Capitalism cannot be regulated

Big business and banks are just as corrupt and eager to shovel profits to senior executives 10 years after the landmark banking reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank as they were during the 2008 crisis, a new report warns, because the bill's regulations on executive pay remain unimplemented.

 It has remained unimplemented—nine years after the deadline Congress set—thanks to lobbying from the banking industry, the report found. Section 956 calls for a ban on all "inappropriate" pay structures that could lead to "excessive risk taking." 

Meanwhile, money that Congress allocated to bail out bank creditors in 2008 effectively went to bankers, while more than 10 million lost their homes, their jobs and their savings.

"White collar crime pays, and until Congress enacts the rules to change it, we'll continue to see top executives raking in off catastrophes of their own making," report author Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen, said.

The report lists billions in bonus cash paid out to executives over the past decade despite Dodd-Frank's regulatory framework banning such cash-outs. 

"It's 2008 all over again," said Naylor. "Congress is bailing out Big Business and enriching CEOs while workers scrape by as the economy lurches downward in a pandemic."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/21/white-collar-crime-pays-decade-after-dodd-frank-executives-still-lining-their

Why GDP?

 Two economic professors find a dead rat while on a long stroll. In disgust, the older don dares his younger colleague: “if you eat it, I’ll pay you $10,000”. The younger economist makes a quick cost-benefit analysis in his head, then accepts the challenge, to his colleague’s surprise. 

Sometime later, realizing the enormity of his financial loss, the older man offers to reciprocate to get his money back. Feeling ashamed of being the only one to eat a dead rat, his younger colleague quickly agrees.

A few days later, feeling quite foolish about what happened, the younger don laments: “Looks like we both ate dead rats for nothing”. The more senior professor reassures him, “Yes, but remember we increased GDP by $20,000”.

GDP has been increasingly challenged on many grounds as a measure of economic and social progress. Clearly, GDP does not take account of other dimensions of wellbeing, natural resource depletion or environmental damage.  Much care work by family members which goes unremunerated and thus unrecorded.

Excluding some economic activities, but not others, when calculating a country’s national income is also problematic as it is difficult to agree on what economic activities should be included to enhance welfare.

Interestingly, US and European statistical offices only started national income accounts after the Second World War using Simon Kuznets’ pioneering work for the Roosevelt administration.

Robert F. Kennedy famously quipped over half a century ago, GDP “measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/07/dead-rats-can-raise-gdp-economists-lowered/

They call it sport

While news in the UK revealed the abuse of gymnasts, a Human Rights Watch report has found child athletes in Japan often suffer physical and verbal abuse and sometimes sexual abuse when training for sport after documenting the experiences of over 800 athletes in 50 sports. 

The 67-page report released on Monday titled "I Was Hit So Many Times I Can't Count" looks at Japan's history of physical punishment in sport and includes first-hand accounts of athletes being punched, kicked and whipped.

"For decades, children in Japan have been brutally beaten and verbally abused in the name of winning trophies and medals," Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in a statement.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200720-japanese-child-athletes-brutally-beaten-and-abused-human-rights-watch-report-finds

Musk Gets Bonus

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk qualified on Tuesday for a payout worth an unprecedented $2.1 billion, his second jackpot since May from the electric car maker following its massive stock surge.

Despite Tuesday’s stock dip, and importantly for Musk’s personal finances, Tesla’s six-month average market capitalization for the first time has reached $150 billion. That triggers the vesting of the second of 12 tranches of options granted to the billionaire in his 2018 pay package to buy Tesla stock at a discount. 

In early May, Musk’s first tranche vested after Tesla’s six-month average stock market value reached $100 billion. Each tranche gives Musk the option to buy 1.69 million Tesla shares at $350.02 each, less than a quarter of their current price. At Tesla’s current stock price of $1,594, Musk would theoretically be able to sell the shares related to the tranche that vested in May and the current tranche for a combined profit of $4.2 billion, or almost $2.1 billion per tranche.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tesla-stocks-musk/teslas-musk-qualifies-for-2-1-billion-payday-idUKKCN24M2PY

More Billions for Bezos

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has set a fresh record increasing his fortune by an additional $13bn (£10bn) in a single day to take his personal wealth to an unprecedented $189bn. The $13bn increase Bezos achieved on Monday is the biggest single-day jump in anyone’s net worth since Bloomberg began tracking the daily changes in fortunes of the world’s wealthiest people in 2012. In ONE DAY Jeff Bezos made well over 4,000 times what the average American earns in their ENTIRE LIFETIME. Bezos is now $71bn richer than the next-wealthiest person on the list: Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Bezos’s fortune has been swelled by Amazon’s soaraway share price as hundreds of millions of people trapped at home by coronavirus lockdowns around the world turn to the online delivery giant to keep themselves fed and entertained. While many businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic and the beginnings of what threatens to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Amazon’s shares have increased by 70% since the start of the year. On Monday alone, the share price rose by 8% to a record $3,197. (By lunchtime Tuesday they were changing hands at slightly below that peak.)

 Bezos’s $189bn fortune means he is personally worth more than companies such as Exxon Mobil, Nike or McDonald’s. His total wealth now makes him worth more than Britain’s biggest company, the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca which is valued on the stock exchange at £121bn. In the UK, Bezos has more than enough money to buy the big four banks – HSBC, Barclays, RBS and Lloyds – and have enough change left over to pick up British Airways owner IAG as well as Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer. The huge increase in Bezos’s wealth on Monday alone is equivalent of adding nearly 30 times the Queen’s £350m fortune. His fortune now dwarfs the GDP of Hungary, Ukraine and Qatar. And he is within striking distance of overtaking Greece and New Zealand who are ranked by the World Bank as the 51st and 52nd biggest economies in the world.

Oxfam, the global development charity, said it was “truly shocking” that Bezos had managed to make so much money during the coronavirus crisis, which has forced hundreds of millions of people around the world to rely on food banks and government support.

“It is hard to reconcile this obscene figure with the reality the rest of us are living through,” Rebecca Gowland, Oxfam’s head of inequality campaign and policy, said. “At a time when hardship is commonplace, hunger is on the increase and half a billion more people face being pushed into extreme poverty, it is truly shocking that one already extremely wealthy individual has pocketed another $74bn already this year.” 

Gowland said it showed global economic policies are “not fit for purpose” and “allow the super-rich to accumulate vast amounts of money at the expense of the rest of us when that money is desperately needed for healthcare and social safety nets”.

Bezos has donated $100m to a food bank charity to help Americans struggling with the economic fallout from the pandemic. .  Bezos’s $100m donation represents 0.05% of his fortune. Bezos has given $2bn, amounting to just more than 1% of his wealth, to the Bezos Day One Fund to help address homelessness and improve education for children in low-income families. Amazon is also pumping $25m into an “Amazon Relief Fund” to support delivery drivers and “seasonal employees under financial distress.”

Bezos would have been even richer, if he had not been required to give his ex-wife MacKenzie 25% of his Amazon shares when they divorced last year. The boom in Amazon’s share price, increased her fortune by $4.6bn on Monday and she is now the world’s 13th-richest person.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/21/jeff-bezos-the-worlds-richest-man-added-10bn-to-his-fortune-in-just-one-day

Malaysia Cracks Down on Refugees

A group of Rohingya refugees who survived a treacherous journey at sea now face caning and seven months in jail after they were convicted under the immigration act in Malaysia, where activists have warned of an alarming rise in xenophobia and inhumane treatment of the migrants. Hundreds of arrests and a sharp rise in hate speech have shocked refugees and migrants. 

Over recent months, Malaysia has been widely condemned for turning away boats carrying Rohingya refugees fleeing desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh. Some boats were allowed to dock, but the hundreds of refugees onboard are understood to remain in detention, according to Amnesty International.

A group of 31 Rohingya men who disembarked from a boat in April have since been convicted under the Immigration Act, and sentenced to seven months in prison, while at least 20 have been sentenced to three strokes of the cane. Nine women are also facing seven months in prison, while 14 children have been charged and are facing jail terms. The sentencing, announced in June, has been condemned as “cruel and inhuman” by Amnesty International, which has called for the decision to be overturned.

The prospect of being sent to detention centres, notorious for violence and illness, has become a most stark threat. At least 735 cases of coronavirus were reported in the centres in June, almost 10% of the country’s total. Refugees and aid workers say detention conditions are cramped and unsanitary, and food is limited.

“It was a horrible situation, the treatment they subjected us to. They took us into the prison, it was small but with so many people, and so many people were ill … it was like we were animals,” said the Yemeni refugee. “There were a lot of Covid-19 cases … the ill, and those who weren’t, were all next to each other without separation.”

Another Yemeni refugee told the Guardian: “They put me in a jail cell for three days without food, without drink or even a toilet. Then they transferred me to a cell in a big prison where there were 200 people.

“I was in the prison and then we were taken out in handcuffs, all together, and they started beating us. Four of the guards beat us and then said we’re being released. The coronavirus and the beatings were agonising.”

UNHCR said it has not had access to Malaysian detention centres since last August.

Immigration raids tarted in May followed a surge in xenophobia after Malaysia was criticised for sending boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees back to sea. Almost 600 undocumented migrants were arrested in the first weekend. Authorities were criticised for rounding up residents and forcing them to sit on the ground without social distancing. A new wave of xenophobic attacks began this month. The government has announced that foreigners will be banned from mosques when they reopen. Refugee children are not allowed to attend formal schools, and rely on religious schools.

“The government is cracking down on migrants and refugees, instead of upholding everyone’s right to health during Covid,” said John Quinley, human rights specialist at Bangkok-based Fortify Rights. “The environment of fear and intimidation against migrants and refugees must end.”

Nur, a Malaysian activist, explained, “Every other day there’s new regulations and new targeted speech against the refugees and ‘illegal immigrants’.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/21/rohingya-face-cruel-caning-sentence-in-malaysia-as-hostility-to-refugees-grows

'Londongrad'

49. Whilst the Russian elite have developed ties with a number of countries in recent years, it would appear that the UK has been viewed as a particularly favourable destination for Russian oligarchs and their money. It is widely recognised that the key to London’s appeal was the exploitation of the UK’s investor visa scheme, introduced in 1994, followed by the promotion of a light and limited touch to regulation, with London’s strong capital

and housing markets offering sound investment opportunities. The UK’s rule of law and judicial system were also seen as a draw. The UK welcomed Russian money, and few questions – if any – were asked about the provenance of this considerable wealth. It appears

that the UK Government at the time held the belief (more perhaps in hope than expectation) that developing links with major Russian companies would promote good governance by encouraging ethical and transparent practices, and the adoption of a law-based commercial environment.

50. What is now clear is that it was in fact counter-productive, in that it offered ideal mechanisms by which illicit finance could be recycled through what has been referred to as the London ‘laundromat’. The money was also invested in extending patronage and building influence across a wide sphere of the British establishment – PR firms, charities, political interests, academia and cultural institutions were all willing beneficiaries of Russian money, contributing to a ‘reputation laundering’ process. In brief, Russian influence in the UK is ‘the new normal’, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the UK business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth. This level of integration – in ‘Londongrad’ in particular – means that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation.

51. It is not just the oligarchs either: the arrival of Russian money resulted in a growth industry of enablers – individuals and organisations who manage and lobby for the Russian

elite in the UK. Lawyers, accountants, estate agents and PR professionals have played a role, wittingly or unwittingly, in the extension of Russian influence which is often linked to

promoting the nefarious interests of the Russian state. A large private security industry has developed in the UK to service the needs of the Russian elite, in which British companies

protect the oligarchs and their families, seek kompromat56 on competitors, and on occasion help launder money through offshore shell companies and fabricate ‘due diligence’ reports, while lawyers provide litigation support. William Browder told the Committee that:

Russian state interests, working in conjunction with and through criminal private interests, set up a ‘buffer’ of Westerners who become de facto Russian state agents, many unwittingly, but others with a reason to know exactly what they are doing and

for whom. As a result, UK actors have to deal with Russian criminal interests masked as state interests, and Russian state interests masked by their Western agents.

52. The links of the Russian elite to the UK – especially where this involves business and investment – provide access to UK companies and political figures, and thereby a means for broad Russian influence in the UK. To a certain extent, this cannot be untangled and the priority now must be to mitigate the risk and ensure that, where hostile activity is uncovered, the tools exist to tackle it at source.

53. The extent to which Russian expatriates are using their access to UK businesses and politicians to exert influence in the UK is: it is widely recognised that Russian intelligence and business are completely intertwined. The Government must, take the

necessary measures to counter the threat and challenge the impunity of Putin-linked elites. Legislation is a key step, and is addressed later in this Report.

54. Several members of the Russian elite who are closely linked to Putin are identified as being involved with charitable and/or political organisations in the UK, having donated to political parties, with a public profile which positions them to assist Russian influence operations. It is notable that a number of Members of the House of Lords have business interests linked to Russia, or work directly for major Russian companies linked to the Russian state – these relationships should be carefully scrutinised, given the potential for the Russian state to exploit them. It is important that the Code of Conduct for Members of the House of Lords, and the Register of Lords’ interests, including financial interests, provide the necessary transparency and are enforced. In this respect, we note that the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament requires that MPs register individual payments of

more than £100 which they receive for any employment outside the House – this does not apply to the House of Lords, and consideration should be given to introducing such a requirement. A ‘Foreign Agents Registration Act’ (an issue which is addressed in the section on Legislation) would also be helpful in this respect.

55. The Government effort on the disruption of Russian illicit financial activity in the UK is led and co-ordinated by the National Crime Agency (NCA). Its work also encompasses the investigation of UK-based professional enablers in the financial and property sectors, with the aim of hardening the UK financial and property markets from the proceeds of crime, and challenging any perception that the UK is a safe haven for illicit funds. The extent to which this money has now been invested, and reinvested, calls into question the efficacy of the recently introduced Unexplained Wealth Orders when applied to the investigation of individuals with such long-established – and to all intents and purposes now apparently legitimate – financial interests in the UK. Whilst the Orders appear to provide the NCA with more clout and greater powers, the reality is that it is highly probable that the oligarchy will have the financial means to ensure their lawyers – a key

group of professional enablers – find ways to circumvent this legislation (we return to this issue later in the Report). By contrast, the NCA lacks the resources required in terms of financial investigators, technical experts and legal expertise – this must be rectified.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/russia-report-reveals-uk-government-failed-to-address-kremlin-interference-scottish-referendum-brexit

The Parable of the Table. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

[An extract from the speech of Gustave Hervé of his trial]

Ah! I know that I wound your conscience, gentlemen of the jury. Your conscience pricks you all the more because you feel that I am speaking the truth. I feel sure that when I say this I wound the universal conscience which the Paris Bar with its eloquence, knows so well how to interpret.

But do you believe that Voltaire, Diderot and the rest of the encyclopaedists were able to avoid treading on people’s corns?

It is a lamentable fact that every time a new form of society is about to come forth from the womb of one on the point of death, it always does so by a long and painful child-birth, producing in every family, and in every heart, trouble and anguish; suffering that every innovator would fain spare those whose convictions he hurts.

As for us revolutionary Socialists, we have discarded the folds of this flag on which the names of so many deeds of butchery are displayed in letters of gold.

Flags are but emblems; and are worth something only in so far as they represent something worthy. What, after all, is one’s native country? Or what, in actual fact, do all these “fatherlands” consist?

Allow me, if you please, gentlemen of the jury, to draw for you a mental picture, to speak if I may a kind of parable, which will the better help you to understand what our feelings are. One’s native land, every country, no matter under what form of government it be masked, is made up of two groups of men, consisting on the one hand of a quite small number, on the other including the immense majority of people.

The first of these is seated round a well furnished table where nothing is lacking. At the head of this table, in the seat of honour, you find the great financiers; some, perhaps, are Jews, others Catholics or Protestants, or it may be even Freethinkers. It is possible for them to be in entire disagreement on questions of religion or philosophy, and even on questions affecting their individual interests, but as against the mass of the people, they are as thick as thieves.

Seated on their right and left hand you have Cabinet Ministers, high officials of every department of civil, religious or military administration. Paymasters-general with salaries of 30, 40, and 60 thousand francs a year: a little further off fully fledged barristers, by their unanimity glorious interpreters of the “Universal Conscience” – the whole Bench and Bar, not forgetting their precious assistants, the solicitors, notaries and ushers.

Large shareholders in mines, factories, railways, steamship companies and big shops: manorial magnates, big landed proprietors; all are seated at this table: everybody that has two-pence is there too, but at the foot. These latter are the small fry, who have for that matter, all the prejudices, all the conservative instincts, of the big capitalists.

Ah! gentlemen of the jury, I wish that you may be of the number of these privileged ones seated around this festive board. Verily, you are not so badly off there, after all, you know. In return for a little work – when you have any work at all – work I say which is oft-times intelligent, occasionally agreeable, which always leaves you with some spare time for yourself, directive work that flatters your pride and vanity – in return for this you can enjoy a life of plenty, made pleasant by every comfort, every luxury that the progress of science has placed at the service of Fortune’s favoured ones.

Far from the table I see a great herd of beasts of burden doomed to repulsive, squalid, dangerous, unintelligent toil, without truce or rest, and above all without security for the morrow; petty shop-keepers chained to their counters, Sundays and holidays, more and more crushed by the competition of the big shops; small industrial employers, ground down by the competition of the big factory owners; small peasant proprietors, brutalised by a sixteen to eighteen hours day, who only toil that they may enrich the big middlemen: millers, wine factors, sugar refiners. At a still greater distance from this table of the happy ones of this world, I see the crowd of proletarians who have but their strength of arm or their brain for sole fortune, factory hands, men and women exposed to long periods of unemployment, petty officials and shop-assistants forced to bow and scrape and hide their opinions, domestic servants of both sexes, labouring flesh, cannon fodder, matériel of “pleasure”.

There are your beloved countries! Your country to-day is made up of this monstrous social inequality, this horrible exploitation of man by man.

When the proletarians doff their hats to the flag as it passes by, it is to this that they uncover. They in effect say: “What a splendid country is ours! How free, kind and just is she!”

How! how you must laugh, Mr. Attorney-General, when you hear them sing:

“ah! glorious is death indeed,
When for our native land – for liberty – we bleed!”

Grenfell and the greed for profits

Rydon, the main contractor on the Grenfell Tower refurbishment secretly “pocketed” £126,000 while switching the cladding to cheaper, more combustible materials, the inquiry into the deadly fire at the building has heard.

Rydon was bidding for the project in March 2014 when it told the landlord of the council block that it could save £293,368 by switching from the originally specified zinc cladding to plastic-filled aluminium panels, which the inquiry has heard had “significantly worse” fire performance.

At the time, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants’ Management Organisation (KCTMO) was trying to cut more than £800,000 from the costs and had told Rydon it was “in pole position” to win the contract.

Rydon knew that the actual saving from the switch would be £419,627, but kept this from the client and “took some of the savings for themselves”, possibly as additional profit, Simon Lawrence, Rydon’s contract manager, admitted. The switch to the aluminium composite cladding panels, which since the fire have been banned on tall buildings, was the biggest part of more than £800,000 of savings 

Rydon promised five times to appoint fire safety advisers but failed to do so. Instead, it relied on the building control department at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, which owned the block, to advise on whether there were any safety problems. Rydon did not tell the client or the architect it was not hiring a fire expert despite having said it would do so in meetings in April, June, July, September and October 2014 as works were getting under way. The absence of a fire engineer on the team meant the cladding was chosen without consulting a specialist fire safety consultant.

Rydon was also under further pressure to save money on the job because one of its employees, Frank Smith, had underpriced the total works by £212,000. Rydon was looking for ways to “compensate” for the mistake, internal company emails showed.

Richard Millett QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Lawrence: “Was the plan in Rydon to keep the TMO in the dark about the real extent of the savings on the ACM panels and then pocket the difference to make up for Frank Smith’s £210,000 estimating error?”

Lawrence, who admitted he had known about the plan to take the savings, replied: “That could be the reason for it.”

Millett asked: “Why was it not Rydon’s responsibility to alert the TMO that Harley had advised that far greater savings could be achieved than you were letting on?”

Lawrence said: “It probably went into risk or into additional profit.”

 Chris Holt, Rydon’s site manager, asked Lawrence about the need to address fire safety, he was reassured that it was in hand. Holt said: “I was aware that as the refurbishment was to a residential block of flats, one of the main risk factors would be fire safety. When I started on the project I spoke to Simon Lawrence and asked whether I was required to consider aspects of fire safety in my role. Simon informed me that it was not part of my role and had been dealt with.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/20/grenfell-firm-rydon-promised-five-times-to-appoint-fire-safety-advisers-inquiry-told

Worse to come?

British households have suffered the biggest hit to their finances since the oil crisis of the mid-1970s.  Against a backdrop of rising job losses four months into the crisis, the Resolution Foundation thinktank said the average household in Britain had suffered a 4.5% drop in income in the month of May, compared with their average monthly income level in the financial year ending March 2020, before the pandemic struck.

Despite the government ramping up spending to cushion the economic blow, with 9.4m jobs furloughed on its coronavirus job retention scheme and £9bn of fresh funding for the benefits system, it said income levels for the typical family had crashed back down to 2006-07 levels in a matter of months.

The thinktank said the hit to incomes was bigger than the one families suffered during the 2008 financial crisis. The income of typical working-age households fell by 2.7% as a result of the banking crash little more than a decade ago.

The Resolution Foundation said the financial impact from Covid-19 comes after a decade of stalling improvements for living standards in Britain. After one of the weakest economic recoveries on record following the 2008 financial crisis, workers’ average pay after accounting for inflation only returned to its pre-crisis peak in December, following 12 years of sluggish growth. It said the decade of lacklustre gains meant the poorest 10th of households in Britain had incomes no higher on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic than in the early 2000s.

The Resolution Foundation said ministers providing emergency funds to cushion the economic fallout had prevented a worse outcome, with the study finding that the poorest fifth of households had seen no immediate hit to their income at all during the first phase of the crisis. Without action, the poorest families would have seen their incomes collapse by at least 8%, it said.

The Treasury’s furlough scheme is due to be cut back from the start of next month, before it is closed completely at the end of October. Last week, the government’s economics forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, warned at least 10% and up to 20% of the 9.4m jobs protected by the scheme could be made redundant when it is closed. The OBR warned unemployment was on track to more than double to levels unseen since the 1980s before Christmas.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, said, “Working people must not pay the price of the pandemic. The government should step in with much greater targeted support to save jobs in hard-hit sectors like retail, manufacturing and aviation,” she said. “The more people we keep in work, the faster we can get ourselves out of recession and get living standards rising again.”

Adam Corlett, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “The government’s unprecedented policy response has played a critical role so far in protecting millions of households, and particularly the poorest, from the worst of the crisis. But for many the threat of further income falls looms large.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/21/uk-households-suffer-biggest-financial-hit-since-1970s-due-to-coronavirus

DWP - "irrational, unjust and unlawful.”

A working single parent who was benefit-capped and left up to £463 a month worse off because of the “irrational” way universal credit calculated her monthly earnings has won a high court victory against the Department for Work and Pensions.

Justice Garnham said the system treated Sharon Pantellerisco, a 41-year-old care worker from Southport, as if she were not working, and punished her by arbitrarily reducing her overall universal credit award through the benefit cap.

In effect, Pantellerisco had been penalised financially because her four-weekly pay cycle did not fit in with the design of universal credit. No “reasonable” secretary of state for work and pensions would have allowed the system to operate as it did in this case, the judge said.

Pantellerisco, who has four children, worked 16 hours a week, receiving the “national living wage”, but was paid on a four-weekly basis, an arrangement that clashed with universal credit rules that calculate earnings over a calendar month. This meant her income for most universal credit assessment periods was deemed to be too low, subjecting her to the benefit cap, which in turn resulted in her benefit income being docked by up to 20% a month. This left her stressed, depressed and struggling to feed and buy clothes for her children. 

Carla Clarke, a solicitor for Child Poverty Action Group, which brought the case, said: “A system that determines the amount of social security low-paid working claimants are entitled to on the arbitrary basis of whether they are paid monthly or four-weekly can only be irrational, unjust and unlawful.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/20/universal-credit-earnings-calculations-unlawful-judge-says

More War Threatens Libya

Libya has been in the throes of civil war since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 that toppled Ghadafi. Control over the oil-rich nation is currently split between a UN-supported Tripoli government in the west and military strongman Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA) in the east.  Egypt has been backing Haftar, along with the United Arab Emirates and Russia, while Tripoli government forces have been supported by Turkey, Italy and Qatar.

Egyptian President el-Sissi has warned of a military intervention to protect Egypt's border with Libya. The move could bring Egypt and Turkey, who support rival sides in Libya's proxy war, into direct confrontation.

Egypt's parliament on Monday authorized the deployment of troops abroad after President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi threatened military intervention against Turkish-backed forces in Libya. Egypt's House of Representatives, which is filled with el-Sissi supporters, said after a closed-door session that armed forces could be deployed outside the country to fight "criminal militias" and "foreign terrorist groups" on a "western front," but did name Libya directly. It said the troops would be defending Egypt's national security.

El-Sissi said last week that Egypt, which shares its western porous desert border with Libya, would not stand idle if there was a threat to the nation's security. He also warned that the strategic coastal city of Sirte was a "red line," and that an attack on the town by Libyan government forces would prompt Cairo to intervene.

With the help of Turkish support, government forces last month ended a 14-month offensive by the LNA in Tripoli. It was a major setback for Haftar, who has sought to unify Libya by force. Since reclaiming Tripoli, government forces have pushed eastward toward Sirte, which lies 800 kilometers from the Egyptian border. The city, which is the late Ghadafi's hometown, is a gateway to Libya's most important crude export terminals. 

 The Egyptian presidenct el-Sissi had spoken with US President Donald Trump and assured him that Egypt would "prevent further deterioration of security in Libya." 

https://www.dw.com/en/egypts-parliament-approves-troop-deployment-in-libya/a-54247567

Migrant Workers Misery in Spain

Thousands of migrant strawberry pickers from Morocco are trapped in Spain. Local groups call it a humanitarian crisis.

Since the late 1990s, thousands of Moroccan seasonal workers have come every year for the strawberry harvest. Around 17,000, mostly female, Moroccan seasonal workers were supposed to come this year to the southern Spanish province of Huelva for the strawberry harvest. 

Alicia Navascues thinks "this hiring model is a modern form of slavery." If working conditions were decent, she pointed out, then locals would be keen to take on these jobs, since the province has had a high unemployment rate in the past few years. "This model of capitalistic exploitation does not work, not for these women," she said. Yet for now it seems it will take more than a pandemic to change it.

Only 7,200 of these so-called temporeras made it there after the borders with Morocco were closed on March 13 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But once the harvest season finished and their contracts expired, most of them have found themselves trapped as their home country kept its doors closed and refused to repatriate them.

Migrant support groups speak of a "humanitarian crisis." The laborers' contracts expired in mid-June, but since then only around a hundred women, who were sick or about to give birth, have been repatriated. Others have given birth during their stay in Spain, working until the day before, if not the very same day they went into labor. A midwife who assisted some of these births told DW that "these women were alone and unable to communicate."

"They are running out of money and, as time goes by they're becoming more and more vulnerable," Jose Maria Castellon, a member of the rights group APDHA, told DW.

The agricultural model of Spain has been questioned for years because of the working and living conditions of its migrant workers.

Apart from seasonal pickers — mostly from Morocco, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria — hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants live year-round in shantytowns close to the fields. Last February, after a visit to the camps, the United Nations' Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights said: "They live like animals. Their conditions are among the worst that I have seen in any part of the world."

 At the places where they stay, many don't have proper ventilation, toilets or running water. Social distancing is a rare privilege. 

"If they had been professional football players, they would have been sent back home right away, but they're poor women," Alicia Navascues, a local human rights activist, told DW.

Now it is possible for the Moroccan workers to return by plane or by ship, but only from French and Italian ports. The harvesters say they cannot afford those tickets. Without a negative test result Morocco will not let them go back home.

https://www.dw.com/en/strawberry-pickers-plight-exposes-modern-slavery-in-spain/a-54239756

Smaller American homes for the planet's sake

U.S. households account for one-fifth of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, thanks partly to Americans' general preference for bigger houses and spacious suburbs. Those preferences also translated into an emissions divide between the rich and the poor, with wealthier households in recent years emitting around 25% more than their lower-income counterparts in smaller homes, the researchers at the University of Michigan said. (Study: bit.ly/3hgPQXO) The study estimated energy use by 93 million U.S. homes, based on details from tax assessor records for 2015 including a house’s size, age, location and construction date. The study revealed a correlation between higher wealth and higher-per-capita energy use and emissions.

Americans may need to rethink how they live, said Benjamin Goldstein, a co-author on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
“Structural change is going to be important and necessary,” said Goldstein, a professor at the University of Michigan. 

In Beverly Hills, the average person puts four times as much heat-trapping gases into the air as someone living in South Central Los Angeles, where incomes are only a small fraction as much. Similarly, in Massachusetts, the average person in wealthy Sudbury spews 9,700 pounds of greenhouse gases into the air each year, while the average person in the much poorer Dorchester neighborhood in Boston puts out 2,227 pounds a year.

“The numbers don’t lie. They show that with people who are wealthier generally, there’s a tendency for their houses to be bigger and their greenhouse gas emissions tend to be higher,” said study lead author Goldstein, an environmental scientist. “There seems to be a small group of people that are inflicting most of the damage to be honest.”

“That is the key message about emissions patterns,” said University of California San Diego climate policy professor David Victor, who wasn’t part of the study. “I think it raises fundamental justice questions in a society that has huge income inequality.”

Even though richer Americans produce more heat-trapping gases, “the poor are more exposed to the dangers of the climate crisis, like heat waves, more likely to have chronic medical problems that make them more at risk to be hospitalized or die once exposed to heat, and often lack the resources to protect themselves or access health care,” said Dr. Renee Salas, a Boston emergency room physician and Harvard climate health researcher who wasn’t part of the study.

Salas and Sacoby Wilson, a professor of environmental health and epidemiology at the University of Maryland, who also wasn’t part of the study, pointed to studies in Baltimore and other cities showing that because of fewer trees, more asphalt and other issues, temperatures can be more than 10 degrees hotter in poorer neighborhoods.

Builders can consider reducing floor spaces. And residential buildings might reduce using natural gas, a fossil fuel, for heating and cooking, he said. Such measures may be especially important, given that more than 100 million new homes are expected to be built in the next 30 years, while the country’s 328 million population is projected to grow by more than a third in that time. Because the average lifespan of an American house is around 40 years, the United States risks a “carbon lock-in” unless it commits to more energy-efficient homes and neighborhoods, the researchers said.

“We need to have denser and smaller homes,” said Goldstein, who said home sizes in the United States and Canada are abnormally large compared with other rich nations.

Residential carbon emissions are harder to change than those from transportation, where you can trade a gas-guzzler for a cleaner electric vehicle, Goldstein said.

Noting that many residents are stuck with the fossil fuel-based energy delivered by their local utility, he said, “I don’t think we can solve this based on personal choices. We need large scale structural transitions of our energy infrastructure.”

https://apnews.com/be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc

China's Sea Dragons

The military rivalry between China and the United States is only growing sharper. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared most of Beijing’s claims of sovereignty in the South China Sea illegal, throwing Washington’s weight behind the rival claims of Southeast Asian nations over territory and resources in the strategic waterway that were supported by international law. China said the U.S. position raised tensions in the region and undermined stability. 

 As part of an accelerated modernization  since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012,  new amphibious ships and the specially trained marines they carry will boost Beijing’s firepower and political influence far from its shores.  China is expanding its force of marines under the command of the PLA Navy. These troops are being trained and equipped to make landings and fight their way ashore. China now has between 25,000 and 35,000 marines, according to U.S. and Japanese military estimates. That’s a sharp increase from about 10,000 in 2017.  China began a rapid increase in the size of its marine force in 2017. Earlier, marines had been a low priority in the decades when China’s military built a massive ground force to defend the mainland. A regiment of marines was formed in 1953 and expanded to a division but then disbanded in 1957. It was reformed in 1979.

China’s marine force is now organized into seven brigades, each with armor, infantry, artillery and missiles, and is the strongest force of this type among the rival claimants to disputed territories in the South China Sea. Two army units trained in aerial assault had been transferred to a marines brigade dedicated to helicopter landings. China’s marines “can simultaneously seize multiple islands in the Spratlys,” the report said, referring to a contested group of islands and reefs in the South China Sea. They could also rapidly reinforce China’s outposts in the Paracel Islands, another disputed territory in the same waterway. These marines would also be useful for seizing other disputed territory, including the uninhabited group of isles in the East China Sea that are claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing - known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China.

The media regularly reports on the gruelling training and military skills of the Jiaolong, or Sea Dragon commandos - a unit from the marines special forces brigade based on Hainan Island off southern China.

Since 2005, China has also built a fleet of six Type 071 amphibious ships. These vessels can carry up to four air-cushion landing craft, similar to  hovercraft, as well as four or more helicopters, armored vehicles and troops on long-distance deployments. The 29,000-tonne Type 071 has command and control capabilities, a medical unit and accommodation for hundreds of marines. The 210-meter long vessel has a range of 10,000 nautical miles and reached a speed of 25 knots.

The 40,000-tonne Type 075 ships are a kind of small aircraft carrier with accommodation for up to 900 troops and space for heavy equipment and landing craft. They will carry up to 30 helicopters at first; later they could carry fighter jets, if China can build short take off and vertical landing aircraft like the U.S. F-35B.

The first Type 075 was launched last September and the second in April, according to reports in China’s official military media. A third is under construction. Eventually, the PLA Navy could have seven or more of these ships, according to reports.

“Without an amphibious force, any military force is greatly constrained in where and how it can conduct operations,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. “Jets can drop bombs and ships can fire missiles at the shore - but you might need infantry to go ashore and kill the enemy and occupy the ground.”

When the Type 075 ships enter service, China will have the capacity to combine them with its other new amphibious and support vessels, Chinese and foreign analysts say. These self-contained fleets can be sent to distant conflicts, deployed as a show of force to deter potential enemies or to protect Chinese investments and citizens abroad. They would also allow the PLA to provide disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, competing with the U.S. for prestige and soft power.  PLA military planners are looking at operations across the globe, in places where China has extensive offshore investments. These commercial interests are likely to multiply as Beijing presses ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious bid to put China at the center of global trading routes. China has already deployed marines and their armored vehicles to its first overseas base at Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. Marines are also deployed on the flotillas China sends on naval anti-piracy missions to the Gulf of Aden, these reports said.

Short of war, capable amphibious forces will also become a powerful diplomatic or coercive tool for Beijing, military analysts say. So far, Washington has had a monopoly on this type of engagement with other governments, routinely sending marine expeditionary units abroad for port visits, joint training exercises and disaster relief.

“We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Ian Easton, the senior director of the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based security research group. “Ten years from now, China is almost certainly going to have marine units deployed at locations all over the world. The Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions are global. Its interests are global. It plans to send military units wherever its global strategic interests require.”

These amphibious forces will also contribute to the PLA’s mounting capacity to make a landing on Taiwan or seize other strategically important or disputed territory in China’s offshore regions, according to specialists in amphibious warfare. China’s marines will also be important to man what is expected to become a network of strategic military bases around the world, including fortifications on territory Beijing has seized in the South China Sea.

Despite this build-up, military experts argue the PLA marines remain far less capable than the 186,000-strong U.S. Marine Corps, with its extensive experience of amphibious and land operations.

The Pentagon said most of the new PLA marines brigades were not yet manned and equipped to be fully operational. It said China’s marines lacked sufficient armored vehicles, helicopters and training to conduct complex amphibious operations.

https://uk.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-military-amphibious/