Indonesian gig drivers fear hardship after fuel price hike

Agnes ANYA
Thu, September 15, 2022 a


Sitting on the side of a Jakarta road anxiously waiting for his phone to ping, driver Muhammad Ridwan says it is now barely worth hurtling through thick smog every day to ferry passengers.

A 30 percent hike in fuel prices spurred hundreds of drivers of the most popular ride-hailing apps to hold protests across Indonesia as they struggle to make ends meet.

"I sometimes don't eat a proper meal the whole day to allocate my cash for fuel. If I don't have fuel, how can I work?," asked Ridwan, a contractor for Gojek -- which alongside Singapore's Grab is among Asia's most valuable start-ups.

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The drivers operate in an unregulated market and critics say the firms exploit them as "partners" or contractors, taking large cuts of their daily income.

To cut Indonesia's deficit during rising global inflation and soaring energy prices due to the war in Ukraine, President Joko Widodo slashed fuel subsidies.

It pushed the price of Petralite -- Indonesia's cheapest fuel choice -- from about 7,650 rupiah (50 cents) to 10,000 (67 cents) per litre.

- 'Cannot accept' cost -

On-demand drivers say the two ride-hailing giants have only hiked fares slightly -- to the tune of 800 rupiah (5 cents) per kilometre -- to cover the additional costs.

Both Gojek and Grab told AFP they imposed a rate change in line with government regulation.

Gojek, which earlier this year merged with e-commerce platform Tokopedia in a multibillion-dollar deal, said the objective of the rate change was to "support driver partners".

Grab said it was "designed to protect and maintain our driver-partners' welfare".

They both declined to disclose the rate increase but union leaders said it fell short of drivers' expectations.

"Drivers across Indonesia cannot accept the fare adjustment," said Igun Wicaksono, who heads a union of more than 100,000 drivers.

On a good day, drivers can earn up to 150,000 rupiah ($10). But where a re-fuelling stop once cost 20,000 rupiah ($1.35), it can now cost up to 35,000 rupiah ($2.35).

Drivers sometimes have to refuel twice in a shift, leaving them with a threadbare profit.

- 'Don't just throw promises' -

More competition from cheaper delivery apps is adding further pressure on Gojek and Grab drivers, leading to fears they won't be able to provide for their families.

"It significantly burdens me whenever I buy fuel these days," said 38-year-old Grab driver Iwan Nur Akbar, who had waited an hour for an order to ping on his phone.

"Thankfully I can still afford food for my family as we regularly get rice from government schemes," he said.

The gig economy, with its complex rewards-based system, has been in the spotlight globally in recent years with workers in several countries holding protests against their tech employers.

Anger was already bubbling in Indonesia before the fuel price hike with claims of unfair practices and poor working conditions.

In July, one driver sewed his lips shut to signal how drivers' concerns on go unheard.

Gig drivers warn that the lack of action could result in mass protests across the country. So far, protests have been limited to a few hundred, and met with a huge deployment of around 8,000 police officers in Jakarta.

With Grab and Gojek accounting for more than four million drivers, that is a daunting prospect for the government.

"Don't just throw promises," said Gojek driver Saiful Ridwan, 38, referring to government assurances of help as he waited outside Jakarta's Pasar Senen wholesale market.

"Don't let poor people become poorer."

agn-jfx/skc/ser/lb

Spanish islanders struggle one year after volcanic eruption


Daniel Silva and Desiree Martin
Fri, September 16, 2022 


"Our plan now is... there are no plans," said a tearful Leticia Sanchez Garcia, a year after her house was buried under lava from a volcano that erupted on the Spanish island of La Palma.

After living with friends for months, the 34-year-old was finally able to move in May, along with her partner and three young children, into a prefabricated wooden house provided by the government.

Yet for her and many others on the tiny isle, part of the Canary Islands chain off Africa's northwest coast, life remains difficult.

On Monday, it will be a year to the day since the Tajogaite volcano -- previously known as Cumbre Vieja for the ridge on which it sits -- erupted.

A year on, Sanchez and others like her face an uncertain future.

Sanchez works as a geriatric nursing assistant, but her contract expires in December.

Her partner lost his job when the banana plantation where he worked was destroyed by the volcano. Now he is employed by the local government as a street sweeper but his contract too ends in December.

The family can stay in the three-bedroom house for one year for free.

"I am still in denial," she admitted, sitting on the patio of her new house in Los Llanos de Aridane, the economic centre of the island of around 83,000 people.

"I still think I will return one day."

From the patio, Garcia can see the volcano that upended her life and the mountain slope where her house once stood. But she avoids looking in that direction, she said.

She missed her "garden, her chickens, making plans with friends".
- 'Rather be dead' -

The volcano rumbled for 85 days, ejecting ash and rivers of lava that swallowed up more than a 1,000 homes.

It also destroyed schools, churches and health centres, cut off highways and suffocated the lush banana plantations that drive the island's economy.

So far, the government has provided more than 500 million euros ($500 million) towards temporary housing, road repairs, clearing ash and financial support to people who lost their jobs.

But many locals complain that the pace of reconstruction is too slow.

Applications for public aid are complex, they say: craftsmen are often booked out, building materials scarce and construction permits too slow in coming.

So far, only five of the 121 prefabricated houses bought by the government have been allotted to people left homeless by the volcano, says the regional government.

Around 250 people whose homes were destroyed are still living in hotels, according to the Platform of Victims of the Volcano, which lobbies for those who lost their property.

Another 150 are staying with friends and family.

"No one died in the eruption," said the group's president, Juan Fernando Perez Martin, a 70-year-old former high school teacher who has polio.

"But some of us would rather be dead than suffer all these strong emotions, all these problems we are facing."

His house, which was adapted for his wheelchair, was buried under more than 20 metres (65 feet) of molten rock.

Frustrated by the delays in getting government aid, he took out a bank loan to buy a more modest house in the central town of El Paso and adapt it for his disability. He lives there with his Mexican wife.
- 'In limbo' -

One of the few items they were able to take when they fled their previous home was a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which now features prominently in their kitchen.

Everything else is gone, including Martin's prized collection of nearly 6,000 books.

"I can never recover that," he told AFP in the patio of his new home where he likes to smoke cigars.

While the eruption was officially declared over on Christmas Day, the volcano will continue to release toxic gases for a long time.

That is why some 1,100 people are still unable to return to their homes in and around Puerto Naos, a resort town on the southwest coast of the island.

The gas levels in the area are considered too dangerous. Signs featuring skulls and crossbones at the entrance to the town warn of the "risk of asphyxiation".

"We are in limbo," said Eulalia Villalba Simon, 58, who owns a restaurant and flat in Puerto Naos to which she no longer has access.

She now rents an apartment on the other side of the island, surviving thanks to aid from the government and charities.

"We don't know when we can go back or even if we will be able to return because we have been told it could last for months or years," she said.

"We don't know what will happen."

bur-ds/mg/jj/ach

3-Year-Old Kangaroo Kills Owner In Australia In First Such Fatal Attack Since 1936

Navdeep Yadav - Yesterday -  Benzinga

An alpaca breeder was killed by a three-year-old pet kangaroo in Australia in what is being seen as the first fatal kangaroo attack since 1936.

What Happened: Peter Eades was attacked by his pet kangaroo on his property in Redmond in the Great Southern region of Western Australia on Sunday, ABC News reported.

He was found with serious injuries by a family member at his rural property, according to the police. The report added that the police had to kill the kangaroo to make it safe for paramedics to treat Eades. However, their efforts to save him were unsuccessful. “The kangaroo was posing an ongoing threat to emergency responders,” a statement from the police read.

According to community members, Eades was an animal lover and had hand-raised the animal from when it was a joey. He had also established the Agonis Alpaca stud in 1997 and built up a 60-head flock. He liked naming each animal and building a cemetery to bury them when they died. In 2017, Eades told the publication that he wished to be buried next to Claudia, his favorite alpaca, after his death.

Why It's Important: This was the first fatal attack by a kangaroo since the 1936 case in New South Wales when a man suffered extensive head injuries, including a broken jaw, as he attempted to rescue his two dogs from a large kangaroo.

Recently, an elephant in southern Thailand also ripped its handler in half using its tusks after being made to carry rubberwood in the scorching heat.

See Also: Elephant Rips Handler In Half In Thailand After Being Forced To Carry Wood Logs In Extreme Heat

© 2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

  

Kangaroo kills man, blocks medics in rare Australia attack

Sep 14, 2022

Animals Planet

A kangaroo attacked a man in Redmond, Australia, and blocked emergency paramedics from getting to him in time, leading to his death – the first fatal attack by a kangaroo in Australia since 1936.

The Western Australian Police Force released a statement saying that the 77-year-old man may have been keeping the wild kangaroo as a pet and that he sustained "serious injuries" on his property in western Australia, 250 miles southeast of Perth, before a relative found him and summoned emergency responders.

Police were forced to shoot and kill the kangaroo after the animal prevented paramedics from reaching the injured man.

Authorities Suspect a Collision with a Whale Capsized a Boat in New Zealand, Killing 5 People

Sage Marshall Steven Hill - Yesterday 

Five people died after their boat capsized off the coast of Kaikōura, New Zealand. The incident took place on Saturday, September 10. Six people survived the incident and were rescued by the Coast Guard. Authorities suspect that a collision with a whale capsized the 28-foot fishing boat the people were on.


Humpback whales are commonly seen in the area where the suspected collision occurred.© Pixabay

"It always plays on your mind that it could happen,” Kaikōura Mayor Craig Mackle told The Associated Press. Mackle said that the water was dead calm at the time of the incident. He suspects that a whale surfaced from beneath the boat. The area where the incident occurred is a popular whale-watching destination known to have a large number of sperm and humpback whales. It's not clear which species of whale was involved in the accident. 

Mackle added that he'd never heard of a whale-boat collision occurring until now.

“This is an unprecedented event that has occurred,” Kaikōura Police Sergeant Matt Boyce told Stuff.

 "This has been a tragic event and the police are providing support to those involved at this very difficult time.” According to news reports, the boat involved was typically used as a fishing charter. When the incident took place, the captain was reportedly taking a group of bird watchers from a local birding group on an excursion. Police helicopters immediately responded to the situation. Divers helped recover the bodies of the deceased, which were all inside of the boat.

Maritime New Zealand has assigned several investigators to undertake a full investigation of the tragic event once the recovery operations are complete. Authorities have not released the identities of the victims.

UK
Guernsey nursing union rejects States pay offer

BBC - Yesterday 

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has rejected the latest pay offer from the States of Guernsey.


The union had previously recommended rejecting the offer© PA Media

The union, which represents most of the island's nursing staff, held a ballot in which 65.2% of those who voted rejected the offer.

Public sector staff have been offered a 5% rise this year, an RPIX pay rise in 2023 and an RPIX pay rise less 1% for 2024.

The Policy and Resources Committee said it would comment further next week.

Sarah Johnston, RCN operational manager, said the "underlying issue on pay has simply been ignored".

She said: "Yes, members have had recent pay rises but the gap between their pay and that of their Civil Service peers remains.

"The final year below inflation rise was seen as a slap in the face by many. We really hope that the States do not ignore us again. We want to talk with them, we want to discuss nursing pay in a constructive manner."

The committee said it had been notified of the result of the ballot, and said it would give it "consideration".

A spokesperson said: "At this current time we are respecting the national period of mourning, but we will comment further next week after that period has ended."

Thousands affected by French air traffic strikes

Tens of thousands of passengers are set be affected by a French air traffic control strike on Friday.


Thousands affected by French air traffic strikes© Getty Images

Ryanair has cancelled 420 flights, most of which were scheduled to fly over France, affecting 80,000 passengers.

EasyJet has cut 76 flights, British Airways has cancelled 22, while Air France said it would only run 45% of its short-haul flights.

Separately, on Monday 15% of Heathrow Airport's schedule will be altered during Queen Elizabeth's state funeral.

To ensure the skies over London fall quiet during the events, there will be flight cancellations, including 100 British Airways flights and four Virgin Atlantic flights.

French strikes

The strike action in France is being taken by the SNCTA air traffic control union is row over wages, as inflation soars, and recruitment.

Ryanair says all passengers affected have been notified. The low-cost carrier normally operates more than 3,000 flights per day.

Neal McMahon, Ryanair operations director, said it was "inexplicable" that thousands of European citizens and visitors "will have their travel plans unfairly disrupted".

"It is inexcusable that passengers who are not even flying to or from France are disrupted," he said.

He said French laws protect French domestic flights, but not ones flying over the country.

"It is time that the European Union step in and protect overflights so that European passengers are not repeatedly held to ransom by a tiny French air traffic control union," he said.

Budget rival EasyJet said it had cancelled flights at the request of French authorities.

EasyJet said: "While this is outside of our control, we would like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience they may experience."



Thousands to be hit by French air traffic strike© Getty Images

British Airways said along with the 22 cancelled flights to and from Heathrow, there could be some extra delays on Friday.

Air France is only running 45% of its short and medium-haul flights, and 90% of long-haul. It has also warned that delays and last minute cancellations cannot be ruled out.

The flight cuts affect the whole of France, the French civil aviation authority - DGAC said. It added that it was currently working with the European air travel regulator Eurocontrol to help airlines avoid the country's air space.

Strikes across the aviation industry caused severe disruption to Europe's summer traffic, including ground and cabin personnel, who are seeking pay rises to cope with increased living costs amid high inflation.

In July, several strikes by firefighters and staff at Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport led to cancellations and delays.



Thousands affected by French air traffic strikes© Getty Images

Heathrow disruption

Separately, Heathrow Airport said Monday's flight schedule would change during the Queen's funeral.

Heathrow said that all take-offs and landings on Monday will be delayed for 15 minutes before and after the two-minute silence at the end of the funeral.
Bus strikes called off after Queen's death
Strike action cancelled after the Queen's death

Following that, there will be no arrivals between 13:45 BST and 14:20 BST during the procession of the hearse, and no departures between 15:03 BST and 16:45 for the ceremonial procession via the Long Walk to Windsor Castle.

Between 16:45 BST and 21:00 BST, departures will be reduced to support the committal service at St George's Chapel.

Flights will also be diverted around Windsor Castle "to minimise noise during the private family service and interment", it said.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has issued guidance which means that air passengers whose flights are cancelled or badly delayed on Monday because of Heathrow's changes will not legally be entitled to financial compensation. That is because these are likely to be deemed extraordinary circumstances.

However, airlines are offering customers refunds or re-bookings.

Neurotic in paradise: Capitalist hangover on a ‘red’ Greek island

Opinion by Belén Fernández - Yesterday - Al Jazeera


It was some years ago during a brutal winter in Bosnia that I first learned of the existence of the remote Greek island of Ikaria. Prior to the pandemic, Sarajevo was one of my regular stops as I pursued a life of frenzied international itinerance, eschewing a fixed residence and, more importantly, avoiding my execrable country of birth, the United States.

Drone footage of a beach on the island of Ikaria, Greece

 [Dimitris Tosidis/EPA-EFE]

On this particular visit to subzero Sarajevo, I alternated between falling on ice outdoors and sitting in my apartment looking at pictures of summertime scenes on the internet. And it was on account of the latter pastime that Ikaria entered my consciousness, via a spate of articles extolling the island’s rugged beauty and the extraordinary longevity of its inhabitants.

A Guardian dispatch from 2013, for example, starred 100-year-old Gregoris Tsahas, who enjoyed a pack of cigarettes and more than a few glasses of red wine per day, trekked four hilly kilometres between his home and his regular café, and had never once been sick minus a bout of appendicitis.

A 2012 New York Times Magazine essay relayed the story of Stamatis Moraitis, who was either 97 or 102 years old, and who had returned to his native Ikaria from the US in the 1970s after being diagnosed with cancer. He recovered with no sort of treatment aside from gardening, winemaking and playing dominoes past midnight with friends — and proceeded to outlive all his American doctors.

No one has pinpointed the precise secret to Ikarian endurance, but it appears to involve a combination of a slow life, social camaraderie, olive oil, wild sage tea, goat’s milk, outdoor labour, afternoon naps, therapeutic winds and sexual activity into old age — not to mention the sheer exquisiteness of the physical environment. As if that weren’t good enough, it gets even better: Ikaria is known locally as the “red rock” in reference to its communist tendencies, which only intensified in accordance with the island’s service as a place of banishment for Greek leftists in the mid-twentieth century.

I, myself, was not terribly concerned with making it to 97 or 102, but I did find the prospect of immortal wine-drinking island communists singularly inspiring. After running around in a tizzy my whole life, I figured I should probably slow down and see how it was really meant to be done. My first attempt to visit Ikaria in 2020 was thwarted by the coronavirus, but on June 12, 2022, I arrived by ferry from Athens in the small Ikarian coastal village of Armenistis.

My plan was simple: I was going to take one month to relax, sort myself out and become a supremely tranquil person who — nourished by goat’s milk and communist vibes — took constant naps and read books by the sea.

Things initially looked promising. The terrace of my attic apartment offered a wide view of the Aegean Sea and of a cove below, where the water comprised a mind-boggling array of shades of blue. I went on hikes through the hills, smelled the smells of island plants and flowers and drank half-litres of homemade wine at the taverna, above which lived a man who looked to be about 90 and was often swimming or tooling around on his motor scooter.

The man had lived in New York, he told me, and invited me to swing by his farm down the road for some apricots. A younger Ikarian — who had also tried his hand at life in America and promptly repatriated himself — commented wryly to me: “Ikarians are very bad at capitalism.”

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear to me in Armenistis that I happened to be quite good at it. Although I wanted to chill out, indoctrination dies hard. I effectively began applying a capitalist mindset and work ethic to leisure.

It was insufficient to chill on the beach with a book; rather, I had to be the absolute best beach book person ever, emanating grace and harmony with the serene backdrop even as I raced to fulfil my daily page quota. I had to simultaneously be the best island hiker, island plant smeller, taverna frequenter, sea swimmer, and so on, despite fully recognising the counterproductive nature of my approach. Leisure became a chore and/or competition and the vicious cycle was only reinforced by my increasing agitation at the fact that I was, obviously, failing to relax.

I was also acutely aware that this was a grotesquely privileged sort of torment — and that the vast majority of people in the world could not spend their time being neurotic in paradise. Whenever it seemed that I would not complete all the myriad tasks I had assigned myself for the day, I experienced heart palpitations of the sort that had defined my teenage years in the US. Back then, the need to excel at all academic and extracurricular endeavours to attain perfectly “well-rounded” status on college applications had done a number on my nervous system.

On June 29, I attended one of Ikaria’s famed panygiria — feasts that honour saints and that often last all night. These festivities were not compatible with my schedule, given my habit of waking prior to the crack of dawn to feel that I was beating the rest of the world. Still, off I went to the village of Pezi, up the mountain from Armenistis, to celebrate Saints Peter and Paul.

I opted to hitchhike, and was first picked up by a Norwegian couple in search of a gas station and then by a young Greek man on a motorcycle. He swung calmly around mountain curves as the sun set over the sea, and I dug my fingernails into his shoulders and emitted yelps of varying decibels.

Hundreds of people were already at the outdoor party, consuming goat meat, drinking local wine and dancing to music supplied by a tireless four-person ensemble. Concentric circles of dancers spun around and around with hands clasped; off to the side, a grey-haired man executed an energetic leap to the encouragement of a man and woman crouching on the ground in front of him, clapping.

At first, I hung back, wallowing in the existential pain of having no culture, community, or, I decided, even identity, aside from being a cog in the capitalist machine. Eventually, however, I’d had enough wine that none of this mattered, and I broke into the outer circle, grabbing a hand on either side of me. Around we went at dizzying speed, as I held on for dear life and felt preemptive nostalgia for this moment of fleeting eternity.

I tried to leave the panygiri at one o’clock in the morning but was informed by the Greeks at my table that I would never find a ride at such an early hour. I finally left at 2:30am and was escorted halfway back to Armenistis by three men in a car. Two women in another car took me the rest of the way.

The next day, I developed a massive rash that began under my right arm and extended down my side and across my back. I rushed to the closest thing to a pharmacy in Armenistis, which also served as a barber shop and where I had purchased a beach towel with a giant lion on it. The daughter of the proprietor took one look and pronounced it the work of the Ikarian white moth, which, she said, I must have come into contact with at the panygiri.

In response to my next petrified question, she looked at me with a mixture of amusement and utter seriousness and responded: “Of course you’re not going to die, you’re in Ikaria.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

BANKING IN LEBANON

Armed man detained after holding up south Lebanon bank to access own savings - security source


BEIRUT (Reuters) - An armed man was detained after holding up a Lebanese bank in the southern city of Ghazieh on Friday morning in an attempt to retrieve his savings frozen in the country's banking system amid a three-year financial meltdown, a security source told Reuters.

The man was able to retrieve a portion of his funds from Byblos Bank in Ghazieh before being detained, the source added.

It was at least the third such incident this week involving a depositor entering a bank to try to retrieve their money by force.

(Reporting by Timour Azhari; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

CLIMATE CRISIS IS A CAPITALI$T CRISIS

Oxfam: Acute hunger has surged in climate hotspots

Deutsche Welle - 

As poorer countries suffer the most from extreme weather, the charity has slammed major polluting countries in the West over a "stark demonstration of global inequality."The number of people facing acute hunger has more than doubled in the world's climate change hotspots, according to an Oxfam report released on Friday.


Afghanistan is one of several countries where climate change is contributing to a hunger crisis© Sanaullah Seiam/Xinhua/picture alliance

The report found that extreme hunger has risen by 123% over the past six years in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Somalia and Zimbabwe -- the ten countries with the highest number of United Nations aid appeals driven by extreme weather events.

Across these countries, 48 million people are estimated to suffer from acute hunger, which is defined as hunger resulting from a shock and causing risks to lives and livelihoods. In 2018, that figure was 21 million people.

"Climate change is no longer a ticking bomb, it is exploding before our eyes," Oxfam's international chief Gabriela Bucher said.

"It is making extreme weather such as droughts, cyclones, and floods -- which have increased five-fold over the past 50 years -- more frequent and more deadly."

Appeal for international action to combat climate-related hunger

Oxfam said climate-fueled hunger is a "stark demonstration of global inequality" because the least-polluting countries are the most affected by droughts, floods and other extreme weather events.

Bucher said Western countries could forgive debt to free up resources in affected countries, and should also help pay to tackle climate-fueled hunger globally.

"They must pay for adaptation measures and loss-and-damage in low-income countries, as well as immediately inject lifesaving funds to meet the UN appeal to respond to the most impacted countries," Bucher said.

The UN humanitarian appeal for 2022 comes to $49 billion, which Oxfam noted was equivalent to less than 18 days of profit for fossil fuel companies, when looking at average daily profits over the last 50 years.

zc/rt (AFP, dpa)

Copyright 2022 DW.COM, Deutsche Welle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

UN warns up to 345 million people marching toward starvation

THE ENTIRE POP OF THE U$A IN ONE YEAR

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press - Yesterday 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. food chief warned Thursday that the world is facing “a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude,” with up to 345 million people marching toward starvation — and 70 million pushed closer to starvation by the war in Ukraine.

 Fatuma Abdi Aliyow sits by the graves of her two sons who died of malnutrition-related diseases last week, at a camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, Sept. 3, 2022. Millions of people in the Horn of Africa region are going hungry because of drought, and thousands have died, with Somalia especially hard hit. 

(AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)

David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told the U.N. Security Council that the 345 million people facing acute food insecurity in the 82 countries where the agency operates is 2½ times the number of acutely food insecure people before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

He said it is incredibly troubling that 50 million of those people in 45 countries are suffering from very acute malnutrition and are “knocking on famine’s door.”

“What was a wave of hunger is now a tsunami of hunger,” he said, pointing to rising conflict, the pandemic’s economic ripple effects, climate change, rising fuel prices and the war in Ukraine.

Since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, Beasley said, soaring food, fuel and fertilizer costs have driven 70 million people closer to starvation.

Despite the agreement in July allowing Ukrainian grain to be shipped from three Black Sea ports that had been blockaded by Russia and continuing efforts to get Russian fertilizer back to global markets, “there is a real and dangerous risk of multiple famines this year,” he said. “And in 2023, the current food price crisis could develop into a food availability crisis if we don’t act.”

The Security Council was focusing on conflict-induced food insecurity and the risk of famine in Ethiopia, northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. But Beasley and U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths also warned about the food crisis in Somalia, which they both recently visited, and Griffiths also put Afghanistan high on the list.

“Famine will happen in Somalia,” Griffiths said, and “be sure it won’t be the only place either.”

He cited recent assessments that identified “hundreds of thousands of people facing catastrophic levels of hunger,” meaning they are at the worst “famine” level.

Beasley recalled his warning to the council in April 2020 “that we were then facing famine, starvation of biblical proportions.” He said then the world “stepped up with funding and tremendous response, and we averted catastrophe.”

“We are on the edge once again, even worse, and we must do all that we can — all hands on deck with every fiber of our bodies,” he said. “The hungry people of the world are counting on us, and … we must not let them down.”

Griffiths said the widespread and increasing food insecurity is a result of the direct and indirect impact of conflict and violence that kills and injures civilians, forces families to flee the land they depend on for income and food, and leads to economic decline and rising prices for food that they can’t afford.



A woman sells food items at a market in Owo, Southwestern Nigeria, Tuesday, June 7, 2022. Nigeria's consumer inflation surged to a 17-year high in August 2022, its statistics agency said on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, signalling more hardship for citizens and businesses in Africa's largest economy.

 (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

After more than seven years of war In Yemen, he said, “some 19 million people — six out of 10 — are acutely food insecure, an estimated 160,000 people are facing catastrophe, and 538,000 children are severely malnourished.”

Beasley said the Ukraine war is stoking inflation in Yemen, which is 90% reliant on food imports. The World Food Program hopes to provide aid to about 18 million people, but its costs have risen 30% this year to $2.6 billion. As a result, it has been forced to cut back, so Yemenis this month are getting only two-thirds of their previous rations, he said.

Beasley said South Sudan faces “its highest rate of acute hunger since its independence in 2011” from Sudan. He said 7.7 million people, over 60% of the population, are “facing critical or worse levels of food insecurity.” Without a political solution to escalating violence and substantial spending on aid programs, “many people in South Sudan will die,” he warned.


People receive food rations in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 10, 2022. The U.S. and Swiss governments and Afghan economics experts say they'll transfer $3.5 billion in frozen funds from Afghanistan’s central bank to use for the country’s people as hunger grips every province there. The Taliban government will not be a part of the new Afghan Fund, which will maintain its account with the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. 

(AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

In northern Ethiopia’s Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions, more than 13 million people need life-saving food, Griffiths said. He pointed to a survey in Tigray in June that found 89% of people food insecure, “more than half of them severely so.” Beasley said a truce in March enabled WFP and its partners to reach almost 5 million people in the Tigray area, but resumed fighting in recent weeks “threatens to push many hungry, exhausted families over the edge.”

In northeast Nigeria, the U.N. projects that 4.1 million people are facing high levels of food insecurity, including 588,000 who faced emergency levels between June and August, Griffiths said. He said almost half of those people couldn’t be reached because of insecurity, and the U.N. fears “some people may already be at the level of catastrophe and already dying.”

Griffiths urged the Security Council to “leave no stone unturned” in trying to end these conflicts, and to step up financing for humanitarian operations, saying U.N. appeals in those four countries are all “well below half of the required funding.”

Should Congress make Social Security permanent for children?

Noah Berlatsky
September 14, 2022

Three Chlidren playing with blocks (Shutterstock www.shutterstock.com)

One of Joe Biden’s signature achievements was passing the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). It pulled millions of children out of poverty.

Yet no sooner had the policy proven effective than it lapsed.

Checks stopped. Children fell back into poverty. The CTC quietly disappeared from the Democrats’ agenda, to be mentioned only quietly and in passing as the congressional elections approach.

All thanks to Republican opposition.

Why aren’t Democrats running on the Child Tax Credit the way they are running on social security and abortion rights?

Stanley Greenberg at the American Prospect argues that Democrats simply do not understand the importance of working-class issues.

There’s something to that. But I think that the Child Tax Credit has also suffered from its own efficiency. The CTC is in many ways the perfect wonky technocratic antipoverty solution, delivering targeted and direct aid to the neediest in the least wasteful way possible.

The elegance has muted opposition to an extent. But it’s also led proponents to underplay its transformative effects and to frame it as a limited program to fix social glitches, rather than as a sweeping assertion of children’s rights to flourish. Bolder claims, less focused demands, may make it easier to rally support for a vital program.

The Child Tax Credit has been around since 1997. As the name suggests, it gives working families with children a tax rebate.

But the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) expanded and transformed the program into what had been essentially a regular cash payment for low-income families with children.

It increased annual payments from $2,000 to $3,600 per child under 6 and to $3,000 between 6 and 17. It closed a loophole that shut out a third of children if their parents’ earnings were too low. Instead of a lump sum, it provided for monthly checks of $250 to $300 per child.

The results were stunning.

In the six months the program operated, child poverty plummeted by 30 percent. Food insufficiency fell by 26 percent. Each month, the program kept more than 3 million children out of poverty.

Researchers found that 91 percent of families spent the money on basics. There was no evidence that the money led people to quit their jobs or stop looking for work. Nonetheless, Republicans and conservative Democrats like US Senator Joe Manchin decided the payments were coddling the poor, and refused to renew them.

Predictable result: 3.7 million children fell back into poverty.

The evidence couldn’t be clearer.

The expanded CTC ensured food, shelter and basic needs for the poorest children in the United States. You’d think Democrats would tout such a successful program. But they’ve been oddly reticent.

As Greenberg points out, Biden has included the expanded CTC in speeches only sporadically. Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders has championed it. But even he and other progressives like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have tended to emphasize it less than (also important!) programs like Medicare for All, student loan forgiveness and climate legislation.

They’re probably lukewarm about the CTC because the public has been. The policy has majority support, but it’s not overwhelming. A December 2021 poll on renewing the credit showed 47-42 percent in favor. That’s a lot less than the support for expanding Medicare, which some polls have found has a whopping 83% approval.

The Times speculated that the CTC might be unpopular because older voters aren’t interested in giving money to needy children, or because the cost (about $25 billion a year) is too high.

But student loan forgiveness also helps the young. The cost is somewhere around $500 billion over a decade. It polls better than the CTC, with 51-39 percent approve of student loan forgiveness.

So why hasn’t the expanded CTC caught the public imagination? Maybe the problem is not that the program is too generous and ambitious, but that it’s not generous and ambitious enough.

The expanded Child Tax Credit is a good example of a program rooted in what sociologist Elizabeth Popp Berman calls “the economic style” of policy thinking. In her book, Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in US Public Policy, published in June, Berman argues that this economic style has become entrenched in Washington over the last 60 years.

The economic style, Berman said, prioritizes efficiency and targeted interventions to help those in most need at the least cost. The expanded CTC sends money directly to low-income children. For every dollar spent, society gets back 84 cents in reduced healthcare and welfare costs. It’s a targeted, thrifty, efficient program.

The problem with efficiency, though, is that it fails to capture the imagination. Medicare for All proponents do say our current healthcare system is an expensive mess. But the real force is the insistence that health care is not a privilege, but a right. The climate movement is not just about more efficient, cleaner production. It’s about the imperative to preserve our planet for coming generations.

As Berman points out, the biggest social programs of the Roosevelt and Johnson administrations weren’t advertised to voters on the basis of efficiency. The New Deal and the War on Poverty were presented as necessary expenditures to assure equality and a social safety net for all. They promised to transform the nation, not make it more efficient. 

As Lyndon Johnson said:

QUOTE

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.

UNQUOTE

Compare that rhetoric to Biden’s antipoverty program — which is called the expanded Child Tax Credit. That is a name that evokes fiddling with the tax code, not equality in our time.

The thing is, though, that the expanded CTC is consistent with expanded dreams. Greenberg suggests the program could be a “Social Security for children” — a framing that could have appeal.

Giving direct payments to children in poverty isn’t really an efficient tax tweak. It’s a bold statement that society owes all its young people food, shelter and some measure of comfort.

In that context, the CTC, for all its success, looks like a start rather than an end point. Cutting child poverty by 30 percent is good. But if we can do that, shouldn’t the goal be to eliminate child poverty?

The program already provided a wealth of information about how to help kids. Establishing it permanently, with a commitment to increase funding, could pull all 11.6 million children in need — 16 percent of all children in the US — above the poverty line.

Passing transformative legislation is difficult. It can take years or decades. It’s possible that if it isn’t seen as transformative, Biden and the Democrats might be quietly able to slip the expanded Child Tax Credit into law with some bipartisan support.

But given the way that momentum for the program has stalled out, it might be worthwhile for activists and progressives to embrace, and emphasize, the Child Tax Credit’s latent radicalism.

What would the United States look like if we decided that children and their families had a right to abundance and liberty? We should make Social Security for children permanent and find out.