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Citing the lack of abortion services in the community, several local groups involved in a campaign for abortion access are hosting a March, Rally, Rage for Abortion Access in Geneva on Friday.

The Geneva Womens Assembly and the regional branches of the Party for Socialism and Liberation said that while New York continues to portray itself as a safe haven for women seeking legal abortions, much of rural New York, including Geneva, lacks the services the state claims to provide.

The groups claim researchers committed to expanding abortion access have contacted all local health facilities to inquire about what abortion services they provide, and the resounding answer has been that there is no abortion access in Geneva. This includes Finger Lakes Health and Finger Lakes Medical Associates, the major local health providers which operate both Geneva General Hospital and the health services at Hobart and William Smith.

As I called from clinic to clinic, asking what abortion services are offered, I was continuously met with uncertainty, and was frequently referred to Planned Parenthood, which is already at capacity and will be for months to come, reported Abbey Brown. I am baffled at the amount of womens health clinics, hospitals, and general healthcare facilities that do not offer abortion in the Finger Lakes.

In a news release, organizers state Fridays event, March, Rally, Rage for Abortion Access in Geneva, is meant to draw attention to the fact that, in our community, legal does not mean accessible.

Were New Yorkers without access to the same care the rest of the state has, Abby Hellauer Geiger explained. FLH and FLMA have a duty to provide abortion services to anyone who wants one in and around Geneva.

The Geneva Womens Assembly and the regional branches of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which are collaborating on this campaign for abortion access, encourage all who are outraged by this lack of essential services to come to Fridays march. It will begin at 6 p.m. in front of the Scandling Center on Hobart and William Smith Colleges campus and conclude at Geneva General Hospital.

Get the top stories on your radio 24/7 on Finger Lakes News Radio 96.3 and 1590, WAUB and 106.3 and 1240, WGVA, and on Finger Lakes Country, 96.1/96.9/101.9/1570 WFLR.

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Friday Rally to Draw Attention to Lack of Abortion Access in Geneva - Finger Lakes Daily News

By Pedro Pablo Morejon

HAVANA TIMES Ive had an idea stuck in my head for weeks now, ever since President Miguel Diaz-Canel from the only legal party in Cuba, the Communist Party said that we need to carry on defending socialism because change would make our lives worse and that despite hardship, we still have dignity My idea? To write about Socialisms positive contributions in my country.

As were living very dignified lives under the shadow of continuity, I start looking for something that would make me feel like everything isnt bleak and hopeless, that this dignity would help us somehow, that a bright future awaits us beyond the present.

I sit down in front of the computer, open a Word document and stay there, watching how the minutes pass by and the page is still blank, ideas arent coming or flowing like Id like them to.

Thats because the truth is I wanted to paint a Cuba that is becoming more and more unrealistic, but I dont know whether thats because there isnt anything to praise or because Ive been tainted by scorn for a system that has only brought us destruction.

The reality is were living amidst blackouts, shortages of food, medicine, drinking water, transport etc.; amid a mass exodus, disease, accidents, unnecessary deaths, lies, repression and a dark horizon. Amidst so much audacity its really hard to find something positive, because Im not writing fiction here, but reality.

Its also better I chop my hand off before I start writing about healthcare and education. With dengue, medicine shortages and the condition of our clinics, having good health is a blessing right now in Cuba.

What about schools, you ask? Indoctrination centers where university graduates cant find a solution to their professional uncertainties and economic needs.

I think real hard, trying to find a hidden corner in my mind, begging a brain cell to help me with pictures of progress, something to enlighten me and Eureka!

Yep, socialism in Cuba has contributed to humankind. I repeat, it has contributed.

We are a museum of a country. Every historian interested in studying real socialism, in its most well-known form Stalinism, finds an accurate laboratory in Cuba, an endless source of what was one of the worst, along with Fascism, two social systems in the 20th century.

We are the lighthouse that guides Latin America, but not because of our good examples, but to warn Bolivars nations of the perils and not to shipwreck their dreams.

Unfortunately, some countries have ignored the signals and then they crash and come tumbling down. Venezuela, for example.

In short, we are an example to the world, showing everything you shouldnt do if you want to build a prosperous society.

We are a country of need, the justification for criminal sciences where you must sacrifice one thing to save everything else.

We Cubans play this part.

This is socialisms contribution on the island, at least for the rest of the world.

Read more from Pedro Pablo Morejon here on Havana Times.

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Cuban Socialisms Contribution to the World - Havana Times

Emily Carver is Head of Media at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The heavens may have finally opened but there is a foreboding sense that disaster is on the horizon.

Bad news keeps coming, yet we only have a vague idea of how the next Prime Minister will attempt to deal with the omini-crisis we face. Soaring energy bills, NHS waiting lists, repeated strike action, illegal immigration; the country feels in a state of limbo as the to-do list grows by the day.

Despite the deluge of apocalyptic headlines, many are unaware of just how tough its going to get (a recent survey showed 12 per cent of us think bills willdecreasethis winter, while most underestimate the scale of the rises heading our way). But many of us are already pinching pennies as the cost of basics keep rising.

One exception to the doom and gloom has been the resilience of our labour market, though the issue of shortages in key sectors remains. The latest data show a mixed bag, but no sign of recession (yet). The headline problem that median pay increases have failed to keep pace with accelerating inflation is of little surprise, although an increase in low-paid workers, for example in food and hospitality, is likely to have had a downward effect on the median pay data.

But with unemployment only very marginally up, and payroll employment at a record high, there is still hope that the economic downturn could at least be a job-rich recession.

However, the cost of lockdown is becoming more apparent by the day. Businesses are going to the wall in record numbers. During the pandemic, insolvencies were kept artificially low. But as government support tapered off, businesses that were clinging on for dear life have found rising costs the final nail in the coffin; in the second quarter of this year, insolvencies were 81 per cent higher than in the same period the previous year.

The question of how businesses are going to cope with rising outgoings remains unanswered. Despite the growing consensus that government must always have a solution, it may well be that there is very little ministers can do to alleviate the pain, and its likely that many of those who have not prepared, for example through energy efficiency measures or cost savings, will go bust.

The number of restaurants, for example, falling into insolvency has increased by more than 60 per cent in the past year and more up-to-date figures are likely to show the situation worsen. For hospitality, Sunaks endless schemes and handouts were for thousands of businesses simply putting off the inevitable.

Perhaps if the trade-offs had been articulated earlier, fewer people would have accepted the Governments authoritarian measures for so long. In any case, it was a dereliction of duty that both government and opposition failed to communicate what impact the pandemic and public health measures might have on the economy and our standard of living further down the line.

It was as if the Government could simply turn on the spending taps, throw us a life jacket, and everything would be near plain sailing. The only thing that mattered was keeping the virus at bay.

Many of us enjoyed near or full pay, while the state borrowed and printed money to keep our heads above water and keep businesses that otherwise would have gone to the wall alive. This gave a false sense of security. Many in salaried jobs even accrued savings as living expenses plummeted.

Much of that money will now have been well and truly spent. A large proportion of households have no savings at all.

Against this backdrop, the left is gaining support for its big-state solutions. Sir Keir Starmers economically illiterate policy to punish the oil and gas sector with further windfall taxes in order to freeze the energy cap will do nothing to deal with the fundamental issue: a lack of gas supply.

Nor will it be cost-free, as the Labour front bench seem to think it will be. Of course, no word is given to the impact of windfall taxes on investment, the very evident failure of the energy price cap as a policy, nor the way the Net Zero dogma of successive governments has left us woefully exposed to supply shocks.

But at least Starmer has a proposal (Labour would stop the energy price cap going up. This would save families 1,000 this winter), however overly simplistic it may be. And its a popular one. When the public is asked whether theyd like to maintain the current price cap, of course the vast majority say yes. Who would opt for higher energy bills?

But this is akin to asking people if they want any freebie. The difficulties lie in the terms and conditions.

With the current vacuum in government, its prime time for the Left to make gains, and they may well be doing so. Worryingly, public debate appears to be on their side, at least in the battle of ideas, and polling continues to show Labour in front on managing the economy.

After the Government succumbed to a windfall tax, the Conservatives lost their free market credentials. The Left has capitalised on this. Now, greedy corporations are to blame for inflation. Nationalisation of industry is the answer to rising prices.

And further redistribution of wealth is demanded, with little to no recognition of the considerable cost-of-living support already announced by the Government amounting to 1,200 for a working-age family on means-tested benefits, which will apparently be paid for by the windfall tax, but more so extra government borrowing.

Liz Truss, focusing on economic growth, has promised to reverse the rise in National Insurance and suspend the green levy on energy bills. Rishi Sunak, on top of his already announced support packages, has committed to removing the five per cent VAT on household energy bills. The accusation that this is mere tinkering at the edges is fair, and further immediate support in the form of higher benefits may well be needed.

But its on the next leader of our country to be honest about the challenges we face and the limits of government. Its on them to look beyond sticking plasters, to communicate a longer-term strategy that will lower the cost of living through supply-side reforms rather than increasing dependence on the state, and to have the courage to rethink our energy strategy that has for so long neglected security of supply while prioritising arbitrary climate targets.

It will only be by providing a strong and confident alternative to the left-wing narrative and restoring the party to its reputation of managing the economy well that the Conservatives stay the party of government.

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Emily Carver: The Left is gaining support for socialism, as the cost living crisis mounts, and the new Tory leader must fight back - ConservativeHome

Ferdinand Marcos Jr was elected president of the Philippines in May. In his inaugural address, delivered on June 30, Marcos pledged that his presidency would be like that of his father, the countrys brutal and corrupt dictator who ruled a martial law regime for a decade and a half. Citing his fathers example, Marcos Jr vowed he would get it done.

During the socially explosive years of 197072, Ferdinand Marcos Sr methodically deployed, tested, and prepared the legal apparatus of state repression prior to the full imposition of military rule in September 1972. The months since the election of Marcos Jr have been marked by the incremental tightening of the authoritarian rule.

On August 8, Walden Bello, chair of the political party Laban ng Masa [Fight of the masses], who ran for vice president in the May elections, was arrested and charged with cyber-libel. Bello is a former congressman with a prominent international reputation as a figure of the left and an opponent of globalization. He promotes reformist politics as if it were a type of socialism.

Bello famously called vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte, daughter of the previous president Rodrigo Duterte, a coward for her refusal to engage in public debates during the election campaign. When Duterte was elected vice president, her close aide filed libel charges against Bello for his campaign statements. Bello was dragged through the humiliating process of arrest and had his mugshot takenbarefootat a local police station before being released on bail a day later.

Bello is scheduled to be arraigned before the Regional Trial Court in Davao City in September. He has filed an appeal with the Department of Justice on the entirely justified grounds that the libel complaint constituted political persecution.

The arrest of Bello is a direct attack on the right to free speech and an indication that the Marcos II government is preparing to crack down on all forms of dissent.

Sixteen priests, nuns, and lay persons, all members of the Catholic church organization, Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, were indicted on August 15 on charges of funding the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which is classified as a terrorist organization, and have been denied bail.

The sixteen are charged on the basis of testimony provided by two anonymous witnesses, who the government claims are defecting members of the CPPs New Peoples Army (NPA). The Marcos Sr dictatorship routinely employed secret witnesses in its military courts to label political opponents Communists, and this practice is being brought back.

When Marcos Sr imposed martial law, he shut down all news, television, and radio broadcasts that he did not directly control, and only allowed them to reopen when they acquiesced to his dictatorship. Marcos Jr is shutting down the opposition media and banning alternative sources of news and political perspective.

On June 8, the National Telecommunication Commission ordered 27 websites blocked at the request of the National Security Council which cited the reactionary Anti-Terror Law passed under the Rodrigo Duterte administration.

The banned websites include those associated with the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines, as well as the personal page of CPP founder and ideological leader, Jose Maria Sison. Bundled up with the CPP in the ban were websites of legal political organizations, including BAYAN, and alternative news sites, such as Bulatlat and Pinoy Weekly. International publications, including Monthly Review and Counterpunch, which had in the past published material favorable to the CPP have been banned as well.

On June 29, the Security and Exchange Commission ordered the revocation of the certificates of Rappler, one of the countrys leading news publications critical of the Duterte and Marcos administrations. The revocation is currently under appeal.

Fundamental to these authoritarian maneuvers is the rewriting of the past and the rehabilitation of the martial law regime. The Presidential Museum and Library, which contains valuable documents on the Marcos dictatorship, has been taken offline. The anti-Terrorist law is being used to ban a growing list of books, which are deemed subversive from libraries, schools and universities. The attack is sweeping. Among the authors listed is poet and National Artist for Literature Bien Lumbera.

Mandatory military training is being brought back. Vice President Duterte, who is secretary of education, announced that she intended to make Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) a requirement, rehabilitating a Marcos-era policy that only ended in 2002, and which was long associated with brutal hazings and indoctrination.

Unadulterated propaganda is being mass produced. A major film recently released, Maid in Malacaang, depicts the overthrow of the Marcos regime as the ouster of a wise and kindly presidential family by an ungrateful mob. Government announcements are now being routinely made over the television stations of Sonshine Media Network, headed by an anti-Communist cult leader loyal to Marcos and Duterte, Apollo Quiboloy, who is wanted for sex trafficking and who claims to be the Son of God incarnate.

We are witnessing a creeping martial law.

The repressive apparatus of the Marcos II administration builds upon the measures taken by the fascistic presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, but there is something qualitatively new as well. Dutertes rule was marked by the crudity and volatility of a provincial warlord vaulted to the heights of Philippine society. He unleashed police violence against the poor, in the name of a war on drugs, and oversaw the extrajudicial killing of over 30,000 people.

The Marcos II administration is less personalistic. There is a calculated legality to its systematic repressive measures that is starkly reminiscent of those taken by Marcos Sr.

Duterte expressed a global phenomenon: the turn by the ruling elite to authoritarian forms of rule in the face of mounting social crisis and unrest. Marcos Jr represents a significant further step in the open embrace of dictatorship.

Marcos Jr has the backing of a super-majority in both the Senate and Congress, which represents the support of a substantial majority of the bourgeoisie. The embrace by the ruling class of dictatorship, and the targeting of all forms of opposition for repression, expresses at the most fundamental level the political preparations to crush the emergence of mass opposition from the working class and oppressed masses. The ruling elite are keenly nervous as they confront immense crisis.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on August 15 that 20 million Filipinos live below the poverty line. That number has gone up by 2.3 million people since the last time data was collected in 2018. The poverty threshold is defined as an income of P12,030 ($US215) a month for a family of five. More than 18 percent of the countrys population falls below this meager measurement.

An even more dire statistic is the proportion of Filipinos unable to meet basic food needs, defined as making P8,379 ($US150) a month for a family of five. Some 5.9 percent of the population could not afford adequate food on a daily basis, 200,000 more people fell into this category since 2018.

The average income of Filipino households declined by 2 percent since 2018 in absolute terms and fell by 10 percent when adjusted for inflation. Minimum wage has fallen even farther. Minimum wages in the Philippines vary throughout the country and are established by a regional wage board. BusinessWorld calculated that minimum wages, when adjusted for price increases over the past year, had fallen by somewhere from 10.716.9 percent since July 2021. For working families on the brink of poverty these figures are catastrophic.

Philippine society is a powder keg. An op-ed published in the Philippine Star following Marcos election made clear that the Philippine ruling class shares the same fears as their counterparts around the globe: Marcos must resist going Sri Lankas way.

Marcos campaign for presidency relied on lies about the past which were made possible by the historical ignorance of broad layers of the public, who have been systematically miseducated. He secured a good deal of support, however, through populist promises. In late April, in the final stages of the campaign, he pledged to lower market rice prices to P20 ($US0.36) a kilo through subsidies and price caps, a pledge that if implemented would have cut the price of the most basic food necessity in half.

The Marcos II administration, however, has not brought down food prices; it has shut down news organizations. There are no substantive palliative measures forthcoming. Like his father, Marcos Jr sees the solution to the growing unrest in repression and dictatorship.

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Creeping martial law in the Philippines as poverty grows - WSWS

Sunday was the anniversary of the day in 1935 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Critics decried the program as socialism, which it is, of a mild and democratic sort, but hardly anyone complains about it nowadays.

In fact, Social Security might be the single most popular program the federal government operates. Even Republicans, who despise such programs in theory (its a tax, its mandatory, it has a somewhat progressive or redistributive benefit structure, which means it helps the poor more than the rich), dont dare criticize it much and never talk about getting rid of it.

The Social Security Act has many other provisions, but the big one is that it requires workers and their employers to contribute every pay period to a trust fund during their working years and enables retirees to receive benefits a pension of sorts starting at any age between 62 and 70 (the longer you wait, the bigger the monthly check).

You probably knew all that, but I thought Id observe the anniversary.

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Im 71 and have started getting my benefits and will get them until I croak. Pretty cool. Really helps. I havent calculated how long Ill have to live to get all my contributions (and the contributions of my various employers) back, plus interest. But its not an investment program. Its an insurance program, which insures us all a bit against not being able to pay for our retirement years.

Social Security is also, as I said above, socialism of a sort. Its mandatory. Theres no guarantee youll get back more than you pay in (although most recipients do). Its also an anti-poverty program of a sort, which conservatives are supposed to hate, because it has a somewhat progressive benefit structure.

I bring it up mostly to observe the anniversary and also to gig the knucklehead red-baiting Right, who should be calling for the abolition of this bit of socialism but dont dare.

Plus, I enjoy the tale of Ida Mae Fuller, who worked under (and paid into) Social Security for three years, then retired and received the very first Social Security benefit (Social Security check number 00-000-001, for $22.54) and ended up living until she was 100 years old and collecting $22,888.92 in total benefits.

God rest ye, Ida Mae, beneficiary of socialism.

Heres a link to a smarter lookback at Social Securitys origins, part of Heather Cox Richardsons series Letters from an American.

Richardsons piece doesnt mention Ida May Fuller but does celebrate Frances Perkins, the first-ever woman in the cabinet, who, as secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, is credited by Richardson as the driving force behind the Social Security law.

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An anniversary for Social Security and a nod to its first beneficiary - MinnPost