A United Nations (UN) report presented Tuesday claims that Venezuelan security services under the direction of President Nicolas Maduro have committed crimes against humanity in an effort to quash political opposition in the beleaguered Latin American country.

Compiled by the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the report outlines the extensive use of arbitrary arrest and torture in Venezuela since 2014.

“Real or perceived government opponents and their relatives were subjected to unlawful detention, followed by acts of torture,” read the report, which then went on to list various types of torture, noting that victims were beaten with blunt and sharp objects, given electric shocks, and force-fed feces and vomit, as well as suffering sexual violence at the hands of security services.

The report clearly condemns President Maduro’s hands-on role in the well-organized system designed to crush dissent. It also rebukes Venezuelan authorities for failing to hold abusers accountable.

“The Venezuelan authorities have failed to hold perpetrators to account and provide reparations to victims in a context where judicial reforms announced from 2021 have failed to address the justice system’s lack of independence and impartiality,” the UN mission said.

 The report says Maduro and United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Diosdado Cabello regularly give orders to intelligence services to target specific individuals — often opposition, student and protest leaders, journalists and people working for NGOs. These people are often surveilled, investigated and then subjected to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” sometimes for days or weeks on end.

Mission researchers found that the area known as the Arco Minero del Orinoco, established as a gold mining center in southern Venezuela last decade when oil sales plummeted, was rife with abuse.

“The Mission has reviewed publicly available information indicating that members of the Venezuelan military and political elite have benefited and continue to benefit financially from gold mining-related activities in the Arco Minero,” said the report.  The region, which has become heavily militarized, gives those with ties to power in Caracas the opportunity to build immense personal wealth in a region plagued by illegal mining and where indigenous populations are regularly attacked.

UN report: Venezuela committing crimes against humanity to crush opposition | News | DW | 20.09.2022

A huge increase in wealth of the richest 0.00004% of the world’s adult population comes as billions of low- and middle-income people – many of whom saw their savings wiped out during the pandemic – struggle to cope with soaring food and energy prices.

The ranks of the global “ultra high net worth” (UHNW) individuals swelled by 46,000 last year to a record 218,200 as the world’s richest people benefited from “almost an explosion of wealth” during the recovery from the pandemic.

The number of UHNW people – those with assets of more than $50m (£43.7m) – jumped in 2021 as the super-rich benefited from soaring house prices and booming stock markets, according to a report by investment bank Credit Suisse. The number of people in the UHNW bracket has increased by more than 50% over the past two years.

“The strong rise in financial assets resulted in an increase in inequality in 2021,” the report by Credit Suisse, which helps manage the fortunes of many of the world’s richest people, said. “We estimate that global wealth totalled $463.6tn at the end of 2021, a rise of $41.4tn (9.8%),” the report said.

The increase in wealth has not been distributed fairly. The richest 1% of the global population increased their share of all the world’s wealth for a second year running to 46%, up from 44% in 2020.

The number of US dollar millionaires increased by 5.2 million during 2021 to a total of 62.5 million – just under the 67 million population of the UK. Anthony Shorrocks, an economics professor and an author of the report said the number of millionaires was becoming so large that it was becoming “an increasingly irrelevant measure of wealth”.

More than a third of the millionaires live in the US, which is home to 24.5 million millionaires, or 39% of the world’s total. The number of US millionaires increased by 2.5 million – almost half of all new millionaires minted across the world. “This is the largest increase in millionaire numbers recorded for any country in any year this century and reinforces the rapid rise in millionaire numbers seen in the US since 2016,” the report said.

China is in second place, with 10% of the world’s millionaires, ahead of Japan with 5.4%, the UK (4.6%) and France (4.5%).

Switzerland was once again named the richest country in terms of mean average wealth per adult at $700,000, ahead of the US at $579,000. However, the inequalities in those countries are highlighted when the median average wealth per adult is examined. Switzerland falls to sixth place with a median wealth of $168,000 and the US drops to 18th place with $93,000. Australia is top of the median wealth table with $274,000. UK adults have a mean wealth of $309,000 (14th place) and a median wealth of $142,000 (ninth place).

Number of global ultra high net worth individuals hits record high | The super-rich | The Guardian

Losing our Heads

Too many place their trust in queens and kings

Or posturing, self-promoting presidents.

But where’s the difference? When to all intents

And purposes, whether birth or ballot brings

Them to throne or office, each for all the pomp

With or without benefit of election

Become the focus for misdirection,

Hoping none see the trick by those who romp

Away with the profits and disappear,

While the esteemed leader of the nation

Receives the expected adulation

From all whose vision’s presently unclear.

But what meaning for any head of state,

When the spectacle fails to fascinate?

D. A.

 Millions of people in the UK are suffering poor health because they miss out on vital rehabilitation after strokes, heart attacks and cancer, which in turn is also heaping further pressure on the NHS, a damning report warns.

Physiotherapists say some groups of patients are particularly badly affected. Without access to these services, many patients desperately trying to recover from illness became “stuck in a downward spiral”, they said, with some developing other health conditions as a result.

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) says millions of people in marginalised communities, including those from ethnic minorities, are not only more likely to live shorter lives, but also spend a greater proportion of their lives struggling with health difficulties.

Vital services that could tackle those inequities are either unavailable or poorly equipped to meet their needs, the report warns, adding that “some communities face particular barriers”. People who face “systemic discrimination and marginalisation” and those who live in poor communities are more likely to miss out on rehab, the report says. The CSP said access to high-quality rehabilitation services must be improved to avoid “further entrenching health inequalities faced by millions”.

Prof Karen Middleton, the chief executive of the CSP, said: “Rehabilitation services have been under-resourced for decades and were not designed coherently in the first place. This has exacerbated poor health outcomes, particularly for people from marginalised groups. It’s not only the individual who suffers. Without adequate access to rehabilitation, health conditions worsen to the point where more and more pressure is eventually piled on struggling local health systems and other public services. We desperately need a modernised recovery and rehabilitation service that adequately supports patients following a health crisis and prevents other conditions developing.”

People are living longer with long-term conditions and after cancer, stroke or heart disease. When people are dealing with a long-term condition, their future health and wellbeing “makes a significant difference”, according to the report. However, the authors warned: “It should be universally available as an unmissable part of treatment. But currently millions miss out.

“Without rehabilitation people can be stuck in a downward spiral where having one long-term condition leads to other health conditions, including further long-term conditions, with loss of mobility and poor mental health and multiple medication regimes. Ensuring everyone who needs rehabilitation can access it can reverse this downward spiral.”

Thousands of physiotherapy staff in England and Wales would vote on industrial action after overwhelmingly rejecting this year’s NHS pay award. The CSP said almost 80% of those voting in England said they were prepared to take industrial action, with 83% in Wales. The CSP council recommended members voted in support of action. A decision has already been taken to ballot in Scotland.

Millions in poor health due to lack of rehab after illness, warns UK report | Health | The Guardian

 Industries such as retail, health care and logistics are reverting to an old tactic and trapping people in miserable jobs by threatening to saddle them with debt if they quit. Workers across the United States in fields ranging from nursing to trucking have been discouraged from leaving jobs because employers charge them for training costs if they quit before an arbitrary deadline.

It is the  Training Repayment Agreement Provisions (TRAPs) clauses in employment contracts. A practice likened by critics to indentured servitude, peonage and modern slavery, a form of debt bondage. Bosses are primarily using TRAPs to obstruct workers from leaving jobs.

TRAPs have been commonly used by employers since the 1990s, but they were almost exclusively reserved then for highly specialized workers such as engineers or airline pilots. As markets became increasingly concentrated and union power was diminished by policymakers into the 21st century, bosses used their growing dominance to impose TRAPs on rank-and-file workers, such as truckers, nurses, mechanics, electricians, salespeople, paramedics, flight attendants, bank workers, repairmen, and social workers. 

Registered nurse Cassie Pennings testified about being stuck with $7,500, “more than six months’ rent,” after leaving one hospital job because she was appalled by staffing ratios during the COVID-19 pandemic and didn’t want to be complicit in neglecting patients.

“Despite being one of the most profitable health care systems in the nation, my former employer responded to cries for help from the front line with breakfast burritos and free water bottles,” Pennings said.

Pennings also told lawmakers that she doubted the $7,500 price tag placed on the cost of her training. “I didn’t get any kind of license or accreditation or anything, and my actual training was only a few weeks.”

Lawyer, David Seligman, told the Senate Banking Committee that TRAPs are used by managers to leave workers “stuck with low pay, dangerous conditions, abusive treatment, or work that does not allow them to advance professionally.” He continued, “The law does not permit employers or others to provide a work opportunity in exchange for a worker’s promise to indenture themselves to their employer through debt,” Seligman said. “These sorts of work arrangements harken back to nineteenth century peonage used to subjugate former slaves, and they are precisely the kind of exploitation that our anti-trafficking and peonage laws were designed to prohibit.”

The chair of the committee, Sherrod Brown, commented, “Last I checked, indentured servitude was illegal in the United States. But it looks like some enterprising companies are rebranding it, with these new employment contracts.”

“For every TRAP that is the subject of a court opinion, tens of thousands remain unchallenged.”

More US Employers Are Trapping Workers in a New Form of Indentured Servitude (truthout.org)

 One person is estimated to be dying of hunger every four seconds. 19,700 people are estimated to be dying of hunger every day, which translates to one person dying of hunger every four seconds.

238 organisations from 75 countries – including Oxfam and Save the Children have warned that urging decisive international action is required to “end the spiralling global hunger crisis”.

In an open letter addressing world leaders gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, they expressed outrage at skyrocketing hunger levels.

“A staggering 345 million people are now experiencing acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019,” they said.

 “Despite promises from world leaders to never allow famine again in the 21st century, famine is once more imminent in Somalia. Around the world, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation in 45 countries,” they said.

“It is abysmal that with all the technology in agriculture and harvesting techniques today we are still talking about famine in the 21st century,” Mohanna Ahmed Ali Eljabaly from the Yemen Family Care Association said. “This is not about one country or one continent and hunger never only has one cause. This is about the injustice of the whole of humanity.”

According to the organisations, the global hunger crisis has been fuelled by a “deadly mix of poverty, social injustice, gender inequality, conflict, climate change, and economic shocks”, along with the lingering impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which further increased food prices.

Hunger now killing one person every four seconds, NGOs say | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

 They have fought to deny sick days and other vital benefits to workers in the rail freight industry and the safety of workers and communities, meanwhile, has been put in jeopardy by executives who have fired workers and increased hours, train operator executives have been rewarding shareholders with billions of dollars in stock buybacks and dividend bumps.

According to Railroad Operators: Bad for Workers, Good for Investors, a collection of data compiled by the Groundwork Collaborative, a handful of major rail companies reported more than $10 billion in buybacks and dividends over the first six months of 2022.

“Our research shows just how far railroad executives will go to funnel record profits to their shareholders—even if that means stagnant wages, inhumane attendance policies, and throwing our supply chain into further turmoil,” Mike Mitchell, director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative, explained.

Groundwork found that Union Pacific is leading the pack in 2022. Rather than using billions of dollars in revenue to improve pay and job conditions, Union Pacific gave $5 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends in the first six months of this year alone. CSX, for instance, funneled nearly $3 billion in buybacks and dividends to investors from January through June, while Canadian National Railway reported $2.3 billion in stock buybacks during the same time period.

Norfolk Southern’s chief financial officer Mark George said on a July call that “shareholder distributions are up and you’ll observe here the 19% higher dividend payments through six months on top of continued strong share repurchase activity.”

Railroads have been enjoying record profits after decades of deregulation, consolidation, and “just-in-time” practices known as “precision railroad scheduling” transformed the industry into what Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, describes as “another monopolized cash cow for Wall Street.”

Union Pacific chief executive officer Lance Fritz told investors on a July call that the company had cut staff by a third since 2018 and said, “We’ve got to do some other unique and creative things with our labor unions in order to make our crews more available and more productive.”

 He also said that Union Pacific is prepared to make further staffing cuts during an economic downturn, asserting that conductor-less trains would be “better for the conductors’ quality of life.”

While Fighting Workers, Railroads Made Over $10 Billion in Stock Buybacks (commondreams.org)

 Save the Children is urgently calling on the international community to ramp up its support to Haiti, to meet the growing needs of vulnerable children and families.

More than 4.9 million people—including 2.2 million children—need assistance, many of them suffering from hunger and malnutrition. 

Widespread poverty, a rising cost of living, extreme levels of violence, low agricultural production, expensive food imports and growing political instability have worsened existing food insecurity in the country.

Chantal Imbeault, Save the Children’s Country Director in Haiti, said, “The situation in the country is increasingly precarious, violence has reached extreme levels. It is very difficult to access water and food, with children being the most affected, suffering from hunger and at risk of losing their lives. There is lack of health services for mothers who are blocked behind barricades. We urge the international community to continue the efforts to assist children and families in Haiti.”

Haiti: More than 2.2 million children in need as violence surges across the country – Haiti | ReliefWeb

 Female protesters have been at the forefront of escalating protests in Iran and have been burning headscarves, after the death in custody of a woman detained for breaking hijab laws. Mahsa Amini died in hospital on Friday after spending three days in a coma. Ms Amini was arrested in the capital last week by Iran’s morality police, accused of breaking the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf, and their arms and legs with loose clothing. There were reports that morality police beat Ms Amini’s head with a baton and banged her head against one of their vehicles,