Our Human Affairs Bulletin -

October 2021 Issue

A Public Service of the Multnomah County Democratic Party

NATIONS & PEOPLE
9/8/21 Newsweek — “On Wednesday, the most senior working diplomats of China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan took part in their first-ever virtual summit to discuss a region-wide approach to their common neighbor. The meeting came days after their special representatives met via virtual link while marking an intensified focus on the situation in Afghanistan . . . Afghanistan is still facing severe challenges, such as humanitarian issues, people’s livelihoods and the COVID-19 pandemic. Some international forces may also use political, economic and financial means to create new troubles for Afghanistan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was officially quoted as saying.”

9/6/21 The Hindu Net Desk — “After all the U.S. troops pulled out from Afghanistan, and many countries evacuated refugees, the Taliban announced that Mullah Baradar, the militant group’s co-founder would head the government. . . Scores of women took to the streets demanding equality in work days after the rest of the countries completed their evacuation. Even though the Taliban has asserted that their administrative approach would be different from what it was two decades ago, it remains to be seen what style of functioning they will adopt.”

9/9/21 Al Monitor —“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which controls Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, seeks to attract Arab tribes and clans in its areas of control and is working to build friendly ties with them. The various forces in Syria have been adopting a policy to get closer to the tribes during the past years, to mobilize support and extend their influence, as well as to recruit them in their military factions. . . [the] Al-Uqaydat tribe, like the rest of the Arab tribes in Syria, is divided. Some of its clans are affiliated with the Syrian government, some are affiliated with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and still others with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).”

9/13/21 Gandhara News Service — The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO “will have its attention centered on the regional fallout from the U.S.-led international military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power when it convenes in Dushanbe [on September 16th] . . . Attention will be fully on Afghanistan. [The eight SCO countries — China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — will become nine with full membership granted to Iran Afghanistan, Belarus, and Mongolia are ‘Observer States’; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey are ‘Dialogue Partners’.] Beijing has established working ties with the Taliban, recognizing its hold on power and agreeing to provide aid and vaccines to Afghanistan. Meanwhile the militant group has offered goodwill to China with support for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and vowing that it won’t let radical Uyghur groups — which China views as an internal threat — operate in the country.”

9/19/21 Washington Post (Tyler Pager, Anne Gearan, and John Hudson) — “The two leaders [Pres. Biden and Pres. Macron] have not spoken since French leaders erupted last week at Biden’s announcement that the U.S. was forming a new defense alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom focused on the Indo-Pacific. As part of the deal, the U.S. will share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, prompting the Australians to drop a $66 billion submarine contract with France.”

10/2/21 Anchorage Daily News — “Amid a record hot summer in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, beset by devastating fires, floods and hurricanes, Antarctica was mired in a deep, deep freeze. That’s typically the case during the southernmost continent’s winter months, but 2021 was different. The chill was exceptional, even for the coldest location on the planet. The average temperature at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station between April and September, a frigid minus-78 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-61 Celsius), was the coldest on record, dating back to 1957. This was 4.5 degrees lower than the most recent 30-year average.”

10/6/21 Wiley Online Library: Middle East Policy — “Under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has a considerable number of completed or ongoing infrastructure and economic projects in various Middle Eastern countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Arab countries such as Iraq and Syria have been among the hardest hit due to insufficient healthcare systems. Despite the tough circumstances in these host countries, as well as the obstacles to trade posed by the global pandemic, China’s BRI in the Middle East seems to have weathered this health crisis successfully . . . Located on one of BRI’s main routes [the China-Central Asia-West Asia corridor], the Middle East is [both] essential to China’s economic growth and a passageway to the more affluent European market. Countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf states possess large reserves of oil, gas, and other natural resources that China needs to secure for its domestic consumption. Beijing considers this region a key land route for shipping oil from the Middle East and West Africa — an alternative to the maritime routes of the Malacca Strait, the Bab al-Mandab, and the Strait of Hormuz, primarily controlled by the United States and Western countries. Although long plagued by civil wars and poverty, Iraq and Syria are considered by China to be important to the BRI.”

10/6/21 MyCentralOregon.com — “President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will hold a virtual meeting before the end of this year, according to a senior U.S. administration official. That’s the key outcome of six hours of meetings Wednesday between two of their top aides — national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs. The virtual summit comes amid high tension in the critical relationship between the world’s two largest economies.”

10/8/21 Mexico News Daily — “San Luis Potosí will soon have a new weapon in the fight against crime: an elite SWAT team created by the new governor [Ricardo Gallardo Cardona]. The unit is the first of its kind designed to combat crimes that fall within state jurisdiction, the newspaper Milenio reported. The force will be made up of state police with training in weapons and tactics for combating robbery, assault and other crimes. It is a model that is already familiar in the United States, where SWAT teams typically respond to acts of terrorism, hostage situations and reports of heavily armed criminals.”

10/8/21 The Jerusalem Post — “In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders suggested that the same amount of money offered by the US to fund the Iron Dome — $1 billion — be transferred in the form of aid to Gaza, as well. Sanders acknowledged that while Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system saves countless civilian lives, it is already fully funded, and the extra $1 billion offered by the US is on top of $3.8 billion already supplied to Israel from the US — more aid than to any other country. He then stressed the damage caused to infrastructure in Gaza and Palestinian lives during Operation Guardian of the Walls this past May. Over 1,000 homes were destroyed, Gaza’s only facility for COVID-19 testing was destroyed, 72,000 people were displaced, water and sewage lines were destroyed . . . among other damages.”

ECONOMY
4/27/21 US Environmental Protection Agency — “Today, at an address to water associations, utilities, and their workers to mark Water Week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan announced the 2021 notice of funding availability under the agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) program and state infrastructure financing authority WIFIA program. These lending programs accelerate investment in critical water infrastructure through innovative and flexible financing that can support a wide range of projects in both large and small communities.”

8/10/21 Oregon Office of Economic Analysis — “Starting wages for production jobs — the manufacturing jobs that actually do the manufacturing — really aren’t that much higher than in restaurants. Pre-COVID here in Oregon the hourly wages were about $1 (12%) higher. That’s not nothing, but at the same time is not a huge wage premium. The bigger boost to income is really seen among experienced workers. The median production worker in Oregon brought home $15–20,000 more than the median food preparation worker did, once you account for hourly wage, hours worked per week, and weeks worked per year, all of which are higher in manufacturing than in food service. Take home pay was nearly double at $38,400 versus $19,600 (+$18,800 or +96%). And in practical terms that pay difference is massive. It is equivalent to being able to spend an additional $470 per month on rent (using the imperfect 30% of income metric), with more available for food, vacations, and the like.”

9/8/21 Engineering News-Record — “Fusion test produces more power than it takes in. A nuclear fusion startup led by scientists at MIT on Sept. 8 announced a major advance that the team says could pave the way for the world’s first commercial fusion power reactor by the end of the decade. Researchers at Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) conducted a successful test of key magnet technology that generated a sustained field of more than 20 teslas, a unit of intensity for magnetic fields (one newton force per ampere of current per meter of conductor).”

9/9/21 Xinhua News Service — “A major equipment test has been launched on the Jiangxi section of Jiangxi-Shenzhen high-speed railway, which is scheduled to operate by the end of 2021. Engineers tested the operations of its tracks, catenary system, communications and signals of the rail line in east China on Wednesday. Trains are designed to run on the 436 km railway with a speed of 350 kph [217 mph]. By the end of 2020, China had more than 37,900 km [17,336 miles] of high-speed rail lines in service.”

9/10/21 House Committee of Transportation & Infrastructure — “Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Chair of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA), Chair of the Joint Economic Committee Don Beyer (D-VA) and 139 U.S. House Representatives sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) applauding the agencies’ withdrawal of the deeply flawed Navigable Waters Protection Rule (NWPR), commonly known as the Trump Dirty Water Rule.”

10/1/21 American Society of Civil Engineers — “This comprehensive bill [HR3684 — Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] will bring relief to communities facing strained power grids, aging bridges, leaking water pipes, and spotty broadband. American families do not want to have to wonder if their power will stay on in the next storm, if the bridge connecting their community will close for emergency repairs, or if . . . virtual school means their child will miss out [because they have no broadband].”

10/8/21 Mexico News Daily — “Annual inflation rose to 6% in September, the national statistics agency INEGI reported Thursday, a figure that is double the central bank’s target. It was the seventh consecutive month that annual inflation exceeded the Bank of Mexico’s target of 3% give or take a percentage point, and the highest rate since April, when inflation reached 6.08%. Fuel shortages and supply chain disruption could [also] cause stagflation, one bank director warned.”

10/9/21 Egypt Daily News — “Egypt’s candidacy as chairman of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) for the 2023–2024 session has been unanimously approved. Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Aty confirmed the appointment. It came during his participation in a remote extraordinary meeting of AMCOW. In a speech during the meeting, Abdel-Aty praised the members of the Executive Council, stressing Egypt’s keenness to support development in all African countries through the implementation of water projects. . . Since 2011, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have been negotiating an agreement on filling and operating the Renaissance Dam, which is intended to be the largest source of hydroelectric power in Africa, with a capacity of 6,500 megawatts.”

FINANCE

9/3/21 The Daily Caller — “Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who has warned of high inflation since the beginning of the year, said this week that inflation could grow even higher as the price of homes continues to rise. Home prices are more than 41% higher than the previous peak recorded in 2006, a major industry report showed on Tuesday. Every time you hear that inflation is transitory remember that double house price inflation hasn’t yet shown up in the indexes, Summers tweeted. Housing represents 40 percent of the core CPI [consumer price index].”

9/6/21 Financial Review — “Foreign investors are stampeding towards the exits as anxiety mounts that they’re likely to be left nursing hefty losses when Beijing finally comes to the rescue of the giant Chinese debt-laden property developer, China Evergrande. . . Beijing could be preparing to bail out Evergrande’s real estate arm in China, and leave the holding company — which owes most of the debt — to either default, or to reach a deal with its bondholders.”

9/7/21 U.S. Department of the Treasury — “Today, the ‘tax gap’ — the difference between taxes that are owed and collected — totals around $600 billion annually and will mean approximately $7 trillion of lost tax revenue over the next decade. The sheer magnitude of lost revenue . . . is equal to 3 percent of GDP, or all the income taxes paid by the lowest earning 90 percent of taxpayers. . . Today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn, and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe. . . Currently, an under-staffed IRS, with outdated technology, is unable to collect 15 percent of taxes that are owed, and a lack of resources means that audit rates have fallen across the board, but they’ve decreased more in the last decade for high earners than for Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients.”

9/8/21 U.S. Department of the Treasury — “After the debt limit was reinstated on August 1, Treasury began employing certain extraordinary measures to continue to finance the government on a temporary basis. These measures, which are authorized by law and have been used in previous debt limit impasses, include a suspension of certain investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, and the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan. Once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted, the United States of America would be unable to meet its obligations for the first time in our history.”

9/23/21 Global Times: Evergrande ‘not too big to fail’ — “Houses are for people to live in, not for people to speculate on. Hence, the exposure of Evergrande’s crisis underscores the authorities’ firm determination to regulate a rapidly expanding sector, whose development relies on piles of debt, said Cong Yi, a professor at China’s Tianjin University of Finance and Economics.”

9/24/21 (MENAFN- Asia Times) — “Far from a Lehman moment, the Evergrande crisis was a preemptive popping of a bubble — the sort of action that US authorities might have been wise to take in 2004 before the collapse of the US housing market nearly took down the global banking system . . . The Evergrande crisis will accomplish a set of objectives , . . First, it will stop the growth of dangerous leverage in the property sector, an objective that Chinese regulators signaled in 2020 with ‘red lines’ for developer leverage and curbs on lending to the property sector. It’s dangerous to pop a bubble, one official said, but even more dangerous not to. Second, it will bring down home prices, in keeping with the government’s theme of ‘common prosperity’ and more equitable distribution of rewards. Soaring home prices, particularly in coastal cities and Beijing, have put home ownership outside the reach of lower-income Chinese.”

DISEASE CONTROL

(8/28/21) Mayo Clinic — “Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune. Often, a percentage of the population must be capable of getting a disease in order for it to spread. This is called a threshold proportion. If the proportion of the population that is immune to the disease is greater than this threshold, the spread of the disease will decline. This is known as the herd immunity threshold. What percentage of a community needs to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity? It varies from disease to disease. The more contagious a disease is, the greater the proportion of the population that needs to be immune to the disease to stop its spread. For example, measles is a highly contagious illness. It’s estimated that 94% of the population must be immune to interrupt the chain of transmission. How is herd immunity achieved? There are two main paths to herd immunity for COVID-19 — infection and vaccines.”

9/5/21 New England Journal of Medicine — “Global heating is also contributing to the decline in global yield potential for major crops, which has fallen by 1.8 to 5.6% since 1981. This decline, together with the effects of extreme weather and soil depletion, is hampering efforts to reduce undernutrition. Thriving ecosystems are essential to human health, and the widespread destruction of nature, including habitats and species, is eroding water and food security and increasing the chance of pandemics.”

9/8/21 Reuters — “The COVAX vaccine-sharing facility [under the World Health Organization] will likely receive 1.425 billion doses of anti-COVID-19 shots from donor countries this year, down from a July estimate of 2 billion. . . Reasons for the cut include export restrictions on key supplier Serum Institute of India (SII), manufacturing problems at Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, as well as delays in the regulatory review of shots developed by U.S. biotech firm Novavax and China’s Clover Biopharmaceuticals.”

9/13/21 Johns Hopkins — “Herd immunity to COVID-19 does not mean that we will soon achieve a level of immunity in the population . . . and coronavirus will be over’. Returning to life as it was before the pandemic, without seeing large coronavirus outbreaks, is unlikely to happen for several years, for a few reasons. First, it has proven much harder to get people vaccinated against COVID-19 than against measles. As of September 2021, just over half of the US population was fully vaccinated against COVID-19 — even though we know that the FDA-approved vaccines are extremely safe and have remained highly effective, even against new variants like the delta variant. Second, young children are still not eligible for the vaccine, and new children (who are susceptible to COVID-19) are born every day. So, until we get vaccines that are approved for use in all ages, there is likely to be ongoing transmission of the coronavirus in kids, who will in turn be able to infect adults, especially unvaccinated ones. Third, while our vaccines against COVID-19 are very effective and dramatically reduce the risk of infection, they do not reduce that risk to zero. People who have gotten vaccinated can still become infected (so-called breakthrough infections), and some people who have had COVID-19 can get it again. This means that we would need an even higher level of vaccination against COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity.”

(9/15/21) NBC News

• “41,504,840: The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, per the most recent data from NBC News and health officials. (That’s 155,286 more since yesterday morning.)
• 668,139: The number of deaths in the United States from the virus so far, per the most recent data from NBC News. (That’s 2,175 more since yesterday morning.)
• 1 in 500: The approximate number of people in America who have died of COVID.
• 381,453,265: The number of vaccine doses administered in the U.S., per the CDC. (That’s 621,540 more since yesterday morning.)
• 54 percent: The share of all Americans who are fully vaccinated, per the CDC.
• 65.1 percent: The share of all U.S. adults at least 18 years of age who are fully vaccinated, per CDC.”