Avanti West Coast, the worst-performing rail operator in Britain, which has severely cut back its services, is revealed to have paid out £11.5m in shareholder dividends last year.

Avanti, jointly owned by FirstGroup and Italian rail operator Trenitalia, over the same period, was paid a franchise subsidy of £725m to help cope with the impact of the pandemic.

The number of trains running from London Euston to Manchester has fallen from three an hour to just one. The operator was second bottom in the performance table for late trains in 2020-21 and was bottom in 2021-22. It has received more than 50,000 complaints over the last two years, the highest number of any operator.

Ministers were accused last week of rewarding Avanti for failure after it was paid £17m in performance and management fees in 2020-21, including about £4m in payments for “operational performance”, “customer experience” and “acting as a good and efficient operator”.

Avanti paid shareholders £11.5m despite ‘abysmal’ service for rail users | Rail transport | The Guardian

 People can’t seem to catch a break. The top-down assault on their rights is relentless and will continue next year and the year after. The ruling class is unable and unwilling to solve any problems but they have many plans for arrangements that keep the majority of people marginalized and disempowered. 

Relying on the rich and their politicians will not advance the interests of working people and the general interests of society one iota. It will not give rise to a human-centered economy. It will not bring about security, stability, prosperity, and peace for all. Only the people themselves have an objective interest in opening the path of progress to society and must rely on themselves to do so. Constantly begging the politicians of the rich for a few crumbs here and there is the old way of doing things. It doesn’t work. It is time to build a new world where the people occupy center-stage and conduct all the affairs of society on a conscious human basis.

U.S. Conditions

“Public perception of the economy is the lowest since 2008.”

“Food prices rise fastest rate since 1970s.”

“Egg prices in US jump 47% as food inflation hits highs not seen since 1979.”

“US natural gas prices spike to 14-year high.”

“Up 43% over last decade, water rates rising faster than other household utility bills.”

“More Americans are going hungry, and it costs more to feed them.”

“98 Million in US skipped treatment or cut back on essentials to pay for healthcare this year.”

“Workers are picking up extra jobs just to pay for gas and food. Prices are rising faster than wages, and more Americans than ever are working two full-time jobs simultaneously.”

“‘I can’t even afford groceries.’ HALF of U.S. food banks report growing numbers of households needing handouts — Biden’s plan to end hunger by 2030 comes unstuck as prices of eggs, butter and other basics soar. More than 38 million people in the U.S. do not get enough food to live an active, healthy life, the Department of Agriculture says.”

“Around half of older Americans can’t afford essential expenses: report.”

“As many as 125,000 active-duty service members and their families experience food insecurity in the United States.”

“The value of the federal minimum wage is at its lowest point in 66 years.”

“54 billion for Ukraine while in the U.S. millions suffer in poverty.”

“Two-thirds of low-wage firms that cut worker pay in 2021 spent billions on stock buybacks.”

“Jobless claims at 8-month high as layoffs edge higher.”

“Layoffs are in the works at half of companies, PwC survey shows.”

“Walmart lays off corporate employees [about 200] after slashing forecast.”

“Peloton to slash 780 jobs and hike prices in push to turn profit.”

“Amazon’s 100,000 job cuts reflect industry-wide adjustments to economic uncertainty.”

“Small business owner confidence hits new low, survey says.”

“Over $540M Liquidated as Bitcoin, Ethereum Plummet.”

A June 2022 report from The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) found that, “The average gap between CEO and median worker pay in our sample jumped to 670-to1, up from 604-to-1 in 2020. Forty-nine firms had ratios above 1,000-to-1.” IPS examined compensation at 300 corporations.

“The labor force participation—the proportion of the population over the age of 16 in work or seeking work—is continuing to fall. It was 62.1 percent in July [2022], down from 62.4 percent in March [2022]. Before the onset of the pandemic, it was 63.4 percent.”

“Americans loaded up on $40 billion more in debt in June [2022], Fed says.”

“Credit-card debt is soaring. Accounts for about $890 billion of Americans’ staggering $16 trillion in household debt.”

“Data shows number of low-income audits could triple as IRS grows.”

“”We’re Witnessing A Housing Recession”: Existing Home Sales Crater 20% In July As Affordability Collapses.”

“Rising housing costs have made housing largely inaccessible and unaffordable to most Americans, but have acutely impacted communities of color and low- to moderate-income families over the past several decades.”

“Buying a home in America is now the LEAST affordable it’s been in 33 years as average mortgage payments rose to $1,944 in June compared to $1,297 in January due to higher rates and record home prices.”

“Homebuyer Competition Falls to Lowest Level Since Early Months of Pandemic.”

“Americans born between 1981 and 1996, the most educated and most diverse generation in U.S. history, were once considered harbingers of economic progress and promise. But now, even well into their careers, most of them lag behind the financial and familial strides of previous generations.”

Nearly 75% of New York City (NYC) schools will experience big funding cuts in the coming weeks (Fall 2022). The NYC school system is the largest public school system in the country with about 1.1 million students and roughly 80,000 teachers.

“When kids go back to school this fall, pandemic-era free lunch will be gone. Debt incurred by US families who can’t pay lunch fees runs up $262 million a year.”

“‘Never seen it this bad’: America faces catastrophic teacher shortage.”

“A spate of horrific attacks in New York has people fearful of returning to work.”

“Starbucks must rehire 7 Memphis employees who supported a union, a judge says.”

International Conditions

“Low growth, high inflation: World faces increasingly challenging global environment.”

“There is a global debt crisis coming – and it won’t stop at Sri Lanka.”

“Growing recessionary trends in major economies.”

“IMF warns of ‘gloomy outlook’ for global economy, slashing growth estimates.”

“‘Grotesque greed’: UN chief Guterres slams oil and gas companies.”

“Shipping firm Maersk, a barometer for global trade, warns of weak demand and warehouses filling up.”

“The U.S. was the worst-performing of the major Group of Seven economies in the second quarter, the latest data show.”

“A winter energy reckoning looms for the west.”

“Railway workers in France go on strike [July 2022] demanding higher wages.”

“UK economy shrinks in 2nd quarter [2022], sharpening recession fear.”

“UK inflation rate rises to 40-year high of 10.1%.”

“UK is facing Dickens-style poverty, ex-PM warns.”

“Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths gripping Britain is only tip of the iceberg.”

“Millions will join breadline in recession-hit UK, NIESR warn.”

“UK energy bills to hit £4,200 in January [2023].”

“Bank of England launches biggest interest rate hike in 27 years, predicts lengthy recession.”

“Germany must cut gas use by 20% to avoid winter rationing, regulator says.”

“Norway’s central bank hikes rates by 50 basis points in bid to tackle surging inflation.”

“Turkey shocks markets with rate cut despite inflation near 80%.”

“Saudi Aramco profit surges 90% in second quarter amid energy price boom.”

“Tunisia: Unemployed graduates demand the Authority finds solution to their unemployment.”

“Zambia is a desperately hungry poor country.”

“More than 1,200 people are detained indefinitely in Australia with no criminal conviction.”

“New Zealand’s central bank raised interest rates on 17 August – a seventh hike in row. And it signaled that further increases will follow.”

“Japan wants young people to drink more alcohol.”

“Soaring unemployment in Myanmar follows junta rollback of labor rights.”

“Argentina hikes rate to 69.5% as inflation surges to 30-year high.”

“Bank of Mexico raises interest rates to record 8.5 percent.”

“Chile economy on brink of recession amid rampant inflation.”

 Bangladesh is one of the world’s largest tea producers, exporting tea to more than 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and France. Nearly 150,000 people work at more than 200 Bangladeshi tea plantations, mostly located in the Sylhet region in northern Bangladesh.

But tea pickers, most of whom are female, work long hours and earn some of the lowest wages in the country. Most tea workers are low-caste Hindus, the descendants of labourers brought to the plantations by colonial-era British planters in the 19th century. They say little has changed for tea workers over the generations. Tea garden workers are among the lowest paid in the country.

Researchers say tea workers – who live in some of the country’s remotest areas – have been systematically exploited by the industry for decades. The United Nations says they are one of the most marginalised groups in the country, with limited access to basic facilities and education.

“Tea workers are like modern-day slaves,” said Philip Gain, director of the Society for Environment and Human Development research group. “The plantation owners have hijacked the minimum wage authorities and kept the wages some of the lowest in the world.”

The tea workers have been holding a strike for nearly two weeks to demand raise in daily wages amid rising inflation. They say the current daily wage – 120 taka (about $1.25) – was barely enough to buy food, let alone other necessities such as health and education. The workers’ union is demanding a 150 percent (300 taka or $3.15 a day) rise in their daily wages. 

“No tea worker will pluck tea leaves or work in the leaf processing plants as long as the authority doesn’t pay heed to our demands,” said Sitaram Bin, a committee member of the Bangladesh Tea Workers’ Union.

“Nowadays, we can’t even afford coarse rice for our family with this amount,” Anjana Bhuyian, a tea plucker, explained. “A wage of one day can’t buy a litre of edible oil. How can we then even think about our nutrition, medication, or children’s education?”

Thousands hit the streets after fuel prices were hiked by more than 50 percent two weeks ago.  Protesters blocked the Sylhet-Dhaka highway as they escalated the strike.

Luchee Kandu and her husband work on a plantation. 

“We hardly get any type of facilities, don’t have enough money for our children’s education, we barely get 3kg flour as ration once a week. Some days we don’t even get to eat, which is why we are protesting,” Kundu pointed out in Srimongal, known as Bangladesh’s tea capital.

Why are Bangladesh tea garden workers protesting? | Workers’ Rights News | Al Jazeera

Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (IWCA) in 1978to protect American Nativ e children from forced removal from their families, tribes, and culture and preserve tribal sovereignty.

It addressed the nationwide problem of state child welfare agencies taking Native children from their families and placing them in non-Native homes, in an attempt to force Native children to assimilate and adopt white cultural norms. Before ICWA, public and private agencies were removing 25 to 35 percent of Native American/Alaska Native children from their homes, and 85 percent of those children were placed in non-Native households.

Beginning in the early 1800s, the architects of the Federal Indian Boarding School Program designed the program to erase the Indigenous identities of Native people. The government snatched children as young as four years old from their families and sent them to militarized boarding school institutions designed to destroy their Native identities and culture, often hundreds of miles away from their tribal homelands. Any markers of their Indigeneity — language, clothing, traditional hairstyles, and even their names — were prohibited in these institutions. Indian boarding schools were places where Native youth were stripped of their culture: many children died at these schools from outright neglect, malnutrition, untreated illness, and as a result of physical violence carried out against them.

In 1958, the Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Indian Adoption Project. The project’s explicit goal was to assimilate Native children into white culture through adoption and the intentional destruction of Indigenous family units and tribal communities. During this era and continuing today, practices rooted in ethnocentric stereotypes operating under the guise of “child protection” resulted in the baseless separation of thousands of Native children from their families and homelands.

This November, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Brackeen v. Haaland, a case that challenges the constitutionality of ICWA. If the Supreme Court rules ICWA unconstitutional, it could have far-reaching consequences for Native children, families and tribes while simultaneously putting the existence of tribes in jeopardy. Brackeen v. Haaland is the largest threat to Native children, families, and tribes before the Supreme Court in our lifetimes. If ICWA is overturned, states would once again be allowed to tear Native children from their families, tribes, and culture while simultaneously threatening tribes’ very existence. The legal arguments made by the plaintiffs challenging ICWA in Brackeen undermine key tenets of federal Indian law, and threaten many other laws upholding tribal sovereignty. The outcome of Brackeen v. Haaland could put centuries-long legal precedent upholding tribal sovereignty — including tribes’ right and ability to preserve their unique cultural identities, raise their own children and govern themselves — in jeopardy.

Native Families’ Right to Stay Together is at Stake at the Supreme Court | News & Commentary | American Civil Liberties Union (aclu.org)

 On August 16, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law. Some progressives have been complaining that Manchin watered the bill down and that Sinema watered it down even more.

Asset manager Steven Rattner, who served as counselor to the secretary of the treasury under President Barack Obama argues that it essentially leaves the United States’ super-rich unscathed.

The Inflation Reduction Act, Rattner notes, contains “no increase in the egregiously low corporate income tax rate, no reversal in overly generous deductions for businesses” and “no rise in income tax or capital gains rates paid by the wealthy.”

“Wealthy individuals escaped essentially unaffected by the new legislation,” Rattner observes. “Ms. Sinema even objected to closing the indefensible carried interest loophole, through which many private equity executives and some hedge fund managers pay only a 23.8 percent tax rate on gains achieved on their share of investors’ capital…. On the expenditure side of the ledger, we lost the chance to enact many other worthy initiatives, like continuation of the expanded child tax credit; tuition-free community college; parental leave and an augmented earned-income tax credit.”

 Rattner laments. “It was a missed opportunity of extraordinary scale.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to meet with representatives from drug manufacturers, pharmacies, and state health departments on August 30 to “map out” how to shift the bill for coronavirus jabs and therapeutics from the federal government to individuals, according to The Wall Street Journal. It reported, “Switching vaccine purchasing to the commercial market would mean that each insurer and pharmacy benefit manager would be negotiating with drug manufacturers and prices would likely be higher than what the federal government has paid, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Insurers would have to start paying for the vaccines, he said, likely raising premiums.”

“We’ve known at some point we’d need to move over into the commercial market, and we’re approaching that time now,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary at HHS for preparedness and response. 

Tahir Amin, an intellectual property lawyer and co-executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), described the Biden administration’s plan as a “recipe for disaster, unless you are a pharmaceutical company or other profit center in the healthcare market.”

How one senator ensured the wealthy would be ‘essentially unaffected’ by spending bill: ex-treasury adviser – Alternet.org

‘Terrible Idea’: Biden Preparing to Shift Costs of Covid Treatments, Vaccines to Patients (commondreams.org)

The climate measure act Biden signed bypasses the administration’s concerns about emissions and guarantees new drilling opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

It boosts oil and gas interests by mandating leasing of vast areas of public lands and off the nation’s coasts. The law reinstates within 30 days the 2,700-square miles (6,950-square kilometers) of Gulf leases that had been withheld. It ensures companies like Chevron will have the chance to expand And it locks renewables and fossil fuels together. Chevron executives have  predicted continued growth in the Gulf and tied that directly to being able “to lease and acquire additional acreage.”

If the Biden administration wants solar and wind on public lands, it must offer new oil and gas leases first. The measure’s critics say that’s holding renewables hostage unless the fossil fuel industry gets its way. As a result, U.S. oil and gas production and emissions from burning fuels could keep growing.

 The leasing provisions mark a failure in efforts by environmentalists and social justice advocates to impose a nationwide leasing ban. The movement’s high point came when Biden followed campaign pledges to end new drilling on federal lands with an order his first week in office suspending lease sales.

Explained Andrew Gillick with Enverus, an energy analytics company whose data is used by industry and government agencies, “The folks that think oil and gas will be gone in 10 years may not be thinking through what this means.” The result would be more planet-warming carbon dioxide — up to 110 million tons (100 million metric tons) annually.

The increase in oil and gas emissions could be as much as 77 million to 110 million tons (70 to 100 million metric tons) of additional carbon dioxide annually by 2030 from new leasing, according to economist Brian Prest with the research group Resources for the Future.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said that the government was “barreling full-steam ahead” without adequately considering global emission increases.

There’s uncertainty about how quickly other pieces of the bill could bring emission cuts. Wind and solar construction could run into the supply chain problems hindering many economic sectors. And technology to capture and store carbon dioxide is still being refined and is in limited use.

In Louisiana’s St. James Parish, where petrochemical plants dominate the landscape, environmental justice activist Sharon Lavigne said the legislation will allow pollution from fossil fuels to keep harming her community.

“That’s just like saying they’re going to continue to poison us, going to continue to cause us cancer,” said Lavigne.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-technology-science-oil-and-gas-industry-climate-environment-28df40ad9ebb33f4447815b6593673b3

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that there was “still a long way to go” in resolving the global food crisis. He was on a visit to the Ukrainian port of Odesa, where grain exports are moving after a months-long blockade. Guterres also spoke of the need for unimpeded access to Russian food and fertilizers, which are subject to export delays because of sanctions.

“It is time for massive and generous support so developing countries can purchase the food from this and other ports — and people can buy it,” Guterres said.

 The number of people at risk of starvation in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa has increased to 22 million, the UN’s world food programme (WFP) says.

“This number will continue to climb, and the severity of hunger will deepen if the next rainy season … fails and the most vulnerable people do not receive humanitarian relief,” WFP said in a statement. “Needs will remain high into 2023 and famine is now a serious risk, particularly in Somalia”, where nearly half the population of 15 million is seriously hungry.

Years of insufficient rainfall across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have caused the worst drought in 40 years and conditions akin to famine in the hardest-hit areas, aid groups say.

Four failed rainy seasons has killed millions of livestock, destroyed crops and forced 1.1 million people from their homes in search of food and water.

“The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa,” the WFP executive director, David Beasley, said on Friday. “There is still no end in sight to this drought crisis, so we must get the resources needed to save lives and stop people plunging into catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation.”

At the start of 2022, WFP warned that 13 million people across the three countries faced starvation, and appealed for donors to open their purses at a time of great need. But funds were slow in coming, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine among other crises drawing attention from the disaster in the Horn, humanitarian workers said.

Horn of Africa drought places 22 million people at risk of starvation, says UN | Africa | The Guardian

 India does not have a national policy or a law to deal with refugees. The country is, however, not a signatory to international laws such as the 1951 UN Convention and the 1967 Protocol, which secure the rights of refugees to seek asylum and protect them from being sent back to life-threatening places. Refugees entering the country without a visa are treated as illegal immigrants under the Foreigners Act or the Indian Passport Act. An absence of documents can mean that refugees coming to India have no access to basic facilities like healthcare, education and employment.

In 2019, the Modi government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which offers amnesty and expedites the path to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim “illegal immigrants” from the neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were provided an allowance by the state government and allowed to seek jobs. India has for years supported the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees who followed him into exile and sought asylum in the country.

Hours after Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s tweet that there are plans to provide housing and security to the Rohingya community in the capital, New Delhi, the government said the refugees would be held in detention centres until they were deported.

According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 40,000 Rohingyas are in India – at least 20,000 of them are registered with the UN Human Rights Commission.

 “…Despite unprecedented scenes on our screens this summer of wildfires obliterating entire streets in English villages, there are still those who refuse to accept that global heating is a thing. These people call themselves climate skeptics, but they are deniers pure and simple, and almost invariably of the libertarian hard right. Climate breakdown offends their worldview, as they see it as a threat to the free-market, capitalist framework that they worship as a god. Indeed, it is a threat to capitalism, and capitalism will not tackle the climate emergency, not survive it. No system predicated on greed and short-term profit, rather than the greater good, will prevail against the storm that is coming, and, ultimately, the deniers will reap the whirlwind along with everyone else…” – Bill McGuire, volcanologist and Emeritus Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London.

https://truthout.org/articles/capitalism-wont-fix-the-climate-crisis-it-will-also-not-survive-it/