent about it, but lambast Iran for seizing a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

Germany remains committed to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), from which the United States unilaterally withdrew a year ago, and Germany will therefore not intervene on behalf of the US.

Add to this Turkey – a key NATO member both for her strategic location and NATO’s actual military might established in Turkey – moving ever closer to the east, and becoming a solid ally of Russia, after having ignored Washington’s warnings against Turkey’s purchasing of Russian S-400 cutting-edge air defense systems. For “sleeping with the enemy” – i.e. moving ever closer to Russia, the US has already punished Turkey’s economy by manipulating her currency to fall by about 40% since the beginning of 2018. Turkey is also a candidate to become a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and so is Iran.

Turkey has become a de facto lame duck as a NATO member and may soon officially exit NATO which would be a tremendous blow to the North Atlantic Alliance – and may tempt other European NATO nations to do likewise. Probably not overnight, but the idea of an ever more defunct NATO is planted.

All indications are that the future, economically and security wise – is in the East.
even Europe may eventually ‘dare’ making the jump towards better relations with primarily Russia and Central Asia and eventually with China.

And that especially if and when Brexit happens – which is by no means a sure thing. Just in case, the UK has already prepared bilateral trade relations with China, ready to be signed – if and when – the UK exits the EU.

Will the UK, another staunch US ally, jump ship? – Unlikely. But dancing on two weddings simultaneously is a customary Anglo-Saxon game plan. The Brits must have learned it from their masters in Washington, who in turn took the lessons from the Brits as colonial power for centuries, across the Atlantic.

Western, US-led war on Iran is therefore unlikely. There is too much at stake, and especially, there are no longer any reliable allies in the region. Remember, allies – shall we call them puppets or peons, are normally doing the dirty work for Washington.

So, threatening, warning and annoying provocations by the US with some of its lasting western allies may continue for a while. It makes for good propaganda. After all, packing up and going home is not exactly Uncle Sam’s forte. The western alliance is no longer what it used to be. In fact, it is in shambles. And Iran knows it.

Sex Workers in India – Life in a “Gutter”

Tanya Kumar

Last month, while researching on Sex Worker’s rights movements in India for an academic project, I came across some extremely disturbing incidents mentioned by VAMP (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad) and other online articles describing the plight of Sex Worker’s in our country. One of the most glaring incidents mentioned by them was of a sex worker with speech and hearing impairment who was detained at an observation home after a brothel raid, who requested a judge to let her go home and the judge snarkily responded in open court saying “a woman who has come from the gutter, wants to return to the gutter?”.

In a system which is so biased against sex workers where they are refused basic access to healthcare and police protection, if the judiciary also treats them in a demeaning manner, where are we headed?The role of the judiciary in India is to protect the constitutional rights of citizens and enforce the rule of law. Does a community suffering from the burden of stigmatization not deserve the fundamental rights of equality before law and right to protection of civil rights? The treatment of this community is testament to the fact that our dream of achieving an egalitarian and liberal society is at a distant horizon.

State of the Women in Sex Work

According to the National AIDS Control Organization, there are 800,000 women in sex work in India officially and the unofficial numbers are definitely much higher. This large section of society faces widespread stigmatization and social exclusion in the following ways:

1. Violence – The marginalization of sex workers due to the perception of them being social miscreants and their actions being unlawful has led to this community being extremely vulnerable to violent crimes. Due to the nature of their job, they are not even protected under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The following stats from a survey of 3000 sex workers conducted by CASAM, SANGRAM, MASUM and VAMP organisations of India, clearly show the extent of the problem
2. Police Mistreatment – The police in most cases due to their personal biases mistreat sex workers and wrongfully arrest and detain them after brothel raids or for public nuisance or obscene conduct which are provisions in the Indian Penal Code. This is followed by instances of police violence as we can see in the same survey of these 3000 women
3. Denial of Labour Protection Rights – Even though sex work is not illegal, it is not recognized as a profession under the Indian Law. This leads to them being deprived of basic rights such as minimum wages, unionization rights, health and safety regulations, legal redressal systems and protection from exploitation.
4. Denial of Healthcare Access – The health problem of STDs and HIV/AIDS is widespread in this community. Hence, they not only deserve but also require free/affordable healthcare to prevent and treat these diseases. However, most women have reported hostility from public hospitals and the stigma towards these diseases is further blocking the required penetration required to reach these women. National AIDS Control Organization and its partners have been attempting to reach out to this community however, it requires much more support and de-stigmatization to be successful.
5. Denial of Access to Justice – The police, justice system, labour protection, women rights committees have all been failing the sex worker’s community and instead of providing them a safe space to complain about violence, exploitation, and other rights infringements, the system itself harasses these women through wrongful detention and mistreatment

Working towards the Problem

There are organizations such as VAMP, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC),SANGRAM (Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha) etc., who have been working towards protecting the rights of these women and bringing the community together to create a united voice and a collective which can demand their right to healthcare, purchasing houses, alternate employment opportunities and fair and just treatment by the police.

Most of these movements have been aimed at separating the association of human trafficking and sex work. Human trafficking and forcing women into sex work through trafficking is a criminal offence. However, this is a separate issue and needs to be dealt with at a policing level. Sex work in itself is not a criminal offence, however, due to this association and societal stigmatization it is treated as one. Most of these women are victims of societal mistreatment rather than trafficking. They are ones who have moved into the profession voluntarily and to earn a livelihood. Hence, they do not want to be treated as victims and just want equal rights as the rest of society. The treatment of the sex worker by the judge as mentioned at the beginning of the article portrays how their profession is looked down upon to an extent where they are not treated as human beings at all. This results in unnecessary police detention, misguided rehabilitation and mistreatment of sex workers after brothel raids.

The only way forward is for the system to start recognizing them as citizens of India with rights. If the government can ensure they have identification documents, ration cards and other social entitlements through registrations, they can be protected in the same sphere as labourers are. Steps should be taken to ensure their participation in policy making in order to amend backward laws that affect sex workers and move towards decriminalizing related activities to sex work which result in the harassment of sex workers. Violence against sex workers should be dealt with severely and mechanisms need to be in place to ensure their access to the justice system. And lastly, there needs to be a collective which can stand together and hold the government accountable if this community is deprived of any of the above rights.

Can Recycling Really Solve The Plastic Problem?

Meena Miriam Yust & Arshad M. Khan

The practice of recycling has everything to commend it:  On a finite planet, it conserves resources; it is meretricious allowing us, as it does, to pin a mental merit badge on our chests as we ready the assigned recycling bin once a week; and it is an activity that is all good.  We are saving the planet, albeit in a small way, from some of the excesses of the developed world.  And when everyone does their share, the impact has to be unavoidably significant.  Right.  Or, does it?

If we examine what we recycle, that is paper, glass, metal cans and plastic, the junk mail and other paper discarded is the most copious but plastic is close.  Almost all of it used to go to the developed world’s great recycling bin in the east … China.  It absorbed some 95 percent of EU recyclable waste and 70 percent from the US.  But China began to grow its own domestic garbage with the growth of its economy.  The consequences have not been unexpected.  China announced a new policy in 2018, named inexplicably National Sword, banning the import of most recyclables, particularly plastics and contaminated materials.

Since then China’s import of such recyclables has fallen 99 percent.  Needless to say, metals and glass are not as seriously affected.  For the American recycling industry, it has been a major earthquake.  First, about 25 percent of recyclables are contaminated and not recyclable.  Then there are plastic bags.  Not only are these, too, not recyclable but they tend to jam up sorting machinery.

The sorting of waste sent to China had been taken over by families in port side communities.  It became their livelihood, retrieving whatever fetched a price and dumping the rest.  Piling up in ad hoc landfills, it washed down waterways into the ocean.  They were not the only culprits.  Thus we have had the phenomenon of whales being washed up dead, starved because stomachs were full of plastic — 88 pounds densely packed in the stomach of one found in the Philippines and 50 pounds inside another in Sardinia.  China’s ban on waste imports has been followed by Malaysia and Vietnam.  In March of this year, India joined them.

As the outlets for their waste disappear and as most of the plastics are not recycled, self-reliance has been forced upon developed countries.  All to the good for the environment, because it will also curtail the use of plastics out of necessity.  The truth is only a fraction of plastic waste is recyclable, generally the white transparent bottles of which some are preferred.  Most ends up in landfills.  A 2017 study in  Science Advances determined that 90% of plastics ever produced are still in the environment.  Yet in the past six decades an estimated 8 billion tons have been produced.  Moreover, the usage trend is upwards and in 2014 some 311 million tons were produced worldwide.

There is though a small movement to restore reusable bottles, and a company called Loop Industries may be on the right track. Their founders announced at the World Economic Forum in 2019 that they aim to return to the milkman model, reusing bottles for everything from edibles to shampoo and detergent. Loop has partnered with Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, PepsiCo, and other large companies.  Perhaps, if we all return to the milk bottle model of the 1950s  — refilling containers to be used again — there may be greater hope for the planet.  The good news is, some towns and states have already banned single-use plastic bottles.

Another intriguing possibility is to use the millions of tons of crustacean shells discarded.  Scientists are now able to extract chitin and chitosan from shrimp and lobster shells.  Still in the research stage, the process has to be made industrially feasible, and there are also problems with hazardous waste as it uses potent chemicals like sodium hydroxide.  Biodegradable chitin and chitosan can be used as plastic substitutes to make surfboards and anti-microbial food packaging.  Scotland-based CuanTec has developed a bacterial method that has eliminated 95 percent of the sodium hydroxide and also cut energy use by a third as the bacteria do all the work.  They use shells from the langoustines common in northern Europe, and have already signed a contract with the large UK supermarket chain Waitrose to supply flexible film for packaging fish.  The film’s antibacterial properties extend fish shelf life by three days.

An unexpected and more insidious source of plastic pollution is synthetic clothing.  Researchers have determined that acrylic clothing may release more than 700,000 plastic fibers in a single wash.  Polyester releases about 500,000 fibers, and a poly-cotton blend releases about 137,000.  These fibers end up in the water we drink and the fish we eat.  Making matters worse is the presence of microplastic at depths up to the 1000 meters, investigated by Choy et al in the deep waters of Monterey Bay using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).  The ROV collected the samples at ten different depths.  Maximum pollution was found, surprisingly, not at the surface but from 200 to 600 meters below.  They also collected red crabs and found plastics in the gastrointestinal tract.  Giant “sinkers,” the particle filtering mucous houses used for feeding by larvaceans and discarded after use, were collected at depths ranging from 251 to 2967 meters to overlap and extend the range of the research.  All contained microplastics.   Clearly, ridding the oceans of plastic pollution is an almost unsurmountable problem.

Japanese manufacturers have come up with a washing machine filter to catch microfibers, which may provide some aid if more widely distributed.  Yet we still do not know the efficacy of such devices.  Curbing the problem at the source is still the most sensible if we wish to sustain the planet.  It is up to us.

Returning to the cheap, convenient and  therefore ubiquitous plastic bags, there is hope for now there are several different types:  the most common are conventional plastic bags, then there are compostable bags designed to be recycled in industrial composters, biodegradable bags, and two types of oxo-biodegradable bags.  The latter degrade in open landscapes or on water surfaces like oceans.  None degrade too well in landfills.  There is, however,  another problem with compostable biodegradales:  to repel water and oil these have in them perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances in which an hydrogen atom has been replaced by fluorine.  Known as PFAS, these persistent chemicals leach out of the plastic and remain in the compost to be absorbed by plants and later by humans to accumulate in their bodies.

However, it’s back to landfills for the non-recyclables.  In 2015, the US alone produced 34.5 million tons (or 13 percent of total municipal solid waste) of plastic waste from which a small fraction (9 percent or 3.1 million tons) was recycled, 5.4 million tons was incinerated with energy recovery and about 26 million tons ended up in landfills.  Burning reduces volume by 87 percent.  However, open burning produces pollutants including dangerous dioxins, so safe combustion requires a contained environment.

Unless there is a change, the plastic problem appears likely to keep growing.  In 1950, the world produced only about 2 million tons compared to over 300 million tons in present times.  The UN has taken a first step by adding plastic waste to the Basel agreement on hazardous waste — 187 countries have signed up, the US under the Trump administration remains an exception.

Engineering institutions have become aware of the problem and are educating their young members.  As reported in their July 2019 issue of IET Member News, the British electrical engineering professional body has two competitions sponsored by Greenpeace and Greenseas.  For the Greenpeace prize, teams have to come up with methods, technologies and alternative delivery systems to reduce plastic packaging in supermarkets.  And the Greenseas challenge requires competitors to develop a robotic machine to clear beaches of plastic cigarette stubs.  The machine has to be large enough to collect a reasonable amount and painted brightly to attract attention and inform the public of the problem.  Then there is OceanX Group, headed by a young engineer, that is developing automated monitoring and cleanup technology to remove plastic from waterways and better to detect sources.  It employs artificial intelligence including drones.

The inescapable upshot of all of this is a need for education.  Sorting recyclables initially and disposing non-recyclable material into the curbside waste bin could save energy later, and many man-hours.  Changes in the kind of plastic material produced may also help.  For instance, just reducing the coloring used in plastic bottles eases recycling as these additives are expensive to remove.  Also tax incentives for manufacturers can only aid recycling efforts.  However, the now evident danger to the food chain begs including the cost of safe disposal (like controlled combustion for example) in the price of items.  Above all, the total amount of plastic generated can no longer keep increasing; it has to be reduced.

German auto supplier Eisenmann files for bankruptcy

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

The worldwide decline in sales in the auto industry has claimed its next victim. On Monday, auto supplier Eisenmann filed for bankruptcy for itself and its subsidiaries. The family-owned company in Baden-Württemberg employs 3,000 workers at 27 locations in 15 countries, 1,400 in Germany, most of these at its headquarters in Böblingen near Stuttgart.

The bankruptcy was predictable; employees’ last monthly salaries were allegedly not paid. Workers reported learning about the bankruptcy in the mail.

Eisenmann is one of the world's leading manufacturers of paint shops and light tunnels for quality control in the automotive industry. Its customers include Italian luxury manufacturer Lamborghini, California electric car manufacturer Tesla and German manufacturer Daimler AG. Eisenmann had received an order to build a plant in Kecskemet, Hungary, for the German car manufacturer, but the factory expansion was suspended because of poor sales figures.

On Tuesday, Daimler denied rumours, according to which this had played an important role in the Eisenmann insolvency, “Contrary to other reports, Daimler AG has not cancelled any orders with the Eisenmann company. Daimler has been in contact with Eisenmann's management for months and has responded to the request for support.”

Earlier this week, business daily Handelsblatt reported that Eisenmann had “overstretched” itself in some major projects, which led to high losses in 2018. In addition, the company had accepted orders at giveaway prices, in the face of fierce competition. This was now reaping its revenge.

Figures for 2018 are not yet available, but in 2017 sales had already slumped from 862 to 723 million euros. Now they are thought to have fallen even further.

“We had to act quickly and consistently here,” said Managing Director Michael Keppel, responsible for the restructuring. The Eisenmann family and the lenders are supporting the chosen path. Two years ago, the family had negotiated with a Chinese investor on the sale of the company. The talks were said to have been broken off in autumn 2017 because ideas about the purchase price had drifted far apart.

The family owners are now trying to use the bankruptcy process to divest shares, reduce jobs and worsen working conditions. The company says it is focusing on its core business and wants “to promote the strategic realignment of the Eisenmann Group with the restructuring in the context of the insolvency proceedings, in order to return to a profitable business as soon as possible,” said Keppel.

Eisenmann is now looking for a strategic partner for its established business in paint shops for the auto industry, Keppel said on Monday evening. “The first interested parties have already contacted us.”

But it is still unclear whether the Eisenmann Group will be completely broken up. Competitors, like neighbouring Dürr AG, are already rubbing their hands. The publicly traded company had also started “restructuring measures” in the spring due to weaker earnings expectations.

Dürr had placed adverts to attract engineers, especially from Eisenmann. “We hope to be able to better fill our vacancies now,” Handelsblatt quoted a Dürr spokesman saying. He also said, “If an automaker needs help with ongoing projects because of the Eisenmann bankruptcy, we are ready.”

Although Dürr had also issued a profit warning recently, it still expects a return of between 5.5 and 6 percent.

The Eisenmann insolvency casts a spotlight on the entire automotive industry. Production is down five percent worldwide. China, the largest automotive market in the world, which has been the great hope of manufacturers so far, is now seeing a continued decline. In the first half of 2019, new car sales fell by 14 percent compared to the previous year.

Just two weeks ago, Opel had announced it was slashing another 1,100 posts in Rüsselsheim, Eisenach and Kaiserslautern. Last week, Japan’s Nissan group announced a reduction of 12,500 jobs worldwide. At the end of June, Ford announced 12,000 redundancies and five plant closures in Europe by the end of 2029. Since the beginning of the year, General Motors has announced 14,000 layoffs, Volkswagen 7,000, Jaguar 4,500 and Tesla 3,000. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Last autumn, a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), associated with the Social Democratic Party, concluded that a hasty conversion of production to electro-mobility in the German auto industry would threaten 600,000 jobs and ruin a large proportion of the suppliers.

Handelsblatt reports that in this situation, declining payment practices in the auto industry were also aggravating the situation. For less liquid and smaller companies like Eisenmann, this could lead to payment difficulties or even insolvency.

Eisenmann is not the first and will not be the last victim of the global economic slowdown. Jobs are also being cut at other suppliers. 6,00 jobs at Marquardt are to be relocated abroad. Tire manufacturer Continental plans to close its plant in Oppenweiler, and filter specialist Mann und Hummel wants to cut 1,200 jobs worldwide.

The head of the automotive supplier Mahle, Jörg Stratmann, has announced that nearly 400 jobs will be cut at the Stuttgart base and the plant in Öhringen will be closed by the end of 2020, hitting 240 employees. Further plant closures could not be ruled out, he said.

Precision parts supplier Schaeffler announced the reduction of 900 jobs months ago. Goodyear-Dunlop plans to cut 1,100 jobs in Hanau and Fulda. Bosch is also planning massive job cuts. Most recently, Baden-Württemberg-based Weber Automotive, a company with 1,500 workers, filed for bankruptcy.

According to the IG Metall trade union, in the southwest, the centre of the German automotive industry, one in two companies are facing “cost reductions.” “The signs are piling up that many companies want to shape the changes of the future with concepts from yesterday,” local IG Metall district chief Roman Zitzelsberger said, only in the same breath to play down the seriousness of the situation confronting workers. There was no reason to paint things black, after years of boom, the industry was now entering a “phase of normalization” the union official said.

However, IG Metall and its works council representatives are not content just keeping workers quiet in the factories, they are themselves working out plans for social cuts and dismissals and enforcing them against the workforce.

With its demand for a “transformation short-time working allowance”, the IG Metall is currently preparing mass redundancies in the automotive and component supply industry. This was also the aim of the mass demonstration in Berlin at the end of June, which the IG Metall had called on the slogan #FairChange. This was to make clear to industry and government that the impending attacks can only be enforced jointly with the union and its 50,000 works council representatives and 80,000 shop stewards.

In a flyer for this demo, the Sozialistiche Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) wrote, “Workers around the world confront the same multinational corporations and financial interests. Therefore, they must not be divided. They can only defend their rights and achievements by coordinating their struggles internationally. This requires a break with the unions and the formation of independent action committees. These must organize the fight against factory closures, layoffs and redundancies and build links with workers at other sites and countries.”

UK housing crisis: 630,000 young people face homelessness in retirement

Alice Summers 

Hundreds of thousands of young people in the UK risk homelessness when they retire because they will be unable to afford skyrocketing private rental costs.

A lack of social housing and the inability of many young people to get onto the property ladder mean that at least 630,000 millennials—those born between 1981 and 1996—will be unable to find affordable rented accommodation when they stop working.

According to an official report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People, the number of people still renting when they retire is set to increase more than three times, from 450,000 today to over 1.5 million in 2046.

Around half of these households will be unable to afford the rent they could manage before they retired, as income typically halves after retirement. This means that those in the private rental sector, who pay a large proportion of their income on rent, may see this doubled as a proportion of income to unaffordable levels.

In England, the average private renter pays some 27 percent of his or her monthly income on housing costs. This rises to a massive 49 percent for those living in London, with some boroughs, such as Hackney, seeing private tenants paying, on average, 83 percent of their income on rent.

The problem of high rental costs as a proportion of salary does not impact all sections of the population equally, but weighs far more heavily on the working class. While the top decile of earners in England pay an average of 20 percent of their income on private rent, those with an income in the second to last decile pay an average of 45 percent of their income, rocketing up to 64 percent for the lowest tenth of earners.

With the loss of income that comes with retirement, these housing costs will be out of reach for many, especially the poorest, putting hundreds of thousands of pensioners at risk of homelessness.

The report also predicts that the number of older households living in unsuitable or unfit private rented accommodation could rocket from around 56,000 today to 188,000 in 20 years’ time, and to 236,500 in 30 years, in what it calls an “inevitable catastrophe for the pensioners of tomorrow.”

As older people are increasingly unable to afford good-quality and appropriate housing, more and more vulnerable elderly pensioners will be forced into substandard accommodation, with dire consequences for their health and well-being. Poor quality housing is known to have directly caused the deaths of thousands of older people.

According to a 2018 study by the charity organisation National Energy Action, some 36,000 deaths over the last five years, mostly of older people, can be attributed to conditions related to living in a cold home. A further 17,000 people are estimated to have died as a direct result of fuel poverty. This is the second-worst rate of unnecessary winter deaths of 30 countries in Europe, beaten only by Ireland.

The crisis facing the elderly will only be exacerbated as more and more people are unable to afford suitable accommodation.

The ever-rising cost of housing, poor employment prospects and increasing debt mean that many young people today are unlikely to ever buy their own home, and will be forced to shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds in rent to private landlords over the course of their lifetime.

Millennials are roughly half as likely to possess their own home as the same age group in the 1980s. At the peak of home ownership in 1989, 50.8 percent of young people between the ages of 25 and 34 owned their own home. This compares to only 27.7 percent of this age group in 2018, a figure that has crept up marginally over the last couple of years.

But such is the housing crisis faced by millennials that 3.4 million young people aged between 20 and 34 are unable even to rent their own homes, instead having to continue living with their parents. This figure has increased in absolute terms by 1 million people in two decades, as well as increasing as a proportion of the population from 19.48 percent in 1997 to 25.91 percent in 2017.

While the comparison between millennials and previous generations is useful in marking the significant decline in conditions for the working class as a whole, millennials as a generation are divided by class just as are all generations.

According to a study by the Resolution Foundation, young adults from wealthier backgrounds are far more likely to own their own home than their poorer peers. While the home ownership rate of 20- to 35-year olds whose parents have no property wealth is only 11 percent, 37 percent of this age group whose parents are in the top third of the property wealth distribution own their own house.

At the age of 30, young people whose parents do not possess any property wealth are about 60 percent less likely to be homeowners themselves, the study found.

The extent of this class divide is well demonstrated by the increasing rates of second home ownership, both among older generations and millennials. According to a second report by the Resolution Foundation, the number of British people who own a second home, buy-to-let or overseas property has increased by 53 percent since 2001. While the home ownership rate is falling across all age groups, one in ten (5.5 million) people in the UK now own a second home, with the value of this additional property wealth increasing from around £610 billion in 2001 to £941 billion in 2014-16 (the latest period for which figures are available).

But while young people today are far less likely to own their own home than previous generations were at their age, the report found that younger generations are matching their additional property ownership rates, with 7 percent of those born in the 1960s and those born in the 1980s owning additional property by the age of 29.

This indicates that millennial property wealth, like the property wealth of older generations, is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the rich, the report noted.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People report calls for a national strategy to avoid a “crisis of pensioner homelessness,” with at least 38,000 new rental homes being built specifically for older people.

This will do virtually nothing to alleviate the housing crisis blighting the UK.

Access to decent and affordable housing is a basic social right, but under capitalism it is increasingly unavailable. Only a socialist reorganisation of society can satisfy the desperate and growing need for decent housing for all.

The never-ending austerity programme of the ruling class and all of its political parties, which has plunged millions into poverty over the last decade, exacerbating the housing crisis, must be reversed and billions allocated to provide decent-paying jobs, free and high-quality health care, housing, education and social services for all. The wealth of the billionaires must be expropriated to help meet these social needs, along with the nationalisation of the major corporations and their transformation into democratically-controlled public utilities.