Michael link thank you so much michel for coming on im going to say that when you were appointed special rapporteur you probably didnt think you were going to be thinking of the illegal occupation in the context of a Global Pandemic how about is coronavirus in the occupied territories that alone gaza. Look at the very beginning it appeared opin when the crown of iris 1st hit in march it appeared that the the occupy palestinian territories were going to actually weather this extremely rather well in part thats because of a negative situation other such limited freedom of mobility. And movement with respect to other gaza strip in particular and that many you know a huge number of the palestinian population in the west bank is also extremely limited freedom of movement around behind the the wall and as really checkpoints well whats happened with respect to the 2nd wave that were experiencing now is that cases both in gaza the west bank and including East Jerusalem are rising exponentially and ive just been on the on the line with u. N. Officials in the occupied territory talking about their worries of this pandemic increases winds up cresting you know the next several weeks that the very limited Health Care Systems we have in the occupied territory with particularly in jazz are are going to be overwhelmed they suffer from a shortage of hospital beds they suffer from a shortage of doctors and nurses who can whine about caring for the for the ill they want to suffering from a lack of respirators and particular you know that and gaza they have 10 to 12 hours of power a day they have very poor water supply and theyve had an exodus of nurses and doctors leaving gaza because of on paid salaries going to places where they can get security employment elsewhere in the arab world so theres every indicator now that the coronavirus is going to leave a devastating path in its wake in the occupied territories and particularly in gaza will it be knock on effect through the top administrations cancellation of funds to unravel and other n. G. O. S. To try to help medical facilitation in gaza of course you know when you consider in particular in gaza. The 2000000 doesnt the palestinians that are behind the gaza blockade that israel has imposed for the last 13 years or for around 1200000 of those are registered refugees with with. Providing a huge number of resources education and health and welfare to the population of gaza and yet its because funding was cut 2 years ago by the trumpet ministration its now announced in the last few weeks that its run out of funds its going to have to be paying partial salaries over the next several months unless and until they can one of securing new bridge funding from the International Community this is a this is a significant crisis on top of a crisis the palestinians are facing and that under a as an institution of all of its 70 years of operations under very difficult political and social circumstances in the middle east this has to be one of its very worst moments ever of course 40000000 a death food in the United States and get it for food stamps theres no evidence to suggest that this cutting of funding has incited militancy increased militancy in gaza though well this is one of the worries that micah my conversation with the u. N. Officials has indicated that you know the palestinians dont see a peaceful path to selfdetermination to freedom from an alien rule and a living with the same dignity that everybody else in the world is and is entitled to if legal routes or peaceful groups or political processes to wind up working for them then youre inviting people to to engage and not peaceful violent reaction to to entrenching occupation thats a. There for 53 years and shows no signs of going away i mean babs you can forgive the u. K. Mainstream media they will covert they go breaks it but how difficult is it as a special to get information out on to the media say in the United States or or britain i mean maradona the great argentinian Football Player said in my heart i am palestinian that wasnt really quoted in a of the television a bit trees how difficult is it to. Get your mandate out to the world as it was. When we its actually the palestinian israeli conflict the 53 year old occupation by israel of this palestinian territory is really an exercise in irony on the one hand this is the most international of conflicts and as well its one of the best covered. Of comics in the sense that there are numerous palestinian and israeli nongovernmental organizations and a number of u. N. Agencies that produce a pleat top drawer Work Research work advocacy work of whats actually going on in gaza in the west bank in East Jerusalem yet there is an enormous gap between the wealth of information that i myself rely heavily on and what actually gets translated into the International Media it may well be that the media at any time when it publishes a critical article that it tends to peel back some of the areas of onion rings on what is actually happening in the in the occupied palestinian territory winds up getting reaction back. From either political sources or from organized or from organizations who dont let their their critical commentary and the matter winds up getting dropped the same thing happens in my own country canada where you see very little coverage thats critical with respect to whats going on with an occupation that is becoming ever more entrenched. Ever more permanent and were an arising for peace and prosperity is drifting further away from the never where you say reputable of course israeli officials accuse the u. N. Organizations of basically being antisemitic biased institutions on the side of the palestinians. Yeah and i feel i and hes made gadfly and im one of the targets that frequently arises with respect to commentary with respect to this you know the criticism is why are you picking on his real why are there are so many resolutions of the General Assembly or at the Human Rights Council with respect israel and my response is actually that resolutions arent devoted to israel theyre not focused on israel theyre focused on israels occupation of the palestinian territory which theyre of which there is almost wall to Wall International consensus at least at the diplomatic level that this is a this is an occupation that is israels an occupying power that israel is in violation of a number of the basic tenets of International Humanitarian law so what we have with this particular conflict is an enormous gap between promise and and performance how quick was the world to respond when there was. You know invasions or other International Human rights crises say in me m. R. Or in or in africa yet with when it comes to israel and and the occupation of palestine there is virtually no movement at all with respect to a Holding Israel accountable to trying to end issues with respect to defiance and impunity in this particular case and this occupation will not die of old age and if you listen to liberal israelis or israelis with conscience they say the same thing that there is no political appetite within the israeli political sphere of doing anything but continuing with deepening the occupation is only when the International Community will wind up. Telling israel that there cannot be an occupation and endless occupation without some costs attached to it that youll see a reversal in fortunes and you know lets get personally and have you not become homeless get personally. You saw what happened to bunny sonders when he raised the issue of the u. N. Security Council ResolutionsJeremy Coleman has been that todd with anti semitism due to get attacked a lot. I do receive critical comments on the work that i produce i i do receive not so flattering email as well but you know and i say this in a special rubber tour i say this as a law professor you know i try to ground my work in International Law i try to ground my my were in the numerous un resolutions that come from the Security Council in the General Assembly and i look closely at the writings of the you know steamed scholars who write on this particular area there is no conflict in the modern world where International Law has spoken with such frequency and sidesteps with respect to the so im i feel that i have i can act with a fair amount of confidence by citing u. N. Security Council Resolutions remember that the u. N. Security council is the is the formals diplomatic and Political Chamber and Deliberative Forum of the International Community i ground my my commentary on the illegality of the settlements or the illegality of the of the wall and its location or the commentary with respect to the illegality of an exaggeration and what these u. N. Bodies have set and. The last thing ill say on this is i remember being told as a when i 1st took this position for to have years ago i want to my previous answers he said you know theres 2 things that you have to have one is to be fearless you have to be able to speak truth to power with respect to this but the other thing he said is you have to be responsible you have to make sure that your facts are as much as possible accurate that your reference to law is well grounded but just finally and very briefly condolences were paid from the gaza gov. And the Palestinian Authority for the alleged must have assassination of irans top a physicist. Obviously states wanted assassination is illegal under International Law do you think as some may be suggesting that israel may be repeating what happened as regards costly the 22 day gaza war 1400 civilians killed ahead of the Obama Presidency as a warning to joe biden. Look i think what this tells us is that there are a number of complicated issues in the middle east that are on the world agenda and will be the top of the genda when there is a new American Administration and when joe biden become becomes president you know i guess what i can say is i very much want the American Administration to be actively and bit and gauged in trying to find a if a final just in general solution with respect to the Israeli Occupation of palestine and enable palestinian selfdetermination you know what i what i fear is that there are a number of competing issues in the middle east including and especially iran and that the for the presidency of the joe biden may consider that that may be where they want to expend their limited Political Capital in the middle east and devote their efforts to try to reengage iran as they should and try to see if a new avenue or revise agreement can be entered into with respect to the development of Nuclear Power as it should but i hope that doesnt take precedent over the need to find and bring to a just in general and the palestinians really conflict and allowing the palestinians and israelis to have a shared future thats going to be based on on prosperity and human rights and equality in the holy land treasure of which i thank you. My pleasure off of the right monopsony capitalism is british promoted by working class fashion icon kate moss collapses threatening tens of thousands of jobs could nato nation supply chain supercharged a global working class that ends sweatshops forever. Going up about 2 and going underground. In fact. My pappy away from. The. Board if he does much good enough for me. It is. Giving me a hand. That will get us on that. Machine that can get the terms and then he. Need to. Tell me about. Whats going on and all that bad was it. Not part of our. Welcome back in about 72 hours one of britains biggest clothing groups arcadia is announcing chemical trade anymore threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of workers and some predict the collapse of many more household names because of the impact of coronavirus is the whole Global Economic model for manufacturing changing and woodworkers ironically be the winners joining me now from london to talk about his new book monopsony capitalism is dr. Welcome to going underground this sounds to me and ill be up to mystic book for anyone worried about that train is being from sweat shops what is monopsony so the best way to look at monopsony is as a kind of. An inverse of monopoly monopolies you have say 2 Shoe Companies or 3 Shoe Companies and they have equal parts in a market and then lets say one takes over another shoe company and it becomes 2 thirds of the market that means they have 2 thirds of monopoly of that market monopsony is the relationship between that shoe producer and the various parts of the supply chain so if you have a high degree of monopsony and you have many suppliers its a buyers market right you have many sellers of the buyers are a lot of power if its low enough for me its few few sellers so its not necessarily the case so producers of shoes and shirts for since the formation of happens and you know 10100 years ago have relied on this uneven relationship of high degree of monopolies you have lets say nike and adidas own 60 percent of the casual and sports shoe sector and tens of thousands of potential factories that they could put downward pressure on and so that is a high degree of nazi which means that they have an incredible amount of power because its basically like a bottleneck and theyre you know the suppliers are fighting like crazy to get the business of very few ballistic biters as your book makes clear as there are being tragic catastrophes related to some supply as and as i have been successful workers struggles the number of supplies is decreasing which means that ultimately. Capital will be threatened here i mean look across the kind of ideological spectrum whether its smith the classical marxists keynesians there isnt a fundamental understanding that firms move to word centralization because theres an underlying law you could say that of competition that means that as firms fight for profits some firms go out of business and other firms gobble up their business and become larger now if you. Apply that to the principles of the sweat shop the way in which to his remain limited in the sweat into the sweat shop sectors so clothes and shoes and toys and furniture is that you had. A a way of geographically relocating firms so theyre never able to get enough profit at the buyers supplier side to invest and expand and become these kinds of larger firms but because of these kind of because of limits on globalization you know you seeing the cost of producing and so sort of curve or delta region of china for the lot you know basically from 2005 to 2008 half the shirts in the world are being projects were going to church in the world reproduced in these 3 provinces but thats the problem as the price of producing there when up it sets these kind of geographic limits and as you said those geographic limits capital so i didas are nike or h. And m. Cant just find geographic ways to put to increase profits and put downward pressure on suppliers and workers so as that happens smaller firms go out of business bigger firms become bigger. And as that happens that bottleneck that you dont like it is used to put pressure on these firms becomes looser and looser because theres fewer and fewer people competing and that that opens up the possibility for workers to potentially make demands at the point of rushing were already seeing that in certain parts of the set i should say out of as and not you know as you deny any switch involvement in there a supply chain but hey you mentioned china there you talk about the fact that china has seen more wildcat strikes in any other country in the world we dont hear about this there are workers fighting for rights in these factories every day if you look at china because the state doesnt necessarily sanction. You know the ability for works to withdraw their labor power in the same kinds of ways or strikes in the same kinds of ways of the. Its basically all the strikes in china are wildcat strikes but the number of strikes that are happening in china especially in certain parts of the china south eastern parts of china are phenomenal i mean 50000 strike spontaneous strikes at specific factories on word from 2014151617 thats a combination of factors and there was a plan to basically the state Central Government has a Clear Division between the Central Government policy of the communist party in china and provincial governments and there was a kind of forms of devolution over the course of the last 20 years to the point where the Central Government was felt like it was not in their interest to continue to have these kinds of sweatshop sectors thriving at very low wages and they were trying to basically advance more technologically the regions in the country that were most developed specifically the periphery delta region but the provinces had nother had another plan in some way so you have you know there was the. Strike in 2014 in one joe and express has sent jan this isnt a perv at all to region and this is the largest tricolor private sector firm in the history of china and it still largest producer of shoes in the world you know in their studio one in 6 shoes were probably produced in a few yen facility exclusive producer for i need to send 90 the state at the time their policy was going to 50000 workers in this facilities and spreading going on strike at the time the states policy was basically like dont cares in the factories dont force them back to work in the same ways but the provinces had Something Else in mind so theyre also rent seeking theyre also in the pockets of these more more more more men monopolistic supply and so that its a day its a complicated story you have these larger suppliers which means that workers can actually organize and demand more from not just the sort of low margin suppliers. But also these larger suppliers have a lot of authority and power over state authority over provincial authorities or you know the ability to withstand strikes for longer periods of time but just to be clear its these kinds of actions far more and the actions of a headquarters of these big brands that have a more a more impact than fair trade code by nike had it as an reebok shop or shaming people who buy brands that are accused of violating Worker Rights i mean look these codes and been researched and cold on it regimes multistakeholder agreements all of these things that lots of them are corporate some of them are n. G. O. S some of them are state. All of them have been thoroughly researched extensively and rigorously over the last 3040 years and what we find is that overwhelming glee in the preponderance of evidence shows that they have made absolutely no difference you havent seen these kind of there are a way to raise your window dressing theyre not worth the paper theyre printed on because they get what we see is wages successfully go. Whatever benefits a firm will get from not having sweatshop workers is outdone by the profits that they can make so you can see that theres a liability for for example run a plaza the worst natural accident in the history of the world have to do it on 13 in dhaka over a 1000 women mostly women crushed to death from prada prime markets produce their whats happened to the bottom line of those firms nothing so any liability that could come from quite literally the murder of a 1000 people in bangladesh is outdone by the profits they can make by ensuring the lowest lowest wages and downward pressure and score of race the bottom obviously this company is the door for money in recompense they said that there was no wrongdoing on their behalf im going to ask you quickly practical question because in the book you say the real median wages growth in china has risen 17 percent since 2009 does that mean that he also quote a figure of a just 2 percent of the price of a t. Shirt goes to labor from that was a bangalore 2004 for you are we seeing a rise in the amount that is going to the workers that make our clothes so in these sectors its very heated theres different parts of sectors that that become more and more technologically advanced than other sought by a producer that produces blouses is different from a producer to produce issues so shoes are now seeing waging pieces higher level of consolidation mens underwear denim but in other parts of the sector which are still very much geographically relocating very small firms very much. So lots of firms producing for very few. Theres youre not really seeing wage growth so but what he does is these these particular parts of the sector are indicators of a larger change ok well it was certainly from reading your book at some of the w t o codes its not the world bank code its not t. M. Geos it is workers that are pushing this and this mechanism of the market which reduces the number of suppliers just tell me how it seems to me inspiring workers all over the world not just the ones at the lowest end of global labor if you look at so for example china you give the example of china you exceed you know a say in the book lots of strikes and a strike action thats happening in certain parts a sector that inspires people across the supply chain in those sectors and that hugh yen example i gave you not only inspired workers there but inspired workers you know hugh young facility to make the same demands in vietnam and and there was a large a strike of a private sector employer in vietnamese history and they won all their demands by the state it inspires people in all different parts of the world thats that thats what thats what capital for years a lot of times with strikes and with labor actions then industrial actions its not just the benefits that those workers make at that at the point of at that point of production its a wage in which winning there inspires and spreads in other places you talk about how the great successes and fruit of the loom one of the providers had no honduras of course that could decide yes that despite all these workers excesses a return to obama era. Manipulation in honduras and alone the next president of the United States. Trying to intervene kind of on behalf of capital can that neutralize worker or resistance to poor wages all of what happened in honduras predate to a large extent what obama did you know in the loom which isnt meant undergarment and undergarments produced. Well the big 3 they are entire supply chain is basically a large portion of supply chains based in under arrest of the largest private sector employer in honduras and workers you know based on an International Campaign organize those workplaces and organize the entire sector and they make you know 1718 percent more than the other workers in that region and also you know their they get lunch you get transportation paid its fundamentally different there than really anywhere else now in the region but it is a matter of for that company. A company in whole it was based on the struggles of workers at that at that at the company and the complete company capitulated to the demands of workers but its primarily because of the changing composition of capital and workers workers demands and the the fact that you know you have an obama who is very much much more sympathetic to trade deals over a trump who is at least overtly at least a spouse with more critical critical perspectives on trade deals i dont actually think that in terms of the sweatshop conditions of workers fighting it will make a difference we just have to look at history you see clinton wrote you know nafta caste you saw the trade deals around p. P. P. Driven by obama the real difference is the changing composition of capital the material conditions and the subjective agency of the working class to south organize and meet demand at the point reduction. Thank you and thats it for the show well be back on saturday with your head of an anti School BusingPresident Biden book 65 years to the day of the montgomery bus boycott sparked by the arrest of rosa parks refusing to give a bus seat to a white man in alabama black women in the usa would not get the vote 10 years later in 165 until then catch up on all our interviews with the pull of the underground on Twitter Facebook instagram sound. Evening. When almost choked steam rollie one old cold just told her any goal to get to shape out of this thing called to educate and engage equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart when shes to look for common ground. At this point no one knows when the crisis whether it is undeniable that this has negatively the economy what does it mean. Is that even. The divide separating the rich from the continue to live. A total catastrophe that is how Donald Trumps branded it the us election in a lengthy video speech pleading with the u. S. Supreme court to overturn the results. Russian president Vladimir Putin gives an order for nationwide vaccination against 19 which is the sputnik jab starting next week. And the french grapples with a crisis of public trust in the police force and the anger over brutality cases the ruling party is forced to withdraw criminalizing the filming of officers. Was your headlines and more in about well just under an hour. International