Yet another story of falling populations.

Russia’s population shrank by about half a million last year.

There were 229,700 more deaths between January and November 2020 than in the same period the previous year.

Putin has long called for greater efforts towards population growth. Last year, he blamed the trend on low incomes.

Experts say further causes other than the pandemic are the migration of younger, well-educated people abroad and the low birth rate.

Russia: Population shrinks for first time in 15 years | Russia News | Al Jazeera

 The US immigration detention system is the world’s largest and part of a for-profit prison industry.

“We’ve commodified human displacement,” said David Taylor, who has used drones to take aerial photography and video of 28 privately run Ice detention centers near the US southern border, in California, Arizona and Texas.

While accounts of abuse and exploitation from inside facilities appear in the news media, the detention centers are usually in isolated, underpopulated areas with access to photographers or film crews tightly controlled.

Between 2015 and 2018, as the administration began to ramp up its crackdown on immigrants, the targeted average daily population of detained immigrants grew 50%. Corporations won contracts from ICE worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

‘This is literally an industry’: drone images give rare look at for-profit Ice detention centers | US immigration | The Guardian

  A study, which surveyed almost 1.4 million adults aged over 55, provides fresh insights into why people of black and south Asian ethnic backgrounds have a greater risk of death from Covid than white people.

It found that for almost all ethnic minority groups, health-related quality of life was worse compared to white British people, with the average health of 60-year-olds belonging to five of the groups – Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab, and Gypsy or Irish Traveller – similar to that of an average 80-year-old.

Not only are people from these groups often poorer and more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions, they are also more likely to report worse treatment when visiting their GP surgery, and insufficient support from local services, such as housing and social care.

Study reveals depth of BAME health inequality in England | England | The Guardian

 In the USA, the bottom 99% last year paid about 7.5% of their total wealth in taxes.

The top 0.001% paid about 3.2%.

‘How About a Counter-Argument Based on Fact?’: Warren Destroys CNBC Host Over Two-Cent Wealth Tax Criticism | Common Dreams News

 In the USA, the bottom 99% last year paid about 7.5% of their total wealth in taxes.

The top 0.001% paid about 3.2%.

‘How About a Counter-Argument Based on Fact?’: Warren Destroys CNBC Host Over Two-Cent Wealth Tax Criticism | Common Dreams News

 The European Union is “not fit for purpose” in the task of reducing poverty in Europe and Brexit risks exacerbating the problem, Prof Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special envoy on human rights has said after a two-month investigation. One in five people – more than 92.4 million or 21.1% of the EU population – still experiences poverty, defined as having an income below 60% of national median income. A total of 19.4 million children, representing 23.1%, live in poverty across the bloc.

He said the EU’s “constitutional framework” was driving a race to the bottom in corporation and income tax and salary levels.

A lack of harmonisation on those issues, coupled with the 1997 stability and growth pact that imposes ceilings of 3% a year in national budget deficits and 60% of GDP on public debt, were major constraints on progress, he said. The internal competition to cut taxes and wages as member states sought to attract investment risked being further fuelled by Brexit, said De Schutter, as the UK sought to find a competitive advantage over the 27 member states of the EU.

The EU does not currently have a target for reducing poverty within its 27 member states. The previous target of taking 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 was missed by 8.7m people.

EU ‘not fit for purpose’ to reduce poverty in Europe, says UN envoy | European Union | The Guardian

 Toll

There’s not one hundred thousand Covid deaths,

But one personal death a hundred thousand times,

With tears the unit of grief. As frost rimes

The season still, so the count of last breaths

Continues unstaunched, with lockdowns unlocked

Only to be locked again and borders

Closed, as if virus observes such orders,

While politicians appear publicly shocked.

Inter-governmental squabbles have started,

Contending for vaccines. Should supplies stall,

A failure for one is a failure for all:

Common weal and common health can’t be parted.

If the free market’s promoted to decide,

What then the cost, how many will have died?

D. A.

 The UK has once again lost an international court case regards its claim of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands.

 Italy failed to protect the “right to life” of more than 200 migrants and refugees who died when the boat they were on capsized in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Human Rights Committee said on Wednesday that Italy “failed to respond promptly to various distress calls from the sinking boat, which was carrying more than 400 adults and children”. It also called on Italian authorities to “proceed with an independent and timely investigation and to prosecute those responsible” for the deaths.

Had the Italian authorities immediately directed its naval ship and coastguard boats after the distress calls, the rescue would have reached the vessel at the latest two hours before it sank.

Italy could have saved 200 drowning migrants: UN committee | Human Rights News | Al Jazeera

Biden’s executive orders are receiving much attention from the president-friendly media. But what are the real effect of them?

One such presidential order is to phase out the Department of Justice’s contracts with privately managed prisons.

Biden’s private prison executive order fails to scale back incarceration. The federal Bureau of Prisons — which makes up slightly more than 8 percent of the current U.S. penal population — but just 9 percent of the people incarcerated under the Bureau of Prisons are held in a private prison.

Biden has excluded the Department of Homeland Security, and therefore privately run immigration detention centers, from his order. In contrast to the small percentage of private prisons within the Bureau of Prisons, the majority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities are currently under private contracts. Yet there is no indication that the Biden administration will extend the executive order to the Department of Homeland Security. There is so far no indication that the Biden administration will extend the executive order to the Department of Homeland Security, as the order is careful to only refer to “criminal” detention facilities in contrast to ICE’s “civil” detention facilities.

Rather than taking a step toward dismantling mass incarceration, Biden’s private prison executive order shores up the legitimacy of the state to imprison people. He could issue a moratorium on U.S. Marshals Service and ICE contracts with local jails and on the United States Department of Agriculture loan program, which finances jail expansion in the name of “community development,” and which together have been driving rural jail expansions. He could halt federal executions and commute the sentence of every person on federal death row. 

Biden could institute broad-based de-carceration by ending pre-trial federal detention and giving clemency to most people incarcerated in federal prisons. He could end federal policing initiatives that target sex workers. And he could champion the repeal of the 1994 Crime Bill, the law that helped build Biden’s political career.

The problem of private prisons is not that they are private but that they are prisons. This executive order is simply an act of moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic. When a private prison contract runs out, imprisoned people will be transferred to a different federal prison where they will still be subject to inadequate medical care, violence and premature death.