https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDyN46olvfQ&ab_channel=RepresentUs
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Election Day Shows Americans Want Progressive Policies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-1LB3NDfoU&ab_channel=GrahamElwood
Australian billionaires celebrate skyrocketing wealth while pandemic forces workers into poverty
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/rich-n05.html
Max Boddy
14 hours ago
While workers face Great Depression-style unemployment and poverty, the wealth of Australia’s elite has soared. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) annual rich list for 2020 has revealed that 200 individuals and families increased their combined fortunes by more than $82 billion during the past year, to a total of $424 billion.
Despite, or in many cases because of, the COVID-19 pandemic, the total wealth in the hands of this tiny proportion of the population jumped by more than in the previous year, before the coronavirus crisis emerged. The $82 billion rise, or 24 percent, far surpassed the $59 billion, or 21 percent, increase on the 2019 list.
There is an air of triumphalism in the coverage of this result. In a video introducing the Rich List, editor Michael Bailey said the “big trend, amazingly, was that the total wealth pot actually went up” when “everyone assumed it was going to be going down because of coronavirus.”
Australia now has 104 billionaires, up from 91 the year before, and the cut off for being added to the list rose to $540 million, up from $472 million in 2019. At the top of the list are two “ore-ligarchs,” iron ore magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest. Each more than doubled their worth, to a combined wealth of over $52 billion, mainly on the back of growing ore sales to China.
By contrast, millions of workers have been pushed into poverty and destitution. A Foodbank report in October revealed that food relief requests have risen by 47 percent, on average, since the pandemic began. Some 43 percent of food insecure people were going a whole day without food, compared to 30 percent last year.
Glorifying the obscene wealth accumulated by those on the Rich List, the AFR magazine included numerous photos and descriptions of the billionaires’ luxury mansions and other property holdings.
One example is Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-chief executive of tech company Atlassian, who rose to fifth on the list this year with a personal fortune of $16.93 billion. His primary residence is the $100 million Fairwater estate on Sydney Harbour’s Point Piper beachfront, “the only nine-figure house sale in Australia.”
Cannon-Brookes has reportedly spent almost $250 million on property over the past decade. His holdings include a $24.5 million purchase in Newport on Sydney’s northern beaches and the $18.5 million former residence of Germany’s consul-general in Sydney’s Woollahra, as well as his $15 million New South Wales Southern Highlands farm, Widgee Waa. His most recent purchase was an empty block of land on Sydney’s northern beaches, bought for $1.425 million after one day on the market.
Much of the wealth at the top still rests on the financial parasitism and speculation that has seen property prices surge over the past decade, forcing millions of households to take out massive loans just to buy a house. The property tycoons, with combined fortunes of $81.56 billion, dominate the list.
An AFR article trumpeted that “four of the 10 richest Australians made their wealth in the property industry and retain billionaire status even amid the uncertain economy and global health crisis” and “almost a quarter of the richest 200 built their empires in the property sector.”
However, the largest increase in wealth was extracted by the “ore-ligarchs.” This was due in part to mines remaining open throughout the pandemic. The super-profits made by the mining magnates allowed them to develop and roll out mass testing of their employees—a service never provided to the rest of the population.
Chris Ellison, a West Australian mining businessman, joined the billionaires club this year. His company developed equipment that has the capacity to test up to 10,000 people a day and deliver results in three hours.
This meant that when Brazil was devastated by the spread of COVID-19, which caused the shutting down of some mining operations, Australian exporters were able to step in and rack up billions in profits.
The collective wealth of the 12 individuals on the Rich List whose wealth is in some way derived from mining in Western Australia hit $79.8 billion, swollen by a massive $43.8 billion in 18 months.
Another sector boomed thanks to the pandemic. Afterpay, a pay later technology company, boosted its profits because millions of people sought delayed payment options as they faced the prospect of unemployment and poverty. Its founders, Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar, rose from the bottom of last year’s rich list to numbers 50 and 51, worth $1.86 billion each.
Yet the Rich List insisted that such individuals, whose wealth and lifestyle is unimaginable to the majority of people, have also struggled during the pandemic.
“The burdens of the COVID-19 lockdown across Australia didn’t discriminate between the super-rich, the poor and those in between,” the AFR claimed, while conceding that the super-rich were better off “financially to weather the crisis.”
In reality, Australia’s federal, state and territory governments, Liberal-National Coalition and Labor alike, have played a large part in boosting corporate profits during the pandemic. First, assisted by the trade unions, they have kept most large industries open, including mining, manufacturing, construction and warehousing operations.
Second, they handed out unprecedented subsidies, incentives and cheap loans totalling some $400 billion, with the lion’s share going to big business.
As a result, the decades-long accumulation of obscene wealth at one end of society, acquired through the creation of poverty, devastation and misery at the other end, is accelerating.
The Rich List was launched in 1984, the first full year of the trade union-backed Labor government of Bob Hawke, which began a vast redistribution of wealth towards the top. Then the 200 richest people had a combined wealth of $6.4 billion. There has been a 66-fold increase in wealth for the top 200 in 36 years.
The pandemic is rapidly widening the social gulf. According to modelling conducted at the Australian National University, another three quarters of a million people have already been thrown into poverty by September’s cuts to JobKeeper wage subsidies and JobSeeker welfare payments. About 4 million people, or 16 percent of the population, are now living in poverty.
Unless we create our own progressive media we have no chance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuSzobLz300&ab_channel=DoubleDownNews
Regulations in the meat industry weaken as coronavirus pandemic strengthens
Cordell Gascoigne
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/meat-n04.html
As the coronavirus continues to infect millions across the United States, workplace safety regulations continue to be loosened in the meatpacking industry. In meatpacking plants, as a consequence of the maintenance of production with the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union and following Trump’s invocation of the Defense Production Act to keep the plants running in April, more than 40,000 meat-processing workers have contracted the virus and over 200 have died.
The spread of the virulent disease is the result of the government’s policy of “herd immunity,” in which the near-complete lack of oversight by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has played a key role. According to figures from the beginning of October, OSHA issued only 30 citations out of more than 9,000 total complaints, with the highest proposed fine just $40,482.
This was highlighted in a case filed by workers at a Maid-Rite Specialty Foods plant in Dunmore, Pennsylvania. The suit alleges that OSHA did nothing for weeks after a worker filed a safety complaint in April. The complaint described insufficient precautions taken amid an outbreak at the plant. Other workers filed a similar complaint in May, asserting they were facing “imminent danger” due of the risk of infection.
Imminent danger, as defined by OSHA’s website, “means any conditions or practices in a place of employment which are such that a danger exists which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately.” Given the documented extent of the spread in the meatpacking industry, this criterion is obviously met in the bulk of meatpacking plants nationwide. Given the indications of widespread cover-ups and intimidation designed to keep workers from reporting sick, as shown by a recent whistleblower case against JBS, the real scale of the disease in meatpacking plants is almost certainly far higher.
“When OSHA finds that conditions pose an ‘imminent danger’ to workers, it typically intervenes quickly and asks the employer to mitigate the risk,” according to a New York Times report on the lawsuit. “But in a hearing before a federal judge in late July, a local OSHA official testified that she did not consider the term to be appropriate in the Maid-Rite case.”
According to the Times report, OSHA’s central office had designated all meatpacking facilities to be “medium risk” and the agency would not rush to a formal inspection on an “outlying” issue. In reality, meatpacking plants emerged over the spring and summer as key drivers of the spread of the disease in rural areas of the country. An OSHA area director also confirmed this policy of inaction by noting that, out of nearly 300 coronavirus-related complaints which his office had received at the time, none of the complaints were deemed by the agency to represent an “imminent danger.”
OSHA had inspected the Maid-Rite meatpacking plant on July 9, months after the initial complaint, and found that many workers were spaced two or three feet apart without barriers separating them. Standing reality on its head, a Labor Department lawyer said at the hearing that “If anonymous litigants could drag OSHA into court every time they disagreed with the agency’s investigatory conclusions, the agency would be severely limited in its ability to carry out its mission,” while adding that the agency was still at that time determining the “feasibility of requiring the company to space [workers] farther apart.”
On July 29, OSHA forged an alliance with the trade group North American Meat Institute (NAMI), on the bogus grounds of “collaborating” to ensure sufficient PPE and social distancing measures. In April, NAMI had essentially drafted the language of Trump’s executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to keep meatpacking plants open. NAMI CEO Julie Ann Potts praised the move at the time, declaring the day after the order was issued, “By keeping meat and poultry producers operating, the President’s executive order will help avert hardship for agricultural producers and keep safe, affordable food on the tables of American families.”
OSHA said in the aftermath of its alliance with NAMI, it “recognizes the value of establishing a collaborative relationship to foster safety and health practices and programs to improve American workplaces.” But in reality, OSHA and other regulatory bodies are collaborating with the companies to abolish enforcement.
Experts concede that with “limited resources for inspections,” OSHA “must set priorities according to risk.” An OSHA spokeswoman told MarketWatch, “OSHA has pre-existing requirements and standards that not only remain in place and enforceable but also apply to protecting workers from the coronavirus.”
Union officials, along with some company executives have reported that after having contacted OSHA regarding the imminent threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic, OSHA was slow to respond to the reports. After a rewrite of OSHA’s guidelines, the agency now requires only those hospitalizations be reported which occur within 24 hours of exposure, a virtual impossibility. The new wording, according to experts, effectively abolishes the requirement of companies to report hospitalizations.
The elimination of even token oversight has gone forward with the full support of the unions, including the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The union, acting as an enforcer for the corporations, has sought the shutdown wildcat strikes, most notably in Greeley, Colorado.
On May 14, OSHA had visited a Smithfield plant location Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where more than 3,000 workers are employed, after the plant had closed amid an outbreak, and several workers had died, only to then reopen. In a statement, even Smithfield’s executive vice president and NAMI board member bemoaned the lack of federal oversight, claiming that they had “repeatedly urged OSHA to commit the time and resources to visit our operations in March and April,” but that “They did not do so.”
However, fraud and criminality were commonplace in the industry long before the coronavirus pandemic. Late last month in Texas, Rean Brooks at the Texas Packing Company pleaded guilty to misleading federal regulators, in a case first launched in 2018, over the storage of an illegal quantity of anhydrous ammonia, exposing workers to the hazardous chemical. Exposure may cause convulsive coughing, painful breathing, pulmonary congestion, blindness, or even death.
According the OSHA’s website, “Refrigerant grade anhydrous ammonia is a clear, colorless liquid or gas, free from visible impurities.” The chemical is used in refrigeration systems at facilities, such as meat processing plants. Court documents reveal that a refrigeration unit containing over 10,000 pounds of the chemical was in violation of OSHA regulations. In 2018, Texas Packing Company was operating its facility with 16,500 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, vastly exceeding the regulatory limit by 6,500 pounds, well over the requirement instructed by a Process Safety Management (PSM) program.
Management at Texas Packing were informed that the implementation of a PSM program would cost nearly $20,000. In an effort to save the company that expense, the plant falsified records to give the illusion that the plant was in compliance with OSHA’s regulations, exposing workers to potential hazards.
The original fine in this case from 2018 was $615,640, which is 45 times larger than the maximum citation this year in relation to coronavirus. This only throws into sharper relief OSHA’s deliberate coverup of the spread of infections in the plants.
Which Leftist Congressional Candidates Won Their Elections? | Breakdown of Results
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOtQeVbtdAM&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport
Three short films–including The Present, about the brutality of Israeli checkpoints
Joanne Laurier
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/pres-n05.html
The Present
Two short films and an hour-long documentary currently screening at international film festivals or available online recently came to our attention.
The most striking is The Present by British-Palestinian filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, concerning the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and focused on the brutal checkpoint system.
The film, co-written by Nabulsi and poet Hind Shoufani, was shot over six days at or around the infamous Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem, Palestine. At that entry point thousands of Palestinian workers queue up as early as 3 a.m. to cross into Israel for work.
Yusef (played by the world-renowned Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri—The Band’s Visit, The Time That Remains, Wajib) takes his young daughter Yasmine (Mariam Kanj) to buy a gift for his wife Noor (Mariam Basha) on their wedding anniversary. The simple excursion, which also involves buying groceries, requires going only a short distance. But nothing is simple when confronted with the enormous hurdle of crossing through a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers who would rather abuse and demean Yusef than allow him to pass.
At the entry, Yusef is forced to remove the contents of his pockets and some of his clothing. He is then put in a cage with other men waiting for admittance. During the long wait, the traumatized Yasmine urinates in her pants.
The return trip home is made even more difficult because father and daughter are pushing a trolley with a new refrigerator—the anniversary present—that won’t fit through the gates of the checkpoint. More dehumanization: along with their groceries is a bag with Yasmine’s soiled pants. “You’re all disgusting,” sneers one of the Israeli soldiers.
Rifles are instantly pointed at Yusef when he loses his temper. Chafing at the injustice of not being allowed to circumvent the checkpoint gates with his refrigerator, he nearly becomes another Palestinian casualty of war.
Beautifully shot by seasoned French cinematographer Benoit Chamaillard, the 25-minute movie dramatizes its points eloquently, forcefully and efficiently. In a world in which millions of refugees face insurmountable borders, Nabulsi, in an interview with eninarothe.com, speaks about a people whose freedom of movement is continually trampled upon.
In Palestine, she explains, there are more than “130 Israeli military checkpoints, another 100 or so ‘flying’ check points—that can appear anytime, anywhere—separate roads, curfews, the separation wall, a convoluted permit and ID system and of course the inhumane blockade of Gaza.”
These control mechanisms, Nabulsi says, “are all an assault on this basic human right, that in turn destroys so many other rights—like the right to get to work and earn a living and put food on the table for your children, like being able to visit friends and family, tend to your lands, get to a hospital or clinic, school, study at university—or in the case of my film, something as simple as being able to go and buy someone you love a gift!”
The director also speaks about the psychological ramifications and the “impact on the human spirit, and the harm it can cause an individual, families, children, and whole communities, caught in such an exhausting, stressful and deliberately humiliating infrastructure.”
In 2014, Nabulsi made her first trip to Palestine as an adult, where she saw up close the infamous wall “ploughing through villages, the refugee camps, the separate road system, the checkpoints, the settlements,” she explains in an interview with the National News.
“I have met with mothers whose 13-year-old boys were in military prison,” she notes in another interview, “I listened to their stories of how they were taken, what their experiences inside prison were. I have met families whose homes were demolished, and had tea with them on the rubble.”
Her filmography indicates her commitment: she wrote Oceans of Injustice in 2016 and Today They Took My Son in 2017 about a mother coping with her young son being taken away by the Israeli military.
Award-winning film director and journalist John Pilger commented about the latter that this “extraordinary film is a landmark work. It touched me deeply and made me angry all over again about the horror of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people. It points a finger straight at the rest of us, whose governments support Israel, and demand that we speak up now, and never stop until Palestinians are free.”
In 2018, Nabulsi wrote and directed Nightmare of Gaza.
“The arts play a crucial role in changing the world and I believe film precedes them all. It gives voice to the silenced, thereby helping build the empathy and understanding needed to effect change.” Farah Nabulsi
Lost Kings
American director Brian Lawes’ short film Lost Kings treats child hunger. The movie tells the short story of Zuri (Dash Melrose) who, seeking food for a younger brother, sets out with a backpack and a rusty bike. His first stop is a convenience store where his attempt to steal a packaged meal gets interrupted by the store manager.
Zuri sees his opportunity when pedaling through a wealthy neighborhood. The residents of one of the homes are leaving. Breaking in, he fills his pack with food. Awed by the luxurious surroundings, he decides to explore further, only to be trapped upstairs when the family returns.
The tense, harrowing situation is resolved by a kindly teenage girl as the police arrive to investigate the family’s report of an intruder. The film is well-intentioned, but somewhat socially nebulous and lacking concreteness.
“The world seems to be growing more and more polarized in so many ways,” asserts Lawes in an interview with filmandtvnow, “and in a time of crisis like we’re all finding ourselves in, I think connection, empathy, and always striving to see each other’s humanity first is going to be essential in finding our way through this period in history.”
COVID-19 is exacerbating the hunger crisis in America. A new report by Feeding America finds that the number of food insecure children could escalate to 18 million, the highest total ever reported by the US Department of Agriculture in the 25 years it has been measuring the condition. This horrendous figure compares to 17.2 million in 2009 at the height of the Great Recession.
The Curve
The Curve by Canadian filmmaker Adam Benzine is a documentary focusing on the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the first US case in January to the Easter weekend that Donald Trump randomly chose as his target for bringing the country out of lockdown.
In under an hour, the movie features a gallery of journalists and international experts who describe in some detail the failures of the Trump administration. Among those interviewed in Benzine’s work are Dr. Ali Khan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response; Dr. Emily Landon, chief infectious-disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine; Sonia Shah, investigative journalist and author of Pandemic; Ilan Goldenberg, former U.S. State Department Adviser; Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner, director of the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC); and Ed Yong, the Atlantic ’s science writer.
There is no shortage of Trump video clips showing him in all his ignorant, reactionary glory.
This encourages one reviewer to comment about Benzine’s documentary, “It all comes down to Trump, of course.” Except that it doesn’t. In fact, while Trump is one of the most brazen and thuggish in relation to the COVID-19 crisis, every major government in Europe and around the world has adopted the same essentially homicidal policies. The impact of the coronavirus speaks, above all, to the incompatibility of decent health conditions and life itself with the continued existence of capitalism.
The Curve seems largely to have been made as a pro-Biden electoral tract, available for free on YouTube until the end of election day November 3.
The movie pushes the Democratic Party line that the coronavirus crisis has a significant racial element, featuring Black Lives Matters supporters, for example, as the only component of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic global demonstrations against police violence.
Benzine, based in Toronto, reveals his complacency when he claims that he could have made a film about the Canadian government’s response to the pandemic, but that there was little to criticize: “There’s no drama there. Canadians are largely a passive and obedient population in a good way. If the government says that scientists tell us to do something, we do it. We don’t view it as an infringement on our civil liberties to not die.”
In fact, Canada has more than 250,000 cases, adding 2,000 new ones a day. There are more than 10,000 dead. The policies of the Justin Trudeau government have centered on forcing workers back to the job and students back to school, with disastrous consequences.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)