Tulum is the jewel of Mexico’s Riviera Maya where ancient ruins perch above white-sand beaches. Tulum was declared a “world yoga capital” in 2017. Almost 4 million more tourists arrived into the state’s airports in July and August, compared with the same period in 2019. The opening of a new international airport in Tulum next year will drive up visitor numbers even further. Unrestricted development has largely cut off public access to the 80-mile stretch of beaches, leaving the local Maya people – who work mostly as builders, cleaners, chefs and taxi drivers – isolated from their ancestral sites of natural beauty as they cannot afford to visit the seaside cafes and restaurants.

The 12,000-strong community who live in the 137-hectare (340-acre) hamlet of 2 de Octubre are facing eviction as developers forge ahead with plans to build on land sold by the Quintana Roo state government to meet demand for high-end property in the popular beach town. Condos primed to replace the simple dwellings could each sell for up to $300,000 (£280,000) – putting them far beyond the reach of local people, many of whom earn about $20 a day amid some of Mexico’s starkest disparities of wealth and an absence of social housing. Indigenous people are being forced further away from the most desirable areas to make way for foreigners who can afford the high prices. Nor can they bear the costs of buying their own land in a town dominated by foreign capital.

Tensions are brewing in step with rapid gentrification and social change, which has seen the poverty rate jump to 62% – the highest in the country. While there is no shortage of low-paid service-sector jobs, the threat of eviction hangs over the local people who helped transform Tulum from wilderness to a thriving town of at least 50,000 people.

“It is a mockery: these are the hard-working people whose hands have built Tulum,” says Rafael Barajas, president of a local community organisation. “Violence in the state is deep-rooted and a modern apartheid keeps communities isolated and in poverty.” he pointed out, “Lands have been effectively stolen and sold to unscrupulous investors and hotel owners, who operate with impunity”. The businesses want the Mayans to do their shifts but then disappear at night,” adds Barajas. Leaders of a campaign started this year to resist eviction have refused reported offers of land about 10 miles away, not least because commuting to work each day would eat into already meagre paypackets.

Attempts by police to evict locals have met resistance, including people building barricades that often end up ablaze. In late July, almost 100 police officers descended on the hamlet – which sits in the shadow of a recently built luxury development and lacks drainage or running water – and fired teargas while a bulldozer attempted to knock down homes.

Mexican tourism boom: Tulum’s locals fight evictions as developers move in | Global development | The Guardian

  The number of families struggling to manage their telecoms bills has doubled over the last year – from 15% to 29% of customers nationwide – the highest level the regulator has recorded.

8 million UK households are facing problems paying their mobile, broadband, pay-TV and streaming bills, prompting the media regulator to call on the biggest telecoms companies to reconsider the inflation-busting price rises planned for the spring.

Ofcom found in its annual affordability survey that one in seven families have cut back spending in other areas, such as on food and clothing, to afford their communication services, while 9% have cancelled a service.

Ofcom called on telecoms providers to scrap the formula used for annual price rises in April. The mechanism – used in some form by many providers including BT, TalkTalk, Shell Energy and Vodafone – increases bills by the rate of inflation in January as measured using the consumer prices index, plus 3.9%.

“The cost of living crisis is putting unprecedented strain in household budgets,” said Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s networks and communications group director. “This includes a much stronger emphasis on offering and promoting social tariffs, as well as thinking carefully about whether significant price rises can be justified at a time when the finances of their customers are under such pressure.”

“Restricting the services of someone who is particularly reliant on them, to push them into paying outstanding bills, should be avoided or limited,” said Ofcom. “Disconnection should only ever be used as a last resort.”

Record 8m households in UK struggle to manage telecoms bills, says Ofcom | Telecommunications industry | The Guardian

“I do not want to be carried home in a zinc-lined coffin or stain my hands with somebody’s blood because of the war of one person that wants to build an empire.”

 It is estimated that almost 200,000 Russians have fled to neighbouring nations to avoid being called up for military service in Ukraine. 

The Interior Ministry of Georgia said over 53,000 Russians have entered the country since last week, while Interior Ministry officials in Kazakhstan said 98,000 crossed into that nation. The Finnish Border Guard agency said over 43,000 arrived in the same period. Media reports also said another 3,000 Russians entered Mongolia, which also shares a border with the country.

Over 194,000 Russians flee call-up to neighboring countries | AP News

Orthodox View

Patriarch in robes sown with gilded thread

Before his glistering altar stands,

Holding the Gospels in jewelled hands

Firmly proclaiming what those scriptures said

About swords, plough shares and the Prince of peace,

While praising the president and his state

And damning their enemies to their fate,

His cheek unturned. It is time to release

The apostles of war to bless with shell

And shot hospitals, nurseries and schools,

Wherever the innocent or such fools

Seek refuge in such a Christian hell.

This prelate seeks power as his word dies

On his lips, with him being Lord of the Flies.

D. A.

The essential features of capitalism are:

1. the ownership of the means of wealth production by a propertied class which lives by owning;

2. the sale of their labour-power by the property-less majority for salaries or wages;

3. the production of goods for sale.

The Labour Party does not propose abolishing these essential features of the capitalist economic system. We say that only with socialism will the poverty and insecurity of the workers be brought to an end. The risk of war will be removed only with the removal of the commercial rivalries of capitalism. The Labour Party programme will fail, not because of the personal merits or demerits of its leaders, but because it is wholly a programme of reforms of capitalism.

The Socialist Party has been telling fellow workers for years, not merely that the Labour Party does not believe in socialism, but that they are an organisation which hopes and attempts to reform capitalist society. It neither understands the basic structure of capitalism which it wants to modify, nor socialism which it claims as its objective.

The Labour Party can govern and can administer capitalism— only in the interests of the capitalist class. Past Labour governments are ample demonstration of this. The Labour Party can govern; it can and must make promises which induce the electorate to give it support—but can it keep them?

The Socialist Party is not organised for the purpose of relieving the more or less obvious results of poverty. Our object is to abolish the cause of poverty, not to waste our time and energies in futile attempts to mitigate some of the more glaring effects. 

 The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday published Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989 to 2019, a report revealing that while the total real wealth of U.S. families tripled over those 30 years, the growth was dramatically unequal.

Families in the top 10% and in the top 1% of the distribution, in particular, saw their share of total wealth rise over the period,” the report notes.

In 2019, families in the top 10% of the distribution held 72% of total wealth.

Families in the top 1% of the distribution held more than one-third.

Families in the bottom half of the distribution held only 2% of total wealth.

In 2019, white families’ median wealth was 6.5 times that of Black families, 5.5 times that of Hispanic families, and 2.7 times that of Asian and other families.

By 2019, student loan debt was the largest component of total debt for families in the bottom 25%—more than their mortgage and credit card debt combined. Among Americans age 35 or younger, 60% of their debt burden was due to student loans.

An analysis,  End Austerity: A Global Report on Budget Cuts and Harmful Social Reforms, estimates that 85% of the world population will be living under austerity measures by next year as tens of millions face hunger, homelessness, and health crises. Around 6.7 billion people are expected to feel austerity’s impacts in 2023, with the impacts falling disproportionately on the poor and other vulnerable populations

The report finds that “a long list of austerity measures is being considered or already implemented by governments worldwide,” including budget cuts targeting key social programs, privatization of public services, and wage caps for teachers, healthcare workers, and others. The report shows that 143 countries—94 of which are developing nations—are pursuing austerity, often at the urging of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has imposed punishing loan terms on low-income countries throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The IMF and other global financial institutions often recommend targeting social programs only to the extreme poor in an attempt to justify budget cuts, “a typical neoliberal policy” with damaging impacts that have frequently spurred mass uprisings.

“Despite the cost-of-living crisis, governments in developing countries, often with their hands tied by international financial institutions, are putting big corporations ahead of the people,” said Matti Kohonen, director of the Financial Transparency Coalition. “Nearly 40% of Covid-19 recovery funds went to big companies, meaning that those most impacted by the pandemic have been left behind.”

Aggressive means-testing “is often justified as an ‘improvement,’ including in many low- and lower-middle-income countries such as Central African Republic, Eswatini, Gambia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, and Uganda, where the majority of the population lives below the poverty line,” the report continues. 

“In the worst of times, austerity is the worst possible choice. It should not even be on the agenda,” argued Nabil Abdo, Oxfam International’s senior policy adviser. “Austerity is designed to dismantle public healthcare and education and labor regulations. It enriches the wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the rest of us. Choosing austerity over many other ways to reduce deficits or even boost budget revenues, like taxing wealth and windfall profits, is not only economically disastrous—it’s deadly.”

 The End Austerity campaign, said, “This austerity recipe has been tried and failed many times, and only inflicted hardship and pain on populations all over the world, supercharging the inequality crisis,” the campaign’s website declares. “The system is broken, people are worse-off while corporations and the wealthy are getting richer every day.”

 “The price of food and necessities is increasing. Only our wage rate is decreasing,”

Selim Raihan, an economics professor at the Bangladesh University of Dhaka and executive director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, said, “Poor people are already in danger. A large population is now at risk of becoming extremely poor,” he said.

 With the government increasing fuel prices 50% in August, inflation on the rise and the economy slowing, for Bangladeshis just getting by is now much harder. The rising cost of living is taking a heavy toll on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, including many already struggling to survive after climate change-fuelled disasters have claimed their homes and land. Bangladesh’s inflation rate is now about 7.5%, according to the country’s central bank, after the government dramatically boosted fuel prices in the face of rising global fossil fuel costs, in part as a result of the Ukraine conflict. It has sent prices of food and other commodities surging even as daily electricity outages slowed productivity.

Workers are particularly feeling the pinch.

Arzina Begum, 50, who works in a garment factory in Hemayetpur, west of Dhaka, and lives in a damp little rented room, said her salary of 15,000 taka a month no longer is enough to support herself and her son.

Taslima Akhtar Beauty, a leader of Garment Workers Rights Movement, said salaries need to rise to 20,000 or 25,000 taka a month for families to make ends meet – something there is so far little sign will happen.

In some parts of Bangladesh, rising and increasingly unaffordable prices are leading to protests.

The minimum wage for tea workers was set by the government in 2021 at 120 taka ($1.20) a day, leaving them among the lowest-paid workers in the country. In the second week of August, with fuel and food prices soaring, around 150,000 tea workers launched an indefinite strike, demanding a new daily wage of 300 taka.

“We live in less-than-human conditions without proper medical care, housing and education,” worker Prakash Bauri said in an interview, as he choked back tears.

In response to the protests, Bangladesh’s prime minister announced a new 170 taka daily wage for tea workers – less than what was demanded but enough to at least temporarily suspend the strikes. Workers hope for another wage boost by the end of the year. Other workers have little expectation for improvements.

Rising inflation traps Bangladesh climate migrants (trust.org)

 In 33 US states, clergy are exempt from any laws requiring professionals such as teachers, physicians and psychotherapists to report information about alleged child sexual abuse to police or child welfare officials if the church deems the information privileged. Efforts to rid state laws of the privilege have been successful in only a handful of states, including North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and West Virginia.

This loophole has resulted in an unknown number of predators being allowed to continue abusing children for years despite having confessed the behavior to religious officials. In many of these cases, the privilege has been invoked to shield religious groups from civil and criminal liability after the abuse became known to civil authorities.

The Roman Catholic Church has used its well-funded lobbying infrastructure and deep influence among lawmakers in some states to protect the privilege, and influential members of the Mormon church and Jehovah’s Witnesses have also worked in statehouses and courts to preserve it in areas where their membership is high.

“They believe they’re on a divine mission that justifies keeping the name and the reputation of their institution pristine,” said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, speaking of several religious groups. “So the leadership has a strong disincentive to involve the authorities, police or child protection people.”

Sen. Victoria Steele, a Democrat from Tucson, on three occasions, proposed legislation to close the clergy reporting loophole in Arizona. Steele said that key Mormon lawmakers including a former Republican state senator and judiciary committee chairmen thwarted her efforts before her proposals could be presented to the full Legislature. 

“It’s difficult for me to tell this story without talking about the Mormons and their power in the Legislature,” Steele said. “What this boils down to is that the church is being given permission to protect the predators and the children be damned. … They are trying with all of their might to make sure this bill does not see the light of day.”

 In Montana in 2020 the state Supreme Court ruled that church leaders were under no obligation to report, citing the state’s clergy-penitent privilege.

A bill seeking to rid Maryland of the privilege in child abuse cases evoked a strong rebuke from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then the powerful archbishop of the Diocese of Washington, D.C.

“If this bill were to pass, I shall instruct all priests in the Archdiocese of Washington who serve in Maryland to ignore it,” McCarrick wrote in a Catholic Standard column. “On this issue, I will gladly plead civil disobedience and willingly — if not gladly — go to jail.”

The bill never emerged from committee. Similar legislation proposed in 2004 suffered the same fate. Today, the clergy-penitent privilege in Maryland remains intact, even though McCarrick has been defrocked for sex crimes.

Churches defend clergy loophole in child sex abuse reporting | AP News

 According to the Global Energy Monitor (GEM), more than 24,000km of new oil pipelines are under development around the world, a distance equivalent to almost twice the Earth’s diameter. The oil pumped through the pipelines would produce at least 5bn tonnes of CO2 a year if completed, equivalent to the emissions of the US, the world’s second-largest polluter. The oil industry enjoyed record profits in the last year, the report said, and “is using this moment of chaos and crisis to push ahead with massive expansions of oil pipeline networks”.

“For governments endorsing these new pipelines, the report shows an almost deliberate failure to meet climate goals,” said Baird Langenbrunner at GEM. “Despite climate targets threatening to render fossil fuel infrastructure as stranded assets, the world’s biggest consumers of fossil fuels, led by the US and China, are doubling down on oil pipeline expansion.”

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said on Wednesday: “The fossil fuel industry is killing us, and leaders are out of step with their people, who are crying out for urgent climate action.”

Huge expansion of oil pipelines endangering climate, says report | Oil | The Guardian