Saturday, March 11, 2017

Pyongyang: “The U.S. is the worst human rights abuser”

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/03/pyongyang-us-is-worst-human-rights.html

KCNA (Korean Central News Agency) Commentary on U.S. Inveterate Repugnancy and Hostility toward DPRK.

Source: Solidnet.

Pyongyang, March 9 (KCNA) — The U.S. State Department in “2016 country report on human rights” published on March 3 cited “data” on “human rights issue” in the DPRK and went so bully as to list the DPRK as an “authoritarian state”.

The State Department made a flurry of rhetoric, let out by human scum-like “defectors from the north” who fled the country after committing crimes against their kinsmen and the nation, established facts in a bid to use them for tarnishing the dignity of a sovereign state. This is an expression of inveterate repugnancy and hostility toward the ideology and social system in the DPRK.

We strongly reject its “human rights report” aimed to threaten the political stability of a country and bring down its social and political system under the “human rights standard” based on the American view on value.

Aggression and interference in the internal affairs of other countries and nations are justified on the international arena at present under the “human rights standard” set by the U.S. and other Western countries.

Prompted by their unilateral interests, quite irrelevant to human rights, the U.S. and other Western countries label other countries preserving their own social system and political mode “human rights abusers” and put collective pressure on them.

The recent report, too, took issue with human rights situation in other countries through prejudice and fabrication guided by the American-style “human rights standard” as before.

But the U.S. is the worst human rights abuser as it brought down legitimate states through “color revolution” and spawned the worst-ever refugee problem while wantonly interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign states under the signboard of “defence of human rights”.

It is ridiculous for the U.S. to publish the report faulting the human rights performance in other countries while styling itself “human rights judge,” being unaware of where it stands.

Polaris, a flesh traffic information body, made public a report that flesh traffic in the U.S. in 2016 increased 35.7 percent as compared with that in the previous year, a clear proof of the poor human rights performance there.

Polaris in its report disclosed that 7 572 cases of flesh traffic occurred in California, Texas, Florida and other states of the U.S., terming it “one form of modern-day slavery”.

The U.S. is heading for the grave of history due to the extreme gap between the rich and the poor and all sorts of social evils prevalent there. However, it is faulting the Korean-style socialist system where the working masses fully enjoy genuine political freedom and rights and a happy life. It is ridiculous, indeed.

No country considers that the U.S. is making “efforts” to work out “human rights reports” on other countries out of its true concern about human rights performance.

The U.S. “human rights report” is just a tool for aggression for bringing down the ideology and system of other countries and attaining its domination aims.

A clear proof of this is the human rights abuses perpetrated by the hegemonic forces in various countries of the world like Iraq.

The U.S. has no elementary moral qualifications to talk about “human rights issue” of the DPRK as it threatens the right to existence of the Korean people to the extremes through the unprecedented blockade-type “sanctions” pursuant to its vicious hostile policy toward the DPRK.

All the countries on earth have the right to exercise their right to realize their own independent desire under the institutional and legal guarantees provided by the state where they reside.

The “human rights report” annually made public by the U.S. for decades is aimed to infringe upon the sovereignty of other countries. This fact glaringly reveals the nature of the U.S. styling itself an “international judge”.

The U.S. will get nothing through the “human rights” smear campaign, part of its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

The people in the DPRK are enjoying genuine political freedom and rights and a happy life under the best socialist system in the world. The DPRK will invariably advance along the road of promoting the Korean-style human rights chosen by its people themselves while foiling the U.S. hostile rhetoric about “human rights”.

Human rights can never be a playing thing of the U.S.

Friday, March 3, 2017

THIS IS CAPITALISM! Smartphones made by blood; child labour in Congo’s cobalt mines

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/03/this-is-capitalism-smartphones-made-by.html

It’s Capitalism, Stupid…

 

A Sky News investigation has found children as young as four working in Congolese mines where cobalt is extracted for smartphones.The mineral is an essential component of batteries for smartphones and laptops, making billions for multinationals such as Apple and Samsung, yet many of those working to extract it are earning as little as 8p a day in desperately dangerous conditions.

With little regulation requiring companies to trace their cobalt supply lines, and most of the world’s cobalt coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the chances are your smartphone contains a battery with cobalt mined by children in the central African nation.The Sky News team visited a string of mines in the DRC’s former Katanga Province and found children working at all of them.

Eight pence a day for backbreaking work

At one cobalt mine, children toiled in the drenching rain carrying huge sacks of the mineral. Dorsen, eight, had no shoes and told us he hadn’t made enough money to eat for the past two days – despite working for about 12 hours a day.

His friend Richard, 11, talked about how his whole body ached every day from the tough physical work.

The mine tunnels are dug by hand by miners who have no protective equipment. The tunnels have no supports and are prone to collapse, especially in the rain.

At one mine we travelled to, workers had downed tools in support of a fellow miner who had died after one such collapse.

There are thousands of unofficial, unregulated, unmonitored mines where men, women and children work in what can only be described as slave conditions. In one group, we found a circle of children with a four-year-old girl picking out cobalt stones.

Other children younger than her were sitting among the mineral or playing nearby. A pregnant woman already carrying a toddler on her back was also in the group. None of them wore gloves or masks, yet the World Health Organisation says exposure to cobalt and breathing in its dust fumes can cause long-term health problems.

Certainly, many of those involved in the mining industry believe they’re suffering poor health as a result.

Makumba Mateba has a huge tumour on his throat which he believes has grown because the water in his village is contaminated by cobalt mining.

He said: “We only drink the water which comes from the mining sites after all the minerals have been washed in it. “It comes right through our village and I drink it and I’m sure it’s that which has made me sick.”

Monica, four years old, picks out cobalt stones at a mine.

Mystery illnesses

Becha Gibu, a doctor in the village of Kimpesa, said many of the babies he delivered had mysterious illnesses. “There are lots of infections they’re born with, sometimes rashes, sometimes their bodies are covered in spots,” he said.

“The mothers are also just not strong when giving birth – this is all a consequence of the mining.”

 

The DRC sits on one of the richest mineral deposits in the world, with huge amounts of gold, tin and cobalt underneath its soil. It produces 60% of the world’s cobalt – a fifth of which is extracted by hand or artisanal miners known locally as creusseurs.

 

Cobalt collected by small mining operations is sold to mostly Chinese traders, who we filmed secretly. They don’t ask questions about where their cobalt comes from or who has worked to extract it – they just want the best price. Traders then sell it mostly to exporter Congo Dongfang International, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, which supplies most of the world’s largest battery makers.

The supply line is chaotic, informal and unregulated, with unofficial, non-standardised prices paid out to groups, individuals and larger networks.

Monday, January 2, 2017

Capitalism Unmasked: Numbers reveal the expansion of social inequalities in the 21st century

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/01/capitalism-unmasked-numbers-reveal.html

The poorest half of the world’s population shares a bit under the 1% of the global wealth, while the richest 10% owns the 88% of the total global wealth. The 0.7% of the world’s population owns 116.6 trillion dollars!

1. The richest 1% of the world’s population controls half of the global wealth. Despite the economic crisis, the number of millionaires in a worldwide scale was increased during the last 12 months of 2016.

2. According to a survey by Credit Suisse, 3.4 billion people– the 71% of the world’s population- share only 7.4 trillion dollars, less than the wealth of the 2,473 billionaires around the world.

3. The total number of billionaires grew by 81% since 2009, a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, while their wealth was more than doubled. According to data provided by Wealth-X and UBS, 16.6 million people (0.334% of the global population) own 77 trillion dollars, which is almost the annual global GDP.

4. Approximately 211,275 millionaires (0.004% of the global population) own the 12.8% (29.7 trillion dollars) of the global wealth, while 2,325 billionaires own 7.3 trillion dollars.

5. The wealth of the richest 62 people has risen by 45% in the five years since 2010 – that’s an increase of more than half a trillion dollars ($542bn), to $1.76 trillion.

6. Since the turn of the century, the poorest half of the world’s population has received just 1% of the total increase in global wealth, while half of that increase has gone to the top 1%. The average annual income of the poorest 10% of people in the world has risen by less than $3 each year in almost a quarter of a century. Their daily income has risen by less than a single cent every year (Credit Suisse, 2015).

7. Approximately 780,000,000 people lack access to clean water, while 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation.

8. Every year, approximately 3,500,000 children die from hunger.

IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM ©.

by James Thompson

It was a chilling moment when I woke up to a surreal New World in which Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States (POTUS) the night before.

Just like one of the disjointed scenes from the 1971 Monty Python movie “And Now for Something Completely Different”, the present absurd reality shocks us out of the previous absurd reality. The previous buffoon has been jettisoned and a new buffoon takes the stage.

Now we are confronted with a new POTUS that some on the left characterize as a right-wing, authoritarian populist. It is too early to tell whether he is a true fascist since he has never held public office before. There can be no question that many of the kooks and clowns he has appointed to his new administration are open fascists. However, “one swallow does not make a summer.” The world will soon find out if the US people have elected a true fascist to head their government.

Meanwhile, the vanquished social Democrats in the United States refuse to be excluded from the buffoonery. The buffoon-elect is no stranger to bad ideas and bad policy. He has a terrible history of vicious public attacks on people with disabilities, women, racial minorities, immigrants, i.e. you name it, and he has attacked it. He advocates dismantling government programs and replacing them with privatization schemes which only benefit the wealthy. He has put his foot in the middle of almost all important domestic economic issues.

Do the so-called “progressive” forces in the United States call out the new buffoon in the White House on these issues? When you listen to the mainstream media, do you hear about the new POTUS’ absurd stance on these issues?

No, all you hear about are the unfiltered delusions of the progressive left about the Russians hacking poor, innocent little Hillary and causing her Majesty to lose an election that was hers to lose. All you hear about is the Russian state propaganda machine which has poisoned the minds of innocent Americans and turned them into agents of Putin.

Never before has one man had such pervasive control over the minds of Americans. Putin has been turned into a modern day Rasputin, Hitler and Darth Vader all combined into an evil individual who threatens the very survival of the American way of life. Indeed, Putin and Trump are accused of threatening “American democracy.”

Trump, in spite of his repugnant racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc., has resisted the demonization of the Russians and has argued against the social Democrats’ rush to war with the Russians. In this regard, Trump has assumed the role of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.

Trump seems to get it that war with Russia would be the end of capitalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in short order.

This position infuriates the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie.

So, what do the social Democrats do? In an opportunistic orgy they attempt to savage Trump in an effort to please the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie. By attacking Trump’s peaceful tendencies towards Russia, they prove without a doubt that the social Democrats in the United States view their alliance with the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie to be more important than their alliance with the US working class.

A war with Russia would definitely benefit the US bourgeoisie but would be devastating and catastrophic for the US working class.

The US social Democrats continue unashamedly with their historical motto “Profits before People.”

No one knows whether they will be successful in pushing the new buffoon-elect into starting a new war.

They must believe that great treasure awaits them if they please their evil Masters.

Meanwhile, the US working class is stuck in a swamp full of alligators.

Will the US working class continue to cleave to the social Democrats? The next four years should tell the story.