The Grenfell Tower public inquiry should lead to criminal prosecutions of organisations involved in the disaster, lawyers for the bereaved said. 

 They accused a “rogues gallery” of firms of being  “grossly negligent”, “fraudulent” and “reckless”.

Greed was a key motivator and private sector organisations involved in the refurbishment had shown “a callous indifference to anything – morality, honesty, life safety – that was not related to the bottom line of the business”, said Imran Khan KC.

Grenfell was “a human rights disaster, a systematic failure of state and private actors to protect the life, security and dignity of people” and that institutional racism “infected every aspect of the disaster”. Of the people who died in the fire, 85% were from ethnic minorities.

Arconic, the US-owned firm that made the highly combustible cladding panels, was first among those named by Stephanie Barwise KC, representing one group of survivors, in a “rogues gallery” as responsible for the speed of the fire’s growth and spread, followed by the architect Studio E, and fire engineer Exova.

Celotex, which made most of the combustible insulation used on the tower, and Kingspan, another manufacturer, “were fraudulent in their sales tactics and in their dealings with those who were charged with testing and certifying the products”, said Adrian Williamson KC. 

Studio E, Harley, the facade contractor, and Exova were “grossly negligent”, Michael Mansfield KC said.

Among those responsible for exacerbating the fire’s impact were the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its tenant management organisation. RBKC’s housing director rejected an annual inspection programme of door closers on grounds of cost despite the fire brigade requiring it. Several closers were missing on the night of the fire, assisting the spread of fire and deadly smoke.

“This conscious cost-benefit analysis with human life as the cost was not a legitimate way for a local authority to behave,” said Stephanie Barwise KC, representing one group of survivors.

While pleased the inquiry has uncovered truths about what caused the fire, many survivors are impatient that it has delayed criminal justice as the Metropolitan police have said criminal charges can only be considered after the inquiry report is published, expected later in 2023.

‘Rogues gallery’ of Grenfell firms should be prosecuted, lawyers say | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

 For decades, immigration statistics were based purely on a survey of people arriving and departing from UK air, sea and rail ports. Millions of passengers enter and leave the UK each year and picking migrants out of this enormous haystack has in part been a matter of luck. In the early 2010s, for example, these figures appeared to show an alarming situation where half of all international students were overstaying their visas. 

Under Theresa May, the Home Office launched a multi-pronged campaign to identify illegal immigrants, which included closing bogus colleges and introducing right-to-work and right-to-rent checks. New statistics in 2017 concluded the original overstaying estimate for students had simply been wrong, a fault of failing to count people properly – and a sign of how unreliable migration statistics were as a whole. There is no evidence of a major issue of non-EU students overstaying their entitlement to stay

But it was too late for one group that fell on the wrong side of the so-called hostile environment policies: people who had come legally from Commonwealth countries in the postwar era but couldn’t provide enough proof of this when questioned.

 These victims of the Windrush scandal suffered multiple injustices thanks to an imaginary foe in the numbers and a failure of government record-keeping.

From migration to railways, how bad data infiltrated British politics | Georgina Sturge | The Guardian

  As the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh takes place,  Egypt’s authoritarian regime stands accused of human rights abuses. 

 Sahar Aziz, a professor at Rutgers University in the US, says “the Egyptian government has given summit access only to local governmental NGOs that support the regime”. The Egyptian regime, he points out, has treated civil society as “enemies of the state”.  Hosting the event seems like a political cover for its self-defeating repression of civil society, writes Aziz, author of ‘The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom’.

 Amnesty International (AI) said the arrest of hundreds of people in the past two weeks alone, in connection to calls for protests during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), is a reminder of the grim reality of Egypt’s policy of mass arbitrary detention to crush dissent.

At least 151 detainees are currently being investigated by the Supreme State Security Prosecution, while hundreds more have faced shorter arrests and questioning.

“The arrest of hundreds of people merely because they were suspected of supporting the call for peaceful protests raises serious concerns over how the authorities will respond to people wishing to protest during COP27 – an essential feature of any UN climate conference”.

“The Egyptian authorities must allow peaceful demonstrators to gather freely and refrain from using unlawful force or arbitrary arrests to deter protests,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director. “World leaders arriving in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27 must not be fooled by Egypt’s public relations (PR) campaign. Away from the dazzling resort hotels, thousands of individuals including human rights defenders, journalists, peaceful protesters and members of the political opposition continue to be detained unjustly,”

“They must urge President Abdelfattah al-Sisi to release all those arbitrarily held for exercising their human rights. As a matter of urgency, this should include imprisoned activist Alaa Abdel Fattah…”

In the run up to the climate summit (6 November-18 November), Egyptian authorities released 766 prisoners following a decision by President al-Sisi to reactivate a Presidential Pardons Committee (PPC) in April, said Amnesty International.

Yet over the same period, Amnesty International has documented the arrest of double that number; 1,540 people who were questioned over the exercising of free speech and association.

In the past six months, Amnesty International has gathered data from dozens of lawyers who regularly attend interrogations and detention renewal hearings, reviewed court decisions and other official documents, and interviewed former prisoners as well as relatives of detainees. In recent weeks, security forces have arrested and detained hundreds of people in downtown Cairo and town squares across Egyptian cities over content on their phones — a tactic often employed by police ahead of expected protests. While most were released within hours or days, some were taken to prosecutors, while others remain subject to enforced disappearance according to lawyers

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Chief Programmes Officer at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance, explained that hosting a global conference such as COP 27 places a special obligation on Egypt’s government to respect and enable the exercise of fundamental freedoms as per international law.

“The right to protest peacefully and the right against arbitrary detention are essential elements of international law. In the present instance, Egypt’s government can easily order the release of arbitrarily imprisoned prisoners of conscience and allow protests to take place without impediments as a sign of good faith,”

 Human Rights Watch said Egyptian authorities escalated the use of abusive Emergency State Security Courts to prosecute peaceful activists and critics who joined thousands of dissidents already in the country’s congested prisons. And Courts issued death sentences in mass trials, adding to the sharply escalating number of executions.

Gadir Lavadenz, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice and Lidy Nacpil, Executive Director, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, write: climate conferences are increasingly becoming spaces for greenwashing of not just the big polluters’ crimes, but also of the regimes and presidencies hosting COP.

 The official COP app requires access to the user’s location, their email, and their photos. The wi-fi at COP is apparently restricting access to human rights organizations and some news organizations. According to the website of the Egyptian presidency for COP27, anyone wishing to organize protests in Sharm El-Sheikh must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance and show the organizers a COP27 badge. Protests will only be allowed between 10:00-17:00 in an area far from the conference and monitored by cameras. The authorities have also limited the content of protests to climate-related issues.

COP27: Egypt’s Repressive Regime Under Fire—While it Hosts a Key Climate Summit | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

The Hurun Rich list, which ranks China’s wealthiest people with a minimum net worth of 5 billion yuan ($690m), said only 1,305 people made the threshold this year, down 11% from last year. 

Their total wealth was $3.5tn, down 18% from last year.

The number of individuals with $10bn or more fell by 29, 

The number of billionaires, in US dollars, dropped by 239 this year

The global economic outlook has been heavily affected by the war in Ukraine and slowing economic growth in China, that has in turn been exacerbated by the country’s ultra-strict Covid policies and a prolonged property slump.

Zhong Shanshan, whose listed companies include water bottler Nongfu Spring and vaccine developer Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, took first place on the list for the second year running, with a fortune that grew 17% to $65bn.

The founder of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, Zhang Yiming, took second place, but saw his wealth fall 28% to $35bn due to a drop in ByteDance’s valuation. 

In third place was Zeng Yuqun, chairman of battery giant CATL.

Yang Huiyan, the businesswoman behind Country Garden Holdings, which like many other Chinese developers has been battling debt issues, saw her wealth fall by $15.7bn, the biggest drop on the 2022 list.

Tencent founder Pony Ma posted the second largest drop, falling $14.6bn amid sliding tech stock prices, to take fifth place on the list. 

Alibaba founder Jack Ma and his family tumbled four places to be ranked number nine.

A two-year regulatory crackdown has hit China’s biggest tech names such as Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings.

China’s super-rich see fortunes plunge as economy slows | China | The Guardian

 Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, was once home to 26 lakes that provided fishing, fresh water and protection from flooding, and a livelihood for thousands of people. Since the 1990s, however, 16 of the lakes have been filled in for boreys (gated communities) and residential housing, as Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, has pursued a development boom. The remaining 10 have been at least partly filled.

Over the past year, Boeng Tamok, the Cambodian capital’s largest remaining freshwater lake, has been parcelled off to government agencies, developers and investors, ranging from a Cambodian pop star to the military to the land minister’s daughter.  The 3,200-hectare (8,000-acre) lake is disappearing: every day, dozens of trucks dump big piles of sand into the water.

Hundreds of families who lived on the shore have already been evicted, leaving about 250 families – roughly 1,200 people – facing eviction, according to Phnom Penh urban land rights organisation Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT).

Boeng Tamok was among the last holdouts until the government claimed the area as “state public land” in 2016, paving the way for parts of it to become “state private land” – and ultimately tagged for private development.

 But the reclassification process is opaque, and 2,152 hectares, or about two-thirds of the lake, have been privatised without input from the public. Environmentalists, land rights groups and researchers have pointed to the negative consequences of lake-filling, including loss of livelihoods, animal habitats and increased risk of flooding.

“How can they define if the land is no longer used for the public interest, classify it as private state land and then give it to other groups or developers?” says Soeung Saran, director of STT, an NGO, “The public also wishes to know why specific groups of people can get this much or this many hectares of land while other groups are not able to, even though they have been living there for generations,” he says.

“I have to fight for this house, this land, this shelter for my children,” says Prak Sophea, 43, looking out at the water from her back veranda. “It’s unjust … why do we have no rights to live here?” 

She is is the de facto leader of about 100 residents – mostly women – fighting to keep their homes for as long as possible. The group delivers petitions to city hall, stages protests in public parks, marches along the lake’s shrinking shoreline and even faces off against bulldozers nearing their stretch of roadway, documenting their activities on Facebook Live. In 2020, she led a 50-strong group in a march towards the prime minister’s house. She and other protesters have relegated men to the back of the group, believing that police are less likely to treat women violently.

 Kong Toeur was accused of “obstruction and incitement” for allegedly blocking a road while protesting in May. It hasn’t stopped her: in a separate incident in mid-October, she discovered that authorities were about to fill in the patch of the lake where she and 10 others fished for daily food. She refused to budge from her fishing boat, stopping the trucks from dumping sand for three days. But she had to go home to sleep. When she returned, the fishing plot was gone.

 “You live in air conditioning and have a car,” she says of the officials and developers taking over Boeng Tamok, waving both hands in disgust. “I don’t even have an old bicycle. Why can the rich live here and the poor can’t?”

Officials have repeatedly defended the decision to carve up the lake, with Hun Sen calling critics “jealous” and a land ministry spokesperson arguing at a recent meeting that the lake’s development outweighs its preservation.

‘Why do we have no rights?’: Phnom Penh lake community make a last stand against developers | Global development | The Guardian

 Africa contributes less than 4% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and industry. However, it suffers disproportionately from the effects of climate change. Cyclones, floods, high temperatures, and droughts are killing and displacing millions of Africa.  Climate change is not letting up. Floods in Nigeria and South Africa, droughts in Kenya and Somalia, and food crises in the Horn of Africa have led to massive deaths and huge damage to homes and infrastructure that cannot be recovered. Who will pay for the climate damage?

Finance is at the heart of the COP27 negotiations. Africa is anxious for a solution to the issue of loss and damage and is pushing for finance to address loss and damage as a result of global warming. The special needs and special circumstances of Africa are a priority for the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) at COP27. The argument is that developed countries largely responsible for climate change should pay for the loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure, not to mention economic and cultural losses endured by developing countries that do not have the means to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Selam Kidane Abebe, Legal Advisor to the AGN, explained, that African countries were investing up to 9% of the GDP on adaptation, money that should be invested in their equally pressing and urgent development sectors.

In 2009, developed countries committed to giving $100 billion annually until 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions and cope with climate change. The money never came, and this target has been moved to 2023. 

Will it ever arrive?

“We hope so because it is the responsibility of developed countries to come forward with it,” Ambassador Wael Aboulmagd, Special Advisor to the COP27 President, told a media briefing. “In all reality $100 billion is not going to solve the problem; it is not even close to addressing a fraction of the climate needs… the numbers are in trillions. The overall financial landscape needs to be revisited,” Aboulmagd noted, convinced that developed countries must be nudged to find a workable solution in climate finance.

Climate change is hitting Africa hard, and extreme weather could cost the continent $50 billion annually by 2050, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)

 Rising fuel prices as a result of the Ukraine war have flipped the script. Some developed countries are increasing subsidies for fossil fuels, while others have fired up coal plants and natural gas lines to fill the energy gap. Even China has recently approved new coal mines. It has led to an argument that why not allow African countries to raise their emissions levels and develop their economies as developed countries did in industrializing? Should Africa – yearning to boost industrialization – abandon fossil fuel dependence and join the race for renewables?

“The speed of this energy transition should not be the same for every country around the world, many African countries are languishing in extreme poverty, and they make the case that if we are being told to keep that resource underground for the global good then the international community has to come up with a package to allow us otherwise to eliminate poverty and pursue our sustainable development goals,” said Aboulmagd. While there is a global case for emissions reduction targets and transition to renewables, developing countries cannot just be told to quit fossil fuels without financial support to go green. A tailored approach for every country, depending on its circumstances, is called for. “It is essentially telling people to stop having energy; by the way, Sub-Saharan Africa has less than 20 percent access to energy in their entire population. We need to make sure that when we make a demand of a country it is a reasonable one that they can reasonably be expected to do without almost devastating their development objectives and poverty reduction elimination objective,” he urged.

 Inger Andersen, United Nations Environment Programme, Executive Director, says, “Even if all commitments are implemented immediately, the reality is that climate change is going to be with us decades into the future. And the poorest keep paying the price for our inaction. It is, therefore, imperative that we put time, effort, resources, and planning into adaptation action.”

Africa: Will COP27 Deliver or be a Climate Forum of Empty Promises? | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Oil producers have cashed in on a period of geopolitical turmoil due to the conflict in Ukraine that has shaken up the global energy market and sent prices skyrocketing.

Aggregate net income for publicly listed oil and gas companies operating in the U.S. exceeded $200 billion for the second and third quarters of the year.

The $200 billion figure, which included super-majors, mid-sized integrated groups and smaller independent shale operators, marks the sector’s “most profitable six months on record and puts it on course for an unprecedented year,” the Financial Times wrote. “Operating cash flow will likely be record-breaking – or at least very close to it – by year’s end.” 

The bumper profits have been underpinned by soaring free cash flow, a key industry metric which is defined as cash flow from operations minus capital spending, the report explained. It also pointed out that benchmark Brent crude has averaged more than $105 a barrel over the second and third quarters – well above an average of around $70 per barrel over the past five years. Brent hit a high of almost $140 a barrel in early March.

Wall Street has reportedly demanded that companies prioritize shareholder returns over expensive drilling campaigns in pursuit of ever-greater output growth.

Capital spending by the world’s 50 biggest producers will be around $300 billion this year, roughly half of what it was in 2013, the last time prices were at a comparable level.

“Over the past five years, the industry has shifted from ‘drill, baby drill’ to focusing on what shareholders actually want, which is return of capital,” said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James. “Dividends and share buybacks have never been as generous as they are now.” 

Russia and Iran have rapidly expanded their energy ties amid the Western sanctions imposed on both nations.

Iran expects to sign a $40 billion agreement with Russian energy major Gazprom in December, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari said. The National Iranian Oil Company and Gazprom agreed in July to cooperate in the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields in Iran. The document also includes swaps in natural gas and oil products, the implementation of LNG projects, and the construction of gas pipelines.  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced that Moscow and Tehran may agree to a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be completed by the end of the year. Novak noted that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”

Energy Around: U.S. Oil Producers Enjoy Most Profitable Six Months Ever| Countercurrents

 138,000 residential and commercial properties in England and Wales are owned by offshore companies, with holdings in London alone worth a combined £55bn.  42,543 are in London, and concentrated in the most expensive areas. In the City of Westminster, which includes the central London areas of Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Belgravia, there are 9,066 offshore-owned residential properties, and a further 5,453 in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,

Rex McKenzie, the lead researcher and a lecturer at Kingston University, found, “The billionaires and millionaires who use offshore services to buy houses are part of a transnational wealth elite that includes the world’s oligarchs, super-rich, kleptocrats, tax dodgers and criminals.”

More than 138,000 properties in England and Wales owned by offshore companies | UK news | The Guardian

 27% of  Europeans describe their financial position as “precarious”, defined as “one unexpected expenditure could change everything

 More than half see a serious risk it will become so over the coming months. They said they felt they faced a very or somewhat significant risk of falling into precariousness over the coming months – with one in five (17%) assessing the possibility as very high. Italians and Greeks were the most worried, with 70% and 68% respectively very or somewhat concerned. About 47% of respondents in Britain said they felt the risk of precariousness was significant, and 42% of those in France.

 80% of respondents said they had already been forced to make significant compromises, including cutting down on travel (62%) or heating (47%), borrowing from friends or family (42%), finding a second job (40%) and skipping a meal (29%).

More than half (54%) of more than 6,000 people across France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and the UK told the pollster Ipsos their purchasing power had fallen over the past three years – mostly due to higher food, fuel, heating and rent bills.

In Greece, 68% of respondents said their spending power had fallen “a lot” or “somewhat” since 2019, followed by 63% in France, 57% in Italy, 54% in Germany, 48% in Britain and 38% in Poland.

Across the six countries, 64% said they were now “often” or “sometimes” unable to decide what to cut next as they had already cut what they could, 28% said they were overdrawn by mid-month, and 27% often or sometimes feared losing their home.

72% of parents across the six countries said they had cut back on their own leisure activities (76%), hair and beauty treatments (72%) and clothes budget (72%) in order to preserve their children’s quality of life. Almost half of parents across the six countries also said they regularly cut back on their own food to feed their children, while 66% said they had been forced to rein in their children’s activities, including outings and holidays.

 49% – including 50% in the UK – of parents said they were worried about not being able to meet their children’s needs in future, while 33% said they were already unable to ensure their children’s diet was as varied as they would like.

One in four Europeans say their financial position is ‘precarious’ | Cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 Despite living on the Italian peninsula since the 14th century, Romani people have historically been seen as outsiders in Italian society. That is why they, alongside Jews, were targeted by the fascist state from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1926, just four years after coming to power, Benito Mussolini’s fascist government issued an order to expel all “foreign Gypsies” and “cleanse the country of all Gypsy caravans”. Those who remained were regularly harassed and arrested. In 1940, the internment of Roma and Sinti in Italian concentration camps began where many were either murdered, deported to Nazi death camps, or died of hunger or poor conditions.

Romani people continue to be viewed with suspicion and hatred. When Roma from the Balkans began arriving in Italy in the 1960s, the local authorities started putting them in so-called “nomad camps” based on the racist assumption that Romani people were vagrants. But the Yugoslav Roma were coming from a sedentary lifestyle, never having been nomadic in their lives. These policies persisted. Negative perceptions that Roma are criminals and illegal immigrants grew.

 In the 2000s, this allowed populist politicians like Berlusconi to politicise the issue and use it for electoral gain. Berlusconi subjected the Roma to police intimidation, illegal detentions and deportations. He justified the fingerprinting of Romani children, ethnic censuses of Romani people, and deployment of troops to crack down on so-called “Gypsy criminality”.  Segregated “nomad camps” became the de facto policy of choice for provincial authorities to accommodate Roma who could not be deported under a 2007 law, allowing expulsions of people deemed to “threaten” public safety. In later years, after the camps were neglected and left without access to basic services, the authorities started forcefully evicting Romani families from them. The Italian government started demolishing homes and turning families out onto the street without providing them with alternative accommodation. Berlusconi’s policies became a template for state violence against the Roma. Police raids and intimidation, the systematic use of punitive forced evictions and surveillance tactics against the Roma have continued under successive governments. Berlusconi’s anti-Roma campaign also paved the way for the far-right in mainstream Italian politics.

Salvini became deputy prime minister and interior minister and within a month of taking office, he called for a census of the Roma to facilitate their deportation, noting that “unfortunately” those holding Italian citizenship could not be deported. He also threatened to remove Romani children from their families if they were not sent to school. Salvini incited anti-Roma actions throughout Italy. Far-right groups such as Forza Nuova and Casa Pound organised anti-Roma marches and engaged in violent hate crimes against Romani communities.

Italy’s Roma fear what comes next with the election of Meloni who has a history of racist anti-Roma rhetoric.

Under Meloni, the plight of Italy’s Roma will only get worse | Opinions | Al Jazeera