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Aid money the G8 has
promised but won't deliver could save more than 3 million lives, Oxfam
said today as leaders gathered for the summit in L'Aquila, Italy.
These, and many more lives and livelihoods are at risk unless urgent
action is taken to protect poor people from the triple threat of the
economic crisis, rising food prices and climate change. Sub Saharan
Africa alone is expected to lose $245bn this year as a result of the
global slump but will receive only about $5bn in additional aid.
Aid money the G8 has
promised but won't deliver could save more than 3 million lives, Oxfam
said today as leaders gathered for the summit in L'Aquila, Italy.
These, and many more lives and livelihoods are at risk unless urgent
action is taken to protect poor people from the triple threat of the
economic crisis, rising food prices and climate change. Sub Saharan
Africa alone is expected to lose $245bn this year as a result of the
global slump but will receive only about $5bn in additional aid.
Yet rather than delivering on his own aid promises and encouraging
other countries to meet theirs, Silvio Berlusconi, G8 chair and Italian
president is attempting to wriggle out of his commitments to the
world's poorest. He has cut aid and pushed the G8 to adopt a new 'whole
of country' approach that would use creative accounting to hide broken
promises.
Max Lawson, Oxfam senior policy advisor, said:
"Like a modern day Nero, Berlusconi is fiddling while Africa burns. G8
leaders must get serious and ensure this Summit delivers a concrete
plan to get aid promises back on track, and to protect poor people from
the triple threat of the economic, food and climate crises."
According to the OECD, G8 leaders will fall short by as much as
$23bn in their 2005 promise to increase annual aid by $50bn over five
years. Oxfam calculates this money could be used to pay for HIV
treatment for 500,000, services for mothers and newborns that would
save a further 2.5 million, child health services that would save a
further 600,000 lives.
On average, rich countries outside the G8 give more than twice as
much of their national income in overseas aid (0.54%), as G8 members
(0.23%).
Farida Bena, Oxfam International Italian spokesperson
said: "It is time that G8 countries paid their fair share of aid to
reduce poverty in Africa and elsewhere. Why can other rich countries
put their hands in their pocket whilst most of the G8 refuses to do so?
A G8 that refuses to keep its word, a G8 that fails to meet the
unprecedented challenges facing the world's poor - that is a G8 in
crisis."
Far from showing leadership in their role as G8 chair, Italy is
cutting its aid to poor countries. Last year Italy cut their aid
through the Foreign Affairs Ministry by a staggering 56%. France too
has barely increased aid despite promises to do so and other countries
are not bringing the ambition needed to the table this year - when it
is most needed.
The 'whole of country approach' promoted by Berlusconi could allow
countries to count money charities, philanthropists, companies and
trade links deliver to developing countries as part of their assistance
to poor countries. Adding these disparate elements to produce a large
cash figure of little value would allow countries like Italy and France
to deflect attention from their lamentable performance on aid.
Instead of muddying the waters with creative accounting, Oxfam is
calling on the G8 to agree an emergency plan to get their aid
commitments back on track ahead of the 2010 deadline. The need for
increased aid is shown by the $245bn economic black hole facing Africa
as a result of a reduction in expected growth from 6.7 per cent to 1
per cent. By contrast, aid will only increase by $4.6 billion this
year, IMF special drawing rights and other measures agreed at the G20
add only another $16bn. This falls way short of what is needed.
Lawson said: "The world has a triple crisis on it hands. The
economic crisis is destroying jobs, reducing remittances and forcing
cuts in health and education services for some of the world's poorest
people. Africa is set to lose $245bn this year alone yet the response
from rich countries remains pitifully small.
"The food crisis has pushed another 200 million people into hunger -
more than one in six of the world's people now do not have enough to
eat. The climate crisis contributes to severe weather that is forces
people from their homes and destroys their livelihoods every day."
Bena said:"Over the next few days, the G8 must show the leadership
the world needs - there won't be any second chances to save these 3
million people later. The G8 cannot turn their back on the poorest
people now - this must be a week of bold action."
Oxfam International is a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice. We are working across regions in about 70 countries, with thousands of partners, and allies, supporting communities to build better lives for themselves, grow resilience and protect lives and livelihoods also in times of crisis.
"Elon Musk's commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives—so that you get nothing and they get everything," warned one advocate.
A lengthy series of X posts attacking Social Security as a "nightmare" caught the attention of the platform's mega-billionaire owner, Elon Musk, who could soon take aim at the beloved New Deal program as co-chair of an advisory commission tasked with identifying federal spending to slash.
"Interesting thread," Musk, the world's richest man, wrote late Monday in response to the posts by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who once said he hopes to pull Social Security "up by the roots and get rid of it," along with Medicare and Medicaid.
In his new thread, Lee characterized Social Security—which lifts more Americans above the poverty line than any other federal program—as a "tax plan" insidiously disguised as a retirement plan and condemned the Social Security Act of 1935 as one of many "deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people."
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), replied Tuesday that Lee's posts amount to "a misrepresentation of Social Security's history and how the program works."
"There is nothing deceptive about Social Security. The social insurance program has been working just fine for nearly 90 years and has never missed a payment," said Richtman. "The kind of propaganda Sen. Lee posted undermines public support for Social Security, making it easier to cut or privatize the program. It is perhaps no coincidence that Sen. Lee's second-biggest campaign contributor by industry is the securities and investment sector."
"The money is ours, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. You're not going to get a penny of it."
Lee also claimed the federal government "routinely raids" the Social Security Trust Fund—a longstanding and misleading right-wing talking point.
Social Security Works (SSW), a progressive advocacy group, said Tuesday that by amplifying Lee's thread to his hundreds of millions of followers, Musk "just declared war on Social Security."
"For 89 years, through war and peace, boom time and bust, health and pandemics, Social Security has never missed a single payment," said Alex Lawson, SSW's executive director. "Compared to the risky alternatives on Wall Street, Social Security is a rock of retirement security. If billionaires like Elon Musk paid into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us on all of their income, we could expand benefits for everyone and pay them in full forever."
"This is a declaration of war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public," Lawson said. "The Republicans are coming for your Social Security, which they call a 'nightmare.' Elon Musk's commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives—so that you get nothing and they get everything."
"We've seen this play again and again," he added. "When Republicans destroyed defined-benefit pension plans, they claimed that the market would be able to create amazing returns for everybody. Instead, workers got pennies, while Wall Street managers got billions. That is always the plan. We will defeat this Republican effort to steal our earned benefits. The money is ours, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. You're not going to get a penny of it."
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, similarly denounced Lee's thread and Musk's promotion of it, saying both "should enrage and concern every single American who has contributed to Social Security."
"Sen. Mike Lee has dreamed about 'phasing out Social Security' and the benefits generations of Americans have earned for more than a decade. His bad ideas have been rightfully ignored but last night he got a big assist from Elon Musk, who amplified Lee's wrongheaded views about Social Security on X."
"Social Security is a solemn promise between the American people and the government," Fiesta continued. "We pay for Social Security's guaranteed benefits with every paycheck and expect them to be there when we retire, lose a spouse or parent, or become disabled. No one voted to phase out Social Security or let Wall Street gamble with their earned benefits. Older Americans will rightly punish any politician who tries to cut their benefits or gut the system that has worked for generations."
On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to defend Social Security while simultaneously pushing proposals that would wreck the program's finances.
Many Republican lawmakers, who are soon to be in the majority in both chambers of Congress, have called for raising the Social Security retirement age—a change that would cut benefits across the board. On Tuesday, Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) toldFox Business Network that "we're going to have to have some hard decisions" on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—a euphemism for benefit cuts.
Richtman of NCPSSM said that the kind of attack advanced by Lee and other Republicans "conflicts with President Trump's promise not to tamper with Americans' earned benefits."
"It signals where Trump's MAGA allies in Congress are heading—toward privatization and benefit cuts, something the majority of Americans across party lines say they do not want," Richtman added.
"The declaration of the martial law is now invalid—the people now can be relieved," said National Assembly Speak Woo Won Shik after the vote.
This is a developing story... Check back for possible updates...
Members of South Korea's parliament voted unanimously and across party lines on Tuesday to rescind a declaration of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol just hours earlier.
Following the 190-0 vote, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik declared that the president's declaration was no longer valid and vowed that the elected representatives of parliament would "protect democracy with the people."
"Through the passage of the motion through the National Assembly, the president must immediately lift the martial law," Woo said in a statement. "The declaration of the martial law is now invalid—the people [of South Korea] now can be relieved."
The effort by Yoon to impose martial law, reportsReuters, "which he cast as aimed at his political foes, was vocally opposed by the speaker of parliament and even the leader of Yoon's own [conservative] party, Han Dong-hoon, who has clashed with the president over his handling of recent scandals."
According to the Associated Press:
Police and military personnel were seen leaving the Assembly's grounds after Woo called for their withdrawal. Lee Jae-myung, leader of the liberal Democratic Party, which holds the majority in the 300-seat parliament, said the party’s lawmakers will remain in the Assembly’s main hall until Yoon formally lifts his order.
"Democratic Party lawmakers, including me and many others, will protect our country's democracy and future and public safety, lives and properties, with our own lives," Lee told reporters.
The AP was providing a live feed from outside parliament in Seoul, where some had gathered to protest the move by Yoon:
The South Korean military reportedly said it would not stand down until Yoon officially lifted the order, as members of the opposition, including Lee and Woo, vowed to remain inside the parliament until such an order was delivered.
According to the Korean Herald: "Under the Constitution, martial law must be lifted when a parliamentary majority demands it." The newspaper reported that martial law troops had dispersed following the request of the Speaker Woo.
The parliamentary motion was passed less than three hours after Yoon first declared martial law.
"I remind [the presidential office] clearly that they must carry out the process of lifting the martial law without delay," said Woo.
"There is no excuse for leaving us all unprotected," said one advocate.
Emphasizing that the Equal Rights Amendment is the only proposed constitutional amendment that has yet to be certified, 46 U.S. senators have joined the growing national call for President Joe Biden to ensure the proposed statute is part of the Constitution when he leaves office in January.
Reporting on the letter on Tuesday, the Virginia-based publication Style Weekly noted that the state's two Democratic senators—Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine—joined almost the entire Democratic caucus in sending the letter to Biden on November 22. Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont signed the letter, but Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who also caucuses with the Democrats, did not.
The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and was immediately ratified by 35 states. It took nearly five decades for the amendment to be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. state legislatures, with Virginia becoming the 38th state to ratify it in 2020.
Despite the amendment meeting the ratification requirements, Biden has yet to direct the national archivist, Colleen Shogan, to certify the ERA and publish it in the Federal Register, which would formally cement it as part of the U.S. Constitution.
Once published, the amendment would guarantee legal equality between men and women, and reproductive rights advocates have said it could be invoked by judges to overturn anti-abortion rights laws that have been passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country—an urgent issue as President-elect Donald Trump's second term in office with a GOP-controlled Congress draws near.
"As you are keenly aware," wrote the senators, "after nearly 50 years under the protections of Roe, more than half of all Americans have seen their rights come under attack, with access to abortion care and lifesaving healthcare varying from state to state. A federal solution is needed, and the ERA is the strongest tool to ensure equality and protect these rights for everyone. It would establish the premise that sex-based distinctions in access to reproductive care are unconstitutional, and therefore that abortion bans—which single out women for unfair denial of medical treatment based on sex—violate a constitutional right to sex equality."
The senators noted that state-level equal rights amendments have already been used in Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Nevada to protect against "legislative infringements on women's reproductive freedom."
The letter was reported ahead of a virtual town hall scheduled for Tuesday at 7:00 pm ET, when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is scheduled to speak about the ERA.
The town hall was organized by the Biden Publish the ERA Alliance, which consists of 20 non-partisan advocacy groups including Doctors for America, Free Speech for People, and the League of Women Voters.
Organizers are also planning rallies in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and next week.
Kati Hornung, co-founder of Vote Equality U.S. and a leader in the grassroots effort that pushed Virginia to ratify the ERA, told Style Weekly that Biden "campaigned on fixing our constitutional gender equality gap and his campaign even requested to speak at a VAratifyERA event in 2019."
"He is running out of time to tell the national archivist, Colleen Shogan, to do her job," she said. "One hundred seventy million women and girls have been waiting 101 years for this amendment to be added and with the increased threats to our LGBTQIA+ family and friends, there is no excuse for leaving us all unprotected."