Two new talks have been uploaded to the Party website:

The Ideas of Rutger Bregman

Paul Bennett, 15th July 2022

Human Nature

Richard Field, 22nd July 2022

 Sri Lanka’s food inflation soars to a staggering 80 percent in June 2022.

An alarming 6.3 million people (about 3 in 10 households) are now food insecure.   Of this number, 66,000 people are severely food insecure

The majority of households (61 percent) are regularly using food-based coping strategies such as eating less preferred, less nutritious food and cutting back on food portions. 

About 6.7 million people are not consuming adequate diets and 5.3 million people are reducing the number of meals eaten.

While urban households are depleting savings to cope for now, rural populations are already turning to credit in order to purchase food and other essentials.

An alarming increase in high-risk child protection incidents such as sexual assault, physical abuse, and child negligence have been reported in at least four districts, namely: Moneragala, Nuwara Eliya, Batticoloa and Mullaitivu. 

WFP Sri Lanka Country Brief, June 2022 – Sri Lanka | ReliefWeb

Palestinian authorities are systematically mistreating and torturing Palestinians in detention, including critics and opponents, Human Rights Watch said today in a parallel report submitted jointly to the United Nations Committee Against Torture with the Palestinian rights group Lawyers for Justice. 

More than a year after the PA beat to death prominent activist and critic Nizar Banat while he was in custody and violently dispersed people demanding justice for his death, including rounding up scores for peaceful protesting, no one has been held to account. Prosecutors brought charges against 14 accused security officers, but critics say the authorities are moving too slowly and are biased, including in a June 21 decision by military prosecutors to release the accused for 12 days.

“More than a year after beating to death Nizar Banat, the Palestinian Authority continues to arrest and torture critics and opponents,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “Systematic abuse by the PA and Hamas forms a critical part of the repression of the Palestinian people.”

In the months that followed Banat’s death, PA police forces violently dispersed popular protests demanding justice and rounded up scores of people for peacefully protesting.

The death in custody of Banat and rounding up of demonstrators in the weeks that followed reflects the Palestinian authorities’ systematic practice of arbitrary arrest and torture with impunity, Human Rights Watch said. PA and Hamas security forces routinely taunt and threaten detainees, use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions, as Human Rights Watch and Lawyers for Justice lay out in their parallel report.  

Palestinian authorities have consistently failed to hold security forces accountable, as documented in the parallel report.

In 2021, the ICHR received 252 complaints of torture and ill-treatment and 279 of arbitrary arrest against PA authorities in the West Bank and 193 complaints of torture and ill-treatment and 97 of arbitrary arrest against Hamas authorities in Gaza. Hamas authorities have also executed 28 people in Gaza since seizing political control in June 2007, in a context in which  due process violations, coercion, and torture are prevalent, and have summarily executed scores of other people without any judicial process, often on accusations of collaboration with Israel.

Palestinian authorities should abide by the international human rights treaties they have acceded to and end grave abuses and endemic impunity by holding those responsible to account.

The parallel Human Rights Watch and Lawyers for Justice report also covers mistreatment and torture by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and impunity for these abuses. Despite more than 1,300 complaints of torture filed with Israel’s Justice Ministry since 2001 stemming from acts allegedly carried out by Israeli authorities in Israel or the West Bank, including painful shackling, sleep deprivation, and exposure to extreme temperatures, these complaints have only resulted in two criminal investigations and no indictments over the past 20 years, according to the Israeli rights group Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. As part of its duties under the Convention Against Torture to “prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction,” the State of Palestine should cease all security coordination with the Israeli army that contributes to facilitating torture and other grave abuses, and stop handing over Palestinians, as long as there remains a real risk of torture and other prohibited ill-treatment for those handed over, Human Rights Watch said.

“Many governments say they want to support the rule of law in Palestine and yet year after year continue to fund police forces that actively undermine it,” Shakir said. “Purported concerns over the fragility of Palestinian institutions and other tired excuses should no longer stand in the way. Donor governments should cut ties to abusive Palestinian police and security forces and center their Palestine and Israel policies on human rights.”

Palestine: Impunity for Arbitrary Arrests, Torture | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)

 The German economy is facing a shortage of workers. Immigration reform may be on the table to attract more foreign labour. Germany loses around 350,000 working-age people every year as the Baby Boomer generation, those born in the years immediately following World War Two, retires, and not enough younger people are available to fill their positions. The labor market will have seven million fewer workers by 2035, according to labor experts.

Around 56% of companies report being short-staffed, according to a survey from the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry. Those polled said they considered the shortage one of the biggest risks they face.

Germany’s Federal Employment Agency has noted bottlenecks in 148 job areas, with another 122 at risk. It can take eight months for an elderly care home to fill a position. For construction companies, the wait is six months. Nationwide, there are more than 1.7 million open jobs.

“This is no longer just a problem in specialist fields, but a general staffing problem,” Markus Winter, the director of the temp agency, IDS,  said. Unskilled labor also has openings, he added, “areas that are really essential for industry, which without them nothing happens…Companies are already hiring untrained workers and then helping them learn on the job…”

Germany on the hunt for labor | Germany | News and in-depth reporting from Berlin and beyond | DW | 26.07.2022

Whereas Germany could once rely on workers from other countries in the European Union to compensate for domestic shortages,  said Herbert Brücker, a professor at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, said that source is starting to dry up.

“Incomes in other EU countries are starting to pick up, and they are also seeing demographic changes,” he said. “Basically, the party is over.” 

A law passed in 2020 was supposed to encourage the 400,000 foreign workers Germany needs every year to come and stay in Germany. In its first year, it only attracted 30,000, which Brücker called a “disappointment.”

 About 2.4 million households – nearly half of all claimants on universal credit – have on average £62 docked each month to repay benefit advances, tax credit overpayments and debts owed to landlords and utility companies.

With energy and food prices soaring and benefit levels pegged way below inflation, the deductions often leave struggling households without enough money to afford food or pay their bills, forcing some claimants to turn to food banks to survive.

The Commons cross-party work and pensions select committee urged ministers to give households extra “breathing space” by suspending all benefit deductions until inflation dropped to a manageable level or benefits were increased to accurately reflect living costs.

The committee noted that while the government has urged creditors to accept reduced monthly repayments from households battling the cost of living crisis, it “isn’t following its own advice” when it comes to deductions levied as a result of government policy rather than individuals’ behaviour. The bulk of benefit deductions are for advance payments made to new universal credit claimants, introduced to help tide them over the built-in five-week wait for a first payment. They are interest-free but must be repaid from future benefit payments.

The benefits uprating mechanism, which set benefit increases in April using inflation estimates from the previous September, had effectively caused a real-terms fall in income for low-income families and was “not fit for purpose”, the MPs’ report said.

Stephen Timms, Labour chair of the committee, said: “Deductions by [the] DWP from benefits are contributing to the hardship, and the government should give those struggling some much-needed breathing space by following its own advice to other creditors and pausing repayments until the threat of inflation recedes.” He continued, “A properly functioning social security safety net should be agile enough to respond to worsening economic conditions, but the high levels of inflation have laid bare the dysfunctional nature of parts of the system – not least that any increase in benefits is already seven months out of date when it takes effect.”

The report called for an urgent review of the benefit cap, which has been frozen at the same level since 2016, despite a statutory requirement to do so every five years. The committee noted that capped families did not even receive the 3.1% below-inflation benefits increase.

 Cuts introduced from 2010 meant that UK social security spending would be about £34bn lower next year than it was in 2010, the committee noted.

Benefit deductions should be stopped until inflation falls, say MPs | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 Around half of U.S. seniors living alone can’t afford their basic necessities.

Fifty-four percent of older U.S. women who live on their own and 45% of older men in the same situation are either impoverished by federal standards or cannot cover their necessary expenses, according to the Elder Index, a project of the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 

5M older women living alone, 2M older men living alone, and more than 2M older couples having incomes that made them economically insecure

“…The cost of living is just too high for older Americans, and their earned benefits aren’t keeping pace with these costs,” the Alliance for Retired Americans tweeted.

 Ramsey Alwin, president and chief executive of the National Council on Aging, explained, “There’s a myth that Social Security and Medicare miraculously take care of all of people’s needs in older age. The reality is they don’t, and far too many people are one crisis away from economic insecurity.”

Around Half of US Seniors Living Alone Can’t Afford Basic Expenses: Study (commondreams.org)

Auto Workers (UAW) members made history last November, winning direct elections of national officers (“one member, one vote”) in a membership referendum. The road to the referendum was paved with corruption: officials embezzling and misusing funds and taking bribes from an employer. Many auto workers are frustrated at years of contract concessions that have allowed automakers to build a two-tier workforce, with the number of temporary and lower-paid workers ballooning.

Now delegates are headed to a Constitutional Convention where candidates will be nominated for the top slots. The whole process will put to the test whether reformers can break the iron grip of the Administration Caucus, the one party that has ruled the union for 70 years.

The election will cover 14 positions: president, secretary-treasurer, three vice presidents (traditionally assigned to each of the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), plus nine regional directors.

Neil Barofsky, the federal monitor assigned to clean up the scandal-ridden Auto Workers, issued his third report on the state of anti-corruption reform among UAW leadership on July 19, days before the union’s convention.

The report details the monitor’s extreme frustration with union officials’ stonewalling over many months, stating that “the Union’s cooperativeness veered sharply in the wrong direction.”

Top officers “repeatedly failed to even respond to the Monitor’s requests for interviews and documents” and concealed evidence of a high official’s “mishandling of a sum of cash.”

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) has put forward a platform for delegate candidates with the motto, “No Corruption. No Tiers. No Concessions!” Dozens of UAWD members have been elected delegates by their locals on this platform. 

UAW Delegates Head to Convention and Prepare for First Direct Elections | Labor Notes

 Millions of people will be plunged into “unmanageable” debt this winter unless the government comes up with more support for those struggling to pay their energy bills, the business and energy select committee have warned.

In a report focusing on how to ease punishing energy costs now, while guarding against future crises, said a £15bn package of support for bill payers, announced in May, had already been rendered obsolete by soaring energy prices, a driving force behind a 40-year-high 9.4% inflation rate that has been eroding household finances.

 Bills are now forecast to reach £3,244 when the next price cap takes effect in October. Bills will have risen by nearly £2,000 within a year, compared with the £1,200 that Sunak’s measures will make available to only the most vulnerable households.

Energy bills will push millions into unmanageable debt, MPs warn | Energy industry | The Guardian

 The highest deforestation rates since 2009. The third most active hurricane season on record. Extreme rainfall, floods, and landslides displaced tens of thousands of people. Rising sea levels. Glaciers in Peru lost more than half their size. 2021 was a challenging year for Latin America and the Caribbean. That’s according to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021 report 

 the second most disaster-prone region in the world,

 It states that “sea levels in the region continued to rise in 2021 at a faster rate than globally.

The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season brought 21 named storms that included seven hurricanes and was the sixth consecutive above-average season.

 extreme rainfall led to tens of thousands of homes being destroyed or damaged and hundreds of thousands of people displaced

The record-setting drought in Chile continued in 2021, marking the 13th consecutive year of the “Central Chile Mega-drought,” which placed the country at the center of the region’s water crisis.

Climate Change Impacts Threaten Latin America and the Caribbean | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 A fifth of UK households now have an average shortfall of £60 a week between what they earn and what they need to cover essentials such as energy bills, rent, transport and food, as the rising cost of living leaves people with the lowest amount of spare cash in almost five years.

Living costs, up 11% year on year in June, led to a record 18% drop in average household disposable income of £175.80 a month.

The average household had £200 a week left after paying tax and essential bills last month – a figure that has fallen for eight consecutive months.

The squeeze on cash is leading people to cut back on non-essentials.

Those on the lowest incomes were hardest hit. Those in north-east England and Northern Ireland fared worst.

Mark Nalder, head of payments at Nationwide building society, said: “Following a peak in spending during May, our data suggests households have started to cut back across the board and where they can. This is happening as we enter the summer period where customers will want to enjoy themselves, so it will be interesting to see how these often conflicting interests are balanced.

“As we head into the holiday season, we expect budgeting to continue being a feature as the nation prepares for even higher costs with inflation continuing to climb and the energy price cap rising again this autumn.”

Fifth of UK households now have ‘negative disposable income’ | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian