Migrants are the easy target as scapegoats for economic woes. It is not new. Blaming migrants for lower wages growth is easy and simplistic.

Last week, Philip Lowe, the head of the Australia Reserve Bank suggested migration could have caused lower wages growth. He commented the hiring of migrants brought in to deal with “specific gaps where workers are in short supply … dilutes the upward pressure on wages in these hotspots”.

This is not altogether startling, but he then added,  “…it is possible that there are spillovers to the rest of the labour market”.

The problem is, as Lowe noted earlier in his speech, “immigration adds to both the supply of, and demand for, labour”.

Essentially migrants increase the supply of people looking for work, but also the demand for things that need people to work to provide. In effect – both taking away and adding to the pressures on wages. Nothing in Lowe’s speech suggested that migration had a stronger impact on wages growth going down than up.

A number of economists were quite dismayed that the head of the central bank should stoke the anti-migration fires – especially, as Australian National University economist Ryan Edwards noted on Twitter, it goes against a vast majority of economic scholarship.

Most studies suggest migration has a positive impact on wages growth.

This is because migrants, as was noted in an article published in the Oxford Economic Papers journal in 2020, “perform complementary tasks, rather than substitutable tasks, in the labour market” – ie they don’t take your job, they work with or for you.

The positive finding is consistent with the landmark study led by ANU economist Robert Breunig in 2016 which found “almost no evidence that outcomes for those born in Australia have been harmed by immigration”.

A recent update by Gabriela D’Souza found that “wages are positively correlated with proportion of migrants” and “immigration has largely been a positive for incumbent workers”.

Even a study published in May by the Melbourne Institute which looked at the specific impact on youth workers found that young foreign students increase the competition for work for under 25s, but they also now have to compete with older workers who are staying in their jobs longer.

The government was reducing the budget deficit – in effect reducing demand in the economy – and all the while was arguing for smaller minimum wage rises and capping public sector wages.

We also had a collapse of the bargaining system, which reduced enterprise agreements and reduced strikes.

When the system makes it harder to bargain for wages rises, not surprisingly wages don’t rise as fast.

Blaming migrants for Australia’s lower wages growth is easy but too simplistic | Greg Jericho | The Guardian

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world, and is particularly popular with farmers growing common food crops. But there is heated debate in many countries about whether or not glyphosate herbicides should continue to be used due to concerns they may cause cancer. The new finding of flaws in industry studies means regulatory assurances about glyphosate safety in Europe and the United States have been based, at least in part, on shoddy science.

 Corporate-backed scientific studies are raising troubling questions about a history of regulatory reliance on such research in assessing the safety of the widely used weedkilling chemical known as glyphosate, the key ingredient in the popular Roundup herbicide.

 In a 187-page report researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria said a thorough review of 53 safety studies submitted to regulators by large chemical companies showed that most do not comply with modern international standards for scientific rigor, and lack the types of tests most able to detect cancer risks.

“The quality of these studies, not of all, but of many of these studies is very poor. The health authorities … accepted some of these very poor studies as informative and acceptable, which is not justified from a scientific point of view,” Siegfried Knasmueller, the lead author.

The new analysis challenges safety assurances, finding that much of the methodology used in the industry studies is outdated and not in keeping with international quality standards. Of the 53 studies submitted to regulators by the companies, only two were acceptable, according to current internationally recognized scientific standards, said Knasmueller.

The corporate studies at issue focus on the genotoxic properties of glyphosate – whether or not it causes DNA damage – and they support corporate assurances that the chemical is safe when used as directed and does not cause cancer. They were commissioned and/or conducted by the former Monsanto Co, which is now a part of Bayer AG, as well as Syngenta, Dow, and others involved in making and/or selling glyphosate.

Particularly problematic was the focus on testing for chromosome damage in early stages in red blood cells of the bone marrow in laboratory mice and rats. These tests routinely detect only 50-60% of carcinogens, according to Knasmueller. “So many carcinogens are not detected with this method,” he said.

A type of test known as “comet assay” has a much higher value for identifying carcinogens because it can quantify and detect DNA damage in individual cells in a variety of organs, and is commonly used for evaluating genotoxicity, according to Knasmueller. But no comet assay tests were included, according to the analysis.

“I cannot understand why the health authorities did not ask for such data,” said Knasmueller, who is an expert in genetic toxicology.

Linda Birnbaum, former director of the US National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, said there has been an ongoing problem that is not unique to glyphosate with regulators taking industry studies “at industry’s word” while ignoring red flags raised in non-industry-funded research.

“This puts once more a finger on a sore spot: that national regulators do not seem to pay close scrutiny when looking at the quality of industry’s studies,” said Nina Holland, researcher at the watchdog group Corporate Europe Observatory. “This is shocking as it is their job to protect people’s health and the environment, not to serve the interests of the pesticide industry.”

Corporate studies asserting herbicide safety show many flaws, new analysis finds | Monsanto | The Guardian

  California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has dramatically overblown the state’s achievements in key elements of wildfire suppression, repeatedly overstating how many acres of the state were treated with fuel breaks and hazardous tree removal.

Newsom claimed that 90,000 acres protecting the most vulnerable communities had been treated, the data showed only a fraction – roughly 11,400 acres – was actually completed. Newsom slashed roughly $150m from Cal Fire’s wildfire prevention budget.

The clearest and probably biggest discrepancy related to 35 priority projects that were identified early on by the Newsom administration. When he came into office one of the first things he did was ask Cal Fire for recommendations on how to get the problem under control. One of the main recommendations was 35 projects for fuel reduction – things like thinning and prescribed burns – that will protect 200 of the most vulnerable communities in California. In early 2020, Newsom came out and said “mission accomplished”.

Gavin Newsom oversold California’s fire prevention efforts. A journalist uncovered the truth | California | The Guardian

 A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found average per-pupil funding in the most deprived fifth of schools fell in real terms by 1.2% between 2017-18 and 2020-21, while it increased by 2.9% in the least deprived fifth.

Funding for deprived schools in England has shifted to wealthy areas, study finds | Education | The Guardian

The world’s nuclear powers actually increased spending on nuclear weapons by $1.4 billion more than they had put out the previous year. 

And that increase was only a small percentage of the ongoing investment of nine countries in their growing nuclear arsenals.

More than half of the total 2020 “investment” in weaponry appropriate for world-ending scenarios, $37.4 billion to be exact, was by the USA. A staggering $13.3 billion was given to weapons maker Northrop Grumman alone to begin the development of a new intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, the one thing our thoroughly troubled world obviously needs.  The US is now be planning to devote at least $1.7 trillion over the next three decades to “modernizing” what’s already the most modern nuclear arsenal on the planet.  in 2020, the USA alone had more than 5,000 nuclear weapons, at least 1,300 of them deployed and ready to use—enough, that is, to destroy several worlds. In 2021, the U.S. is preparing to invest more than $100 billion in producing a totally new ICBM, whose total cost over its “lifespan” is already projected at $264 billion—and that’s before the cost overruns even begin.

A nuclear war between two regional powers, India and Pakistan, could throw so many particulates into the atmosphere as to create a nuclear winter on this planet, one likely to starve to death billions of us. 

 In all, those nine nuclear powers spent an estimated $137,000 a minute in 2020 to “improve” their arsenals. Imagine if all that money had instead been devoted to creating and disseminating vaccines for most of the world’s population. Imagine a planet on which every dollar earmarked for nuclear weapons would be invested in  green solutions to a world growing ever warmer.

Opinion | Nuclear Weapons: An All-American Horror Story | Tom Engelhardt (commondreams.org)

 Euros

Banners raised, with flags and favours flying,

A motley crusade of sovereign fervour

Promoted as sporting endeavour,

But the rules of capital applying.

Four-four-two or five-three-one, a back three

Or twin strikers? Studio pundits opine,

Replays replayed, did the ball cross the line?

Media companies sell the commodity.

Whether by intent or default, national

Identification is reinforced,

With old enmities and resentments sourced,

As states find expression in football.

Then, an almost tragedy comes about

And common humanity breaks out.

D. A.

Carla Dee will facilitate an evening of ‘Town Planning For Socialist Living’

What could a town high street, village or city look like in a post-capitalist world?

 The Roma in the Czech Republic makes up just 2 percent of the country’s 10 million. The community struggles with discrimination in education, housing and employment. Ghettos, rife with rubbish and disease, scar towns and cities.

Stanislav Tomas,  a 46-year-old Roma man, in Teplice, a small city close to the Czech Republic’s northern border with Germany,  died after police knelt on his neck for more than six minutes. Many see similarities with the murder of George Floyd. The incident has shone a light once more on the plight of the large Roma communities that live in Central Europe, who face deep discrimination, and often abuse, at the hands of police and authorities. Reports of casual mistreatment by police and other authorities are common across the country. The Council of Europe and Amnesty International have called for an independent investigation into the incident

“The Czech police are racist,” said 38-year-old Milan. “We don’t believe anything they say.”

“This isn’t the first time the police have killed Roma,” said Jan Cervenak. “No one believes them about what happened here.”

There has been a deafening silence from across the political spectrum. Several political parties did not respond to questions from Al Jazeera.

“There’s no political advantage to be gained by supporting the Roma community,” suggested activist Gwendolyn Albert.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis certainly sees little potential. Within two days of Tomas’s death, he expressed his full support for the police.

One local woman, echoing claims made to Czech media, says that police have made witnesses sign agreements not to discuss the incident. She says people in the neighbourhood are scared of the police.

Police forced several witnesses to delete videos of the incident from their phones.

Roma see little hope as they mourn ‘Czech George Floyd’ | Roma News | Al Jazeera

 This week in the Pacific north-west, temperature records were being broken. Temperatures reached 47.9C in British Columbia, Canada, temperatures more typically found in the Sahara desert, dozens have died of heat stress, with “roads buckling and power cables melting”.

Another heatwave earlier in June saw five Middle East countries top 50°C. The extreme heat reached Pakistan, where 20 children in one class were reported to have fallen unconscious and needed hospital treatment for heat stress. 

Additional warming from greenhouse gas emissions means that such extreme heatwaves are more likely and scientists can now calculate the increase in their probability. For example, the 2019 European heatwave that killed 2,500 people was five times more likely than it would have been without global warming.

Extreme heatwaves outside the usual range for a region will cause problems, from disrupting the economy to widespread mortality, particularly among the young and old. Yet in places in the Middle East and Asia, something truly terrifying is emerging: the creation of unliveable heat.

While humans can survive temperatures of well over 50C when humidity is low, when both temperatures and humidity are high, neither sweating nor soaking ourselves can cool us. What matters is the “wet-bulb” temperature – given by a thermometer covered in a wet cloth – which shows the temperature at which evaporative cooling from sweat or water occurs. Humans cannot survive prolonged exposure to a wet-bulb temperature beyond 35C because there is no way to cool our bodies. Not even in the shade, and not even with unlimited water.

A 35C wet-bulb temperature was once thought impossible. But last year scientists reported that locations in the Persian Gulf and Pakistan’s Indus River valley had already reached this threshold, although only for an hour or two, and only over small areas. As climate change drives temperatures upwards, heatwaves and accompanying unliveable temperatures are predicted to last longer and occur over larger areas and in new locations, including parts of Africa and the US south-east, over the decades to come.

 Heatwaves intensify inequality. Poorer neighbourhoods typically have fewer green spaces and so heat up more, while outdoor workers, often poorly paid, are especially vulnerable. The rich also buy up cooling equipment at high prices once a heatwave is underway and have many more options to flee, underscoring the importance of public health planning.

Heat can cause havoc with crop production. In Bangladesh, just two days of hot air in April this year destroyed 68,000 hectares of rice, affecting over 300,000 farmers with losses of US$39m (£28m). 

Canada is a warning: more and more of the world will soon be too hot for humans | Simon Lewis | The Guardian

  More money is being spent destroying the environment than protecting it,  according to the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC).

The government’s 25-year environment plan to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030 and its promise to deliver biodiversity net gain on infrastructure projects look good on paper, but inadequate monitoring and a lack of compliance mean the government is not delivering on them. Nature is still not being taken into account in policymaking. Funding cuts and a lack of ecological expertise in government and local authorities is worsening the situation, MPs said.

Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “We are losing species at a terrifying rate and multiple warnings are not being heeded. The collapse in biodiversity has to be pushed up the political agenda, and nature protection and restoration given the priority and resources it needs, before it’s too late. The Treasury still sticks to an outdated mindset, which sees GDP growth as the key measure of progress and nature as an expendable resource. That has to change, as the report makes clear.”

Philip Dunne, chairman of the committee, said despite countless policies to improve the natural environment, they remain “grandiose statements lacking teeth and devoid of effective delivery mechanisms”.

Tories’ ‘toothless’ UK policies failing to halt drastic loss of wildlife | Wildlife | The Guardian