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)
Monday, December 27, 2021
Fury as banker set to become the new chairman of NHS England
"He'll be able to share all of his medical knowledge with the ex-banker Sajid Javid! FFS!!!" tweeted one angry person.
A banker is set to become the new chairman of NHS England in a bid to make it more “accountable” for its funding.
The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed former TSB chairman Richard Meddings is the Government’s preferred candidate for the role on Thursday.
The Telegraph reported that ministers wanted Mr Meddings to provide an “outside eye” to make the NHS accountable for its additional funding, and said the Government was anxious to identify a “heavyweight” from the private sector with experience in digital and data, in order to help the NHS make better use of technologies.
The NHS still relies on paper records at some of its hospitals.
Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid has invited the Health and Social Care Committee to hold a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing with Mr Meddings.
The role of chairman with NHS England will become available when Lord Prior of Brampton steps down early next year.
80,000 customers switched accounts
The Telegraph also reported that Cabinet ministers stressed their expectation that the NHS must achieve value for money after an additional £5.5 billion was channelled towards it for the second half of 2021 and a national insurance increase is set to fund an extra £12 billion for it next year.
As chairman of TSB, Mr Meddings oversaw what he described as “its most challenging year” in 2018 when it accrued losses of £104.5 million.
The migration of its IT system cost the bank £330.2 million, with higher charges related to customer compensation, additional resources and fraud.
Around 80,000 customers switched their bank account away from TSB the same year.
Mr Meddings is also a non-executive director at HM Treasury and Credit Suisse and is the former group finance director for Standard Chartered bank.
The Department of Health and Social Care said he was selected as preferred chair after an open public appointment process.
Following the select committee hearing, it will then set out its views on his suitability for the role of chair and the Secretary of State will then consider the committee’s report before making a final decision.
The ten most expensive weather disasters this year caused more than $170 billion in damage, $20 billion more than in 2020, a British aid group said Monday.
Each year, UK charity Christian Aid calculates the cost of weather incidents like flooding, fires and heat waves according to insurance claims and reports the results.
In 2020, it found the world’s ten costliest weather disasters caused $150 billion in damage, making this year’s total an increase of 13 percent.
Christian Aid said the upward trend reflects the effects of man-made climate change and added that the ten disasters in question also killed at least 1,075 people and displaced 1.3 million.
The most expensive disaster in 2021 was hurricane Ida, which lashed the eastern United States and caused around $65 billion in damages. After crashing into Louisiana at the end of August, it made its way northward and caused extensive flooding in New York City and the surrounding area.
Spectacular and deadly flooding in Germany and Belgium in July was next on the list at $43 billion in losses.
A cold snap and winter storm in Texas that took out the vast state’s power grid cost $23 billion, followed by flooding in China’s Henan province in July that cost an estimated $17.6 billion. A man stands in front of a destroyed house after floods caused major damage in Schuld near Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, western Germany, on July 17, 2021. (CHRISTOF STACHE / AFP)
Other disasters costing several billion dollars include flooding in Canada, a late spring freeze in France that damaged vineyards, and a cyclone in India and Bangladesh in May.
The report acknowledged its evaluation mainly covers disasters in rich countries where infrastructure is better insured and that the financial toll of disasters on poor countries is often incalculable.
It gave the example of South Sudan where flooding affected around 800,000 people.
“Some of the most devastating extreme weather events in 2021 hit poorer nations, which have contributed little to causing climate change,” the report’s press release noted.
In mid-December, the world’s biggest reinsurer, Swiss Re, estimated natural catastrophes and extreme weather events caused around $250 billion in damage this year.
It said the total represented a 24 percent increase over last year and that the cost to the insurance industry alone was the fourth highest since 1970.
Assangefiled an appealThursday to challenge a decision of the London High Court of Justice, which opened the door for his extradition to the US on charges of spying. If the appeal is granted, the case will be heard at theUK Supreme Court.
The Queen’s Bench Division of the London High Court of Justice overturned the Westminster Magistrates’ Court’s decision earlier this month preventing Assange from being extradited. In doing so, the Court rejected Assange’s assertion that he could not be removed under the Extradition Act of 2003 due to mental health concerns, and found the US government’s assurances regarding the Assange’s treatment sufficient to allow for extradition despite the Act’s requirements.
The said assurances included a commitment by the US government not to hold Assange at its Florence, Colorado facility—the highest level maximum security prison in the country—or under “special administrative measures” such as solitary confinement, which could cause his mental condition to deteriorate. US authorities also indicated their willingness to transfer Assange to a facility in his home country of Australia to serve his sentence if convicted.
Assange’s appeal challenges the reasoning of the Queen’s Bench regarding US assurances, which he claims are discretionary and ultimately meaningless. Assange’s lawyer Stella Moris, stated that a decision on the appeal is not expected until the third week of January.
Assange has been in custody since 2019, despite serving a sentence for violating bail conditions in an unrelated case, and spent seven years at Ecuador’s embassy in London to avoid being removed to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. These allegations were later dropped. Assange faces 175 years in prison for exposing US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo.
2 cities in China have repossessed land owned by Evergrande amid scrutiny over assets of the debt-laden developer
Huileng Tan Mon, 20 December 2021, Evergrande's assets are under scrutiny amid its debt crisis.
Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
The land planning authority in the city of Chengdu said that it has taken over two plots of idle land from Evergrande.
This follows a similar move by Haikou city earlier.
The Chinese government can take back land if it has been sitting idle for more than two years.
Two cities in China have repossessed land from cash-strapped real estate developer Evergrande.
Last Friday, the land planning authority of the southwest city of Chengdu announced it had taken over two plots of land that had been sitting idle for over a decade. According to the notices, the two plots total over 340,000 sq. meters (31,587 sq. ft.).
According to a government notice published last Monday, Haikou city, located in Hainan province in southern China, took back eight plots of land from Evergrande for similar reasons.
Under Chinese law, the government can take back land that has been sitting idle for two years without having to compensate the property owner.
This latest move comes as China's government stepped in to oversee Evergrande's debt crisis. The company announced earlier this month that there was "no guarantee" it would have enough funds to meet debt repayments. Authorities have started auditing the assets of Evergrande and its billionaire founder, Hui Ka Yan, Reuters reported last week.
Shenzhen-headquartered Evergrande is the world's most indebted property developer, with $300 billion in liabilities. Investors fear its collapse could have a domino effect on China's economy — possibly sending the rest of the world into a financial crisis.
The Chinese government has signaled there will be no outright bailout for Evergrande. However, authorities have asked government-owned firms and state-backed property developers to buy some of Evergrande's assets, Reuters reported in September.
Guangzhou city authorities have also taken over Evergrande's soccer stadium and plan to sell it, as construction has come to a stop, Reuters reported last month, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Evergrande has divested some businesses to raise cash, including Chinese streaming platform HengTen and Dutch electric motor maker e-Traction.
S&P Global and Fitch Ratings recently said they consider the property giant to be in default. Evergrande Defaults!
Now What?
12/15/2021
China Evergrande failed to make interest payments to offshore bondholder, prompting Fitch Ratings to upgrade the Company’s status to “restricted default” on December 9, making China Evergrande the twelfth Chinese real estate firm to default on bonds in 2021, and by far the largest to do so.
China Evergrande, the second-largest real estate developer in China, has been narrowly dodging default for months. The Company has more than US $300 billion in debt that, as it warned the market back in September, it believed would be difficult for it to service. (As an aside, it is believed that China Evergrande could have an additional US $150 billion in debt, off its official financial books).
Put simply, the cash flow of the Company, severely dampened by the cooling Chinese housing market, is not enough for it to service interest payments to those from which it borrowed funds, typically in the form of interest-bearing corporate bonds.
One such unlucky purchaser of China Evergrande corporate bonds, among others, are off-shore investors. Off-shore bondholders will likely be the least prioritised of the Company’s investors when receiving interest payments or reparations.
Evergrande defaults!
Perhaps fortuitously, it was the failure by China Evergrande to make interest payments to this very group of investors that prompted Fitch Ratings to upgrade the Company’s status to “restricted default” on December 9. Interestingly, China Evergrande is the twelfth Chinese real estate firm to default on bonds in 2021, and by far the largest to do so.
Now what?
Other rating agencies, such as Moody’s and S&P Global, have not been so quick to upgrade their status of China Evergrande. However, S&P Global has noted that China Evergrande’s default is “inevitable”.
China Evergrande themselves seem to be ignoring public comment on its failure to meet its obligation, nor has it ceased operations or begun any formal paperwork to address its potential bankruptcy.
China Evergrande is currently under restructuring while attempting to continue operations as usual. The restructuring includes renegotiating its liabilities and offloading non-construction arms of the Company at bargain prices such as its property management business, as well as stakes in a major Chinese bank and (strangely enough) a streaming services.
Pressure is being applied to the Company’s leaders to speed up its restructuring since the change in its Fitch rating. According to Bloomberg, the China Evergrande restructure is being heavily monitored, if not outright controlled by Chinese Authorities in Beijing and the Company’s home province of Guangdong.
Right now, the official line from the Central Bank of China is that the China Evergrande crisis is being handled as per the “principles of marketization and rule of law,”. If more rating agencies follow Fitch Rating in the coming weeks, China Evergrande could slip into something a little more serious than restricted default and the above quote may become a little truer, with Chinese authorities being hamstrung in their ability to interfere with a meltdown
China Evergrande chief's stake in services unit drops on forced selling Finance
|24 Dec 2021
The China Evergrande Centre building sign is seen in Hong Kong. (Reuters)
The shareholding of China Evergrande Group's chairman in its property services unit has fallen to 58.18 percent from 60.96 percent after forced selling of pledged shares by a third party, a Hong Kong stock exchange filing showed.
The number of Evergrande Property Services Group shares involved was 300 million, and the drop was the result of steps taken on Dec. 20 to enforce rights to the shares held as security against chairman Hui Ka-yan, the filing said.
Reuters could not immediately determine who sold the pledged shares.
The stake was worth roughly HK$798 million (US$102.32 million), based on the stock's closing price of HK$2.66 on the day.
Shares of Evergrande Property Services Group ended 1.5 percent lower on Friday at HK$2.63.
Evergrande Group, grappling with over US$300 billion in liabilities and at risk of becoming China's biggest ever default, has been scrambling to raise cash by selling assets and shares.
Hui's stake in Evergrande Group itself dropped to 59.78 percent earlier this month, also on forced selling.
(Reuters)
A revolutionary movement for democracy has taken hold in Sudan, led by young people
December 26, 20218:04 AM ET Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday EYDER PERALTAT A huge network of resistance committees has transformed public protest in Sudan, challenging the new junta.
EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
We're going to begin this hour with a remarkable protest movement on the African continent. That's my usual assignment, and I was recently in Sudan, a country that has seen huge change the past few years. Much of it has been driven by young people, who are on the streets again, following a military coup. There are only about 20 protesters standing in the middle of a dusty street in Khartoum. Rayan Nour is one of them. As cars zoom past, she's holding a handwritten sign. She's wearing a business suit and a bandana printed with little marijuana leaves.
So this is just a silent protest.
RAYAN NOUR: Exactly. You just have a sign.
PERALTA: What does your sign say?
NOUR: (Non-English language spoken) - the world is ruled by a woman who fights.
PERALTA: A woman on the streets, wearing pants, protesting, was unthinkable just a few years ago. Sudan is a country long governed by Islamic law, but a revolutionary movement for democracy has taken hold here. In 2019, mass protests forced Sudan's dictator Omar al-Bashir from power. A new military junta is again being challenged. Nour is one of the organizers.
NOUR: It's highly coordinated, and then you have so many committees to organize all these things - media, the field, making sure that these streets are barricaded.
PERALTA: Kholood Khair runs a think tank in Sudan. She says their whole lives, young people watched how the Islamist regime used a vast network of informers to keep Sudanese in check. And inevitably, Khair says, they learned.
KHOLOOD KHAIR: What the resistance committees have done is effectively take over that structure to use it for resistance. And that's why they were so effective in defeating - unseating Bashir in 2019.
PERALTA: Now in Sudan with little notice, tens of thousands of protesters can flood the streets. They paralyzed the country in hours and are confident this will ultimately dislodge the new junta and lead it to a democracy. It's worked before, they believe, so why wouldn't it work now?
KHAIR: And the vision is that politics actually takes place at the grassroots level and not in the sort of agreements and handshakes that are happening between senior officials.
PERALTA: At first, the movement was led by the highly educated - doctors, engineers, teachers - but they were easy targets for the government. So taking inspiration from the regime they hated, young people created resistance committees. Every block, every building now has a committee working independently to call people to the streets. As Nour and I talk, an older man gets close to listen to our conversation. Is he intelligence? I ask Nour.
NOUR: Well, it doesn't matter. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. But we're everywhere too.
PERALTA: We meet Nour again the day after the small protest.
NOUR: Hello.
PERALTA: How are you?
NOUR: I'm good. How are you?
PERALTA: She gets in the car wearing a different suit and her trademark bandana. This time, every resistance committee in Khartoum has decided to head toward the presidential palace. It's bound to be chaotic and violent.
NOUR: So you're just literally paralyzing the street.
PERALTA: The resistance committees are mostly run by young people like Nour. She says this generation was built for change.
NOUR: My mom always taught me to not let anyone take my rights away from me and for me to get that by my hand if I had to and not wait for anyone to get it for me.
PERALTA: That's how they toppled the dictator. When we start walking toward the presidential palace, barricades have already started going up. Older women are building them using pavers from the median.
NOUR: They have joined us. They weren't here. We were here. Like, the first protest - it was called in the newspaper - was like, (non-English language spoken), which is the whores and the gays - protest of the whores and the gays. And I was like, OK, whores, gays, let's go (laughter).
PERALTA: We walk past burning tires, past drummers and poets, and as we get closer to the palace, the crowd builds into the thousands. And without warning, security forces make their move.
The military has shot tear gas through all of downtown. Blocks and blocks are just covered in tear gas.
Some protesters collapse, overcome by the tear gas. Others hit by canisters are bleeding. We see one older man running, wiping tears from his eyes.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: We are looking for freedom for our children, for our kids. You will find us everywhere. You will never - you will never sleep. No one, no one, no one above this nation.
PERALTA: Amid the chaos, Nour is calm. Her voice never rises. She never runs. Why keep doing this because the more you keep doing it, the more the chances that you will die?
NOUR: So you're living here. What are you going to do? Are you going to just cope with that, or are you going to do more and get to what you are protesting for since the beginning?
PERALTA: You're also 24 years old.
NOUR: Yeah.
PERALTA: Like, I don't know. Like, you have life.
NOUR: Yeah.
PERALTA: Right?
NOUR: Yeah. I do, but in order for me to go to that life, I need this life to settle for me.
PERALTA: Things may not, as she put it, settle for Rayan Nour soon. There was another big protest yesterday. Security forces used tear gas and live bullets to disperse activists. Some of them say the U.S., a country known for pushing democratic values, doesn't have their back. I talk to young people like Nour all the time in my work, and I hear that a lot. When they find out I'm American, they often tell me that they feel abandoned by the U.S.
Sudanese activists want the U.S. to support their push for democracy
NPR's Eyder Peralta speaks with Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, about the ongoing conflicts in that region.
EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
To give a better sense of the role of the U.S. in the region, we are joined now by Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. He's the Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Ambassador, welcome.
JEFFREY FELTMAN: Thank you very much for having me.
PERALTA: So what do you tell these young Sudanese people who say the U.S. has abandoned them?
FELTMAN: Well, our interest in Sudan is to have a stable Sudan, to have a stable Horn of Africa. The only way that you're going to have a stable Sudan is if the democratic aspirations of the people - the people that you've been interviewing, that you've been meeting - if those aspirations are met. So we are supporting the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people as the only means to forge a stable Sudan.
PERALTA: So in Sudan, there was a deal struck between the civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and the military. And the U.S. very much backed this deal. Why does the military have to play any role in Sudanese democracy when it's clear that the citizens who are out on the streets don't want them at the table?
FELTMAN: I mean, I agree that what has to happen now is that the civilian confidence in this transition - the civilian confidence in what happens between now and the elections, which are scheduled for late 2023 or early 2024, has to be restored. So how do you restore the civilian confidence that the transition's going to meet their aspirations? And that's through the military taking certain steps, like stepping back from some of the political decisions, confirming that they will be transferring the head of the Sovereignty Council, sort of the main constitutional body in the transitional phase, to a civilian next summer, to stop the type of violence against peaceful protesters, to lift the state of emergency. There's lots that the military needs to do now to be able to help restore the civilian confidence that their democratic aspirations will be met through this transition.
PERALTA: But why not let the civilians do that? Why do the - why does the military have to play a role?
FELTMAN: The reality is if you go back to those inspiring demonstrations back in 2019 that you referred to when they - when the civilians came together in peace to overthrow a dictator - to overthrow Omar Bashir - the constitutional declaration that was agreed upon between - by those that were looking to get rid of Bashir and afterwards was sort of an arrangement between the civilians and the military, an arrangement where the military could not pick the civilians, and the civilians recognized that they were not going to be able to sideline the military through the transition period. I mean, the goal, again, of - is to get to elections, have a civilian-led transition that leads to a democratic Sudan after elections in late 2023 and 2024.
And so that constitutional declaration that's supposed to govern the transitional period has a civilian-military arrangement in it. The problem now is that the civilians, for very good reason after October 25, don't trust that the military is going to fulfill its part of that - those transitional arrangements. And that's what we're trying to do - is to find ways to encourage the military to take the steps that would restore confidence in that civilian-military partnership and would restore the civilian role in that civilian-military partnership.
PERALTA: So let's move on to Ethiopia. On Friday, the U.S. said it was ending a trade deal with the country, citing Ethiopia's gross violations of human rights. What makes you think that the sanctions will make any difference, that it'll change the course of what's happening in Ethiopia?
FELTMAN: Well, I mean, the trade privileges that Ethiopia enjoyed up until January 1 are based on legislation that has conditions. The legislation says the countries that engage in gross violation of human rights will not enjoy these trade privileges. So it's a statutory requirement that the administration took. Our overall point has been that it is time now to end this war. There have been too many civilians killed, too many displaced. The human rights atrocities are appalling. And there's been insufficient humanitarian access to millions of people in northern Tigray now for months.
The Tigrayan Defense Forces - these are the forces that moved within 200 kilometers of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a few weeks ago - those forces are back in their home state of Tigray. That was the demand of the government and, frankly, was the demand of United States, as well. That should trigger an end to the conflict. That should trigger a shift to negotiations. That should trigger an end to the human rights abuses and full humanitarian access to those who need food, medicine, fuel, cash, et cetera. So right now, that's what we are pushing for - is to push for the reality that the Tigray Defense Forces are back in Tigray to end this war.
PERALTA: That's Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman. He's the U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa. Thank you, Ambassador.
FELTMAN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ROOTS FT. MUSIQ'S "BREAK YOU OFF")
From NPR's annual list of reading recommendations, Books We Love, we hear four suggestions of history books from 2021.
EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
The end of the year is a time to reflect, to look back. If you want to look way back, Books We Love - NPR's list of the best reads from 2021 - has hundreds of recommendations, including books about history. These are four that our colleagues recommend.
TOM HUIZENGA, BYLINE: I'm Tom Huizenga, a producer at NPR Music. And, you know, sometimes, a book comes along that completely breaks new ground - a total eye-opener. And that's the book called "Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians In The Land Of Bach, Beethoven And Brahms." And it's written by Kira Thurman, a professor of history and Germanic languages and literatures at the University of Michigan. And the book offers the history of the many Black musicians who, because they were denied opportunities in the U.S., fled to German-speaking Europe as early as the 1870s. They were in search of artistic freedom. And they found it, but they also discovered new forms of racism. Some Germans applauded them, you know, wholeheartedly. Many others rejected them, fearing that Germany's sacred art was being encroached on. I love the book because it's meticulously researched, but the writing style is not academic at all. It goes down like water. Most importantly, it uncovers a story of people and a performance practice and rebuilds an unknown period in music history.
EMIKO TAMAGAWA, BYLINE: I'm Emiko Tamagawa, and I'm a senior producer for Here And Now.
TAMAGAWA: I'm recommending Danielle Dreilinger's "The Secret History Of Home Economics" because before I read it, I thought of home economics as a class I took in junior high with the aptly named Mrs. Housekeeper. But then I did read it and discovered that, in the early 20th century, home economics provided jobs for women in the sciences, corporations and government. It was also an area where Black women could and did make significant contributions. And Dreilinger makes a convincing case that because home economics teaches real-world skills like cooking and managing a budget, it should still be part of the school curriculum. So thanks, Mrs. Housekeeper.
ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: I'm Eric Deggans, NPR TV critic. The book I'm talking about is "On Juneteenth" by Annette Gordon-Reed.
DEGGANS: Gordon-Reed mingles her own personal story - she was the first Black student to desegregate schools in her hometown of Conroe, Texas - and used that as a window into a way to talk about how to look at Texas's mythology and consider some of the things in Texas's history that were rooted in slavery, rooted in lynching, rooted in oppression of Black people so that we have a more accurate understanding of the history of the state and, by extension, the history of the nation. This book in a lot of ways points out how history has been tweaked to serve the sensibilities of the white-dominated mainstream. And this book is a really elegant argument for widening that lens and a very elegant argument for facing up to the truth of what America is.
HOLLY MORRIS, BYLINE: Hi. My name is Holly Morris, and I'm part of the NPR training team. My book is "A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" by the historian Emma Southon. It's about all the ways ancient Romans murdered each other.
MORRIS: For a lot of Roman history, murder wasn't really a crime in the eyes of the law. Even after killing people got more regulated, there weren't, like, Roman homicide detectives looking into suspicious deaths. There was a lot of crucifixion and gladiatorial combat, and some people got really creative. One guy wanted to feed someone to lampreys, which are kind of like giant eels, but he was talked out of it. My favorite part was the curse tablets. People would scratch mean things on sheets of lead, roll them up and nail them shut. There's one that conjures demons to kill and smash a hated sports team, that sport being chariot racing. I read this book because I'm a fan of ancient Rome - well, maybe not a fan. They were pretty bloodthirsty. Not a fan of murder. But it really is pretty fun for a book about death.
PERALTA: That was Holly Morris recommending "A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum," Eric Deggans with "On Juneteenth," Emiko Tamagawa, who suggested "The Secret History Of Home Economics," and Tom Huizenga, who recommended "Singing Like Germans." For more ideas on what to read, you can find the full list of Books We Love at npr.org/bestbooks.
USA
Federal rent money finally got to renters, and eviction filings haven't gone up
With millions of Americans behind on rent, Congress sent billions of dollars to help, and after some early stumbles, a lot more of that money is now reaching people who need it.
EYDER PERALTA, HOST:
The U.S. launched the biggest rental assistance program in history over the past year. During the pandemic, more than twice as many Americans as usual fell behind on rent, many after losing their jobs. So Congress sent $47 billion to help people pay their back rent and avoid eviction. OK, but did it work? NPR's Chris Arnold has been following the effort and has this report.
CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE: There was a lot of worry that this year would see a catastrophic wave of evictions, with millions of families displaced from their homes. Congress approved that historic pile of money way back a year ago last December, but for the first half of the year, almost none of it was getting to people.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
MEHRAN MOSSADDAD: I can't sleep. I've got the shakes.
ARNOLD: That was Mehran Mossaddad back in June. He's a single dad living near Atlanta, and he had to stop driving Uber because he couldn't leave his 10-year-old daughter home alone doing remote school. So he fell behind on rent. He should have qualified for that help from Congress. He applied. But for months, he couldn't get it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MOSSADDAD: I get panic attacks not knowing what's in store for us. I have to take care of my daughter.
ARNOLD: What was happening was hundreds of state and local programs had to be set up to distribute the federal money, but they ran into all kinds of problems. Many programs put unnecessary restrictions in place. They asked for way too many documents. We spoke to Chris Winston with South Carolina's housing agency. He says at first, it seemed simple enough to require that renters show, for example, that they have a lease. But...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
CHRIS WINSTON: We have a lot of folks who rent from Jimmy, this house or this apartment or this mobile home on some land. There's no signed arrangement. There's no signed agreement.
ARNOLD: So over just things like that, almost nobody could qualify for the help. A month into South Carolina's program, Winston says they had handed out money to only, like, 10 families - 10.
WINSTON: That's when we realized how many applications were being held up because of documentation.
ARNOLD: Meanwhile, people were falling further behind on rent.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
AKIRA JOHNSON: They filed an eviction on me. They knocked on my door with the eviction paper.
ARNOLD: Akira Johnson (ph) is a single mom we talked to in Columbia, S.C. Her landlord refused to participate with the local rental assistance program. And the program for months refused to cut checks directly to renters when that happened. So she was stuck and really worried about her kids.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
JOHNSON: I feel like if we did lose the place, I would probably have to send them to their grandmother's. That's, like, separating from them.
ARNOLD: But then things started to change. The Treasury Department and housing groups were basically begging these programs to get rid of the red tape and streamline things, and many did. In June, July, August, September, more and more people got help. Mossaddad and Johnson both did, and they're back working again. We checked in with Johnson just the other day.
JOHNSON: I'm still at my home. I did extend my lease for six months. The kids are great. They're beautiful. They're excited about Christmas.
ARNOLD: Mossaddad says he and his daughter are doing well, too. He still can't make as much money driving Uber as normal, but it's enough to scrape by.
MOSSADDAD: Everything's good. I mean, in comparison, my God, where we were last year, things are - you know, have a little sense of normalcy again.
ARNOLD: Altogether, nationwide, somewhere around 3 million people have now had their back rent paid.
PETER HEPBURN: We don't see a giant increase in evictions.
ARNOLD: Peter Hepburn is a researcher at Princeton University's Eviction Lab. He says there was no tsunami of evictions. Even after the Supreme Court struck down a federal eviction moratorium in August, eviction filings have stayed below normal levels. Some states like New York, New Jersey, Texas have now distributed almost all of their share of the federal money. And Hepburn hopes that these programs that have been set up and that are working well can keep getting some funding going forward to prevent evictions even after the pandemic.
HEPBURN: As we start to move back toward normal, we don't need to accept a status quo in which 3.7 million eviction cases are filed every year. Perhaps there's space here to be doing better.
ARNOLD: But before we get there, things are not back to normal yet. Not all these programs are working well. Some haven't even used anywhere near the amount of money that they got from Congress. Meanwhile, millions of people are still behind on rent, and they're still waiting for that help.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
USSR 1922-1991, USA 1776-2025?
What we can learn from Soviet stagnation and disintegration
Thirty years ago today the Soviet Union came to an end. This is not an occasion for triumphalism. It is a warning.
Stagnation, or the absence of a future, was the underlying Soviet problem. Stalinism had created temporary social mobility in the Soviet Union, if at the cost of millions of deaths and the creation of the largest prison system in the world. Leonid Brezhnev, who consolidated power in 1964 and held it until his death in 1982, inherited a mature system. He abandoned the promise that Soviet rule could bring harmony and freedom, and aimed for maintenance and nostalgia. He created a cult of the Second World War, an era of past greatness. Stalinism meant that peasants became workers; now what was on offer to second- or third-generation workers was the memory of Stalinism. Social mobility was difficult. The status quo seemed inevitable and eternal.
Everything was forever until it was no more -- as Alexei Yurchak titled his book about the last Soviet generation. Mikhail Gorbachev, the youthful Soviet leader who came to power in 1985, had ideas about revival. He was trying in 1990 and 1991 to breathe life into a federation. His idea was that the Soviet state, established on new federal lines, would be easier to control than a recalcitrant and decadent communist party. He fell from power on the issue of how much power should remain in the center, and how much devolved to the republics. Boris Yeltsin, his rival, was pushing for more authority for the Russian republic. Gorbachev was hoping that his new union treaty would settle the question. The Soviet hardliners who attempted a coup in August 1991 thought Gorbachev had gone too far. Their failed attempt sidelined Gorbachev and opened the field for Yeltsin to pull Russia out of the USSR. On this date in 1991, Yeltsin, along with the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine, formally dissolved the Soviet Union.
Under Vladimir Putin, today's official Russian version of these events is that the end of the Soviet Union was a western plot. In fact Western leaders, supporters of Gorbachev, was surprised and dismayed. The West had much to do with collapse of communism in Europe, less through its foreign and military policies, than by its example. Western domestic policies had succeeded in providing many people with a sense of the future. A combination of elections, markets, the welfare state, and unions allowed both the United States and western Europe to provide not just rising standards of living but also a belief that members of coming generations might do something new and interesting. This story is told on the European side in Tony Judt's outstanding history Postwar. In the United States, this social mobility was known as the "American Dream."
Western social mobility was most clearly visible from Soviet Union's outer empire, eastern Europe. East European communist regimes were encouraged to follow the Soviet model and to focus on satisfying the consumer demands of the working class. But once communism was premised on an inferior version of the Western lifestyle, it could not defend itself against comparisons to the West. The proximity of western Europe and the attractiveness of American culture made it obvious that people could enjoy both greater freedom and greater prosperity than was on offer in eastern Europe. When Gorbachev came to power, he cast the east European regimes adrift, assigning them to find their own ways to socialism. The roundtables and elections that followed in Poland and elsewhere brought an end to the satellite regimes in 1989. The end of the outer empire led to the end of the empire itself. It created a sense of possibility and a model for change which would be seized upon in the USSR itself in 1991.
Once American leaders and thinkers got over their surprise at this turn of events, they tended to interpret them as an affirmation of contemporary policies that were designed to break unions and undo the welfare state. That was a mistake. Given further authority by the by the end of communism, American politicians of the 1980s prepared the way for an American crack-up, the one that we are experiencing now.
In a certain way, our choices since the 1980s recall the Brezhnev era. Reagan and Brezhnev, for example, were of similar minds about free labor unions. In 1980, an east European working class opened the one meaningful window of freedom in the communist world. That summer, Polish workers established a labor union, Solidarity, that bargained for freedom of expression, as well as for economic goals. Legal in communist Poland for more than a year, its existence challenged the way Soviet-style systems were supposed to work. Bogged down by war in Afghanistan, the USSR could not afford to invade its Polish neighbor, as it had done in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Brezhnev instead pressured the communist regime in Poland to declare martial law itself, which it eventually did. Solidarity was broken and criminalized in December 1981.
This was four months after the Reagan administration began its own crackdown on unions, by firing striking air traffic controllers. That set the tone for a change in attitudes and policies that led to the humbling of the American labor movement. In the early 1980s, about 20% of American workers were members of unions. Today the figure is more like ten percent. That, in turn, is a basic cause of decreased American social mobility.
Reagan and Gorbachev.
Brezhnev died in 1982, but his spirit lived on. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was essentially plagiarizing Brezhnev when she claimed that "there is no alternative." Thatcher meant capitalism, of course, rather than Soviet rule. But the argument, and the basic consequence, is the same. If there are no alternatives, then the role of the citizen is reduced to zero. Experts will decide what is best for us, and will explain to us why this or that disaster was a necessary element of this best of all possible worlds.
After the end of the USSR, Thatcher's idea that there were "no alternatives" to capitalism achieved a broad consensus. This dulled our minds to the future, and made capitalism itself more doctrinaire and less tolerable. We plagiarized communism's dead philosophy. Thatcher and Reagan pulled the grungy idea of economic determinism from the dustbin of history. Naturally, our version of economic determinism was different than the Soviet one: not that state planning would automatically bring socialism, as Soviet leaders had maintained, but that capitalism would automatically bring democracy. But the basic error was the same. We were wrong, just as the Soviets had been.
It was not in fact true that capitalism would bring democracy: consider China. The twenty-first century has been quite good for capitalism, but quite bad for democracy. More fundamentally, determinism about freedom cannot be true in principle. Democracy means that people are free to rule themselves. To accept that freedom can be delivered mechanically by a larger economic process is not only to misunderstand freedom but also to render it impossible. Anyone who expects freedom to be delivered by some external force will get the opposite.
Brezhnev and Nixon
And so, in our minds and in our institutions, we did away with the model that seemed attractive to people suffering under communism. Having weakened both unions and the welfare state, we brought our own era of stagnation. The American standard of living today is comparable to that of 1981, when Reagan and Brezhnev cracked down on unions. The welfare state has been replaced, in some measure, by a carceral state: it is we who now have the largest prison system in the world. Social immobility is a central feature of American life, as it was of Soviet life. The attendant anger and frustration generate political alternatives to democracy.
We too have chosen determinism over freedom and cut off the future. We too have lost a war in Afghanistan during an age of stagnation. We have had a failed coup attempt, and are now awaiting a second. We too have our problems in regulating relations between the center and the federal units. Some of our states have passed legislation that compromises elections, in preparation for a full subversion of democracy in 2024. Should a president be installed in 2025 after losing an election, the United States could fall apart.
History does not repeat. It does, however, give us a chance to rethink. All regimes come to an end, and rarely is this understood as it is happening. Few of us expected the USSR to disintegrate, but it did. Few of us might expect the USA to disintegrate, but it could. The scenario does not seem so distant to me now.
The point is not that the U.S. is just like the U.S.S.R., but that we have missed some important resemblances. Proclaiming our superiority and our indignation at comparisons is not the way forward. Nationalist pathos just makes things worse. Exceptionalism and triumphalism are not the mark of success but of vulnerability. Whether or not a stagnating system collapses depends, at least in some measure, on self-awareness. History can help us become more self-aware.
Looking back, we can see how the West won the cold war: a combination of elections, markets, the welfare state, and labor unions that allowed social mobility and a sense of the future. We can also see that we have made a mistake, since the 1980s, in throwing away most of our advantages, and weakening a system that once looked formidable and attractive. It would be best to notice this while we still have some time to do something about it.
When we remember the end of the Soviet Union, we should not be congratulating ourselves. We should be asking ourselves what we have done wrong these last thirty years, and thinking about how to end our own stagnation. We should be preparing for the crisis looming in 2025. After all, there are always alternatives, some better, some worse.
US Xinjiang-related sanctions undermine global cotton industry chain: Report
A report about the impact of U.S. Xinjiang-related sanctions on the global cotton industrial chain was released in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Sunday.
The report, titled "Hindering Trade, Increasing Costs and Disrupting the Industrial Chain: Impacts of U.S. Xinjiang-Related Sanctions on Global Cotton Industrial Chain," was issued by the Institute for Communication and Borderland Governance, Jinan University.
The sanctions imposed by the United States on Xinjiang cotton under the pretext of so-called "forced labor" and "violation of human rights" will damage the global cotton industry chain, said the report.
More than 70 people were interviewed. They included cotton growers owning different cultivation area sizes and heads of cotton textile and garment companies, which vary in sizes (large, medium, and small) and categories (private and state-owned enterprises, listed and unlisted companies).
From sowing, managing to harvest, Xinjiang's cotton production is expected to be fully mechanized soon. Until now, cotton sowing has been almost 100 percent mechanized.
China's cotton industry has become an irreplaceable industrial link in the global cotton textile industry because of its quality raw materials, comprehensive supply chain, and established industrial chain. Therefore, the disruption of China's cotton industry is tantamount to disrupting the global cotton industry chain, said the report.
According to the report, the U.S. sanctions against the Xinjiang cotton industry are a typical example of "the beneficiary crying as a victim," a scheming lie of "fictitious justice," through which the slickness of the U.S. government is plain to see.
On Dec. 26, millions throughout the world’s African community will start weeklong celebrations of Kwanzaa. There will be daily ceremonies with food, decorations and other cultural objects, such as the kinara, which holds seven candles. At many Kwanzaa ceremonies, there is also African drumming and dancing.
It is a time of communal self-affirmation – when famous Black heroes and heroines, as well as late family members – are celebrated.
As a scholar who has written about racially motivated violence against Blacks, directed Black cultural centers on college campuses and sponsored numerous Kwanzaa celebrations, I understand the importance of this holiday.
For the African-American community, Kwanzaa is not just any “Black holiday.” It is a recognition that knowledge of Black history is worthwhile.
History of Kwanzaa
Maulana Karenga, a noted Black American scholar and activist created Kwanzaa in 1966. Its name is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza” which means “first fruits” in Swahili, the most widely spoken African language. However, Kwanzaa, the holiday, did not exist in Africa. A candle is lit each day to celebrate the seven basic values of African culture. Ailisa via Shutterstock.com
Each day of Kwanzaa is devoted to celebrating the seven basic values of African culture or the “Nguzo Saba” which in Swahili means the seven principles. Translated these are: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics (building Black businesses), purpose, creativity and faith. A candle is lit on each day to celebrate each one of these principles. On the last day, a black candle is lit and gifts are shared.
Today, Kwanzaa is quite popular. It is celebrated widely on college campuses, the U.S. Postal Service issues Kwanzaa stamps, there is at least one municipal park named for it, and there are special Kwanzaa greeting cards.
Kwanzaa’s meaning for black community
Kwanzaa was created by Karenga out of the turbulent times of the 1960’s in Los Angeles, following the 1965 Watts riots, when a young African-American was pulled over on suspicions of drunk driving, resulting in an outbreak of violence.
Subsequently, Karenga founded an organization called Us – meaning, black people – which promoted black culture. The purpose of the organization was to provide a platform, which would help to rebuild the Watts neighborhood through a strong organization rooted in African culture.
Karenga called its creation an act of cultural discovery, which simply meant that he wished to point African-Americans to greater knowledge of their African heritage and past.
Rooted in the struggles and the gains of the civil rights and black power movements of the 1950s and 1960s, it was a way of defining a unique black American identity. As Keith A. Mayes, a scholar of African-American history, notes in his book,
“For Black power activists, Kwanzaa was just as important as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kwanzaa was their answer to what they understood as the ubiquity of white cultural practices that oppressed them as thoroughly as had Jim Crow laws.” Overturning white definitions
Today, the holiday has come to occupy a central role, not only in the U.S. but also in the global African diaspora.
A 2008 documentary, “The Black Candle” that filmed Kwanzaa observances in the United States and Europe, shows children not only in the United States, but as far away as France, reciting the principles of the Nguzo Saba.
‘The Black Candle’
It brings together the Black community not on the basis of their religious faith, but a shared cultural heritage. Explaining the importance of the holiday for African-Americans today, writer Amiri Baraka, says during an interview in the documentary,
“We looked at Kwanzaa as part of the struggle to overturn white definitions for our lives.”
Indeed, since the early years of the holiday, until today, Kwanzaa has provided many black families with tools for instructing their children about their African heritage.
This spirit of activism and pride in the African heritage is evident on college campus Kwanzaa celebrations – one of which I recently attended. (It was done a few days early so that students going on break could participate.)
The speaker, a veteran of the Nashville civil rights movement, spoke about Kwanzaa as a time of memory and celebration. Wearing an African dashiki, he led those in attendance – blacks and whites and those of other ethnicities – in Kwanzaa songs and recitations. On a table decorated in kente cloth, a traditional African fabric, was a kinara, which contains seven holes, to correspond to the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa. There were three red candles on the left side of the kinara, and three green candles on the right side of the kinara. The center candle was black. The colors of the candles represent the red, black and green of the African Liberation flag.
The auditorium was packed. Those in attendance, young and old, black and white, held hands and chanted slogans celebrating black heroes and heroines, as diverse as the civil rights icons, Rosa Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Jamaican musician Bob Marley.
It was a cultural observance that acknowledged solidarity with the struggles of the past and with one another. Like the black power movements, such as today’s Black Lives Matter movement, it is an affirmation of “Black folks’ humanity,” their “contributions to this society” and “resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
Karenga wanted to “reaffirm the bonds between us” (Black people) and to counter the damage done by the “holocaust of slavery.” Kwanzaa celebrations are a moment of this awareness and reflection.
