Strikes sweep Britain as soaring inflation savages living standards

Anna Cooban - CNN

Workers in the United Kingdom have had enough of falling living standards.

Rail workers, journalists, lawyers, and postal workers have gone on strike in recent weeks to demand higher pay as inflation soars to its highest level in decades.

At least 155,000 workers are currently on strike, including staff at the country’s postal service, and engineers and call center workers for telecom provider BT (BTGOF). Two rail unions on Wednesday announced further strike action by 14,000 of their members later this month.

More strikes could be on the way this fall, threatening unprecedented disruption across a range of industries. Teachers, doctors and nurses are set to vote on strike action in the coming weeks. Unions could even coordinate their walkouts. Unite and Unison — the country’s biggest unions with 2.7 million members in total — are calling for others to join them in synchronized action.

It is one of the most significant waves of industrial unrest the United Kingdom has seen since the “winter of discontent” in the late 1970s when rampant inflation pushed workers to stage mass walkouts. About 7.9 million working days were lost between November 1978 and February 1979, according to the Office for National Statistics.


About 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff walked off the job in June in Britain's biggest and most disruptive railway strike for 30 years. - Matt Dunham/AP

Soaring prices and years of stagnant wages are the backdrop to this year’s disputes. Consumer price inflation hit a 40-year high of 10.1% in July. Forecasters at Citigroup said last week that inflation could shoot past 18% at the start of next year, and Goldman Sachs thinks it could even hit 22% if gas prices don’t fall soon.

Workers are already feeling the strain. Average real wages, which account for inflation, fell by 3% between April and June, compared with the same period last year. That was the biggest hit to spending power in more than 20 years. Real wages barely increased in the decade to 2020.

And average household energy bills — which have already risen 54% this year — are set to increase by another 80% to £3,549 ($4,124) in October. According to estimates by Auxilione, a research firm, average bills could hit £7,700 ($8,949) next April — equivalent to a £642 ($746) monthly bill.

Workers are mobilizing in response.

‘Demoralizing’

The United Kingdom has “never seen [this] level of disruption across all sectors,” Chiara Benassi, an associate professor in comparative employment relations at King’s College London, told CNN Business.

In recent months, the cost-of-living crisis has acted as a “trigger” for widespread grievances that have been building up over a long period of time, she said.

“These strikes affect not only [what] we would say [are] manual occupations or low-skilled jobs that more evidently would struggle with the cost-of-living crisis, but also highly-skilled jobs like junior doctors, British Telecom engineers, barristers, academics, teachers,” Benassi said.

BT workers on strike over pay on August 30 in London, England.

 - Guy Smallman/Getty Images

Deepsha Agrawal, a junior doctor at Oxford University Hospital, told CNN Business that her colleagues are pushing for a bigger pay increase than the 2% the government agreed back in 2019.

“It’s quite demoralizing, because the current inflation rate is expected to go very high next year,” she said.

Her union, the British Medical Association, will soon ballot its members over whether to strike. Agrawal believes that they will. Many of her colleagues feel they cannot afford to buy houses or have children.

“[Junior doctors] are as hardworking and as educated as other professionals. We are struggling and we are paying a price out of our pocket to do the work that we do,” she said.

“With what happened during Covid, we should be rewarded for what we did, not punished for what we do every day,” Agrawal added.
Fewer union members

The current wave of industrial action cannot easily be compared to the 1970s and 1980s — if only because the government stopped tracking numbers of striking workers, and working days lost, during the Covid-19 pandemic. It recently started collecting data again, and will provide an update this month.

Richard Hyman, a professor of industrial relations at the London School of Economics, told CNN Business that this years’ strikes would pale in comparison to those of earlier decades simply because union membership has fallen so dramatically.

“Around about 1980, more than half the workforce was in a trade union. Today it’s less than a quarter, so there’s been a big decline,” Hyman said.

Strikes used to be concentrated in sectors which have “more or less disappeared” like coal mining and steel, Hyman added. Now, union membership is more heavily skewed towards the public sector, or big utility companies that used to be owned by the government.

“There’s been the rise in precarious work, so that a growing proportion of workers simply don’t have a proper job any more so are not in a position to go on strike,” Hyman added.

Benassi said that during the 1980s, when UK manufacturing industry was shrinking rapidly, strikes were often about the survival of key sectors.

Between 1984 and 1985, thousands of coal miners went on strike after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government threatened to close many of the country’s coal pits.

“[Today] it’s a bit different, because we are talking only about pay. Of course, the disputes at the time were also about pay but it was also about, for example, not closing down the mines,” she said.

More restrictions coming?

This year’s strike wave is significant, though, for the breadth of industries affected and because of the hoops UK workers have to jump through to down tools legally.

“Striking in the UK is very difficult. It’s way more difficult than anywhere in western Europe, especially after the Trade Union Bill in 2016,” she said.

The legislation, which came into force in 2017, made it much harder for unions to call a strike by requiring at least 50% of members to take part in the ballot, and at least 40% of the votes cast to be in favor of strike action. The law also increased the period of notice unions must give employers of their intention to strike from one week to two.

In comparison, Benassi said that neither a ballot nor a notice period are required in Germany.

Liz Truss, UK foreign secretary and favorite to succeed Boris Johnson as prime minister next week, has said she would bring in even tougher limits on unions’ powers to call a strike.


Waste overflows from bins during a strike by workers in Edinburgh, Scotland, on August 27. - Russell Cheyne/Reuters

She has proposed raising the support threshold for strike action from 40% to 50% of votes cast, and extend the notice period to a month.

“I will take a tough line on trade union action,” Truss told Sky News in July.

Liz Truss’ leadership campaign declined to comment when contacted by CNN Business.

“There’s quite an adversarial campaign from the side of the government to say well we’ll send agency workers to replace the workers on strike, or they should go back to work immediately, or there has already been a pay rise,” Manuela Galetto, associate professor of employment relations at the University of Warwick’s Business School, told CNN Business.

Despite the obstacles, workers may feel more emboldened to strike at the moment, given the tight labor market, she said.

UK unemployment was 3.8% between April and June this year, ONS data shows. That’s its lowest level in more than 50 years. There was also one unemployed person for every job vacancy — a record low.

“It means that many workers are in work and they are in a good position to ask for [a pay] increase. They cannot be easily replaced [at a macro level],” Galetto said.

41% of Black and minority workers in the UK are suffering racism on the job

Zayn Nabbi - CNN

More than two in five Black, brown and minority ethnic workers in the United Kingdom say they have faced racism on the job, according to a new study.

The 'toxicity' and 'loneliness' of #workingwhileBlack

Duration 4:23

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41% of those workers “faced racism at work in the last five years,” according to a report published Wednesday by the Trades Union Congress, a federation of labor unions. The TUC says it is the biggest study into the issue ever conducted in the United Kingdom.

Among younger workers, the figures are even more troubling. About 52% of Black, brown and minority ethnic workers aged 25 to 34 years old reported suffering racism during that period, while 58% of those aged between 18 and 24 years old said the same.

Racist incidents included overhearing racist jokes, being subjected to stereotyping or comments about appearance, receiving racist remarks, or outright bullying and harassment.

For the report, researchers at Number Cruncher Politics conducted focus groups last year, and surveyed 1,750 Black, brown and minority ethnic workers between February and May this year.

The study also found that workers are reluctant to report incidents of racist behavior. About 44% said they didn’t report them because they “didn’t believe it would be taken seriously.”

And nearly half of all Black, brown and minority ethnic workers, or BME, said they had “experienced at least one form of discrimination consistent with institutional racism.”

Institutional racism — often defined as systems which perpetuate discrimination and bias in organizations — can include being unfairly disciplined or missing out on a promotion.

“This report lifts the lid on racism in UK workplaces. It shines a light on the enormous scale of structural and institutional discrimination BME workers face,” TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said.

“Many told us they experienced racist bullying, harassment — and worse. And alarmingly, the vast majority did not report this to their employer,” she added.

Responding to the report, Matthew Percival, the director for skills and inclusion at the Confederation of British Industry, said that the “data shows there is still a way to go in addressing racial and ethnic equality across society. Businesses must be doing all they can to build an inclusive workplace and tackle discrimination.”

The CBI is encouraging companies to report ethnicity pay gaps and set clear targets for improving BME participation at senior levels, Percival added.

A spokesperson for the UK government said: “Our inclusive Britain action plan sets out plans to build a fairer and more inclusive society, including promoting fairness in the workplace and action to tackle the ethnicity pay gap.”

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Recession fears are rising. Why are people still quitting their jobs?

BY SYLVAN LANE - 

08/31/22 

THE HILL

Interest rates are rising, inflation is lingering at four-decade highs, the economy appears to be slowing and experts fear a recession is on the way. But Americans are still quitting their jobs at near-record rates in the face of growing economic uncertainty.

The percentage of American workers who quit their jobs set a record earlier this year and has only dropped slightly as the economy slows from two years of torrid growth. After reaching 2.9 percent this spring, the quits rate dropped to 2.7 percent in July, according to data released Tuesday by the Labor Department.

The idea of quitting a job amid a period of increased cost of living and a dubious economic future may seem counterintuitive. But the labor market has remained stacked in favor of workers, who see ample opportunities to boost their earnings to supplant increased costs from inflation.

“Despite recent declines, job openings still outnumber unemployed workers by a sizable margin, illustrating just how tight the labor market remains,” wrote AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, in a Monday analysis.

There were roughly two open jobs for every unemployed American, according to Labor Department data, giving job seekers ample opportunities to find new jobs with better pay or working conditions. Businesses are still scrambling to find enough workers to keep up with consumer spending — which is well above pre-pandemic levels — from a workforce that remains smaller than it was before COVID-19.

“It seems possible that employer demand would need to cool significantly more before recruiters start to notice an easing in recruiting conditions,” Konkel wrote.

In other words, employers still have too many open jobs and not enough candidates to avoid boosting wages and other perks to find talent. And that means workers still have ample incentive to quit for a better-paying job, particularly with inflation still high.

Job seekers on Indeed.com are looking for ever-higher wages, Konkel explained. The number of Indeed users seeking jobs with a $20 per hour wage rose above those seeking $15 per hour in June 2022, and the number of jobseekers looking for $25 per hour is up 122 percent over the past 12 months.

Konkel attributed the spike in job seekers looking for more money to the steady increase in advertised wages and the inflation they’ve helped to feed.

“Once job seekers know it’s possible to attain a higher wage, their expectations may shift and act as a pull factor in searching for a higher dollar amount. In this case, the shift in job seeker expectations from searching for $15 to instead $20 is clear,” Konkel explained.

“On the flip side, inflation continues to take a bite out of workers’ paychecks,” she continued, noting that only 46 percent of workers saw wage gains that outpaced inflation.


The pressure to quit for a higher paying job has been highest in the private sector, where 3.5 percent of the workforce left their current employer in July. Workers in industries with historically low wages, tough working conditions and limited teleworking options have led the charge.

The leisure and hospitality sector posted a whopping 6.1 percent quit rate in July, down sharply from 6.9 percent a year ago but still nearly twice the national quit rate.

Restaurants and bars in particular have struggled to return to pre-pandemic employment levels despite rapidly raising wages. The pressure has also made it nearly impossible for those businesses to fire or lay off employees, even amid usual season turnover.

“Hospitality companies tell us that what was once a ‘one strike, you’re out’ rule for employees who failed to show up at work without notice is now more like a ‘ten strikes, you’re out’ rule. They cannot afford to fire workers because they cannot afford to replace them,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

“The decline in terminations in industries like hospitality have been so large, they have more than offset the increase in layoffs in the tech sector,” she explained.

Quits have also remained high in retail (4 percent) and the transportation and warehousing sectors (3.5 percent), with both industries facing threats from a decline in goods spending and rising interest rates.

Even so, there are some signs of waning worker confidence, which may lead to a decline in quits.

ZipRecruiter’s job seeker confidence index dropped 4.5 points in August to an all-time low of 97.8, Pollak said, with a greater number of applicants looking for job security over higher wages.

“Since the pandemic, job seekers have been looking for higher pay, less stress, and greater flexibility. In August however, job security rose to the second-place spot in their priority ranking,” Pollak explained.


“One in four employed job seekers say they feel less secure about their current job than they did six months ago. Rising risk of a recession, paired with a wave of recent tech layoffs, has made employees more concerned about the precarity of their jobs.”

Why Rich Guys Get Richer Off of Debt—While the Rest of Us Can Get Crushed by It

Drew Magary on how debt is still a grift for the well-off ten years after the financial crash.


BY Drew Magary 

GQ

 October 10, 2019

Photo Illustration/Getty Images

I am in debt. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, to be a touch more specific about it. Four years ago, I took out a home equity loan, signed on the dotted line, and agreed to pay it off over the span of three decades. So far, I’ve been able to make my payments without much trouble, provided I don’t fire off a tweet down the line saying Hitler had some good ideas and thus sabotage my earning potential forever and ever. I am paying down my debt and enjoying my renovated home, just as the system intended.

But the system does not work this way for everyone. Hardly. Just as there is a massive income gap in America today, there is also a massive debt gap. There are people whose lives have been destroyed by student loans and who have been forced to serve out their existences in de facto peonage to those loans. And then you have rich fuckers like Jared Kushner and his father-in-law, taking on millions upon millions in debt (and that’s just the debt we know of) while still sitting pretty (at least for now). I'm in the middle—just a chump who doesn’t understand a single thing about the physics of debt beyond the standard bank loan my wife and I have currently taken out.

The catch is that I’m not REALLY in the middle. The system works for me as intended, but only because I make a nice amount of money. For people of lesser means, the system suffocates them instead of working the way it's supposed to, as it currently is for me. For people with obscene wealth, debt appears to be a cute little toy to play with. A luxury. For the poor, it can be an unbearable burden. So what I wanted to figure out was why this is. Beyond the obvious effects of income disparity, why are millions of Americans getting obliterated by relatively small debts while the rich can over-leverage themselves into infinity, seemingly without consequence if they fail?

To figure this all out, I took a crash course in econ basics from two people, which is two more people than I usually ask about such matters. The first is a close friend of mine, whom I will refer to as Jeremy here. Jeremy works in finance and asked me to keep his real name and his company anonymous so he doesn’t get fired. The second is associate economics professor Damon Jones, of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Together, these two gentlemen explained to me why this system is the way it is, and why all debtors are not created equal. But before we can sort out how all this works, we have to go back in time a bit [Wayne’s World KOOKALOO KOOKALOO sound effect] to understand how our current loaning system came to be.

“I think a key question is: Why should society penalize people taking a risk and failing?” Jeremy said to me. Yep, that was what I wanted to know. To show me, Jeremy started to talk feudalism. “This is a very dramatic example, but I think it's useful. There was a time before the United States was formed where, if you were to borrow money from, like, the feudal lords and failed, they had things called debtors’ prisons. If you couldn't pay back the money, by hook or by crook, the feudal lord was going to extract from you one way or another. That had a very chilling effect on people's appetite to take risk. (Old) Europe was a much more hidebound society. There was a culture of being punished for failure. So I think that if you think of it in those terms, it explains how we got to where we are.”

It’s true. Debtors’ prisons lasted well past the feudal era, but were eventually outlawed in the U.S. nearly two centuries ago. And yet it still took until 1983 for the Supreme Court to rule that debtors couldn’t be jailed merely for being in hock. I’m sure that President Trump’s Supreme Court lapdogs will flush that ruling down the toilet days from now, but our present system was basically intended to democratize debt.

But this is a system devised and overseen by humans, and humans have a tendency to create monsters out of their own inventions. In fact, according to the ACLU, going to jail for debt is happening to Americans all over again. Companies and the politicians they control are pioneering ways of taking advantage of the debt system, and of the people trying to partake in it.

“The American Dream involves buying a single-family home,” Professor Jones told me. “One way to help facilitate that is to subsidize and make homeowner loans available to as many people as possible.”

That sounds good! Houses for everybody! BUT WAIT…

“These companies are going to compensate for that by raising the raising interest rate, and so that can backfire,” Jones continues. “They may drive interest rates so high that you price out a lot of people from the ability to afford a home.” And avoiding home ownership may be the SMART move, because as Jones notes, “Very low income people tend to have subprime borrowing, so interest rates potentially are more likely to be predatory.”

That subprime usury was the impetus for the economy cratering in 2008, and the Trump administration has feverishly chipped away at the protections that were established in the wake of that crash, laying the groundwork for predatory lenders to swoop in once more.

Indeed, if you have a super high credit score, the average interest rate on a personal loan falls between 10-13 percent. If you have a shitty credit score, that average interest rate triples. If taking out a loan is “renting money,” as Jeremy put it, your rent is too damn high if you’re struggling and too damn low if you are not.

But wait! We’re not done tilting the playing field. Professor Jones says that, “At a higher income level, there are ways to disperse that burden (of debt) a little bit more.” In other words, you can have other people borrow money for you. Perhaps you’ve heard of leveraged buyouts, a nasty and ought-to-be-banned practice in which a company can take out a debt to buy another company and then offload that debt ONTO the new company, inflating the value of their own portfolio while the asset is then stripped and left to rot from within.

That’s not a personal loan. You can engineer this sort of disaster and still come out of it with a squeaky clean credit rating. According to Jones, “If you are borrowing and then the company that goes bankrupt, it may not reflect on your record as it would if you had individual debt. When some airline goes bankrupt, the CEO isn’t going to have trouble finding getting a loan at the bank. Reputationally you take a hit, but people are able to rebound at that level peacefully.”

That's a key difference. You have a lot more freedom when the financial risks you take are ones made with other people’s money, and you can do so if you're a wealthy fella. You also have access to various tools to help strategize your debts and manage them. You have lawyers who know bankruptcy laws well or can negotiate debts down to smaller amounts. You have friends and colleagues and perhaps a rich uncle willing to lend you money at a decent rate or go in on a promising investment with you. You can spot investment ventures that will easily outpace your interest rate (like, say, the Chicago Cubs), so that your loan pays for itself and then some. You likely have a better education and can therefore more easily discern if you’re being scammed by a lender or by the investment venture in question. Hell, you're probably too white to be targeted by predatory lenders at all.

The freedom doesn't end there. Jeremy notes that you can form an LLC to borrow money, in which case your business becomes its own collateral, just like a home you’ve taken out a mortgage on. The bank then comes and takes all your car washes if you fail, but they don’t take YOU. And they don’t clean out the rest of your personal assets. At that level, debt becomes elastic, and there are multitudes of soft, downy cushions to catch you if you fall.

Jeremy says, “Debt allows you to do more than you could” with just your own resources. This is very much a good thing, but it is far more applicable to the Warren Buffets of the world than to the masses. As such, people at large are encouraged to pursue the kind of debt elasticity they can't really afford, and thus they have bigger eyes for debt than their bank accounts can withstand. When the President himself cries out that he loves debt, he’s encouraging you to follow his muse. Predatory lending practices are more than happy to sell you on the FREEDOM of debt in order to imprison you.

I asked Jeremy, does the current system entice people to over-leverage themselves more than they ought to, particularly student debt?

“Totally, yes.”

For those same masses, debt becomes less an opportunity than a need. You need a place to live? Debt. You need a car? Debt. You need to go to school so you can get a decent job? Debt. You sick? Hoo shit, you got debt coming your way. “A lot of people have debt for health care,” Jones told me. “And so you have to borrow in order to live. That is less of an investment approach and more about survival.”

It will not shock you to learn that lower income people tend to have more medical debt, not just because they lack the capital, but also because their maladies cripple their ability to pay off whatever they’ve borrowed to treat it in the first place. “It's not just the debt that is hurting you,” Jones says, “but the event that led to the need for that debt.”

Free time is also key to debt. If you're wealthy, you not only have access to all these tools for better managing your debt, but you can make that management part of your vocation, if not all of it. And it's a respectable vocation, arguably the most lucrative one in America today. Jeremy illustrates an example where some hedge fund dude can essentially spend all day overseeing his debts and investments, whereas a hairdresser trying to earn a living has to, you know, cut hair, and therefore doesn’t have as much time or energy to go scouting out potentially lucrative real estate deals. “I gotta use my hands,” he says of our hypothetical beautician. “There is a kind of a ceiling on what's reasonable that I can actually do.”

That is a true and generally acceptable aspect of the system at work. As Jeremy notes, we shouldn’t be a country that dramatically penalizes people for taking risks. And for the wealthy, we don’t. Ah, but for people who took the almost mandatory gamble on a college loan only to find themselves perennially in the red, and for Pennsylvania parents who were threatened to have their kids ripped from them (what is it with this country’s fetish for family separation?) because they couldn’t pay off a fucking student lunch debt, and for Florida felons who are now denied suffrage if they're delinquent in paying fines, those dramatic punishments are creeping back into the framework. And the punishment is far harsher for those taking on debt as a matter of need than those taking on debt to realize some grand business vision. America is heading back toward the Feudalistic system of debt punishment. I can’t believe I’m making sincere warnings about Feudalism the way wingnuts do when Bernie Sanders talks about free health care, but here we are.

And that is where my lesson in economics comes to an abrupt end. Everyone should be free to take risks, and everyone should be held equally accountable should those risks backfire, especially if they are not risks that our society has essentially made obligatory. I would say one way to level the system is to make all the obligatory expenses that currently goad you into debt—housing, education, health care—cost-free by raising taxes on the rich who love debt so. Only someone above my pay grade—and above Jeremy’s, and above Professor Jones’—can make that happen. But, as it stands now, that someone is a man reluctant to change a system that, as far as he can see, offers him endless financial possibilities thanks to the miracle of freewheeling loans.

How “Eat the Rich” Became the Rallying Cry for the Digital Generation

On TikTok and Twitter, at campaign rallies, and on Etsy, the old class warfare quip feels newly urgent.


By Talia Lavin 

GQ

November 5, 2019


In 1793, the streets of Paris were in an uproar. A few years earlier, citizens irate over poverty, a grinding and brutal famine, and disenfranchisement had toppled the monarchy and smashed the Bastille fortress, sending shockwaves throughout Europe and the world. It was a transitional time of declarations and riots, blood spilled, and unchecked, revolutionary hope—and a new, more equitable form of government was blossoming into being in the capital. But years into the new order, the people were still restive and unsettled: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen may have been passed by the National Assembly, and the king himself executed by guillotine, but there still wasn’t enough food to go around.

With the monarch bloodily dispatched, the people had found they could eat neither rights nor freedom, and lacked sufficient bread to enjoy either. Citizens complained that speculative merchants were selling moldy bread, adulterated wine, and diseased, blood-bloated meat to the poor, saving their best wares for the wealthy. In the ten-volume History of the French Revolution, author Adolphe Thiers summed up the spirit of the era with a quote by the then late famous social theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “When the people shall have nothing more to eat,” Rousseau apocryphally quipped, “they will eat the rich.”

Two hundred years later, Rousseau’s bon mot still resonates; on social media, at political rallies, in the streets, and in our secret hearts, the carnivorous id of class struggle is surging up again to prominence. It’s no wonder that Twitter wags and street protesters are embracing the guillotine aesthetic; America feels frayed by its own striation. While adulterated wine might not be our biggest problem as a society, the country has a very real crisis of hunger simmering in our cities and towns; some 37 million Americans lived in food-insecure households in 2018, according to data newly released by the USDA, including six million children. Scenarios more Dickensian than Jacobin are playing out in schools as a result; one New Jersey school district barred students with more than $75 in school lunch debt from attending prom, field trips, and extracurricular activities, then denied a local donor the opportunity to pay down the entirety of students’ debt.

As is all too common in America, the up-by-the-bootstraps myth that austerity and punitive policy in the face of poverty will lead magically toward abundance held sway in New Jersey. The school district’s superintendent, Joseph Meloche, told local media that “simply erasing the debt does not address the many families with financial means who have just chosen not to pay what is owed.” The idea that children should suffer in school for either the neglect or poverty of their parents feels cruelly airlifted from another era, one in which the bootstrap was more commonly used as a lash than a metaphor.

Meanwhile, it seems as if the outlays of the wealthy are getting more and more recherché. Social media has long appealed in part because of its ability to show us the rarefied world of fabulous wealth and abundance, but as California burns due to PG&E’s obsession with profit maximization over power-line maintenance, and New York installs increasingly draconian surveillance measures to ensure subway riders don’t skip out on the $2.75 fare, it’s hard not to feel the sting of class resentment. The country has the feel of the twilight of a monarchy, under the rule of an erratic sovereign who has done his level best to reduce the vast machinery of government to a reflection of his own will. He issues his edicts, often enough, from an array of gilded private residences that evoke, with neither taste nor elegance, the excess of Versailles. Meanwhile, the super-wealthy aristocracy acquire more and more: The recently released floor plans of Jeff Bezos’s newest mansion reveal 25 bathrooms, a whiskey cellar, and an entire spare house for entertaining. Adam Neumann, the tall, handsome, and totally reckless tech executive behind the spectacular demise of WeWork, is walking away with a $1.7 billion golden parachute as a reward for his abject failure, leaving thousands of laid-off employees holding the bag.

It’s no wonder, then, that the digital generation has developed a stewing sense of class resentment and taken that to social media. On TikTok, short-video heir to Vine and premier social network for the country’s teens, a recent trend called the “rich check challenge” birthed a vicious countervailing current. The “Rich Boy Check” meme, an unironic display of wealth, took off in late winter of this year. The brief videos began with an ear-catching slogan—“Eyo, rich-boy check”—and then, to the wafting strains of 17th-century Italian composer Luigi Boccherini’s “Minuetto,” teen after teen showed off their affluence. Fleets of luxury cars, indoor pools to lounge in, home movie theaters, private gyms with rows of treadmills, rococo furniture in white leather, Jacuzzis, and block-long mansions loop over and over on the app, garnering hundreds of thousands of views—and a mix of envy and revulsion among viewers.

With the swiftness of any good digital backlash, countless ironic takes on the “Rich Boy Check Challenge” bubbled up almost immediately. Under the hashtag #eattherich, a young woman played “Minuetto” as she used her phone camera to scan a tiny bathroom with a moldy-looking toilet. Another young woman scanned a meager room shrouded in darkness; a third tied a shoelace around her waist as a belt.

A separate but related endeavor, the TikTok hashtag #eattherich has also spawned hundreds of videos, which abound with a nascent class-based resentment sprung from the pages of Marx and into meme-ready soundbites. To the minor-key emo rock song “I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace, a teenager in black nail polish pours water from a cup labeled “UNETHICALLY RICH” over a printed-out picture of Jeff Bezos. Another professes her desire to “vore” Bezos, using the Internet slang word for fetish-inspired cannibalism. In yet another video, a teenage girl in a black hoodie performs a signature TikTok maneuver—using progressively appearing snippets of text—to point out that “the only minority destroying America is the rich.” On Twitter, there are countless posts not just urging the eating of the rich—but asking for, or providing, recipes. (“Simmer £100,000 cash in the blood drained from the carcass. Serve on a bed of rocket with a side of coleslaw.”)

In prior periods of excess, Rousseau’s enduring quote has resurfaced to spice up cultural artifacts. Most entertainingly, the greed-is-good ’80s gave rise to the 1987 movie Eat the Rich, with a soundtrack by Motörhead, the mesmerizing trans actress Lanah Pellay in a lead role, and some truly visceral scenes centered around the minced meat of the wealthy, eagerly consumed, with French fries, by their monied peers. In the overconfident, imperial bloom of the early ’90s, Aerosmith made their own sally into class warfare, and their song “Eat the Rich” has surprisingly literal lyrics. “With this here fork and knife/Eat the rich/There's only one thing that they are good for,” yowls Steven Tyler, wearing an incongruous pair of devil horns.

These days, politicians have slowly begun to awaken to the restive national mood, with progressive bellwether candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders explicitly focusing on taming the excesses of billionaires and demanding further contribution to the public good from the gilded class. It’s no wonder that, faced with a stump speech about systemic change and the necessity of a wealth tax, the crowd at a recent Warren rally began spontaneously chanting, “Eat the rich!”

For Rousseau, the notion of eating the rich was a Swiftian exaggeration of the struggles of the starving masses, in response to a quite literal famine that was the French Revolution’s most proximal cause. In memes and on social media, “Eat the rich” is a slogan that serves as both a signifier of class struggle and a play on literal consumption of the flesh of the wealthy. On Etsy, you can buy “Eat the Rich” dinner plates; on Redbubble, a customizable merch site, there are countless items for sale with the slogan, and several have replaced the hammer in the hammer-and-sickle of communism with a fork.

In some ways, “Eat the rich” is the perfect revolutionary slogan for the digital era: It’s succinct, easily shareable, and built for risqué humor. It’s hard to get edgier than cannibalism, and no would-be Internet humorist worth their salt can resist the lure of a Bezos bulgogi. But for all the waggishness of the slogan, revolution is usually born of an authentic powerlessness and privation; it’s hard not to feel, in the waning days of 2019, that the American populace abounds in both.

Talia Lavin is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her first book, 'Culture Warlords,' is forthcoming in 2020 from Hachette Books.

Last Alberta UCP leadership debate circles back to controversial sovereignty act

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday-Edmonton Journal

United Conservative leadership hopefuls faced off for the final official party debate Tuesday evening before ballots are mailed out.


Candidates Todd Loewen, left, Danielle Smith, Rajan Sawhney, Rebecca Schulz, Leela Aheer, Travis Toews, and Brian Jean attend the United Conservative Party of Alberta leadership candidate's debate in Medicine Hat on July 27, 2022. The party said its membership had doubled since June.

The event, held at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton in front of a full crowd of about 700 attendees, came only days before ballots are to be sent to just under 124,000 eligible UCP members on Friday in the race to replace Premier Jason Kenney.

Again drawing criticism was former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith’s centrepiece campaign promise of an Alberta sovereignty act she has said would let the province reject federal laws, court rulings and regulatory decisions. Fellow leadership contenders and legal experts have warned that it would create a potential constitutional crisis, undermine the rule of law, and scare off investors.

On Tuesday, former transportation minister Rajan Sawhney suggested Smith should wait to get a mandate from Albertans in next spring’s general election before trying to pass the controversial legislation.

Smith, the perceived front-runner, pointed to the province’s fair deal panel and a referendum last fall that saw 62 per cent support for scrapping the federal equalization program and said UCP members support the bill.
Related

Kenney's comments on sovereignty act 'premature, ill-informed and disrespectful' says Smith

Kenney says notion of Alberta Sovereignty Act 'nuts'

“I believe that we have that mandate for the people of Alberta to get tough with Ottawa,” she said.

Sawhney disagreed.

“Such a consequential piece of legislation does require a mandate of all Albertans in a general election and equating the equalization referendum to a mandate for the sovereignty act is ludicrous,” she said.

The quip was one of several directed at Smith, who faced more direct attacks during the first official debate in July when she also drew ire for her comments on cancer treatment , as well as her past advocating for a provincial sales tax (PST).


Travis Toews and Danielle Smith take part in the United Conservative Party of Alberta’s final leadership debate on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2022 in Edmonton. Greg Southam-Postmedia© Greg Southam

Former children’s services minister Rebecca Schulz said the Alberta sovereignty act threatens party unity.

Related video: Alberta’s UCP leadership candidates prepare for final debate

Duration 2:06  View on Watch

“I don’t think we can go into the very first legislative session with a bill that other candidates on this stage don’t support,” said Schulz.

Former finance minister Travis Toews also piled on, saying “we can’t wave a magic wand and get rid of federal law, that’s simply a fallacy.”

Smith shot back by saying Toew’s plan to introduce provincial tariffs to push back would create a chaos of its own, taking the opportunity to criticize the UCP government’s COVID-19 measures.

“The only ones who created chaos were the the ministers who were involved in the priorities and planning committee that shut down businesses arbitrarily, shut down the economy arbitrarily,” she said.

Chestermere-Strathmore UCP MLA Leela Aheer bluntly called the proposed legislation “crap” and an attack on Canadian, and Albertan, values.

Throughout the debate, Smith argued that the time has come to stop letting Ottawa dictate terms. To a roaring applause, Smith said “I may make mistakes from time to time, but I won’t be bullied and I won’t be pushed around. I will stand up for you and I will always put Alberta first.”

When pressed on his future plans, Toews did not commit to running again in the 2023 election regardless of the outcome of the leadership race.

Former Wildrose leader and Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche UCP MLA Brian Jean argued that the only way to get the attention of Ottawa is to demand constitutional renegotiations.

Central Peace-Notley Independent MLA Todd Loewen stressed his promise to rebuild trust with the provincial government, and to send a strong message to Ottawa.

“Some of the candidates I think are just willing to sit back and wait for things to happen and there will be no change and that’s unacceptable.”

Under the party’s preferential voting system, if the first-place candidate doesn’t get a simple majority in the first ballot, the candidate with the fewest votes falls off the list, and second choices are then rolled into the remaining candidates’ counts in subsequent ballots until a winner is chosen.

With votes potentially being split between seven candidates, Tuesday’s debate was also an opportunity to appeal to voters for down-ballot support.

Aheer and Jean directly asked members to consider them their second choice, if not their first.

In her closing remarks, Sawhney took the opportunity to condemn a recent spate of attacks on politicians and journalists.

“We can’t let the politics of anger win,” she said.

The result of the leadership vote will be announced from the BMO Centre in Calgary on Thursday, Oct. 6.

The new leader is slated to deliver a keynote address to UCP members at the party’s annual general meeting starting Oct. 21 at the River Cree Resort in Enoch outside of Edmonton.

lijohnson@postmedia.com
twitter.com/reportrix

Mining firm bringing $20 million rare earth facility to Saskatoon

Bryn Levy -  Star Phoenix


Industry and government players hope for a lot more firsts as a North American rare earths processing industry begins to take shape in Saskatoon.


The installation team stands atop the Dense Media Separator (DMS), the first major equipment installation at Vital Metal's Saskatchewan Extraction Facility in Saskatoon. Once completed, the facility will process ore from the Nechalacho rare earth mine in the Northwest Territories into a mixed rare earth carbonate destined for a Norwegian refinery for final separation into individual rare earth elements and eventually electric vehicle motors. 

PHOTO: Courtesy Vital Metals/Ray Anguelov

Australia’s Vital Metals Inc. is in the process of building a $20 million facility in the city’s North Industrial area. Once finished, it’s intended to complete a rare earth mineral supply chain stretching from a mine in the Northwest Territories to Europe, and ultimately to assembly lines putting out electric vehicles.

“So there’s a mine-to-motor supply chain. It is the only one outside China,” said David Connelly, Vital’s vice-president of strategy and corporate affairs.

He went on to detail the complex steps it takes to get rare earth elements out of the ground and purified to the point where they can be used in applications ranging from permanent magnets in electric cars or wind turbines, LED screens and lightbulbs.

Rare earths are also used in components for high-tech weapons systems, and have become a national security concern in light of dismal relations between the West and China, which currently controls more than 80 per cent of the global market.

Vital’s Saskatoon plant will produce a carbonate, which Connelly described as a moist powder, made up entirely of rare earths. The carbonate will go on to Norway, where there is already “a very advanced, and almost zero-carbon footprint” process to separate it into the 17 individual metals that collectively make up rare earths, he added.

The facility hit a key milestone this summer, with the installation of its first major piece of equipment. The device, known as a dense media separator, gave everyone at the company a pleasant surprise when it performed to engineers’ specifications on its first test run, Connelly said.

The test puts Vital squarely on the path to getting its first shipments to Norway late this year. Connelly said they’re planning to ramp up capacity over the next 24 months. From there, Connelly said the company plans to double capacity by 2025. A third phase would then seek to “double the double” by 2026.

All this is happening right next door to another rare earths facility operated by the Saskatchewan Research Council, which itself hit another first earlier this week, producing the first made-in-Canada rare earth metal ingots .

While Vital and the SRC are separate firms, Connelly said the ecosystem forming in Saskatoon is proving beneficial.

“We cooperate, and they’ve got great labs and we use their labs and we really respect their capacity to do assays, and so on,” he said.

The province earlier this year announced $20 million to expand the SRC facility and add a smelting unit. Jeremy Harrison, minister responsible for the SRC, said getting the research organization into rare earths has served three goals: it’s a vital standalone industrial project; it’s “a catalyst” to help attract outside firms like Vital to set up shop here; and it’s a response to Chinese state firms flooding the market in decades past, in order to squash previous efforts at developing Canada’s rare earths reserves.

“We really feel we have a competitive and comparative advantage, and that in the long term, the economics work on this,” Harrison said.


Related
First Canadian rare earth ingots processed in Saskatchewan
Mining facility opens in Saskatoon just as global demand rises

BACKGROUNDER

Chile is about to vote on one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. But consensus is crumbling

Daniela Mohor W. - Yesterday  - CNN

In the past few weeks, Daniela Jorquera, a 55-year-old Chilean sociologist who defines herself as progressive, started going to rallies to support adopting a new constitution.

“I saw a lot of young people, families. There was music and colorful flags; it had nothing to do with the political confrontation we see in the news everyday,” she said.

When she walked back to her car, Jorquera, who lives in Santiago, said she felt full of hope. “I thought: we will win, how can we not?”

Yet, like most Chileans, she knows that certainty is precisely what Chile lacks these days.

On September 4, the country will vote on whether to adopt a new proposed constitution, one that was originally conceived to fix the country’s stark inequality. The country’s current constitution was written during Augusto Pinochet´s dictatorship and – despite many amendments – most Chileans say it lacks legitimacy and is too free-market oriented.

Protests and social upheaval in 2020 forced then-president Sebastien Piñera to call a referendum on creating a new constitution, the final draft of which was submitted to Piñera’s successor, leftist Gabriel Boric, this year.

But although 78% of Chilean voters supported the idea of constitutional change back in October 2020 entry referendum, today they appear divided on the draft proposed.

Soon after the draft was made public last July, different polls began showing an increasing trend toward the rejection of the charter, with the government publicly recognizing that scenario.


Chile is about to vote on one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. But consensus is crumbling© Provided by CNNA demonstrator waves the Chilean flag during a November 2020 protest against then President Sebastian Pinera in Santiago. - Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

The constitutional process has been praised internationally for giving the country an institutional way out of a social crisis, and for responding to modern Chileans’ demands for more equality and a more inclusive and participatory democracy.
A groundbreaking drafting process

The constitutional assembly convened to rewrite the constitution was the first in the world to have full gender parity, and the first in the country´s history to include designated seats for indigenous representatives. It included a majority of independents reflecting Chileans’ distrust in traditional parties – and was more representative of the country´s diversity.

If approved, Chile’s constitution would become one of the most progressive in the world, giving the state a front-line role in the provision of social rights. The draft puts a strong emphasis on indigenous self-determination and on the protection of the environment; the highly privatized water rights system will be dismantled, among other things. Gender equality will be required in all public institutions and companies, and the respect for sexual diversity is also enshrined.


Chile is about to vote on one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. But consensus is crumbling© Provided by CNNPeople demonstrate against the draft of the new constitution in Santiago in August. - Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images

But the project has become bitterly divisive for some. The right argues the draft would shift the country too far left, or that it is too ambitious and difficult to turn into efficient laws, and even some of its supporters on the left want adjustments to be made, with their slogan “approve to reform.”

Conservatives have led an aggressive campaign against the constitutional change, accusing the Boric administration of electoral interventionism. His left-wing government is currently under administrative investigation by the Chilean comptroller general over allegations it used a public information campaign about the referendum to advocate in favor of the new constitution. The comptroller separately found that the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency, Giorgio Jackson had failed to respect the principle of non-interventionism required before the referendum.

Boric responded to those allegations telling the press that the government would cooperate with the investigation and that his administration’s actions are is “in no case interventionism, but rather information dissemination.”

A large part of the center-left has also become wary of the document and called to reject it. Cristián Warnken, a well-known literature professor and television interviewer, is one of them. He recently founded “Amarillos por Chile,” a movement of moderates asking for a new convention and the writing of another draft.

“We would have wanted a new constitution with a State that guarantees social rights, protects the environment and many other things included in this proposal, but by turning it into an ideological statement, the convention decapitalized the great possibility we had to have a constitution approved by a vast majority,” he said.

Sebastián Izquierdo, a researcher at the Center of Public Studies (CEP) in Santiago praises the convention´s ability to meet the one-year deadline to write its proposal. But he is not a fan of the result.

“The text is too maximalist. It makes reaching agreements very difficult and leaves too much space for ambiguity and different interpretations, which has caused many problems,” he said.

One of the most controversial issues is that of indigenous rights. The draft defines Chile as “a plurinational State” and proposes to give more autonomy to indigenous communities, including a parallel justice system. That was enough to raise fears that Chile’s unity is at risk or that native people won´t have to respond to the rule of law, although the proposal doesn’t stipulate that, Izquierdo said.

Related video: Chile Faces Its Moment of Truth on New Constitution

Duration 5:57    View on Watch

Some argue that embracing plurinationality is important for reflecting the reality in Chile, Mireya Dávila, a political scientist and assistant professor at the Universidad de Chile, points out.

“The new constitution tries implicitly to grant equal conditions to communities that were exploited for centuries and who are the country´s first nations,” she told CNN.

Also under fire are parts of the proposal related to the reorganization of the political system and the state’s role in guaranteeing equitable access to health and better pensions.

Under the new constitution, the Senate would be replaced by a regional chamber, which skeptics say would give the lower house too much power.

The current health care system would be replaced by a single national state-funded service. Currently, Chilean citizens can opt for coverage by public national health funds or private insurers. In both cases, health care is funded by a social security contribution equal to 7% of every worker’s wage. But the pricing of private health insurance varies, giving the wealthier access to better services.

Advocates for the change to a single service say this will result in better care for more people, while critics worry it risks overwhelming an already strained public system.

Conservatives also worry that the new constitution would affect the existing private pension funds system – a legacy from the military regime that is seen by many Chileans as a symbol of inequality. But others, including some businesses and economists, credit it for the country’s strong capital markets and steady economic growth.

Claudio Salinas, a conservative councilman and the coordinator of a group of civil society organizations calling to reject the charter proposal, says they are concerned the private pension funds some workers have saved until now will eventually be “expropriated” or not “inheritable” to their family in case of death.

However, the draft constitution does not say this – rather, the future of pension funds is expected to be regulated by a new law in the Congress.

Supporters of the new constitution counter that their opponents have gone over the board with unsupported arguments, describing their criticisms as fake news designed to scare Chileans with exaggerated interpretations of the text.

“They have said we wouldn´t have the same national anthem, that the flag would change, and that private property would be eliminated, for instance. These aren’t things included in the proposal but spreading those fake news has created a scenario of much uncertainty,” said Vlado Mirosevic, a congressman for the Liberal party and the spokesperson for the approval campaign.

He compares misinformation around Chile’s new constitutional draft to the MAGA movement in the US and to the Brexit campaign in the UK.

Misinformation has indeed been an issue, though experts say it can be difficult to distinguish between intentional fake news and legitimate differences in the interpretation of the proposed draft. The proliferation of social media posts aiming to undermine the vote’s integrity has already led Chile’s electoral service to reject false claims on its website.

The untraditional nature of the constituent assembly has undoubtedly also played a role in further polarizing the country, after an already confrontational presidential election. Former presidential candidate José Antonio Kast´s far right Republican Party called the constitutional assembly “a circus” after two of the members drew negative attention going to sessions wearing costumes of Pikachu and of a blue dinosaur. More recently, a member voted remotely from his shower.

Early on, the body’s public image took a hit when a journalistic investigation unveiled that one of its representatives had built his campaign talking about his fight against cancer, although he didn’t have the disease. He later said that he had actually been referring to a different illness that was “socially stigmatizing.” He resigned, but the episode has often been referenced by critics of the constituent assembly.
The end of privileges

María José Donoso is a 37-year-old accountant who lives in Maipú, a middle-class area of Santiago. Her partner lost his job during the pandemic and she stopped working to take care of their young daughter. They currently live on a US $550 monthly budget, selling handcrafts on a market.

To be able to study, Donoso said, she had to work part-time because she had no free education. To get a doctor´s appointment, she added, she must wait for months, while wealthier people can be cared for immediately.

“I will vote yes to new constitution because it will help level the field. Those who are afraid of changes are businessmen or politicians afraid of losing their privileges,” she said.

According to the World Inequity Lab, a research center focusing on the study of income and wealth distribution worldwide, Chile is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America with the top 10% concentrating 60% of the average national income.

The need to address that reality is main argument of the approval campaign.

“We are not naïve. We know there is room for improvement, and we have the flexibility to do it,” Mirosevic said. “But this text is a much better starting point than what we have now,” he said.

The uncertain outcome of the referendum has put additional strain on an already struggling economy. According to data released in July by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the Consumer Price Index, an indicator of inflation, registered a 13.1% increase in the past year.

Against this backdrop, an investigation led by a group of economists calculated the social rights guaranteed by the new constitution would cost an estimated 8.9% to 14.2 % of the GDP per year. Chances of making those rights a reality in the short term are scarce, and high expectations may lead to new popular discontent, Izquierdo said.

Opinions diverge. Carolina Tohá, a long-time politician and a former member of socialist President Michelle Bachelet´s administration, told CNN that “the new constitution mentions a progressive implementation of social rights and is very clear in establishing the principle of fiscal responsibility.”

Attempting to give Chileans – and markets – some certainty, earlier this month President Boric summoned his coalition to reach an agreement about possible reforms to the charter in case of approval. They were made public in mid-August and address the most controversial principles. Boric also stated that, be it rejected, there would be a new convention and redrafting.

On the other side, Chile’s right-wing coalition also committed to amend the current constitution in terms of social rights. And this month, Congress voted in favor of a constitutional reform that reduces legislative quorums to facilitate potential tweaks to the current charter.

But on each side distrust prevails about the opponents’ real intentions. Only one thing is certain: The constitutional process in Chile is not over. After the plebiscite, no matter who wins, coalitions on both sides have committed to make changes either to the new or the current constitution.

“After September 4, the constitutional process will … either put the new constitution in place or to look at new alternatives if it is not adopted,” said Dávila, the assistant professor at the Universidad de Chile.

In any case, she added, Chile is poised to set a precedent in Latin America: If the new constitution is adopted, it can be an example of a constitutional change that strengthens democracy in terms of social rights and environment; if rejected, it will show that the path to follow is dialogue within democracy.

“This shows that the debate about the kind of society we want is not settled yet,” said Gonzalo Cowley, an expert in innovation who has led several crowdsourced studies of the constitutional process. “There is no real consensus on how we meet Chileans’ demands.”

New manufacturing plant to create sustainable economic growth for Alberta First Nation

Kashmala Fida Mohatarem - 2h ago

A new manufacturing plant owned by the Alexander First Nation, near Edmonton, aims to create skilled job opportunities and long-term employment.


From left: Ken Braget, Ian Arcand, Chief George Arcand, Kris VanderBurg 

and Rick Wilson, minister of Indigenous relations, at a ribbon-cutting

 for Alexander Valve and Supply.

© Submitted by Ken Braget

Alexander Valve and Supply, which makes valves for the oil and gas industry, had its opening on Friday, marking a new era of self-sustaining economic growth for the community.

Edmonton businessman Ken Braget, who brought the idea to the First Nation 55 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, said he wanted to offer community members new opportunities in the areas of employment and skills development.

Braget, who is Métis from Michel First Nation, spoke to CBC's Edmonton AM on Monday.

"I just started thinking, like, why are we not looking at this opportunity to invest in our Indigenous communities by giving them infrastructure to then build skills, build employment and then build off of that?

"The way forward, I believe, in true reconciliation has got to be skill development. It's got to be, you know, being involved, having ownership and meaningful employment."

The manufacturing facility, in a former hockey rink, currently has five employees who are undergoing training.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Alexander First Nation said having the company is an amazing milestone for the community and they look forward to "generations of success."

"The value Alexander Valve and Supply will bring to the Nation is immeasurable," RJ Arcand, business development and marketing specialist for Alexander Business Corporation, said in the statement.

"Employment and training for Alexander members is just one of many benefits we will see throughout. To say we are excited is an understatement."

Braget had thought about the idea of helping Indigenous communities be more financially sustainable since 2018.

Early in 2021, he decided to reach out to Indigenous communities around Edmonton with the idea of a partnership opportunity for his business, True North Valve Solutions.

In March 2021, Alexander First Nation reached out to him about the possibility of partnering.

Originally, Braget said he had envisioned providing Alexander with a manufacturing facility; True North would buy the products and distribute them.

But in June 2021, the reserve decided to buy his company out. Braget remains its CEO.

"I agreed because I believe that it's a perfect way forward for our First Nations communities to actually be involved and have ownership and control," he said.

Braget's 10- to 15-year goal for the company is to move the distribution centre, currently in Edmonton, to Alexander. He said he'd like to see the company grow to employ 100 people.

He hopes the company not only provides jobs but a way for the youth in the area to build up a resume if they want to move on to bigger opportunities outside.

Hong Kong says it can target anyone in the world after Canadian journalist charged

Tom Blackwell - Yesterday- National Post

Victor Ho, the former editor in chief of the Vancouver edition of Sing Tao, 

the most-popular Chinese newspaper in Canada.

The Hong Kong government has defended its charges against a Canadian critic of the regime, saying anyone who violates the city’s widely condemned national security law — “regardless of their background or where they’re located” — will be prosecuted.

The comment drives home what has been a fear of overseas activists since the law was enacted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2020 – that it could be used as a threat, at least, against dissidents anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, accused B.C. resident Victor H o said top federal government leaders must make a clear statement that foreign governments cannot employ such tactics against Canadians — something no member of cabinet has yet to do.

Intelligence agency and Global Affairs Canada employees have made contact with Ho, however, and a Global Affairs official issued a statement Wednesday saying it is “very concerned” that the national security law (NSL) is being applied to Canadians.

Section applying Chinese national security law to whole world chills Canadian activists

Inside Canada’s Chinese-language media: 'Beijing has become the mainstream,' says ex-Sing Tao editor

Earlier this month, the Hong Kong security bureau announced it was charging Ho — a long-time Canadian citizen and retired newspaper editor ‚ and two U.S. residents with breach of the security law’s “subversion” section.

Their offence was to spearhead a Toronto-based plan to set up a sort of parliament in exile for Hong Kong, chosen by online elections involving residents of the enclave and its diaspora in other countries.

“Acts and activities that endanger national security have very serious consequences, and hence actions must be taken to prevent and suppress such acts and activities, to ensure that individuals endangering national security will face legal consequences,” bureau spokesman Tommy Wu told National Post by email this week.

Asked if it would be possible to prosecute another nation’s citizen for an act that occurred in that country, he answered in the affirmative.

“It should also be pointed out that the NSL has extraterritorial effect,” said Wu. “Any persons or entities who violate the NSL, regardless of their background or where they are located, will be dealt with by the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) government in accordance with the law.”

While Canada and some other countries do allow prosecution of wrongdoing that occurred outside the country — such as terrorist attacks by or against Canadians — they typically target conventional criminal acts, not mere criticism of a government.

The affair began when Ho and other Hong Kong natives in Canada and the U.S. announced last month they were launching the overseas parliament.

It’s a largely symbolic response to Chinese government actions that have gutted Hong Kong’s legislative council of its limited democratic elements, part of a sweeping crackdown on freedoms there.

The security bureau declared Aug. 3 that Ho, former Hong Kong legislator Baggio Leung and ex-Hong Kong democracy activist Yuan Gong-yi — the latter two both now Washington, D.C., residents — were suspected of committing the offence of “subverting the state power” under the NSL’s article 22.

“Police shall spare no efforts in pursuing the cases in accordance with the law in order to bring the offenders to justice,” said a news release, which also warned Hong Kong residents they could risk legal trouble themselves if they associate with such individuals.

The law’s article 38 says it can apply to offences committed “from outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.”

The charges against Ho and the two others may mark the first use of the section.

The B.C. journalist urged top federal leaders to make a clear statement decrying such actions.

Ottawa “should send a message to other governments that you can’t treat Canadian citizens like this, you can’t demonize Canadian citizens for activities that are completely acceptable in a democratic society.”

In a brief response Aug. 18 to colleagues of Ho who had written Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about his situation, the prime minister’s office said their letter had been passed on to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

Asked about the issue and whether the government had spoken to Hong Kong or China representatives about Ho’s case, Mendicino’s office forwarded the query to Global Affairs.

The department said Wednesday that Ottawa has grave concerns about the “rapid deterioration” of rights and freedoms in Hong Kong and had responded with various actions, including suspending an extradition treaty, imposing export-control measures and launching new immigration avenues for residents of the city.

“We are very concerned by the application of the National Security Law against any Canadians,” said the statement.

Ho immigrated to Canada in 1997 and became a citizen in 2001, working as editor in chief of the Vancouver edition of Sing Tao, the country’s largest Chinese-language newspaper at the time.

He said the NSL charges mean he cannot travel to Hong Kong, where he has relatives, and he’s advised other family members not to visit the city. In terms of his own safety, he met with a Canadian Security Intelligence Service officer on Monday and was contacted by a Global Affairs Canada official, both of whom offered help.

He said there is no way Hong Kong could pursue the charges against him except through kidnapping or other illegal means.

Guy Saint-Jacques, Canadian ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016, said his outspoken criticism of Beijing and the current Hong Kong administration means both the mainland and the city are off limits for him now, as well as countries that have extradition treaties with them.

The NSL “has far-reaching consequences for anyone who has criticized or would dare to question the Chinese leadership or policies anywhere in the world,” he said.