(A response to Sue Webb opinion in People’s World on January 4, 2016)

Dear Editor:

In Sue Webb’s opinion piece which appeared in the January 4, 2016 edition she implies that all that is needed in the USA is for us to change the word “capitalism” to “socialism” and everything will fall into place. Of course, this is pure fantasy, the words of a person who is satisfied with the capitalist system of greed and corporate control, what we used to refer to as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Ms. Webb is, indeed, bourgeois and her oversimplifications show that.

Her slanders of the USSR and socialism are particularly disturbing. She writes “[socialism] – has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there’s nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not “socialist.”

Ms. Webb never objected the to the USSR when, in an act of great proletarian internationalism, the Soviet Union and the socialist community of nations led an international movement to save the life of Angela Y. Davis. Now that there is no more USSR thanks to the counter-revolutionary activities of Mikhail Gorbachev and those around him that promoted the concept of socialist “markets” and private enterprise, Ms. Webb all of a sudden finds fault with the socialism of the 20^th Century, calling it dictatorial, politically repressive, bureaucratic, and over-centralized, with a command style structure. And what dare I ask, was the USSR when they supported the CPUSA and its fight against racism and its political anti-monopoly program? So soon she forgets! Ms. Webb never objected when the Soviet Union supported the Cuban economy and the development of Cuba. She never objected when the USSR supported the national liberation movements in Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Congo. All during the existence of the Soviet Union, the world witnessed the greatest fighter for world peace and socialism. Real socialism. To deny that is the worst kind of right opportunism.

As her alternative to scientifically planned economic socialism, Ms. Webb describes how we in the USA have many publicly owned electric utilities. That’s nice. We also have private utilities Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas, and Electric (PG&E), and Edison International for example, that endanger our environment and public health, cause great disasters like the natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California, the natural gas leak in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the financial manipulation of energy prices by companies like Enron. What is the plan of the social-democrats to deal with these privately owned conglomerates in a socialist economy?

Ms. Webb says that Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist because he rejects the idea of a planned economy. Great! So we should continue living with the chaos we live in now, where material goods are produced not for the benefit of the people, but to continue the system of private profits and exploitation at any cost? She speaks like a typical believer in American exceptionalism. As long as we have markets for goods everything will be OK. She even says it would be OK to operate private businesses that continue to exploit workers, a kind of touchy, feeley, nice capitalism!

Gus Hall, the great American Communist leader, said many times that there is no “socialist model but that there are general concepts and economic laws of socialism that cannot be ignored. When they are cast aside as Sue Webb suggests we should, the result is counter-revolution and an increase in anti-worker activity. As long as there is a bourgeois class and that class holds the levers of power, it makes no difference who is President of the United States. We have two Americas. A capitalist America, and a working class America. The class war intensifies more every day. We will never have socialism unless and until the workers themselves take power and own the means of production and write their own ticket. They don’t need a Democratic Party messiah to do that. They need a real trade union federation like the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), another contribution to humanity from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

So what is socialism? In any country, in any language, socialism is the intermediary step toward a communist society. Socialism is defined as follows: “The social order which, through revolutionary action by the working class and its allies, replaces capitalism. It is “the first phase of Communist society, as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society” (Marx). It is the social order in which the exploitation of man by man has ended because the toiling masses own the means of production. In contrast with the higher phase of Communist society, where “each gives according to his need,” in Socialist society “each gives according to his ability, and receives according to the amount of work performed”.

Contrast this with Democratic Socialism, *which is the general term for reformist and opportunist parties in their “theory” and practice in the Labor Movement [in sharp contrast with class conscious, anti-imperialist trade unionism of the WFTU]. Social-Democracy’s history is marked by timidity, legalism, “respectability,” capitulation to the influence of the capitalists, and consistent betrayal, of the working class.

Time to ask yourselves, which side are you on?

*Marxist Glossary, L. Harry Gould, Sydney. Australia 1948

Joe Hancock

PCUSA, Los Angeles

Africa: Charting the Digital Gender Gap

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 25, 2016 (160125)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

New research from the World Wide Web Foundation reveals new details
about the enduring digital gender gap in Africa’s urban cities,
despite the unprecedented expansion of access to mobile phones among
women as well as men. In poor neighborhoods of six African cities,
the study shows, “women are almost as likely as men to own a mobile
phone of their own, but they are a third less likely than men of
similar age, education level and economic status to use their phones
to access the Internet. ” The cities included were Lagos, Nairobi,
Maputo, Kampala, Yaounde, and Cairo.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/ict1601.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/ict1601.php

The full 10-country study, also including Manila, Jakarta, and New
Delhi in Asia, and Bogota in Latin America, predictably showed that
education, age, and income had significant effects on the scale of
the digital gender gap, and found that three of ten men surveyed
were adamant that the Internet should be a male-controlled domain.
But it also showed that once women did have access, they were able
to narrow the gap with men in effective use of the Internet.

It concluded that explicit attention to gender equity in ICT
policies could have major impact for poor women as well as men, in
an urban environment in which access to mobile phones is now almost
universal.

The report from Mozambique, which has long pioneered in Internet
access, well illustrates the point. “The Women’s Rights Online
Mozambique report found that while nearly all women and men in
Maputo slum areas own a mobile phone, only 33% of women had accessed
the Internet, compared to 59% of men. … The majority of
respondents (96% of men and 93% of women) used their mobile phone
every day.” But while women use it predominantly for voice and text
messaging, a higher proportion of men have access to data plans and
the Internet.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin includes the executive summary of the
report, as well as two brief blog posts on Maputo and Yaounde. The
full report, as well as data files from the survey, are available on
the website of the World Wide Web Foundation (
http://webfoundation.org).

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on information and communication
technology, visit http://www.africafocus.org/ictexp.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Women’s Rights Online : Translating Access into Empowerment

Global Report – October 2015

World Wide Web Foundation

with support from Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency (Sida)

http://webfoundation.org/ – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ztjkmx9

Executive Summary

The newly adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals include an
important pledge to harness information and communications
technologies (ICTs) to advance women’s empowerment, as well as a
commitment to connect everyone in Least Developed Countries to the
Internet by 2020. However, until now, estimates of the “digital
divide” between women and men in use of the Internet and other ICTs
have been sketchy.

This report explores the real extent of that divide in nine cities
across nine developing countries, in order to gain a better
understanding of the empowering potential of ICTs as a weapon
against poverty and inequality, and the barriers that must be
overcome to unlock it. Research was designed and carried out in
close collaboration with leading national civil society
organisations in the countries we studied.

The stereotype of poor people in the developing world uniformly
“left behind” in the darkness of a life without Internet
connectivity is as misleading as its opposite: the cliche in which
almost everyone in Nairobi or Jakarta now wields a mobile phone that
gushes forth market price data, health information and opportunities
for civic engagement.

Instead, our research reveals a picture of extreme inequalities in
digital empowerment – which seem to parallel wider societal
disparities in information-seeking, voice and civic engagement. For
example, Internet use among young, well-educated men and students in
poor communities of the developing world rivals that of Americans,
while Internet use among older, uneducated women is practically non-
existent.

Inequalities in access

Women are about 50% less likely to be connected than men in the same
age group with similar levels of education and household income.

Women are almost as likely as men to own a mobile phone of their
own, but they are a third less likely than men of similar age,
education level and economic status to use their phones to access
the Internet.

The most important socio-economic drivers of the gender gap in ICT
access are education and age. Controlling for income, women who have
some secondary education or have completed secondary school are six
times more likely to be online than women with primary school or
less.

Cities with the highest gender gaps in education level such as
Nairobi (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda), Maputo (Mozambique), and Jakarta
(Indonesia) were also the ones where the highest gender gaps in
Internet access were reported.

Conversely, in the cities where women’s educational attainment
outstrips the men in our sample (New Delhi and Manila), the gender
gap in Internet access has closed.

Unconnected women cited lack of know-how and high costs as the major
reasons that they are not using the Internet. In the countries in
our study, a monthly prepaid data allocation of one GB (enough for
just 13 minutes of Web use a day, excluding video) costs, on
average, about 10% of average per capita income. That’s 10 times
more than what the same data costs the average OECD citizen,
relative to income, and is double what

people in developing countries spend on healthcare. In the countries
with the highest Internet costs as a proportion of average income,
our study found the lowest numbers of women online and the largest
gender gaps in Internet use.

Inequalities in use

How people use the Internet, once they are connected, is also
strongly influenced by offline inequalities. Most of the urban poor
respondents in our study face comprehensive marginalisation in civic
and economic life. Only a small minority proactively seek out
information from any source on topics key to achieving their rights,
and an even smaller percentage participate in political debate or
community affairs. Most are in insecure, informal work or don’t have
any reliable income of their own. Being female deepens exclusion on
every single one of these counts.

A few of these poor urban dwellers are starting to use the Internet
to change their situation – to gain a voice, seek information,
enhance their livelihoods, or expand their networks beyond existing
social boundaries. Not only is this group small, it is also
disproportionately male.

Women are half as likely as men to speak out online, and a third
less likely to use the Internet to look for work (controlling for
age and education). However, there is potential for digital
empowerment to spread much more widely and equitably:

* A high proportion of women and men surveyed recognise and value
the Internet as a space for commenting on important issues, and say
that the Internet has made it safer for women to express their views
– even though they may not yet be using it for this purpose
themselves.

* Large majorities of urban poor Internet users do already exploit
digital platforms as a vehicle for reinforcing the social ties on
which their survival often depends, suggesting that the Internet’s
power to enhance social capital could be an effective route to
digital empowerment.

* Education is a major enabler of digital empowerment among women,
suggesting opportunities for greater investment in girls’ education
to work hand-in-hand with targeted ICT skills programmes in schools.

* Gender gaps in how men and women use the Internet are significant
– but not as large as gender disparities in access to the Internet.
In other words, once women do manage to get online, the gap narrows
between female and male users in terms of digital empowerment. The
policy challenge is to grow the minority of women using the Internet
and expand their voice and choices into a majority – both through
expanding women’s access and in tackling barriers to women’s
empowerment.

Notably, women who are active in “offline” political and civic life
are not only more likely to be connected in the first place, but are
also three times more likely (controlling for education level, age
and income) to use the Internet to express opinions on important or
controversial issues than other women. We need to better understand
this synergy between offline and online agency in order to learn how
gender norms that silence women in both realms can be overcome.

Patriarchy online

Around three in 10 men agreed with sentiments that the Internet
should be a male-controlled domain, but only two in 10 women agreed.
Only a tiny fraction of women said they do not use the Internet
because it is “not appropriate” for them or that they are not
permitted to do so. Such attitudes were much more prevalent in some
cities than others, however. For example, in New Delhi and Manila
nearly two-thirds of men agreed with the statement that women should
not be allowed to use the Internet in public places, and over half
agreed that men have the responsibility to restrict what women look
at online. Yet, these were the two cities with the highest levels of
Internet use among women, suggesting that patriarchal beliefs don’t
necessarily stop women getting online. However, further research is
needed to explore the extent to which they contribute to self-
censorship in how, where and when women use the Internet.

Summary of key recommendations

We will not achieve the SDGs on universal Internet access and
empowerment of women through ICTs unless technology policy is
specifically designed to tackle and overcome the steep inequalities
of gender, education, and income outlined in this study.

Full details of each recommendation can be found at the end of the
report, but the fundamentals include:

1 Establish time-bound targets for equity in Internet access, use
and skills, by gender and income level. Our 2014 Web Index shows
that many national ICT strategies or broadband plans include, at
most, a rhetorical commitment to gender equity. A few have a
patchwork of interesting but small-scale programmes and initiatives,
but overarching targets linked to budget allocations are needed to
ensure coherence, coordination and scale.

2 Teach digital skills from primary school onwards. Our findings
point strongly to the overwhelming difference that education makes
to women’s use of technology, even when controlling for other
factors such as income and age. By making sure that primary and
secondary school curricula include ICT literacy basics, we can take
advantage of near-100% primary enrolment rates to open up digital
opportunities for everyone.

3 Smash the affordability barrier. Making broadband cheaper is not
only the best way to get more people connected, but also a
prerequisite to enable them to go online and explore longer and more
often, so they can fully unlock digital opportunities. For example,
women who are able to go online daily are nearly three times more
likely than infrequent users to report that the Internet has helped
them to increase their income.

4 Practice woman-centred design. The impact of online services could
be dramatically increased by defining the end user as a woman and
not just a generic “consumer”. Experience shows that when women are
not consulted, products and services are often destined to fail.
When government agencies and donors invest in such services, the
number one target for success should be uptake by low-income women.

5 Make women’s civic and political engagement an explicit goal. The
small minority of poor women who are already active in community or
political life are not only much more likely to be online, but also
far more likely to use technology in transformative ways.
Policymakers should work with women’s groups to find ways that
technology can help women to enhance their offline participation,
voice and power.

6 Combat harassment of women online. In 74% of countries included in
the Web Index, law enforcement agencies and the courts are failing
to take appropriate actions in situations where ICTs are used to
commit acts of gender-based violence. Governments must take steps to
enact adequate legislative measure

7 It’s not (just) the technology, stupid. Neither communications
ministries, which typically have lead responsibility for national
ICT strategies, nor gender ministries, where these exist, can
achieve the SDGs on Internet access and women’s digital empowerment
on their own. Additionally, our findings underline the lesson that
empowering women does not happen in separate boxes labelled
“offline” and “online”, but requires progress across several fronts
at once. Government agencies, civil society groups and private
sector stakeholders will need to work together in all sectors to
ensure that ICT initiatives are systematically integrated with wider
efforts to expand women’s choices and capabilities in the labour
market, in the home, at school and in public life. Training
policymakers across different sectors (such as health, education,
small business, agriculture) to understand and harness the potential
of ICTs to tackle poverty and gender inequality may be a good
starting point.

*************************************************

Mozambique: What is keeping women offline?

Web Foundation · December 11, 2015

Women’s Rights Online

http://tinyurl.com/zawsfyd

As part of our Women’s Rights Online research, this series of guest
blogs features on-the-ground perspectives from each of our research
partners around the world. In this post, Mozambique’s Science,
Innovation, Information and Communications Technology Research
Institute (SIITRI) analyses Mozambique’s Women’s Rights Online study
results and outlines how to get more of the country’s women online.

The Women’s Rights Online Mozambique report found that while nearly
all women and men in Maputo slum areas own a mobile phone, only 33%
of women had accessed the Internet, compared to 59% of men. These
results confirm that women and girls are being excluded online in
Mozambique, and that we must take action to make sure the digital
future is inclusive.

As part of the project, we surveyed men and women in 29 urban poor
areas of the capital, Maputo to learn more about why the gap in
Internet access persists.

In our survey, women cited four main barriers to Internet access:

1. Many women have never learned how to use the Internet

2. Women simply do not have a device

3. Women are not able to access the Internet on their devices

4. High costs, including both network costs and the opportunity cost
of accessing the Internet, prevent women from accessing the Internet

Another important issue we considered was how women use their mobile
phones. Since the mobile phone is the first place many people
experience the Internet, we needed to know if the increase in mobile
phone use was benefitting women in terms of online access.

The majority of respondents (96% of men and 93% of women) used their
mobile phone every day. The service most frequently used by
respondents was combination of voice calls and SMS, and the
frequency of use of these services was higher amongst women (64%)
when compared with men (49%), as more men used a combination of
voice, SMS and data services.

This discrepancy in ownership and access to data services can be
explain in part by differences between men and women’s disposable
income. A greater percentage of men than women own a mobile phone
and spend more on accessing data.

How can Mozambique expand women’s access to the Web?

It’s clear that efforts are needed to expand women’s access. There
is much to be done, but we recommend focussing on four key areas to
tackle the gap in Mozambique:

1. Improve education: First and foremost, we must tackle low levels
of education and high illiteracy rates of women and girls. Keeping
girls in school longer means reading skills will improve. The
government should also integrate ICT skills training into the
curriculum early on, to equip girls with the tools they need to
enter the information economy.

2. Change attitudes: We must also encourage changes in cultural
attitudes. The gender gap in education is often due to domestic
responsibilities, and traditions that downplay the importance of
girls’ education.

3. Provide affordable public access: In order to facilitate access
for women, ICTs need to be located in other local institutions women
frequent where they feel safe and welcome. These might include NGOs,
women’s employment centres, libraries and health centres. Providing
Internet access in a local health centre could bring the added
benefit of increasing women’s access to health information during
their visits.

4. Reduce the cost of mobile Internet: So many women own mobiles,
but so few are using them to get connected. Mozambique could
consider introducing a subsidised or free Internet access scheme,
providing more women with the opportunity to use the devices they
already have to get online.

How can we make this happen?

Mozambique was one of the first countries to adopt a comprehensive
ICT policy and implementation strategy. As a next step, it needs to
become fully gender responsive. SIITRI will target politicians,
policy makers and influencers directly with these recommendations to
close the gender gap in ICTs through engagement events, workshops
and roundtables. We have already begun this work by advocating at a
national level at the Maputo Internet Forum organised by Swedish
Embassy in October, through the ongoing work and advocacy of the
A4AI-Mozambique National Coalition, and by hosting a workshop on
“Advocating for Empowerment of Women through ICTs and the Web” in
late November. It is our objective to secure concrete and time-bound
commitments from the government to close the digital gender gap.

We must ensure the digital revolution is a revolution for women and
girls. We hope this project has begun that process, and we are
excited about the possibilities for women and girls in Mozambique.
You can follow our updates on our website (http://www.siitri.ac.mz).

***************************************************

Narrowing Cameroon’s gender gap: reasons for hope

Web Foundation · October 7, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/gn9jwwz

Women’s Rights Online As part of our Women’s Rights Online research,
this series of guest blogs features on-the-ground perspectives from
each of our research partners around the world. In this post, Julie
Owono, Head of Africa Desk at Internet Sans Frontières (
http://www.internetsansfrontieres.org/), shares her experience of
how improving women’s access to the Internet is empowering women in
Cameroon.

Being an expatriate Cameroonian woman, I know from personal
experience how Web-enabled information and communication
technologies (ICTs) can expand possibilities for women. I have had
opportunities that I could never have anticipated if I had remained
in the offline world. Indeed,  I probably wouldn’t have found my
job, which now allows me to be involved in initiatives and projects
that help build a safe and accessible Internet for all, and help
tackle some social and economic issues that plague my country. I am
thinking for instance of the project Feowl, an open data project on
electricity cuts, that I created and implemented between 2012 and
2013.

I want the change that I have witnessed to spread to the many
Cameroonian women for whom survival and dignity are still a daily
struggle. ICTs are a tool – one that, when paired with the right
skills, can be transformational and empowering.

This is the focus of my work at Paris-based NGO Internet Sans
Frontières: ensuring that the Internet remains a space for
borderless creation, cooperation, and interaction, as well as a tool
for economic, social and political advancement.

Promoting Internet access among disadvantaged communities is central
in our work – from youth in Urban poor areas in Brazil, to helping
LGBT communities in Cameroon secure their digital communications,
and helping decrease the price of Internet access in the country
through our work with the Alliance for Affordable Internet -we are
committed to ensuring that the Web remains a space that  anyone,
regardless of social, economic, political background can access and
use.

One disadvantaged group still experiencing barriers to access and
use of the Internet is women in developing countries. A 2012 study
by Intel and Dalberg on Women and the Web concluded that “across the
developing world, nearly 25 percent fewer women than men have access
to the Internet, the gender gap soars to nearly 45 percent in Sub
Saharan Africa”.

The figure is striking, but probably not surprising when compared it
to other gender metrics. Women are still the most subject to
inequalities. In Cameroon, women hold only 16.1 percent of the seats
at the parliament. 63.3 percent of the women aged 15 and above
participate in the labor workforce, while the figure goes up to 76.7
percent for men in the same age groups according to the UN’s Gender
Inequality Index. According to a 2007 survey by the Cameroonian
National Statistics Institute, Women spent an average 17 hours per
week on housework against 9 hours for men. We believe that access to
and effective use of the Internet can facilitate women’s
participation in political and economic life, closing the gender
gap.

The good news for Cameroon is that the Cameroonian Government has
taken the issue of the gender gap in ICTs seriously. Importantly,
the government has acknowledged that the major barriers to gender
equality are “socio-cultural hindrances, that are the corollary of a
patriarchal social organisation”. Admitting this challenge publicly
gives women space to discuss the problem and possible solutions
directly.

The government also claims to have trained more 100,000 women
between 2012 and 2002 in digital literacy and the use of ICT. Our
study suggests that while these efforts are commendable, we need to
expand on them to make visible progress on empowering women through
ICT.

The number of Cameroonian Internet users is also increasing,
particularly through mobile phones. More and more women use a well-
known Facebook group called Kamer sisters (read more about the group
here – link in French http://tinyurl.com/jjc8cwf ), gathering more
than 7,000 Cameroonian women based in or outside Cameroon, to
advertise their products and businesses and look for jobs. It is not
rare to see women looking to hire nannies, or young women looking
for such positions.

Whatsapp is also gaining popularity as a platform for women to
generate income and run communications for their small businesses.
For example, one young female entrepreneur  advertises her talents
as hairdresser and makeup artist, giving her contact details on
whatsapp. For entrepreneurs like her, Whatsapp acts as a cheaper and
more direct alternative to a traditional website.

This is precisely what we hoped to achieve when Internet Sans
Frontières  decided to get involved in the Women’s Rights Online
project: see these new trends in the use of Web-enabled ICTs spread
among women from poor urban backgrounds and  benefit them socially
and economically. We look forward to sharing the full research
results and using them to understand the next steps for civil
society and government in narrowing Cameroon’s gender gap.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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More in Congress Sign On As CoSponsors of HR 676, Single Payer Healthcare Bill

In December six representatives, Danny Davis (IL), Grace Napolitano (CA), Emanuel Cleaver (MO), Jerry McNerney (CA), Robin Kelly (IL), and Alan Lowenthal (CA), added their names as cosponsors on HR 676, Congressman John Conyers' Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, the national single payer legislation. 

The total number of cosponsors is now 59, not including chief sponsor Conyers. 

The more cosponsors that are added, the more quickly this real solution becomes politically viable. The more representatives who speak boldly for HR 676, the higher single payer advances on the nation's agenda.  

Call your representative and ask her or him to sign on to HR 676. The Capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.  Ask to speak to your representative by name. If you need to look up a representative, you can do
so here.

When talking with representatives who have already signed on, encourage them to speak up for HR 676 on the House floor, to the press, in town hall meetings, and to put their support for HR 676 on their website. If they
need further information, spend the time to bring the facts about HR 676 to their attention. This clear and simple statement of Dr. Marcia Angell may help. 

The list of representatives who have already signed on to HR 676 is here.

The list of representatives who were cosponsors of HR 676 in earlier Congresses but have not yet signed on in the 114th is below. This is a good place to start. 

Rep. Xavier Becerra, California 34th
Rep. Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Georgia 2nd
Rep. Corrine Brown, Florida 5th 
Rep. G. K. Butterfield, North Carolina 1st 
Rep. Andre Carson, Indiana 7th, 
Rep. Marcia Fudge, Ohio 11th, 
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas 30th, 
Rep. David Loebsack, Iowa 2d 
Rep. Nita M. Lowey, New York 17th 
Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, New Mexico 3d 
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts 8th 
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, New York 5th 
Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey 10th 
Rep. Jared Polis, Colorado 2nd 
Rep. David Scott, Georgia 13th 
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi 2nd 
Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez, New York 7th 
Rep. Peter J. Visclosky, Indiana 1st  
Rep. Maxine Waters, California 43rd   

"According to myth…a single-payer system is a good idea, but unrealistic.... What is truly unrealistic is anything else."

--Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine, June 10, 2009 


#30# 

 HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare to everyone residing in the U. S. Patients will choose their own physicians and hospitals.

 HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and preventive care, emergency services, dental (including oral surgery, periodontics, endodontics), mental health, home health, physical therapy, rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care and correction, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable medical equipment, palliative care, podiatric care, and long term care.

 HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private health insurance industry and HMOs.

 In the current Congress, HR 676 has 59 co-sponsors in addition to Congressman Conyers.

 HR 676 has been endorsed by 622 union organizations including 151 Central Labor Councils/Area Labor Federations and 44 state AFL-CIO's (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NJ, NY, NV, MA, RI, NH, ID. 

For a list of union endorsers, or a sample endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow 

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care--HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217

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Africa: Stealth Assault on African Seeds

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 19, 2016 (160119)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“There is a renewed and stronger assault on seed … based on legal
systems that permit exclusive rights over seeds on the spurious
contention that plant varieties were ‘discovered’ and improved on.
But these ‘discovered’ varieties are the product of the whole
history of collective human improvements and maintenance carried out
by peasants. To assert exclusive rights over the whole on the basis
of small adjustments is nothing short of outright theft.” – South-
South Dialogue, Durban, South Africa, November 2015

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In rich countries, debate about industrialized agriculture often
focuses on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the safety and
transparency consequences for consumers. In developing countries
with large sectors of peasant farmers, this is only a small part of
a larger debate on the future of agriculture, pitting multinational
companies and large-scale investors against the autonomy and rights
of peasant farmers.

Land grabbing is highly visible, and has attracted much international attention. Less visible, and potentially even more damaging, is the appropriation of rights to seeds, fueled not only by the companies themselves but also by a concerted campaign to erode farmers’ traditional rights to seeds in favor of patents by multinational corporations. This is a issue not only for GMOs, but also for other seeds produced by other breeding technologies.

The debate is filled with acronyms, as well as the claim that
“scientific” agriculture will provide food and development
benefiting the peasants as well. And the campaign to change laws and
erode traditional rights is unrelenting. It is based on the
Universal Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV
91), which works for the privatization of seeds by imposing
intellectual property rights on plant varieties.

In recent years a drive to extend these laws on “plant variety
protection” in African and other developing countries has rapidly
accelerated.

This Africa Focus Bulletin contains a recent declaration by groups
resisting this drive, and excerpts from a brief article by Dr. Carol
Thompson, noting the apartheid-like differential effect of these
laws. Also included (just below) are linked to other essential
resources on this issue.

For a recent series of short articles featuring interviews with
African grassroots leaders (mainly women), visit
http://otherworldsarepossible.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/hjhe756

For global overviews of the issue, see

* The Berne Declaration. Owning Seeds, Accessing Food. 2014.
https://www.bernedeclaration.ch – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zcryou5

* GRAIN. UPOV 91 and other seed laws: A basic primer. October 2015.
http://www.grain.org / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/hlvztp8

Two longer related reports with additional background specifically
on African seeds include:

* African Centre for Biodiversity. The expansion of the commercial
seed sector in sub-Saharan Africa: Major players, key issues and
trends. December 2015. http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qy382hc

* African Centre for Biodiversity. Profiting from the Climate
Crisis, Undermining Resilience in Africa. Gates and Monsanto’s Water
Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project. May 2015.
http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/zk32nlu

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on
agriculture, food sovereignty, and related issues, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-ag.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Declaration on Plant Variety Protection and Seed Laws from the
South-South Dialogue

Durban, South Africa

29 November 2015

http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/j5uxvkc

We, participants at the South-South Dialogue, are members of peasant
and civil society organisations and concerned individuals from
Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe working on issues of food and
seed sovereignty, peasants’ control of seed production and exchange,
and biodiversity. We gathered in Durban, South Africa 27-29 November
2015 to share information and knowledge, and to come to a common
understanding on seed and plant variety protection (PVP) policy and
laws and strategies for resistance and alternatives in the global
South.

We are working in our countries and regions to advance the ongoing
global struggle for socially just and ecologically sustainable
societies, in which farming households and communities have control
and decision-making power over the production and distribution of
food and seed.

Human societies and the seeds we use to produce the food that
sustains us have grown symbiotically over millennia. Seeds emerged
from nature and have been diversified, conserved, nurtured and
enhanced through processes of human experimentation, discovery and
innovation throughout this time. Seeds have been improved by means
of traditional and cultural knowledge transmitted from generation to
generation. Seeds are therefore the collective heritage for people
serving humanity. Peasants and indigenous peoples have always been
the custodians and guardians of the collective knowledge embedded in
the wide diversity of seed that has enabled the development of
humankind as a species.

However, today capitalist greed poses fundamental threats to the
continued conservation, reproduction and use of the biological
diversity nurtured for all this time. The forced enclosure of land
and other natural resources and its capture and conversion into
private property was one disastrous step. This has caused and
continues to cause social dislocation and displacement, damaging the
social fabric of human societies, severing the connection between
people and the land, and consolidating social, collectively-produced
wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

There is a renewed and stronger assault on seed, agricultural
biodiversity heritage and the knowledge associated with these.
Related law and policy making processes are already far advanced in
Europe, the United States and other parts of the world and are being
imposed on our countries in the South through multilateral and
bilateral trade and investment agreements. They are based on legal
systems that permit exclusive rights over seeds on the spurious
contention that plant varieties were ‘discovered’ and improved on.
But these ‘discovered’ varieties are the product of the whole
history of collective human improvements and maintenance carried out
by peasants. To assert exclusive rights over the whole on the basis
of small adjustments is nothing short of outright theft.

Efforts to expand this expropriation to the global South are being
pursued aggressively by multinational seed and life sciences
corporations and their cohorts in state and multilateral
institutions. This takes the form of a coordinated political and
technocratic crusade to impose uniform and draconian laws and
regulations in favour of intellectual property (IP) rights such as
plant variety protection (PVP) for private interests, the
proliferation of genetically modified (GM) seeds, and exclusive
recognition and marketing of seed and plant varieties that pass
through breeding and production systems tightly controlled by
economic elites.

There are no benefits for peasant and farming households and
communities, or for society in general, from these developments. In
a few short decades – just a small fraction of the time humans have
been engaged in industrial agriculture – this enclosure of the
collective seed heritage has spread virulently across the globe. The
historical practices of context-specific peasant-managed seed
systems we have relied on are vilified, denigrated as being backward
and obsolete, and criminalised. Farmers are taken to court and
imprisoned for maintaining the biological base as a living system
while seed and food corporations make huge profits legitimised by
seed and IP laws.

The result is the alarming erosion of agricultural biodiversity and
related knowledge, and a deepening threat to the sustainable use of
the genetic base, and consequently to food production and ecological
balance, and to humanity. Current seed and IP laws violate the ethos
of sharing between farmers, which is the backbone of peasant farming
systems, seed and people’s sovereignty and the basic human right to
food.

We cannot stand by passively and watch this legalised dispossession
and destruction. We are compelled to resist. We declare our
commitment to work in alliance with one another, with peasant and
indigenous peoples’ movements, and with other likeminded civil
society organisations and individuals, to fight the spread of this
aggressive and violent system of domination on the basis of
autonomy, collective self-organisation, cooperation, sharing,
solidarity and mutual respect.

We declare our principled opposition to any form of IP on life
forms, seeds and related information or exclusive rights to their
use. We reject genetic modification and other current and emerging
proprietary technologies in agriculture as these technologies are
built on the disintegration of holistic farming systems, the
exclusion of farmers from processes of plant breeding and natural
resource management, and the control of seeds and planting material
in the hands of corporate and political elites.

We reject the imposition of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on
its country members, through the Trade Related aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, to adopt rules
allowing the privatization of seeds and related knowledge. We reject
the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants (UPOV) type laws and other intellectual property regulation
on seeds and plant varieties. It is also unacceptable that bilateral
free trade agreements impose on Southern countries intellectual
property measures that go beyond the provisions of the WTO.

We are opposed to laws dealing with the marketing and certification
of seed. These new seed laws undermine peasant seed systems that
have been developed locally over generations of farmers and are
geared towards creating massively increased private sector
participation in seed trade. In addition, these laws promote only
one type of seed breeding. The entire orientation of these seed laws
is geared towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties
in terms of seed quality control and variety registration. What is
very clear is that these laws criminalise the marketing of farmers’
varieties. The ultimate aim of these laws is to facilitate new
markets for commercial seed companies and the occupation by
multinationals in the seed sector in the global south and displace
and criminalise peasant seed systems.

We oppose the fragmentation of genetic information and the divorce
of this information from physical resources through the Global
Information Systems (GIS) such as DivSeek (a global information
system on genetic sequencing and related knowledge for seed,
proposed by the World Bank), since there is the possibility of the
use of this information expediting the further privatisation of
seeds through international legal systems.

We will fight for laws, policies and public programmes that support
and strengthen peasants and communities to continue with their
diverse and context-specific practices of plant breeding, selection,
production and distribution. We will fight for a more responsible
role for public sector activities based on ongoing democratic,
participatory and transparent processes of engagement with citizens
and inhabitants of our countries and regions. We will continue to
defend our rights to produce, use, exchange and sell all seed and
planting material. We will work to recover, maintain and expand the
use of native and local seed, and the revival of diverse food
cultures as the most effective routes to protect biodiversity. We
recognise the irreducible diversity that can only be managed through
peasant seed production systems and maintained by peasants as
breeders and users of seed.

We believe seeds are the people’s heritage in the service of
humanity that should be managed collectively, democratically and
sustainably. We reaffirm the centrality of agricultural producers as
the primary stewards of our collective genetic resources, especially
women peasants who continue to play a direct role in the maintenance
and enhancement of these resources. We commit to supporting peasant
households and communities in their stewardship, and to building
links with allies, wherever we may find them, to advance the cause
of food and seed sovereignty.

Organisations:

Acción Ecológica – Ecuador, Acción por la Biodiversidad – Argentina,
African Centre for Biodiversity – South Africa, Articulación
Nacional de Agroecología/Grupo de Trabajo en Biodiversidad,
Asociación Nacional para el Fomento de la Agricultura Ecológica –
ANAFAE- Honduras, Commons for EcoJustice – Malawi, Earthlife Africa
Durban, Fahamu Africa, Farmers’ Seed Network – China, GRAIN, Growth
Partners Africa, Grupo Semillas – Colombia, JINUKUN – COPAGEN,
Cotonou, Benin, Kenya Food Rights Alliance, Movimiento de Pequeños
Agricultores (MPA) – Brasil, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana,
PELUM Association Zimbabwe, Red de Agrobiodiversidad en la Zona
Semiárida de Minas Gerais – Brasil, Red de Coordinación en
Biodiversidad – Costa Rica, Red Nacional para la defensa de la
Soberanía Alimentaria en Guatemala, REDSAG – Guatemala, Red por una
América Latina Libre de Transgénicos Swissaid Guinea-Bissau Zimbabwe
Smallholder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF)

South-South Dialogue Participants (list available in original
document)

********************************************************

Apartheid Seed Law

Carol B. Thompson

Pambazuka News, June 3, 2015

[Excerpts only: for full text and references with explicit
comparisons to apartheid laws, see the original text at
http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/features/94834]

[Carol Thompson is a professor emerita at Northern Arizona
University, a member of AGRA-Watch in Seattle, Washington, and co-
author with Andrew Mushita of Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global
Exchange as Enclosure, which was featured in AfricaFocus after its
publication in 2007.]

Although political apartheid was dismantled by the 1994 election of
President Nelson Mandela, a new form of economic apartheid is now
stalking the entire African continent.

This new economic apartheid refers to the seed convention known as
UPOV91 (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants), advanced by the European Union, the United States, and the
World Bank presuming to protect plant breeders’ rights under the
World Trade Organization. The EU is requiring its implementation by
African governments as a prerequisite for trading under the Economic
Partnership Agreements (EPAs), scheduled for 2016.

UPOV91 gives exclusive proprietary rights to plant breeders, who
work in modern laboratories full of expensive equipment. The
convention gives these breeders, or their corporate sponsors,
private ownership over a new strain, extending property rights
beyond the seed, to the full plant, and to “essentially derived”
products (e.g., flour from wheat).

To obtain this legal ownership, the new variety must be distinct,
uniform, and stable (DUS), characteristics not found in farmers’
newly bred varieties after their experimentation in the fields. It
means that farmers’ new varieties are not protected by the UPOV
convention and remain free for the taking.

Farmer breeders do not desire seed traits that are highly stable,
for they are looking for nuances in traits in order to choose the
next seeds for breeding. As one farmer asked, “what do they mean by
‘heritage seed’? Aren’t the seeds changing all the time?”

During the 20 years of proprietary rights for breeders of DUS
varieties, no one can exchange, use, experiment or save the seed
without permission, a prohibition eradicating farmers’ rights to
work with any seeds. Because farmers have cultivated diverse food
crops over millennia, two international laws protect farmers’ rights
(International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological
Diversity). For African governments to incorporate UPOV91 into
national laws, they would have to violate these two treaties.

Farmers’ experimentation and freely sharing involve not only seeds
but the indigenous knowledge embedded in them. African farmers, for
example, know the hundreds of varieties of millets and sorghums or
teff, grains more nutritious than maize or rice or wheat, and ones
that are regaining interest on the continent because they grow well
in semi-arid conditions, while the more familiar maize varieties are
not standing up to climate change aridity. Smallholder African
farmers grow 20-25 crops on one hectare, sharing knowledge—sometimes
formally in farmer field schools but also daily in informal
ways—about which variety grows best under another crop, where to
place the various crops in terms of moisture percolation in the
small field, and especially, variable planting times in case the
rains come late, or start early. Farmers know the nutrition value of
their biodiverse crops, encouraging children and mothers to partake
more of one (e.g., pearl and finger millets) than of another
(cassava). And nutrition includes feeding the living soil with
leguminous plants rotated with grain crops.

Why would anyone want to destroy farmers’ experimentation and
knowledge? For the same reason apartheid reigned too long: it is
profitable. UPOV 91 offers another way to privatize a living
organism, accomplished more easily than the difficult job of
enforcing a patent across the globe.

[The following comparisons make clear the parallel to apartheid
laws, in establishing unequal rights to access to resources that are
essential for human survival.]

Segregation with inferiority

UPOV91 is trying to establish, by law, the inferior status of
smallholder farmers who breed and do scientific experiments in the
field. It legitimizes the corporate plant breeders’ entitlement and
presumed superiority. The normative law translates back into profit
for the corporations benefiting from PVP – plant variety protection.
This constructed distinction between two different types of breeding
becomes a “ritual of truth”.

Aesthetics of segregation

UPOV91 legitimizes the view that “real plant breeders” wear white
coats and work in a sparkling laboratory with the latest
instruments, while projecting that farmer breeders working in the
soil are inferior. Because they cannot produce DUS (distinct,
uniform, stable) seeds, they are not breeders. The Gates
Foundation’s Program for African Seed Systems (PASS) call farmers’
seeds “weak” and “recycled”, “used for decades”. Like apartheid
benches “for whites only” in the parks and on the beaches, only a
breeder of DUS seeds can sit on the laboratory stool as a recogn1zed
seed breeder; farmer breeders do not qualify.

Legal enforcement of apartheid

The pass laws, restricting the movement of Africans at all times,
became a core impetus for organ1zing against apartheid from the
Defiance Campaign (1952) through “making the townships ungovernable”
(1980s). Any “non-white” without a pass could be detained for 90
days, or more, without trial or notification of any lawyer.

Farmer breeders will not be summarily detained, but Canada has
already made violation of its UPOV-based law a criminal act, not a
civil offense. The U.S. courts have upheld Monsanto’s allegations
against hundreds of farmers that they stole a “Monsanto gene”, when
most often, pollen carried by wind fertilized the farmers’ crops.
With these precedents, the economic apartheid of UPOV91 will most
likely be strictly enforced by the courts.

Resistance

Civil society and farmers across the African continent are
organizing against UPOV91, but the threat of the looming European
trade agreements (EPAs) remains. Just as civil society resistance in
the North changed the context for domestic apartheid, the
international community needs to voice and organize rejection of
this apartheid seed law.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recognizes two seed
systems: the formal one and farmers’, because all breeders are
essential to cultivate new food varieties in this time of climate
change. Further, farmers are more advanced breeders because their
new seeds are already “field tested”, whereas laboratory-bred seeds
often fail during field trials, not expressing the traits desired.
Let us not allow UPOV to gain any “sensibility of normalcy” in
segregating and denigrating farmer seed breeders:

The international community’s vociferous and sustained rejection of
this new economic apartheid would protect the future of food for us
all.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
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