The American government protect their masters

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 The United States administration abruptly withdrew from international negotiations over how best to tax the profits of multinational corporations such as U.S.-based tech giants Amazon and Google, leading European allies to accuse the White House of torpedoing years-long talks that were close to a resolution.



 Several European countries, led by France, have been rolling out digital services taxes, which would fall heavily on American internet companies. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Britain have all announced plans to levy digital services taxes, which impose duties on the online activity that takes place in those countries, regardless of whether the company has a physical presence



 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said negotiations were at an “impasse” and threatened to retaliate “with appropriate commensurate measures” against any country that attempts to unilaterally move ahead digital services taxes on U.S.-based companies—a warning that sparked fears of a potentially devastating trans-Atlantic trade war.

Maria Jesus Montero, a spokesperson for the Spanish government, said Thursday that “neither Spain, nor France, nor Italy, nor Britain, no country will accept any type of threat from another country. We are not legislating to damage the interest of other countries,” said Montero. “We are legislating so that our tax system is orderly, fair, and adapted to current circumstances.”

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Thursday denounced Mnuchin’s letter as a “provocation for everyone who was negotiating in good faith” and said France will reimpose its currently suspended 3% tax on digital services if OECD nations can’t reach a deal on a fair tax system by the end of the year.


“We were inches away from an agreement on digital taxation at a time when the digital giants are the only ones in the world to have benefited immensely from the coronavirus crisis,” Le Maire said. “So it is a provocation to all the citizens of the world who say that it is still legitimate for all the digital giants to pay their taxes. It is also a provocation to the U.S. allies. What is this way of treating U.S. allies—the British, Spanish, Italians, French—by threatening us with sanctions?”


Current rules generally allocate corporate profit for tax purposes based on where value is created. But modern multinationals—particularly ones with digital offerings—can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed. Many big European countries say that tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their products are consumed, something that could boost their tax revenues by billions of dollars. But the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies, where it has more to lose. Tech companies, for their part, have opposed national digital-services taxes like France’s, but have supported the OECD process, arguing that they would like to avoid a patchwork of overlapping national initiatives.

Pollutants permitted in water

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“We have among the cleanest and sharpest — crystal clean, you’ve heard me say, I want crystal clean — air and water anywhere on Earth…our air and water are the cleanest they’ve ever been by far,” Trump once said.



  On Thursday, the EPA finalized a rule to roll back regulations of a chemical found in rocket fuel that can cause brain damage in infants. The Associated Press noted, the chemical’s danger should not be underestimated to the 16 million Americans under threat of having the contaminant in their drinking water.



 Perchlorate can damage the development of fetuses and children and cause measurable drops in IQ in newborns, the American Academy of Pediatrics said last August in urging the “strongest possible” federal limits. Studies cited by the doctors’ group included one showing that 9 out of 13 breastfeeding infants were ingesting significant levels of the chemical.



 The decision to deregulate perchlorate in public drinking water was described as  “illegal, unscientific, and unconscionable,” by Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) senior strategic director for Health Erik D. Olson in a statement. “The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening the health of pregnant moms and young children with toxic chemicals in their drinking water at levels that literally can cause loss of IQ points,” said Olson. “Is this what the Environmental Protection Agency has come to?”



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/18/illegal-unscientific-and-unconscionable-despite-risk-brain-damage-infants-trump-epa

Not every worker is protected

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America’s 2.2 million domestic workers, the majority of them women of colour, the crisis is particularly acute.



 More than 70% saw their incomes cut or jobs eliminated at the start of the pandemic, according to a survey by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, an organisation that advocates for nannies, housecleaners and home health aides.



 With wages that average about $12 (£9.50) an hour, few have robust financial cushions. And because of informal work arrangements or immigration status, many are not eligible for the relief offered by the government.



 “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of women who have absolutely no access to protection or support,” says Tatiana Bejar, a New York City-based organiser at Hand-in-Hand, a non-profit that advocates for domestic workers.  In the US, many shutdown orders didn’t think to address in-home help at all. Official guidance on how to handle return has also been sparse. Hand-in-Hand, which aims its actions at employers, has urged families to keep nannies at home at full pay, but the official ambiguity means figuring out what to do has often been a fraught family-by-family decision.

“Just because domestic work continues to be invisible, therefore employers of them were also invisible,” Ms Bejar says



 Kenya Williams worked as a nanny in New York for 22 years,  explained “Our profession, I found out during this time, we just don’t matter. We have to fight so hard for things that other people get easily,” she says. “I would just like to be able to be like, ‘Ok, I know I’ll be ok to some extent.”

The hardship faced by Ms Williams matches global patterns, which show women, minorities and people working in the informal economy have been hit particularly hard by the lockdowns. In the US, the unemployment rates among Hispanic and black women approached 20% last month – nearly double that of white men.
The uneven economic impact is likely to add “significantly to existing vulnerabilities and inequalities”, the International Labor Organization warned this spring. It called on governments to respond by increasing efforts to extend social protections to those people, like maids and nannies, whose work often occurs beyond the reach of government rules.
 Haeyoung Yoon, policy director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, pointed out that “The coronavirus pandemic has really put a spotlight on the structural inequities that workers were already living through,” Ms Yoon says. “We need to really address these issues at a structural level so that workers are able to have access to good wages and good working conditions. But just because working people are reminded, doesn’t mean that our policymakers are going to legislate and change policies to meet the needs,” she adds.

Japan wants to grow

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Much is made of China’s artificial islands constructed to lay claim to mineral-rich sea but less is said about other nations’ attempts to make use of so-called islands to extend their sovereignty.



  Okinotorishima is an atoll that is 1,740 kilometers (1,081 miles) south of Tokyo that has been reinforced with breakwaters to protect a patch of concrete that measures less than 10 square meters and is just 16 centimeters above the high tide level. This patch of concrete, however, permits Japan to claim an exclusive economic zone covering 400,000 square kilometers of the surrounding waters, which are rich in maritime resources. Surveys have indicated that deposits of valuable natural resources also lie just beneath the seabed.



 The UN convention that covers legal issues at sea says that “rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life on their own shall have no exclusive economic zone.” China, South Korea and Taiwan all insist that Okinotorishima is just a rock that Japan cannot use to extend its EEZ. The Japanese government is also concerned at Chinese encroachment into Japanese waters, with Tokyo submitting a diplomatic complaint to Beijing in January 2019 after a Chinese government survey vessel was detected operating within Japan’s EEZ around Okinotorishima.  Operated by China’s State Oceanic Administration, the vessel may have been attempting to obtain data on natural resources, including oil and gas.



 https://www.dw.com/en/japan-takes-the-high-ground-over-its-outlying-islands/a-53617175

America and Organizing Workers

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The International Trade Union Confederation’s world map showing its rankings of the best and worst countries for working people.

Along with Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other countries with far fewer resources than the U.S., the nation was ranked as a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, with the top-ranking countries reporting only “sporadic violations of rights.” Of countries with the rating of 4, the ITUC wrote, “The government and/or companies are engaged in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under threat.”


Every other G7 country ranked at least a 3 on the scale.


“In many countries, the existing repression of unions and the refusal of governments to respect rights and engage in social dialogue has exposed workers to illness and death and left countries unable to fight the pandemic effectively,” said the ITUC. Around the world, the ITUC found that violations of workers’ rights are at a seven year high. “The breakdown of the social contract is exposed in the 2020 ITUC Global Rights Index,” the report reads. “The trends by governments and employers to restrict the rights of workers through violations of collective bargaining and the right to strike, and excluding workers from unions, have been made worse in 2020 by an increase in the number of countries which impede the registration of unions—denying workers both representation and rights.”

The price of war

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 In 2019 alone (the last year for which worldwide spending figures are available), federal spending on the U.S. military soared to $732 billion.  (Other military analysts, who included military-related spending, put the figure at $1.25 trillion.)



   As a result, the United States, with about 4 percent of the world’s population, accounted for 38 percent of world military spending.  Although it’s certainly true that other nations engaged in military buildups as well, China

accounted for only 14 percent of global military spending that year, while Russia accounted for only 3 percent.  Indeed, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.



 In February 2020, the administration introduced a 2021 fiscal year budget proposal that would devote 55 percent of the federal government’s $1.3 trillion discretionary spending to the military.  By 2030, the military proportion of the federal budget would rise to 62 percent.



 While the COVID-19 pandemic continues with over 110,000 deaths thus far, a large portion of the economy has collapsed, unemployment has reached the catastrophic levels of the Great Depression, and American cities are torn by civil unrest Republican officials argue that  public assistance measures are “too expensive.” America cannot afford to address its deep problems in healthcare, educational opportunity, and decent housing. Military spending is affordable! America possesses 5,800 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched from land, sea, and air, and is presently involved in a vast “modernization” program to rebuild the entire nuclear arsenal.  The price tag for this enormous undertaking over the next three decades, has been estimated as at least $1.5 trillion.

Refugee Numbers Rise

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80 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of last year as a result of conflict, violence, persecution and human rights violations, according to the United Nations.



  26 million were refugees, 4.2 million asylum seekers and 45.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) – those who fled to other parts of their own country.



 11 million more people fled their homes in 2019, almost doubling the total figure over the past decade. 



 People from Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar made up more than two-thirds of the refugee population.



 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/80-million-people-forcibly-displaced-worldwide-200617162524605.html

Protecting their land

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PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.



 Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.

Haus tambarans are the cultural and political hub of villages in the Sepik region. Pre-colonisation their function was analogous to a local parliament, where debates were held and collective decisions taken. But they also play important roles in spiritual and ancestral connection and in rituals and initiations. In an unprecedented move, the 28 haus tambarans issued a collective Supreme Sukundimi Declaration calling for “a total ban on the Frieda river mine”.
It said: “The river is the life of the Sepik and therefore it must be protected at all cost. It is our innate role to guard the river from exploitation and destruction by outsiders. Our future is in peril from this proposed mine and, therefore, we have gathered together as guardians of the river to stand firm as one.”
Peni, from Korogu village on the Sepik River, said the villages felt the need to make the collective declaration – admissible in court – because “they do not trust the government, the police, the army and the outsider who is the owner of the Frieda mine”.
Peni said villages along the Frieda and Sepik rivers would seek to halt the mine through legal and legislative channels but would ultimately defend their ancestral lands.
“There will be an uprising in the Sepik region and lives will be lost. No one will win this uprising. The government of PNG will have blood on their hands.”

The mine would be the largest in PNG’s history, and one of the largest in the world, covering 16,000 hectares, and is forecast to yield gold, silver and copper worth an estimated US$1.5bn a year for more than 30 years.

Campaigner Emmanuel Peni told the Guardian PanAust had not been “honest or transparent” in its consultations with those who live in the Sepik river valley. He said people whose lives and livelihoods depended on the river feared their villages could be permanently damaged or destroyed by the mine, citing the case of Rio Tinto’s Panguna mine, which has left downstream villages with poisoned water, polluted fields and a ruined river valley.
“If the dam collapses it will be catastrophic and destroy the Sepik river and our way of life,” he said. “We need to ensure that the Sepik is protected. It is our identity, our life, and the heartbeat of our culture. A life without the Sepik river as we know it would devastate our communities forever.”

Patents Before Patients

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The United Nations, International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and others said it was a “moral imperative” that everyone have access to a “people’s vaccine.” 

 Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo agreed.
“The global spread of COVID-19 has told us in no uncertain terms that disease knows no boundaries and no country can afford to go it alone,” he said. “Only a people’s vaccine with equality and solidarity at its core can protect all of humanity from the virus. … A bold international agreement to this end cannot wait.”
But such grand declarations are unenforceable.

“We have this beautiful picture of everyone getting the vaccine, but there is no road map on how to do it,” said Yuan Qiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Medecins Sans Frontieres in Geneva. She said numerous problems must be resolved to manage distribution and that few measures have been taken. In the past, Hu said, companies have often applied for patents for nearly every step of a vaccine’s development and production: from the biological material like cell lines used, to the preservative needed to stretch vaccine doses and even how the shots are administered.

“We can’t afford to face these multiple layers of private rights to create a ‘people’s vaccine,’” she said, urging “very open conditions” so every manufacturer capable of doing so can produce a vaccine once its proven effective.
The World Health Organization and others have called for a COVID-19 “patents pool,” where intellectual property rights would be surrendered so pharmaceuticals could freely share data and technical knowledge. Numerous countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada and Germany have already begun revising their licensing laws to allow them to suspend intellectual property rights if authorities decide there is an overwhelming need given the pandemic. But the response from the industry has been lukewarm. Executives at Pfizer and some other major drug makers say they oppose suspending patent rights for potential COVID-19 vaccines.
 There is no precedent for divvying up vaccines that would arguably be needed by every country on the planet.
“We can’t just rely on goodwill to ensure access,” said Arzoo Ahmed, of Britain’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, noting that precedents of how innovative drugs have been distributed are not encouraging. “With HIV/AIDS, it took 10 years for the drugs to reach people in lower-income countries.”

Meat Shortage? A Lie

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As workers in meat processing plants around the United States earlier fell ill with the COVID-19, threatening production, the meat industry called for the government to allow the facilities to remain open, citing the threat of a catastrophic domestic food shortage.  After slaughterhouses in several states were closed when thousands of workers tested positive and dozens died, the industry publicly lobbied the Trump administration to intervene with state and local officials or risk major meat shortages across American grocery stores. Indeed, some retailers put limits on the amount of meat customers could buy, and the fast-food chain Wendy’s, at one point, ran low on hamburger. 



 Trump issued an executive order allowing the plants to stay open as essential businesses even as workers were getting sick and dying. 



 According to the New York Times and USA Today, the industry was lying about the threat of a shortage in order to maintain large exports to overseas markets.



 “It was a fake meat shortage,” tweeted labor journalist Steven Greenhouse.



 “The meat companies were saying the sky was falling, and it really wasn’t,” Food & Water Watch senior lobbyist Tony Corbo told the Times. “It wasn’t that there was not enough supply. It was that the supply was being sent abroad.”



 A record amount of pork to China in April, 129,000 tons, even as the industry was wringing its hands over shortages and appealing to the federal government for exemptions to Covid-19 restrictions imposed on the plants at the state and local level. Keeping the plants open was yo protect their long-term investments in exporting to China, a country that is vital to their growth.



 Ben Lilliston, a co-executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, which advocates for fair and sustainable food systems, told USA Today  that industry claims about shortages do not appear to have been about maintaining American food supplies.



 We’ve been very skeptical about these claims around shortages,” said Lilliston. “I think they were able to use the idea of food shortages as leverage.”



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/17/it-was-fake-meat-shortage-reporting-suggests-industry-sacrificed-workers-during

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