It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 30, 2021
Australian Dockworkers Accused of Threatening Christmas With Strike
Labor action will center on the Patrick terminal in Melbourne (Patrick)
Australia’s major ports are bracing for the impact of a dockworkers’ strike against the country’s largest terminal operator. The labor action comes as the ports continue to struggle to maintain their operations in the face of continuing COVID-19 related restrictions. As Australians prepare for the busy summer season and the upcoming Christmas holidays, fears of supply chain disruptions and shortages are rising, claims the labor union has been quick to dismiss.
The Maritime Union of Australia announced that after 18 months of negotiations with Patrick Terminals, they will begin a rolling labor action against the operators, which handles over 40 percent of all the container freight coming into Australia. “Wharfies are expected to walk off the job of 12 hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” said the MUA. The focus is the port of Melbourne, but it will also include other actions in Sydney, Fremantle, and Brisbane.
A spokesperson for Patrick called the actions “bewildering,” saying that they have been bargaining with the union for over 19 months and provided “a very generous pay increase, guaranteed no redundancies, and provided a commitment to preserving jobs.”
Patrick CEO Michael Jovicic said, “The MUA is clearly embarking on a major pre-Christmas industrial campaign. It seems that the union is trying to starve the Melbourne public of Christmas presents after all that Victorians have gone through over the past 18 months – it is truly mind-boggling.”
The MUA was quick to counter, saying that the company is engaging in “exaggerated PR spin,” firmly declaring that rolling strikes throughout October “won’t ruin Christmas.” The union accuses the terminal operator of “corporate tactics to deny a modest pay raise and remove previously agreed conditions on secure jobs.” The union says it declined an offer to continue the previous contract due to changes that would impact job security for its members.
“That Christmas shelves won’t be stocked in time, that’s a complete fabrication,” said MUA Assistant National Secretary Jamie Newlyn. “There’s plenty of capacity on the Australian waterfront with other container terminal operators to make sure that our stores will be full of stock and the kids will get their Christmas presents. We’re trying to limit impact on the public by just quarantining the action to Patrick, where the dispute lies.”
Patrick Terminals, however, says that the rolling strikes will have a far greater impact as they will spread to neighboring operations and other ports around the country. Retailing associations are fearful of the impact on smaller stores, with Patrick saying the strike was most likely to impact imported electronics, furniture, sporting gear, and building materials in the lead-up to Christmas.
Talks between the union and terminal operator reportedly collapsed last Friday, September 24, after the union rejected an offer of 2.5 percent wage increases for four years. The union began serving notice of the planned labor actions over the weekend.
Earlier in 2021, the Maritime Union of Australia reached separate deals in February with DP World and in June with Hutchison Ports for its terminals in Sydney and Brisbane. The MUA and Patrick have been locked in a protracted dispute. The union staged a labor action in September 2020 against the Patrick terminal at Port Botany in Sydney. Before the union was ordered back to work, an estimated 100,000 containers were reportedly backed up in the port.
China Plans $3.5B Equity Investment in Pakistani Port Project
The KCCDZ project includes a new harbor bridge (left) and a 1,500 acre redevelopment district (right)
At this year's joint meeting on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, Pakistan's Ministry of Maritime Affairs came away with a huge commitment. The Chinese government has agreed to make a direct investment - not a loan - of $3.5 billion in the Karachi Coastal Comprehensive Development Zone, or KCCDZ. This massive proposal would include constructing a mixed-use residential/commercial/seaport project on underutilized lands belonging to the Karachi Port Trust.
Illustrations of the 1,500-acre development show a mixture of high- and mid-rise buildings on a strip of reclaimed land, just across an inlet from Karachi's TP3 sewage treatment plant. The illustration suggests that its new buildings and roads will also replace the Machar Colony neighborhood, an unplanned settlement also known as the Fisherman's Colony. This area is home to about 150,000 people, primarily low-income residents who work in fishing or shrimp-processing, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres.
In a release, Pakistan's Ministry of Maritime Affairs said that the project would include residential resettlement assistance for "more than 20,000 families living in the surrounding slums."
The proposed development also appears to transform the fishing harbor on the port's West Wharf - a jam-packed marina for small fishing vessels - into a new waterfront commercial district. According to the ministry, a new "state-of-the-art fishing port" will take its place, along with a "world-class fisheries export processing zone," according to the ministry.
KCCDZ will also add four new ship berths for the Karachi Port Trust, located on the new, reclaimed "peninsula" in the harbor. It will also add a giant harbor bridge across Baba Channel, giving the new district a direct highway connection with Karachi's container terminals. It also adds an extra sewage plant adjacent to the existing TP3 facility.
"The KCCDZ will unlock Pakistan’s unexplored Blue Economy and significantly enhance development and industrial cooperation between the two brotherly countries," the ministry said. "The KCCEZ is a game-changer for Pakistan."
LONG READ
China's Illicit Squid Fishery Has Deadly Impact on North Korea
Chinese squid fishing vessel anchored at Ulleung, South Korea (Outlaw Ocean Project)
[This article originally appeared on NBC News and appears here courtesy of The Outlaw Ocean Project]
The battered wooden “ghost boats” drift through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies have been reduced to skeletons. In 2019, more than 150 of these macabre vessels washed ashore in Japan, and there have been more than 500 in the past five years.
For years the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best guess was that climate change pushed the squid population further from North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen dangerous distances from shore, where they become stranded and die from exposure.
But an investigation conducted by an international team of academic researchers, Ian Urbina (a former New York Times investigative reporter who now directs The Outlaw Ocean Project), and Global Fishing Watch has revealed what marine researchers now say is a more likely explanation: China is sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70 percent.
The Chinese vessels — nearly 800 in 2019— appear to be in violation of U.N. sanctions that forbid foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests, were intended to punish North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.
“This is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s waters,” said Jaeyoon Park, a data scientist from Global Fishing Watch.
China is a member of the U.N. Security Council, which unanimously signed the recent North Korean sanctions. But the flotilla violating this ban comprises nearly a third of the entire Chinese distant-water fishing fleet, according to Global Fishing Watch.
Presented with the findings of the investigation, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that, “China has consistently and conscientiously enforced the resolutions of the Security Council relating to North Korea.” The ministry added that China has “consistently punished” illegal fishing.
In March 2020, two countries anonymously complained in a report to the United Nations about China’s violations of these sanctions and they provided evidence of the crimes, including satellite imagery of the Chinese ships fishing in North Korean waters and testimony from Chinese fishing crew who said they had alerted their government of their plans to fish in North Korean waters.
The fishing grounds in the Sea of Japan, known in the Koreas as the East Sea, are located between the Koreas, Japan and Russia, and include some of the world’s most contested and poorly monitored waters. Up to now, the huge presence of Chinese boats in this area was largely hidden, because their captains routinely turn off their transponders, making them invisible to on-land authorities, which under most conditions is illegal.
Global Fishing Watch and its partner researchers were able to document these vessels, however, using several types of satellite technology, including one that spots bright lights at night. Many squid boats use extremely strong lights to draw their prey nearer to the ocean surface, making the squid easier to catch. The Chinese also use what are called “pair trawlers,” which consist of two side-by-side boats with a net strung between them that combs the seas, which are easier to track by satellite since the two travel together.
So many North Koreans have disappeared at sea in recent years that some North Korean port towns, including Chongjin along the country’s eastern shore, are now called “widows villages.” In 2019, more than 50 bodies of North Koreans washed onto Japanese beaches, according to the Japanese Coast Guard.
The grim uptick of these ghost boats washing ashore has stoked paranoia and inflamed a tense history between Japan and North Korea, leading some in Japan to speculate that the ghost boats are carrying spies, thieves, or possibly even weaponized carriers of contagious disease.
“If a Korean ship lost its way, it would be destroyed by the time it lands on our beaches,” said Kazuhiro Araki, CEO of the Abduction Research Organization, a group that studies the history of hundreds of Japanese citizens who were allegedly kidnapped by North Korea in the 70s and 80s. “But some ships arrived to our coast intact, and with no men on board, and its possible those people are spies who made it to land.”
Encrusted with shells and algae, these flat-bottom wooden boats are 15 to 20 feet long and typically carry five to 10 men. They have no toilets or beds, just small jugs of clean water, fishing nets and tackle, according to Japanese Coast Guard investigation reports. They fly tattered North Korean flags and their hulls are often emblazoned with painted numbers or markings in Korean script including, "State Security Department" and "Korean People's Army."
All of the bodies found on board these ghost boats appear to be male, though some were so badly decomposed that Japanese investigators struggled to say for sure. Political tensions between the countries and a lack of transparency in the so-called “Hermit State” of North Korea make it difficult to get an official explanation of the phenomenon.
In 2004, China signed a multi-million-dollar fishing license agreement with North Korea that led to a drastic increase in the number of Chinese boats in North Korean waters. But international sanctions imposed in 2017 in response to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests were meant to squeeze key sources of North Korean revenue.
A long-time benefactor of North Korea, China signed the sanctions after being pressured by the United States, and in August 2017 China’s minister of commerce publicly reiterated his government’s commitment to enforce these new rules.
Seafood remains North Korea's sixth-biggest export and in recent speeches the country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, has pushed the state-owned seafood industry to increase its haul.
"Fish are like bullets and artillery shells," an editorial in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, said in 2017. "Fishing boats are like warships, protecting the people and the motherland."
In the wake of the U.N. sanctions and as foreign currency reserves have dwindled, the North Korean government has tried to bolster its fishing industry by turning soldiers into fishermen, dispatching these poorly-trained seafarers onto notoriously turbulent waters. The sanctions have also intensified North Korea’s gasoline shortage. Japanese investigators say that some of the Korean fishing boats washing onto Japanese beaches suffered from engine failure or simply ran out of fuel.
Since 2013, at least 50 survivors have been rescued from these dilapidated boats, but in interviews with Japanese police, the men rarely say more than that they were stranded at sea and that they want to be returned home to North Korea. Autopsies on the bodies found on these boats usually indicate that the men starved or died from hypothermia or dehydration.
In 2013, North Korean fishermen were limited by the capacity of their 12-horsepower engines and they typically only traveled several dozen miles from land, said a former North Korean fisherman, who defected to South Korea in 2016 and now lives in Seoul.
“Government pressure is greater now, and there are 38-horsepower engines,” said the defector, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions for his family. “People are more desperate, and they can go farther from shore.”
But marine researchers say that pressure from the North Korean government is not the only factor.
“Competition from the industrial Chinese trawlers is likely displacing the North Korean fishers, pushing them into neighboring Russian waters,” said Jungsam Lee, whose institute also found hundreds of North Korean vessels fished illegally in Russian waters in 2018.
In 2017, the Japanese Coast Guard also reported spotting more than 2,000 North Korean fishing boats fishing illegally in their waters. In more than 300 instances, the Japanese Coast Guard used water cannons to force these boats to leave the area.
Powerful Chinese fleet
Around the globe, many kinds of fish and sea creatures are disappearing at an unsustainable rate due to climate change, overfishing and illegal fishing by industrial fleets. As these fishing stocks shrink, competition grows and offshore clashes between fishing nations become more common. Seafood-loving countries like Japan and South Korea are being edged out by growing fleets from Taiwan, Vietnam and most of all, China.
With a population of over 1.38 billion, China is the world's biggest consumer of seafood and its global catches have grown by over 20 percent in the past five years. Many of the fishing stocks closest to China’s shores have collapsed from overfishing and industrialization, which is why the Chinese government heavily subsidizes its fishermen, who sail the world in search of new grounds.
Fishing fleets from China accounted for 50 to 70 percent of the squid caught on the high seas in recent years, according to an estimate by the Chinese government. Often these boats are fishing illegally in other countries’ national waters, according to analysis by C4ADS, a marine research firm.
The Sea of Japan includes disputed patches of water where the surrounding countries — Russia, Japan and the two Koreas — do not recognize each other’s sea borders. The incursion of the Chinese in this region has only intensified local tensions.
Chinese fishing boats are famously aggressive, often armed and known for ramming competitors or foreign patrol vessels. Chinese media often depict the country’s maritime clashes with other nearby Asian nations as an extension of ancient China's Three Kingdoms, which fought a fierce three-way battle for supremacy.
Tensions between Seoul and Beijing increased in 2016 after a Chinese vessel, illegally fishing in South Korean waters, sank a South Korean Coast Guard cutter. The cutter was in South Korean waters and was trying to stop a Chinese fishing ship that allegedly had been caught illegally fishing when another Chinese ship rear-ended the marine officers.
Similarly, while reporting at sea for this investigation, reporters for this article filmed 10 of these illegal Chinese fishing ships crossing into North Korean waters. However, the reporting team was forced to divert its course to avoid a dangerous collision after one of the Chinese fishing captains suddenly swerved toward the team’s boat, coming within 10 meters, likely intending to ward off the boat.
Spotted at night and roughly 100 miles from shore, the Chinese squid ships would not respond to radio calls and were traveling with their transponders off.
A yearly migratory species, the so-called Pacific Flying Squid spawn in waters near the southeastern port city of Busan or off South Korea's southernmost island of Jeju. They swim north in the spring before returning south to their birthplace between July and September.
In 2017 and 2018, the illegal Chinese boats, which are typically about 10 times larger than North Korean boats, caught as much of the squid as Japan and South Korea combined — an estimated 160,000 tons, worth more than $440 million annually.
Marine researchers fear a full collapse of this squid colony, which has declined by 63 percent and 78 percent in South Korean and Japanese waters respectively since 2003.
The Chinese fleet is a primary culprit of this precipitous drop because in targeting North Korea waters, these industrial boats are catching the squid before they grow big enough to procreate, said Park, the scientist from Global Fishing Watch.
Since Chinese authorities do not make their fishing licenses public, Global Fishing Watch said that there is no way to verify that all of the ships entering North Korean waters were authorized by the Chinese government. However, the organization corroborated that the vessels were of Chinese origin through various other sources of information.
Among these corroborating sources were transponder and other types of radio transmissions, records from South Korean Coast Guard officials who routinely board and inspect fishing ships on their way into North Korean waters, data showing the ships departed from Chinese ports or waters that are strictly limited Chinese vessels, records indicating the use of distinctly Chinese gear type or ship design, and satellite information showing that the ships previously fished in Chinese waters that are closely policed and forbidden to foreign ships.
All of the roughly two dozen fishing ships that the reporting team witnessed heading into North Korean waters were flying Chinese flags.
"When they come, they take over,” said Kim Byong Su, the mayor of Ulleung island, located in the East Sea about 75 miles east of the Korean Peninsula. A tiny spit of land belonging to South Korea, Ulleung is the closest port to the North Korean fishing grounds.
Kim said that the Chinese squid boats have decimated the island’s two primary sources of income, tourism and fishing. In the Jeodong market near the pier, rows of the squid are draped across lines like folded laundry as they sun-dry into fish jerky. Squid sellers estimated that the per-pound cost of squid is roughly three times what it was less than five years ago.
Most of the island’s men older than 40 are squid fishermen but a third of them are now unemployed because of the decline in stock, the mayor said. That a creature so central to the local culture could disappear has shaken this community, whose identity has been defined by squid fishing for centuries.
Historically, most of the Ulleung’s restaurants served fried, dried or raw squid as a free appetizer, but these dishes are now absent from many menus.
Local animosity toward the Chinese fleet has been made only worse, the mayor said, because a few times a year when bad weather strikes, an armada of more than 200 Chinese squid boats arrive simultaneously to the Ulleung’s port to ride out the storm. The mayor said he is powerless to tell them to leave.
They dump oil, throw litter, run loud smoky generators all night and when leaving drag their anchors, destroying the island’s freshwater pipes, he said.
“The outside world needs to know what’s happening here,” Mr. Kim said.
Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.
This article appears here courtesy of The Outlaw Ocean Project. To follow the project's latest work, readers may subscribe to its Substack newsletter at https://theoutlawocean.substack.com/.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
Graves of 19th century migrants found on trail in Idaho
September 27, 2021 FILE - This undated file image provided by the City of Rocks National Reserve shows the Inner City formation inside the reserve in southeastern Idaho. Cadaver dogs have found what are probably seven graves of mid-1880s migrants who died in south-central Idaho on the California Trail while crossing what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve.
(City of Rocks National Reserve via AP, File )
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Cadaver dogs have found what are probably seven graves of mid-1880s migrants who died in south-central Idaho on the California Trail while crossing what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve.
Experts with the Oregon-California Historic Trails and City of Rocks National Reserve identified two possible graves.
The Post Register reported in a story last week that the cadaver dogs earlier this month confirmed the two sites as containing human remains and then found five more possible burial sites.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” said Tara McClure-Cannon, assistant park manager at City of Rocks. “We had suspected some of these areas in the past based on what they looked like. The dogs were partly confirming our suspicions.”
McClure-Cannon said the park has several options on how to handle the grave sites. It could bring in ground penetrating radar to confirm they are graves containing bodies. In rare cases, potential graves are excavated. The locations of the potential grave sites will be marked with a GPS location, but not made public so they won’t be disturbed.
Jerry Eichhorst, president of the Idaho chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association, helped locate some of the potential graves and said marking the graves can create problems.
“Unfortunately, a lot of these places are very isolated, and if you put up a fence or anything around it, you just marked it,” Eichhorst said. “We mark that the GPS coordinates are a suspected grave site that’s been verified with cadaver dogs, and you know it’s there and the people that care know it’s there, but it’s not open to the general public for the risk of vandalism.”
About 200,000 migrants passed through the national reserve mainly heading to California on the California Trail that splits off of the nearby Oregon Trail, experts have said, adding that there are probably thousands of migrants buried along the California and Oregon trails.
“It’s estimated that there’s a person buried every quarter mile to every half mile, just depending on the accounts in the stories and such,” he said.
Deb Hurlburt trains, who trains cadaver dogs and works closely with regional search-and-rescue and crime units, said three German shepherds searched an area about the size of two football fields at the national reserve.
“A couple of areas our dogs definitely, based upon their body language, found the smell of human remains,” she said.
Eichhorst and his group have gathered about 2,700 diary entries from emigrants, with some of them indicating burial cites at the City of Rocks National Reserve and others offering clues on people who survived the journey.
“Several years ago I found a diary that referenced writing their name on some rocks at City of Rocks that we’ve never found names on,” Eichhorst said. “I told Wallace Keck, the park manager, about it and sent him the diary. He went out and was able to climb up these rocks and find names on it.”
Labour conference: Members vote for £15 minimum wage amid row
Andy McDonald MP: "Is it unreasonable to expect our key workers not to have that level of pay?" The Unite union put forward a motion calling for the minimum wage to increase to £15 to a vote on Tuesday.
The current minimum wage is £8.91 for those 23 and over, £8.36 for those aged 21 and 22, and £6.56 for 18 to 20-year olds.
The wide-ranging Unite motion also said that, for Labour to win the next election, it "must be an anti-austerity party, defending jobs and improving living standards".
And it included demands for stronger union rights, higher taxes "on the very wealthiest", an end to zero-hour contracts and a "better work-life balance".
But asked about the wage rise earlier, Sir Keir said: "It should be a £10 minimum wage - that's a 12% increase [meaning] £2000 a year for working families."
Before the vote, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the party leadership was "perfectly happy" for conference delegates to back the £15 motion.
However, he said Labour would only reassess its current policy closer to the next general election, adding this was the "responsible thing to do".
But Mr Corbyn called for the party to commit to a £6 an hour rise in the minimum wage now.
Speaking at a fringe event alongside Labour's conference, the former leader told the BBC: "We live in a low-wage economy and a low-wage economy leads to poverty. We live in a society now with more food banks than branches of McDonald's. That's where we have got to."
Mr Corbyn also praised Mr McDonald, saying he had "huge admiration" for the MP, adding: "He went through a lot of trauma [on Monday] because he did not in all conscience feel he could go and say that he was opposed to £15 minimum wage because he is not.
"He supports it, so he took the decision he did to resign. I fully support him."
Sir Keir was a member of Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet during the run-up to the 2019 election
Raising the minimum wage was not one of the 10 pledges Sir Keir made when running for the Labour leadership last year.
But he supported a campaign in 2019 for fast food chain McDonald's to improve pay and conditions.
At the time, he said: "They're not asking for the Earth. They're asking for the basics - £15 an hour, the right to know their hours in advance and to have trade union recognition. That ought to be the norm in 21st Century Britain."
But on Tuesday, Sir Keir said his comments were in relation to "particular industrial disputes at McDonald's", adding: "I backed them in that and I'd back them again today in relation to that the minimum wage, [but] across the whole of the economy is a completely different issue."
In a scathing resignation letter, Mr McDonald claimed the leader's office had instructed him go to a meeting at the party conference and "argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage".
"After many months of a pandemic when we made commitments to stand by key workers, I cannot now look those same workers in the eye and tell them they are not worth a wage that is enough to live on, or that they don't deserve security when they are ill," the former shadow employment secretary added.
Mr Corbyn also backed the so-called "McStrike" in 2019, but his policy as leader was for at least £10 minimum wage - also Labour's current position.
Japan’s next leader sets sights on wage hikes to fuel growth
FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2021, file photo, Japan's former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida poses for a portrait picture following his press conference at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party after he was elected as party president in Tokyo. The man soon to become Japan's next prime minister says he believes raising incomes is the only way to get the world's third-largest economy growing again. Growth had stalled even before the pandemic hit, stymied by longstanding problems including a shrinking population, growing inequality and stagnant incomes. (Du Xiaoyi/Pool Photo via AP, File)
MITO, Japan (AP) — Fumio Kishida, the man soon to become Japan’s prime minister, says he believes raising incomes is the only way to get the world’s third-largest economy growing again.
Kishida says he wants to promote a “new capitalism” that would be more equitable, with fairer distribution of national wealth — the only way to get frugal Japanese families to spend more.
“Unless the fruits of growth are properly distributed, a ‘virtuous cycle of growth and distribution’ cannot be realized,” he told reporters after he overwhelmingly was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday. “I would like to take economic measures to raise the incomes of many of you.”
Nearly a decade after long-serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to “make Japan great again,” the economy is in a holding pattern, stalled both by the pandemic and by chronic problems such as an aging and shrinking population, growing inequality and stagnant incomes.
Topping Kishida’s to-do list is another big dose of government spending to help Japan recover from the COVID-19 shock.
Despite his ambitious talk, Kishida is viewed as an establishment choice, not a reformer. He’s a former banker and solid member of the political elite: his father and grandfather also were politicians.
Analysts say Kishida, who is all-but-certain to be elected prime minister by Parliament on Monday, is unlikely to stray far from Abe’s playbook of heavy doses of stimulus. Neither did the current prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping aside after one year in office.
Kishida’s top priority? “The economy,” he told national broadcaster NHK.
He said he plans to propose a spending package worth several hundred billion dollars soon.
His support for housing and education subsidies should boost consumer spending, said Naoya Oshikubo, senior economist at SuMi TRUST. He expects a “tailwind for the stock market, as it will make clear that ex-Prime Minister Abe’s economic policies will continue.”
Under Kishida, the Bank of Japan is likely to stick to its years-long efforts to spur growth by keeping interest rates near zero — making borrowing cheap — by pouring trillions of yen (hundreds of billions of dollars) into the economy through asset purchases.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 0.3% Thursday after data showed factory output and retail sales weakened in August as the country buckled down to fight the pandemic.
While share prices are near their highest levels in three decades, that wealth is not trickling down to average Japanese. Their incomes adjusted for inflation have been falling while jobs are growing less secure as companies increasingly rely on part-time and contract workers to keep costs low. The average minimum wage in Japan is only 930 yen ($8.30), while the cost of living is higher than in many Western countries.
Czech support for nuclear becomes law
29 September 2021
Support for new nuclear build at the Czech Republic's Dukovany power plant has been signed into law by President Miloš Zeman. It is designed to remove market failures that stand in the way of the Czech Republic's goal to rely on nuclear energy for secure supply of power and heat.
Dukovany today. A new power plant adjacent to this is to be built by 2036 (Image: ČEZ)
The new law, approved by a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies on 16 September, allows a state-owned company to purchase electricity from new nuclear plants at a fixed rate for at least 30 years, with the possibility of extension. The power will be resold on the wholesale market and any profit or loss translated into an adjustment to power bills, although the government said it will set an upper limit on any extra cost. It is known as Lex Dukovany, after the power plant site where new build is planned. Zeman officially signed the law yesterday, bringing it into effect.
The Czech government and the International Energy Agency have both said this addresses market failures that inhibit the construction of both nuclear and renewable capacity.
Major drivers of the Czech Republic's pro-nuclear position are that the country needs to reduce the amount of coal it uses without prompting security of supply issues, such as an over-reliance on imports. The government has noted that renewable sources are limited by geographic factors. "In addition to stable electricity supplies," Lex Dukovany reads, "nuclear power plants also enable the provision of stable heat supplies, which is another advantage due to the extensive system of central heat supply in the Czech Republic."
Therefore, "Nuclear energy has been identified as the primary means of ensuring energy security in the Czech Republic in the context of achieving the goal of a climate-neutral EU by 2050 due to its ability to ensure low-carbon, stable and cheap electricity supplies."
Dukovany II
A national priority to maintain energy security is the continued operation of the Dukovany nuclear power plant, where four VVER-440 reactors have operated since the late 1980s. Approaching 40 years of age, they need engineering work to extend their service lives by a further 20 years, and after that replacement by a new power plant to be known as Dukovany II.
In July 2020 the Czech government signed a framework agreement on the construction of the new unit with national power company ČEZ and project company Elektrárna Dukovany II. That agreement aimed for ČEZ to hold a tender for the reactor supplier, negotiate a contract and receive all the required licences by 2024, so that the unit can be put into operation in 2036.
Notably, wordings in the new law restrict suppliers for new power plants and maintenance services to companies from countries that have signed the International Agreement on Government Procurement of 1996, which effectively excludes the Russian and Chinese industries. The Czech Ministry of Industry instead selected EDF, Westinghouse and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power for security vetting via a questionnaire. ČEZ said in June that the companies are answering questions about their "ownership structure, supply chain, links of stakeholders with the state, problems with the implementation of projects, accusations and other problems in nuclear resource projects, technology transfer and know-how."
Policies currently in place should see coal phased out in the Czech Republic in 2038, although the International Energy Agency recently encouraged a faster schedule. At that time renewables are expected to provide 25% of electricity and nuclear as much as 58%.
Researched and written by World Nuclear News
Pentagon officials say Afghan govt's collapse was rooted in 2020 US deal with Taliban
Issued on: 30/09/2021 -
Gen. Frank McKenzie, Commander of US Central Command, appearing on screen from MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Fla., speaks about Afghanistan during a virtual briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021.
Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to the 2020 US agreement with the Taliban signed in Doha that promised a complete troop withdrawal. Joe Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the withdrawal in Afghanistan, drawing criticism from Republican US lawmakers.
This week, the US House and Senate started hearings of a congressional review on the troop pull-out in Afghanistan and the war itself. During its second day, General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500, as part of President Joe Biden's decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unravelling of the Washington-backed Afghan government accelerated.
“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military - psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.
On February 29, 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the US promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021, with the Taliban committing to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January.
McKenzie had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow." In addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin" for the 20-year war effort, he added, because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army: “our advisers were no longer down there with those units.”
Democrat Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the war in Afghanistan, which he argued needed to be brought to a close after 20 years of stalemated fighting that had cost American lives, drained resources and distracted from greater strategic priorities.
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with the analysis. The Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis,” he added. War in Afghanistan 'a strategic failure'
Wednesday's hearing with Pentagon leaders was politically charged. Republicans sought to cast President Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointed to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years.
The previous day, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that on Wednesday.
When pressed Tuesday, Milley also told the Senate committee that it had been his personal opinion that at least 2,500 American troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the Kabul government and a return to Taliban rule.
Defying US intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its American-trained army collapsed on August 15, allowing the Taliban to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a couple of hundred men on motorcycles and without firing one shot. That triggered a frantic US effort to evacuate American civilians, Afghan allies and others from Kabul airport.
The Taliban had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.
‘Plain old politics’
US House and Senate started hearings which could become an extended congressional review of the US failures in Afghanistan. This after years of limited congressional oversight of the war although hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were consumed.
“The Republicans' sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden's decision to end US involvement there.
Tuesday's hearing also was contentious at times, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterised the military options with which he was presented last spring and summer.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) asked why Milley did not choose to resign after his advice was rejected. The general, who was appointed to his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump and retained by Biden, said it was his responsibility to provide the commander in chief with his best advice.
“The president doesn't have to agree with that advice,” Milley said. “He doesn't have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to resign just because my advice was not taken."
(FRANCE 24 with AP & REUTERS)
Reparations draw UN scrutiny, but those who’d pay say little
By SALLY HO
September 28, 2021 Prime Minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Timothy Harris, in a pre-recorded message, addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday Sept. 24, 2021, at UN headquarters. At the United Nations General Assembly, African and Caribbean countries that stand to benefit from reparations were backed by other nations, though those most responsible for slavery and colonialism said little about what they might owe to African descendants.
(Peter Foley/Pool Photo via AP)
More than a year after Black Lives Matter protests launched a worldwide reckoning about the centuries of racism that Black people continue to face, the question of reparations emerged — unevenly — as a high-profile issue at this year’s largest gathering of world leaders.
At the U.N. General Assembly, African and Caribbean countries that stand to benefit from reparations were backed by other nations, though those most responsible for slavery and colonialism said little about what they might owe to African descendants.
Leaders from Africa (South Africa and Cameroon) to the Caribbean (Saint Kitts & Nevis and Saint Lucia) were joined by representatives of countries that are unlikely to be tapped to pay up — Cuba and Malaysia among them — in explicitly endorsing the creation of reparation systems.
Those missing from the renewed global conversation on the topic, though, were noteworthy as well: the United States, Britain and Germany, wealthy and developed nations built from conquests of varying kinds.
“Caribbean countries like ours, which were exploited and underdeveloped to finance the development of Europe, have put forward a case for reparations for slavery and native genocide, and we expect that case to be treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves,” said Philip J. Pierre, prime minister of Saint Lucia. “There should be no double standards in the international system in recognizing, acknowledging and compensating victims of crimes against humanity.”
A look at who is and isn’t talking about the issue this past week is a sign that while the movement supporting literal payback to the African continent and the forced diaspora that ravaged it is growing, the substantive engagement of major powers — however apologetic — is limited.
U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, made no mention of it in his address, though the White House earlier this year said it supported studying reparations for Black Americans. And the office of its U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is African American, wouldn’t comment on the recent reparations discussions.
Monetary atonement for America’s history of slavery is a seminal question in the world’s attempt to reconcile with what South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called “one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind, and a crime of unparalleled barbarity.”
“Its legacy persists in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and in Africa itself,” Ramaphosa said at a meeting on reparations during the General Assembly. “Millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty.”
Slavery in what became the United States began more than 400 years ago with slaves forcibly transported by ship from Africa. The debate about reparations has been ongoing ever since slavery was abolished in 1865.
In recent years, the issue has languished in Congress for more than three decades, though reparations have gained traction in a smattering of cities and local governments as the country continues to grapple with fallout from the death of George Floyd in 2020.
Carla Ferstman, an international law expert who studies reparations as a professor at the University of Essex, said the U.N. talks this session mark a significant milestone for the global reparations movement that has been brewing for 20 years.
What remains to be seen is how it unfolds between individual nations — and how transformative the results are. While each reparations program would specifically be between the perpetrators and the victims’ descendants, the conversation to rectify wrongs in history has now become universal.
“It’s universal,” Ferstman said, “because inequity is universal.”
Valued reparations to address harm could come in the form of direct financial payments for individuals, developmental aid for countries, the return of colonized land, treasured artifacts and cultural items, systemic corrections of policies and laws that may still oppress, and the kind of full-throated apologies and acknowledgements that wipe aside certain historical figures that were once celebrated as national heroes.
“People perceive their harms in very different ways — this perception of how the wrongs happened and how they manifested in terms of later generations,” Ferstman said. “One needs to be sensitive to what is important and how to best rectify.”
The latest discussions on reparations came as the U.N. commemorated an important but contentious 2001 anti-racism conference in South Africa that resulted in what is known as the Durban Declaration.
A new resolution adopted at the commemoration meeting last Wednesday acknowledged some progress but deplored what it called a rise in discrimination, violence and intolerance directed at people of African heritage and many other groups — from the Roma to refugees, the young to the old, people with disabilities to displaced people.
There was even a discussion devoted to reparations, though it didn’t go unnoticed during that talk that last week’s new declaration stopped short of demanding nations must pay reparations to those their government harmed.
It said only that there should be a way for descendants to seek “just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered.” That was despite the U.N. Human Rights Council’s explicit recommendation for reparations in a major milestone report in June.
“While reparations could not compensate or right all the wrongs that had been done against the people of African descent, they could go a long way in addressing systemic racism that still lingers in the society today, in bringing about a level playing field to realize their true potentials,” Syed Mohamad Hasrin Aidid, head of Malaysia’s U.N. mission, said at Wednesday’s meeting.
The United States, Britain and Germany were among the dozens of countries that didn’t attend the Durban commemoration last week because of persisting grievances about the conference 20 years ago, when the U.S. boycotted it over references to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it did not dispute the horrors of slavery and colonialism, but that it was focused on solving today’s problems. It said in a statement: “While we acknowledge that the wounds run very deep, we believe that the most effective way for the U.K. today to respond to the cruelty of the past is to ensure that current and future generations do not forget what happened, and to address modern-day slavery and racism.”
Germany’s president, in his General Assembly address, didn’t mention reparations, though his is one of the few countries that have directed money to make up for its colonial-era actions.
Early this year, Germany officially recognized the massacre of tens of thousands of people in Namibia as genocide and agreed to provide 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for projects that are expected to stretch over 30 years to help the communities affected. That announcement pointedly did not label Germany’s initiative as formal reparations.
Facing journalists this week at the United Nations who sought answers on Namibia, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his country continues to negotiate proposals with the African leaders.
“(T)he results that have been achieved have been achieved with the desire to finally reach an outcome, though not a conclusion, with regard to this truly difficult chapter of German history,” Maas said. “For in fact, it is only the beginning of a period of very, very intensive cooperation between Germany and Namibia.”
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Sally Ho, based in Seattle, is a member of The Associated Press’ Race & Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho
Thai flood victims 'start from zero' after killer storm
Issued on: 30/09/2021 -
A resident casts a net in his partially submerged Lopburi village
Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
Lopburi (Thailand) (AFP)
Watching his fridge float across the kitchen and bed disappear underwater was not how Samran Buachumsuk hoped to begin retirement at his newly built home in central Thailand.
Flooding after tropical storm Dianmu has hit 31 provinces, killed seven people and inundated more than 215,000 households, authorities say.
About 150 kilometres (93 miles) south, the capital is on alert -- with floodwater expected to reach Bangkok late next week.
In the ancient city of Lopburi, a caramel sea has lapped into homes and Samran does not know where he will find the money to repair his house and buy new furniture.
'I might have to start from zero since there is very little stuff that is salvageable,' said Samran Buachumsuk Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
"I think this is it -- I might have to start from zero since there is very little stuff that is salvageable," the 61-year-old, who retired last month, told AFP.
Aoi Ketpan, 53, managed to move some of her family's belongings to higher ground but could not compete with the speed of the rising water.
"The water reached the level of my hip in a matter of minutes," she told AFP.
A resident steers his boat through crops subrmerged in floodwaters in Lopburi Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
Down the road, teenage boys had found a silver lining: throwing nets into the torrent to catch fish and crabs for dinner.
At a nearby temple evacuees rest on mats, reliant on donated food packages.
Lopburi's weather bureau chief Norawat Thipraks said the flood peaked at two metres and would take at least two weeks to recede.
A boy swims in the floodwaters Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
The level of the Chao Phraya river -- which snakes through Bangkok after winding almost 400 kilometres down from the north -- is steadily rising as authorities release water from dams further upstream.
The Royal Irrigation Department is discharging 2,750 cubic metres of water -- the equivalent of 1.1 Olympic swimming pools -- per second, from the Chao Phraya Dam into the river.
Somkiat Prajamwong from the Office of National Water Resources said authorities were working to divert some of the floodwater to protect the capital.
Lopburi's weather bureau chief Norawat Thipraks says the flood will take at least two weeks to recede Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
Hydrology expert Seree Suparathit from Rangsit University said the floodwater would likely reach Bangkok around October 6-10, with a new storm expected next week adding to the risks.
The capital experienced catastrophic floods in 2011 that left a fifth of the city underwater, but experts say this year's disaster is unlikely to reach that level.
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Dukovany today. A new power plant adjacent to this is to be built by 2036 (Image: ČEZ)
