the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, injustice, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
jan 17, 2020
*Boris Johnson referred to police watchdog over alleged relationship with American businesswoman The prime minister of Great Britain may be facing an investigation as impeachment grips America.
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*Putin critics ask how his PM choice acquired expensive properties
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Russian government resigns as Putin proposes reforms that could extend his grip on power(ARTICLE BELOW)
*World Bank warns of global debt crisis amid borrowing buildup
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Australia is burning — and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is leading the climate coverup: (ARTICLE BELOW)
*Here’s What Workers of the Global South Endure to Create Corporate Wealth
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Unqualified, dangerous': the oddball officials running Bolsonaro's Brazil
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Cost of UK royals back in spotlight after Queen’s year to forget
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'It doesn't matter if it's Christmas': Hong Kong pro-democracy activists keep up protests(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Football must do more to tackle racism, says Downing Street
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Catastrophic’ conditions as bushfires rage in Australia
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Brexit: MPs back Boris Johnson's bill
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*European Parliament slams 'LGBTI-free' zones in Poland
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Boris Johnson wins huge majority on promise to 'get Brexit done'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Britain needs its own Mueller report on Russian ‘interference’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. LOBBYISTS PREPARE TO SEIZE “HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY” IN TORY-LED BREXIT TO SHRED CONSUMER SAFEGUARDS, RAISE DRUG PRICES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Russia Can't Compete in the Next 2 Olympics
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*BREXIT AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S. QUITS OVER ‘HALF-TRUTHS’
NO MORE LIES(ARTICLE BELOW)
*MASSIVE LEAK OF DATA REVEALS NEW MONEY-HIDING SECRETS OF SUPERRICH — AND THIS IS ‘ONLY THE BEGINNING’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*LEAKED DOCUMENT REVEALS US DRUG FIRMS ARE PUSHING TRUMP TO TARGET THE NHS AFTER BREXIT(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Dozens of Jewish graves vandalized at cemetery near Strasbourg
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Nepal’s mass animal slaughter begins despite outcry
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Government shutdown in Samoa amid ‘cruel’ measles outbreak
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*AMERICA IS NOT THE LAND OF THE FREE BUT ONE OF MONOPOLIES SO PREDATORY THEY IMPERIL THE NATION(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
**World Highlights*
1/17/20
*Brazil's Culture Minister Fired After Echoing Goebbels
Brazil's culture minister has been sacked after using parts of a speech by Nazi Germany's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels in a video, sparking outrage. In the clip posted on the ministry's Twitter page, Roberto Alvim detailed an award for "hero ... (BBC News)
Russia
Putin critics ask how his PM choice acquired expensive properties
Russian president’s supporters praise Mikhail Mishustin as technocrat and self-made man
Andrew Roth in Moscow
the guardian
Thu 16 Jan 2020 07.54 EST
Russian opposition figures have raised questions about how Vladimir Putin’s surprise choice for new prime minister has acquired properties worth millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the Russian president’s allies have rushed to support Mikhail Mishustin, the former head of Russia’s tax service, who claimed to have been stunned and “not [to have] slept all night” after Putin named him as the replacement for Dmitry Medvedev.
Supporters have praised Mishustin’s credentials as a technocrat and a “self-made man”. Mishustin was confirmed in the post by Russia’s parliament on Thursday and is the country’s first new prime minister since 2012.
Mishustin’s appointment is part of a sweeping reorganisation of Russian government that will help enable Putin to maintain power after his expected exit from the presidency in 2024 under term limits. Analysts said Mishustin may play a role as a “caretaker” figure but was unlikely to be Putin’s long-term successor.
Opponents of Putin have begun digging into Mishustin’s record. Shortly after his nomination, the investigative site Proekt reported, state property registers began hiding Mishustin’s name in connection with a house in Moscow’s fashionable Rublyovka suburb as well an apartment in downtown Moscow. Proekt estimated the value of the properties at nearly $10m (£7.6m). The owner is now listed as the Russian government, common for properties denoted as secret.
Researchers for Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician and anti-corruption researcher, noted that Mishustin’s wife had earned nearly 790m rubles (nearly £10m) in the past nine years, according to government declarations. Little is known about her business and there are no companies listed in her name, the investigative group said.
“Mishustin has been a ‘servant of the people’ for 20 of the past 22 years,” Navalny wrote in the investigation. “So why is he so damn rich?”
Corruption scandals hounded Medvedev in recent years, helping to spark protests by young Muscovites in 2017, and the Kremlin hopes that Mishustin’s record as a technocrat will protect him from similar attacks. Strict laws limit the official earnings of Russian government officials, but less so their families.
Mishustin served as the head of the Russian investment company UFG from 2008-10 and as the laboratory head for a non-profit in the early 1990s. He first joined Russia’s tax service in 1998 and was appointed its head in 2010.
Allies of Putin, including those considered his potential successor, also fell in behind Mishustin. He “knows how to balance the interest of both business and the state”, said Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister seen as a liberal ally of Putin.
“The school of life has been tough for this man, and he is capable of big missions,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the hard-nosed chairman of Russia’s parliament, adding that Mishustin was a “self-made man”.
Meanwhile, the Russian president’s allies have rushed to support Mikhail Mishustin, the former head of Russia’s tax service, who claimed to have been stunned and “not [to have] slept all night” after Putin named him as the replacement for Dmitry Medvedev.
Supporters have praised Mishustin’s credentials as a technocrat and a “self-made man”. Mishustin was confirmed in the post by Russia’s parliament on Thursday and is the country’s first new prime minister since 2012.
Mishustin’s appointment is part of a sweeping reorganisation of Russian government that will help enable Putin to maintain power after his expected exit from the presidency in 2024 under term limits. Analysts said Mishustin may play a role as a “caretaker” figure but was unlikely to be Putin’s long-term successor.
Opponents of Putin have begun digging into Mishustin’s record. Shortly after his nomination, the investigative site Proekt reported, state property registers began hiding Mishustin’s name in connection with a house in Moscow’s fashionable Rublyovka suburb as well an apartment in downtown Moscow. Proekt estimated the value of the properties at nearly $10m (£7.6m). The owner is now listed as the Russian government, common for properties denoted as secret.
Researchers for Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician and anti-corruption researcher, noted that Mishustin’s wife had earned nearly 790m rubles (nearly £10m) in the past nine years, according to government declarations. Little is known about her business and there are no companies listed in her name, the investigative group said.
“Mishustin has been a ‘servant of the people’ for 20 of the past 22 years,” Navalny wrote in the investigation. “So why is he so damn rich?”
Corruption scandals hounded Medvedev in recent years, helping to spark protests by young Muscovites in 2017, and the Kremlin hopes that Mishustin’s record as a technocrat will protect him from similar attacks. Strict laws limit the official earnings of Russian government officials, but less so their families.
Mishustin served as the head of the Russian investment company UFG from 2008-10 and as the laboratory head for a non-profit in the early 1990s. He first joined Russia’s tax service in 1998 and was appointed its head in 2010.
Allies of Putin, including those considered his potential successor, also fell in behind Mishustin. He “knows how to balance the interest of both business and the state”, said Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister seen as a liberal ally of Putin.
“The school of life has been tough for this man, and he is capable of big missions,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, the hard-nosed chairman of Russia’s parliament, adding that Mishustin was a “self-made man”.
Russian government resigns as Putin proposes reforms that could extend his grip on power
By Mary Ilyushina and Sheena McKenzie, CNN
Updated 10:56 AM ET, Wed January 15, 2020
Moscow, Russia (CNN)The entire Russian government is resigning, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced Wednesday, after Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping reforms that could extend his decades-long grip on power beyond the end of his presidency.
Putin thanked members of the government for their work but added that "not everything worked out." Putin added that in the near future he would meet with each member of the cabinet. The mass resignation includes Medvedev.
The surprise announcement came after Putin proposed constitutional amendments that would strengthen the powers of the prime minister and parliament at the expense of the presidency.
Taking power from the presidency and handing it to parliament could signal a power shift that has been long speculated about in Russia.Putin's critics have suggested that he is considering various scenarios to retain control of the country after his presidential term ends in 2024, including the option of becoming prime minister with extended powers. Similarly, in 2008 Putin swapped places with the prime minister to circumvent the constitutional provision banning the same person from serving two consecutive terms.
In his statement, Medvedev indicated that the government was resigning to clear the way for Putin's proposed reforms.
Putin "outlined a number of fundamental changes to the constitution, significant changes not only to a number of articles of the constitution, but also to the balance of power as a whole," Medvedev said in his statement, which was aired on Russian state television.
"In this context, it's obvious that we, as the government ... should provide the president of our country with the opportunity to make all the decisions necessary for this. And in these conditions, I believe that it would be right, in accordance with Section 117 of the constitution," for the government to resign, Medvedev added.
In his annual address to the Federal Assembly earlier Wednesday, Putin said he agreed that no one should serve as president for more than two consecutive terms, and proposed several constitutional amendments.
His key proposal is to transfer the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the parliament.
"I know that a constitutional provision is being discussed in our society that the same person should not be president for more than two consecutive terms," Putin said. "I don't think this is a fundamental issue, but I agree with that," he said.
"I propose ... entrusting the State Duma with the power to approve the candidacy of the prime minister, and then, per the prime minister's proposal, [appoint] all deputy prime ministers and federal ministers," Putin said. "In this case, the president will be obliged to appoint them, that is, he will not have the right to reject parliament-approved candidacies."
According to the current constitution, the president needs to secure approval from the lower house of parliament to appoint the head of the government, and it is within presidential rights to then appoint all deputies and ministers.
In a televised statement, Putin asked current members of government to fulfill their duties until a new one is formed.
"I want to express satisfaction with the results that have been achieved," Putin said. "Of course not everything worked out, but nothing ever works out in full."
Medvedev is expected to become deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council. Putin is the chairman.
Putin thanked members of the government for their work but added that "not everything worked out." Putin added that in the near future he would meet with each member of the cabinet. The mass resignation includes Medvedev.
The surprise announcement came after Putin proposed constitutional amendments that would strengthen the powers of the prime minister and parliament at the expense of the presidency.
Taking power from the presidency and handing it to parliament could signal a power shift that has been long speculated about in Russia.Putin's critics have suggested that he is considering various scenarios to retain control of the country after his presidential term ends in 2024, including the option of becoming prime minister with extended powers. Similarly, in 2008 Putin swapped places with the prime minister to circumvent the constitutional provision banning the same person from serving two consecutive terms.
In his statement, Medvedev indicated that the government was resigning to clear the way for Putin's proposed reforms.
Putin "outlined a number of fundamental changes to the constitution, significant changes not only to a number of articles of the constitution, but also to the balance of power as a whole," Medvedev said in his statement, which was aired on Russian state television.
"In this context, it's obvious that we, as the government ... should provide the president of our country with the opportunity to make all the decisions necessary for this. And in these conditions, I believe that it would be right, in accordance with Section 117 of the constitution," for the government to resign, Medvedev added.
In his annual address to the Federal Assembly earlier Wednesday, Putin said he agreed that no one should serve as president for more than two consecutive terms, and proposed several constitutional amendments.
His key proposal is to transfer the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the parliament.
"I know that a constitutional provision is being discussed in our society that the same person should not be president for more than two consecutive terms," Putin said. "I don't think this is a fundamental issue, but I agree with that," he said.
"I propose ... entrusting the State Duma with the power to approve the candidacy of the prime minister, and then, per the prime minister's proposal, [appoint] all deputy prime ministers and federal ministers," Putin said. "In this case, the president will be obliged to appoint them, that is, he will not have the right to reject parliament-approved candidacies."
According to the current constitution, the president needs to secure approval from the lower house of parliament to appoint the head of the government, and it is within presidential rights to then appoint all deputies and ministers.
In a televised statement, Putin asked current members of government to fulfill their duties until a new one is formed.
"I want to express satisfaction with the results that have been achieved," Putin said. "Of course not everything worked out, but nothing ever works out in full."
Medvedev is expected to become deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council. Putin is the chairman.
World Bank
World Bank warns of global debt crisis amid borrowing buildup
Current debt wave is largest, fastest and most broad-based since 1970s, say economists
Larry Elliott Economics editor
the guardian
Wed 8 Jan 2020 16.00 EST
The World Bank has highlighted the risk of a fresh global debt crisis after warning of the biggest buildup in borrowing in the past 50 years.
In its half-yearly Global Economic Prospects (GEP), the Washington-based organisation said of the four waves of debt accumulation since the 1970s, the latest was the largest, fastest and most broad-based.
The World Bank, which provides loans and grants to developing and emerging economies to help tackle poverty, said there could still be a financial crisis even though historically low interest rates were making debts more manageable.
“Low global interest rates provide only a precarious protection against financial crises,” said Ayhan Kose, a World Bank official. “The history of past waves of debt accumulation shows that these waves tend to have unhappy endings. In a fragile global environment, policy improvements are critical to minimise the risks associated with the current debt wave.”
Total emerging and developing economy debt reached almost 170% of gross domestic product in 2018 – or $55tn (£42tn) – an increase of 54 percentage points of GDP since 2010. China accounted for the bulk of the increase – in part due to its size – but the build-up was broad-based, and included other big emerging economies such as Brazil.
The World Bank said financial turmoil in emerging and developing economies was one of the threats to its forecast of a slight strengthening of global growth this year, from 2.4% to 2.5%.
The modest pick-up in activity would depend, the GEP said, on a better year for some of the large emerging economies – such as Argentina, Mexico and Turkey – that struggled in 2019. But the World Bank stressed there were downside risks to its forecast.
“This rebound is not broad-based; instead it assumes improved performance of a small number of large economies, some of which are emerging from a period of substantial weakness. About a third of emerging market and developing economies are projected to decelerate this year due to weaker-than-expected exports and investment.”
The World Bank’s concerns that countries could be borrowing excessively stem from the recent history of financial distress, with each crash preceded by an accumulation of debt. The build-up since 2010 had been concentrated in emerging and developing countries rather than in advanced nations.
In about 80% of emerging and developing economies total debt was higher in 2018 than in 2010 and the World Bank said they had been “navigating dangerous waters” because the current wave of borrowing had coincided with a decade of repeated growth disappointments. Heavily indebted countries were now confronted by weaker growth prospects in a fragile global economy.
The GEP said debt was rising among emerging countries, in contrast with previous episodes – such as the 1980s Latin American debt crisis – when the debt build-up was region specific. More than a third of emerging and developing economies had experienced an increase in debt of at least 20 percentage points of GDP. In addition, debt accumulation had been in both the public and private sectors, which contrasted with past waves when the build-up was either by the government or private firms.
The World Bank said countries should seek to reduce the likelihood of crises and lessen their impact should they materialise by building resilient monetary and fiscal frameworks, instituting robust supervisory and regulatory regimes, and following transparent debt management practices.
“However, high debt carries significant risks for emerging and developing economies, as it makes them more vulnerable to external shocks. The rollover of existing debt can become increasingly difficult during periods of financial stress, potentially leading to a crisis,” it said.
In its half-yearly Global Economic Prospects (GEP), the Washington-based organisation said of the four waves of debt accumulation since the 1970s, the latest was the largest, fastest and most broad-based.
The World Bank, which provides loans and grants to developing and emerging economies to help tackle poverty, said there could still be a financial crisis even though historically low interest rates were making debts more manageable.
“Low global interest rates provide only a precarious protection against financial crises,” said Ayhan Kose, a World Bank official. “The history of past waves of debt accumulation shows that these waves tend to have unhappy endings. In a fragile global environment, policy improvements are critical to minimise the risks associated with the current debt wave.”
Total emerging and developing economy debt reached almost 170% of gross domestic product in 2018 – or $55tn (£42tn) – an increase of 54 percentage points of GDP since 2010. China accounted for the bulk of the increase – in part due to its size – but the build-up was broad-based, and included other big emerging economies such as Brazil.
The World Bank said financial turmoil in emerging and developing economies was one of the threats to its forecast of a slight strengthening of global growth this year, from 2.4% to 2.5%.
The modest pick-up in activity would depend, the GEP said, on a better year for some of the large emerging economies – such as Argentina, Mexico and Turkey – that struggled in 2019. But the World Bank stressed there were downside risks to its forecast.
“This rebound is not broad-based; instead it assumes improved performance of a small number of large economies, some of which are emerging from a period of substantial weakness. About a third of emerging market and developing economies are projected to decelerate this year due to weaker-than-expected exports and investment.”
The World Bank’s concerns that countries could be borrowing excessively stem from the recent history of financial distress, with each crash preceded by an accumulation of debt. The build-up since 2010 had been concentrated in emerging and developing countries rather than in advanced nations.
In about 80% of emerging and developing economies total debt was higher in 2018 than in 2010 and the World Bank said they had been “navigating dangerous waters” because the current wave of borrowing had coincided with a decade of repeated growth disappointments. Heavily indebted countries were now confronted by weaker growth prospects in a fragile global economy.
The GEP said debt was rising among emerging countries, in contrast with previous episodes – such as the 1980s Latin American debt crisis – when the debt build-up was region specific. More than a third of emerging and developing economies had experienced an increase in debt of at least 20 percentage points of GDP. In addition, debt accumulation had been in both the public and private sectors, which contrasted with past waves when the build-up was either by the government or private firms.
The World Bank said countries should seek to reduce the likelihood of crises and lessen their impact should they materialise by building resilient monetary and fiscal frameworks, instituting robust supervisory and regulatory regimes, and following transparent debt management practices.
“However, high debt carries significant risks for emerging and developing economies, as it makes them more vulnerable to external shocks. The rollover of existing debt can become increasingly difficult during periods of financial stress, potentially leading to a crisis,” it said.
Australia is burning — and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is leading the climate coverup: NYT
January 8, 2020
By Brad Reed - raw story
Even as news of massive forest fires in Australia put the world’s focus on dealing with the climate change crisis, the right-wing media empire run by Rupert Murdoch has been leading the charge to deny, deflect, and distract.
The New York Times reports that Murdoch-owned media outlets have pushed out multiple stories that downplay the role of climate change in the intensity of the fires, while also pinning the blame on groups ranging from environmentalists to arsonists.
“On Wednesday, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp., the largest media company in Australia, was found to be part of another wave of misinformation,” the Times reports. “An independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, at the same time that an article in The Australian making similar assertions became the most popular offering on the newspaper’s website.”
Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, tells the Times that the Murdoch papers are being “reckless and extremely harmful” in their efforts to obfuscate about the real reasons that fires in the country have grown more intense as the planet has warmed.
“It’s insidious because it grows,” he said. “Once you plant those seeds of doubt, it stops an important conversation from taking place.”
In addition to casting about false blame for the fires, Murdoch’s papers have also tried denying that the fires are really that much of a problem.
“Not true, scientists say, noting that 12 million acres have burned so far, with 2019 alone scorching more of New South Wales than the previous 15 years combined,” the Times reports.
Read the whole story here.
The New York Times reports that Murdoch-owned media outlets have pushed out multiple stories that downplay the role of climate change in the intensity of the fires, while also pinning the blame on groups ranging from environmentalists to arsonists.
“On Wednesday, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corp., the largest media company in Australia, was found to be part of another wave of misinformation,” the Times reports. “An independent study found online bots and trolls exaggerating the role of arson in the fires, at the same time that an article in The Australian making similar assertions became the most popular offering on the newspaper’s website.”
Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, tells the Times that the Murdoch papers are being “reckless and extremely harmful” in their efforts to obfuscate about the real reasons that fires in the country have grown more intense as the planet has warmed.
“It’s insidious because it grows,” he said. “Once you plant those seeds of doubt, it stops an important conversation from taking place.”
In addition to casting about false blame for the fires, Murdoch’s papers have also tried denying that the fires are really that much of a problem.
“Not true, scientists say, noting that 12 million acres have burned so far, with 2019 alone scorching more of New South Wales than the previous 15 years combined,” the Times reports.
Read the whole story here.
review
Here’s What Workers of the Global South Endure to Create Corporate Wealth
BY Eve Ottenberg, Truthout
PUBLISHED January 5, 2020
In recent decades, as U.S. corporations shipped millions of jobs overseas to save money on wages, GM, H&M, Apple and dozens of other companies established elaborate supply chains in Asia, Mexico and Latin America, where workers earn pennies per hour. These chains are geographically expansive networks organized by foreign companies to produce semi-finished goods in different places before final assembly for huge global corporations.
Abuses abound. One typical example: An Indonesian factory that supplied the Japanese multinational behind the clothing brand Uniqlo abruptly closed, leaving workers with unpaid wages and unpaid severance. Intan Suwandi, the author of the recently published book Value Chains, told Truthout that there have been similar cases involving Nike, Adidas, H&M and Walmart in Cambodia and Honduras. A Chinese factory that supplied PUMA abused its workers and paid starvation wages, while workers in India’s home garment sector are as young as 10 years old, working for companies that supply the U.S. and European Union.
Suwandi also cites, in an email, a Chinese factory that produces computer products, such as keyboards and printer cases, for Hewlitt-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. The factory applied a “long list of draconian disciplinary measures, and fines were used to control every movement and almost every second of the workers’ lives.” She also mentions a Chinese factory that produces parts for Ford, where, among many violations, seriously injured workers were “fired after a year or two.”
And then there’s Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones for Apple and products for Dell, Nokia, Hewlitt-Packard and Sony. It employs roughly 400,000 people at its Shenzhen factory, paying 83 cents an hour, under conditions so deplorable that in one six-month period in 2010, 13 workers jumped from the factory building, at least 10 to their deaths, while later, 150 threatened to kill themselves thus. Meanwhile, in 2012, a fire in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that supplied Walmart and Sears, killed 112 workers.
Value Chains argues that economic imperialism is alive and well and being practiced in the Global South by corporations from the North. Although in recent years some leftists have argued that with the hollowing out of the Global North’s manufacturing base, economic imperialism ended, Suwandi disputes this. Her book mentions the GM commodity chain, which, as former GM director of sustainability David Tulauskas told Suwandi, includes “20,000 suppliers that provide us parts that go onto our vehicles. We buy from them approximately 200,000 individual items, spending about $100 billion. We operate in 30 countries. We sell those products in 125 countries.” Those suppliers, Suwandi explains, are scattered in Brazil, China and Mexico. Wages are kept low through direct investments and “arm’s lengths contracts.”
Value Chains devotes many pages to these contracts, which are a form of subcontracting without equity involvement. In these contracts, multinationals outsource production to suppliers mostly in the global South through contract relationships. As a result, the complex network of labor-value chains conceals how profits are extracted from workers by making it almost impossible to trace profits back to those workers. This is largely due to the arm’s length contracts.
Suwandi cites John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century in order to demonstrate how much wealth transnational western corporations extract from workers in the Global South: “Apple subcontracts the production of the component parts of its iPhones to a number of countries, with Foxconn subcontracting the final assembly in China. Due … to low-end wages … Apple’s gross profit margin on its iPhone 4 in 2010 was found to be 59 percent of the final sales price.” For each iPhone 4, retailing at $549, Smith writes, only $10 went to labor costs in China.
Cheap labor in the Global South means that multinational capital only has to pay a few cents an hour for work which creates much more value than that, Suwandi explains. Corporations disguise this value capture by attributing it to marketing, distribution and design activities in the Global North. Of course, it helps that that’s where the products are sold, with high markups on production cost. This obfuscates GDP. Take Apple’s iPhones:
Only 1.8 percent goes to labor costs in China, only that amount is recorded in China’s GDP, while a large percentage is recorded in the GDP of the country where Apple is headquartered — the United States — even when none of the production processes happened here…. The country where the iPhone was produced receives in its GDP only a small proportion of the final sales price. Meanwhile the larger part shows up in the GDP of the country where it is consumed…. So that’s why the profits that multinationals get are very difficult to trace back to the workers in the Global South.
Suwandi emails that global labor value chains (or “global commodity chains,” “global value chains,” or “global supply chains”) link people, tools and activities to deliver goods and services to the market. Her book argues that multinational corporations headquartered in the Global North control these chains completely, in every detail, even though they don’t own them. She explains that each chain consists of various nodes (each node signifies a specific production process) with different businesses involved in these different production processes. Take a pair of Nike sneakers: Several nodes are involved where semi-finished parts of the final product are made in various factories located in different countries. The raw materials are also acquired from different countries. If final assembly occurs in a factory in Vietnam, the sneakers will be labeled “made in Vietnam.”
The top three countries participating in labor value chains are China, India and Indonesia, where, according to Value Chains, wages are low and productivity is high. These labor value chains “are imperialistic in their characteristics,” because “capital accumulation processes are inseparable from the unequal relations among nation states.” The global labor force is concentrated in the South: With 541 million industrial workers there in 2010, compared to 145 million in the North, the idea that the commodity chain system is imperialist in nature makes sense. Indeed, Value Chains argues that globalized production is a new form of economic imperialism that transfers wealth from South to North. This does not preclude, however, the creation of local billionaires in China and India, who reap immense profits from their own transnational corporations. And where does all that profit go? “Huge quantities of this loot,” Value Chains reports, “captured from peripheral economies in the global South end up in the ‘treasure islands’ of the Caribbean, where trillions of dollars of money capital are now deposited.”
All this pelf, of course, comes directly out of workers’ hides. The cheaper the wages of the workers in the Global South, the greater the gross profit margins. Moreover, Suwandi explains, “Multinationals exercise a high degree of control within these labor-value chains, even when they only engage in contractual relationships with their suppliers.”
Value Chains examines two Indonesian firms, pseudonymously labeled Java Film and Star Inc., which often have the same customers for the plastic wrappers they produce. These firms do not use sweatshops, partly because they do not identify as “labor intensive.” But that’s one of Suwandi’s points: Exploitation does not necessarily involve blatantly abusive practices. She observes that multinationals control their suppliers’ production to the smallest detail, determining their suppliers’ profit margins, by increasing exploitation of the suppliers’ workers, usually through increased productivity, but also sometimes by depriving workers of their rights, or through violence, abuse and law-breaking.
Making production more economical and increasing productivity involve two processes, according to Value Chains – “systemic rationalization and flexible production.” Suwandi explains that capital wants production to be flexible enough to accommodate market fluctuations, “without paying the price … this burden is in the end placed upon workers through enhancing exploitation.” Engaging in arm’s length contracts itself exemplifies both processes. Systemic rationalization, according to Value Chains, refers “to the technological and organizational changes by corporations that began in the 1970s … [with] its focus on the rise of decentralized production throughout the globe.” (The ‘70s was the decade when neoliberalism and the union busting it entailed really got going. It’s when corporations “modernized.”) Flexible production — according to Lean and Mean by Bennett Harrison, which Value Chains quotes — involves “lean production, downsizing, outsourcing and the growing importance of spatially extensive production networks governed by powerful core firms and their strategic allies.”
Abuses abound. One typical example: An Indonesian factory that supplied the Japanese multinational behind the clothing brand Uniqlo abruptly closed, leaving workers with unpaid wages and unpaid severance. Intan Suwandi, the author of the recently published book Value Chains, told Truthout that there have been similar cases involving Nike, Adidas, H&M and Walmart in Cambodia and Honduras. A Chinese factory that supplied PUMA abused its workers and paid starvation wages, while workers in India’s home garment sector are as young as 10 years old, working for companies that supply the U.S. and European Union.
Suwandi also cites, in an email, a Chinese factory that produces computer products, such as keyboards and printer cases, for Hewlitt-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM. The factory applied a “long list of draconian disciplinary measures, and fines were used to control every movement and almost every second of the workers’ lives.” She also mentions a Chinese factory that produces parts for Ford, where, among many violations, seriously injured workers were “fired after a year or two.”
And then there’s Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles iPhones for Apple and products for Dell, Nokia, Hewlitt-Packard and Sony. It employs roughly 400,000 people at its Shenzhen factory, paying 83 cents an hour, under conditions so deplorable that in one six-month period in 2010, 13 workers jumped from the factory building, at least 10 to their deaths, while later, 150 threatened to kill themselves thus. Meanwhile, in 2012, a fire in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that supplied Walmart and Sears, killed 112 workers.
Value Chains argues that economic imperialism is alive and well and being practiced in the Global South by corporations from the North. Although in recent years some leftists have argued that with the hollowing out of the Global North’s manufacturing base, economic imperialism ended, Suwandi disputes this. Her book mentions the GM commodity chain, which, as former GM director of sustainability David Tulauskas told Suwandi, includes “20,000 suppliers that provide us parts that go onto our vehicles. We buy from them approximately 200,000 individual items, spending about $100 billion. We operate in 30 countries. We sell those products in 125 countries.” Those suppliers, Suwandi explains, are scattered in Brazil, China and Mexico. Wages are kept low through direct investments and “arm’s lengths contracts.”
Value Chains devotes many pages to these contracts, which are a form of subcontracting without equity involvement. In these contracts, multinationals outsource production to suppliers mostly in the global South through contract relationships. As a result, the complex network of labor-value chains conceals how profits are extracted from workers by making it almost impossible to trace profits back to those workers. This is largely due to the arm’s length contracts.
Suwandi cites John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century in order to demonstrate how much wealth transnational western corporations extract from workers in the Global South: “Apple subcontracts the production of the component parts of its iPhones to a number of countries, with Foxconn subcontracting the final assembly in China. Due … to low-end wages … Apple’s gross profit margin on its iPhone 4 in 2010 was found to be 59 percent of the final sales price.” For each iPhone 4, retailing at $549, Smith writes, only $10 went to labor costs in China.
Cheap labor in the Global South means that multinational capital only has to pay a few cents an hour for work which creates much more value than that, Suwandi explains. Corporations disguise this value capture by attributing it to marketing, distribution and design activities in the Global North. Of course, it helps that that’s where the products are sold, with high markups on production cost. This obfuscates GDP. Take Apple’s iPhones:
Only 1.8 percent goes to labor costs in China, only that amount is recorded in China’s GDP, while a large percentage is recorded in the GDP of the country where Apple is headquartered — the United States — even when none of the production processes happened here…. The country where the iPhone was produced receives in its GDP only a small proportion of the final sales price. Meanwhile the larger part shows up in the GDP of the country where it is consumed…. So that’s why the profits that multinationals get are very difficult to trace back to the workers in the Global South.
Suwandi emails that global labor value chains (or “global commodity chains,” “global value chains,” or “global supply chains”) link people, tools and activities to deliver goods and services to the market. Her book argues that multinational corporations headquartered in the Global North control these chains completely, in every detail, even though they don’t own them. She explains that each chain consists of various nodes (each node signifies a specific production process) with different businesses involved in these different production processes. Take a pair of Nike sneakers: Several nodes are involved where semi-finished parts of the final product are made in various factories located in different countries. The raw materials are also acquired from different countries. If final assembly occurs in a factory in Vietnam, the sneakers will be labeled “made in Vietnam.”
The top three countries participating in labor value chains are China, India and Indonesia, where, according to Value Chains, wages are low and productivity is high. These labor value chains “are imperialistic in their characteristics,” because “capital accumulation processes are inseparable from the unequal relations among nation states.” The global labor force is concentrated in the South: With 541 million industrial workers there in 2010, compared to 145 million in the North, the idea that the commodity chain system is imperialist in nature makes sense. Indeed, Value Chains argues that globalized production is a new form of economic imperialism that transfers wealth from South to North. This does not preclude, however, the creation of local billionaires in China and India, who reap immense profits from their own transnational corporations. And where does all that profit go? “Huge quantities of this loot,” Value Chains reports, “captured from peripheral economies in the global South end up in the ‘treasure islands’ of the Caribbean, where trillions of dollars of money capital are now deposited.”
All this pelf, of course, comes directly out of workers’ hides. The cheaper the wages of the workers in the Global South, the greater the gross profit margins. Moreover, Suwandi explains, “Multinationals exercise a high degree of control within these labor-value chains, even when they only engage in contractual relationships with their suppliers.”
Value Chains examines two Indonesian firms, pseudonymously labeled Java Film and Star Inc., which often have the same customers for the plastic wrappers they produce. These firms do not use sweatshops, partly because they do not identify as “labor intensive.” But that’s one of Suwandi’s points: Exploitation does not necessarily involve blatantly abusive practices. She observes that multinationals control their suppliers’ production to the smallest detail, determining their suppliers’ profit margins, by increasing exploitation of the suppliers’ workers, usually through increased productivity, but also sometimes by depriving workers of their rights, or through violence, abuse and law-breaking.
Making production more economical and increasing productivity involve two processes, according to Value Chains – “systemic rationalization and flexible production.” Suwandi explains that capital wants production to be flexible enough to accommodate market fluctuations, “without paying the price … this burden is in the end placed upon workers through enhancing exploitation.” Engaging in arm’s length contracts itself exemplifies both processes. Systemic rationalization, according to Value Chains, refers “to the technological and organizational changes by corporations that began in the 1970s … [with] its focus on the rise of decentralized production throughout the globe.” (The ‘70s was the decade when neoliberalism and the union busting it entailed really got going. It’s when corporations “modernized.”) Flexible production — according to Lean and Mean by Bennett Harrison, which Value Chains quotes — involves “lean production, downsizing, outsourcing and the growing importance of spatially extensive production networks governed by powerful core firms and their strategic allies.”
sounds like the usa's administration!!!
Brazil
'Unqualified, dangerous': the oddball officials running Bolsonaro's Brazil
While the far-right president has trashed norms the lower ranks of his administration have shown jaw-dropping offensiveness
Tom Phillips and Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
the guardian
Thu 2 Jan 2020 05.05 EST
Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and his gun-loving sons have hogged the headlines during his first year in power with their incendiary declarations, social media meltdowns and scandal-hit lives.
Endless column inches have also been devoted to the eccentricities and extremist ideas of his top lieutenants, including the foreign minister who insists climate change is a Marxist plot and the education minister who enjoys tweeting about his dog’s habit of defecating on Brazil’s top newspapers.
But the lower ranks of Brazil’s government apparatus are also being populated with less well-known characters who trumpet white supremacist slogans and rage against the left.
“Say whatever you like about Bolsonaro, one has to recognize his rare talent of … choosing the most unqualified, lunatic and/or dangerous people for jobs,” the journalist Mauro Ventura wrote earlier this month.
“As someone said, they seem to have been picked for their IQ: that’s to say their quotient of imbecility, inability, idiocy, incompetence, ineptitude or impiety.”
Brazil specialist Monica de Bolle said the hiring of such figures reflected the “totally nuts” nature of Bolsonaro’s “fundamentalist” administration.
“They are not looking for people who have knowledge but people who are loyal,” said De Bolle, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“I hate the Trump comparisons because Brazil is Brazil and the US is the US. But it’s just like Trump has surrounded himself with yes men. They are all yes men - and for the most part they are all men.”
Here are four Bolsonaro underlings you may never have heard of:
Filipe Martins - Foreign policy adviser to the president
Before this year Martins, 31, had almost no foreign policy experience. Yet his close ties to two of Bolsonaro’s sons have helped transform him into one of Brazil’s most influential men and landed him an office just metres from Bolsonaro’s.
Like Bolsonaro’s sons, Martins is a disciple of the US-based writer and conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho and revels in bashing leftists, feminists, “globalists” and journalists on social media. He is also a Steve Bannon fan, nicknamed “Sorocabannon” thanks to his origins in the Brazilian city of Sorocaba and admiration for Trump’s ex-strategist.
As with many Bolsonaristas, Martins basks in controversy, using alt-right catchphrases such as “Deus Vult” and General Franco-era slogans to bait critics. After Brazil’s footballers lost to Belgium in the 2018 World Cup, the man who now helps run Brazilian foreign policy branded the European country “a modern-day Babel”.
Martins also enjoys conspiracy, last year accusing CNN and the New York Times of complicity in a “social engineering” campaign to promote paedophilia.
Roberto Alvim - Special secretary for culture
A dramatist by trade, Alvim once received an award for a production of Harold Pinter’s The Room. But before being named culture secretary in November the 46-year-old director was best known for insulting the grande dame of Brazilian theatre, the Oscar-nominated actor Fernanda Montenegro, as a “sordid” leftist.
That attack enraged Brazilian thespians but earned him Bolsonaro’s affections – and a job as Brazil’s culture chief.
An online biography makes unusual reading. Aged 22, Alvim ditched a budding directing career to undergo “a process of inner discovery through meditation practices”. He ended up in a hut in north-eastern Brazil and depriving himself of food, water and human contact for 21 days.
Alvim returned to theatre before reportedly finding God in 2017 after a supposedly miraculous cure for near-fatal cancer. “It was a direct intervention from our Lord Jesus Christ,” he recently claimed.
Alvim has said his newfound faith converted him into a hardcore Bolsonarista. In recent Facebook posts he has savaged his leader’s opponents as lefty “cockroaches”, railed against the “bastards” from Greenpeace and accused Brazil’s “rotten” and “demonic” art world of unfairly demonizing Bolsonaro.
Sérgio Nascimento de Camargo - Fundação Cultural Palmares
The man chosen to run the government foundation promoting black culture has called for Brazil’s Black Consciousness Day to be scrapped and has branded many of Brazil’s best-known black celebrities and artists “parasites of the black race”.
Most notoriously, he once called one of Brazil’s most celebrated samba composers, Martinho da Vila, a “bum” who should “be sent to the Congo”.
Camargo, who is himself black, has also found targets for his insults beyond Brazil’s borders, including the American civil rights activist Angela Davis, whom he called a “minger” and “hag”.
On social media, Camargo describes himself as a “rightwing black” who opposes “victimhood and the politically correct”. “Slavery was terrible, but beneficial for the descendants”, he recently claimed.
After public outrage and a legal challenge, Camargo’s appointment was suspended. But Bolsonaro has said he hopes that decision can be overturned, calling Camargo an “excellent” person.
Dante Mantovani - Head of the National Arts Foundation
The hard-right classical conductor and YouTuber presiding over the government body in charge of policy for visual arts, music and dance has claimed the Soviet Union infiltrated the CIA to distribute LSD at Woodstock. “Rock activates drugs which activate sex which activates the abortion industry,” Mantovani alleged, noting that John Lennon had said he made a pact with the devil.
Mantovani has said Metallica was good for keeping drivers awake but called Brazilian greats Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and pop star Anitta “aberrations” for depicting Brazil as a “type of brothel”. Taking office, he claimed Brazil owed its culture to Portugal which “civilised” rather than “colonised” his homeland.
Endless column inches have also been devoted to the eccentricities and extremist ideas of his top lieutenants, including the foreign minister who insists climate change is a Marxist plot and the education minister who enjoys tweeting about his dog’s habit of defecating on Brazil’s top newspapers.
But the lower ranks of Brazil’s government apparatus are also being populated with less well-known characters who trumpet white supremacist slogans and rage against the left.
“Say whatever you like about Bolsonaro, one has to recognize his rare talent of … choosing the most unqualified, lunatic and/or dangerous people for jobs,” the journalist Mauro Ventura wrote earlier this month.
“As someone said, they seem to have been picked for their IQ: that’s to say their quotient of imbecility, inability, idiocy, incompetence, ineptitude or impiety.”
Brazil specialist Monica de Bolle said the hiring of such figures reflected the “totally nuts” nature of Bolsonaro’s “fundamentalist” administration.
“They are not looking for people who have knowledge but people who are loyal,” said De Bolle, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“I hate the Trump comparisons because Brazil is Brazil and the US is the US. But it’s just like Trump has surrounded himself with yes men. They are all yes men - and for the most part they are all men.”
Here are four Bolsonaro underlings you may never have heard of:
Filipe Martins - Foreign policy adviser to the president
Before this year Martins, 31, had almost no foreign policy experience. Yet his close ties to two of Bolsonaro’s sons have helped transform him into one of Brazil’s most influential men and landed him an office just metres from Bolsonaro’s.
Like Bolsonaro’s sons, Martins is a disciple of the US-based writer and conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho and revels in bashing leftists, feminists, “globalists” and journalists on social media. He is also a Steve Bannon fan, nicknamed “Sorocabannon” thanks to his origins in the Brazilian city of Sorocaba and admiration for Trump’s ex-strategist.
As with many Bolsonaristas, Martins basks in controversy, using alt-right catchphrases such as “Deus Vult” and General Franco-era slogans to bait critics. After Brazil’s footballers lost to Belgium in the 2018 World Cup, the man who now helps run Brazilian foreign policy branded the European country “a modern-day Babel”.
Martins also enjoys conspiracy, last year accusing CNN and the New York Times of complicity in a “social engineering” campaign to promote paedophilia.
Roberto Alvim - Special secretary for culture
A dramatist by trade, Alvim once received an award for a production of Harold Pinter’s The Room. But before being named culture secretary in November the 46-year-old director was best known for insulting the grande dame of Brazilian theatre, the Oscar-nominated actor Fernanda Montenegro, as a “sordid” leftist.
That attack enraged Brazilian thespians but earned him Bolsonaro’s affections – and a job as Brazil’s culture chief.
An online biography makes unusual reading. Aged 22, Alvim ditched a budding directing career to undergo “a process of inner discovery through meditation practices”. He ended up in a hut in north-eastern Brazil and depriving himself of food, water and human contact for 21 days.
Alvim returned to theatre before reportedly finding God in 2017 after a supposedly miraculous cure for near-fatal cancer. “It was a direct intervention from our Lord Jesus Christ,” he recently claimed.
Alvim has said his newfound faith converted him into a hardcore Bolsonarista. In recent Facebook posts he has savaged his leader’s opponents as lefty “cockroaches”, railed against the “bastards” from Greenpeace and accused Brazil’s “rotten” and “demonic” art world of unfairly demonizing Bolsonaro.
Sérgio Nascimento de Camargo - Fundação Cultural Palmares
The man chosen to run the government foundation promoting black culture has called for Brazil’s Black Consciousness Day to be scrapped and has branded many of Brazil’s best-known black celebrities and artists “parasites of the black race”.
Most notoriously, he once called one of Brazil’s most celebrated samba composers, Martinho da Vila, a “bum” who should “be sent to the Congo”.
Camargo, who is himself black, has also found targets for his insults beyond Brazil’s borders, including the American civil rights activist Angela Davis, whom he called a “minger” and “hag”.
On social media, Camargo describes himself as a “rightwing black” who opposes “victimhood and the politically correct”. “Slavery was terrible, but beneficial for the descendants”, he recently claimed.
After public outrage and a legal challenge, Camargo’s appointment was suspended. But Bolsonaro has said he hopes that decision can be overturned, calling Camargo an “excellent” person.
Dante Mantovani - Head of the National Arts Foundation
The hard-right classical conductor and YouTuber presiding over the government body in charge of policy for visual arts, music and dance has claimed the Soviet Union infiltrated the CIA to distribute LSD at Woodstock. “Rock activates drugs which activate sex which activates the abortion industry,” Mantovani alleged, noting that John Lennon had said he made a pact with the devil.
Mantovani has said Metallica was good for keeping drivers awake but called Brazilian greats Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and pop star Anitta “aberrations” for depicting Brazil as a “type of brothel”. Taking office, he claimed Brazil owed its culture to Portugal which “civilised” rather than “colonised” his homeland.
a waste of money!!!
Cost of UK royals back in spotlight after Queen’s year to forget
December 25, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
POOL/AFP / Andrew Matthews Britain’s Prince Charles (C), Prince of Wales is reportedly keen on reforming the Monarchy
After a torrid 2019 in which the queen’s son Prince Andrew was implicated in an underage sex abuse scandal, many in Britain are again asking if the monarchy has gotten too big — and rich — for its own good.
The family’s year to forget may encourage Prince Charles, set to eventually take over from his mother Queen Elizabeth II, 93, in his purported belief that the centuries-old institution needs reform, according to royal experts.
“He wants to slim it down to a hard core of senior family members who work full-time,” said author Penny Junor, who has written several books on the royals including “The Firm” — the nickname sometimes given to the family.
“Andrew shooting himself in the foot has certainly made that an easier task,” she told AFP.
The 59-year-old prince, dubbed the queen’s “favourite son” by the UK press, has been dogged by allegations that he had sex with one of American convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.
Andrew, who strenuously denies the accusations, gave a calamitous BBC interview last month in which he unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from the late US financier.
The furious media backlash saw him subsequently promise to “step back from public duties”.
It was a grim year as well for Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the former US actress.
The celebrity couple sued several British newspapers over intrusions into their private lives, while his relationship with brother Prince William has reportedly soured — creating more tabloid gossip fodder.
The family’s tribulations led The Guardian to proclaim the firm had “lost its grip”, with royal observers predicting change will inevitably result.
– ‘Ministry of good feelings’ –
The size and cost of Britain’s royal family has long been contentious, with the latest controversies renewing calls for a “rationalised structure of Windsor plc,” as The Daily Telegraph wrote.
“Bloated royal families are fine when you run a quarter of the world… not so good when you are in charge of a diminished, austere Britain, grappling with recession in the early 21st century,” the newspaper added.
Jonny Dymond, who covers the royal family for the BBC, said how much to finance the family “has been a big deal for a long time”.
“It’s the attack point for republicans,” he told AFP.
Dymond noted Britain’s royals have been adept at periodically reinventing the brand, acting as a kind of “ministry of good feelings” for the nation to justify its expenses.
“And that’s the problem with what you have at the moment, which is you’re certainly not getting your money’s worth,” he said.
“You’re not getting that when you have Prince Andrew accused of what he’s accused of, you’re not getting that when Harry and Meghan are busy suing the newspapers.”
– ‘Cost to the taxpayer’ –
The queen receives an allowance — a so-called “sovereign grant” — from the government each year, which reached £82 million ($106 million, 96 million euros) for the financial year 2018-2019.
That is intended to pay for the family members’ functional roles as figureheads, as well as the salaries of employees and maintaining places like Buckingham Palace.
The monarch also benefits from a “privy purse” which stems from the revenues of half a billion pounds in assets grown by the Duchy of Lancaster estate since the Middle Ages.
The portfolio of lands, properties and assets held in trust generated almost £20 million last year, which the queen partly shares across the family.
Buckingham Palace does not disclose how exactly these funds are distributed to family members like Andrew.
The British press reports that he has received an annual royal allowance of £250,000 which his mother would give him each year, in addition to a yearly military pension of around £25,000.
The Duke of York, known for his “jet set” lifestyle, lives free of charge, as does his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, in a royal residence.
He reportedly sold a property in Sunninghill, southwest London, which the queen had donated to him, for around £15 million in 2007, and owns a luxurious chalet in Switzerland.
“One of the common complaints about the monarchy is the cost to the taxpayer,” said Junor.
“There is a perception that many members of the family are free-loaders who don’t do much work.”
The family’s year to forget may encourage Prince Charles, set to eventually take over from his mother Queen Elizabeth II, 93, in his purported belief that the centuries-old institution needs reform, according to royal experts.
“He wants to slim it down to a hard core of senior family members who work full-time,” said author Penny Junor, who has written several books on the royals including “The Firm” — the nickname sometimes given to the family.
“Andrew shooting himself in the foot has certainly made that an easier task,” she told AFP.
The 59-year-old prince, dubbed the queen’s “favourite son” by the UK press, has been dogged by allegations that he had sex with one of American convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.
Andrew, who strenuously denies the accusations, gave a calamitous BBC interview last month in which he unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from the late US financier.
The furious media backlash saw him subsequently promise to “step back from public duties”.
It was a grim year as well for Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, the former US actress.
The celebrity couple sued several British newspapers over intrusions into their private lives, while his relationship with brother Prince William has reportedly soured — creating more tabloid gossip fodder.
The family’s tribulations led The Guardian to proclaim the firm had “lost its grip”, with royal observers predicting change will inevitably result.
– ‘Ministry of good feelings’ –
The size and cost of Britain’s royal family has long been contentious, with the latest controversies renewing calls for a “rationalised structure of Windsor plc,” as The Daily Telegraph wrote.
“Bloated royal families are fine when you run a quarter of the world… not so good when you are in charge of a diminished, austere Britain, grappling with recession in the early 21st century,” the newspaper added.
Jonny Dymond, who covers the royal family for the BBC, said how much to finance the family “has been a big deal for a long time”.
“It’s the attack point for republicans,” he told AFP.
Dymond noted Britain’s royals have been adept at periodically reinventing the brand, acting as a kind of “ministry of good feelings” for the nation to justify its expenses.
“And that’s the problem with what you have at the moment, which is you’re certainly not getting your money’s worth,” he said.
“You’re not getting that when you have Prince Andrew accused of what he’s accused of, you’re not getting that when Harry and Meghan are busy suing the newspapers.”
– ‘Cost to the taxpayer’ –
The queen receives an allowance — a so-called “sovereign grant” — from the government each year, which reached £82 million ($106 million, 96 million euros) for the financial year 2018-2019.
That is intended to pay for the family members’ functional roles as figureheads, as well as the salaries of employees and maintaining places like Buckingham Palace.
The monarch also benefits from a “privy purse” which stems from the revenues of half a billion pounds in assets grown by the Duchy of Lancaster estate since the Middle Ages.
The portfolio of lands, properties and assets held in trust generated almost £20 million last year, which the queen partly shares across the family.
Buckingham Palace does not disclose how exactly these funds are distributed to family members like Andrew.
The British press reports that he has received an annual royal allowance of £250,000 which his mother would give him each year, in addition to a yearly military pension of around £25,000.
The Duke of York, known for his “jet set” lifestyle, lives free of charge, as does his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, in a royal residence.
He reportedly sold a property in Sunninghill, southwest London, which the queen had donated to him, for around £15 million in 2007, and owns a luxurious chalet in Switzerland.
“One of the common complaints about the monarchy is the cost to the taxpayer,” said Junor.
“There is a perception that many members of the family are free-loaders who don’t do much work.”
'It doesn't matter if it's Christmas': Hong Kong pro-democracy activists keep up protests
Donny Kwok, Mari Saito - reuters
12/25/19
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong anti-government protesters marched through Christmas-decorated shopping centers on Wednesday, chanting pro-democracy slogans and forcing one mall to close early, as police fired tear gas to disperse crowds gathering on nearby streets.
The protests have turned more confrontational over the festive season, though earlier in December they had been largely peaceful after pro-democracy candidates overwhelmingly won district council elections.
Despite the embarrassing results, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leaders have made no new concessions.
“Confrontation is expected, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas,” said Chan, a 28-year-old restaurant worker who was part of a crowd which exchanged insults with police outside a shopping center in the Mong Kok district.
“I’m disappointed the government still didn’t respond to any of our ... demands. We continue to come out even if we don’t have much hope,” said Chan, who only gave his surname.
Riot police patrolled several neighborhoods while tourists and shoppers, many wearing Santa hats or reindeer antlers, strolled past.
There were no major clashes, but with impromptu crowds forming to shout expletives at the unpopular officers, who have been accused of using excessive force, police briefly fired tear gas in Mong Kok, a popular protest area.
Police describe their reaction to the unrest as restrained.
Hundreds of protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks, descended on shopping malls around the Chinese-ruled city, shouting popular slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”
Police arrested several people in a shopping mall in the Sha Tin district after pepper-spraying them. The mall closed early.
CHRISTMAS ‘RUINED’
Baton-wielding police fired tear gas on Tuesday at thousands of protesters who barricaded roads and trashed a Starbucks cafe and an HSBC branch.
The city’s leader Carrie Lam said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that many Hong Kongers and tourists were disappointed that their “Christmas Eve celebrations have been ruined”.
“Such illegal acts have not only dampened the festive mood but also adversely affected local businesses.”
The Hospital Authority said 25 people had been injured overnight, including one man who fell from the second to first floor of a shopping mall as he tried to escape the police.
HSBC has become embroiled in a controversy involving a recent police crackdown on a fund-raising platform supporting protesters. HSBC denied any connection between the crackdown and its closure of an account linked to the group, but remains the target of protester rage.
Starbucks has been targeted after the daughter of the founder of Maxim’s Caterers, which owns the local franchise, publicly condemned the protesters.
DINNER WITH STRANGERS
The protests started more than six months ago against a now-withdrawn bill which would have allowed extraditions to mainland China where courts are controlled by the Communist Party.
They have since evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement, with demonstrators angry at what they perceive as increased meddling by Beijing in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China denies interfering, saying it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula put in place at that time and blaming foreign forces for fomenting unrest.
While protesters have repeatedly vandalized businesses they believed to have ties with pro-Beijing figures, they deliberately supported those which have offered them shelter from tear gas or free water during hot summer marches.
One eatery in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist area organized a Christmas dinner for protesters, with hundreds queuing outside for a free plate of noodles or fried chicken.
“It’s my first time going to a buffet with strangers, but we share the same goals ... so it feels like a meaningful way to spend Christmas,” said private tutor Kenny, 46, who was eating outside the diner.
The protests have turned more confrontational over the festive season, though earlier in December they had been largely peaceful after pro-democracy candidates overwhelmingly won district council elections.
Despite the embarrassing results, Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leaders have made no new concessions.
“Confrontation is expected, it doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas,” said Chan, a 28-year-old restaurant worker who was part of a crowd which exchanged insults with police outside a shopping center in the Mong Kok district.
“I’m disappointed the government still didn’t respond to any of our ... demands. We continue to come out even if we don’t have much hope,” said Chan, who only gave his surname.
Riot police patrolled several neighborhoods while tourists and shoppers, many wearing Santa hats or reindeer antlers, strolled past.
There were no major clashes, but with impromptu crowds forming to shout expletives at the unpopular officers, who have been accused of using excessive force, police briefly fired tear gas in Mong Kok, a popular protest area.
Police describe their reaction to the unrest as restrained.
Hundreds of protesters, dressed in black and wearing face masks, descended on shopping malls around the Chinese-ruled city, shouting popular slogans such as “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times!”
Police arrested several people in a shopping mall in the Sha Tin district after pepper-spraying them. The mall closed early.
CHRISTMAS ‘RUINED’
Baton-wielding police fired tear gas on Tuesday at thousands of protesters who barricaded roads and trashed a Starbucks cafe and an HSBC branch.
The city’s leader Carrie Lam said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that many Hong Kongers and tourists were disappointed that their “Christmas Eve celebrations have been ruined”.
“Such illegal acts have not only dampened the festive mood but also adversely affected local businesses.”
The Hospital Authority said 25 people had been injured overnight, including one man who fell from the second to first floor of a shopping mall as he tried to escape the police.
HSBC has become embroiled in a controversy involving a recent police crackdown on a fund-raising platform supporting protesters. HSBC denied any connection between the crackdown and its closure of an account linked to the group, but remains the target of protester rage.
Starbucks has been targeted after the daughter of the founder of Maxim’s Caterers, which owns the local franchise, publicly condemned the protesters.
DINNER WITH STRANGERS
The protests started more than six months ago against a now-withdrawn bill which would have allowed extraditions to mainland China where courts are controlled by the Communist Party.
They have since evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement, with demonstrators angry at what they perceive as increased meddling by Beijing in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China denies interfering, saying it is committed to the “one country, two systems” formula put in place at that time and blaming foreign forces for fomenting unrest.
While protesters have repeatedly vandalized businesses they believed to have ties with pro-Beijing figures, they deliberately supported those which have offered them shelter from tear gas or free water during hot summer marches.
One eatery in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist area organized a Christmas dinner for protesters, with hundreds queuing outside for a free plate of noodles or fried chicken.
“It’s my first time going to a buffet with strangers, but we share the same goals ... so it feels like a meaningful way to spend Christmas,” said private tutor Kenny, 46, who was eating outside the diner.
Race
Football must do more to tackle racism, says Downing Street
Government ready to act ‘if required’ after calls for inquiry in wake of incident at Spurs
Aamna Mohdin
the guardian
Mon 23 Dec 2019 07.01 EST
Downing Street has said the football authorities need to do more to tackle racism in the game after calls for a government inquiry and more comprehensive sanctions in response to an alleged racist incident during a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea on Sunday.
Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said the government was monitoring the authorities’ response and was ready to take further steps “if required”.
“Racism of any kind has no place in football or anywhere else and we must confront this vile behaviour,” he said. “Clearly there remains more work to be done by the football authorities in tackling this issue and we are committed to working with them on this to stamp it out.
The spokesman added: “The FA, Premier League and English Football League have significantly stepped up their efforts, but we expect them to continue to prioritise this issue and to consult with both players and supporter groups, and we will be monitoring how the football authorities implement their plans through the season.”
No 10’s comments were echoed by Priti Patel, the home secretary, who said: “Those found guilty of a racially aggravated offence under the Public Order Act can face a sentence of both six months in prison and a 10-year ban from attending all football matches.
“We fully expect the entire football community to work with the authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice so we can stamp this evil out of our national game.”
Earlier, the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) said: “Once again, a Premier League fixture has been tainted by abuse from the stands towards players. We believe that the time has come for all governing bodies to unite collectively to end this abuse.
“The PFA calls for a government inquiry into racism and the rise in hate crime within football and immediate and urgent action from an all-party group at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to address this urgent issue.”
It was reported that the sports minister, Nigel Adams, would speak to Tottenham Hotspur about the abuse on Monday.
The game on Sunday was paused after the Chelsea defender Antonio Rüdiger was allegedly targeted with racist abuse by a section of the crowd.
The referee Anthony Taylor stopped the game during the second half when an object was thrown at Chelsea’s goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, and Rüdiger indicated that a supporter had shouted a monkey chant at him.
César Azipilicueta, the Chelsea captain, brought the incident to the referee’s attention, who asked for an announcement to be broadcast to the crowd. The announcement over the PA system at the Tottenham stadium told the crowd that “racist behaviour is interfering with the game”. It was repeated twice, though it is understood that only one allegation of racism was made.
Damian Collins MP, who chaired parliament’s culture, media and sport committee, said players must be made aware of their right to walk off the pitch if they face racist abuse. He said: “I think players [should be be made] well aware of what their rights are - that if they’re unhappy with the behaviour of people in the crowd and unhappy that behaviour has not been stopped, that if they choose to come off then they will be backed up by the football authorities in doing so.”
The incident at the Tottenham ground was the latest of several racist incidents to mar English football over the past 12 months. The Manchester derby sparked a furore after a City fan appeared to make a monkey gesture at United’s player Fred, while on the same day a League Two game between Scunthorpe and Forest Green Rovers was halted after allegations of racist abuse. In October an FA Cup tie between Haringey Borough and Yeovil was replayed after racist abuse from the crowd.
Kick It Out’s George Starkey-Midha echoed the PFA’s call for the government to take action. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s imperative on everyone involved in football, on the government, or anyone in any kind of position of authority, to begin to take this far more seriously and look at how we can begin to make inroads, because clearly you’ve now got a situation where every single week there seems to be another incident and it’s a serious, serious problem.”
Starkey-Midha said there needed to be “far more robust” reporting procedures and “far more comprehensive sanctions”, including within football, to respond to racism. When asked if the PFA was accurate when warning of the “blatant racism that is currently rife in the UK”, Starkey-Midha replied: “Yes, absolutely. I think it’s undeniable that racism is still a very serious problem in this country.”
He added: ““I think people like to look abroad to Italy, Russia and Bulgaria when incidents happen there and I think we’re right to criticise when we see it, but there are serious levels of racism in this country still too. Unless we wake up to that fact, we won’t tackle it properly.”
The former cabinet minister David Mellor called for fans to do more to root out racism at football matches in Britain. Mellor told PA Media: “Fans cannot escape responsibility for clearing racism out of the game. Somebody must know who this idiot or these idiots are.
“Fans cannot just pass by on the other side of the road, they must stand up and be counted otherwise we will be on a slippery slope and it will lead to matches being abandoned, stadiums being closed and games being played behind closed doors.”
Mellor, who presented BBC radio’s 606 football phone-in programme for nine years, added: “What we cannot do is take issue with racism when British teams play in eastern Europe and then ignore incidents over here. Fans cannot be morally neutral about this.”
Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said the government was monitoring the authorities’ response and was ready to take further steps “if required”.
“Racism of any kind has no place in football or anywhere else and we must confront this vile behaviour,” he said. “Clearly there remains more work to be done by the football authorities in tackling this issue and we are committed to working with them on this to stamp it out.
The spokesman added: “The FA, Premier League and English Football League have significantly stepped up their efforts, but we expect them to continue to prioritise this issue and to consult with both players and supporter groups, and we will be monitoring how the football authorities implement their plans through the season.”
No 10’s comments were echoed by Priti Patel, the home secretary, who said: “Those found guilty of a racially aggravated offence under the Public Order Act can face a sentence of both six months in prison and a 10-year ban from attending all football matches.
“We fully expect the entire football community to work with the authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice so we can stamp this evil out of our national game.”
Earlier, the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) said: “Once again, a Premier League fixture has been tainted by abuse from the stands towards players. We believe that the time has come for all governing bodies to unite collectively to end this abuse.
“The PFA calls for a government inquiry into racism and the rise in hate crime within football and immediate and urgent action from an all-party group at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to address this urgent issue.”
It was reported that the sports minister, Nigel Adams, would speak to Tottenham Hotspur about the abuse on Monday.
The game on Sunday was paused after the Chelsea defender Antonio Rüdiger was allegedly targeted with racist abuse by a section of the crowd.
The referee Anthony Taylor stopped the game during the second half when an object was thrown at Chelsea’s goalkeeper, Kepa Arrizabalaga, and Rüdiger indicated that a supporter had shouted a monkey chant at him.
César Azipilicueta, the Chelsea captain, brought the incident to the referee’s attention, who asked for an announcement to be broadcast to the crowd. The announcement over the PA system at the Tottenham stadium told the crowd that “racist behaviour is interfering with the game”. It was repeated twice, though it is understood that only one allegation of racism was made.
Damian Collins MP, who chaired parliament’s culture, media and sport committee, said players must be made aware of their right to walk off the pitch if they face racist abuse. He said: “I think players [should be be made] well aware of what their rights are - that if they’re unhappy with the behaviour of people in the crowd and unhappy that behaviour has not been stopped, that if they choose to come off then they will be backed up by the football authorities in doing so.”
The incident at the Tottenham ground was the latest of several racist incidents to mar English football over the past 12 months. The Manchester derby sparked a furore after a City fan appeared to make a monkey gesture at United’s player Fred, while on the same day a League Two game between Scunthorpe and Forest Green Rovers was halted after allegations of racist abuse. In October an FA Cup tie between Haringey Borough and Yeovil was replayed after racist abuse from the crowd.
Kick It Out’s George Starkey-Midha echoed the PFA’s call for the government to take action. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s imperative on everyone involved in football, on the government, or anyone in any kind of position of authority, to begin to take this far more seriously and look at how we can begin to make inroads, because clearly you’ve now got a situation where every single week there seems to be another incident and it’s a serious, serious problem.”
Starkey-Midha said there needed to be “far more robust” reporting procedures and “far more comprehensive sanctions”, including within football, to respond to racism. When asked if the PFA was accurate when warning of the “blatant racism that is currently rife in the UK”, Starkey-Midha replied: “Yes, absolutely. I think it’s undeniable that racism is still a very serious problem in this country.”
He added: ““I think people like to look abroad to Italy, Russia and Bulgaria when incidents happen there and I think we’re right to criticise when we see it, but there are serious levels of racism in this country still too. Unless we wake up to that fact, we won’t tackle it properly.”
The former cabinet minister David Mellor called for fans to do more to root out racism at football matches in Britain. Mellor told PA Media: “Fans cannot escape responsibility for clearing racism out of the game. Somebody must know who this idiot or these idiots are.
“Fans cannot just pass by on the other side of the road, they must stand up and be counted otherwise we will be on a slippery slope and it will lead to matches being abandoned, stadiums being closed and games being played behind closed doors.”
Mellor, who presented BBC radio’s 606 football phone-in programme for nine years, added: “What we cannot do is take issue with racism when British teams play in eastern Europe and then ignore incidents over here. Fans cannot be morally neutral about this.”
‘Catastrophic’ conditions as bushfires rage in Australia
December 21, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
AFP / PETER PARKS Australia endures bushfires every year but the early and intense start to this season, along with the record temperatures, has fuelled concerns about global warming
A scorching heatwave intensified bushfires ravaging parts of Australia on Saturday, and out-of-control blazes surrounding Sydney worsened under “catastrophic” conditions.
Australia’s eastern coast has been hit by a record-breaking heatwave, which has moved in from the west of the country, fanning hundreds of fires in its path.
Sydney was shrouded in toxic smoke as blazes flared to its north, south and west, some just 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Australia’s largest city.
“Today has been an awful day,” New South Wales sate fire commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said Saturday afternoon.
Temperatures were expected to peak at 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) in parts of the state — the country’s most populous — including in parts of west Sydney.
Australia endures bushfires every year but the early and intense start to this season, along with the record temperatures, has fuelled concerns about global warming.
The fires have torched at least three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land across the country — an area equivalent to the size of Belgium — with at least 10 people killed and more than 800 homes destroyed.
A “mega fire” burning over 460,000 hectares north of Sydney escalated Saturday, as did a fire burning on multiple fronts in the Blue Mountains, where authorities said an unknown number of properties were burning.
Some 3,000 firefighters across the state were bracing for a wind change in the afternoon, expected to bring “dangerous and difficult, volatile conditions”, Fitzsimmons added.
“We will not get on top of these fires until we get some decent rain,” Fitzsimmons said of the outlook.
“We are seeing a relentless pattern of hot, dry air dominating the weather features at the moment,” he added.
Evacuations were being carried out in the town of Bargo, on the front of a 185,000-hectare blaze which tore through the nearby area on Thursday.
“It’s horrific, it’s devastating driving around. We feel pretty isolated where we are with the roadblocks. Loved ones can’t come and see us,” Bargo resident Corey Cartes told AFP.
Cartes was told to leave two days ago, but has stayed behind to defend his property.
“Everyone is offering to help, but there is nothing they can do. Not for us now, just stay out and stay safe and we hope the fireies (firefighters) can do their job.”
In the state of South Australia, which in the past few days has borne the brunt of the heat wave, more than 1,500 firefighters have been battling fires that ripped through more than 40,000 hectares.
Two people died in fires there over the past two days, and dozens of firefighters and residents have been treated for injuries and smoke inhalation.
Emergency crews were also on alert in the southern state of Victoria, where fires were burning following days of scorching temperatures.
– ‘Health emergency’ –
Leading doctors have warned of a “public health emergency” given the unprecedented toxic smoke pollution choking Sydney.
“It is pretty much the whole New South Wales population being exposed to prolonged smoke and because we have never experienced this before, we don’t know what the eventual outcome will be,” Kim Loo told AFP.
“It probably won’t be obvious for months, or even years,” added Loo, also a member of advocacy group Doctors for the Environment.
Hospitals have been recording sharp increases in emergency room visits for heat exhaustion and respiratory problems.
Loo said elderly patients, as well as children and outdoor workers were the most at risk, warning the health sector is “not prepared” to deal with such cases.
Vulnerable people in New South Wales have been urged to stay indoors amid worries the scorching heat combined with the toxic smoke could cause “severe illness, hospital admissions and even death”.
Sydney resident Len Renekov told AFP Saturday he was most worried about “getting all the smoke particles into my lungs and into my heart.”
The 67-year-old was wearing a mask, still a rare sight, while nearby a dozen Sydneysiders sweated through their regular Saturday morning workout under the harbour bridge, without face coverings.
“A week ago it was worse, I couldn’t see the Opera House,” he said.
Australia’s eastern coast has been hit by a record-breaking heatwave, which has moved in from the west of the country, fanning hundreds of fires in its path.
Sydney was shrouded in toxic smoke as blazes flared to its north, south and west, some just 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Australia’s largest city.
“Today has been an awful day,” New South Wales sate fire commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said Saturday afternoon.
Temperatures were expected to peak at 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) in parts of the state — the country’s most populous — including in parts of west Sydney.
Australia endures bushfires every year but the early and intense start to this season, along with the record temperatures, has fuelled concerns about global warming.
The fires have torched at least three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land across the country — an area equivalent to the size of Belgium — with at least 10 people killed and more than 800 homes destroyed.
A “mega fire” burning over 460,000 hectares north of Sydney escalated Saturday, as did a fire burning on multiple fronts in the Blue Mountains, where authorities said an unknown number of properties were burning.
Some 3,000 firefighters across the state were bracing for a wind change in the afternoon, expected to bring “dangerous and difficult, volatile conditions”, Fitzsimmons added.
“We will not get on top of these fires until we get some decent rain,” Fitzsimmons said of the outlook.
“We are seeing a relentless pattern of hot, dry air dominating the weather features at the moment,” he added.
Evacuations were being carried out in the town of Bargo, on the front of a 185,000-hectare blaze which tore through the nearby area on Thursday.
“It’s horrific, it’s devastating driving around. We feel pretty isolated where we are with the roadblocks. Loved ones can’t come and see us,” Bargo resident Corey Cartes told AFP.
Cartes was told to leave two days ago, but has stayed behind to defend his property.
“Everyone is offering to help, but there is nothing they can do. Not for us now, just stay out and stay safe and we hope the fireies (firefighters) can do their job.”
In the state of South Australia, which in the past few days has borne the brunt of the heat wave, more than 1,500 firefighters have been battling fires that ripped through more than 40,000 hectares.
Two people died in fires there over the past two days, and dozens of firefighters and residents have been treated for injuries and smoke inhalation.
Emergency crews were also on alert in the southern state of Victoria, where fires were burning following days of scorching temperatures.
– ‘Health emergency’ –
Leading doctors have warned of a “public health emergency” given the unprecedented toxic smoke pollution choking Sydney.
“It is pretty much the whole New South Wales population being exposed to prolonged smoke and because we have never experienced this before, we don’t know what the eventual outcome will be,” Kim Loo told AFP.
“It probably won’t be obvious for months, or even years,” added Loo, also a member of advocacy group Doctors for the Environment.
Hospitals have been recording sharp increases in emergency room visits for heat exhaustion and respiratory problems.
Loo said elderly patients, as well as children and outdoor workers were the most at risk, warning the health sector is “not prepared” to deal with such cases.
Vulnerable people in New South Wales have been urged to stay indoors amid worries the scorching heat combined with the toxic smoke could cause “severe illness, hospital admissions and even death”.
Sydney resident Len Renekov told AFP Saturday he was most worried about “getting all the smoke particles into my lungs and into my heart.”
The 67-year-old was wearing a mask, still a rare sight, while nearby a dozen Sydneysiders sweated through their regular Saturday morning workout under the harbour bridge, without face coverings.
“A week ago it was worse, I couldn’t see the Opera House,” he said.
Brexit: MPs back Boris Johnson's bill
bbc news
20 December 2019
MPs have backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan for the UK to leave the EU on 31 January.
They voted 358 to 234 - a majority of 124 - in favour of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which now goes on to further scrutiny in Parliament.
The bill would also ban an extension of the transition period - during which the UK is out of the EU but follows many of its rules - past 2020.
Earlier, Boris Johnson argued that it would allow the UK to "move forward".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to vote against it, saying there was "a better and fairer way" to leave the EU.
The bill had been expected to pass easily after the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority at last week's general election.
MPs also backed the timetable for further debate on the bill over three days when they return after the Christmas recess - on 7, 8 and 9 January.
The government says it will get the bill into law in time for the 31 January Brexit deadline.
The legislation, which would implement the Brexit agreement the prime minister reached with the EU in October, was introduced in Thursday's Queen's Speech, setting out the government's priorities for the next year.
There are changes to the previous bill, which was backed by the Commons in October, but withdrawn by the government after MPs rejected a three-day deadline for getting it through Parliament.
The changes include:
The bill also loses a previous clause on strengthening workers' rights.
The government now says it will deal with this issue in a separate piece of legislation, but the TUC has warned that the change will help "drive down" working conditions.
They voted 358 to 234 - a majority of 124 - in favour of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which now goes on to further scrutiny in Parliament.
The bill would also ban an extension of the transition period - during which the UK is out of the EU but follows many of its rules - past 2020.
Earlier, Boris Johnson argued that it would allow the UK to "move forward".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to vote against it, saying there was "a better and fairer way" to leave the EU.
The bill had been expected to pass easily after the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority at last week's general election.
MPs also backed the timetable for further debate on the bill over three days when they return after the Christmas recess - on 7, 8 and 9 January.
The government says it will get the bill into law in time for the 31 January Brexit deadline.
The legislation, which would implement the Brexit agreement the prime minister reached with the EU in October, was introduced in Thursday's Queen's Speech, setting out the government's priorities for the next year.
There are changes to the previous bill, which was backed by the Commons in October, but withdrawn by the government after MPs rejected a three-day deadline for getting it through Parliament.
The changes include:
- Legally prohibiting the government from extending the transition period - during which a trade deal between the UK and EU will be discussed - beyond 31 December 2020
- Allowing more UK courts to reconsider European Court of Justice rulings that have been retained in UK law after Brexit
- Requiring ministers to report annually to Parliament on disputes with the EU under the prime minister's withdrawal agreement
- Repealing spent legislation that "now serves no purpose"
The bill also loses a previous clause on strengthening workers' rights.
The government now says it will deal with this issue in a separate piece of legislation, but the TUC has warned that the change will help "drive down" working conditions.
European Parliament slams 'LGBTI-free' zones in Poland
dw
12/18/19
Some 80 local governments in Poland have issued resolutions creating zones forbidding tolerance of sexual minorities. The European Parliament also accused municipalities of withholding funds for rights organizations.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Wednesday condemning so-called "LGBTI-free" zones in Poland.
Most of these zones — where local authorities pledge to refrain from acts that encourage tolerance — were decreed in non-binding directives from local governments.
Municipalities must also avoid providing financial assistance to NGOs working to promote equal rights.
"The European Parliament urges Polish authorities to condemn these acts and to revoke all resolutions attacking LGBTI rights," the legislature said in a statement.
Poland's Commissioner for Human Rights Adam Bodnar has received several complaints against these municipal zones, which total at least 80 in towns across Poland.
The European Parliament resolution also notes its concern for the discrimination LGBTI people face at the hands of national governments of member states.
EU funds "must not be used for discriminatory purposes," their statement noted.
Although discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal in Poland, homophobia and transphobia is considered widespread in the country. Neither same-sex marriage nor civil unions are allowed in Poland. This year at the Pride march in the city of Bialystok, thugs ran through the crowd assaulting people and setting off smoke bombs.
As recently as October, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's conservative Law and Justice party, said: "We consider two communities fundamental the family as one man, one woman and the children."
Read more: Homophobia in Poland still deeply entrenched
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Wednesday condemning so-called "LGBTI-free" zones in Poland.
Most of these zones — where local authorities pledge to refrain from acts that encourage tolerance — were decreed in non-binding directives from local governments.
Municipalities must also avoid providing financial assistance to NGOs working to promote equal rights.
"The European Parliament urges Polish authorities to condemn these acts and to revoke all resolutions attacking LGBTI rights," the legislature said in a statement.
Poland's Commissioner for Human Rights Adam Bodnar has received several complaints against these municipal zones, which total at least 80 in towns across Poland.
The European Parliament resolution also notes its concern for the discrimination LGBTI people face at the hands of national governments of member states.
EU funds "must not be used for discriminatory purposes," their statement noted.
Although discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal in Poland, homophobia and transphobia is considered widespread in the country. Neither same-sex marriage nor civil unions are allowed in Poland. This year at the Pride march in the city of Bialystok, thugs ran through the crowd assaulting people and setting off smoke bombs.
As recently as October, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's conservative Law and Justice party, said: "We consider two communities fundamental the family as one man, one woman and the children."
Read more: Homophobia in Poland still deeply entrenched
stupidity is not limited to the Usa!!!
Boris Johnson wins huge majority on promise to 'get Brexit done'
The Conservative party looks set to achieve its biggest majority in more than 30 years, as Labour faces recriminations
by Jon Henley
the guardian
Fri 13 Dec 2019 04.43 EST
Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, secured a crushing victory in the UK’s general election as voters backed his promise to “get Brexit done” and take the country out of the European Union by 31 January next year.
Johnson’s Conservatives captured 364 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons with all bar one seat counted, a comfortable majority of 74 and the party’s best showing in a parliamentary election since Margaret Thatcher triumphed in 1987.
He addressed the nation just after 7am in London, saying Brexit was now the “irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people” and promising those who lent their vote to the Tories in traditional Labour areas: “I will not let you down.”
Earlier, in his seat of Uxbridge and West Ruislip west of London, he said the government had been given “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done … I think this will turn out to be a historic election that gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people”.
As results from across the country suggested the exit poll would prove correct and seat after seat in the opposition Labour party’s strongholds swung from Labour red to Tory blue, Johnson’s gamble on calling an early vote after long months of parliamentary deadlock over Brexit appeared to have paid off.
The prime minister will now move swiftly to ratify the Brexit deal he sealed with Brussels, allowing Britain to exit the bloc, more than 40 years after it originally joined, at the end of next month – nearly a year later than originally planned and three-and-a-half years after Britain voted to leave.
Brexit, however, will be far from “done”. Johnson must now negotiate a multi-part deal governing the UK’s future relationship with the world’s largest trading bloc, a process most experts think could take years but he has promised can be completed during an 11-month transition period due to end in December 2020.
Labour, meanwhile, whose leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, had presented voters a manifesto offering a second Brexit referendum and a radical expansion of the state, was plunged into bitter recriminations after the party won just 203 seats, its worst result in 84 years.
Labour lost seats it had held for long decades in former industrial areas in the Midlands and north of the country England as voters who had overwhelmingly backed Brexit in the June 2016 referendum swung towards the Conservatives.
Corbyn, 70, said on Friday he would not lead the party into the next election. He described the projected result as “very disappointing”, adding that he would “discuss with our party and ensure there is now a process of reflection on this result and the policies that the party will take going forward”.
His critics blamed the party’s losses on Corbyn’s ambiguity over Brexit and said voters had expressed antipathy to him during the campaign. Corbyn, who was elected leader in 2015, has alienated moderates by shifting the party firmly away from the centre ground that brought Labour three successive election victories under Tony Blair.
He has also faced accusations of failing to tackle antisemitism in the party. “It’s Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn was a disaster for Labour – everyone knew that he couldn’t lead the working class out of a paper bag,” said Alan Johnson, one of Blair’s former ministers.
Ruth Smeeth, a Labour MP who lost her Midlands seat, said Corbyn should take the blame for the party’s defeat and resign. “There are genuine questions about whether the Labour party has a right to exist,” she said. “Who do we exist to represent?”
But loyalists blamed Brexit for the debacle, and insisted the party could not return to the centre. “We need to fight back, not triangulate,” said Richard Burgon, Corbyn’s justice spokesman. “People on the doorstep weren’t complaining about our policies, and we wouldn’t have had the policies ... if it weren’t for Jeremy’s leadership.”
The anti-Brexit Scottish National party was on course to win a sweeping victory in Scotland, seizing 48 of the 59 seats and setting the scene for it to campaign for a second vote on secession from England after rejecting independence in 2014.[...]
Johnson’s Conservatives captured 364 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons with all bar one seat counted, a comfortable majority of 74 and the party’s best showing in a parliamentary election since Margaret Thatcher triumphed in 1987.
He addressed the nation just after 7am in London, saying Brexit was now the “irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people” and promising those who lent their vote to the Tories in traditional Labour areas: “I will not let you down.”
Earlier, in his seat of Uxbridge and West Ruislip west of London, he said the government had been given “a powerful new mandate to get Brexit done … I think this will turn out to be a historic election that gives us now, in this new government, the chance to respect the democratic will of the British people”.
As results from across the country suggested the exit poll would prove correct and seat after seat in the opposition Labour party’s strongholds swung from Labour red to Tory blue, Johnson’s gamble on calling an early vote after long months of parliamentary deadlock over Brexit appeared to have paid off.
The prime minister will now move swiftly to ratify the Brexit deal he sealed with Brussels, allowing Britain to exit the bloc, more than 40 years after it originally joined, at the end of next month – nearly a year later than originally planned and three-and-a-half years after Britain voted to leave.
Brexit, however, will be far from “done”. Johnson must now negotiate a multi-part deal governing the UK’s future relationship with the world’s largest trading bloc, a process most experts think could take years but he has promised can be completed during an 11-month transition period due to end in December 2020.
Labour, meanwhile, whose leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, had presented voters a manifesto offering a second Brexit referendum and a radical expansion of the state, was plunged into bitter recriminations after the party won just 203 seats, its worst result in 84 years.
Labour lost seats it had held for long decades in former industrial areas in the Midlands and north of the country England as voters who had overwhelmingly backed Brexit in the June 2016 referendum swung towards the Conservatives.
Corbyn, 70, said on Friday he would not lead the party into the next election. He described the projected result as “very disappointing”, adding that he would “discuss with our party and ensure there is now a process of reflection on this result and the policies that the party will take going forward”.
His critics blamed the party’s losses on Corbyn’s ambiguity over Brexit and said voters had expressed antipathy to him during the campaign. Corbyn, who was elected leader in 2015, has alienated moderates by shifting the party firmly away from the centre ground that brought Labour three successive election victories under Tony Blair.
He has also faced accusations of failing to tackle antisemitism in the party. “It’s Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn was a disaster for Labour – everyone knew that he couldn’t lead the working class out of a paper bag,” said Alan Johnson, one of Blair’s former ministers.
Ruth Smeeth, a Labour MP who lost her Midlands seat, said Corbyn should take the blame for the party’s defeat and resign. “There are genuine questions about whether the Labour party has a right to exist,” she said. “Who do we exist to represent?”
But loyalists blamed Brexit for the debacle, and insisted the party could not return to the centre. “We need to fight back, not triangulate,” said Richard Burgon, Corbyn’s justice spokesman. “People on the doorstep weren’t complaining about our policies, and we wouldn’t have had the policies ... if it weren’t for Jeremy’s leadership.”
The anti-Brexit Scottish National party was on course to win a sweeping victory in Scotland, seizing 48 of the 59 seats and setting the scene for it to campaign for a second vote on secession from England after rejecting independence in 2014.[...]
Opinion
Russia
Britain needs its own Mueller report on Russian ‘interference’
Conservative-leaning media in the UK and US see little mileage in exposing meddling that helped their own side
Glenn R Simpson and Peter Fritsch
the guardian
Thu 12 Dec 2019 06.17 EST
The British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence. It’s high time its institutions – including the media – woke up to that fact. In 2016, both the United Kingdom and the United States were the targets of Russian efforts to swing their votes. The aim was to weaken the alliances that had constrained Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, such as the European Union and Nato.
The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Many of them worked in concert and interacted with Russians close to the Kremlin. The outcome in both countries was also eerily similar. Both countries have been at war with themselves in the three years since, pulling them back from the international stage at a time when Putin has consolidated his position in Crimea, Ukraine, Syria and beyond.
Our Washington-based research firm, Fusion GPS, conducted much of the early investigations into Russia’s support of the Trump campaign, aided by our colleague Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk. While our initial focus was on Russian meddling in US politics, it has since become increasingly clear that Britain’s political system has also been deeply affected by Russian influence operations.
There the similarities end. For the past three years, the US has undergone a messy and boisterous effort to understand the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 election and beyond. There have been multiple congressional investigations with the power to compel documents and testimony from witnesses. There was a two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
After mostly ignoring the issue during the election campaign itself, the US media have made up for lost time by digging deeply into Russian interference and the extent of the Trump campaign’s complicity.
All of these investigations have been imperfect. The congressional investigations often devolved into farce as Trump’s political allies decided to investigate the investigators instead of Russia’s attack. The Mueller report’s damning findings were obfuscated by lawyerly language and twisted beyond recognition by Trump’s loyal attorney general. Mueller interpreted his mandate narrowly, leaving crucial questions unanswered.
But the process did produce an avalanche of documents and testimony, a great deal of it public, that has aided understanding of what occurred. That makes it harder for Russia to reprise its attack. The Mueller report’s main finding – that Russia had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to elect Trump – was unambiguous and thoroughly documented. So too was Mueller’s clarion call for Americans of all political persuasions to wake up to the continuing threat of Russian interference in its politics.
In Britain, the official response has consisted largely of denial. Consumed by bitter divisions over Brexit and public spending, it took years longer than it should have for parliament to conduct an investigation of Russian penetration of British politics. Even now, the government has suppressed its findings until after the election – an unconscionable decision given the importance to the democratic system itself.
Many US institutions have shown more backbone and independence than their UK counterparts. Some of those who served in the Trump administration, such as the British-born Fiona Hill and Lt Col Alexander Vindman, have been willing to stand up in public and tell the truth, despite intimidation from the president and his allies. In the UK, the courageous whistleblowers needed to expose Russian influence have yet to emerge.
The UK media have started prying into these issues and important work has been conducted shedding light on the actions of Russian-backed groups such as the Conservative Friends of Russia. But, in general, news organisations have been slow off the mark, stymied by dwindling resources and overloaded by the hurricane of Brexit news. Britain’s onerous libel laws and its culture of official secrecy have only made matters worse.
In both the US and the UK, there’s an understandable tendency by those helped by Russian efforts to minimise the perception of this influence. Conservative-leaning media in both countries see little advantage in uncovering Russian meddling that would appear to undercut their own political preferences. In the US, some of Trump’s defenders have even resorted to parroting Russian propaganda that falsely shifts the blame for their interference to rivals in Ukraine.
The British official instinct to handle these unpleasant matters in private has not served it well. The public cannot have confidence that the political establishment will deal with these thorny issues any better than it has with Brexit.
In short, Britain needs its own Mueller report: a full, independent and public accounting of Russian efforts to interfere in its politics. Few people will look forward to this process in a country already exhausted from fighting over Brexit. But it’s essential to halt Russia’s attack on Britain’s democracy and restore confidence in its politics.
Putin will not be easily deterred. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s, with little prospect of growth so long as it suffers under his kleptocracy. The only option to become relatively stronger, Putin believes, is to divide and weaken his adversaries. However, Putin is not the Wizard of Oz. He cannot invent underlying political currents; he can only intensify them.
This is the biggest danger we face: that we cannot escape our partisanship long enough to face down our common enemy. Putin is not a Conservative; nor is he a Republican. The next time he interferes it could easily be in favour of their political opponents. Britain’s institutions must wake up to the Russian threat before Putin seriously damages the country’s centuries-old democracy.
The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Many of them worked in concert and interacted with Russians close to the Kremlin. The outcome in both countries was also eerily similar. Both countries have been at war with themselves in the three years since, pulling them back from the international stage at a time when Putin has consolidated his position in Crimea, Ukraine, Syria and beyond.
Our Washington-based research firm, Fusion GPS, conducted much of the early investigations into Russia’s support of the Trump campaign, aided by our colleague Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk. While our initial focus was on Russian meddling in US politics, it has since become increasingly clear that Britain’s political system has also been deeply affected by Russian influence operations.
There the similarities end. For the past three years, the US has undergone a messy and boisterous effort to understand the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 election and beyond. There have been multiple congressional investigations with the power to compel documents and testimony from witnesses. There was a two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
After mostly ignoring the issue during the election campaign itself, the US media have made up for lost time by digging deeply into Russian interference and the extent of the Trump campaign’s complicity.
All of these investigations have been imperfect. The congressional investigations often devolved into farce as Trump’s political allies decided to investigate the investigators instead of Russia’s attack. The Mueller report’s damning findings were obfuscated by lawyerly language and twisted beyond recognition by Trump’s loyal attorney general. Mueller interpreted his mandate narrowly, leaving crucial questions unanswered.
But the process did produce an avalanche of documents and testimony, a great deal of it public, that has aided understanding of what occurred. That makes it harder for Russia to reprise its attack. The Mueller report’s main finding – that Russia had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to elect Trump – was unambiguous and thoroughly documented. So too was Mueller’s clarion call for Americans of all political persuasions to wake up to the continuing threat of Russian interference in its politics.
In Britain, the official response has consisted largely of denial. Consumed by bitter divisions over Brexit and public spending, it took years longer than it should have for parliament to conduct an investigation of Russian penetration of British politics. Even now, the government has suppressed its findings until after the election – an unconscionable decision given the importance to the democratic system itself.
Many US institutions have shown more backbone and independence than their UK counterparts. Some of those who served in the Trump administration, such as the British-born Fiona Hill and Lt Col Alexander Vindman, have been willing to stand up in public and tell the truth, despite intimidation from the president and his allies. In the UK, the courageous whistleblowers needed to expose Russian influence have yet to emerge.
The UK media have started prying into these issues and important work has been conducted shedding light on the actions of Russian-backed groups such as the Conservative Friends of Russia. But, in general, news organisations have been slow off the mark, stymied by dwindling resources and overloaded by the hurricane of Brexit news. Britain’s onerous libel laws and its culture of official secrecy have only made matters worse.
In both the US and the UK, there’s an understandable tendency by those helped by Russian efforts to minimise the perception of this influence. Conservative-leaning media in both countries see little advantage in uncovering Russian meddling that would appear to undercut their own political preferences. In the US, some of Trump’s defenders have even resorted to parroting Russian propaganda that falsely shifts the blame for their interference to rivals in Ukraine.
The British official instinct to handle these unpleasant matters in private has not served it well. The public cannot have confidence that the political establishment will deal with these thorny issues any better than it has with Brexit.
In short, Britain needs its own Mueller report: a full, independent and public accounting of Russian efforts to interfere in its politics. Few people will look forward to this process in a country already exhausted from fighting over Brexit. But it’s essential to halt Russia’s attack on Britain’s democracy and restore confidence in its politics.
Putin will not be easily deterred. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s, with little prospect of growth so long as it suffers under his kleptocracy. The only option to become relatively stronger, Putin believes, is to divide and weaken his adversaries. However, Putin is not the Wizard of Oz. He cannot invent underlying political currents; he can only intensify them.
This is the biggest danger we face: that we cannot escape our partisanship long enough to face down our common enemy. Putin is not a Conservative; nor is he a Republican. The next time he interferes it could easily be in favour of their political opponents. Britain’s institutions must wake up to the Russian threat before Putin seriously damages the country’s centuries-old democracy.
U.S. LOBBYISTS PREPARE TO SEIZE “HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY” IN TORY-LED BREXIT TO SHRED CONSUMER SAFEGUARDS, RAISE DRUG PRICES
Lee Fang - the intercept
December 9 2019, 4:00 a.m.
BORIS JOHNSON’S election on December 12 hinges on the British prime minister’s promise to leave the European Union. Johnson has remade the Conservative Party, pushing out longtime party members wary of a firm break from the EU, to cast the election as a chance to build a parliamentary majority focused on finalizing Brexit.
The original Brexit referendum that passed in June 2016 pitted populists against the establishment, with banks funneling huge amounts of money to oppose the referendum, which was cast as a measure to return taxes and power to local British citizens, while restoring the sovereignty of the U.K.’s borders against what was cast as unfair trade and uncontrolled migration.
But the politics of the deal have shifted over time, with hard-liners gaining power within Tory leadership and demanding a radical break from the EU. Corporate lobbyists now see an opportunity to use Johnson’s proposed swift exit from the EU as a way to forge bilateral trade deals, including one between the U.S. and the U.K, that would outsource local authority to rules set by an array of international business interests. A wide range of industries are primed to take advantage of the deal to evade EU consumer safeguards and drug pricing rules. Representatives from American pork to Silicon Valley and everything in between are trying to influence the negotiations.
Departing the EU could mean that British consumers would no longer be protected by broad EU-wide regulations on chemicals, food, and cosmetics, among other products. Several international corporate groups have pushed to ensure that in the event of Brexit, such safeguards are abandoned in exchange for a regulatory standard that conforms to the norms of the U.S.
Consultants working directly on the Brexit deal in London and in Washington, D.C., have asked to limit the ability of British regulators to set the price for pharmaceutical drugs, lift safety restrictions on pesticides and agricultural products, and constrain the ability for the U.K. to enact its own data privacy laws.
In January, a lengthy hearing hosted by trade officials from both countries provided a forum in D.C. for industry to lay out its agenda on what should happen after Brexit. Before the hearing, two major industry groups sent letters outlining their agendas for the Brexit negotiations in 2019.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby group that represents the largest drugmakers in the world, insisted that any U.S.-U.K. deal “must recognize that prices of medicines should be based on a variety of value criteria.” PhRMA called for changes in the way the U.K.’s National Health Service sets price controls through comparative effectiveness research, an effort to control the costs of drugs using clinical research.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobby group for the biopharmaceutical industry, made similar demands in a letter to trade officials for the U.K., calling to do more in “shouldering a fair share of the costs of innovation.” BIO suggests that in order to ensure fair treatment for drugmakers, companies should have the right to petition an “independent body” to overrule decisions made by the NHS.
At the hearing, Craig Thorn, a lobbyist representing the U.S.’s National Pork Producers Council, told the Trump administration that the proposed U.S.-U.K. deal present a “historic opportunity,” citing his client’s desire to continue trade with the U.K. by evading EU restrictions on certain feed additives and antibiotics used widely on American pork. Similarly, Floyd Gaibler, a representative of the U.S. Grains Council, said that the deal provides a window for American agriculture to avoid the EU restrictions on pesticides that have been or will soon be banned.
Silicon Valley, similarly, views Brexit as a chance to bypass EU-wide limits on data collection, or even new U.K.-based rules. Several technology lobbyists have pushed to provide trade provisions between the U.S. and U.K. that outlaw so-called data localization requirements. Some regulators have looked at the need for technology firms to store consumer data in local servers, to ensure that it is not resold or abused in any way.
Other corporate demands by U.S.-based groups are spelled out in a series of requests and testimony made by lobbyists before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the federal agency entrusted with negotiating trade deals. Federal lobbying disclosures show a number of interests, including Cargill, IBM, Koch Industries, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, Ford Motor Company, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Salesforce, have lobbied on the potential U.K. deal in recent months.
It’s not just U.S.-based interest groups seeking to retool corporate standards through a hard Brexit. The Institute of Economic Affairs, a major conservative think tank in London, has met repeatedly with Conservative Party leaders and American trade officials to shape a new U.S.-U.K. trade deal that mirrors the demands of industry groups.
Peter Allgeier, a former U.S. trade official, testifying on behalf of the Institute of Economic Affairs at the hearing earlier this year, called for rules that relax regulatory standards and bring the U.K. in line with an American approach to business. “In areas such as food safety and automobile standards, rigid prescriptive EU standards have stifled innovation and impeded U.S. exports,” said Allgeier.
Allgeier has worked closely with Shanker Singham, a consultant known as the “Brexiteers’ Brain” for his expansive influence over Tory trade strategy and Johnson’s approach to Brexit. Singham holds a position with the Institute of Economic Affairs as the organization’s director for trade policy.
The two men are also consultants to business interests while they help guide the direction of Brexit. In an email to The Intercept, Allgeier said that his “list of clients is proprietary information.” Singham, who did not respond to a request for comment, works with the European lobbying firm Grayling, which represents pharmaceutical firms such as AbbVie, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson, according to EU disclosures.
The potential for a Brexit deal to serve as a corporate Trojan horse became a campaign issue last month when Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighted documents detailing ongoing negotiations between representatives from the U.K.’s Department for International Trade, trade officials from the Trump administration, and industry, discussing the ongoing U.S.-U.K. trade agreement. “We are talking here about secret talks for a deal with Donald Trump after Brexit,” Corbyn declared, citing the potential for higher drug costs and privatization of the NHS.
Dean Baker, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted in an email to The Intercept that such regulatory demands by industry are “always part of trade deals.” Baker said that U.S. trade to the U.K. is relatively trivial, at around 2.5 percent of GDP, making incentives for rushing a trade agreement relatively small.
“On the other hand,” Baker wrote, “paying higher prices for drugs and being unable to regulate the Internet is likely to impose very substantial costs.”
“A government weighing these factors carefully would almost certainly refuse a deal, but a Johnson government that made Brexit front and center is likely to feel strong political pressure to have a deal with the hope few people will pay much attention to the content,” Baker noted. “Johnson could tout the deal as a big success. People would only see the negative effects years down the road.”
The original Brexit referendum that passed in June 2016 pitted populists against the establishment, with banks funneling huge amounts of money to oppose the referendum, which was cast as a measure to return taxes and power to local British citizens, while restoring the sovereignty of the U.K.’s borders against what was cast as unfair trade and uncontrolled migration.
But the politics of the deal have shifted over time, with hard-liners gaining power within Tory leadership and demanding a radical break from the EU. Corporate lobbyists now see an opportunity to use Johnson’s proposed swift exit from the EU as a way to forge bilateral trade deals, including one between the U.S. and the U.K, that would outsource local authority to rules set by an array of international business interests. A wide range of industries are primed to take advantage of the deal to evade EU consumer safeguards and drug pricing rules. Representatives from American pork to Silicon Valley and everything in between are trying to influence the negotiations.
Departing the EU could mean that British consumers would no longer be protected by broad EU-wide regulations on chemicals, food, and cosmetics, among other products. Several international corporate groups have pushed to ensure that in the event of Brexit, such safeguards are abandoned in exchange for a regulatory standard that conforms to the norms of the U.S.
Consultants working directly on the Brexit deal in London and in Washington, D.C., have asked to limit the ability of British regulators to set the price for pharmaceutical drugs, lift safety restrictions on pesticides and agricultural products, and constrain the ability for the U.K. to enact its own data privacy laws.
In January, a lengthy hearing hosted by trade officials from both countries provided a forum in D.C. for industry to lay out its agenda on what should happen after Brexit. Before the hearing, two major industry groups sent letters outlining their agendas for the Brexit negotiations in 2019.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobby group that represents the largest drugmakers in the world, insisted that any U.S.-U.K. deal “must recognize that prices of medicines should be based on a variety of value criteria.” PhRMA called for changes in the way the U.K.’s National Health Service sets price controls through comparative effectiveness research, an effort to control the costs of drugs using clinical research.
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobby group for the biopharmaceutical industry, made similar demands in a letter to trade officials for the U.K., calling to do more in “shouldering a fair share of the costs of innovation.” BIO suggests that in order to ensure fair treatment for drugmakers, companies should have the right to petition an “independent body” to overrule decisions made by the NHS.
At the hearing, Craig Thorn, a lobbyist representing the U.S.’s National Pork Producers Council, told the Trump administration that the proposed U.S.-U.K. deal present a “historic opportunity,” citing his client’s desire to continue trade with the U.K. by evading EU restrictions on certain feed additives and antibiotics used widely on American pork. Similarly, Floyd Gaibler, a representative of the U.S. Grains Council, said that the deal provides a window for American agriculture to avoid the EU restrictions on pesticides that have been or will soon be banned.
Silicon Valley, similarly, views Brexit as a chance to bypass EU-wide limits on data collection, or even new U.K.-based rules. Several technology lobbyists have pushed to provide trade provisions between the U.S. and U.K. that outlaw so-called data localization requirements. Some regulators have looked at the need for technology firms to store consumer data in local servers, to ensure that it is not resold or abused in any way.
Other corporate demands by U.S.-based groups are spelled out in a series of requests and testimony made by lobbyists before the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the federal agency entrusted with negotiating trade deals. Federal lobbying disclosures show a number of interests, including Cargill, IBM, Koch Industries, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Association, Ford Motor Company, the National Association of Manufacturers, and Salesforce, have lobbied on the potential U.K. deal in recent months.
It’s not just U.S.-based interest groups seeking to retool corporate standards through a hard Brexit. The Institute of Economic Affairs, a major conservative think tank in London, has met repeatedly with Conservative Party leaders and American trade officials to shape a new U.S.-U.K. trade deal that mirrors the demands of industry groups.
Peter Allgeier, a former U.S. trade official, testifying on behalf of the Institute of Economic Affairs at the hearing earlier this year, called for rules that relax regulatory standards and bring the U.K. in line with an American approach to business. “In areas such as food safety and automobile standards, rigid prescriptive EU standards have stifled innovation and impeded U.S. exports,” said Allgeier.
Allgeier has worked closely with Shanker Singham, a consultant known as the “Brexiteers’ Brain” for his expansive influence over Tory trade strategy and Johnson’s approach to Brexit. Singham holds a position with the Institute of Economic Affairs as the organization’s director for trade policy.
The two men are also consultants to business interests while they help guide the direction of Brexit. In an email to The Intercept, Allgeier said that his “list of clients is proprietary information.” Singham, who did not respond to a request for comment, works with the European lobbying firm Grayling, which represents pharmaceutical firms such as AbbVie, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson, according to EU disclosures.
The potential for a Brexit deal to serve as a corporate Trojan horse became a campaign issue last month when Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighted documents detailing ongoing negotiations between representatives from the U.K.’s Department for International Trade, trade officials from the Trump administration, and industry, discussing the ongoing U.S.-U.K. trade agreement. “We are talking here about secret talks for a deal with Donald Trump after Brexit,” Corbyn declared, citing the potential for higher drug costs and privatization of the NHS.
Dean Baker, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted in an email to The Intercept that such regulatory demands by industry are “always part of trade deals.” Baker said that U.S. trade to the U.K. is relatively trivial, at around 2.5 percent of GDP, making incentives for rushing a trade agreement relatively small.
“On the other hand,” Baker wrote, “paying higher prices for drugs and being unable to regulate the Internet is likely to impose very substantial costs.”
“A government weighing these factors carefully would almost certainly refuse a deal, but a Johnson government that made Brexit front and center is likely to feel strong political pressure to have a deal with the hope few people will pay much attention to the content,” Baker noted. “Johnson could tout the deal as a big success. People would only see the negative effects years down the road.”
Russia Can't Compete in the Next 2 Olympics
Nation banned from world competition for 4 years because of systematic doping
By John Johnson, Newser Staff
Updated Dec 9, 2019 6:57 AM CST
(NEWSER) – The official sports world is unanimous: Russia cheats. And as a result, the nation cannot compete in next year's summer Olympics in Japan. In fact, Russia is banned from international sporting events for the next four years, a span that includes the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 soccer World Cup, reports Reuters. The World Anti-Doping Agency imposed the ban Monday after evidence emerged that Russia dopes its athletes in systematic fashion. Moscow denies the allegations and is expected to appeal. The New York Times notes that individual Russian athletes can still compete, though they must wear neutral uniforms and won't hear their national anthem if they win. Only athletes who have not been implicated in the scandal are eligible.
Those exceptions are likely to displease critics who say the punishment isn't strong enough. "This is as far as we could go," said Linda Helleland, a Norwegian lawmaker who serves on the WADA executive committee, per the AP. "This is the biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen," she added. "I would expect now a full admission from the Russians and for them to apologize (for) all the pain all the athletes and sports fans have experienced." Among other things, Russia is accused of manipulating lab data to try to cover up its doping, specifically by replacing tainted urine with clean samples at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Those exceptions are likely to displease critics who say the punishment isn't strong enough. "This is as far as we could go," said Linda Helleland, a Norwegian lawmaker who serves on the WADA executive committee, per the AP. "This is the biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen," she added. "I would expect now a full admission from the Russians and for them to apologize (for) all the pain all the athletes and sports fans have experienced." Among other things, Russia is accused of manipulating lab data to try to cover up its doping, specifically by replacing tainted urine with clean samples at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Brexit Ambassador to the U.S. Quits Over ‘Half-Truths’
NO MORE LIES
Nico Hines - London Editor
Published Dec. 06, 2019 11:32AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
One of the senior diplomats at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. has quit in protest at the “half-truths” and distortions she said she was expected to peddle as a representative of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. Alexandra Hall Hall, who has worked in the foreign service for 33 years including a stint as ambassador to the Republic of Georgia, announced her resignation in a searing letter, which was obtained by CNN. “I would prefer to do something more rewarding with my time than peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust,” she wrote. As U.K. Brexit counselor, she was responsible for explaining Britain’s approach to Brexit on Capitol Hill. “I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which our political leaders have tried to deliver Brexit,” she wrote. “[Including] the use of misleading or disingenuous arguments.”
Massive leak of data reveals new money-hiding secrets of superrich — and this is ‘only the beginning’
December 5, 2019
By Common Dreams - raw story
A massive trove of documents, data, and recorded phone calls showing how British company Formations House works to hide money for the superrich is being reported on by journalists all over the world, with the first stories dropping at midnight on Wednesday.
The reporting is being done under the name “29 Leaks,” a reference to Formations House’s original address at 29 Harley Street in London. The data was leaked to the group Distributed Denial of Secrets over the summer.
“It takes a concerted effort from a large number of people to make substantive headway on an investigation like this, in which a large amount of data needs to be quickly processed and examined,” Claire Peters, executive director of the Pursuance Project, told Unicorn Riot on Tuesday.
Peters and Pursuance Project outreach director Annalise Burkhart led a team of reporters from around the world uncovering and detailing the information stored in the huge, roughly 100 GB-sized trove of data.
“Formations House was the perfect example of a ‘one-stop shop’ for creating legal entities that serve as fronts for fraudulent operations and money laundering,” said Burkhart. “In only a matter of days, a client could purchase offshore companies bundled into packages touting minimal compliance requirements, tax-free operations, and anonymity for directors and shareholders.”
“It’s hard to overstate how notorious and suspicious the firm is,” Boing Boing wrote of Formations House when the leak’s existence became public in July.
According to Unicorn Riot, reporting from the data will have an international scope:
Formations House has been the subject of international scrutiny for years, and the #29Leaks documents have been under investigation for some time. It is expected that news stories in Central America, Africa and Europe will examine information drawn from this set of leaks. The use of Formations House-managed companies to move money around between offshore and private banking centers like Luxembourg and other parts of the world is among the main themes of this dataset. Other documents expected to be covered in detail show how the African nation of The Gambia is commonly used to create banks and insurance companies on paper for wealthy people in other continents, which Formations House and related parties package and facilitate.
On Tuesday The Times of London showed, via undercover reporting, how Formations House sets up shell companies for its clients.
McClatchy reported on how Formations House helped Iran’s national oil company avoid sanctions. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project detailed schemes across Eastern Europe. The Economic Times, meanwhile, dug into the comapny’s Pakistani-British management.
More reporting will come, said the Pursuance Project’s Peters.
“There’s much more work to be done with this data,” said Peters, “we’re only at the beginning.”
The reporting is being done under the name “29 Leaks,” a reference to Formations House’s original address at 29 Harley Street in London. The data was leaked to the group Distributed Denial of Secrets over the summer.
“It takes a concerted effort from a large number of people to make substantive headway on an investigation like this, in which a large amount of data needs to be quickly processed and examined,” Claire Peters, executive director of the Pursuance Project, told Unicorn Riot on Tuesday.
Peters and Pursuance Project outreach director Annalise Burkhart led a team of reporters from around the world uncovering and detailing the information stored in the huge, roughly 100 GB-sized trove of data.
“Formations House was the perfect example of a ‘one-stop shop’ for creating legal entities that serve as fronts for fraudulent operations and money laundering,” said Burkhart. “In only a matter of days, a client could purchase offshore companies bundled into packages touting minimal compliance requirements, tax-free operations, and anonymity for directors and shareholders.”
“It’s hard to overstate how notorious and suspicious the firm is,” Boing Boing wrote of Formations House when the leak’s existence became public in July.
According to Unicorn Riot, reporting from the data will have an international scope:
Formations House has been the subject of international scrutiny for years, and the #29Leaks documents have been under investigation for some time. It is expected that news stories in Central America, Africa and Europe will examine information drawn from this set of leaks. The use of Formations House-managed companies to move money around between offshore and private banking centers like Luxembourg and other parts of the world is among the main themes of this dataset. Other documents expected to be covered in detail show how the African nation of The Gambia is commonly used to create banks and insurance companies on paper for wealthy people in other continents, which Formations House and related parties package and facilitate.
On Tuesday The Times of London showed, via undercover reporting, how Formations House sets up shell companies for its clients.
McClatchy reported on how Formations House helped Iran’s national oil company avoid sanctions. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project detailed schemes across Eastern Europe. The Economic Times, meanwhile, dug into the comapny’s Pakistani-British management.
More reporting will come, said the Pursuance Project’s Peters.
“There’s much more work to be done with this data,” said Peters, “we’re only at the beginning.”
the blood suckers are circling!!!
Leaked document reveals US drug firms are pushing Trump to target the NHS after Brexit
Thomas Colson business insider
12/4/19
- American drugs firms believe the British market will be easier to crack after Brexit, according to a leaked document.
- US companies want the Trump administration to open up the UK market, despite warnings it would lead to much higher costs for the NHS.
- The document, leaked to the Mirror newspaper, reads: "Concerns about potential impacts on Britain's National Health Service are being aired. It should prove easier to overcome these challenges with the UK as an individual negotiating partner."
- Experts have warned that the NHS would be landed with a much bigger bill for medication and denied the chance to use cheaper alternatives if it agreed to Washington's demands.
US health firms believe the NHS will be easier to crack after Brexit, according to a leaked document which reveals pressure on the Trump administration to open up Britain's free healthcare system as part of a trade deal with the UK.
The document, written by the Chamber of Commerce and Coalition of Services Industries, indicates that US negotiators believe that contracts to supply the NHS with drugs will be easier to secure once it has left the EU, and is a smaller negotiating partner.
The document, which was leaked to the Mirror newspaper, states that: "Concerns about potential impacts on Britain's National Health Service are being aired. It should prove easier to overcome these challenges with the UK as an individual negotiating partner."
The document also confirms that the US will demand the right for pharmaceutical companies to bid for health services in the UK.
"The United States will seek rules that prohibit, across all services sectors, discrimination against foreign services suppliers and restrictions on the number of services suppliers in the market," the document states.
The prospect of a free trade agreement with the US has often been trumpeted as one of the main attractions of leaving the EU.
But the US makes tough trade demands, especially under the "America First" policy of Donald Trump's administration. It has already made it clear that it will demand much greater access to all UK markets, including drugs and food markets.
Experts have warned that hospitals and patients would have to pay billions more for drugs if the UK did agree to a trade deal with Donald Trump.
A report in November by the NHS Confederation, which represents most hospitals, warned that the NHS would be landed with a much bigger bill for medication and denied the chance to use cheaper alternatives if it agreed to Washington's demands.
"Regarding pricing, the USA objectives [in the trade deal talks] seek to 'provide full market access [in the UK] for US products'[…] Under the [VPAS] scheme, NHS expenditure on branded medicines is capped, ensuring predictability of expenditure for the NHS on the entire branded medicines bill.
"One can imagine that such a scheme would not meet the USA's objectives, which if achieved would result in higher prices for medicines and pass on costs to both patients and the NHS," the report said.
Trump denies the NHS is on the table(a lie of course)
Trump insisted on Wednesday that he would not be interested in access to the NHS if it was presented "on a silver platter."
However, during a previous visit to the UK in June, Trump suggested that the NHS would be "on the table" as part of trade talks before he attempted to backtrack.
Johnson's Conservative party have repeatedly insisted that the NHS will not be part of trade talks with the US.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn believes the potential privatisation of the NHS is one of Labour's strongest cards in the election campaign.
"If that's the case, why have these talks gone on for two years?" Corbyn told the BBC on Tuesday.
Responding to the leaked trade document, Labour's shadow health secretary John Ashworth said: "Today's revelations are yet more evidence that US big pharma companies are lining up to cash-in on a toxic Johnson-Trump deal.
"These mega-corporations want us to pay more for medicine and the proposed US-UK deal could draw £500 million a week from our NHS."
Dozens of Jewish graves vandalized at cemetery near Strasbourg
December 3, 2019
By Agence France-Presse
More than 100 graves were found covered with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti at a Jewish cemetery near Strasbourg in eastern France on Tuesday, officials said, just hours after similar vandalism in a nearby village.
“It’s a shock,” Maurice Dahan, president of the Jewish consistory for the Bas-Rhin region, told AFP, adding that most of the graves were daubed with swastikas.
The government’s regional authority said it was investigating the damage to 107 graves at the cemetery in Westhoffen, around 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Strasbourg.
And about 20 kilometers away it said that anti-Jewish inscriptions were also found in the village of Schaffhouse-sur-Zorn.
The Alsace region has suffered a rash of racist vandalism over the past year, most notably the desecration of 96 tombs at a cemetery in Quatzenheim in February, which drew nationwide outrage over a spate of anti-Semitic attacks.
President Emmanuel Macron, during a visit to inspect the damage, vowed to crack down on hate speech, including by an increased focus on educating against racism in schools.
The rising number of anti-Jewish offenses reported to police — up 74 percent in 2018 from the previous year — have caused alarm in the country that is home to both the biggest Jewish and the biggest Muslim communities in Europe.
“It’s a shock,” Maurice Dahan, president of the Jewish consistory for the Bas-Rhin region, told AFP, adding that most of the graves were daubed with swastikas.
The government’s regional authority said it was investigating the damage to 107 graves at the cemetery in Westhoffen, around 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Strasbourg.
And about 20 kilometers away it said that anti-Jewish inscriptions were also found in the village of Schaffhouse-sur-Zorn.
The Alsace region has suffered a rash of racist vandalism over the past year, most notably the desecration of 96 tombs at a cemetery in Quatzenheim in February, which drew nationwide outrage over a spate of anti-Semitic attacks.
President Emmanuel Macron, during a visit to inspect the damage, vowed to crack down on hate speech, including by an increased focus on educating against racism in schools.
The rising number of anti-Jewish offenses reported to police — up 74 percent in 2018 from the previous year — have caused alarm in the country that is home to both the biggest Jewish and the biggest Muslim communities in Europe.
barbarism in the name of religion!!!
Nepal’s mass animal slaughter begins despite outcry
December 3, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
The stench of raw meat hung in the air and pools of blood dotted the muddy ground on Tuesday as what is thought to be the world’s biggest animal sacrifice swung into action in a remote area of Nepal.
Efforts from activists and officials were expected to cut the death toll from the 200,000 butchered at the last Gadhimai Festival five years ago, but thousands of creatures were still set to be killed over the two days.
The event in honour of a Hindu goddess kicked off in the early hours amid tight security, with the ceremonial slaughter of a goat, rat, chicken, pig and a pigeon. A local shaman then offered blood from five points of his body.
Some 200 butchers with sharpened swords and knives then walked into a walled arena bigger than a football field that held several thousand buffalo as excited pilgrims climbed trees and walls to catch a glimpse.
“We had tried not to support it but people have faith in the tradition and have come here with their offerings,” Birendra Prasad Yadav from the festival organising committee told AFP.
Thousands of goats were also bound for sacrifice — mostly by having their throats slit — as well as pigs and even some rats. The pilgrims could either take the remains to cook or leave them for organisers to bury.
Thousands of worshippers from Nepal and neighbouring India have spent days sleeping out in the open and offering prayers ahead of the event in Bariyarpur village, close to the Indian border.
“I believe in the goddess. My mother had asked her for the good health of my son,” one of them, Rajesh Kumar Das, 30, told AFP, holding a goat in his hand.
Some 2,000 police personnel were patrolling the village and the field where sacrifices were taking place to control crowds gathered to watch.
According to legend, the first sacrifices in Bariyarpur were conducted several centuries ago when goddess Gadhimai appeared to a prisoner in a dream and told him to offer blood and establish her temple.
When he awoke, his shackles had fallen open and he was able to leave the prison and build the temple, where he sacrificed animals to give thanks, so the legend goes.
– ‘Less bloodshed’ –
Indian border authorities and volunteers have in recent days seized scores of animals being brought across the frontier by unlicensed traders and pilgrims.
While this has failed to stop the flow, officials and animal rights groups say such efforts combined with awareness campaigns have helped decrease the bloodshed.
“The temple committee seems to be shaken by the campaigns as well as the government. The number of animals sacrificed are gradually decreasing,” said Amruta Ubale of Animal Equality India.
Local officials have also been running programmes to raise public awareness against the sacrifices and asked devotees to offer money instead of animals, district official Phanindra Mani Pokharel said.
Many were hopeful the centuries-old tradition would end after the temple authorities announced a ban in 2015 and Nepal’s supreme court directed the government to discourage the bloodshed a year later.
But animal rights activists say both government agencies as well as temple committees have failed to implement these rulings.
“It is now time for the Nepal government to step up and introduce a ban in law on animal sacrifice so that this is the last time we witness such horrors at Gadhimai,” said Tanuja Basnet, director of Nepal’s Humane Society International.
Among the bleating goats in the temple area were some devotees who opted not to kill any animals but to free pigeons, like 20-year-old Rabindra Kumar Yadav who came to thank the goddess for his health.
“We didn’t sacrifice an animal, we worshipped the goddess with a pair of pigeons instead,” he said, before the lucky birds flapped away to safety.
Efforts from activists and officials were expected to cut the death toll from the 200,000 butchered at the last Gadhimai Festival five years ago, but thousands of creatures were still set to be killed over the two days.
The event in honour of a Hindu goddess kicked off in the early hours amid tight security, with the ceremonial slaughter of a goat, rat, chicken, pig and a pigeon. A local shaman then offered blood from five points of his body.
Some 200 butchers with sharpened swords and knives then walked into a walled arena bigger than a football field that held several thousand buffalo as excited pilgrims climbed trees and walls to catch a glimpse.
“We had tried not to support it but people have faith in the tradition and have come here with their offerings,” Birendra Prasad Yadav from the festival organising committee told AFP.
Thousands of goats were also bound for sacrifice — mostly by having their throats slit — as well as pigs and even some rats. The pilgrims could either take the remains to cook or leave them for organisers to bury.
Thousands of worshippers from Nepal and neighbouring India have spent days sleeping out in the open and offering prayers ahead of the event in Bariyarpur village, close to the Indian border.
“I believe in the goddess. My mother had asked her for the good health of my son,” one of them, Rajesh Kumar Das, 30, told AFP, holding a goat in his hand.
Some 2,000 police personnel were patrolling the village and the field where sacrifices were taking place to control crowds gathered to watch.
According to legend, the first sacrifices in Bariyarpur were conducted several centuries ago when goddess Gadhimai appeared to a prisoner in a dream and told him to offer blood and establish her temple.
When he awoke, his shackles had fallen open and he was able to leave the prison and build the temple, where he sacrificed animals to give thanks, so the legend goes.
– ‘Less bloodshed’ –
Indian border authorities and volunteers have in recent days seized scores of animals being brought across the frontier by unlicensed traders and pilgrims.
While this has failed to stop the flow, officials and animal rights groups say such efforts combined with awareness campaigns have helped decrease the bloodshed.
“The temple committee seems to be shaken by the campaigns as well as the government. The number of animals sacrificed are gradually decreasing,” said Amruta Ubale of Animal Equality India.
Local officials have also been running programmes to raise public awareness against the sacrifices and asked devotees to offer money instead of animals, district official Phanindra Mani Pokharel said.
Many were hopeful the centuries-old tradition would end after the temple authorities announced a ban in 2015 and Nepal’s supreme court directed the government to discourage the bloodshed a year later.
But animal rights activists say both government agencies as well as temple committees have failed to implement these rulings.
“It is now time for the Nepal government to step up and introduce a ban in law on animal sacrifice so that this is the last time we witness such horrors at Gadhimai,” said Tanuja Basnet, director of Nepal’s Humane Society International.
Among the bleating goats in the temple area were some devotees who opted not to kill any animals but to free pigeons, like 20-year-old Rabindra Kumar Yadav who came to thank the goddess for his health.
“We didn’t sacrifice an animal, we worshipped the goddess with a pair of pigeons instead,” he said, before the lucky birds flapped away to safety.
Government shutdown in Samoa amid ‘cruel’ measles outbreak
December 2, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
Samoa ordered a government shutdown to help combat a devastating measles outbreak Monday, as five more children succumbed to the virus, lifting the death toll in the tiny Pacific nation to 53.
The government said almost 200 new measles cases had been recorded since Sunday, with the rate of infection showing no sign of slowing despite a compulsory mass vaccination programme.
The scheme has so far focussed on children but Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was time to immunise everyone in the 200,000 population aged under 60.
To achieve the goal, he said government services and departments would close on Thursday and Friday this week in order to allow all public servants to assist with the mass vaccination campaign throughout the country.
He said only electricity and water utility workers would be exempt and called on the nation to stand together to contain the outbreak.
“In this time of crisis, and the cruel reality of the measles epidemic, let us reflect on how we can avoid recurrence in the future,” Malielegaoi said in a national address.
Since the crisis began in mid-October, there have been 3,728 measles cases, accounting for almost two percent of the population.
Infants are the most vulnerable and form the bulk of infections, with 48 of the fatalities aged four or less.
A state of emergency was declared in mid-November, with schools closed and children banned from public gatherings, such as church services, to minimise the risk of contagion.
The outbreak has been exacerbated by Samoa’s low immunisation rates, which the World Health Organisation blames on overseas-based anti-vaccine campaigners.
Malielegaoi was unequivocal in his message, telling his people “vaccination is the only cure… no traditional healers or kangen (alkaline) water preparations can cure measles”.
“Let us work together to encourage and convince those that do not believe that vaccinations are the only answer to the epidemic,” he said.
“Let us not be distracted by the promise of alternative cures.”
Officials say the anti-vaccination message has resonated in Samoa because of a case last year when two babies died after receiving measles immunisation shots.
It resulted in the temporary suspension of the country’s immunisation programme and dented parents’ trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.
The government said almost 200 new measles cases had been recorded since Sunday, with the rate of infection showing no sign of slowing despite a compulsory mass vaccination programme.
The scheme has so far focussed on children but Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was time to immunise everyone in the 200,000 population aged under 60.
To achieve the goal, he said government services and departments would close on Thursday and Friday this week in order to allow all public servants to assist with the mass vaccination campaign throughout the country.
He said only electricity and water utility workers would be exempt and called on the nation to stand together to contain the outbreak.
“In this time of crisis, and the cruel reality of the measles epidemic, let us reflect on how we can avoid recurrence in the future,” Malielegaoi said in a national address.
Since the crisis began in mid-October, there have been 3,728 measles cases, accounting for almost two percent of the population.
Infants are the most vulnerable and form the bulk of infections, with 48 of the fatalities aged four or less.
A state of emergency was declared in mid-November, with schools closed and children banned from public gatherings, such as church services, to minimise the risk of contagion.
The outbreak has been exacerbated by Samoa’s low immunisation rates, which the World Health Organisation blames on overseas-based anti-vaccine campaigners.
Malielegaoi was unequivocal in his message, telling his people “vaccination is the only cure… no traditional healers or kangen (alkaline) water preparations can cure measles”.
“Let us work together to encourage and convince those that do not believe that vaccinations are the only answer to the epidemic,” he said.
“Let us not be distracted by the promise of alternative cures.”
Officials say the anti-vaccination message has resonated in Samoa because of a case last year when two babies died after receiving measles immunisation shots.
It resulted in the temporary suspension of the country’s immunisation programme and dented parents’ trust in the vaccine, even though it later turned out the deaths were caused when other medicines were incorrectly administered.
Opinion
Brexit
America is not the land of the free but one of monopolies so predatory they imperil the nation
Its growing economic crisis is in contrast to a thriving and newly innovative Europe
Will Hutton - the guardian
12/1/19
Tomorrow, President Trump arrives in London for the annual Nato summit. Despite the boasting and the trappings of superpower status, he is an emissary from a country whose economy and society are in increasing difficulty, and whose global leadership is under challenge not just from the usual suspect, China, but from Europe. With the unerring capacity to be wrong that defines the Brexit right, Britain is about to decouple itself from a continental economy beginning to get things right, and hook up with one that is palpably beginning to fail.
This is not the conventional wisdom. The EU is sclerotic, undynamic, stifled by quasi-socialist red tape, and hostile to insurgent startups. It is so degenerate it cannot even defend itself – as Trump will undoubtedly remind its leaders over the next two days. The US is the mirror opposite. A free trade agreement post 31 January with the US is the number one strategic policy aim for Brexit Britain – unshackling the UK from the declining old, and embracing the English-speaking, dynamic new. Best be nice to “the Donald”.
Except the latest research demonstrates the reverse is true. Britain is about to make a vast mistake. In the recently published The Great Reversal, leading economist Thomas Philippon of New York University and member of the advisory panel of the New York Federal Reserve, mounts a devastating attack on the conventional wisdom, so perfectly embodied by the witless Boris Johnson. The news is that over the last 20 years per capita EU incomes have grown by 25% while the US’s have grown 21%, with the US growth rate decelerating while Europe’s has held steady – indeed accelerating in parts of Europe. What is going on?
Philippon’s answer is simple. The US economy is becoming increasingly harmed by ever less competition, with fewer and fewer companies dominating sector after sector – from airlines to mobile phones. Market power is the most important concept in economics, he says. When firms dominate a sector, they invest and innovate less, they peg or raise prices, and they make super-normal profits by just existing (what economists call “economic rent”). So it is that mobile phone bills in the US are on average $100 a month, twice that of France and Germany, with the same story in broadband. Profits per passenger airline mile in the US are twice those in Europe. US healthcare is impossibly expensive, with drug companies fixing prices twice as high or even higher than those in Europe; health spending is 18% of GDP. Google, Amazon and Facebook have been allowed to become supermonopolies, buying up smaller challengers with no obstruction.
This monopolising process gums up everything. Investment in the US has been falling for 20 years. Because prices stay high, wages buy less, so workers’ lifestyles, unless they borrow, get squeezed in real terms while those at the top get paid ever more with impunity. Inequality escalates to unsupportable levels. Even life expectancy is now falling across the US.
But why has this happened now? Philippon has a deadly answer. A US political campaign costs 50 times more than one in Europe in terms of money spent for every vote cast. But this doesn’t just distort the political process. It is the chief cause of the US economic crisis.
Corporations want a return on their money, and the payback is protection from any kind of regulation, investigation or anti-monopoly policy that might strike at their ever-growing market power. Boeing, for example, ensured – as one of the US’s biggest lobbyists – that regulation was friendly to its plans to shoehorn heavier engines on to a plane not designed for them – the fatal shortcut behind the two crashes of the 737 Max 8. Philippon shows this is systemic; how both at federal and state level ever higher campaign donations are correlated with ever fewer actions against monopoly, price fixing and bad corporate behaviour.
In Europe, the reverse is true. It is much harder for companies to buy friendly regulators. The EU’s competition authorities are much more genuinely politically independent than those in the US – witness the extraordinary fines levied on Google or the refusal this February to allow Siemens to merge with the French giant Alstom. As a result, it is Europe, albeit with one or two laggards such as Italy, that is bit by bit developing more competitive markets, more innovation and more challenge to incumbents while at the same time sustaining education and social spending so important to ordinary people’s lives.
Even starting up businesses is now easier. France is generating multiple hi-tech startups, with unemployment falling. Parts of Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam or even Milan are now rivalling San Francisco’s Bay area.
The EU’s regulations are better thought out, so in industry after industry it is becoming the global standard setter. Its corporate governance structures are better. And last week, to complete the picture, Christine Lagarde, the incoming president of the European Central Bank, in the most important pronouncement of the year, said the environment would be at the heart of European monetary policy. In other words, the ECB is to underwrite a multitrillion-euro green revolution. In short – bet on Europe not the US.
Thus Jeremy Corbyn, seizing on leaked documents showing how US trade negotiators want UK drug prices to rise to US levels, is on to something much bigger than the threat to the NHS, fatal though that is. Any trade deal with the US will require the UK to accept the protections that are making US capitalism so sclerotic, predatory and high priced – while dissociating itself from a European capitalism that is not only beginning to outperform America’s, but so much better reflects our values.
This election is set to seal not just the geopolitical but geo-economic mistake of Britain’s recent history. The tragedy is that our national conversation is hardly aware of how high the stakes have become.
This is not the conventional wisdom. The EU is sclerotic, undynamic, stifled by quasi-socialist red tape, and hostile to insurgent startups. It is so degenerate it cannot even defend itself – as Trump will undoubtedly remind its leaders over the next two days. The US is the mirror opposite. A free trade agreement post 31 January with the US is the number one strategic policy aim for Brexit Britain – unshackling the UK from the declining old, and embracing the English-speaking, dynamic new. Best be nice to “the Donald”.
Except the latest research demonstrates the reverse is true. Britain is about to make a vast mistake. In the recently published The Great Reversal, leading economist Thomas Philippon of New York University and member of the advisory panel of the New York Federal Reserve, mounts a devastating attack on the conventional wisdom, so perfectly embodied by the witless Boris Johnson. The news is that over the last 20 years per capita EU incomes have grown by 25% while the US’s have grown 21%, with the US growth rate decelerating while Europe’s has held steady – indeed accelerating in parts of Europe. What is going on?
Philippon’s answer is simple. The US economy is becoming increasingly harmed by ever less competition, with fewer and fewer companies dominating sector after sector – from airlines to mobile phones. Market power is the most important concept in economics, he says. When firms dominate a sector, they invest and innovate less, they peg or raise prices, and they make super-normal profits by just existing (what economists call “economic rent”). So it is that mobile phone bills in the US are on average $100 a month, twice that of France and Germany, with the same story in broadband. Profits per passenger airline mile in the US are twice those in Europe. US healthcare is impossibly expensive, with drug companies fixing prices twice as high or even higher than those in Europe; health spending is 18% of GDP. Google, Amazon and Facebook have been allowed to become supermonopolies, buying up smaller challengers with no obstruction.
This monopolising process gums up everything. Investment in the US has been falling for 20 years. Because prices stay high, wages buy less, so workers’ lifestyles, unless they borrow, get squeezed in real terms while those at the top get paid ever more with impunity. Inequality escalates to unsupportable levels. Even life expectancy is now falling across the US.
But why has this happened now? Philippon has a deadly answer. A US political campaign costs 50 times more than one in Europe in terms of money spent for every vote cast. But this doesn’t just distort the political process. It is the chief cause of the US economic crisis.
Corporations want a return on their money, and the payback is protection from any kind of regulation, investigation or anti-monopoly policy that might strike at their ever-growing market power. Boeing, for example, ensured – as one of the US’s biggest lobbyists – that regulation was friendly to its plans to shoehorn heavier engines on to a plane not designed for them – the fatal shortcut behind the two crashes of the 737 Max 8. Philippon shows this is systemic; how both at federal and state level ever higher campaign donations are correlated with ever fewer actions against monopoly, price fixing and bad corporate behaviour.
In Europe, the reverse is true. It is much harder for companies to buy friendly regulators. The EU’s competition authorities are much more genuinely politically independent than those in the US – witness the extraordinary fines levied on Google or the refusal this February to allow Siemens to merge with the French giant Alstom. As a result, it is Europe, albeit with one or two laggards such as Italy, that is bit by bit developing more competitive markets, more innovation and more challenge to incumbents while at the same time sustaining education and social spending so important to ordinary people’s lives.
Even starting up businesses is now easier. France is generating multiple hi-tech startups, with unemployment falling. Parts of Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam or even Milan are now rivalling San Francisco’s Bay area.
The EU’s regulations are better thought out, so in industry after industry it is becoming the global standard setter. Its corporate governance structures are better. And last week, to complete the picture, Christine Lagarde, the incoming president of the European Central Bank, in the most important pronouncement of the year, said the environment would be at the heart of European monetary policy. In other words, the ECB is to underwrite a multitrillion-euro green revolution. In short – bet on Europe not the US.
Thus Jeremy Corbyn, seizing on leaked documents showing how US trade negotiators want UK drug prices to rise to US levels, is on to something much bigger than the threat to the NHS, fatal though that is. Any trade deal with the US will require the UK to accept the protections that are making US capitalism so sclerotic, predatory and high priced – while dissociating itself from a European capitalism that is not only beginning to outperform America’s, but so much better reflects our values.
This election is set to seal not just the geopolitical but geo-economic mistake of Britain’s recent history. The tragedy is that our national conversation is hardly aware of how high the stakes have become.
funnies
ESPECIALLY THE U.S.!!!
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