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29 May 21
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Trump 'Derailed' Boris Johnson's Coronavirus Planning by Demanding the UK Join a 'Bombing Campaign in the Middle East'
Thomas Colson, Business Insider
Colson writes: "Trump derailed the UK government's coronavirus planning at a crucial moment in March last year after former he asked the UK to 'join a bombing campaign in the Middle East,' members of the UK parliament have been told."
Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said that ministers and key aides had been forced to delay COVID-19 meetings on a key day in March after "national security people " arrived in Downing Street and announced that "Trump wants us to join a bombing campaign in the Middle East tonight."
Cummings, who left Downing Street after an acrimonious fallout with the prime minister, made the claims during evidence to the Science and Technology Committee as it reviews the UK's coronavirus response.
The prime minister had been scheduled on March 12 to convene COBRA, the government's emergency response committee, to discuss potential measures to try and contain coronavirus, which was in the early stages of spreading across the country, he said.
Cummings added: "So everything to do with COBRA that day [on March 12] on COVID was completely disrupted because you had these two parallel sets of meetings. You had the national security people running in and out, talking about, are we going to bomb the Middle East? And we had the COVID meeting being delayed, trying to figure out, are we going to do household quarantine?"
Cummings said Trump on March 12 wanted the UK to join a bombing campaign in Iraq, but the UK government declined to participate. The Pentagon on March 12 confirmed that the US carried out airstrikes on weapons facilities run by an Iranian-backed militia after a rocket attack killed two US soldiers and one British soldier near Baghdad.
Eventually, Johnson would announce on March 15 that people should practice social distancing, but he would later be criticized for failing to introduce stricter measures, including the cancellation of mass sports events and the closure of pubs and restaurants.
Cummings said that key aides and scientific advisers gradually realized that the government's "plan A" would result in up to 500,000 deaths, forcing them to change approach later in March and introduce a national lockdown.
The UK has one of the highest coronavirus death tolls per capita in the world, with more than 125,000 have died within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test, according to government figures.
People walk along Wall Street. (photo: AP)
Biden Banks on $3.6 Trillion Tax Hike on the Rich and Corporations
Alan Rappeport, The New York Times
Rappeport writes: "President Biden on Friday unveiled $3.6 trillion in tax increases on wealthy Americans and big corporations to pay for his plans to combat climate change, reduce income inequality and significantly expand the nation's social safety net."
The White House is proposing substantial increases in personal income tax rates for those earning about a half-million dollars and higher tax rates on large corporations.
For the wealthiest taxpayers, the proposals would mean higher taxes on their income, the sale of their investments and the transfer of their assets when they die. Starting at the end of 2021, the top individual income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent from 37 percent, reversing the Trump administration’s tax cuts for the highest income taxpayers. The new rate would apply to income over $509,300 for married couples filing jointly and $452,700 unmarried individuals.
Taxes on capital gains — the proceeds of selling an asset like a stock or a boat — for people earning more than $1 million would be taxed as ordinary income, effectively increasing the rate wealthy individuals pay on that money to 39.6 percent from 20 percent.
A protest in front of a McDonald's restaurant in support of a $15 an hour minimum wage. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The US "Labor Shortage" Is Just a Wage Shortage
Tim Fernholz, Quartz
Fernholz writes: "The US is coming back from the pandemic recession, and all eyes are on the job market. Some business owners, and in particular restauranteurs, are complaining vociferously about the difficulty they're having finding workers. So is there a labor shortage?"
The short answer is, not really.
The right speed for the employment recovery is simple: as fast as possible. In that sense, anything less than a return to full employment isn’t enough. But in reality, thanks to the unique character of the pandemic recession and the historic magnitude of the US government’s response to it, we are seeing an unusually speedy jobs recovery compared to recent recessions.
April’s 266,000-job increase was significantly less than desired, but the US also saw 430,000 people return to the labor force—that is, start searching for a job again after giving up on finding one—making for the largest gain in six months. The number of new claims for unemployment insurance fell to their lowest level since March 2020, when the pandemic’s economic impact was first being felt. And the most recent measure of new job openings, from late March, reached a record high of 8.1 million.
There’s always a labor market shortage
It might help to try and define a labor shortage. Let’s call it a situation where the wages needed to hire workers increase at an unsustainable pace, to the point where employers can’t hire workers and remain in business.
The nature of a recession is that it creates job losses and damages the economy. As recovery proceeds, and businesses start hiring again, there is also always a period when it’s difficult to match workers and employers—there are more unemployed workers and more job openings and professional networks are out of date, making the whole process more challenging. After the housing bubble popped in 2008, we were treated to years of talk about a “skills mismatch,” and particularly labor shortages in the building trades—not coincidentally, one of the sectors hardest hit in that recession. Ultimately, what solved the shortage was growing demand leading to higher wages for contractors.
Employers also complained about skills shortages in 2017, when the US economy was humming. As Minneapolis Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari put it then, “If you’re not raising wages, then it just sounds like whining.”
What about restaurant workers?
There are lots of viral stories about unhappy employers trying to re-open, or pictures of handwritten signs saying nobody wants to work. Restaurants are often at the center of these tales, and not coincidentally, leisure and hospitality workers are the lowest paid of any sector in the US.
What does the data tell us about that sector and its wages? In April, leisure and hospitality was the fast growing sector in the US, adding 330,000 jobs—not exactly the signal of an industry that can’t hire. It was also the sector with the largest increase in pay.
The question, then, is whether the growing wages for leisure and hospitality workers are unsustainable. The answer appears to be: Not yet. The average hourly pay for restaurant workers in April was $15.68; if the pre-pandemic trend of 4% annual growth in these wages had continued in 2020, workers would have started this year earning $15.44. Remember too that this is an average: Many workers will earn less than this number.
Economists will be watching to see if the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report for the month of May shows this trend increasing significantly or not, which will help them figure out how sustainable this wage growth is. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, notes that leisure and hospitality wages make up only 4% of all wages in the economy, which suggests that the sector’s dynamics won’t spread to other industries and create an economy-wide burst of out-of-control wage growth. The average wages of all nonsupervisory employees increased just 1.1% in the last year.
What about unemployment insurance?
A major complaint from employers is that the increase in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits during the pandemic is causing people to stay at home rather than seek work. This remains an open question empirically, and we’ll surely see some interesting studies now that some 23 states are canceling the $300 weekly pandemic bonus, which otherwise expires in September, in an effort to get people back into the labor force.
It’s worth noting, however, that in the most generous states, weekly benefits top out in the low $700s per week. In Oregon, for example, the average UI payment is about $688 a week, equivalent to $17.20 an hour. That’s lower than the average pay of every sector in the economy—except for leisure and hospitality. Also worth noting: Companies can summon laid-off workers back to work, and if they don’t return to their job, their unemployment benefits can be revoked.
One smart idea that deserves more attention is converting the remaining extra UI into a one-time bonus for any unemployed person who gets a job—eliminating the conflict of interest without losing the benefit of increasing demand in the economy while joblessness remains high. Other studies suggest that extending unemployment insurance actually helps people return to employment by giving them time to find the best-matching job.
There’s still a pandemic
It’s easy to forget if you’re vaccinated and fancy free, but half of Americans are not still vaccinated. Many states and counties are still not fully re-opened, notably California, the largest economy in the US. Use of transit and visits to restaurants and hotels have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Research shows that even in states that have relaxed restrictions, people are still behaving cautiously in response to their own estimations of the level of pandemic danger. Texas’ early lifting of all pandemic restrictions, for example, did not lead to more people going to businesses or to higher employment.
Many workers and potential workers are waiting to be fully vaccinated, which for mRNA vaccines can take between five and six weeks. They are also well aware that the US government has no apparent plan to allow businesses to mandate vaccinations, pay their employees to be vaccinated, provide standards for creating a Covid-19 safe workplace, or create reliable credentials to identify people who have been vaccinated.
In labor market terms, we can see this in the April jobs report as well: 4.2 million Americans told government surveyors that health fears kept them from looking for a job, and 9.4 million people said that they were unable to work because their former employers were still closed or offering fewer hours due to the pandemic. That’s nearly the entire gap between pre-pandemic employment levels and today’s.
Workers are people, too
The folks the restaurant industry is looking to hire have their own concerns, which are as legitimate as those of employers. Food service is, as mentioned, low-paying, and notoriously rife with toxic workplaces and tough hours. One thing we’re seeing is pressure for a long overdue increase in benefits and better treatment for workers, while others who can are leaving the industry entirely.
“I lost four really good employees to other businesses that weren’t affected by shutdowns,” one restauranteur told an Oregon newspaper. “I lost a 20-year cook that wasn’t going to tolerate getting laid off anymore. He started painting. I paid him very well.”
Beyond the specific trials of the food service industry, there is speculation that school closings and lack of access to childcare are slowing parents’ return to the workforce. Some economic analysis suggests that parents weren’t disproportionately affected, but 392,000 women left the labor force last month, which other economists argue is a sign that childcare issues are still hindering employment.
The labor market is a market, and that means buyers need to offer the right price. Industries that relied on cheap labor before the pandemic are finding it harder to do so for many reasons, from ongoing pandemic fears, to unsatisfactory wages, to better opportunities in other industries. Focusing on the desire by employers not to compete for workers, or a political agenda of cutting aid to the unemployed, misses the reality that thus far, the system is working the way it should.
A mother holds her child as they surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents. (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)
America's Asylum System Is Broken. Here's How Biden Could Fix It.
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "Republicans have been eager to blame President Joe Biden for inviting a recent spike in arrivals of children and families at the southern border, with his promises of a more humane approach to immigration policy than his predecessor."
The US isn’t prepared for another spike in migration at the border.
epublicans have been eager to blame President Joe Biden for inviting a recent spike in arrivals of children and families at the southern border, with his promises of a more humane approach to immigration policy than his predecessor. But it’s not a one-off crisis — it’s part of a recurring problem to which the US has not adapted, and that has persisted even at times when the federal government has pursued restrictionist border policies.
The Obama administration saw a similar spike in 2014, when more than 237,000 Central Americans, including more than 60,000 unaccompanied children, showed up at the southern border. And it happened again in 2019 under the Trump administration, when officials encountered almost 1 million migrants over the course of a year, including 144,000 in a single month.
The US doesn’t have a system in place to ensure that migrants are treated humanely and in accordance with federal law when these spikes occur. Children have consequently been kept in jail-like holding facilities operated by US Customs and Border Protection beyond the 72-hour legal time limit. That is why the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and the Biden administration have been condemned for keeping “kids in cages.”
While the humanitarian challenges on the southern border are far from over, the number of migrant children and families arriving has slightly subsided from record levels in March, and the Biden administration is moving unaccompanied children out of unsuitable CBP holding facilities much more quickly than it was before. As of May 26, there were 619 children in those facilities, down from more than 5,000 in early April, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. (There are still more than 18,000 children in government-run shelters, many of whom are waiting to be reunited with family in the US.)
As the pressure on resources at the southern border begins to ease, now is the time for the Biden administration to start charting a path forward to ensure that, the next time the US sees a spike in migrant arrivals, it is prepared.
“We’ve never had a plan to rapidly surge resources into the immigration system when things get overloaded,” said Theresa Cardinal-Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “And yet, history has shown that we have major migration events that happen every once in a while. We need to think about those more as regular things rather than the odd accidents that may never come again.”
The US can anticipate these spikes, which are symptoms of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. For years, these countries have suffered from gang violence, government corruption, extortion, and some of the highest rates of poverty and violent crime in the world. The pandemic-related economic downturn and a pair of hurricanes late last year that devastated Honduras and Guatemala, in particular, have only exacerbated those longstanding problems. Many of the migrants arriving on the southern border, sometimes in large caravans, likely felt they had no choice but to seek refuge elsewhere — as is their right under US and international law.
Though the Biden administration has yet to give an outline of its plans to manage the border, several immigrant advocacy groups and think tanks have devised potential frameworks to improve migrant processing. Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have also drafted a bill that would implement related reforms, though it’s not clear whether the legislation will draw significant support from members of either party. Those strategies will become all the more important as the Biden administration begins to lift pandemic-related restrictions at the southern border and resumes processing migrants en masse.
Customs and Border Protection shouldn’t be primarily responsible for processing vulnerable migrants
A core problem with the current system is that US Customs and Border Protection, the law enforcement agency responsible for apprehending migrants trying to cross the border without authorization, is also charged with initially processing asylum seekers. That’s a relic of the 1990s and 2000s when single adult males from Mexico accounted for the vast majority of people arriving on the border.
Since 2014, children and families from the Northern Triangle have arrived in greater numbers with fundamentally different humanitarian needs than the Mexican migrants who came before them, including child care, schooling, and medical and mental health care for trauma victims.
The Bipartisan Policy Center has argued that the recent shift in migration flows requires the US to rethink its approach to how it processes people at the border: CBP should continue to focus on issues related to border security — crime, drugs, contraband, and terrorism — but should leave processing children, families, and other vulnerable populations who may need emergency relief to other experts.
In a plan laid out in a recent report by the think tank, migrants apprehended at the border would be taken into temporary influx facilities jointly operated by CBP, FEMA, and the Department of Health and Human Services where they would receive shelter, food, emergency medical care, and access to other relief. Only minimal processing, such as recording basic biographical data, would occur at these facilities.
People suspected of criminal activity or who have outstanding warrants would still go to secure holding facilities currently operated by CBP. But everyone else would be transported to newly created Regional Migration Processing Centers, where non-uniformed staff (as opposed to CBP officers) would administer legal and medical services to migrants and care for children and trauma victims. There would be separate spaces to house families and children and single adults.
These centers would be staffed with asylum officers from US Citizenship and Immigration Services who would be able to immediately grant asylum to people with straightforward cases, as opposed to having to go through extensive, time-consuming proceedings in immigration court. Those cases would have to be completed in 20 days or less, or transferred to new, nearby border courts.
The border courts, staffed with a new slate of immigration judges, would primarily handle cases involving migrants who have recently arrived in the US and would have to issue a decision within 90 days. If it takes longer for migrants’ cases to be decided, they could be transferred to other immigration courts across the US.
The result would theoretically be that immigration cases could be decided in a matter of weeks or months, rather than years. As of April, immigrants had been waiting an average of more than three years for their cases to be decided in immigration court, which is a lot of time in limbo.
“We have to have a system that is much more expeditious in deciding cases,” Cardinal-Brown said. “That’s good both for people who deserve protection — who can find out quickly, get their status, and get legal work — and for people who don’t make the cut, who can be sent back in an expeditious manner.”
Under the plan, those who receive an adverse decision from an asylum officer could appeal in immigration court if they choose, though not everyone will. Single adults and those who aren’t seeking a form of humanitarian protection could still face rapid deportation through a process called “expedited removal,” under which a migrant does not have the opportunity to plead their case before an immigration judge.
That’s why it’s also important for the US to explore additional legal avenues for people to migrate to the US, such as work visas. The asylum system may be the only currently viable path for Central Americans. Otherwise, they would need a job opportunity requiring certain skills or education or an immediate family member who’s a US citizen and could sponsor them for a visa.
“We need to vastly expand legal avenues for people so that they’re not coming into the asylum system in lieu of some other available form of relief,” Cardinal-Brown said.
Biden could look for alternatives to rapid deportations
While Cardinal-Brown maintains that expedited removal has a place in a functioning immigration system, others have advocated for dramatically scaling back its use, or even abolishing it altogether.
Expedited removal was implemented more than two decades years ago in the interest of increasing efficiency in immigration enforcement. But in the time since, the backlog of cases in immigration courts has grown to exceed 1.3 million, suggesting that it isn’t necessarily working as intended to relieve pressure in other parts of the immigration system. The Trump administration had nevertheless expanded its use beyond just immigrants arriving at the border. Now, unauthorized immigrants living anywhere in the US can be deported under expedited removal.
Yael Schacher, senior US advocate at Refugees International, has argued that, once the Biden administration lifts pandemic-related restrictions at the border, it shouldn’t revert to relying on expedited removal as a primary means of managing migration at the southern border.
In a recent report, she recommends implementing two pilot programs to test out such methods. One program could be based on the administration’s existing system for processing people who qualify for exemptions from the pandemic-related expulsion policy implemented last March under President Donald Trump.
Similar procedures could be used to identify groups that request asylum at a port of entry and for whom expedited removal has historically proved unfair and inefficient, including speakers of indigenous or rare languages. CBP could release them from custody and instruct them to check in with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would then refer them to the asylum office to file an application. If they don’t follow through with the application, then the government could initiate deportation proceedings in immigration court, Schacher writes.
The other proposed pilot program could be modeled after the Biden administration’s current practice of releasing some families into the US due to the fact that Mexico has refused to take them back after they are expelled.
After being processed by CBP, migrants from countries that have not historically cooperated with US efforts to deport their citizens could be sent to a newly created reception center operated by Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.
They would be subject to full deportation proceedings in immigration court, provided with legal orientation services and, if necessary, placed in a case management program designed to ensure immigrants show up for their immigration appointments without putting them in detention. (Although studies have shown that most migrants who were never detained or who were released from detention still show up for their court hearings.) Immigration judges would then terminate deportation proceedings and refer them to the asylum office to file an application.
These proposed pilot programs might seem unnecessarily complex, requiring various steps of referral to different agencies. But they are designed to work within the existing legal framework and allow the Biden administration to test out potential changes to the asylum system unilaterally.
“Putting resources into developing that fair process seems to make the most sense from a human rights and efficiency perspective, especially given that the deterrent approach we have taken for the past 25 years certainly has not stopped people from coming to the border, or led to an efficient asylum process,” Schacher said. “I’m trying to encourage us not to presume that the only efficient and fair way to do things is to rush the process while everyone is detained at the border, which I think is the impulse now.”
The US could put more power in the hands of asylum officers
It’s clear the current system isn’t operating quickly enough to accommodate the number of asylum seekers arriving on the border. That could actually encourage more migrants to make the journey north, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
“The government is doing all this messaging [about the dangers of migrating], and that is not nearly as meaningful to people as the fact that they know from their communities, their families in the United States, and from smugglers, that if you manage to get here and get into the system, your case is going to be pending for years into the future,” said Meissner, who also served as the commissioner of what was then known as the US Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Clinton administration. “That is a real pull factor.”
As a fix, Meissner has proposed to empower asylum officers via a regulatory change to grant asylum in cases that arise on the border without having to refer applicants to the immigration courts, unless they want to appeal an adverse decision. It would represent an expansion of their existing responsibilities, which also include issuing decisions for tens of thousands of people annually who apply for asylum from inside the US.
Shifting processing to the asylum office, which only has a backlog of about 350,000 cases, would in some ways enhance due process for asylum seekers.
In contrast to the process in the immigration courts, interviews at the asylum office are non-adversarial. Asylum officers undergo extensive training on how to conduct interviews with people who have experienced trauma, such as sexual violence, assault, death threats, kidnapping, and torture. And they are educated on conditions in migrants’ home countries that might have driven them to flee.
“It’s important to reserve the immigration court time for cases where there’s a real issue as to whether relief can be granted,” said Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge who chaired the Board of Immigration Appeals, an appellate body within the DOJ, under the Clinton administration. “I think there’s a lot of cases out there that could easily be granted at the asylum office. They never have to get to the immigration court.”
But there are some ways in which the asylum office remains under-resourced. Karen Musalo, founding director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and a professor at UC Hastings College of Law, said that asylum seekers are currently required to provide their own interpreters during interviews with asylum officers, meaning that the quality of interpretation can be “quite below standard,” often to the detriment of an applicant’s case.
Asylum seekers, including unaccompanied children, also don’t have government-appointed lawyers, either at the asylum office or in the immigration courts. There is a robust network of legal aid groups, NGOs, and law firms doing pro bono work that have stepped up to fill that gap somewhat, representing people individually, conducting “know your rights” presentations, and offering legal advice. But more than half of people facing immigration court proceedings still don’t have a lawyer, even though it vastly improves their chances of obtaining relief from deportation.
Biden recently issued a memorandum seeking to expand access to legal counsel for immigrants, but it’s not yet clear how he would do so.
“The entire system would run more efficiently and smoothly, and it would be cost-effective, to have appointed counsel for all asylum claims,” Musalo said.
The Amazon fulfillment warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama. (photo: Rederic J. Brown/Getty Images)
Amazon Workers Are Rising Up Around the World to Say: Enough
Valter Sanches, Christy Hoffman and Casper Gelderblom, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Amazon, the world's most powerful corporation, is an iceberg. Users and consumers see its top: the shops, the streaming service, the packages."
Amazon’s global infrastructure is held together by exploitation of those who operate it. And workers are pushing back
mazon, the world’s most powerful corporation, is an iceberg. Users and consumers see its top: the shops, the streaming service, the packages. But below the surface lies an enormous infrastructure, stretching across continents, linking production, distribution and delivery. A complex transnational system, populated by workers around the world whose labor drives Amazon’s profits.
Its chief executive and founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, tries to conceal this system with the comfort and entertainment his services offer. The reason is equally clear and outrageous. From the factories where the products it sells are made, to the doorsteps where they are delivered, Amazon’s global infrastructure is held together by the exploitation of those who operate it.
Throughout Amazon’s supply chain, Bezos’s behemoth violates workers’ safety, dignity and privacy, putting them to work in worksites designed to squeeze as much labor out of them for as little money as possible. Workers do not take this lying down. Supported by a myriad of progressive allies, there is labor resistance all over Amazon’s global map, with strikes and protests from Spain to São Paulo, from Delhi to Berlin. On Black Friday last year, as scrutiny over Amazon’s anti-union practices, environmental impact, tax avoidance and worker safety intensified in Europe and the United States, UNI Global Union, IndustriaALL, Progressive International, Oxfam, Greenpeace and dozens of civil society organizations, environmentalists and tax watchdogs organized protest actions in 12 countries, uniting under the banner of Make Amazon Pay.
Aided by shocking media reports about dangerous and even dehumanizing working conditions, this activism draws attention to Amazon’s treatment of the warehouse workers who stow, store and sort its signature packages. As a result, the corporation’s efforts to conceal its conduct in this part of its global empire are faltering. In the UK, where most Amazon workers are employed in the corporation’s so-called “Fulfillment Centers”, a poll late last year found that only 24% of respondents believed Amazon treated its workers fairly. In the US, where Amazon recently worked to undermine a union campaign in Alabama with tactics that union leaders say prevented a free and fair election and violated federal law, almost 80% of respondents supported the warehouse workers’ struggle.
In the delivery part of Amazon’s empire, too, workers resist Amazon’s mistreatment. Delivery workers in India recently struck in Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Pune, demanding better pay and employee benefits. During a ground-breaking national strike in Italy, 75% of all Amazon workers in the country stopped work, bringing together warehouse and delivery workers in an inspiring example of cross-supply chain solidarity. Recently, the shockingly common outrage of workers having to pee in bottles due to a lack of adequate break time went viral, bringing delivery workers into the fold of a common front taking on Amazon, and helping expand the public’s conception of Amazon’s workforce.
However, a crucial part of Amazon’s global infrastructure remains largely concealed. The self-styled Everything Store does not just sell, store and ship products – it also directly sources them. The corporation owns more than 400 private-label brands, selling a wide range of products from garments to electronics. From its Kindle e-readers to its rising apparel empire, Amazon is now the top fashion retailer in the United States – Amazon’s brands draw on an extensive network of some 1,400 factories worldwide.
Located mostly in countries in the global south, workers in these factories typically work in dire conditions. In Chinese factories producing Amazon devices like Echo and Alexa, investigations have revealed numerous illegal practices, from endless night shifts to underpayment. Last year, the absence of adequate health and safety measures in a Guatemala factory producing garments for Amazon brands saw a major Covid outbreak, endangering the lives of hundreds of workers. As a recent report by the Worker Rights Consortium revealed, Amazon is among a number of powerful multinationals refusing to make sure factory workers laid off during the pandemic get the severance pay they are still owed.
Amazon is responsible for what happens in the worksites that make up its global empire – and must be held accountable in and across all its regions. Workers themselves are at the forefront of the struggle to make this happen. Like warehouse and delivery workers, factory workers in the last concealed part of Amazon’s global system of exploitation are taking on the corporation. Unionized garment workers who lost their jobs in October when Amazon’s supplier Global Garments closed are demanding the factory reopen, rehire the 1,200 union members and provide them with back pay. In Cambodia, former workers at Amazon’s supplier Hulu Garment are calling on Amazon to ensure their full legally owed severance.
Workers across Amazon’s supply chain share the same struggle. Winning it requires them to come together in solidarity and leverage their collective power. In November, factory workers in Bangladesh joined protesting warehouse workers in many countries and supporters from the public during the planetary mobilization on Black Friday. On Wednesday, workers from the Hulu Garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Global Garments factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, lead a global day of action to make Amazon pay all its workers.
Amazon must pay all its workers – wherever they reside, whatever their occupation. And, ultimately, making Amazon pay is part of a much bigger fight to win another world. One in which global commercial circuits are geared not towards the wealth and power of billionaires and shareholders, but towards the health and happiness of the hard-working people who run it.
Palestinians walk in the rubble of destroyed homes after an Israeli air strike. (photo: Mohammed Talatene/DPA)
Israeli Bombs Killed 66 Kids in Gaza Including 12 Who Were Getting Help for Trauma From Past Attacks
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "As the United Nations human rights chief warns Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza, we look at how Israel killed 12 Palestinian children being treated for trauma from past Israeli bombings."
MY GOODMAN: The United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, says Israel may have committed war crimes during its 11-day bombardment of Gaza, which killed at least 253 Palestinians, including 66 children. Bachelet spoke before the United Nations Human Rights Council.
MICHELLE BACHELET: Such strikes raise serious concerns of Israel’s compliance with the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. If found to be indiscriminate and disproportionate in their impact on civilians and civilian objects, such attacks may constitute war crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. Human Rights Council approved a resolution Thursday to launch a sweeping international investigation into war crimes committed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The resolution was drafted by the Organization of Islamic States.
KHALIL HASHMI: Regrettably, the self-professed global champions of human rights continue to shield the occupier from global accountability and literally provide arms and ammunition for its widely reported war crimes and crimes of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Let us be clear: There is no legal and moral equivalence between the occupier and the occupied.
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has vowed to help rebuild Gaza, but at the same time it’s moving ahead with a plan to sell $735 million worth of bombs to Israel despite congressional opposition.
Earlier this week, I spoke to Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in Gaza. Last week, the council revealed 11 of the children killed in the Israeli bombing of Gaza were taking part in a program to help them deal with trauma from previous Israeli attacks. Egeland is the former humanitarian relief coordinator at the United Nations. He spoke to us from Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands have evacuated fearing another volcano eruption. We also talked about the crisis in the DRC, but I began by asking him to talk about the situation in Gaza.
JAN EGELAND: Well, Gaza has become the home of hopelessness, where people are crammed together, 2 million people, in a tiny place. It’s smaller than the municipality of Oslo, where I normally live. There is no way people can leave the place. Israel and Egypt control the borders, and they don’t let anybody out, really. They let only a bit of humanitarian aid in.During this onslaught, we didn’t only have the 11 ones you talked about, Amy. There was a 12th little girl killed. All of those, we were trying to treat for trauma from the previous conflicts. There’s been five wars since 2006. So, a child would have grown up with nothing but violence, nothing but hopelessness. That’s why we need Blinken and Biden and the leadership of the U.S. now to lead to a solution to this senseless repeat of conflicts where Palestinian children die.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you have the United States providing the weapons for Israel to bomb Gaza and now committing to the rebuilding of Gaza. Can you talk about the problem with this?
JAN EGELAND: Well, it seems futile, really. There seems to be a logical third path — namely, for the U.S. to lead the international community — the U.S., Europe and the Arab countries — to have some kind of an arbitration, when you have an Israeli leadership and Palestinian leaderships incapable of solving the underlying conflicts that lead to repeat violence and insecurity for both peoples. So, could the U.S. lead us, please, in reaching, you know, political solutions, an end to the occupation and so on? We just had an earthquake here in Goma. That’s why it’s shaking.
We need in Gaza to have an end to this serving hopelessness to children, who will grow up with more and more bitterness and chaos. And I’m telling you, we humanitarian workers are sick and tired of building and rebuilding and see it all torn down again.
AMY GOODMAN: You co-signed a letter with 11 other heads of international humanitarian organizations to Secretary of State Blinken about the situation in Gaza. Talk about the issues you’ve raised. I mean, you had this constant bombardment, where the president of the United States, President Biden, would not demand of Netanyahu a ceasefire, said he might like one, he would urge one, but not make that diplomatic demand, particularly important since Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world.
JAN EGELAND: Yeah, we, the 12 nongovernmental organizations serving Palestinians on the ground, the civilian population, especially children, women and the most vulnerable — we urged, in our letter, the United States to take the lead in ending the occupation, getting humanitarian access to all consistently, to all in need, ending the underlying injustice that means that we have this confrontation. But we’re also trying to tell that we need help to be able to be active for all Palestinians, irrespective of where they are in Gaza. Too often the borders close in our face, and we cannot then even help the people in need.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary General, last week, you tweeted, quote, “We are devastated to learn that 11 of the children we help in #Gaza with trauma from previous violence are now killed by Israeli missiles. Israel must stop this madness: children must be protected. Their homes and schools must not be targets.” We also spoke with the head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency in Gaza, about the devastation and the number of schools and hospitals that were attacked. Tell us more about these children and what it means that you’re funding trauma help for them.
JAN EGELAND: Well, we’ve been to Gaza for a very long time. I personally also visited it regularly over the last 30 years. So, during all of my visits to Gaza, where we have 50 humanitarian workers now working around the clock, as they have been for a very long time, the strongest impression is this hopelessness, this bitterness, this sense that the youth do not believe it will become better, it will become worse. So, it’s bitterness. They’re giving up.
We also then saw that too many children were having learning problems in school. I mean, they are having so much nightmares at night that they cannot really follow education. So we started a Better Learning Program, as we call it, which is an excellent psychosocial program, and these children then started to learn better. They were making progress in school. And the Palestinians are like their neighbors, the Israelis — very diligent, very talented, very organized.
So, we were a bit optimistic before this last repeat violence. And through these 11 days of madness, we got news every single day, nearly, of new children killed, 12 now in total, who were in our, you know, psychosocial program. They were then killed with their families, with their dreams, and their nightmares, that we were treating them for.
I think that’s a very strong symbol also of it cannot continue like this. The United States has to get the parties out of this repeat cycle of violence. Would we want to come back every three, four, five years, for eternity, with more bombing of urban areas? We’ve seen that — our estimate is that 13,500 homes have been either damaged or even destroyed. We are accumulating rubble, we’re accumulating dead children, and we’re accumulating hopelessness, if it continues like this.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what Israel, in a lot of the mainstream media, at least in the United States — you’re based in Norway — the equivalency of the Hamas missiles and the Israeli bombardment that killed over 250 Palestinians, a quarter of them — it’s what? Something like 66 children dead?
JAN EGELAND: Well, this is disproportionate warfare. There is one occupier, and that is strong. And there are people then having also now extremist organizations among themselves, trying to inflict as much damage on the other side as they can. But, of course, there were more than five times the number of dead Palestinian children as total fatalities, military and civilian, of all ages, on the Israeli side.
So, again, the U.S. military might that is given to Israel makes it be so much stronger than the other, and therefore we feel they should now reach out and try to make peace with their neighbors. It’s not going to be easy, because there’s a lot of extremism now. And there will be more extremism, because there is more bitterness and more hatred each time you have these kind of military campaigns.
AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us about Gaza earlier this week from Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands have fled their homes fearing another volcanic eruption. We also talk about the crisis in Yemen and vaccine apartheid, when we come back with him.
Tara Houska. (image: Ayse Gürsöz/Education Images/Getty Images)
A Pipeline Is Threatening Their Homeland. Indigenous Women Are Fighting Back.
Brianna Baker, Grist
Baker writes: "Tara Houska is no amateur when it comes to pipeline resistance. The attorney and member of the Couchiching First Nation set up camp at Standing Rock and stood with Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators for six months, helping raise legal funds for water defenders facing charges."
To tribal attorney Tara Houska, the fight against the Line 3 pipeline is a fight for future generations.
ara Houska is no amateur when it comes to pipeline resistance. The attorney and member of the Couchiching First Nation set up camp at Standing Rock and stood with Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators for six months, helping raise legal funds for water defenders facing charges. Four years later, she’s back on the fossil fuel front lines — but this time, it’s personal.
Her target is Line 3, which will carve through Anishinaabe territory in northern Minnesota, just three hours from where she grew up. The pipeline will carry tar sands more than 1,000 miles from Alberta to Wisconsin. In March, Houska and six other Indigenous activists were arrested for trespassing and detained overnight. Their crime: sitting and praying in a waaginogaaning, a traditional, domed structure they erected on a pipeline construction site in northern Minnesota. The demonstration underscored the spiritual relationship between Indigenous peoples and their land — a connection Houska and others believe the pipeline will sever.
Enbridge, the Canadian energy company behind Line 3, claims it is merely replacing a 60-year-old pipeline that is likely to corrode and leak if it isn’t updated. But opponents see the plan as an expansion of it, because it will carry twice the amount of oil. Houska says Line 3 violates Anishinaabe rights granted under the 1837 White Pine Treaty by endangering wild rice, a plant unique to the region and sacred to her tribe. The pipeline faces legal challenges from tribes, environmental groups, and even the Minnesota Department of Commerce, all of which say the environmental risks far exceed the need for additional oil.
Houska, who was a Native American affairs advisor to the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, has used her political know-how to pressure elected officials to intervene. Still, she thinks lawsuits and lobbying aren’t enough. She formed Giniw Collective in 2018 to mobilize resistance and train protesters in direct action. Beyond the waaginogaaning demonstration, Indigenous protesters have blocked construction by chaining themselves to machinery, a boat hauled to the site, and even each other. Authorities have arrested more than 250 people since construction began in November, Houska says. To her, protesters’ courage and personal sacrifice send a message more powerful than any petition.
Fix talked to Houska, a 2017 Grist 50 honoree, about her approach to protest, how fishing and foraging count as direct action, and why the time has come for women to lead the fossil fuel resistance. Her comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Why are you in this fight? What makes you get up every morning and risk arrest?
A. The pipeline will go through [northern Minnesota, near] where I’m from, and it will jeopardize wild rice. Our people maintain a treaty right to safely harvest wild rice, which sits at the heart of our identity. We were told to migrate to where the food grows on water, and this is the only place in the world where wild rice [is naturally found]. Ojibwe people have been here for thousands of years.
The Line 3 fight is an extension of the fight for Mother Earth that’s happening all over. It’s about whether we’re going to continue to allow fossil fuel bullies to steal from future generations. Climate data can sometimes distance us from the real problem, but Line 3 is a reminder that there are human beings who are losing their homes as we speak, whether it’s through displacement to build pipelines like this or to rising seas and extreme weather.
Q. What strategies are you using to halt Line 3?
A. I advocate a multipronged approach. Along with other folks, I’ve been meeting with White House officials. President Biden is positioning himself as the climate president and has made addressing this crisis a top priority. We’re asking that he stand with his word and recognize that the cancellation of Keystone XL is not nearly enough; he can and must intervene on Line 3, too. I also helped launch the Defund Line 3 campaign and organize a Global Day of Action in 85 cities.
Direct actions are often undervalued. Everyone likes to dump their energy and resources into policy and letter-writing and sign-holding. Those types of advocacy are familiar and don’t involve a lot of risk or personal sacrifice. But there’s something deeply powerful when people are willing to physically stand with their word and address a problem with the urgency it requires. That’s happening all over the globe. But oftentimes those activists are under-supported — or worse, killed.
Giniw Collectiv is an Indigenous woman- and two-spirit-led group focused not only on defending the land and training folks in direct action, but on getting people onto the land to understand what they’re defending. People have been harvesting wild rice, fishing, swimming, hunting, and developing connections with these places we’re trying to protect.
Q. Fishing and hunting aren’t usually what people think of when it comes to pipeline resistance. Why is it important for protesters to engage with nature?
A. There are a lot of young people here; in fact, I’m one of the oldest people in camp. This intimate engagement with the surrounding ecosystems has helped a lot of them feel empowered and helped them find their voices. This resistance is not just about fighting an evil thing. It’s also building leaders, and building a model for understanding that we can live with the earth in a different way. Indigenous folks have been doing that for millennia — other folks just forgot.
Human beings aren’t going to solar-panel and wind-turbine our way out of the climate crisis. There is a lot to be said about upcycling and transitioning ourselves away from fossil fuels and into a green economy. A just transition is crucial. We can’t exist in the delicate balance of the earth’s ecosystems without recognizing the importance of mutuality and respect. Nurturing a reciprocal relationship with Mother Earth is foundational to creating a better world.
Q. A key argument from those who favor the pipeline is that Line 3 is creating jobs for struggling communities. What’s your response?
A. That argument is propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, which does not care about local economies. It doesn’t care about job creation. It cares about getting its product to market so it can pay its shareholders. Enbridge promised that 75 percent of the workers building Line 3 would be from nearby communities. In actuality, only about 33 percent of the workforce lives in Minnesota. If Line 3 is constructed, those jobs end when the project ends. Just like pipelines, they don’t have long-term viability.
I would love to see more investment in rural places so the people living there don’t have to destroy the world around them in order to survive. The only good-paying jobs available to many people involve mining precious metals or cutting down our forests. It’s all extraction. We need job training in modern, regenerative economies.
Q. This resistance effort seems to be led, in large part, by women and two-spirit people. Why do you think that is?
A. A number of prophecies have said this time would come about. We’ve been under a patriarchal system for quite some time, and look where we’ve ended up. There is a balancing occurring between the masculine and the feminine. Around the world, land defense and racial justice movements are being led by women and non-gender-conforming folks like two-spirit people.
[In Ojibwe mythology], Giniw is the golden eagle that lives between two worlds It reflects balance and fluidity. And as each generation has become a little more healed and inclusive, I’ve noticed an opening for nonbinary and two-spirit people to make their voices heard. From an Indigenous perspective, these people have masculine and feminine spirits inside of them. That balance is exactly what the world needs, and what this resistance effort needs.
Q. How can people support water defenders resisting Line 3?
A. The best thing you can do, if you’re able-bodied and have the means, is come stand with us or organize folks who can. If you can’t do that, hammer on the banks to divest from fossil fuels. The Stop the Money Pipeline campaign, of which Giniw Collective is a founding member, has resources to help. Alongside that, contact President Biden, climate advisor Gina McCarthy, and Jaime Pinkham at the Army Corps of Engineers, and pressure them to cancel Line 3.
Standing with life requires us to be strong and brave. We aren’t going to stop the climate crisis comfortably. People should educate themselves not only about the issue, but what we can do about it. Recognize that when we engage in personal sacrifice, we are sending an incredibly powerful statement, not just to the decision-makers, but to each other. We’re saying that we’re willing to stand with the earth, and to stand up for someone who hasn’t been born yet.
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