Dear Friend,
While the country is drowned in reports about Covid-19, this news did not so much attract the attention of people. We celebrate the World Press Freedom Day with a report on this issue. The Indian media, known for its sensationalism did not somehow highlight it, nor gave it the coverage it deserved. Like so many events, Covid-19 came to the rescue of the government, in covering up the information. RTI helped in this case, but media minimized the damage to the Modi regime, as much as it could.
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Binu Mathew
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Over Rs 68,600-crore loans of wilful defaulters written off, says RBI
by Countercurrents Collective
While the country is drowned in reports about Covid-19, this news did not so much attract the attention of people. We celebrate the World Press Freedom Day with a report on this issue. The Indian media, known for its sensationalism did not somehow highlight it, nor gave it the coverage it deserved. Like so many events, Covid-19 came to the rescue of the government, in covering up the information. RTI helped in this case, but media minimized the damage to the Modi regime, as much as it could.
That is the title of a Report by business-standard.com, April 29, 2020.
While the country is drowned in reports about Covid-19, this news did not so much attract the attention of people. We celebrate the World Press Freedom Day with a report on this issue.
The Indian media, known for its sensationalism did not somehow highlight it, nor gave it the coverage it deserved. Like so many events, Covid-19 came to the rescue of the government, in covering up the information. RTI helped in this case, but media minimized the damage to the Modi regime, as much as it could.
Indian banks have written off Rs 68,607 crore of debt of top 50 willful defaulters till September 30, 2019, said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in response to a petition filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The list of top 10 is given at the end of this report.
The RTI query was filed by Saket Gokhale (photo below), an activist, on March 19 this year, and he received the list on April 24. It lists defaulters till September 30 last year, which means either the RBI did not update the list, or further willful defaults above Rs. 5 crore did not happen in this period to update.
The activist was seeking “details of the 50 top wilful defaulters and their current loan status till February 16.”
The RBI said the amount (Rs 68,607 crore) comprises outstanding and the amounts technically/prudentially written off till September 30, 2019.
The RBI reply thus lists defaulters till September 30 last year, which means either the RBI did not update the list, or further willful defaults above Rs 5 crore did not happen in this period to update, reported business-standard.com.
“The apex bank also declined to provide the relevant information on overseas borrowers citing a Supreme Court judgement of December 16, 2015,” Gokhale told IANS.
“I filed this RTI because Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur had refused to reply to this starred question asked in the Parliament by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi in the last Budget Session on February 16,” Gokhale told IANS.
Disclosing what the government didn”t reveal, the RBI”s Central Public Information Officer Abhay Kumar provided the replies on April 24, with several startling revelations in the ”diamond-studded list”, said Gokhale :
Six among the 50 top wilful defaulters are connected with the glittering diamond and/or gold jewellery industries, reported IANS. This sector is mostly concentrated in Gujarat, the home state of PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, it may be noted.
Topping the list is Choksi”s scam-hit company, Gitanjali Gems Limited, which owed Rs.5,492 crore, besides other group companies, Gili India Ltd and Nakshatra Brands Ltd, which had taken loans of Rs 1,447 crore and Rs 1,109 crore, respectively. Thus this Group’s amount adds up to Rs 8048 cr.
Choksi is currently a citizen of Antigua & Barbados Isles, while his nephew and another absconder diamond trader Nirav Modi is in London.
Jatin Mehta’s Winsome Diamonds & Jewellery was owing Rs 4,076 crore. Harish R. Mehta’s Ahmedabad-based Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds Pvt. Ltd. owed Rs.,1962 crore.
Baba Ramdev is also on the list who owes Rs 2,212 crores. Absconder liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s dead Kingfisher Airlines Ltd. is also on the list owing Rs 1,943 crore.
Here’s the list of fugitive economic offenders who are residing abroad, according to thenews21.com : Pushpesh Baid, Ashish Jobanputra, Vijay Mallya, Sunny Kalra, Sanjay Kalra, SK Kalra, Aarti Kalra, Varsha Kalra, Jatin Mehta, Umesh Parekh, Kamlesh Parekh, Nilesh Parekh, Eklavya Garg, Vinay Mittal, Nirav Modi, Neeshal Modi, Mehul Choksi.
“I asked a straight question in Parliament – state the names of the 50 top bank loan defaulters in the country. The finance minister refused to answer the question. Now the RBI has given the names of Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and many of BJP’s ‘friends’ in the list of bank frauds. That is why this truth was held back from Parliament,” Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.
“A majority of them have defaulted prominent nationalist banks over the past several years and many of them are either absconding or facing action by various probe agencies and some are under litigation,” Gokhale said.
No industry however is sacrosanct as the top 50 willful defaulters are spread across various sectors of the economy including IT, infrastructure, power, gold-diamond jewellery, pharma, etc.
‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ :
It was the same activist, it may be recalled, who had asked, on December 26 , 2019, about the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’.In a reply, dated January 20, 2020, The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that it has “no information” concerning the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’ — a term that has been used a number of times by PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to attack opponents.
In his RTI application, Saket Gokhle said Home Minister “Amit Shah addressed a public event in New Delhi, and in his address said, ‘The Tukde Tukde Gang of Delhi needs to be taught a lesson and punished’.” Gokhle’s RTI asked for details of the ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’. The home ministry, in its reply to Saket Gokhle’s RTI application, said, “Ministry of Home Affairs has no information concerning tukde-tukde gang.”
Like Amit Shah who stuck to the epithet ‘Tukde Tukde Gang’, despite RTI reply above, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stuck to the policy of the Govt., and took shelter under a technical explanation, which the Govt should have given in parliament, but avoided.
business-standard.com reported her argument:
Stung by the Opposition’s attack on the issue, Nirmala Sitharaman said that the Modi government was cleaning up the financial system, going after wilful defaulters, and accused the Congress of ‘sensationalising’ and being ‘brazen’ in misleading people on the subject.
“Congress and Rahul Gandhi should introspect why they fail to play a constructive role in cleaning up the system. Neither while in power, nor while in the opposition has the Congress shown any commitment or inclination to stop corruption and cronyism,” Sitharaman tweeted late on April 28 Tuesday night.
“Rahul Gandhi and Randeep Surjewala (Congress spokesperson) have attempted to mislead people in a brazen manner. Today’s attempt of Congress leaders is to mislead on wilful defaulters, bad loans & write-offs,” Sitharaman said.
Both are adept in the blame game, people by now realized. They play their due roles depending on who is in power at the given time.
The technical answer for the cover up is as follows:
The write-offs are technical or prudential in nature, which means the banks have made 100 per cent provisions against the loans. However, this doesn’t mean the banks have given up the right to recover the loans. It also doesn’t mean that banks have written off the entire loan, as some loans have been taken against security, which either can be or already has been recovered.
As and when they recover the money, it directly adds up to banks’ profits, and the provisions also come down by that extent (business-standard.com).
RBI maintains records of loans above Rs 5 crore given by banks, both fund and non-fund based, in its Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) database. If any entity defaults, the RBI captures it.
The definition of a willful default is lengthy and conditional, but it simply points to a default by anyone who has the means to pay but won’t.
Gitanjali Gems, owned by Mehul Choksi, was a darling of the stock markets. Soon after the Nirav Modi scam came out in the open, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) found that Choksi and Modi used the same tactics to defraud banks. Choksi, Modi’s maternal uncle, used to open letters of credit in the name of foreign suppliers.
The duo were helped by a few Punjab National Bank employees. Both Modi and Choksi showed fake transactions among various offshore entities and took Indian banks for a ride. The CBI and Enforcement Directorate filed a chargesheet against Choksi and other top officials of Gitanjali Gems.
The List of top 10 is as below:
The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here
by Matthew C Taibbi
Today is World Press Freedom Day, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1993, following the recommendation of
UNESCO’s General Conference. US and India claim to be democracies with flourishing media freedom, while blaming China.. Countercurrents Collective published a series of articles how Media Freedom in India is distorted, by both mainstream and social media, also during the Covid-19 pandemic. This one is a glimpse of the situation in USA, as seen by an American author and mediaperson.
Has Britain Re-Found Its Moral Compass?
by Jafar M Ramini
But I also believe in looking for the silver lining and three days ago I found it when I heard from CAABU- The Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding – that there is hope. It came in the form of a letter, written on the official letter-head of Conservative MP, Crispin Blunt and signed by over 130 fair-minded British MPs from both sides of the house. They also include Lord Chris Patten of Barnes, the former European Commissioner for External
Relations, former Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell and Baroness Helena Kennedy QC.
Libya’s War Heading Towards More Uncertainty
by Naveed Qazi
In the absence of strong U.S. diplomacy and policies, Russia and Turkey appear well balanced to exploit the security and diplomatic vacuum, and control the fate of Libya, as they have done in Syria.
April 2020 marks one year since Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive towards Tripoli to expel its Government of National Accord (GNA). Seen as the next Gaddafi, by many, it was believed that he launched the campaign last year in desperation, as not doing so could have brought his political and military demise.
The offensive left more than thousand fighters dead on both sides, and forced more than one hundred twenty thousand people flee their homes to safer areas, according to World Health Organisation.
As of now, conditional ceasefire seems a distant dream. It was demonstrated by Haftar’s refusal to sign a Russia-Turkey mediated ceasefire document, during his visit to Moscow on 13 January, 2020. There was also a failure in two rounds of talks in Geneva, when United Nations organised a joint LNA-GNA military commission.
In the war, neither of the participants have been able to gain sizeable territories. Although, no major battles are going on right now, intermittent fighting has continued without any gains from either side. What one side loses in one week, it is likely to regain in the next, and vice versa. It has been the essence of this Libyan war until now.
Desperate to stay in power since the last twelve months, GNA has signed a security accord in Ankara, on 27th November 2019, where Turkey committed itself to supply the government with weapons and fighters. President Tayyib Erdogan had sent Syrian mercenaries alongside Turkish advisors to increase the GNA defenses. Turkey is also known to have atleast two drone command centres at Miatiqa Airport, east of the capital, and in Misrata, which have been attacked by LNA air force and foreign supplied drones.
There is also Russian involvement in the nine-year-old conflict. While Moscow is denying its role, it does recognise the presence of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, a secret security company, who are helping Haftar’s forces, although Libyan National Army says that it only deploys Libyan fighters. More than one thousand Russian mercenaries are said to be operating in Libya, according to U.S and Western officials. For Russia, Libya is also part of a strategy to extend Russian influence across the Middle East and Africa. With their expert snipers, high tech guns, and combat discipline, the Russians have inflicted a heavy toll on the pro-GNA militias.
In the absence of strong U.S. diplomacy and policies, Russia and Turkey appear well balanced to exploit the security and diplomatic vacuum, and control the fate of Libya, as they have done in Syria.
There is also interest of Italy and some other European nations in Libya’s civil war, although it is mainly driven by the Middle East’s latest divide, pitting the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Saudi Arabia (who support Haftar) against Turkey and Qatar (who support GNA).
The US has officially supported the Tripoli government without making any real commitments in the past. But, the official line has been blurred after President Donald Trump praised Haftar in a telephonic call: when this happened, there were large protests in Tripoli as a reaction.
One of the U.N. experts’ report also said that there is presence of Chadian and Sudanese fighters in Libya, which has become more marked, since 2019 and that they represent a direct threat to the country’s security and stability.
The interest of foreign nations, in the war, is with total disregard for UN resolution 2510, which calls all countries to refrain from sending any weapons to the North African country.
On a political front, nothing much is happening. Ghassan Salame, UN envoy to Libya, has resigned, and it has further complicated the war crises.
U.N. arms embargo is already in tatters, raising the peril of more civilian causalities. There are refugees who are now fleeing violence, spilling across borders and attempting dangerous sea journeys to Europe.
According to an Oped by Sudarsan Raghavan, “As the war has intensified, so has hate speech, disinformation and fake news as both sides seek to use propaganda as a weapon. It is dividing tribes and communities and fracturing efforts at reconciliation.”
When it comes to Haftar’s strength, there have been reports where it is believed that Haftar’s has lack of human resources, as evidenced by the transfer of six hundred police officers from Benghazi to the front lines on September 10, 2019. In the east, there is also some factional bickering between LNA units. After violently kidnapping Libyan MP Serham Sergawi, the whole act made Haftar a repressive figure.
The behaviour of his troops in the south has inflamed ethnic tensions, with the Tebu militias forcing the Haftar aligned Ahali to abandon Murzuq. The localised conflict has led to the displacement of sixty percent of town’s civilians and their families. UAE sponsored mediation between the Tebu and Haftar’s force is reported to have been collapsed, too.
Although, Haftar has means to recover in this war. His armed strength mostly comes from Gulf patrons, who also provide him an ideological cover. Political Islam also has played a role in Haftar’s military success and domestic appeal. Madakhali Salafism, a branch of Salafi Islam, named after Saudi theologian Rabee Al Madkhali, is cited as a critical ideology for Haftar. In April 2020, Madkhali, a prominent court sheikh of Saudi monarchy, released a voice recording calling upon Salafists in Libya to merge around Khalifa Haftar in his fight against the GNA.
The GNA also relies on Salafist militias, whose loyalty has been rewarded with vast security powers. For example, the Special Deterrence Force, headed by Abdul Rauf Kara, control the entrances to Tripoli and Mitiga International Airport, as militarised version of the late Saudi religious police, focused primarily on enforcing religious customs and morality. However, it has been accused, alongside other Tripoli based militias, of turning into criminal networks straddling business, politics and administration. Haitham Al Tajouri’s Tripoli Revolutionary Brigades (TRB) have also done extortion of central bank employees, kidnapping of government ministers, and done abuses at private prisons controlled by its forces.
Haftar’s forces have been no better than their adversaries. According to a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime (GIATC), the LNA have taken over the lucrative local economy for their own benefit through affiliated businessmen, extortion of bank employees and public servants, and sponsorship of militias engaged in the smuggling of migrants and oil products. The GIATC report also points out systematic smuggling of refined oil products by LNA affiliates and political figures in east Libya, reflecting that Haftar has accumulated enough power for action through Libya’s oil, by controlling significant installations in the south and east, even if his forces were defeated and forced to retreat from Tripoli.
Infact, Haftar, who once lived in exile in the US for more than a decade, and served the CIA, allowed loyalists to shut down oil production in January 2020, as he came under pressure to agree to a diplomatic deal to end the war.
(Naveed Qazi is author of six books, and editor of Globe UpFront. He can be mailed at naveedqazi@live.com)
Lockdown! Some Questions Remain
by Khan Emran
Second aspect to this lockdown is the increased powers of state machinery specifically of police and the manner in which lockdown is implemented. Why many, though not all, in the administration, specifically police have become so arrogant in these tough times? Have certain institutions inherited colonial approach or is it in their genes? Aren’t we living in a democracy? Don’t we have any rights? Don’t we
pay taxes? And are we entitled to a life of dignity or not?
A Friendly Note on the virus
by Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar
Certainly, the virus was merciless on many populations but it is a phase we want to forget like all those people who survived and did the same during past pandemics.
Give refugees temporary leave to remain during Covid-19 crisis
by William Nicholas Gomes
To protect everybody, we are calling for this leave to remain to be granted, alongside ongoing decision-making, to those awaiting decisions from the Home Office, those who have been refused asylum, and those who are undocumented. It is imperative that those without immigration status feel safe in coming forward during the pandemic. Therefore, this grant of leave to remain must also include the possibility of renewal. For all the reasons
outlined above, we also urge you to ensure that no one who currently has leave to remain loses it during the pandemic.
Post-Covid-19 Needs-based Economy, Zero Emissions, UBI, Green New Deal & Free University Education
by Dr Gideon Polya
Comprehensive social distancing and economic lockdown measures required to suppress Covid-19 have been associated with rapid socialism-style adoption of a needs-based economy (essential services), a decrease in carbon fuel burning and air pollution, a widened social safety net, and on-line learning. Post-Covid-19 one envisages a socialist needs-based economy, zero emissions, universal basic income (UBI) , a Green New Deal (GND) and free university education. Unfortunately neoliberal Australia may well reject this golden opportunity.
Post-Covid-19 Needs-based Economy, Zero Emissions, UBI, Green New Deal & Free University Education in World — by Dr Gideon Polya — May 3, 2020
Comprehensive social distancing and economic lockdown measures required to suppress Covid-19 have been associated with rapid socialism-style adoption of a needs-based economy (essential services), a decrease in carbon fuel burning and air pollution, a widened social safety net, and on-line learning. Post-Covid-19 one envisages a socialist needs-based economy, zero emissions, universal basic income (UBI) , a Green New Deal (GND) and free university education. Unfortunately neoliberal Australia may well reject this golden opportunity.
Every cloud has a silver lining and the deadly Covid-19 pandemic is no exception to this aphorism. Because the coronavirus can infect anyone , from princes to paupers, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a global blooming of altruism, the notion “we are all in this together” and concerted action top save lives – a course of emergency action that in a word is “socialism” but which has not been opposed by the One Percenters who in normal circumstances ruthlessly dominate media and the global economy. The big question is whether this altruism will continue unabated in the post-Covid-19 era or whether the neoliberal One Percenters will restore control with business-as-usual, unsustainable economic growth, merciless austerity and burgeoning inequality. As analyzed below, Australia and like rich countries committed to greedy and unsustainable neoliberalism are likely to ignore this opportunity for a Green New Deal (GND).
The Enlightenment and accompanying Age of Reason and Scientific Revolution that helped liberate mankind from primitive superstition and fatalism also opened the Pandora’s Box of rationalism and libertarianism without responsibility. Thus the Science that enabled the Industrial Revolution and ultimately better standards of living for the masses also enabled increasingly high technology weapons of mass murder that were employed in increasingly deadly and genocidal colonial and imperial wars. Science meant more food and better health care resulting in greatly increased populations. However global overpopulation has devastated the biodiversity of the natural world to the extent that scientists now talk of our present era as the Anthropocene Era. Indeed the present animal species extinction rate is 100-1,000 times higher than normal [1-4].
Pre-Covid-19 the world had reached a critical point at which key tipping points were being approached or exceeded in numerous areas due to man-made climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1,2, 5- 15]. Unfortunately a detailed analysis shows that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in all key economic sectors of energy production and non-energy production are increasing whereas the worsening Climate Emergency demands urgently decreasing GHG emissions and ultimately net zero GHG emissions ASAP. The world is heading in the wrong direction towards disaster [16].
Another way of seeing this disastrous progression is by considering the damage-related cost of carbon pollution (Carbon Price) that has been determined to be about $200 per tonne CO2 [13, 17, 18]. Application of this Carbon Price to historical global CO2 emissions and annual CO2 emissions reveals that the global carbon economy has run up an inescapable Carbon Debt of $200-250 trillion that is increasing at about $13 trillion each year [13, 17-22]. Just as future generations will have to pay back the predicted enormous $9 trillion debt entered into through lockdown to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic [23, 24], so they will also have to pay back this present accumulated and inescapable Carbon Debt of $200-250 trillion. Unlike conventional financial debt that can be variously addressed by default, bankruptcy or printing money, Carbon Debt is inescapable e.g. unless trillions of dollars are spent on sea walls, coastal cities and arable land will be inundated.
As a scientist I am endlessly optimistic but have been forced to the conclusion that a plus 1.5C temperature rise will be realized within the next decade, and that resolute global inaction [16] means that a plus temperature rise is effectively unavoidable. Others have come to the same conclusion [25, 26]. Presently about 1 million people die from climate change each year, but the worsening climate emergency means a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable population of only about 0.5 – 1.0 billion in 2100 [27]. Earth and paleoclimate scientist Dr Andrew Glikson (2020): “Further to NASA’s reported mean land-ocean temperature rise of +18°C in March 2020, relative to the 1951-1980 baseline, large parts of the continents, including central Asia, west Africa eastern South America and Australia are warming toward mean temperatures of +2°C and higher… Given the abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere-land system, the current trend signifies an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere, accelerating since the mid-20th century. Terms such as climate change and global warming no longer reflect the extreme nature of the climate events consequent on this shift, amounting to a climate catastrophe on a geological scale” [28].
Eminent physicist and cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking has succinctly summarized the parlous position of Humanity thus (2018): “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [29].
Humanity is in this dreadful pass because of neoliberal greed. Enlightenment libertarianism without responsibility plus reason-based science and technology led to the unbridled capitalism of the Industrial Revolution resulting in gross worker exploitation at home and genocidal subjugation abroad of subject peoples of European empires [30-43]. Worker resistance and activism led to some domestic amelioration, but what Hannah Arendt described as “the alliance between the mob and capital” generated jingoism, nationalism and fascism, suppression of workers at home, and jingoistic support for colonialism, imperialism and awful high technology industrial wars [44-46]. The post-WW2 welfare state adoption was eventually corroded by the now dominant neoliberalism and compounding globalisation. Post-WW2 decolonization and self-determination was compromised by neo-colonialism and horrendous high technology wars for resources and hegemony by the US and its allies.
The currently dominant neoliberalism seeks to maximize the freedom of the smart and advantaged to exploit human and natural resources for private profit. In contrast, social humanism (socialism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) seeks to sustainably maximize human happiness, opportunity and dignity through evolving, culturally-cognizant intra-national and inter-national social contracts [47-53]. Neoliberalism has resulted in huge and growing wealth inequality that endangers democracy (Big Money buys public perception of reality and votes) and endangers the economy (the poor cannot afford the goods and services they produce), this impasse leading to demands for imposition of wealth taxes [54-60]. Thus Oxfam reports (2020): “The wealthiest 1 per cent of people in the world have more than double the wealth of 6.9 billion people [90% of Humanity]” [61]. Poverty kills, and each year an estimated 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease in the Developing World (minus China) in an ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust [38].
The Covid-19 pandemic has variously (depending upon the country) led to extraordinary emergency measures for the general good e.g. free testing for Covid-19 infection, free emergency medical treatment, a safety net for the unemployed, on-line teaching and learning, and even emergency housing in 4 star hotels for the homeless. The big question is whether (1) the end of the Covid-19 in capitalist economies will see a “snap-back” to rampant neoliberalism and brutal austerity imposed on the poor to pay for the Covid-19-related debt (socialism for the rich) or (2) the world seizes the opportunity created by Covid-19-related altruism to emplace a just and sustainable Green New Deal for all of Humanity. Some features of this global Green New Deal are set out below together with a realistic assessment of how rich Australia – that together with New Zealand (Aotearoa) is among world leaders in hugely minimizing deaths from Covid-19 – is likely post-Covid-19 to revert to deadly, business as usual, merciless and unsustainable neoliberal socialism for the rich.
(1). Needs based economy – food, shelter, health, education and culture versus the unnecessary, damaging and deadly (e.g. smoking, alcohol, and speciescide -, pollution-, warming- , obesity-, ignorance- and violence-promotion).
A remarkable feature of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the associated huge economic shut-down due to the need for social distancing, was rapid introduction of permitted “essential services” that included health services, security and emergency services, public transport, key utilities, education (at home or on-line) and production, distribution and sale of food, pharmaceuticals and other vital commodities . All other “add ons” were closed such as sport, beaches, places of worship, playgrounds, gyms, hairdressers, book shops, other specialist shops, art galleries, concerts, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, tourism and even non-urgent, elective surgery for people in pain with bad joints and hips. The concept of “essential services” represents a silver lining in the Covoid-19 cloud that points to the need for a sustainable, rational, needs-based economy.
Recent reports collectively endorsed by thousands of expert scientists have warned the world that time is running out to save Humanity and the Biosphere from further catastrophic climate change and further massive biodiversity loss [1, 2, 5, 6 ]. Massive harm has already occurred due to continuing carbon pollution, population growth and economic growth, and it is clear that zero growth in these areas is insufficient to halt and reverse this worsening disaster. There must be negative carbon pollution (atmospheric CO2 draw-down to a safe and sustainable 300 parts per million CO2 from the present damaging 415 ppm CO2), negative population growth (population decline by about 50%), and negative economic growth (economic degrowth by about 50% with the burden largely borne by rich countries of the global North to permit countries of the global South to achieve a modest increase in standard of living) [59].
This “big picture” macroeconomic shopping list of major desired actions can be complemented by the microeconomic details of things we should not be doing and should be trying to prevent. Thus, for example, each year 1.7 million Americans die preventably from “lifestyle choices” and “political choices”, the breakdown (with some overlaps) including (annual preventable deaths in brackets) (1) smoking (443,000), (2) adverse hospital events (440,000), (3) obesity (300,000), (4) air pollution (200,000), (5) alcohol (75,000), (6) lack of medical insurance (45,000), (7) illicit drugs (38,000) , (8) vehicle crashes (33,000), (9) guns (31,000), (10) suicide (30,000, 7,000 being US veterans), (11) avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths (21,000), (12) homicide (15,000), and (13) jihadi terrorism (a mere 4) [62, 63]. Inspection of this shocking list suggests that in a post-Covid-19 Green New Deal America and other countries should revert to a needs-based economy and specifically (1) ban smoking, (2) better fund hospitals, (3) ban high sugar processed foods and soft drinks, (4) curb private cars and stop all carbon fuel burning, (5) ban alcohol (6), adopt free universal medical care, (7) sensibly control illicit drugs, (8) ban private vehicles, (9) ban guns, (10) massively address mental health and related socio-economic deficits, notably for veterans, (11) stop all avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths by free universal health care, (12) ban guns to cut homicide, and (13) educate the public through accessible ethical reportage so they realize that guns kill about 8,000 times more Americans each year in America than do jihadi non-state terrorists.
Professor Dabo Guan (School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK) (2016) has commented thus on inescapable limits to growth: “For everyone in the world to have an American lifestyle, we would need seven planets, and three to live as Europeans” [64]. The US (population 331 million ) with 4.3% of the world’s population of 7,800 million consumes about 25% of the world’s resources. If China (population 1,409 million) with 18.4 % of the world ‘s population aspired to a US-style share of global resources it would consume 100% of presently exploited resources. Further, the world economy needs to halve for sustainability [59] i.e. China alone with a US standard of living would require 2 planets.
Australia. Australia (population 25.5 million) , like New Zealand (Aotearoa; population4.9 million), has been remarkably successful in suppressing the Covid-19 outbreak. As of 3 May 2020, there were 6,779 detected cases and 95 deaths (Australia), 1,487 detected cases and 20 deaths (New Zealand), 56,714 detected cases and 3,566 deaths (Canada), 182,260 detected cases and 28,131 deaths (the UK), 1,160,838 detected cases and 67,448 deaths (the US), and 3,484,632 detected cases and 244,791 deaths (the World) [65, 66]. So much for the Anglosphere 5-eyes Intelligence-sharing Club (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) that shares vital intelligence – surely nothing less “vital” than intelligence on how to save nearly 100,000 Anglosphere lives to date, and perhaps as many as 200,000 Anglosphere lives by the time the Covid-19 pandemic is over.
Critically, the anti-science, anti-environment, pro-fossil fuels and climate criminal Australian Coalition Government that has resolutely rejected scientific advice on climate change for decades, evidently became alarmed over the escalation of Covid-19 deaths (and its future political implications) and in reverse of its steadfast anti-science position decided to be guided by the expert medical advice of the State and Federal chief medical officers over Covid-19. That single key decision- a no-brainer for sane Australians – may have saved about 20,000 Australian lives and greatly boosted PM Scott Morrison’s electoral popularity. However utterly ignored by largely US-owned, US-beholden and US-dominated Australian Mainstream media is the horrible reality that the pro-fossil fuels and climate criminal Coalition is complicit in an annual carnage of 10,000 Australian deaths from air pollution and about 500 deaths from heat stress [67-69].
The Australian Government that criminally failed to impress on its American friends how to avoid the present American Holocaust of Covid-19 deaths, is nevertheless happy as a cowardly US lackey to back American state terrorist and mass murderer of Americans, Donald Trump, in his attacks on China and the WHO over the Covid-19 pandemic, and his calls for an “independent inquiry” into the coronavirus outbreak. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, and the Chinese have responded to this latest US lackey Australian China-bashing by suggesting that offended Chinese may decide not to send their children to Australian universities and not to buy Australian food and wine (not to mention coal and iron ore) [70]. This latest Australian Government idiocy in concert with Trump American China-bashing idiocy may have a big impact on Australia’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery – another instance of what former Coalition PM Malcolm Fraser has described thus: “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia” [71].
In relation to this “international inquiry” demand and criticism of the WHO by the US Alliance including Australia, the timeline of the responses of China, the WHO and Australia to Covid-19 is instructive (Australian events in bold): 1 December 2019 (first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China; 27 December 2019 (genetic testing identified the agent as a SARS-like coronavirus); 31 December 2019 (Chinese public and the (WHO notified of the coronavirus outbreak); 20 January 2020 (China notified the Chinese public and the world via the WHO of human-to-human transmission of the virus); 23 January 2020 (China announced total economy-impacting and travel lockdown of Wuhan and thence extended this to 15 cities involving 57 million people); 25 January 2020 (first Australian case of being positive for Covid-19, a traveller from Wuhan); 26 January 2020 (China announced further strong health and quarantine measures for China including closure of universities and schools and extension of the Spring Festival holiday); 30 January 2020 (WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern); 1 February 2020 (Australia banned entry of foreign nationals from China, Australian travellers from China to self-quarantine for 14 days ); 1 March 2020 (Australian travel ban on Iran); 5 March (Australian travel ban on South Korea); 11 March 2020 (WHO declared a Covid-19 pandemic); 11 March 2020 (Australian travel ban on Italy); 20 March 2020 ( Australian ban on entry of all non-residents); 21 March 2020 (Australia introduced strong social distancing rules that severely impacted the economy but refused to support closure of schools [72-74], and indeed is presently threatening dire financial penalties for private schools who don’t re- open) [75].
The lockdown and other key measures adopted by the Australian Coalition Government on expert medical advice have kept Australian deaths to an astonishing 95 (as of 3 May 2020) but Hong Kong (population 7.5 million), that included a school closures policy, has done even better with only 4 deaths so far ) [76]. The lockdown is estimated to cost the world $9 trillion over 2 years or $1,1 25 billion per quarter [77, 78] and Covid-19 deaths in the February-April quarter-year period have been re-assessed upwards to 318,000 [79]. The pandemic is estimated to have cost Australia 22% of its GDP [80] i.e. 0.22 x US$1,434 billion = 0.22 x A$2,242 billion = US$315 billion = A$492 billion plus an increase in gross national debt from A$600 billion to about A$800 billion by about government spending of A$200 billion (US$128 billion)) on unemployment relief and other measures (a debt to be repaid by the poor, disadvantaged and future generations) i.e. a total cost of A$692 billion or US$443 billion.
The seriousness of the pandemic can be measured in deaths (Deaths) and the cost of action (Action Cost) is measured in US dollars trying to prevent these deaths [77]. The Action Cost/Deaths ratio is $443 billion/200 deaths = $2.2 billion spent per death for Australia (assuming a total of 200 Australian deaths) as compared to $1,125 billion/318,000 = $1,125,000 million/ 0.318 million deaths = $3.5 million spent per death for the World, or about 630 times less than that spent by Australia. Since the coronavirus does not discriminate between rich and poor, One Percenter-dominated Australia was prepared to spend 630 times more per realized Covid-19 death than the rest of the World.
Australia suffers 85,000 preventable deaths each year due to “lifestyle choices” and “political choices”, the breakdown (with some overlaps) including (1) 26,000 (adverse hospital events), (2) 17,000 (obesity), (3) 15,500 (smoking), (4) 10,000 (pollutants from carbon fuel burning), (5) 4,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian deaths), (6). 5,600 (alcohol), (7) 2,900 (suicides with circa 80 being veterans) , (8) 1,400 (road deaths), (9) 1,900 (illicit opioids with 570 linked to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry), (10) 500 (heat stress), (11) 300 (homicides with about 80 being of women killed domestically), and (12) 4 (from jihadi non-state terrorism in Australia) [81-89]. While Australia has committed about A$700 billion to tackling the Covid-19 crisis that has so far killed 95 people, and has spent about A$200 billion since 9-11 addressing 4 deaths due to jihadi terrorism in Australia, it resolutely refuses to take requisitely massive effective action on these other vastly more deadly and annually recurrent matters.
The neoliberal Australian Coalition Government is very likely to institute a post-Covid-19 “snap-back” to business as usual with re-instatement of neoliberal “socialism for the rich” to encourage business re-investment, and to ensure that the young, poor and disadvantaged under a heavy “austerity” regime pay for the hugely increased national debt. Indeed The Australia Coalition Government is likely to retract the unemployment relief payment that it doubled during the Covid-19 crisis (this payment had not increased for 25 years, during which time Australia had a record period of uninterrupted economic growth). And , as outlined below, Australia will almost certainly continue as one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters and environmental vandals.
(2). Zero emissions, nuclear weapons ban, negative GHG emissions, 300 ppm CO2 for a safe planet, and Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against climate criminal countries.
Humanity is acutely and existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change [91]. Stephen Hawking has put our dilemma most succinctly: “ “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [29]. Humanity needs to urgently ban nuclear weapons and cease greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution [92]. Indeed cessation of GHG pollution is not enough – for a safe and sustainable planet for all peoples and all species we must have negative GHG emissions by drawing down atmospheric CO2 to about 300 parts per million carbon dioxide (300 ppm CO2) from the present damaging and dangerous 415 ppm CO2 [90, 91]. Assisting in that process will be renewable energy, renewable energy-powered public transport, re-afforestation, needs-based economies , economic de-growth and a long-term project of reducing global population.
Australia. Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality, specifically (1) annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution, (2) live methanogenic livestock exports, (3) natural gas exports, (4) recoverable shale gas reserves that can be accessed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), (5) coal exports, (6) land clearing, deforestation and ecocide, (7) speciescide or species extinction, (8) coral reef destruction, (9) whale killing and extinction threat through global warming impacting on krill stocks, (10) terminal carbon pollution budget exceedance, (11) per capita Carbon Debt, (12) ultimately GHG generating iron ore exports, (13) climate change inaction, (14) climate genocide and approach towards omnicide and terracide, (15) increasing GHG pollution despite Paris commitments to lower GHG pollution, and (16) complicity in 9 million annual air pollution deaths from burning carbon fuels, Australia’s share being 75,000 such deaths overseas and 10,000 deaths Domestically [ 89, 93-99]. The pro-fossil fuels, anti-science, climate criminal Australian Coalition Government is substantially outright climate change denialist, and 100% effective climate change denialist by rejecting substantial action on climate change.
Australia has only 0.3% of the world’s population but it is responsible for 4.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution (with its Exported GHG pollution included )[89, 93].Critically, Australia is resolutely committed to neoliberal economics, endless greed, endless expansion and massive environmental vandalism. Just over 50% of the adult Australian population give “2 party preferred” support to the present Coalition Government in Australia’s compulsory and preferential voting system (that adds second preferences to the primary vote if no candidate gains 50% of the primary vote). There is presently just under 50% of such “2 party preferred” support for the Opposition Labor Party. However while Labor recognizes the climate action imperative and supports 100% renewable energy, it blindly supports the climate criminal Coalition Government’s position of unlimited coal, gas and methanogenically-derived meat exports. Only the Australian Greens (10% primary electoral support with most Greens “second preferences” going to Labor) wants a cessation of Australia’s huge Domestic and Exported GHG pollution.
The only thing that realistically will change the racist, greedy, dog-in-the-manger, and climate criminal position of neoliberal Australia and like climate criminal countries will be resolute global action by Green Tariffs, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions, International Court of Justice (ICJ) litigations, and comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in deadly climate criminality. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate in racism. Wars are about resources and Australia and other resolutely climate criminal countries are engaged in a greed-driven War on Terra (War on the Planet, War on Humanity and the Biosphere) associated with a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population of only 0.5-1.0 billion in 2100 [27].
(3). Universal Basic Income (UBI), a Green New Deal and elimination of poverty.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been associated with massive economic lockdown and massive unemployment that is variously about 10-20%. Rich Western countries variously have social safety nets involving disability pensions, aged pensions and unemployment benefits. People in the working age group of 15-64 represent about 65% of the population in ageing Western countries but many in this group are not working e.g. because they are full-time students, doing home duties or people variously incapacitated and disabled. Pre-Covid-19 about 50% of the citizens of rich Western were working with unemployment rates of about 5% , but economic lockdown has resulted in huge increases in unemployment to circa 20%. Thus the proportion of people not in work and variously supported by savings, families, charities or the state in these rich countries has increased from about 5% pre-Covid-19 to about 60%. Now.
A silver lining in the tragic dark cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic is massive societal altruism and support for the circa 60% people not in work. From this remarkable altruism it is but a small step to return to the tribal circumstances of our forebears prior to the Agrarian Revolution 10,000 years ago and societal support for 100% of the people of the tribe. Of course all members of the tribe were expected to make some contribution within their means to the welfare of the tribe. Indeed given the relatively slow rate of evolution of Homo sapiens, one supposes that this mutual altruism in tribal groups his innate in us all. Altruism has evolved genetically through selection of favourably mutated genes (DNA) or through societal selection of favourable behaviours (memes) [100].
Universal basic income (UBI) (aka basic income, citizen’s income, citizen’s basic income, basic income guarantee, basic living stipend, guaranteed annual income, or universal demogrant) describes this system of a state-supported basic survival income for everyone regardless of means or indeed of any work contribution requirement [101].
British writer William Gerhardie in his remarkable book “God’s Fifth Column” [102, 103] concludes his analysis of the origins of the catastrophic WW1 (that was followed by the influenza pandemic that killed up to 100 million people) with a vision of peaceful and just future involving a Universal Basic Income: “God’s Fifth Column, sabotaging all inconclusive formations, works towards the building of a human society resting upon the only foundation acceptable to God. Having considered the self-satisfied physiognomy of the Age during the last 5 decades, foaming at the mouth in the present sixth, the question naturally poses itself: Do you want to go back to it? The answer will probably be that, in so far as the preceding five decades have caused the explosion of the 1940s, they may not be repeated. Everyone, save the people living deceptively on their memories, wants a new world. What kind of world is it to be? We want a world in which the gold standard is replaced by the human standard, the dollar unit by the human unit. We want a world in which every adult human being receives as his birthright, in universal currency, say, one dollar a day, that dollar being a regulated in relation to world-market prices as to form the irreducible standard of his daily subsistence, the inducement to work springing, not from abject necessity but from the common human wish to augment his comfort and embellish his existence …we want scientific world control on the one hand, and personal liberty on the other… We want the League of Nations palace to expand into a World Academy of scientists and economists instructed so to balance the housekeeping accounts of the planet as to encourage, within an adjustable framework of world control, the free play for private initiative. We want them to do precisely that which made Goethe wonder why so comparatively easy an equation should have been beyond the wit of man to work out and maintain: the balancing of an automatic system whereby the violent swinging of the pendulum, whether of politics or economics, is perpetually neutralised, and the defeat of liberty by oligarchy perpetually obviated. The demand is for stability ensuring mobility; uniformity of educational prestige ensuring individual diversity; the economic revolution of universal endowment ensuring a contented conservatism; the pooling of national sovereignties in a supranational order accentuating, far from obliterating, the true cultural development of individual nations. We want the common people to come into their legacy of leisure and culture in order to shed their commonness and become uncommon. We want the meek to inherit the earth. We want our nations to inherit and cherish their cultures” (pages 341-343, [1]).
As the world comes out of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, all decent people will want “a new world” of sustainability and economic fairness and a UBI could be a key element of such a Green New Deal [104-107]. In short, under a UBI scenario all people would have a basic, non-means-tested income that would cover basic liveability and would be complemented by state guarantees of housing, medical care and education from critical infant care to life-long learning. Rather than a society being based (as at present) on maximal freedom for an advantaged minority to exploit natural and human resources for personal profit, society would be organized along Social Humanist (Socialist, Eco-Socialist, Welfare State) lines to sustainably maximize happiness, dignity and opportunity for everyone through evolving , culturally-sensitive intra-national and inter-national social contracts [49, 50].
People vary in their abilities and drive but one imagines that there would be a general social expectation for everyone to at least modestly contribute to society. Caring and other voluntary work, casual employment, part-time employment, home work coupled with child care, State limitation of maximum working hours, and the demonstrable needs to halve population and economic output (economic de-growth) are all examples of how citizen contribution to a UBI society could be quite modest. Indeed a significant subset of society doing no work would be significantly contributing to the desired goal of environmental sustainability. One further notes that caring work to assist the young and elderly is arguably among the most valuable work in present society, requires the least training and is the most poorly remunerated.
Australia. Australia has a population of 25.5 million of which 16.7 million are of working age (15-64 years old) (65.5% of the total population ), 13.0 million are employed or under-employed (51.0%), 0.7 million are unemployed (but seeking work) (2.7%), 3.0 million are of working age but unable to work from circumstances (11.8%), and 8.8 million are too young or too old to work (34.5%) [109]. Thus roughly half the population was employed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. However the economic lockdown measures taken to contain Covid-19 disaster has meant a huge increase in unemployment to a predicted 20% and hence about 60% of the population reliant on savings, charity or state support. Thus the Covid-19 pandemic has produced an incomplete and variable version of UBI in Australia, but will this survive the predicted “snap-back” from “lockdown”? I fear not.
The neoliberal Australian Coalition Government rules one of the richest countries in the world (per capita GDP $54,000) [110] but has a very strong – if deliberately not directly articulated – sense of Them and Us that is a left-over from its genocidally racist and British imperial past. Thus under both Coalition and Labor governments, the unemployment relief had effectively remained the same for 25 years with consequent mass poverty (3 million Australians, including 1 million children, live in poverty) and the Coalition describing the unemployed as “leaners” not “lifters”. However instant mass unemployment due to Covid-19-related lockdown meant that about 1 million so-called “lifters” became unemployed and the Coalition Government immediately doubled the “Job Seeker” relief rate from an unliveable circa A$250 per week to circa A$510 per week [111]. To minimize huge public queues of the unemployed and to halve the actual unemployment rate of circa 20% down to a better Public Relations (PR)-cognizant 10%, the Government introduced a Job Keeper payment of $750 per week to be paid to recently sacked employees via their former employer (but excluding many casual workers) [112]. Indeed this Covid-19 pandemic-inspired altruism does not extend to a large body of refugees, migrant workers and international students who will get A$0 per week to live on.
The US-Versus -Them-ism (UVTI or in a word, Apartheid) of the neoliberal Australian Coalition Government denies the Covid-19 pandemic mantra of “we are all in this together” – some are evidently more in this than others. Indeed Australia’s eminent and much-admired former Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, accurately declared that the Coalition “was ideologically opposed to human rights” [113]. The most fundamental human right is the right to life but this is significantly denied Indigenous Australians for whom there is a circa 10 year lower life expectancy as compared to non-Indigenous Australians. On a global comparative basis, annual avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease total about 4,200 as compared to zero (0) for non-Indigenous Australians. Annual avoidable deaths as a percentage of population is 0.0 % (for non-Indigenous Australians), 0.02% (for Australians as a whole), and 0.6% (Indigenous Australians) as compared to 0.4% for impoverished South Asians and 1.0% for even more impoverished sub-Saharan Africans [38] – and yet Australia is one of the world’s richest countries (per capita GDP $54,000) [110].
In August 2016 the Chair of the Australian Coalition Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, told the ABC Q&A TV program that A$30 billion is spent every year on 500,000 Indigenous people in Australia. However careful analysis revealed that only A$5.6 billion of this was Indigenous-specific expenditure. Thus in 2020 there are about 700,000 Indigenous Australians and one can estimate that collectively they receive A$5.6 billion x 700,000/500,000 = A$7.8 billion maximum spent on addressing 4,200 Indigenous avoidable deaths from deprivation or A$1.9 million per death. In stark contrast, assuming Australia’s deaths in a year-long Covid-19 crisis total only 200, Australia would have spent US$443 billion [80, 114] addressing a 200-death crisis or $2.2 billion per death i.e. 1,000 times more. Why this huge, 1,000-fold disparity in annual Australian expenditure on saving White lives in the once-off Covid-19 crisis as compared to a miserable annual Australian expenditure on saving Black lives in the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide? The answer is glaringly obvious – to politically correct (PC racist) White Australia, White lives matter 1,000 times more than Black lives.
Indeed this week the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Victoria, Dr Annaliese van Diemen, tweeted the following accurate and pointed remark: “Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID19 or Cook 1770?” Enraged, stupid and ignorant Coalition MPs, including the PM, falsely attacked her statement as false with some demanding her resignation or dismissal [115]. However Dr Annaliese van Diemen was correct. Captain James Cook, a great cartographer but also a racist, imperialist and continental-scale thief, stepped ashore and claimed an asserted “terra nullius” Australia for Britain on 29 April 1770. About 8 years later, on Invasion Day, 26 January 1788, the full-blown British invasion commenced and with it the Aboriginal Genocide that was qualitatively the worst genocidal atrocity in all of human history. In the following century the Indigenous population decreased from about 1 million to 0.1 million through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. In 1788 there were 350-700 distinct Indigenous languages and dialects of which only 150 survive today and all but 20 are endangered. There is an ongoing Aboriginal Ethnocide promoted by government racism, opposition to bilingual education, opposition to remote communities on tribal lands inhabited for up to 65,000 years by the world’s oldest continuous cultures, removal of Indigenous children from their mothers at record levels, and dire socio-economic conditions for Indigenous Australians [116].
Of course it is not just Indigenous Australians and those living in dire poverty who are treated as “untermenschen”, “subhumans”, “unpeople”, “useless people” or “leaners” by the machinery of state. Thus each year 85,000 Australians die preventably from “lifestyle choices” or “political choices” and these include 22,000 dying from smoking (15,500), alcohol (5,600) and drugs (about 2,000) [81-89]. However Australian Governments will not violate neoliberal freedom by banning deadly agents such as tobacco and alcohol. Further, with a extraordinary total of only about 100 Covid-19 deaths in Australia [117], and many states or territories now registering zero (0) new Covid-19 cases [65], there is a big move to lift the social distancing-based lockdown (“lives” versus “livelihoods”) , with the first beneficiaries already being bars, restaurants and other social venues that are inevitably associated with licit drugs such as alcohol and nicotine and much less deadly illicit drugs. Indeed the Northern Territory that has a disproportionately big licit and illicit drug problem and a large Indigenous population that is negatively impacted by these scourges, has been the first Australian jurisdiction to substantially lift lockdown constraints.
Post-Covid-19 Indigenous Australians living in one of the world’s richest countries will continue to suffer avoidable deaths from deprivation at a rate between that of impoverished South Asia and even more impoverished sub-Saharan Africa – racist passive mass murder by a politically correct racist (PC racist) White Australia. And given this national commitment to committing and ignoring passive mass murder of Indigenous people one supposes that post-Covid-19 there will be a general rapid return to neoliberal enrichment of the rich at the expense of the poor, even greater austerity, and continued climate criminality but with a now greatly increased national debt to be borne by future generations. Pro-coal, pro-gas and pro-oil Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality [89, 93-99] and as Australia comes out of lockdown with gigantic debt and massive unemployment there will unfortunately be little political stomach among the Mainstream-dominating political Lib-Labs (the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and the Labor Party) for requisite massive action on climate change.
(4). Free university education, free life-long learning, public education, Mainstream truth-telling and an informed electorate.
Even if the post-Covid-19 world adopts a Green New Deal, UBI and a poverty-eliminating social humanist safety net, human greed remains and the problem of political dominance by wealthy individuals or corporations remains. Indeed in his seminal book ”Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”, Professor Brian Ellis referred to this system of political perversion by Big Money as “Corporatocracy” [49, 50]. Indeed Western democracies can be seen to have become Kleptocracies, Plutocracies, Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies, Dollarocracies and Corporatocracies in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality , votes, more political power and thence more private profit. As proposed by Thomas Piketty, annual wealth taxes can partially address wealth inequality-enabling Corporatocracy, but another partial solution lies in truth-telling alternatives to the lying by commission and lying by omission of mendacious, One Percenter-dominated Mainstream media [117-119], and free education and free university education in particular for an informed electorate. Indeed education is a basic human right, and all education can and should be free from infant education to life-long learning [120-122].
In short, every country needs a big, well-funded cohort of science, engineering, medical and other scholarly experts for various economic, health , security and prestige reasons – but why should impoverished students have to pay for it? Indeed some 25 countries already make university education free. Whatever the name – Accredited Remote Learning (ARL), Reading Only Tertiary Education (ROTE), Distance Education – accredited, top quality, off-campus, on-line teaching and learning for lecture-based courses can be provided for circa 1% of the present outrageous cost of ostensible on-campus tertiary education. Indeed the Covid-19 crisis and closure of campuses for social distancing reasons has required and demonstrated the utility of off-campus online education [120-122]. Top quality, accredited, and free tertiary education – and indeed top quality free education from infant schooling to life-long learning – should be a key part of the post-Covid-19 Green New Deal.
The Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for an informed public in order to get urgent and correct political action in a deadly crisis. Thus inspection of the global Covid -19 deaths data (3 May 2020) for medically sophisticated countries reveals astonishing national differences (Covid-19 deaths and deaths per million (/M) of population in brackets): Taiwan (6, 0.3/M), Hong Kong (4, 0.5/M), Singapore (17, 3/M), China (4,663, 3/M), Australia (95, 4/M), New Zealand (20, 4/M), Japan (474, 4/M), South Korea (250, 5/M), Cuba (66, 6/M), Russia (1,222, 8/M) … World (244,760, 31.4/M)… Germany (6,812, 81/M), Canada (3,566, 94/M), US (67,444, 204/M), Ireland (1,286, 260/M), Sweden (2,669, 264/M), France (24,760, 379/M), UK (28,131, 414/M), Italy (28,710, 475/M), Spain (25,100, 537/M) [65, 66].
Thus Taiwan (6, 0.3/M), rapidly implemented travel bans, lockdown, testing and tracing but kept schools open but with temperature checks, spatial separation of students and dividers on desks to separate students [123]. Hong Kong had a similarly rapid and strong lockdown and closed schools and universities [124]. In contrast Australia (95, 4/M) is 8 times worse than Hong Kong but waited until mid-March to ban foreign visitors, with the Coalition Federal Government opposing school closure but Victoria still supporting school closure [125]. China (4,663, 3/M) also achieved a good outcome with rapid and tough lockdown, contrary to the dishonest badmouthing from Donald Trump whose ignorance and idiocy has resulted in a disaster for the US (67,444 deaths, 204/M). Russia (1,222, 8/M) has kept in touch with the pack of East Asian and Australasian best performers. The shocking results in Western Europe evidently resulted from tardy and insufficient responses. Thus the UK apparently toyed with the idea of inaction to permit a speculated “herd immunity” to develop. However the release of a paper by expert UK epidemiologists in mid-March prompted firm UK action including closure of schools and universities – but it came too late with the UK result (28,131 deaths, 414/M) being 100 times worse than that of fellow 5-Eyes Club Anglosphere democracies Australia (95, 4/M) and New Zealand (20, 4/M) [126-128].
Ignorance can be deadly in a virus pandemic. Compounding ignorance is deliberate falsehood and political spin. Thus Trump America and its allies (notably US lackey Australia) are calling for an “international inquiry” into the coronavirus source whereas there is already a huge international scientific effort (with a massive contributions from China) to sequence thousands of coronavirus variants and hence to attempt to establish exactly that [129]. Further, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has extraordinarily cut off funding for US-China research into how coronavirus spread from bats to humans [130]. In response to outrageous US anti-China “fake news” alleging Chinese weaponizing of coronavirus, Andersen et al in a detailed paper in the prestigious Nature Medicine state that: “SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” [131].
Australia. Pre-Covid-19 Australia had a A$32 billion Education Export industry based on offering education from schools to universities to a pre-Covid-19 overseas student body totalling 0.4 million. An Australian Government Parliamentary Library analysis: “The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that, in 2017–18, international education was worth $32.4 billion to the Australian economy, up from $28.1 billion in 2016–17… Higher education accounted for 68.5 per cent ($22.2 billion) of international education export income in 2017–18, and 45.6 per cent of all overseas student enrolments in 2018… [In 2018] there were 398,563 higher education enrolments by people in Australia on student visas” [132]. These students pay for food, accommodation and other services and also contribute hugely to the Australian economy as casual workers. However the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to transfer to on-line delivery for safety reasons exposed the sheer fraudulence of the Australian Education Export industry and indeed the whole system of non-free, full fee-paying university education in Australia.
The English reading skill for overseas students is much greater than their understanding of spoken English with an Australian accent. Further, on-campus teaching typically involves downloading lecture notes and other teaching materials so most overseas and Australian students are actually effectively doing off-campus on-line learning but are being charged tens of thousands of Australian dollars per course unit for de facto fictional on-campus tuition. In short, the Australian Education Export industry is a gigantic scam that has now been exposed by the Covid-19 crisis. Australian universities, scientists, artists and intellectuals are hated by the Stupid, Ignorant and Egregiously Greedy (SIEG) Coalition Government and have taken a big hit in the Covid-19 crisis, but the after the crisis passes the fraudulent treatment of Australian and overseas students will continue. And of course endlessly mendacious Mainstream media, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes will resolutely keep on ignoring the gigantic scam. The extremely bad treatment of overseas students by the Australian Government during the Covid-19 crisis (notably excluding them from unemployment relief) may well kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
The Australian Federal Coalition Government and the Australian State and Territory Governments are under considerable pressure to start relaxing tough social distancing measures. There has been a big debate between those supporting school closure and those opposed [125]. This has now caused a clear rift between the Coalition Federal Government that is adamant that schools should remain open and the Victorian State Government that, guided by the Victorian Chief Medical Officer, is insistent that schools must remain closed (except for children with special needs or with parents working in key essential services). However a large study conducted by German virology experts has concluded that children were just as likely to spread the virus as adults and that schools should remain closed [133], the abstract of their paper stating : “Data on viral load, as estimated by real-time RT-PCR threshold cycle values from 3,712COVID-19 patients were analysed to examine the relationship between patient age andSARS-CoV-2 viral load. Analysis of variance of viral loads in patients of different age categories found no significant difference between any pair of age categories including children. In particular, these data indicate that viral loads in the very young do not differ significantly from those of adults. Based on these results, we have to caution against an unlimited re-opening of schools and kindergartens in the present situation. Children may be as infectious as adults” [134]. Free education for all increases the probability that the voters and the politicians will listen to the scientific experts.
Final comments.
UK humanitarian writer George Monbiot has called for a post-Covid-19 Green New Deal (1 May 2020): “In other words, let’s have what many people were calling for long before this disaster hit: a green new deal. But please let’s stop describing it as a stimulus package. We have stimulated consumption too much over the past century, which is why we face environmental disaster. Let us call it a survival package, whose purpose is to provide incomes, distribute wealth and avoid catastrophe, without stoking perpetual economic growth. Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance.” [107].
Similarly acclaimed Indian writer and humanitarian activist Arundhati Roy has urged a post-Covid-19 transformation (4 April 2020): “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could… Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it” [135].
Decent Humanity must resolutely demand a humane, equitable and sustainable New Deal, a Green New Deal, for all of Humanity in the post-Covid-19 World.
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[125]. Gideon Polya, “COVID-19 Pandemic & Coronavirus Suppression – Should Australian Schools Close? ”, Countercurrents, 22 March 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/03/covid-19-pandemic-coronavirus-suppression-should-australian-schools-close .
[126]. Neil M. Ferguson and 30 colleagues. “Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and health care demand”, Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, 16 March 2020: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf.
[127]. Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart, John Burn-Murdoch and Alex Barker, “The shocking coronavirus study that rocked the UK and US”, Financial Times, 19 March 2020: https://www.ft.com/content/16764a22-69ca-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75 .
[128]. Gideon Polya, “UK-Australia COVID-19 deaths, deprivation deaths in Developing Countries, Indigenous avoidable deaths”, Global Research, 8 April 2020: https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-australian-covid-19-deaths-versus-developing-country-indigenous-avoidable-deaths-deprivation/5708948 .
[129]. Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer, “How coronavirus mutates and spreads”, New York Times, 30 April 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/science/coronavirus-mutations.html?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=743f0c9604-briefing-dy-20200430&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-743f0c9604-44714333 .
[130].Meredith Wadman and Jon Cohen, “NIH’s sudden axing of bat coronavirus grant a “horrible precedent ” and might break rules, critics say ”, Science, 30 April 2020: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/nih-s-axing-bat-coronavirus-grant-h .
[131]. Andersen et al , “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2”, Nature Medicine, volume 26, pages 450–452, 2020: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 .
[132]. Hazel Ferguson and Henry Sherrell, “Overseas students in Australian higher education: a quick guide”, Parliament of Australia, 20 June 2019: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/Quick_Guides/OverseasStudents .
[133]. Kate Connolly and Kim Willsher, “European schools get ready to reopen despite concern about pupils spreading Covid-19”, Guardian, 2 May 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/children-as-likely-to-spread-coronavirus-as-adults-says-scientist?CMP=share_btn_tw&fbclid=IwAR0DovJ_yuO7TwzKBao4eOttkrISbnMC6GSk4p3QtdCT9ycoDb7dlA8zhjQ .
[134]. Christian Drosten et al., “An analysis of SARS-CoV-2 viral load by patient age”, 2020: https://zoonosen.charite.de/fileadmin/user_upload/microsites/m_cc05/virologie-ccm/dateien_upload/Weitere_Dateien/analysis-of-SARS-CoV-2-viral-load-by-patient-age.pdf .
[135]. Arundhati Roy, “The epidemic is a portal”, Financial Times, 4 April 2020: https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca .
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: https://countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
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Every cloud has a silver lining and the deadly Covid-19 pandemic is no exception to this aphorism. Because the coronavirus can infect anyone , from princes to paupers, the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a global blooming of altruism, the notion “we are all in this together” and concerted action top save lives – a course of emergency action that in a word is “socialism” but which has not been opposed by the One Percenters who in normal circumstances ruthlessly dominate media and the global economy. The big question is whether this altruism will continue unabated in the post-Covid-19 era or whether the neoliberal One Percenters will restore control with business-as-usual, unsustainable economic growth, merciless austerity and burgeoning inequality. As analyzed below, Australia and like rich countries committed to greedy and unsustainable neoliberalism are likely to ignore this opportunity for a Green New Deal (GND).
The Enlightenment and accompanying Age of Reason and Scientific Revolution that helped liberate mankind from primitive superstition and fatalism also opened the Pandora’s Box of rationalism and libertarianism without responsibility. Thus the Science that enabled the Industrial Revolution and ultimately better standards of living for the masses also enabled increasingly high technology weapons of mass murder that were employed in increasingly deadly and genocidal colonial and imperial wars. Science meant more food and better health care resulting in greatly increased populations. However global overpopulation has devastated the biodiversity of the natural world to the extent that scientists now talk of our present era as the Anthropocene Era. Indeed the present animal species extinction rate is 100-1,000 times higher than normal [1-4].
Pre-Covid-19 the world had reached a critical point at which key tipping points were being approached or exceeded in numerous areas due to man-made climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1,2, 5- 15]. Unfortunately a detailed analysis shows that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in all key economic sectors of energy production and non-energy production are increasing whereas the worsening Climate Emergency demands urgently decreasing GHG emissions and ultimately net zero GHG emissions ASAP. The world is heading in the wrong direction towards disaster [16].
Another way of seeing this disastrous progression is by considering the damage-related cost of carbon pollution (Carbon Price) that has been determined to be about $200 per tonne CO2 [13, 17, 18]. Application of this Carbon Price to historical global CO2 emissions and annual CO2 emissions reveals that the global carbon economy has run up an inescapable Carbon Debt of $200-250 trillion that is increasing at about $13 trillion each year [13, 17-22]. Just as future generations will have to pay back the predicted enormous $9 trillion debt entered into through lockdown to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic [23, 24], so they will also have to pay back this present accumulated and inescapable Carbon Debt of $200-250 trillion. Unlike conventional financial debt that can be variously addressed by default, bankruptcy or printing money, Carbon Debt is inescapable e.g. unless trillions of dollars are spent on sea walls, coastal cities and arable land will be inundated.
As a scientist I am endlessly optimistic but have been forced to the conclusion that a plus 1.5C temperature rise will be realized within the next decade, and that resolute global inaction [16] means that a plus temperature rise is effectively unavoidable. Others have come to the same conclusion [25, 26]. Presently about 1 million people die from climate change each year, but the worsening climate emergency means a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable population of only about 0.5 – 1.0 billion in 2100 [27]. Earth and paleoclimate scientist Dr Andrew Glikson (2020): “Further to NASA’s reported mean land-ocean temperature rise of +18°C in March 2020, relative to the 1951-1980 baseline, large parts of the continents, including central Asia, west Africa eastern South America and Australia are warming toward mean temperatures of +2°C and higher… Given the abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere-land system, the current trend signifies an abrupt shift in state of the atmosphere, accelerating since the mid-20th century. Terms such as climate change and global warming no longer reflect the extreme nature of the climate events consequent on this shift, amounting to a climate catastrophe on a geological scale” [28].
Eminent physicist and cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking has succinctly summarized the parlous position of Humanity thus (2018): “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [29].
Humanity is in this dreadful pass because of neoliberal greed. Enlightenment libertarianism without responsibility plus reason-based science and technology led to the unbridled capitalism of the Industrial Revolution resulting in gross worker exploitation at home and genocidal subjugation abroad of subject peoples of European empires [30-43]. Worker resistance and activism led to some domestic amelioration, but what Hannah Arendt described as “the alliance between the mob and capital” generated jingoism, nationalism and fascism, suppression of workers at home, and jingoistic support for colonialism, imperialism and awful high technology industrial wars [44-46]. The post-WW2 welfare state adoption was eventually corroded by the now dominant neoliberalism and compounding globalisation. Post-WW2 decolonization and self-determination was compromised by neo-colonialism and horrendous high technology wars for resources and hegemony by the US and its allies.
The currently dominant neoliberalism seeks to maximize the freedom of the smart and advantaged to exploit human and natural resources for private profit. In contrast, social humanism (socialism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) seeks to sustainably maximize human happiness, opportunity and dignity through evolving, culturally-cognizant intra-national and inter-national social contracts [47-53]. Neoliberalism has resulted in huge and growing wealth inequality that endangers democracy (Big Money buys public perception of reality and votes) and endangers the economy (the poor cannot afford the goods and services they produce), this impasse leading to demands for imposition of wealth taxes [54-60]. Thus Oxfam reports (2020): “The wealthiest 1 per cent of people in the world have more than double the wealth of 6.9 billion people [90% of Humanity]” [61]. Poverty kills, and each year an estimated 15 million people die avoidably from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease in the Developing World (minus China) in an ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust [38].
The Covid-19 pandemic has variously (depending upon the country) led to extraordinary emergency measures for the general good e.g. free testing for Covid-19 infection, free emergency medical treatment, a safety net for the unemployed, on-line teaching and learning, and even emergency housing in 4 star hotels for the homeless. The big question is whether (1) the end of the Covid-19 in capitalist economies will see a “snap-back” to rampant neoliberalism and brutal austerity imposed on the poor to pay for the Covid-19-related debt (socialism for the rich) or (2) the world seizes the opportunity created by Covid-19-related altruism to emplace a just and sustainable Green New Deal for all of Humanity. Some features of this global Green New Deal are set out below together with a realistic assessment of how rich Australia – that together with New Zealand (Aotearoa) is among world leaders in hugely minimizing deaths from Covid-19 – is likely post-Covid-19 to revert to deadly, business as usual, merciless and unsustainable neoliberal socialism for the rich.
(1). Needs based economy – food, shelter, health, education and culture versus the unnecessary, damaging and deadly (e.g. smoking, alcohol, and speciescide -, pollution-, warming- , obesity-, ignorance- and violence-promotion).
A remarkable feature of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the associated huge economic shut-down due to the need for social distancing, was rapid introduction of permitted “essential services” that included health services, security and emergency services, public transport, key utilities, education (at home or on-line) and production, distribution and sale of food, pharmaceuticals and other vital commodities . All other “add ons” were closed such as sport, beaches, places of worship, playgrounds, gyms, hairdressers, book shops, other specialist shops, art galleries, concerts, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, tourism and even non-urgent, elective surgery for people in pain with bad joints and hips. The concept of “essential services” represents a silver lining in the Covoid-19 cloud that points to the need for a sustainable, rational, needs-based economy.
Recent reports collectively endorsed by thousands of expert scientists have warned the world that time is running out to save Humanity and the Biosphere from further catastrophic climate change and further massive biodiversity loss [1, 2, 5, 6 ]. Massive harm has already occurred due to continuing carbon pollution, population growth and economic growth, and it is clear that zero growth in these areas is insufficient to halt and reverse this worsening disaster. There must be negative carbon pollution (atmospheric CO2 draw-down to a safe and sustainable 300 parts per million CO2 from the present damaging 415 ppm CO2), negative population growth (population decline by about 50%), and negative economic growth (economic degrowth by about 50% with the burden largely borne by rich countries of the global North to permit countries of the global South to achieve a modest increase in standard of living) [59].
This “big picture” macroeconomic shopping list of major desired actions can be complemented by the microeconomic details of things we should not be doing and should be trying to prevent. Thus, for example, each year 1.7 million Americans die preventably from “lifestyle choices” and “political choices”, the breakdown (with some overlaps) including (annual preventable deaths in brackets) (1) smoking (443,000), (2) adverse hospital events (440,000), (3) obesity (300,000), (4) air pollution (200,000), (5) alcohol (75,000), (6) lack of medical insurance (45,000), (7) illicit drugs (38,000) , (8) vehicle crashes (33,000), (9) guns (31,000), (10) suicide (30,000, 7,000 being US veterans), (11) avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths (21,000), (12) homicide (15,000), and (13) jihadi terrorism (a mere 4) [62, 63]. Inspection of this shocking list suggests that in a post-Covid-19 Green New Deal America and other countries should revert to a needs-based economy and specifically (1) ban smoking, (2) better fund hospitals, (3) ban high sugar processed foods and soft drinks, (4) curb private cars and stop all carbon fuel burning, (5) ban alcohol (6), adopt free universal medical care, (7) sensibly control illicit drugs, (8) ban private vehicles, (9) ban guns, (10) massively address mental health and related socio-economic deficits, notably for veterans, (11) stop all avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths by free universal health care, (12) ban guns to cut homicide, and (13) educate the public through accessible ethical reportage so they realize that guns kill about 8,000 times more Americans each year in America than do jihadi non-state terrorists.
Professor Dabo Guan (School of International Development, University of East Anglia, UK) (2016) has commented thus on inescapable limits to growth: “For everyone in the world to have an American lifestyle, we would need seven planets, and three to live as Europeans” [64]. The US (population 331 million ) with 4.3% of the world’s population of 7,800 million consumes about 25% of the world’s resources. If China (population 1,409 million) with 18.4 % of the world ‘s population aspired to a US-style share of global resources it would consume 100% of presently exploited resources. Further, the world economy needs to halve for sustainability [59] i.e. China alone with a US standard of living would require 2 planets.
Australia. Australia (population 25.5 million) , like New Zealand (Aotearoa; population4.9 million), has been remarkably successful in suppressing the Covid-19 outbreak. As of 3 May 2020, there were 6,779 detected cases and 95 deaths (Australia), 1,487 detected cases and 20 deaths (New Zealand), 56,714 detected cases and 3,566 deaths (Canada), 182,260 detected cases and 28,131 deaths (the UK), 1,160,838 detected cases and 67,448 deaths (the US), and 3,484,632 detected cases and 244,791 deaths (the World) [65, 66]. So much for the Anglosphere 5-eyes Intelligence-sharing Club (the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) that shares vital intelligence – surely nothing less “vital” than intelligence on how to save nearly 100,000 Anglosphere lives to date, and perhaps as many as 200,000 Anglosphere lives by the time the Covid-19 pandemic is over.
Critically, the anti-science, anti-environment, pro-fossil fuels and climate criminal Australian Coalition Government that has resolutely rejected scientific advice on climate change for decades, evidently became alarmed over the escalation of Covid-19 deaths (and its future political implications) and in reverse of its steadfast anti-science position decided to be guided by the expert medical advice of the State and Federal chief medical officers over Covid-19. That single key decision- a no-brainer for sane Australians – may have saved about 20,000 Australian lives and greatly boosted PM Scott Morrison’s electoral popularity. However utterly ignored by largely US-owned, US-beholden and US-dominated Australian Mainstream media is the horrible reality that the pro-fossil fuels and climate criminal Coalition is complicit in an annual carnage of 10,000 Australian deaths from air pollution and about 500 deaths from heat stress [67-69].
The Australian Government that criminally failed to impress on its American friends how to avoid the present American Holocaust of Covid-19 deaths, is nevertheless happy as a cowardly US lackey to back American state terrorist and mass murderer of Americans, Donald Trump, in his attacks on China and the WHO over the Covid-19 pandemic, and his calls for an “independent inquiry” into the coronavirus outbreak. China is Australia’s biggest trading partner, and the Chinese have responded to this latest US lackey Australian China-bashing by suggesting that offended Chinese may decide not to send their children to Australian universities and not to buy Australian food and wine (not to mention coal and iron ore) [70]. This latest Australian Government idiocy in concert with Trump American China-bashing idiocy may have a big impact on Australia’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery – another instance of what former Coalition PM Malcolm Fraser has described thus: “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia” [71].
In relation to this “international inquiry” demand and criticism of the WHO by the US Alliance including Australia, the timeline of the responses of China, the WHO and Australia to Covid-19 is instructive (Australian events in bold): 1 December 2019 (first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China; 27 December 2019 (genetic testing identified the agent as a SARS-like coronavirus); 31 December 2019 (Chinese public and the (WHO notified of the coronavirus outbreak); 20 January 2020 (China notified the Chinese public and the world via the WHO of human-to-human transmission of the virus); 23 January 2020 (China announced total economy-impacting and travel lockdown of Wuhan and thence extended this to 15 cities involving 57 million people); 25 January 2020 (first Australian case of being positive for Covid-19, a traveller from Wuhan); 26 January 2020 (China announced further strong health and quarantine measures for China including closure of universities and schools and extension of the Spring Festival holiday); 30 January 2020 (WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern); 1 February 2020 (Australia banned entry of foreign nationals from China, Australian travellers from China to self-quarantine for 14 days ); 1 March 2020 (Australian travel ban on Iran); 5 March (Australian travel ban on South Korea); 11 March 2020 (WHO declared a Covid-19 pandemic); 11 March 2020 (Australian travel ban on Italy); 20 March 2020 ( Australian ban on entry of all non-residents); 21 March 2020 (Australia introduced strong social distancing rules that severely impacted the economy but refused to support closure of schools [72-74], and indeed is presently threatening dire financial penalties for private schools who don’t re- open) [75].
The lockdown and other key measures adopted by the Australian Coalition Government on expert medical advice have kept Australian deaths to an astonishing 95 (as of 3 May 2020) but Hong Kong (population 7.5 million), that included a school closures policy, has done even better with only 4 deaths so far ) [76]. The lockdown is estimated to cost the world $9 trillion over 2 years or $1,1 25 billion per quarter [77, 78] and Covid-19 deaths in the February-April quarter-year period have been re-assessed upwards to 318,000 [79]. The pandemic is estimated to have cost Australia 22% of its GDP [80] i.e. 0.22 x US$1,434 billion = 0.22 x A$2,242 billion = US$315 billion = A$492 billion plus an increase in gross national debt from A$600 billion to about A$800 billion by about government spending of A$200 billion (US$128 billion)) on unemployment relief and other measures (a debt to be repaid by the poor, disadvantaged and future generations) i.e. a total cost of A$692 billion or US$443 billion.
The seriousness of the pandemic can be measured in deaths (Deaths) and the cost of action (Action Cost) is measured in US dollars trying to prevent these deaths [77]. The Action Cost/Deaths ratio is $443 billion/200 deaths = $2.2 billion spent per death for Australia (assuming a total of 200 Australian deaths) as compared to $1,125 billion/318,000 = $1,125,000 million/ 0.318 million deaths = $3.5 million spent per death for the World, or about 630 times less than that spent by Australia. Since the coronavirus does not discriminate between rich and poor, One Percenter-dominated Australia was prepared to spend 630 times more per realized Covid-19 death than the rest of the World.
Australia suffers 85,000 preventable deaths each year due to “lifestyle choices” and “political choices”, the breakdown (with some overlaps) including (1) 26,000 (adverse hospital events), (2) 17,000 (obesity), (3) 15,500 (smoking), (4) 10,000 (pollutants from carbon fuel burning), (5) 4,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian deaths), (6). 5,600 (alcohol), (7) 2,900 (suicides with circa 80 being veterans) , (8) 1,400 (road deaths), (9) 1,900 (illicit opioids with 570 linked to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry), (10) 500 (heat stress), (11) 300 (homicides with about 80 being of women killed domestically), and (12) 4 (from jihadi non-state terrorism in Australia) [81-89]. While Australia has committed about A$700 billion to tackling the Covid-19 crisis that has so far killed 95 people, and has spent about A$200 billion since 9-11 addressing 4 deaths due to jihadi terrorism in Australia, it resolutely refuses to take requisitely massive effective action on these other vastly more deadly and annually recurrent matters.
The neoliberal Australian Coalition Government is very likely to institute a post-Covid-19 “snap-back” to business as usual with re-instatement of neoliberal “socialism for the rich” to encourage business re-investment, and to ensure that the young, poor and disadvantaged under a heavy “austerity” regime pay for the hugely increased national debt. Indeed The Australia Coalition Government is likely to retract the unemployment relief payment that it doubled during the Covid-19 crisis (this payment had not increased for 25 years, during which time Australia had a record period of uninterrupted economic growth). And , as outlined below, Australia will almost certainly continue as one of the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters and environmental vandals.
(2). Zero emissions, nuclear weapons ban, negative GHG emissions, 300 ppm CO2 for a safe planet, and Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against climate criminal countries.
Humanity is acutely and existentially threatened by nuclear weapons and climate change [91]. Stephen Hawking has put our dilemma most succinctly: “ “We see great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change” [29]. Humanity needs to urgently ban nuclear weapons and cease greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution [92]. Indeed cessation of GHG pollution is not enough – for a safe and sustainable planet for all peoples and all species we must have negative GHG emissions by drawing down atmospheric CO2 to about 300 parts per million carbon dioxide (300 ppm CO2) from the present damaging and dangerous 415 ppm CO2 [90, 91]. Assisting in that process will be renewable energy, renewable energy-powered public transport, re-afforestation, needs-based economies , economic de-growth and a long-term project of reducing global population.
Australia. Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality, specifically (1) annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution, (2) live methanogenic livestock exports, (3) natural gas exports, (4) recoverable shale gas reserves that can be accessed by hydraulic fracturing (fracking), (5) coal exports, (6) land clearing, deforestation and ecocide, (7) speciescide or species extinction, (8) coral reef destruction, (9) whale killing and extinction threat through global warming impacting on krill stocks, (10) terminal carbon pollution budget exceedance, (11) per capita Carbon Debt, (12) ultimately GHG generating iron ore exports, (13) climate change inaction, (14) climate genocide and approach towards omnicide and terracide, (15) increasing GHG pollution despite Paris commitments to lower GHG pollution, and (16) complicity in 9 million annual air pollution deaths from burning carbon fuels, Australia’s share being 75,000 such deaths overseas and 10,000 deaths Domestically [ 89, 93-99]. The pro-fossil fuels, anti-science, climate criminal Australian Coalition Government is substantially outright climate change denialist, and 100% effective climate change denialist by rejecting substantial action on climate change.
Australia has only 0.3% of the world’s population but it is responsible for 4.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution (with its Exported GHG pollution included )[89, 93].Critically, Australia is resolutely committed to neoliberal economics, endless greed, endless expansion and massive environmental vandalism. Just over 50% of the adult Australian population give “2 party preferred” support to the present Coalition Government in Australia’s compulsory and preferential voting system (that adds second preferences to the primary vote if no candidate gains 50% of the primary vote). There is presently just under 50% of such “2 party preferred” support for the Opposition Labor Party. However while Labor recognizes the climate action imperative and supports 100% renewable energy, it blindly supports the climate criminal Coalition Government’s position of unlimited coal, gas and methanogenically-derived meat exports. Only the Australian Greens (10% primary electoral support with most Greens “second preferences” going to Labor) wants a cessation of Australia’s huge Domestic and Exported GHG pollution.
The only thing that realistically will change the racist, greedy, dog-in-the-manger, and climate criminal position of neoliberal Australia and like climate criminal countries will be resolute global action by Green Tariffs, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutions, International Court of Justice (ICJ) litigations, and comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in deadly climate criminality. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate in racism. Wars are about resources and Australia and other resolutely climate criminal countries are engaged in a greed-driven War on Terra (War on the Planet, War on Humanity and the Biosphere) associated with a worsening Climate Genocide en route to a sustainable human population of only 0.5-1.0 billion in 2100 [27].
(3). Universal Basic Income (UBI), a Green New Deal and elimination of poverty.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been associated with massive economic lockdown and massive unemployment that is variously about 10-20%. Rich Western countries variously have social safety nets involving disability pensions, aged pensions and unemployment benefits. People in the working age group of 15-64 represent about 65% of the population in ageing Western countries but many in this group are not working e.g. because they are full-time students, doing home duties or people variously incapacitated and disabled. Pre-Covid-19 about 50% of the citizens of rich Western were working with unemployment rates of about 5% , but economic lockdown has resulted in huge increases in unemployment to circa 20%. Thus the proportion of people not in work and variously supported by savings, families, charities or the state in these rich countries has increased from about 5% pre-Covid-19 to about 60%. Now.
A silver lining in the tragic dark cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic is massive societal altruism and support for the circa 60% people not in work. From this remarkable altruism it is but a small step to return to the tribal circumstances of our forebears prior to the Agrarian Revolution 10,000 years ago and societal support for 100% of the people of the tribe. Of course all members of the tribe were expected to make some contribution within their means to the welfare of the tribe. Indeed given the relatively slow rate of evolution of Homo sapiens, one supposes that this mutual altruism in tribal groups his innate in us all. Altruism has evolved genetically through selection of favourably mutated genes (DNA) or through societal selection of favourable behaviours (memes) [100].
Universal basic income (UBI) (aka basic income, citizen’s income, citizen’s basic income, basic income guarantee, basic living stipend, guaranteed annual income, or universal demogrant) describes this system of a state-supported basic survival income for everyone regardless of means or indeed of any work contribution requirement [101].
British writer William Gerhardie in his remarkable book “God’s Fifth Column” [102, 103] concludes his analysis of the origins of the catastrophic WW1 (that was followed by the influenza pandemic that killed up to 100 million people) with a vision of peaceful and just future involving a Universal Basic Income: “God’s Fifth Column, sabotaging all inconclusive formations, works towards the building of a human society resting upon the only foundation acceptable to God. Having considered the self-satisfied physiognomy of the Age during the last 5 decades, foaming at the mouth in the present sixth, the question naturally poses itself: Do you want to go back to it? The answer will probably be that, in so far as the preceding five decades have caused the explosion of the 1940s, they may not be repeated. Everyone, save the people living deceptively on their memories, wants a new world. What kind of world is it to be? We want a world in which the gold standard is replaced by the human standard, the dollar unit by the human unit. We want a world in which every adult human being receives as his birthright, in universal currency, say, one dollar a day, that dollar being a regulated in relation to world-market prices as to form the irreducible standard of his daily subsistence, the inducement to work springing, not from abject necessity but from the common human wish to augment his comfort and embellish his existence …we want scientific world control on the one hand, and personal liberty on the other… We want the League of Nations palace to expand into a World Academy of scientists and economists instructed so to balance the housekeeping accounts of the planet as to encourage, within an adjustable framework of world control, the free play for private initiative. We want them to do precisely that which made Goethe wonder why so comparatively easy an equation should have been beyond the wit of man to work out and maintain: the balancing of an automatic system whereby the violent swinging of the pendulum, whether of politics or economics, is perpetually neutralised, and the defeat of liberty by oligarchy perpetually obviated. The demand is for stability ensuring mobility; uniformity of educational prestige ensuring individual diversity; the economic revolution of universal endowment ensuring a contented conservatism; the pooling of national sovereignties in a supranational order accentuating, far from obliterating, the true cultural development of individual nations. We want the common people to come into their legacy of leisure and culture in order to shed their commonness and become uncommon. We want the meek to inherit the earth. We want our nations to inherit and cherish their cultures” (pages 341-343, [1]).
As the world comes out of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, all decent people will want “a new world” of sustainability and economic fairness and a UBI could be a key element of such a Green New Deal [104-107]. In short, under a UBI scenario all people would have a basic, non-means-tested income that would cover basic liveability and would be complemented by state guarantees of housing, medical care and education from critical infant care to life-long learning. Rather than a society being based (as at present) on maximal freedom for an advantaged minority to exploit natural and human resources for personal profit, society would be organized along Social Humanist (Socialist, Eco-Socialist, Welfare State) lines to sustainably maximize happiness, dignity and opportunity for everyone through evolving , culturally-sensitive intra-national and inter-national social contracts [49, 50].
People vary in their abilities and drive but one imagines that there would be a general social expectation for everyone to at least modestly contribute to society. Caring and other voluntary work, casual employment, part-time employment, home work coupled with child care, State limitation of maximum working hours, and the demonstrable needs to halve population and economic output (economic de-growth) are all examples of how citizen contribution to a UBI society could be quite modest. Indeed a significant subset of society doing no work would be significantly contributing to the desired goal of environmental sustainability. One further notes that caring work to assist the young and elderly is arguably among the most valuable work in present society, requires the least training and is the most poorly remunerated.
Australia. Australia has a population of 25.5 million of which 16.7 million are of working age (15-64 years old) (65.5% of the total population ), 13.0 million are employed or under-employed (51.0%), 0.7 million are unemployed (but seeking work) (2.7%), 3.0 million are of working age but unable to work from circumstances (11.8%), and 8.8 million are too young or too old to work (34.5%) [109]. Thus roughly half the population was employed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. However the economic lockdown measures taken to contain Covid-19 disaster has meant a huge increase in unemployment to a predicted 20% and hence about 60% of the population reliant on savings, charity or state support. Thus the Covid-19 pandemic has produced an incomplete and variable version of UBI in Australia, but will this survive the predicted “snap-back” from “lockdown”? I fear not.
The neoliberal Australian Coalition Government rules one of the richest countries in the world (per capita GDP $54,000) [110] but has a very strong – if deliberately not directly articulated – sense of Them and Us that is a left-over from its genocidally racist and British imperial past. Thus under both Coalition and Labor governments, the unemployment relief had effectively remained the same for 25 years with consequent mass poverty (3 million Australians, including 1 million children, live in poverty) and the Coalition describing the unemployed as “leaners” not “lifters”. However instant mass unemployment due to Covid-19-related lockdown meant that about 1 million so-called “lifters” became unemployed and the Coalition Government immediately doubled the “Job Seeker” relief rate from an unliveable circa A$250 per week to circa A$510 per week [111]. To minimize huge public queues of the unemployed and to halve the actual unemployment rate of circa 20% down to a better Public Relations (PR)-cognizant 10%, the Government introduced a Job Keeper payment of $750 per week to be paid to recently sacked employees via their former employer (but excluding many casual workers) [112]. Indeed this Covid-19 pandemic-inspired altruism does not extend to a large body of refugees, migrant workers and international students who will get A$0 per week to live on.
The US-Versus -Them-ism (UVTI or in a word, Apartheid) of the neoliberal Australian Coalition Government denies the Covid-19 pandemic mantra of “we are all in this together” – some are evidently more in this than others. Indeed Australia’s eminent and much-admired former Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, accurately declared that the Coalition “was ideologically opposed to human rights” [113]. The most fundamental human right is the right to life but this is significantly denied Indigenous Australians for whom there is a circa 10 year lower life expectancy as compared to non-Indigenous Australians. On a global comparative basis, annual avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease total about 4,200 as compared to zero (0) for non-Indigenous Australians. Annual avoidable deaths as a percentage of population is 0.0 % (for non-Indigenous Australians), 0.02% (for Australians as a whole), and 0.6% (Indigenous Australians) as compared to 0.4% for impoverished South Asians and 1.0% for even more impoverished sub-Saharan Africans [38] – and yet Australia is one of the world’s richest countries (per capita GDP $54,000) [110].
In August 2016 the Chair of the Australian Coalition Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, told the ABC Q&A TV program that A$30 billion is spent every year on 500,000 Indigenous people in Australia. However careful analysis revealed that only A$5.6 billion of this was Indigenous-specific expenditure. Thus in 2020 there are about 700,000 Indigenous Australians and one can estimate that collectively they receive A$5.6 billion x 700,000/500,000 = A$7.8 billion maximum spent on addressing 4,200 Indigenous avoidable deaths from deprivation or A$1.9 million per death. In stark contrast, assuming Australia’s deaths in a year-long Covid-19 crisis total only 200, Australia would have spent US$443 billion [80, 114] addressing a 200-death crisis or $2.2 billion per death i.e. 1,000 times more. Why this huge, 1,000-fold disparity in annual Australian expenditure on saving White lives in the once-off Covid-19 crisis as compared to a miserable annual Australian expenditure on saving Black lives in the ongoing Aboriginal Genocide? The answer is glaringly obvious – to politically correct (PC racist) White Australia, White lives matter 1,000 times more than Black lives.
Indeed this week the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Victoria, Dr Annaliese van Diemen, tweeted the following accurate and pointed remark: “Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID19 or Cook 1770?” Enraged, stupid and ignorant Coalition MPs, including the PM, falsely attacked her statement as false with some demanding her resignation or dismissal [115]. However Dr Annaliese van Diemen was correct. Captain James Cook, a great cartographer but also a racist, imperialist and continental-scale thief, stepped ashore and claimed an asserted “terra nullius” Australia for Britain on 29 April 1770. About 8 years later, on Invasion Day, 26 January 1788, the full-blown British invasion commenced and with it the Aboriginal Genocide that was qualitatively the worst genocidal atrocity in all of human history. In the following century the Indigenous population decreased from about 1 million to 0.1 million through violence, dispossession, deprivation and introduced disease. In 1788 there were 350-700 distinct Indigenous languages and dialects of which only 150 survive today and all but 20 are endangered. There is an ongoing Aboriginal Ethnocide promoted by government racism, opposition to bilingual education, opposition to remote communities on tribal lands inhabited for up to 65,000 years by the world’s oldest continuous cultures, removal of Indigenous children from their mothers at record levels, and dire socio-economic conditions for Indigenous Australians [116].
Of course it is not just Indigenous Australians and those living in dire poverty who are treated as “untermenschen”, “subhumans”, “unpeople”, “useless people” or “leaners” by the machinery of state. Thus each year 85,000 Australians die preventably from “lifestyle choices” or “political choices” and these include 22,000 dying from smoking (15,500), alcohol (5,600) and drugs (about 2,000) [81-89]. However Australian Governments will not violate neoliberal freedom by banning deadly agents such as tobacco and alcohol. Further, with a extraordinary total of only about 100 Covid-19 deaths in Australia [117], and many states or territories now registering zero (0) new Covid-19 cases [65], there is a big move to lift the social distancing-based lockdown (“lives” versus “livelihoods”) , with the first beneficiaries already being bars, restaurants and other social venues that are inevitably associated with licit drugs such as alcohol and nicotine and much less deadly illicit drugs. Indeed the Northern Territory that has a disproportionately big licit and illicit drug problem and a large Indigenous population that is negatively impacted by these scourges, has been the first Australian jurisdiction to substantially lift lockdown constraints.
Post-Covid-19 Indigenous Australians living in one of the world’s richest countries will continue to suffer avoidable deaths from deprivation at a rate between that of impoverished South Asia and even more impoverished sub-Saharan Africa – racist passive mass murder by a politically correct racist (PC racist) White Australia. And given this national commitment to committing and ignoring passive mass murder of Indigenous people one supposes that post-Covid-19 there will be a general rapid return to neoliberal enrichment of the rich at the expense of the poor, even greater austerity, and continued climate criminality but with a now greatly increased national debt to be borne by future generations. Pro-coal, pro-gas and pro-oil Australia is among world leaders in 16 areas of climate criminality [89, 93-99] and as Australia comes out of lockdown with gigantic debt and massive unemployment there will unfortunately be little political stomach among the Mainstream-dominating political Lib-Labs (the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and the Labor Party) for requisite massive action on climate change.
(4). Free university education, free life-long learning, public education, Mainstream truth-telling and an informed electorate.
Even if the post-Covid-19 world adopts a Green New Deal, UBI and a poverty-eliminating social humanist safety net, human greed remains and the problem of political dominance by wealthy individuals or corporations remains. Indeed in his seminal book ”Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”, Professor Brian Ellis referred to this system of political perversion by Big Money as “Corporatocracy” [49, 50]. Indeed Western democracies can be seen to have become Kleptocracies, Plutocracies, Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies, Dollarocracies and Corporatocracies in which Big Money purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality , votes, more political power and thence more private profit. As proposed by Thomas Piketty, annual wealth taxes can partially address wealth inequality-enabling Corporatocracy, but another partial solution lies in truth-telling alternatives to the lying by commission and lying by omission of mendacious, One Percenter-dominated Mainstream media [117-119], and free education and free university education in particular for an informed electorate. Indeed education is a basic human right, and all education can and should be free from infant education to life-long learning [120-122].
In short, every country needs a big, well-funded cohort of science, engineering, medical and other scholarly experts for various economic, health , security and prestige reasons – but why should impoverished students have to pay for it? Indeed some 25 countries already make university education free. Whatever the name – Accredited Remote Learning (ARL), Reading Only Tertiary Education (ROTE), Distance Education – accredited, top quality, off-campus, on-line teaching and learning for lecture-based courses can be provided for circa 1% of the present outrageous cost of ostensible on-campus tertiary education. Indeed the Covid-19 crisis and closure of campuses for social distancing reasons has required and demonstrated the utility of off-campus online education [120-122]. Top quality, accredited, and free tertiary education – and indeed top quality free education from infant schooling to life-long learning – should be a key part of the post-Covid-19 Green New Deal.
The Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for an informed public in order to get urgent and correct political action in a deadly crisis. Thus inspection of the global Covid -19 deaths data (3 May 2020) for medically sophisticated countries reveals astonishing national differences (Covid-19 deaths and deaths per million (/M) of population in brackets): Taiwan (6, 0.3/M), Hong Kong (4, 0.5/M), Singapore (17, 3/M), China (4,663, 3/M), Australia (95, 4/M), New Zealand (20, 4/M), Japan (474, 4/M), South Korea (250, 5/M), Cuba (66, 6/M), Russia (1,222, 8/M) … World (244,760, 31.4/M)… Germany (6,812, 81/M), Canada (3,566, 94/M), US (67,444, 204/M), Ireland (1,286, 260/M), Sweden (2,669, 264/M), France (24,760, 379/M), UK (28,131, 414/M), Italy (28,710, 475/M), Spain (25,100, 537/M) [65, 66].
Thus Taiwan (6, 0.3/M), rapidly implemented travel bans, lockdown, testing and tracing but kept schools open but with temperature checks, spatial separation of students and dividers on desks to separate students [123]. Hong Kong had a similarly rapid and strong lockdown and closed schools and universities [124]. In contrast Australia (95, 4/M) is 8 times worse than Hong Kong but waited until mid-March to ban foreign visitors, with the Coalition Federal Government opposing school closure but Victoria still supporting school closure [125]. China (4,663, 3/M) also achieved a good outcome with rapid and tough lockdown, contrary to the dishonest badmouthing from Donald Trump whose ignorance and idiocy has resulted in a disaster for the US (67,444 deaths, 204/M). Russia (1,222, 8/M) has kept in touch with the pack of East Asian and Australasian best performers. The shocking results in Western Europe evidently resulted from tardy and insufficient responses. Thus the UK apparently toyed with the idea of inaction to permit a speculated “herd immunity” to develop. However the release of a paper by expert UK epidemiologists in mid-March prompted firm UK action including closure of schools and universities – but it came too late with the UK result (28,131 deaths, 414/M) being 100 times worse than that of fellow 5-Eyes Club Anglosphere democracies Australia (95, 4/M) and New Zealand (20, 4/M) [126-128].
Ignorance can be deadly in a virus pandemic. Compounding ignorance is deliberate falsehood and political spin. Thus Trump America and its allies (notably US lackey Australia) are calling for an “international inquiry” into the coronavirus source whereas there is already a huge international scientific effort (with a massive contributions from China) to sequence thousands of coronavirus variants and hence to attempt to establish exactly that [129]. Further, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has extraordinarily cut off funding for US-China research into how coronavirus spread from bats to humans [130]. In response to outrageous US anti-China “fake news” alleging Chinese weaponizing of coronavirus, Andersen et al in a detailed paper in the prestigious Nature Medicine state that: “SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” [131].
Australia. Pre-Covid-19 Australia had a A$32 billion Education Export industry based on offering education from schools to universities to a pre-Covid-19 overseas student body totalling 0.4 million. An Australian Government Parliamentary Library analysis: “The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that, in 2017–18, international education was worth $32.4 billion to the Australian economy, up from $28.1 billion in 2016–17… Higher education accounted for 68.5 per cent ($22.2 billion) of international education export income in 2017–18, and 45.6 per cent of all overseas student enrolments in 2018… [In 2018] there were 398,563 higher education enrolments by people in Australia on student visas” [132]. These students pay for food, accommodation and other services and also contribute hugely to the Australian economy as casual workers. However the Covid-19 pandemic and the need to transfer to on-line delivery for safety reasons exposed the sheer fraudulence of the Australian Education Export industry and indeed the whole system of non-free, full fee-paying university education in Australia.
The English reading skill for overseas students is much greater than their understanding of spoken English with an Australian accent. Further, on-campus teaching typically involves downloading lecture notes and other teaching materials so most overseas and Australian students are actually effectively doing off-campus on-line learning but are being charged tens of thousands of Australian dollars per course unit for de facto fictional on-campus tuition. In short, the Australian Education Export industry is a gigantic scam that has now been exposed by the Covid-19 crisis. Australian universities, scientists, artists and intellectuals are hated by the Stupid, Ignorant and Egregiously Greedy (SIEG) Coalition Government and have taken a big hit in the Covid-19 crisis, but the after the crisis passes the fraudulent treatment of Australian and overseas students will continue. And of course endlessly mendacious Mainstream media, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes will resolutely keep on ignoring the gigantic scam. The extremely bad treatment of overseas students by the Australian Government during the Covid-19 crisis (notably excluding them from unemployment relief) may well kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
The Australian Federal Coalition Government and the Australian State and Territory Governments are under considerable pressure to start relaxing tough social distancing measures. There has been a big debate between those supporting school closure and those opposed [125]. This has now caused a clear rift between the Coalition Federal Government that is adamant that schools should remain open and the Victorian State Government that, guided by the Victorian Chief Medical Officer, is insistent that schools must remain closed (except for children with special needs or with parents working in key essential services). However a large study conducted by German virology experts has concluded that children were just as likely to spread the virus as adults and that schools should remain closed [133], the abstract of their paper stating : “Data on viral load, as estimated by real-time RT-PCR threshold cycle values from 3,712COVID-19 patients were analysed to examine the relationship between patient age andSARS-CoV-2 viral load. Analysis of variance of viral loads in patients of different age categories found no significant difference between any pair of age categories including children. In particular, these data indicate that viral loads in the very young do not differ significantly from those of adults. Based on these results, we have to caution against an unlimited re-opening of schools and kindergartens in the present situation. Children may be as infectious as adults” [134]. Free education for all increases the probability that the voters and the politicians will listen to the scientific experts.
Final comments.
UK humanitarian writer George Monbiot has called for a post-Covid-19 Green New Deal (1 May 2020): “In other words, let’s have what many people were calling for long before this disaster hit: a green new deal. But please let’s stop describing it as a stimulus package. We have stimulated consumption too much over the past century, which is why we face environmental disaster. Let us call it a survival package, whose purpose is to provide incomes, distribute wealth and avoid catastrophe, without stoking perpetual economic growth. Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance.” [107].
Similarly acclaimed Indian writer and humanitarian activist Arundhati Roy has urged a post-Covid-19 transformation (4 April 2020): “Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could… Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it” [135].
Decent Humanity must resolutely demand a humane, equitable and sustainable New Deal, a Green New Deal, for all of Humanity in the post-Covid-19 World.
References.
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[46]. Gideon Polya, “Neoliberalism, neofascism & Trumpism – racist alliance of mob & capital”, Countercurrents, 4 Augustt 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/neoliberalism-neofascism-trumpism-racist-alliance-of-mob-capital ).
[47]. Gideon Polya, “Polya’s 3 Laws Of Economics Expose Deadly, Dishonest And Terminal Neoliberal Capitalism”, Countercurrents, 17 October, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya171015.htm .
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[97]. Gideon Polya, “Latest Lancet data imply Adani Australian coal project will kill 1.4 million Indians”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/04/latest-lancet-data-imply-adani-australian-coal-project-will-kill-1-4-million-indians .
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[99]. Gideon Polya, “Millions join Global School Climate Strike – we are running out of time”, Countercurrents, 22 September 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/09/millions-join-global-school-climate-strike-we-are-running-out-of-time .
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[117]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home ;
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[128]. Gideon Polya, “UK-Australia COVID-19 deaths, deprivation deaths in Developing Countries, Indigenous avoidable deaths”, Global Research, 8 April 2020: https://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-australian-covid-19-deaths-versus-developing-country-indigenous-avoidable-deaths-deprivation/5708948 .
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Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: https://countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
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COVID 19 Aggravating Tribal’s Struggle for Survival : Agri And Forest Based
Livelihood Offer Solutions
by Dr Nilratan Shende
COVID19 has offered us an opportunity to introspect deeply kind of centralised urban centric development model we have pursued over the years, would we learn lessons and reflect on sustainable decentralized model of development for tribal and rural population of the country, time and power dynamics would be able to answer this in coming months and years.
Covid19 infection that has begun from Wuhan in China in November 2019 which has now infected over 3237600 patients in 184 countries till end of April 2020 and led to mortality of over 228828 persons worldwide. In over five and half months virus has reached width and breath across the world and impacted severely at various level. The countries which were well equipped itself with Missile to safeguard their sovereignty but caught off-guard and were ill equipped to deal with Microbes and incidentally it also brought to light lack of preparedness and importance of investment in the area of basic healthcare. COVID 19 has severe implications in the area of business, employment, livelihood, environment, economy, international relations, and as prominent industrialist and philanthropist Ratan Tata put COVID19 created serious existential challenge to the human race.
1st Nationwide lockdown was announced on 25th March in the country and was eventually extended to 3rd of May 2020 after reviewing situation and after consultation with Chief Ministers of various states of India. Although, lockdown has successfully checked spikes in cases and prevented community spread to a great extent, however nationwide lockdown has also created severe hardships for the migrant’s population; be it inter-state or intra state migration. Some instances of gathering of migrants labourers at Delhi, Surat, Orissa, Mumbai while lockdown was in force are indicative of not only desperation to reach home but also prevailing insecurities over jobs and uncertainties over future. Lockdown is most likely to have severe impact on sustainability of small scale industries.
Once lockdown is gradually lifted, stranded migrants labourers would begin their journey to their respective states and homes. 10 tribal dominated states would face severe challenge of reverse migration post lifting of the lockdown. It is even more critical in light of study of a Lucas Chancel, prominent economist which has highlighted in one of the research that Income inequality in India at its highest level since 1922. It is even graver in light of NSS data of unemployment which is highest since 1977. According to data released by think-tank Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s unemployment rate surged to nearly 9 per cent from 8.74% in March 2020. As per Global Hunger Report 2019, India stands at 102nd among 117 countries. Once we analyse the data against aforespecified indicators, it seems even more crucial in light of employment and suicides. As per the data of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) with regards to suicides, it was discovered that the number of unemployed people committing suicide had not only shot up, but it also surpassed that of the farmers in 2017 and 2018. Maharashtra contributes about 13.4% of the total suicide rate followed by Tamilnadu (10.3%) and West Bengal (9.9%), which is highest among the states and UTs. It is therefore important to understand and foresee what challenges and way forward can reverse migration face against the backdrop of very challenging economic state, worrying employment indicators, grave hunger scenario and socially fragile situation on account of losing livelihood.
Researchers Ph D at IITBombay on “Hunger, Food Insecurity and Malnutrition deaths among Tribes in Maharashtra” has revealed Migration as one of the important 13 different types of coping mechanisms that Tribes in Maharashtra rely on while dealing with hunger and starvation. Against this backdrop, one of very crucial challenge that tribals would be staring at is their loss of livelihood and consequently loss of purchasing power of the households and the families which is likely to make them vulnerable further.
Migration was found to be liberating as it provides opportunities for the people to improve their socio economic situation and at the same time positively alters the labour relations, wages and mitigates the exploitative relationships at the grass root level. Migration is one of the important coping mechanism through which people have improved their social life and social status and addressed their aspiration for the future.
Analysis of migration data and its impact at the local level brings to light the fact that migration has had a liberating impact on most of the landless and marginal farmers in the village and even altered the social and economic relationships positively. For instance one of the respondents, Ramnath who explored migration for the first time out of curiosity, has managed to come out of debt trap which has tied him down to one employer in the village, paving the way for achieving household food security and also improving his ability to negotiate better wages. While the researcher was having a discussion with him in his hut, he came up with a very poignant statement which sums up the link between borrowing money from the moneylender and food insecurity. He stated, “Had I borrowed money from the moneylenders, you would not have seen Turi in my yard” pointing proudly to the heap of red split gram which as kept for drying.
What are some of the options that can help in ensuring entitlements, improving livelihood and safeguarding interest of the tribal communities? For 2020-21, the government has allocated Rs 61500 crores for MGNRGA scheme, which is lower than last years revised estimates of Rs 71001.81 crores by 13.4%. Keeping in mind catastrophic effect of reverse migration in rural areas as well as on tribals due to COVID19 pandemic, government should increase budget on MGNREGA substantially and should at list provide 200 man days of work instead of 100 man days of provision currently in order to compensate wage loss due to absence of migration. Such provisioning would lead to increasing purchasing capital of the targeted households and enable communities and households to cope better with likely imminent hunger. Efforts should also be made to include pastoral communities, landless and other excluded communities with the objective of creation of income generating asset under MGNREGA.
Agriculture and allied sector contributes $ 265 billion that is 15% to the GDP and employ over 60% of workforce. As per Central Statistical Office agriculture sector reported a low growth of 2.9% in 2019-20. Tribal livelihood depends greatly on forest based resources and agriculture based livelihood. Agriculture based social enterprises promotion has a huge potential of providing sustainable livelihood of small and marginal farmers that constitute 87% of pleasant in the country and tribal communities. Investment in building social enterprises among tribal coupled with strengthening supply chain and thereby ensuring access to products would be the key in the context of tribal development particularly in lighting of lack of control of the tribal over their own productive resources.
Poverty and backwardness are major issues confronting tribal communities. Gainful employment within the region can prevent forced migration to cities besides improving the standard of living of local communities. In terms of addressing backwardness and poverty, agricultural based entrepreneurship would create self-employment, address structural poverty related issues and enable families to come out of poverty and hunger in a sustainable way. In addition to this, it is equally important to take cognizance of the issues related to land issues and landlessness, food insecurities, inclusive development, capacity building along with sustainability.
COVID19 has offered us an opportunity to introspect deeply kind of centralised urban centric development model we have pursued over the years, would we learn lessons and reflect on sustainable decentralized model of development for tribal and rural population of the country, time and power dynamics would be able to answer this in coming months and years.
Dr Nilratan Shende has his Ph D on Poverty Hunger and Coping Mechanism Among Tribes in Maharashtra from IITBombay. He is a researcher development cum CSR practitioner who is engaged in promotion of social enterprise among people at the BoP.
Bolivia vs Venezuela: COVID-19 response reveals true nature of governments
by Federico Fuentes
Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief their true nature. This is perhaps no more evident than when we compare Bolivia and Venezuela.
Government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief their true nature. This is perhaps no more evident than when we compare Bolivia and Venezuela.
Despite having been installed as “interim” president after a coup last November, Jeanine Anez is presented in the media as leading Bolivia’s “transition back to democracy”. On the other hand, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro is regularly described as a “tyrant” or “dictator” presiding over an “authoritarian regime”.
Yet, when we compare how these governments have responded to COVID-19, it is clear these labels bear little resemblance to reality.
Bolivia
In Bolivia, the government was quite slow to react to the pandemic and, when it finally acted, did so in an incoherent manner.
Eight days after the first cases were detected on March 10 the government closed the country’s borders and initiated a nightly curfew from 5pm–6am. But the curfew only served to raise the number of people on the streets at certain times of the day, thereby worsening the probability of contagion.
The government then shifted to a complete lockdown on March 22, imposed under threat of large fines (up to $450) and jail time (up to 10 years) for those who did not comply. Police and military were granted special powers to ensure compliance.
By April 11, almost 10,000 people had been arrested for violating lockdown restrictions. In comparison, Bolivia had only carried out 4800 COVID-19 tests by April 23.
In terms of alleviating the economic impacts of the lockdown, the government did not issue its first social security payments until mid-April. The government has also said it will subsidise basic utilities and provide companies with loans to cover wage bills.
In the midst of the pandemic, health minister Anibal Cruz resigned on April 8, but not before rejecting Cuba’s offer to help the country fight the virus. Hundreds of Cuban doctors were expelled from Bolivia shortly after Anez assumed power.
Cruz later revealed that modelling indicated Bolivia was facing the prospect of 3840 deaths from COVID-19 within 4 months. He was replaced by Marcel Navajas, who said expanding testing was not a priority, despite World Health Organization recommendations stating it is vital to any strategy to contain the virus.
Bolivia has also been extremely slow to allow hundreds of its citizens stranded in Chile to return home. After initially announcing on March 30 that 150 Bolivians would be allowed in, the government backtracked and said the border would remain closed.
Almost a week later, the first 480 Bolivians were finally allowed to cross, with a further 430 given permission on April 21. Hundreds more continue to wait their turn.
The government, however, has not wasted time in using the crisis to crack down on its main political rival, the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), accusing it of seeking to break the lockdown to distribute food and other supplies to those who need it.
It also postponed the May 3 general elections. The most recent polling showed MAS candidate Luis Arce as the clear frontrunner (leading by about 15%), with Anez in third place.
Despite supposedly heading an “interim” government, installed with the sole purpose of convening new elections, Anez has used the lockdown — during which protests are banned — to overturn previous MAS government policies. These include lifting the ban on tin concentrate exports; allowing the state public works company to contract work without going to tender; and eliminating certain agricultural tariffs.
The economic minister has also flagged ramping up the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture, tax relief for big business and increased foreign investment in natural resource extraction, as part of its “recovery” plan. All without any constitutional or popular mandate.
As of April 23, Bolivia had detected 672 cases and reported 40 deaths from COVID-19.
Venezuela
The situation in Venezuela is starkly different.
Unlike Bolivia, Venezuela was much quicker to move, contacting China early to obtain details about how it dealt with the pandemic. On the basis of this information, it obtained a huge number of COVID-19 testing units and personal protective equipment for health workers.
Today, it leads the region in terms of testing, having carried out more than 350,000 tests. Due to this testing regime, it has only detected 288 cases and registered just 10 deaths, despite having a population two-and-a-half times larger than Bolivia.
Rather than focus on punitive measures, the Maduro government has prioritised policies to alleviate the social and economic impacts of the nationwide lockdown that began on March 17. Among the measures it has taken are a 100% wage guarantee for all workers, a moratorium on rent and loan repayments and social security payments for a range of sectors, including informal sector workers.
Importantly, the lockdown has not meant a complete halt to the circulation of people. Instead, doctors, together with local community activists, have been going door-to-door to seek out potential cases of COVID-19. They have been aided by the government’s online Homeland Platform system, through which people can notify authorities if they have any symptoms.
The same system has also been used to gauge citizens’ opinions on certain measures. For example, a poll was taken in mid-April to see if parents wanted schools to complete the schooling year via distance education and, if so, what would be the most appropriate mechanism to use (internet, radio, dropping off books with exercises).
Community activists have mobilised to distribute copies of a government-issued book (also available online) containing 101 measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The book is made up of written testimonies from residents of Wuhan recounting how they dealt with the outbreak.
Venezuela, which has experienced a wave of mass emigration in recent years due to the country’s economic situation, had received more than 20,000 returning citizens from neighbouring Colombia and Brazil by April 24. Approximately 600–650 more citizens are crossing the border each day, where they are tested and quarantined.
Given the discriminatory policies of many countries that have left migrants without protection, hundreds more Venezuelans have been flown back from Europe and the United States, in many cases on specially chartered flights organised by the government.
Venezuela has been able to pursue its people-first policy in spite of the fact that its health system has been devastated by extensive trade and financial sanctions imposed by the United States and European nations. Reports estimated the death toll from the impact of the sanctions was more than 40,000 in 2018 alone. Others claim the tally is now more than 100,000.
Because Venezuela represents an alternative to the profit-driven capitalist system, the US has chosen the COVID-19 crisis as a time to ramp up its attacks on the Maduro government.
Media outlets, rather than continuing to distort information, should be actively questioning why the US, amid a global pandemic, is supporting a repressive regime in Bolivia that is proving inept at dealing with COVID-19, while it tightens a sanctions regime that is putting lives at risk in Venezuela.
Orignally published in Green Left
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