means – Radio Free

I Covered the Intifada. It’s Wrong to Say It Means Violence Against Jews.

Daoud Kuttab — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:44:56 +0000

Zohran Mamdani to Kristen Welker (Meet the Press, 6/29/25): “Freedom and justice and safety are things that, to have meaning, have to be applied to all people, and that includes Israelis and Palestinians as well.”

Meet the Press host Kristen Welker (6/29/25) showed courage by interviewing Zohran Mamdani, the winner of the Democratic mayoral primary for New York, after he’d been widely attacked by corporate media. But unfortunately, she fell into a trap that has been set repeatedly in recent months to smear Mamdani. She asked him to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” claiming—without offering evidence—that the term “intifada” refers to “violence against Jews.”

I doubt Welker is an Arabic linguist. But as a Palestinian journalist who covered the Intifada and helped introduce the term to Western media, I am appalled by this misrepresentation. Not only is the translation wrong, it’s an insult to the thousands of New York Jews who voted for Mamdani.

For the record, intifada translates to “shake off.” Palestinians used the term to describe their popular resistance against an Israeli occupation of their land that had no end in sight. It emerged amid a steady expansion of illegal settlements, which were systematically turning the occupied territories into a Swiss cheese–like landscape, precisely designed to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

As someone who reported on the Intifada and explained its meaning to international audiences, I can say unequivocally: Intifada was used by Palestinian activists to describe a civil resistance movement rooted in dignity and national self-determination.

Metaphor for liberation

The Arabic-language version of the website of the US Holocaust Museum translated the Warsaw Ghetto “Uprising” as “Intifada”—until blogger Juan Cole (5/1/24) pointed this out. (Creative Commons photo: Phil Kalina.)

Let’s begin with the word’s literal meaning. As noted, in Arabic, intifada simply means “shaking off.” Since many—including Jewish leaders, Christian Zionists and GOP officials—have distorted the peaceful intentions behind the word, I turned to a source that might resonate more clearly with people of faith: the Bible.

In the Arabic version of the Old Testament, the word intifada appears three times, both as a noun and a verb. Looking at its English equivalents in the New International Version (though other translations are similar) offers enlightening context:

Judges 16:20: “Samson awoke from his sleep and thought, ‘I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.’”
Isaiah 52:2: “Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.”
Psalm 109:23: “I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust.”

Each of these examples uses the term intifada—shaking off oppression, captivity or anguish—as a metaphor for liberation, not violence.

While Google Translate and other modern tools often render intifada as “popular uprising,” its literal meaning—“to shake off”—captures the spirit with which Palestinians adopted the term. When they launched the first Intifada in 1987—after 20 years under a foreign military occupation—it was an expression of a desire to wake up, rise and throw off the chains of subjugation. It is not inherently antisemitic, nor does it refer by default to terrorism or violence.

While accompanying international journalists covering the protests, I often discussed this with them. In Jerusalem, I explained to LA Times bureau chief Dan Fisher, the Washington Post’s Glenn Frankel and the New York Times’ John Kifner what Palestinians meant by the word. I told them that throughout Palestinian patriotic literature and slogans, two distinctions were always made: The Intifada was a protest against the Israeli occupation, not against Jews or the existence of Israel, and that the ultimate goal was to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Fisher, Frankel and Kifner included these clarifications in their reports, helping the Arabic term intifada enter the global lexicon with its intended meaning.

‘Bringing terror to the streets of America’

To define “intifada,” Fox News (5/23/25) brought on Douglas Murray, who calls Islam an “infection” and declares that “all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop.”

But today, as protests against Israel’s devastating war on Gaza mount, the word is being twisted. When Rep. Elise Stefanik grilled the presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT in December 2023 about pro-Palestinian chants invoking “intifada,” she equated the term with “genocide of Jews.”

The university presidents faltered. They should have said clearly: Genocide against Jews—or any people—is abhorrent. But intifada is not synonymous with genocide. To equate a call to end the Israeli military occupation with a call for genocide or violence against Jews is a gross distortion—a bizarre reversal that paints the victims as aggressors.

And yet this distortion persists. [Gillibrand] Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo labeled Mamdani antisemitic. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt—who likely doesn’t speak Arabic—claimed on X that intifada is “explicit incitement to violence.” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) added that the word is “well understood to refer to the violent terror attacks.” Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) told WNYC public radio (6/26/25), “The global intifada is a statement that means destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.”

Media echoed the politicians’ misrepresentations of intifada. “Many Jews see it as a call to violence against Israeli civilians,” ABC (6/29/25) reported. “Many Jews consider it a call to violence, a nod to deadly attacks on civilians in Israel by Palestinians in uprisings in the 1980s and 2000s,” wrote the New York Times (6/25/25). Of course, “many Jews” do not hear the word that way—but the more important question is, what is the accurate understanding of the word as used by Palestinians?

Fox News (5/23/25) didn’t mince words: “‘Intifada’ Means Bringing Terror to the Streets of America,” it said in a headline, citing notorious Islamophobe Douglas Murray. To the New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (7/1/25), “What Intifada Really Means” is “giving moral comfort to people who deliberately murder innocent Jews.”

Even liberal podcast host Donny Deutsch repeated the same claim while speaking on MSNBC (Morning Joe, 6/30/25):

I’m outraged that we have a candidate for mayor of New York, Mr. Mamdani, that cannot walk back or cannot condemn the words “globalize the intifada” and his nuance of, “Well, it means different things for different people.” Well, let me tell you what it means to a Jew—it means violence.

Brutal suppression of protest

The First Intifada in the Gaza Strip, December 21, 1987 (photo: Efi Sharir).

The first Intifada embraced principles of nonviolent resistance championed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. My cousin, Mubarak Awad, who established the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, encouraged boycotts of Israeli products, labor strikes and grassroots economic development in preparation for statehood. He translated, printed and distributed Arabic translations of Gene Sharp’s writings on nonviolence throughout the occupied territories. Mubarak was deported on the eve of the Intifada by then–Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

After Shamir came Yitzhak Rabin, who called publicly to “break the bones” of Palestinian stone throwers. During the first Intifada, Israeli soldiers and settlers responded to the nonfatal protests with extreme violence. In the first phase of the uprising—a little more than a year—332 Palestinians were killed, along with 12 Israelis (Middle East Monitor, 12/8/16).

This brutality did not suppress the protests, but merely escalated the violence: At the end of six years, more than 1,500 Palestinians, including more than 300 children, and 400 Israelis—18 of whom were children—were dead, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

The same pattern recurred in the second Intifada: Only after the initial protests were met with massively disproportionate force did Palestinians, led by Hamas, turn to suicide bombing as a desperation tactic (Al Jazeera, 9/28/20). To treat the response to the brutal suppression of protest as though it represented the essential nature of intifada is intellectually lazy and politically cynical.

Zohran Mamdani never used the words “global intifada.” But he refused to denounce calls for the world to wake up and speak out against atrocities in Gaza. His victory in the Democratic primary—supported in part by Jewish New Yorkers—shows he is neither antisemitic nor willing to renounce an Arabic word that has been hijacked and misused by people who would rather Palestinians remain silent and submissive under occupation.

Research assistance: Shirlynn Chan

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Daoud Kuttab.

What It Means to Be Human

Robert Malone — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 14:50:24 +0000

Various domesticated bird species usually run around the farm, including guinea fowl. We love our guinea fowl because they spend their days eating bugs: including ticks, flies, and other noxious pests. Guinea fowl are funny creatures, with colorful bald heads, speckled feathers, long legs, and oddly shaped bodies. We often view them as comic relief as they run around squawking and scurrying from here to there. They like to hang out under the horses, snapping up bugs that the horses disturb as they graze. Guinea fowl are a very primitive bird; they really aren’t very intelligent. Honestly, at times they seem to barely have two brain cells to rub together. Originating from Africa, they are not very domesticated. Guineas act on instinct and are often considered difficult to raise, due to flightiness and a complete lack of “good sense.” However, guineas eat bugs and ticks are at a rate that seems almost unimaginable. Our property is virtually devoid of ticks in the tall grasses. For those who are unclear what a guinea fowl looks like:

So, Jill, my wife, was thrilled when one of our guineas had her first clutch of eggs, and it was even more exciting when she hatched them out! She had raised this particular guinea hen from a young chick and felt “bonded” to her. Although she felt that way, as she discovered later, the hen did not feel kindly disposed towards her when she had her babies hatch. Furthermore, the act of leaning over the bird triggered a defensive reaction from the bird, as that is what predators do. Within the blink of an eye, Jill went from protector to predator.

The particular guinea had laid her eggs far away from food or water in an old barn. Being the good guardian, Jill put food and water in bowls and began to set them out for her. She felt that she “knew” this bird. Jill had raised, fed, and kept her safe at night. Certainly, the bird knew that. As the guinea had babies clustered around her body, she bent down to put the food bowl on the ground.

As Jill put the dishes down, seemingly out of nowhere, this hen flew directly at her face and clawed right down both sides of her cheeks with her talons, drawing deep scratches. With blood literally pouring down her face, she told me later that she felt like a stupid fool for taking liberties. If she were to think back on her relationship with this bird, it had never given her any reason to believe that it appreciated or understood her efforts on the bird’s behalf. Jill just assumed that her attentions and care for the bird were understood. Jill had “felt” like the bird clearly could “see” that Jill was trying to feed and care for the mother hen and her brood. In that instant, the guinea thought Jill was going after her offspring, and she reacted without hesitation.

Her maternal instinct was so quick and so fierce that at first, Jill didn’t even realize what had hit her. The human ability to feel empathy, to believe that what she feeling would be reciprocated, led her right down the path of assuming something that wasn’t.

This is a typical trap that we humans tend to fall into when working with other species. Patricia D. McDonnell , in her book, The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs (ref), gives the example of the little girl bending down to hug and kiss a dog. The child is doing just what baby humans do everywhere. She is hugging, kissing, and wanting to hold on to those close to her, just as her ancestors did in the past. She has the innate behavior of hugging and hanging on to her mother, because that is what human babies do.

But the dog feels very differently when hugged and kissed. Dogs are four-legged pack animals. They do not hug. When dogs are young, they do not hang on to their mother’s belly as she trots through the underbrush. The only time adult canines throw their bodies at each other’s heads is during periods of intense fighting.

When a little girl swings her arms around a dog’s neck and kisses him, the initial reaction of the untrained dog is to react defensively and bite. With all the best of intentions and instinct, this is a clear example of a human sending all the wrong signals to another species.

But why do we do what we do? The first step to understanding our own behavior is to accept both that we are different from other mammals and yet the same. When one goes to the zoo, or watches a nature program on non-human primates, it is a useful exercise to think: “I am related. I need to understand that creature, to better understand myself.” By taking that step, which is not always a pleasant step, a person can begin to understand what it is to be human and to be an animal. One must understand our relationship to other animals to truly understand the human condition. They are the building blocks that allowed us to become human. It is not something to be ashamed of but something to be understood and cherished. The commonalities will enable us to bridge the minds of other species (being careful not to take liberties, like Jill did with the guinea hen). But because we are humans, our reactions are often very different from those of other species.

How are we the same as other species? Sometimes it is just obvious. When I sit in the warm sun, I know that my dog can sit in the same sun and feel the same warm tingling on her skin. When I see my horse, laying in the pasture, with her body positioned to pick up the early morning rays, I don’t have to be up close to know how she feels as the warm sun penetrates her thick hide. Likewise, we can understand the pleasure of sex, of sleep, of eating, and of being warm that other mammalian and even avian creatures enjoy.

But do we think differently than other animals? And if so. How do we think differently? Most animals think in images, not words. We, too, can think in images, although sometimes we have to remember how. To think like an animal, we have to (re)connect to those animal parts of our brain. So some people, this is an easy exercise, for others, it can be challenging.

Do you think in words or images?

By trying to see images of our world through the eyes of an animal, we have to clear our brains of words. To think in images only. Thinking in images can be a calming and centering exercise to give ourselves when our over-analytic brain can’t turn off. To be able to create an image in our mind, whether it is of a special place, or a pleasurable past experience, is a gift from our animal mind. It is a trick often used in meditation to calm and relax the mind. Many a yoga class will involve an exercise of asking people to imagine themselves in a forest or field full of flowers, to bring them back to a mind without words, back to a place in the brain, where words are not needed.

Some say that animals don’t think about the future. I believe they do. So, here is a thought exercise to show how an animal might think about what is to come. Clear your mind. Then think about your next dinner or meal, picture yourself or someone preparing the meal. The next step is to view the table, with the food laid out ready to eat. See the textures, the dishes, the glasses, the food, and imagine (without words), eating that food. Taste it, feel it, smell it –but don’t cheat. No words. Let the images emerge, and explore that world. That is how I believe animals foresee the future. Words are not needed to envision what might come or what they wish to come. Likewise, they might envision even their darkest fears of the future. Using images, they can even think about changing the future. Is it a simple world, compared to our many words, syntax, grammar, descriptors, nouns, verbs, and complex sentence structures, but the point is that it does allow animals to strategize and think about the future. It just uses images instead of word strings.

Animals think in images because they are wired differently, and their brain centers are of different sizes and variations from our own. Thinking in images, for lack of a better term, as those images are probably being viewed in motion, is primarily associated with the right hemisphere of the brain.

There is are right and left hemispheres to mammalian brains. Scientists have concluded that the left part of the human brain has the logic centers; it is rational, logical, and analyzes the world in parts. The left brain is where most of our language processing occurs. Our right brain is the hemisphere that controls images, creativity, and sees the world as a whole.

Overall, animals use both hemispheres, but the side they use more depends on the context: the left for familiar, routine, and logical tasks, and the right for novel, emotional, or stressful situations. The right hemisphere of the human brain is used more for functions involving creativity, spatial ability, artistic and musical skills, intuition, and the recognition of faces, places, and objects.

The right brain is considered by many to be the “animal brain”, and animals are often considered more right-brained. The left side of the brain allows for complex language and tool use. Those of us who are considered more right-brained may feel more connected to our animal heritage because, at some level, right-brained people probably think in images more often or more clearly, just like their animal counterparts. Interestingly, across cultures, women tend to be more right-brained than men. However, modern neuroscience has shown that thinking about people as left or right-brained, as a strict division, is oversimplified.

It is thought that thinking in the right brain can also lead to heightened “anxious arousal” (intense fear, panic or both). A study conducted in 2007, used MRI during an emotional task to demonstrate distinct neural patterns: anxious apprehension (e.g., worry) correlated with left-hemisphere dominance, while anxious arousal (e.g., panic) showed right-hemisphere activation (right inferior temporal area (ref).

When working with prey animals, such as horses, the link to our right brain will often be the key to understanding their psychological states. One must remember how their brain is constructed to understand their world better. They are prey animals; they think in images and have a patina of instincts that direct their thought patterns to be ready for flight in an instant. One must get the horse to be calm, to quiet the right brain centers. Only then can one connect with their left brain to train effectively.

But how else are humans different from their animal counterparts? Many scientists believe that what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal species is not our ability to use tools, communicate with language, or think logically, but rather our large brain size combined with the complex foldings of the human brain to create more room for neurons. There is a simple allometric equation used to determine the slope between brain size and body size. The higher the slope, the larger the brain compared to body size. I believe the human species is different from other species because we are smart; we simply have a larger brain and more brain power. This is a big part of what it means to be a human.

What does it mean to be an animal? From our limited perspective as human beings, are we qualified to answer that question? I believe that we are. Each species has a unique footprint, a specific collection of qualities that sets it apart from all other species. There is no one species called animal. Each species has similarities and differences from the rest of the animal kingdom.

We all share certain similarities in being mammals, even in being alive. We all eat, sleep, defecate, procreate, communicate, have internal heating and cooling systems, fur or hair, and transport ourselves on various configurations of arms and legs. But the differences in how we go about feeding, sleeping, socializing, procreating, and heating are vast. For instance, I know little about how a lioness understands when her newborn babies are hungry or cold. Nor do I know about how a rhinoceros initiates a sexual advance.

As a human species, we have convinced ourselves that our superior brain power can allow us to communicate not just with other humans but with other species as well, and that we can analyze another species’ behavior and draw conclusions. Often, this is true. But sometimes, the very act of being a human directly interferes with our ability to communicate with other animals effectively.

Jill should have known, logically, that her bending over the guinea fowl might set the bird into attack mode. She had not analyzed her behavior as she bent over the bird to put down the feed; she was acting like a predator. But she didn’t make that leap of logic at the time. Instead, she viewed the little bird through her own human eyes and soul –the heart of an empath, and what she was doing was what humans do. Wanting to be close, to reach out. A lesson learned the hard way.

The post What It Means to Be Human first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

INTERVIEW: Secret deal means Laos has some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes

Mat Pennington for RFA — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 18:18:43 +0000

A pack of cigarettes in Laos costs as little as 32 U.S. cents, thanks to a secret deal between the Lao government and British tobacco giant, Imperial Brands.

In a new report, The Examination, a news site that focuses on global health threats, looks into who benefited from the 2001 deal and how an agreement capping excise taxes has hit government revenues in the Southeast Asian nation and kept the price of cigarettes among the lowest in the world. That’s had serious public health consequences for Laos, which has very high rates of smoking.

Radio Free Asia’s Mat Pennington spoke with Jason McLure, an investigative journalist with The Examination who reported the story. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Can you tell us about the deal?

Jason McLure: This story is about a deal that dates to 2001 when the communist government of Laos was privatizing the country’s state tobacco monopoly. Now, what they did instead of having an open tender ... they basically invited Imperial Brands and a local company called ST Group, run by a local businessman named Sithat Xaysoulivong, to bid on this. And ultimately what the Lao government decided to do was to form a joint venture with Imperial Brands and Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong and his ST Group.

Now, the way this was done was very unusual and it also highlighted some very close political connections between Mr. Xaysoulivong and the Lao government at the time.

RFA: So who really benefited from this? And what was the fiscal impact for the Lao government? Did they lose revenue?

McLure: The way the deal was structured was the Lao government retained 47% of the tobacco monopoly and Imperial Brands, this British tobacco giant, got 34%. The remaining 19% of the company was owned by this offshore company called S3T which, we know and learned was owned partly by Imperial Brands and partly by Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong who, as it happened, was an in-law of the Lao prime minister at the time, Bounnhang Vorachit. So there was clearly some familial relationship involved. And ultimately this deal paid $28 million over basically two decades to the former prime minister’s in-law. And this had big consequences for the Lao government. One tobacco control group did a study of the consequences of this deal on public health, and what they found was that the Lao government missed out on $143 million in tobacco tax revenue and that is because one provision of this tobacco contract capped cigarette excise taxes and essentially left Laos with some of the cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: How much is a packet of cigarettes in Laos?

McLure: The cheapest brands of cigarettes in Laos cost about 7,000 kip. That’s about 32 U.S. cents. So, we were able to look at WHO (World Health Organization) data from all around the world and find that basically these are some of the very cheapest cigarettes in the world.

RFA: So what have been the health impacts of this?

McLure: So the health impacts, they really have been significant in Laos. As in many other Asian countries, relatively few women smoke, but somewhere around 37 to 40% of men smoke. So there’s a very high smoking rate there. It’s one of the highest in the world, at least among men. And this is in part a direct consequence of these very cheap cigarettes that are a consequence of this 25-year contract that was signed back in 2001.

Now, there’s a lot of data, a lot of research from tobacco control researchers and public health researchers that show the best way to cut smoking rates to get people to quit smoking, or especially to prevent them from starting to smoke, is to increase the price of cigarettes. And the way that governments can do this is by increasing tobacco excise taxes. Now, this 25-year contract in Laos absolutely prevented the Lao government from doing that.

RFA: And as we know, Laos is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and it doesn’t have a very well-developed health system. So you can see what the sort of impacts would be.

McLure: That’s right. One of my colleagues visited one of the government hospitals in Laos, and she interviewed people who were there with smoking-related diseases. And the treatment was extremely expensive. And even for many people who have common smoking-related diseases like emphysema or lung cancer … particularly people in the countryside, people in villages, any form of radiation or chemotherapy or treatments like that are going to be out of reach.

RFA: So what does Imperial Brands say about this?

McLure: During our reporting, we reached out to Imperial Brands to ask them about this contract and specifically to ask why they decided to include an in-law of the prime minister at the time as part of this contract. And what they told us was that, for one thing, they said they comply with all regulations and generally behave in an ethical manner. But they didn’t respond to the substance of our questions. We asked them as well about why this contract was kept secret for so long. The contract, in fact, itself, contained a secrecy provision. They told us that this type of confidentiality is normal in such commercial arrangements.

RFA: And did the Lao government respond at all to any of your inquiries or Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong or Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit?

McLure: Unfortunately, the Lao government, Mr. Vorachit, Mr. Sithat, even the current Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone, they did not respond to our inquiries for this story.

RFA: I understand that this isn’t a problem that’s totally isolated to Laos, that major tobacco companies have reached deals with authoritarian countries and other nations.

McLure: That’s right. You know, what’s really a little bit unusual about this deal is that we were able to get the documents that showed exactly how the payments flowed from the Lao tobacco company and Imperial to the in-law of Laos’ then prime minister. But we’ve seen that British American Tobacco, another one of the tobacco giants, has been involved in dealings with the North Korean regime in violation of U.S. sanctions. In fact, they agreed to pay more than $620 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department as a result of that.

RFA: So what’s the future of this agreement in Laos? I understand that it’s coming up to its term now.

McLure: Well, that is an interesting question because this is a 25-year agreement that was signed in 2001. It will expire next year. Now, the government of Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone has already informed Imperial that they won’t be renewing this agreement again. However, they did leave the door open to negotiating a new agreement with the same tobacco company. We’ll see if that comes to pass and whether or not any insiders like Mr. Sithat, the in-law of former Prime Minister Vorachit, are involved. One thing that we do know is that Mr. Sithat is also close to the family of the current Prime Minister Sonexay. So it remains to be seen. Ultimately, what we’ve been told is that the current prime minister will be the one making the decision. And as we’ve seen, this could have huge impacts on the future of smoking in Laos and on Laos’ public health.

The Examination is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health threats. Their investigative report was supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mat Pennington for RFA.

INTERVIEW: Secret deal means Laos has some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes

Mat Pennington for RFA — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 18:18:43 +0000

A pack of cigarettes in Laos costs as little as 32 U.S. cents, thanks to a secret deal between the Lao government and British tobacco giant, Imperial Brands.

Radio Free Asia’s Mat Pennington spoke with Jason McLure, an investigative journalist with The Examination who reported the story. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: Can you tell us about the deal?

Now, the way this was done was very unusual and it also highlighted some very close political connections between Mr. Xaysoulivong and the Lao government at the time.

RFA: So who really benefited from this? And what was the fiscal impact for the Lao government? Did they lose revenue?

RFA: How much is a packet of cigarettes in Laos?

RFA: So what have been the health impacts of this?

RFA: And as we know, Laos is one of the poorest countries in Asia, and it doesn’t have a very well-developed health system. So you can see what the sort of impacts would be.

RFA: So what does Imperial Brands say about this?

RFA: And did the Lao government respond at all to any of your inquiries or Mr. Sithat Xaysoulivong or Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit?

McLure: Unfortunately, the Lao government, Mr. Vorachit, Mr. Sithat, even the current Lao Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone, they did not respond to our inquiries for this story.

RFA: I understand that this isn’t a problem that’s totally isolated to Laos, that major tobacco companies have reached deals with authoritarian countries and other nations.

RFA: So what’s the future of this agreement in Laos? I understand that it’s coming up to its term now.

The Examination is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates global health threats. Their investigative report was supported in part by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mat Pennington for RFA.

Aid as a Means to Commit Genocide

Brendan O’Soro — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 19:48:37 +0000

It’s been apparent for some time that the Israeli government intends to expel or kill the population of Gaza and claim the territory. This has become so obvious that even the establishment press is belatedly beginning to notice. In an editorial, the world’s leading business journal, the Financial Times, observed that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land” (emphasis mine). I’m not quite sure what would need to happen before the Financial Times would consider its suspicions confirmed; the Israeli Prime Minister is much more assertive about his intentions, he identified the expulsion of Gazans to be among his “clear conditions” for ending his genocidal campaign; he speaks of emptying Gaza as one empties a dustbin, and with the same regard for its contents. However, because coverage from the corporate press has been so incommensurate with the scale of the horrors, even this tepid statement from the Financial Times is progress.

The Israelis have sought to render Gaza uninhabitable, and then encourage what they’re perversely calling “voluntary emigration.” They’ve embraced the logic that someone fleeing a burning building has “volunteered” to leap from the window. This strategy has many components to it: tens of thousands (at least) of Gazans have been massacred by the Israelis, most of the buildings have been destroyed (the Israelis have begun a campaign to eliminate the ones that remain standing after previous assaults), the Gazan health care infrastructure has been repeatedly attacked, and the entire Gaza Strip has been subjected to a medieval siege, the consequences of which have left the population critically short of food and medicine. After reducing Gaza to starvation through months of total blockade, Israel turned aid distribution into another mechanism of murder or expulsion.

An entity with the philanthropic-sounding name the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose name is so starkly at odds with its function that it might have been coined by a satirist, has been tasked with providing aid to the Gazan population. Anyone familiar with Orwell could likely guess the character of a group with such a crudely propagandistic name. Some organizations have demonstrated the competence to deliver aid and the desire to do so efficaciously, but GHF isn’t one of them. Credible humanitarian organizations were disregarded and the GHF empowered, for reasons that Israeli officials have been forthcoming enough to articulate.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clear about why he decided to slightly relax the siege that Gaza had been subjected to: Israeli allies were beginning to become squeamish about the forced starvation of the entire population of Gaza. These same allies have supported the Israeli campaign despite the International Court of Justice ruling that it’s plausible Israel is violating the Genocide Convention, and despite the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders. The supporters of Israel have demonstrated a willingness to tolerate a great deal of savagery. But Israel’s “closest friends in the world,” as Netanyahu tells us, can’t “handle pictures of mass starvation,” so “minimal” aid deliveries must be allowed. There are no moral concerns about causing a famine in Gaza, only pragmatic considerations. Netanyahu said that “we cannot reach a point of starvation, for practical and diplomatic reasons.” Doing so may cross a “red line” that could cause Israel to lose the support of the United States. Starvation is not wrong—merely inconvenient, like a dinner guest who overstays his welcome.

Another key objective is to force the Gazan population to the southern portion of the territory and then induce them to leave for other countries. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, speaking at a conference in the first week of May, said: “Within a few months we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” He went on to say: “The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” Under the new scheme, the aid distribution sites were limited to only four locations (it was 400 locations when the United Nations was managing the dispersal of aid), and the sites were strategically located in the South of the Strip, which forces the population to congregate in these areas. They will reside under conditions that Israeli planners privately concede will be likened to “concentration camps.”

But that’s only if the Palestinians reach the distribution sites. Kit Malthouse, a conservative member of parliament in the United Kingdom said that the aid distribution system the United Nations was managing was replaced with “a shooting gallery, an abattoir, where starving people are lured out through combat zones to be shot at.” The United Nations was less poetic when voicing its condemnation of the GHF scheme, it merely said that “aid distribution has become a death trap.” Every day brings news of another massacre at an aid distribution center. The public has been subjected to the standard Israeli deceptions about these incidents, but Israeli culpability becomes clear whenever the evidence is honestly interrogated. At the time of this writing, 245 Palestinian aid seekers have been killed by the Israelis and more than 2,152 were injured; the level of savagery is such that the number is certain to be greater within moments after being transcribed.

Let us dispense with the fiction of ignorance. The evidence is not hidden, it is flaunted. The intent is not obscured, it is bragged about. The Israeli government, with the serene assurance of a state that knows its crimes will be subsidized, barely troubles itself with denials anymore. And the United States remains a participant in these crimes.

The post Aid as a Means to Commit Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Brendan O’Soro.

The Morality of Small Means: Sanctioning Israel’s Ministers

Binoy Kampmark — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 23:54:07 +0000

They really ought to be doing more. But in the scheme of things, the sanctioning of Israeli’s frothily fanatical ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich by New Zealand, Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom and Australia is a reminder to the Israeli government that ethnic cleansing, mass killing and the destruction of a people will receive some comment. But a closer look at the trumpeted move does little to suggest anything in the way of change or deterrence, certainly not in Gaza, where the cataclysm continues without restraint.

According to the joint statement, both politicians “have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of new Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous.” The violence by Israeli settlers in the West Bank had “led to the deaths of Palestinian civilians and the displacement of whole communities.”

The reasoning for the imposition of such sanctions tends to minimise Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s zealous defence of programmatic and systematic displacement and removal of Palestinian existence in the Strip, despite the statement claiming that “this cannot be seen in isolation”. The statement fails to note the warnings from the International Court of Justice that Palestinians in Gaza face the risk of genocide, with a final decision pending on the matter.

Singling out individual members of the Netanyahu cabinet as the convenient lunatics and the devilishly possessed is a point of convenience rather than effect. It is true that, even by certain Israeli standards, a figure like Ben-Gvir is a bit too pungent, a convict of racist incitement, the procurer of assault rifles to West Bank settlers and an advocate for the full annexation of the territory. But identifying the villainous monsters conceals the broader villainous effort, and the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong did as much in simply calling the two ministers “the most extreme proponents of the unlawful and violent Israeli settlement enterprise.”

The report of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, prefers to note the broader role played by such agents of power as the Israeli security forces, which it accuses of committing war crimes in directing attacks against the civilian population in Gaza, wilful killing and intentionally launching attacks that “would cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians”. Killing civilians seeking shelter in schools also implicated the forces “in the crime against humanity of extermination.” The canvas of responsibility, in other words, is panoramic and large.

Pity, then, that the latest expression of small means by these five powers does not extend to a complete halt to military cooperation, the selling of arms, or engagement across various fields of industry. That would have diminished the hypocrisy somewhat, something that the countries in question are unlikely to do. More’s the pity that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been spared this fit of moral clarity. When considered in substance, the two ministers face the sorts of restrictions that will be mildly bruising at best: travel bans and the freezing of assets.

The move by the Australian Labor government and its counterparts was, in the broader scheme of things, a modest one. It was also worth remembering that Canberra’s decision was made in sheepish fashion, with Wong previously stating that Australia would never unilaterally make such a move, as “going it alone gets us nowhere”. It was seen by Greens Senator Nick McKim as “far too little and far too late”. Sanctions were needed against the “Israeli industrial war machine.” On the other hand, Alex Ryvchin, co-chief of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry suggests that these measures can become a martyr’s tonic. “They have little support in Israel, but this is the sort of measure that will boost their notoriety and make them perhaps more popular”.

Looking ever the marionette in the show, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio flapped about in condemning the sanctions, which “do not advance US-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire, bring all hostages home and end the war.” Bereft of skills in argumentation, he could only warn US allies “not to forget who the real enemy is.”

The sanctions seemed to cause the condemned two less grief than Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who derided the decision as “outrageous”, “scandalous” and “unacceptable.” It was all part of “a planned and coordinated pressure campaign.” Ben-Gvir was almost smug with the attention and bursting with semitic pride. “We survived Pharoah, we will also survive [British Prime Minister] Keir Starmer,” he tooted in a statement.

Smotrich even seemed thrilled by the timing of it all, having been at the inauguration of a new Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron when he heard the news. “I heard Britain had decided to impose sanctions on me because I am thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he boasted. “There couldn’t be a better moment for this.”

One point is certainly true: the selective moves against the dastardly two leaves the murderous apparatus intact, and the IDF war machine undiminished. Most of all, it will do nothing to halt the construction of a single settlement or save a single Palestinian from dispossession.

The post The Morality of Small Means: Sanctioning Israel’s Ministers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The Morality of Small Means: Sanctioning Israel’s Ministers

Binoy Kampmark — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 23:54:07 +0000

The post The Morality of Small Means: Sanctioning Israel’s Ministers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

To Maryland college students, speaking out about Gaza means more than any potential discipline

Jaisal Noor — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 20:02:17 +0000

This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on June 12, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

At graduation ceremonies across Baltimore this spring, students turned their moments of celebration into protest — waving Palestinian flags, denouncing their schools’ complicity in Gaza’s devastation, and risking discipline from both their universities and the Trump administration.

“I can’t just walk across the stage and not say anything,” said August, a University of Maryland School of Social Work graduate and member of the Anti-Imperial Movement, who asked that their full name be withheld out of fear of harassment. “I can’t just sleep well knowing that my tuition money is complicit in this.”

August was among the students that marked their May 19 commencement ceremony by demanding their school cut ties with Israel. Over a dozen students wore keffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags, covered their hands in blood-red dyed water and signs reading, “Genocide is not a social work value” and “Disclose, Divest from Israel.”

Colleges across the country have cracked down on similar displays: days earlier, at George Washington University, Cecilia Culver was banned from campus after using her graduation speech to declare, “I am ashamed to know my tuition is being used to fund genocide.” At NYU, Logan Rozos’s diploma was withheld after denouncing the “genocide… paid for by our tax dollars and live-streamed to our phones.”

The goal was urgent: to speak out against institutional complicity in Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, where the official death toll nears 55,000, hundreds of thousands of people face starvation, and Israel has vowed to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for the survivors.

Protest has become a constant on college campuses since Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s genocidal response. Over 19 months, students have staged walkouts, encampments, hunger strikes, and civil disobedience — even as administrators rewrite rules to ban and restrict protests and impose harsh discipline. More than 3,000 protesters across the country have been arrested, with hundreds suspended or expelled. Protestors are routinely accused of antisemitism, their calls for accountability dismissed as hatred rather than outrage over humanitarian law.

Resistance has grown since this March, when the U.S.-backed Israeli blockade choked off food, water, and medicine to Gaza — and public perception is starting to shift with it. An April Pew survey showed a majority of Americans now view Israel unfavorably for the first time in decades. That finding was confirmed by a May University of Maryland poll that also found more than a third of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, see Israel’s actions in Gaza as war crimes or “akin to genocide.”

“The only way forward is for everyday Americans — not just students or leftists — to speak up,” said August. “Sometimes it feels hopeless, but the data shows we’re not fringe. A lot of people are waking up to what’s happening in Gaza.”

“Sometimes it feels hopeless, but the data shows we’re not fringe. A lot of people are waking up to what’s happening in Gaza.”
August, a University of Maryland School of Social Work graduate

In conversations with more than a dozen local student activists, Baltimore Beat heard that they see their Pro-Palestine advocacy as part of a broader, generational fight against injustice.

As the crisis in Gaza has deepened, so too has the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus activism — framing student protest as antisemitism. Federal investigations are now underway at more than 60 universities, and hundreds of student visas have been revoked. At institutions like Johns Hopkins University, the administration has threatened to pull billions in federal funding unless university leaders suppress dissent. A federal antisemitism task force — backed by Republicans, key Democrats, and major Jewish organizations — has vowed to stamp out what it deems antisemitism at Hopkins and other campuses.

The administration has targeted prominent foreign-born student activists, claiming their advocacy constitutes support for Hamas and antisemitic incitement. In March, Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent organizer at Columbia University and a legal U.S. resident, was detained by ICE, had his green card revoked, and has languished in detention for several months. “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined — you cannot achieve one without the other,” Khalil told CNN in 2024.

Pro-Palestinian protesters — including many Jewish students — emphasize that their opposition is to Israel’s occupation, not Judaism. They warn that equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism threatens free speech and undermines Jewish safety by turning antisemitism into a political weapon.

Avery Misterka, Jewish student at Towson University and lead organizer of the campus Pro-Palestine movement, has spoken out at multiple protests against Trump administration policies and in defense of targeted student activists.

“Trump isn’t serious about fighting antisemitism — it’s a weapon for his Christian nationalist project,” said Misterka. He heads the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, the nation’s largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization. Misterka noted that Trump has long-standing ties to antisemitic extremists, including several current White House officials.

“We’ve seen what happens when students speak out — they get punished. But we’re still showing up,” he added.

The protests have persisted even as university responses grow increasingly harsh. In the early hours of May 8, tents sprang up on the Keyser Quad at Johns Hopkins University. Students quickly established a small encampment, renaming it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone, in honor of a Gazan pediatrician abducted by Israeli forces. While last year’s encampment at Hopkins lasted for two weeks, this time it was cleared immediately: more than 30 Hopkins armed private police force and Baltimore police officers swept onto the quad within the hour, tearing down tents and detaining students.

The crackdown at Hopkins — carried out by its newly empowered private police force — sparked swift criticism from students and faculty alike.

“Campuses have always been strongholds of dissent. Trump knows critical thinking lives here, and his agenda can’t survive it.”
Claude Guillemard, French Professor at Johns Hopkins University

“Campuses have always been strongholds of dissent. Trump knows critical thinking lives here, and his agenda can’t survive it,” said Claude Guillemard, a French professor at Johns Hopkins University, at a recent rally.

Both students and faculty have led calls for the Baltimore City Council to hold a hearing on the Hopkins Police Department, arguing that the force remains unaccountable to the communities it is supposed to serve. They argue that university leaders are capitulating to a pressure campaign designed to stifle dissent and academic freedom.

At Morgan State University, where student protest played a key role in the civil rights movement, professor Jared Ball sees the pattern repeating: “Faculty in Maryland can’t unionize, governance keeps shrinking, and corporate and military influence keeps growing. Private security is everywhere, yet students still say they don’t feel safe. Administrators confine protests to ‘designated spaces’ and punish anyone who strays — proof that the crackdown on dissent isn’t new, just more aggressive.”

At Towson University, the movement has only broadened. One year after passing a 12-1 divestment resolution, university leaders have rejected calls to divest from Israel as students built an even larger coalition.

Mina, vice president of Towson’s Muslim Student Association, withheld their last name due to ongoing Islamophobic harassment. Despite administrators rejecting their demands, Mina says they remain undeterred.

“We’ve been here since October 7, and we’re not going anywhere,” Mina said.

Even after meeting with the president, none of their demands have been met.

“I guess he thought if he met with us, we’d stop — but we haven’t.”

While protesters face arrest, suspension, and expulsion, no U.S. official has been held accountable for violating laws that prohibit aid to governments committing war crimes.

Organizing extends well beyond protests and marches. On a chilly Saturday in April, Red Emma’s became a marketplace of resistance for students’ political art.

At Morgan State University, where student protest played a key role in the civil rights movement, professor Jared Ball sees the pattern repeating: “Administrators confine protests to ‘designated spaces’ and punish anyone who strays — proof that the crackdown on dissent isn’t new, just more aggressive.”

Students from area schools shared food and strategies for continued action, including University of Maryland College Park, where in April, students voted to divest from Israel and other countries that fuel human rights abuses, joining Towson and University of Maryland Baltimore County, where student bodies approved divestment resolutions last year. The event, organized by Baltimore Artists Against Apartheid, raised more than $3,600 for Palestinian families.

“If we let the repression students face stand, artists will be next,” said organizer Nic Koski. “Defending students under attack is inseparable from defending Palestinian rights — and everyone’s rights.”

One of the participating artists was Qamar Hassan, a graduating senior at the Maryland Institute College of Art, who raised over $500 by selling pieces that had been removed from public spaces by campus administrators.

In May, Hassan also took part in a protest during their graduation. “We really wanted to highlight that [MICA was] still actively censoring students,” Hassan said. They coordinated with classmates to disrupt the ceremony with chants for Palestine, and a few walked the stage carrying Palestinian flags, determined to make their message visible even as most held back, fearing repercussions. The school president refused to shake their hand — a small gesture that captured the tension of the moment.

“We wanted to show that even if it’s just a handful of us, we’re not going to let our school go about with a land acknowledgment and then censor students who want to talk about Palestine,” Hassan reflected.

“It’s important to show others who are scared that you can do these things — and you’ll be okay. You have a voice, and you can use it.”

In a year defined by fear and repression, even a small act of defiance became an example for others — and a signal to Baltimore that the city’s students, and their movement, aren’t going away.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Jaisal Noor.

Fighting for the Planet means Sovereignty for the Sahel

Aaron Kirshenbaum and Jasmine Butler — Tue, 27 May 2025 16:46:27 +0000

At the core of most demands for the US empire, we’re asking for kindergarten ethics– is that a stretch? It’s what the climate movement teaches about our relationship with the Earth: not to take and take and extract and extract because we have a reciprocal relationship. For most of its history, the US has largely ignored this, and that remains the case when it comes to the string of accusations leveled against the current president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré. And if all of us– the climate movement, peace lovers, people with basic compassion–want to save the planet, we need to stand against the attempts of the US and NATO/Western powers in trying to intervene in the Sahel’s process of sovereignty.

Several weeks ago, Michael Langley, the head of US Africa Command (or AFRICOM), testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and stated that Ibrahim Traoré, the current president of Burkina Faso, “is using the country’s gold reserves for personal protection rather than for the benefit of its people,” an absurd claim, considering that the US Department of Defense, which Langley works for, has stolen $1 trillion from US taxpayers in this year’s budget alone. What’s more, AFRICOM itself has a deadly, well-documented history of plundering the African continent, often in coordination with NATO.

Take a guess why Langley might want to delegitimize Traoré’s governance and the larger project of the Alliance of Sahel States/AES (made up of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, all of which have recently allied under a confederation after recent seizures of power). Any takers? Hint: the answer is natural resources and military presence. Traoré has nationalized Burkina Faso’s foreign-owned gold mines in an attempt to actually use the land’s resources to benefit its people. Similarly, upon taking power in Niger, the current president, Abdourahamane Tchiani, nationalized uranium and banned foreign exports. Notably, a quarter of Europe’s uranium, crucial for energy usage, comes from Niger. Considering Traoré’s crucial role in developing the identity of the AES as one of the more vocal and charismatic leaders, targeting Traoré is part of a larger project by the US/EU/NATO axis targeting the AES project at large. Recently, this new AES leadership has launched new green energy and educational initiatives. Meanwhile, the US has pulled out of the Sahel states as the AES asserts its sovereignty in defiance of decades of Western-backed instability.

Traore’s Burkina Faso is not the first Pan-African project to come under attack by the US/EU/NATO axis of power. Just as the vague claims from Langley serve to cast doubt on Traore’s ability to lead a nation, past Pan-African leaders who have dared to challenge imperialism and prioritize their citizens have also come under fire. For instance, former president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was assassinated in 1987 after putting the Burkinabè people’s needs first by rejecting IMF loans and demands, implementing nationwide literacy and vaccine campaigns, and spearheading housing and agrarian reform. Time and again, France and the US have taken decisive action against leaders who have promoted Pan-Africanism and environmental stability over the interests of Western powers. We’re watching it happen live now, and have a responsibility to stand up for Traorè and the AES before it’s too late.

When a country doesn’t bend its knees to Washington, the standard US playbook is one of environmental death, either via hybrid or classic warfare. Venezuela has refused to grant US corporations unfettered access to its oil reserves – the world’s largest – and thus has been forced to use them as a lifeline. The US has punished Venezuela by imposing unilateral sanctions that have prevented the proper maintenance of the country’s oil pipelines, resulting in harmful leaks. In the Congo–one of the lungs of the Earth–the West’s decades-long quest for uranium and other rare minerals has led to mass deforestation, destroyed water quality, and unleashed military forces that have killed millions. And of course, the US is backing the ecocide/genocide in Palestine in order to maintain the existence of a proxy-state in an oil-rich region.

When the US military – the #1 institutional polluter in the world – “intervenes”, the only environmental outcome is climate collapse. And even when countries play by Washington’s rules, the US will still militarize, build more toxic bases, seek continued extraction, and create mass poverty. For the survival of the people and planet, we must resist this imperial expansion.

Any movement concerned with transitioning from an extractive to a regenerative economy must stand against US and Western intervention in the Sahel and advocate for Pan-African projects and a multilateral world. The emergence of a multipolar world means that projects like the AES have partners beyond the region: during Traoré’s most recent visit to Moscow, he met with the heads of state of Russia, China, and Venezuela. The US, of course, threatened by the loss of its dominion, insists on pursuing a dangerous cold war against China, to contain China’s influence, refuses to cooperate on green technology, and plows through any region that it views as a battleground, be it the Asia-Pacific or the Sahel. And always at the expense of life in all forms.

So if we are in a project for life, why, then, are we often met with hesitation in climate spaces to stand against this imperialist extraction? We need to reflect on a few questions. Whose lives do we sacrifice for “strategy”? Which environmental sacrifice zones are we silent about because of the “bigger picture?” What extraction and militaristic build-up do we let happen to theoretically prevent planetary death that is already happening via our own government down the road? Are we avoiding building connections with popular movements because of donors who only fund dead ends? We have a choice to make: allow the doomsday clock threatening climate death and total catastrophe to keep ticking or reverse course and breathe life into something new.

Traorè’s historic meeting with China, Russia, and Venezuela is a glimpse of what’s on the horizon. As people of the world rise against imperialism and neocolonialism, it is up to us in the US climate movement to stand unequivocally in support of projects of self-determination.

Although our lifestyles will certainly look different once we no longer have uninhibited access to the gold, cobalt, uranium, and other resources that are routinely extracted from the African continent and its people, we must prioritize building a more just and healthy relationship with the planet and all its people. If leaders such as Traore succeed in revolutionizing agriculture and resource extraction at a sustainable pace that benefits workers, what might that signal for a new world order in which exploited Africans and their lands do not form the cheap material base for the world? What might we build in place of extractive economies to usher in a green future for all?

The post Fighting for the Planet means Sovereignty for the Sahel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Aaron Kirshenbaum and Jasmine Butler.

Malcolm X and the fight for liberation—by any means necessary

Michael Fox — Mon, 19 May 2025 20:34:35 +0000

“And the injustice that has been inflicted upon negros in this country by Uncle Sam is criminal. Don’t blame a cracker in Georgia for your injustices. The government is responsible for the injustices. The government can bring these injustices to a halt.”

Malcolm X.

Revolutionary. Muslim minister.

Black civil rights leader.

Human rights activist.

Black nationalist

“We want freedom, by any means necessary. We want justice, by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary. We want it now, or we don’t think anyone should have it.”

He is one of the most radical and revolutionary US figures of the 20th century.

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska.

His parents were supporters of Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey.

They were often threatened, harassed and attacked by white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.

When his father was killed in a street car accident

His mother believed it was white supremacists.

Four of Malcolm X’s uncles were killed by white violence.

Malcolm and his siblings grew up in and out of foster homes when his mother was committed to a mental institute after a nervous breakdown.

Malcolm X dropped out of high school after a teacher told him he had no future.

He lived in Boston with a half-sister. And then Harlem, NY.

He got involved in drug dealing, gambling and robbery.

In 1946, he was arrested and sentenced to eight to ten years at Charlestown State Prison for theft.

Prison would be the beginning of his transformation…

He joined the Nation of Islam, a muslim Black Nationalist religious organization.

He stopped smoking and eating pork. He began to pray to “Allah”

He changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X.

The X symbolized his true African family’s name, which he would never know because it had been lost when his ancestors were brought to the Americas as slaves.

When he left prison in 1952, he began to work as a minister in the Nation of Islam mosques

Slowly rising through the ranks. He helped to found and expand mosques in Boston and Philadelphia, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.

He led the temple in Harlem, New York.

In 1955, he married Betty Sanders, who would change her name to Betty Shabazz.

The Nation of Islam membership grew exponentially.

Even boxer Muhammad Ali joined.

Racist violence was rife throughout the United States

And Malcolm X stood against it.

The Civil Rights movement was rippling across the country.

The 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

But Malcolm X disagreed with Martin Luther King Jr.’s calls for non-violent activism:

“We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us. But we are not non-violent with anyone who is violent with us.”

He said African Americans should stand up for themselves.

He called for them to free themselves from the self-hate implanted by white society.

“Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin to such extense that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of yourself to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t be around each other. No… before you come asking Mr. Mohammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God gave you?”

Malcolm X stood against racism and police brutality.

“Every case of police brutality against a negro follows the same pattern. They attack you. Bust you all upside your mouth and then take you to court and charge you with assault. What kind of demoracy is that? What kind of freedom is that? What kind of social or political system is it when a black man has no voice in court? Has nothing on his side other than what the white man chooses to give him? My brothers and sisters we have to put a stop to this and it will never be stopped until we stop it ourselves… This is American justice. This is American democracy. And those of you that are familiar with it, know that in America democracy is hypocrisy. Now, if I’m wrong put me in jail. But if you can’t prove that democracy is not hypocrisy. Then don’t put your hands on me.”

When a member of his temple was brutally beaten by police in 1957…

Malcolm X arrived to the police precinct with hundreds of supporters and demanded he receive medical attention.

Malcolm X later sued New York City for police brutality and won.

“We are oppressed. We are exploited. We are downtrodden. We are denied not only civil rights, but even human rights. So the only way we are going to get some of this oppression and exploitation away from us or aside from us is to come together against a common enemy.”

In the 1960 UN General Assembly in New York he met with African leaders

And even Cuba’s newly victorious leader Fidel Castro.

As his name grew, he became ever more outspoken.

“The history of unpunished violence against our people clearly indicates that we must be prepared to defend ourselves or we will continue to be a defenseless people at the mercy of a ruthless and violent racist mob.”

But Malcolm X also faced racist violence, death threats…

In 1962, Malcolm X’s relationship with the Nation of Islam soured

When he learned that the group’s leader Elijah Muhammad was having affairs with young secretaries, Malcolm X went public.

He broke with the Nation of Islam.

He converted to Sunni Islam and went on pilgrimage to Mecca.

He traveled abroad. Speaking in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The Nigerian Muslim Students Association gave him the honorary Yoruba name Omowale, which means ‘the son who has come home’.

He said it was his most treasured honor.

In the United States, he started his own group — the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

“To bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the Western Hemisphere and first here in the United States and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary. That’s our motto.”

He continued to speak at University campuses.

But he faced increasing death threats from Nation of Islam leaders

For his break and outspokenness against them…

There were attempts on his life. His house was firebombed.

And on February 21, 1965, he was ambushed, shot and killed in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom just before speaking to members of his new organization.

Thousands attended his funeral, including prominent civil rights leaders.

Martin Luther King wrote to Malcolm X’s widow, Betty Shabazz:

“While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem,” he wrote, “I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem.”

Malcolm X was one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in the history of the United States.

His speeches and his words continue to inspire, even 60 years after his assassination.

This is episode 35 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.

You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

GOP House Ways and Means Committee Advances Bill to Give Billions Away to Billionaires, Paid for by Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP

Newswire Editor — Wed, 14 May 2025 21:24:02 +0000

Today, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee voted to advance the tax portion of their reconciliation bill, which would grant massive tax breaks to billionaires and large corporations. This bill not only extends Trump’s original tax cuts but also increases tax benefits for the wealthy by making them larger. For example, the bill would raise the estate tax exemption to $15 million for individuals and $30 million for couples, and expand the pass-through loophole to 23% while making it easier for the wealthy to claim the deduction.

All of these giveaways to the ultra-wealthy would be funded by deep cuts to Medicaid, nutrition programs that support children and veterans, and other essential services. The small portions of the bill that may benefit low- and middle-income families are set to expire in 3-4 years, while wealthy individuals will benefit from permanent tax breaks. The bill would give $55,000 a year to households with a million dollars of income and up, $800 million a year to the 400 richest Americans, and billions more to the biggest corporations in the world.

“Every Republican member on the House Ways and Means Committee voted to extend one of the largest tax giveaways to the rich ever recorded—and then made the tax breaks even bigger—all at the expense of workers and families,” said David Kass, ATF Executive Director. “The billionaire-backed GOP majority can’t hide the truth from their constituents. Millions of Americans will lose life-saving Medicaid coverage and nutritional services while saddling the nation’s future with trillions in debt, all so their billionaire backers can avoid paying anything close to their fair share in taxes. This fight is not over by any means. We call on all Americans to reach out to their representatives and urge them to vote down this disastrous bill, and use every tool at their disposal to stop it.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism

Anita Hofschneider — Wed, 14 May 2025 08:15:00 +0000

On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples.”

Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.

To Julio Cusurichi Palacios, an Indigenous leader who was in the stadium that day, the words from the head of the Catholic Church — which claims 1.4 billion members and has a long, sordid history of violence against Indigenous peoples worldwide — were welcome and momentous.

“Few world leaders have spoken about our issues, and the pope said publicly the rights of Indigenous peoples were historically violated,” he said after Pope Francis died last month. “Let us hope that the new pope is a person who can continue implementing the position the pope who passed away has been talking about.”

Pope Francis delivers a speech during a meeting with representatives of indigenous communities of the Amazon basin from Peru, Brazil and Bolivia, in the Peruvian city of Puerto Maldonado, on January 19, 2018. Vincenzo Pinto / AFP via Getty Images

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.

In 2015, Pope Francis released his historic papal letter, or encyclical, titled Laudato si’. In the roughly 180-page document, he unequivocally identified planet-heating pollution as a pressing global issue disproportionately impacting the world’s poor, and condemned the outsize role wealthy countries like the U.S. have in contributing to the climate crisis. With it, Francis did what no pope had done before: He spoke with great clarity and urgency about human degradation of the environment being not just an environmental issue, but a social and moral one. Laudato si’ established the definitive connection between faith, climate change, and social justice, and made it a tenet of Catholic doctrine.

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The lasting influence of Francis’ encyclical would be buoyed by his other writings, homilies, and his direct appeals to world leaders. He was, for example, credited with helping rally nearly 200 countries to sign the 2015 Paris Agreement, regularly urged cooperation at international climate summits, and released a follow-up to his pioneering encyclical in 2023 that sounded the alarm in the face of the climate crisis.

“Pope Francis routinely said that we have a throwaway society. We throw away people, we throw away nature … and that we really need a culture that’s much more based in care,” said Christopher Cox, executive director of the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment and a former priest. “That means care for people, especially the most poor, the most vulnerable, the most marginalized. And we also need much greater care for creation. We’ve been given a beautiful earth and we’re consuming it at a rate that goes far beyond what will be able to sustain life for the long term.”

The first Latin American pope, Francis was unique in implicitly embracing some elements of liberation theology, a Catholic social justice movement that calls for the liberation of marginalized peoples from oppression. Although Francis was occasionally critical of the doctrine’s Marxist elements and never fully supportive of it, many observers see his statements regarding poor and Indigenous peoples as reflective of the doctrine’s central values.

“Right from the beginning of his papacy, that outreach, that recognition of Indigenous ways of being Catholic and Indigenous language in Catholicism, heralded — up to that point — the most expansive official recognition of Indigenous contributions to Catholicism thus far,” said Eben Levey, an assistant professor of history at Alfred University who has studied the relationship between Catholic Church and Indigenous peoples in Latin America. In the centuries since conquistadores arrived in the Americas and forced Indigenous peoples to accept their religion, many Indigenous communities have made Catholicism their own, and a growing number of church leaders have embraced the idea that there are multiple ways of being Catholic and that Catholicism and Indigenous cultures can coexist.

Members of indigenous communities from Peru, Brasil and Bolivia gather during the assembly of the Amazonian church in Puerto Maldonado, before the arrival of Pope Francis, on January 18, 2018. Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images

A year after becoming pope, Francis approved the use of two Mayan languages, Tzotzil and Tzeltal, in mass and sacraments like baptism and confession. In 2015 he expanded that list to include the Aztec language Nahuatl, and in 2016, during a visit to Mexico, he celebrated mass in Tzeltal, Tzotzil and Chol.

In 2022, Francis officially apologized to Canada for the residential schools that ripped Indigenous children from their families, leading to the deaths of many who were later buried in unmarked graves. The following year, he rejected the Doctrine of Discovery, a religious concept that colonizers used to justify the illegal seizure of land from Indigenous peoples and became part of an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that described Native Americans as “savages.”

Elder Fernie Marty, a Cree from the Papaschase First Nation, stands next to the portrait of Pope Francis placed on top of the white chair where the Pope sat during his 2022 visit, inside the Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples. Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images

“The Doctrine of Discovery is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” Pope Francis said, adding that he strongly supports the global implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also drew a clear connection between those rights and climate action: In 2023, he made clear that Indigenous peoples are critical to fighting climate change when he said, “Ignoring the original communities in the safeguarding of the Earth is a serious mistake, not to say a great injustice.”

But Pope Francis’ progressivism had its limits. In 2019, he called for a meeting of church leaders, known as the Synod of Bishops, for the Pan-Amazon region to address issues affecting the Amazon Basin. Indigenous Catholics who attended brought up illegal logging and violence against land defenders and proposed reforms. “The ancestral wisdom of the aboriginal peoples affirms that mother earth has a feminine face,” reads the document that emerged from the gathering and urged the church to give women more leadership roles and allow married deacons to be ordained as priests. In his response, Francis condemned corporations that destroy the Amazon as committing “injustice and crime,” yet refused to embrace the proposals to make church leadership more inclusive of women and married men.

Francis’ climate activism was also riddled in constraint. He transformed how religious institutions viewed the climate crisis, framing a failure to act on it as a brutal injustice toward the most vulnerable, but could have implemented “more direct institutional action,” said Nadia Ahmad, a Barry University School of Law associate professor who has studied faith-based environmental action. Though the former pontiff publicly supported renewable energy adoption, called for fossil fuel disinvestment, and prompted churches across the world to go solar, he did not mandate what he deemed a “radical energy transition” across dioceses, schools, and hospitals. The work he accomplished “could have been amplified a bit more and had more accountability,” said Ahmad.

But that limitation, she noted, likely stemmed from contradictory politics playing out within the church — many traditional, conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, resisted Francis’ progressive teachings. A 2021 study found that over a period of five years, most U.S. bishops were “nearly silent and sometimes even misleading,” in their official messaging to parishioners about climate change and the pope’s famed encyclical.

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Though Pope Leo XIV has been lauded for his advocacy in defense of immigrants and worker rights — his namesake, Leo XIII, who reigned from 1878 until 1903 is known as a historical Catholic champion of social justice and equality — the new pope’s track record on engaging directly with climate change is sparse.

Still, Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, sees comments the new pope made last year on the need to move “from words to action” as a promising sign that he will continue Francis’ commitment to communicating the urgency of a warming world. The timing of the conclave’s unprecedented decision to select the first pontiff from the United States, coming amid the Trump administration’s sweeping dismissal of climate action, elimination of environmental protections, and attacks on Indigenous rights, isn’t lost on her.

“It may be a signal to say ‘America, come back into the world community, come back into a planetary future where we collectively have been working to create a future worthy of our children and our children’s children,’” she said.

Dancers from Latin America celebrate the newly elected Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s square. Valeria Ferraro / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Leo grew up in Chicago and is a citizen of both the U.S. and Peru, where he spent decades serving as a missionary and bishop before Francis made him a cardinal in 2023. He speaks five languages fluently and some Quechua, an Indigenous Incan language.

While he was working in Peru in the 1990s, Leo was critical of the government’s human rights abuses — though he refrained from explicitly taking sides in the political fight between Maoist rebels and the government of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori, according to Matthew Casey, a historian and clinical associate professor at Arizona State University based in Lima. Still, his reaction to the country’s authoritarianism could provide a glimpse of what stances he might take as pope, Casey said. “It doesn’t matter who was abusing human rights, he was on the side of the people,” he said.

In 2016, the would-be pontiff spoke at a conference in Brazil where attendees talked about threats to the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous peoples who lived there. He praised Francis’ encyclical, describing the document as “very important,” and representing “something new in terms of this explicit expression of the church’s concern for all of creation.” To Casey, that suggests Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, has an awareness of the issues affecting Indigenous peoples, such as the rampant degradation of the environment.

“Both Francis and Prevost are attuned to Indigeneity in ways that they couldn’t have been if they worked in Europe or the United States, because the politics of Indigeneity in Latin America are just so different,” Casey said. More than a week after the conclave that named him pope, communities across Peru are still celebrating the selection of Pope Leo XIV.

Francis and Leo’s shared experiences working with marginalized communities harmed by colonialism and climate change, and their commitment to the social justice aspects of the church’s mission, are particularly meaningful in this political moment, said Levey, the Alfred University historian.

“We are seeing a resurgence of ultra right wing politics globally, and the Catholic Church next to the United Nations is one of the few multilateral organizations perhaps capable of responding in some form or fashion to the questions of our modern age or contemporary moment,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Pope Leo means for global climate action and colonialism on May 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

What the Doxxing of Student Activists Means For the First Amendment

Aaron Fernando — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 19:46:59 +0000

Is ICE following the lead of rightwing websites to suppress pro-Palestinian speech and activism?

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Aaron Fernando.

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More

by Alec MacGillis — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

by Alec MacGillis

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More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.

We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.

The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency’s comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy.

Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs. Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGE’s cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.

The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and it’s unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:

The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The department’s Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the country’s disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eviscerated divisions that oversee the WISQARS database on accidental deaths and injuries — everything from fatal shootings to poisonings to car accidents — and the team that maintains AtlasPlus, an interactive tool for tracking HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to measure and report their greenhouse-gas emissions, as they have done since 2010, making it difficult to know whether any of the policies meant to slow climate change and reduce disaster are effective. The EPA has also taken down EJScreen, a mapping tool on its website that allowed people to see how much industrial pollution occurs in their community and how that compares with other places or previous years.

The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and other indices of immigration enforcement, making it difficult to judge President Donald Trump’s triumphant claims of a crackdown; the last available numbers are from November 2024, in the final months of President Joe Biden’s tenure. (“While we have submitted reports and data files for clearance, the reporting and data file posting are delayed while they are under the new administration’s review,” Jim Scheye, director of operations and reporting in the statistics unit, told ProPublica.)

And, in a particularly concrete example of ceasing to measure, deep cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce weather balloon launches, which gather a vast repository of second-by-second data on everything from temperature to humidity to atmospheric pressure in order to improve forecasting.

Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy. In some cases, the data now being jettisoned is geared around concepts or presumptions that the administration fundamentally rejects: EJScreen, for instance, stands for “environmental justice” — the effort to ensure that communities don’t suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental harms. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency is “working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.’” The spokesperson added: “The EPA will continue to uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment” in Trump’s second term.) The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers public health professor, lamented the threatened pregnancy-risk data at the annual conference of the Population Association of America in Washington last week. In an interview, she said the administration’s cancellation of data collection efforts reminded her of recent actions at the state level, such as Florida’s withdrawal in 2022 from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state passed its law discouraging classroom discussion of sexual orientation. (The state’s education secretary said the survey was “inflammatory” and “sexualized.”) Discontinuing the survey made it harder to discern whether the law had adverse mental health effects among Florida teens. “States have taken on policies that would harm people and then are saying, ‘We don’t want to collect data about the impact of the policies,’” Lindbergsaid. “Burying your head in the sand is not going to be a way to keep the country healthy.” (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

Making the halt on data gathering more confounding, though, is the fact that, in some areas, the information at risk of being lost has been buttressing some of the administration’s own claims. For instance, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly cited, as an argument for tougher border enforcement, the past decade’s surge in fentanyl addiction — a trend that has been definitively captured by the national drug use survey that is now imperiled. That survey’s mental health components have also undergirded research on the threat being posed to the nation’s young people by smartphones and social media, which many conservatives have taken up as a cudgel against Big Tech.

Or take education. The administration and its conservative allies have been able to argue that Democratic-led states kept schools closed too long during the pandemic because there was nationwide data — the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nation’s Report Card — that showed greater drops in student achievement in districts that stayed closed longer. But now NAEP is likely to be reduced in scope as part of crippling layoffs at the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, which has been slashed from nearly 100 employees to only three, casting into doubt the future not only of NAEP but also of a wide array of long-running longitudinal evaluations and the department’s detailed tallies of nationwide K-12 and higher education enrollment. The department did not respond to a request for comment but released a statement on Thursday saying the next round of NAEP assessments would still be held next year.

Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, cast the self- defeating nature of the administration’s war on educational assessment in blunt terms: “The irony here is that if you look at some of the statements around the Department of Education, it’s, ‘We’ve invested X billion in the department and yet achievement has fallen off a cliff.’ But the only reason we know that is because of the NAEP data collection effort!”

Shelly Burns, a mathematical statistician who worked at NCES for about 35 years before her entire team was laid off in March, made a similar point about falling student achievement. “How does the country know that? They know it because we collected it. And we didn’t spin it. We didn’t say, ‘Biden is president, so let’s make it look good,’” she said. “Their new idea about how to make education great again — how will you know if it worked if you don’t have independent data collection?”

“Reality has a well-known liberal bias,” Stephen Colbert liked to quip, and there have been plenty of liberal commentators who have, over the years, taken that drollery at face value, suggesting that the numbers all point one way in the nation’s political debates. In fact, in plenty of areas, they don’t.

It’s worth noting that Project 2025’s lengthy blueprint for the Trump administration makes no explicit recommendation to undo the government’s data-collection efforts. The blueprint is chock full of references to data-based decision-making, and in some areas, such as immigration enforcement, it urges the next administration to collect and share more data than its predecessors had.

But when an administration is making such a concerted effort to stifle assessments of government and society at large, it is hard not to conclude that it lacks confidence in the efficacy of its current national overhaul. As one dataset after another falls by the wayside, the nation’s policymakers are losing their ability to make evidence-based decisions, and the public is losing the ability to hold them accountable for their results. Even if a future administration seeks to resurrect some of the curtailed efforts, the 2025-29 hiatus will make trends harder to identify and understand.

Who knows if the country will be able to rebuild that measurement capacity in the future. For now, the loss is incalculable.

Jesse Coburn, Eli Hager, Abrahm Lustgarten, Mark Olalde, Jennifer Smith Richards and Lisa Song contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Alec MacGillis.

What Tesla’s massive image problem means for the world’s transition to EVs

Paul Krantz — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 17:21:30 +0000

Following its founding by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, Tesla became the world’s leading electric vehicle brand in less than a decade. In the company’s early years, including after investor Elon Musk became CEO in 2008, it put out a few hundred or a few thousand cars a year. But by 2015, Tesla made the best-selling electric car model worldwide — a title Tesla has now held for seven of the last 10 years. In 2023, the company delivered 1.8 million cars and controlled about 20 percent of the world’s EV market.

But Tesla’s status as the Kleenex of EVs is now in question. After Musk’s full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump, his Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, and his efforts to dismantle the United States government under the auspices of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Tesla is facing an organized protest movement, fading sales around the world, and a tumbling stock market valuation. As the company’s image suffers, EV market experts are watching closely to see whether the fallout from Musk’s far-right activities will affect the broader e-mobility transition.

" data-credit="Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images"/>

In Europe, public ire has focused on Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and his backing of far-right political parties.
Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images

Transportation is the second-largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions, behind power generation, and is responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s emissions. The U.S. contributes the biggest share of transportation emissions by far, and “light-duty vehicles” (including personal cars and trucks) are responsible for around 57 percent of transportation emissions in the U.S. Most of these emissions come from burning gasoline, and electric vehicles, which can run on renewable energy, have the potential to significantly reduce the sector’s carbon footprint. A recent independent analysis suggests that Tesla’s cars prevented between 10.2 million and 14.4 million metric tons of carbon in 2023 — about the same impact as 3,000 to 4,000 wind turbines running for a year.

The transformation of Tesla cars from a symbol of green progress to an embodiment of authoritarianism has been widespread and fast-moving.

In the U.S., the brand’s fall from grace has mirrored Musk’s gutting of essential government agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In Europe, public ire has focused on Musk’s Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration and his backing of far-right political parties in Germany, Italy, and the UK.

In mid-February, the “Tesla Takedown” protest movement began organizing demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the U.S. and Europe. A decentralized campaign originally launched by actor Alex Winter and sociologist Joan Donovan, Tesla Takedown has organized protests around the world — including hundreds in a single Saturday for its recent “Global Day of Action.” The movement’s advocates suggest that tanking Tesla’s stock price (and therefore also Musk’s net worth) is a viable means of reducing the political power of the man who is currently running a chainsaw through American institutions.

The Tesla Takedown movement has organized protests around the world — including hundreds in a single Saturday for its recent “Global Day of Action.” Lab Ky Mo / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images

Most of the organized opposition to Tesla has been peaceful, but vandals torched Tesla cars and chargers in France, Germany, Massachusetts, Nevada, Missouri, and other states last month. The Trump administration has called attacks on Tesla products “domestic terrorism.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department will seek a 20 year prison sentence for one man accused of vandalizing a Tesla dealership.

As protests have gained steam, Tesla’s global sales have plummeted. Tesla announced on Wednesday that its worldwide sales in the first quarter of 2025 were down 13 percent from the same period in 2024. The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reported that Tesla sales across the continent dropped in January and February by 43 percent compared to a year prior. Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council found that Tesla sales in the country were down 35 percent in the four months following Trump’s election victory compared with the year before. The country that has seen the biggest recent drop in Tesla sales is Germany, where sales fell by 76 percent year-over-year in February, according to the country’s road traffic agency.

Stateside, Tesla’s sales losses compared to a year ago haven’t been quite as dramatic — in part because sales had already begun to drop last year. But backlash against Musk appears to be having an effect — registrations of new Teslas were down 11 percent across the U.S. in January compared to a year before. And in California the number of Tesla owners trading in their cars jumped nearly 250 percent in March, compared to the same month last year.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s stock price has also taken a hit. On March 10, Tesla stock dropped 15 percent, marking the brand’s biggest single-day loss in five years. As of the end of March, the company’s stock price was down 32 percent from the beginning of the year and 44 percent since mid-December. Even insiders like Tesla chair Robyn Denholm and board member James Murdoch have recently dumped millions of dollars worth of stock. This week, 27 lawmakers in New York penned a letter to the state comptroller requesting that Tesla stock be removed from the state’s biggest public pension fund. Unfortunately for Tesla workers, the backlash aimed at Musk may take its toll on them, as many have long accepted salaries below industry norms in exchange for stock options.

Tesla has been steeped in controversy since before Musk’s interventions in the American government — and even before he bought and rapidly transformed Twitter in 2022.

While EVs may be better for the planet than their gas-burning counterparts, they also fuel lithium extraction and require tremendous energy to manufacture. And Tesla has faced criticism for years for its apparent disregard for the well-being of its labor force — from miners in the Global South facing human rights abuses to factory workers in the U.S. and Europe who’ve documented hazardous conditions and hostile, racist work environments. Musk is also starkly anti-union: Tesla is the only major auto brand whose workers are not represented by any union in the U.S., and its refusal to negotiate with workers in Sweden resulted in a mechanics strike that has been dragging on since October 2023.

Tesla has also had negative impacts on the local environments it operates in. Its factories have racked up huge fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for emitting toxic chemicals. The expansion of a Tesla factory in Germany was opposed unsuccessfully by local residents and climate activists who said it threatened local drinking water resources.

Tesla dissolved its public relations department in 2020, and its investor relations department didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment for this article.

The Trump administration has called attacks on Tesla products “domestic terrorism.” Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images

If Musk’s participation in the Trump administration continues to hurt Tesla’s brand, what will the impact be on the broader EV market? Industry analysts at S&P Global Mobility predict global EV sales will grow by nearly 30 percent this year despite uncertain market conditions. And even as European Tesla sales dropped 43 percent in the first two months of this year, overall EV sales increased 31 percent during the same period.

Still, not all experts are optimistic. Murtuza Ali, a senior analyst at the market research firm Counterpoint Research, told Grist that “some consumers may be unwilling to switch” from Tesla to other brands, especially given “Tesla’s key attraction — an expansive charging network, which other automakers cannot replicate overnight.”

But others in the industry suggest that the EV market is now robust enough that Tesla’s continued decline won’t dampen growing EV adoption. “The EV market has gotten so much stronger in the past year that buyers can find a good alternative should they decide not to buy a Tesla,” said Will Roberts, automotive research lead at the EV market analysis firm Rho Motion.

Steffen Schaefer, head of future cities and mobility at AFRY Management Consulting, who has worked with automakers, utility companies, and charge point operators on EV charging projects, agreed. “If Tesla would go down, it would not be the end of the e-mobility movement,” he said. “The industry is now solid enough that it’s going to continue.”

Meanwhile, Tesla’s competitors are not missing their chance to profit from its demise. In February, the Norway division of the South Korean automaker Kia posted an ad on one of its social media pages showing a Kia EV with a bumper sticker on it reading “I bought this after Elon went crazy” — a play on stickers adopted by Tesla owners protesting that they bought their cars “before Elon went crazy.” (Kia headquarters quickly clarified that it hadn’t approved the ad.)

Swedish EV maker Polestar went a step further and offered a $5,000 “conquest bonus” toward a lease of the Polestar 3 to current Tesla owners in the U.S. who are willing to make the switch. Polestar initially offered the deal for one week in February — but after its head of U.S. sales reported above-average orders during that period, the brand extended the promotion through the end of March.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Tesla’s massive image problem means for the world’s transition to EVs on Apr 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Paul Krantz.

Chef and writer Magdalena O’Neal on being honest about your means

Colleen Hamilton — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 07:00:00 +0000

You’ve done pop-ups all over the world. I’m curious who you decide to collaborate with?

I trust my gut a lot. And I’m genuinely inspired by my friends. I was listening to a podcast recently that was talking about how you shouldn’t want to date somebody or have a friend who you don’t want to be like. Not in a way where you’re like, “I want to be you. I want your life.” More in a way where you’re like, “Wow, I admire you so much.” I have friends who are really good at communication in ways that I fail at, and I’ll watch them communicate professionally or personally and think, “I should try that.” It’s genuine, pure inspiration. That’s when I feel like a friend becomes a collaborator for me—because they’re actually inspiring me in my craft.

What’s most helpful about working with others as a chef?

More than anything, it’s about knowing that I don’t know everything. I had to lean on my friends so hard yesterday for an event, and they would do something that wouldn’t be how I’d do it. And then I’d be like, “Actually, it’s fine that way.” There isn’t one route to success. I don’t have the roadmap and need everyone to follow me. Other people’s ideas are so inspiring.

A couple of years ago, I started referring to everybody I engage with as someone I’m in a relationship with. I feel like when we’re growing up, you only refer to relationships romantically. But now I understand that my closest friends and I are all in relationships. Sometimes we have to “vibe check” each other. We have to be like, “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a few days and I miss you.” We have to check in and make sure we’re still happy with each other and showing up for one another, and if we’re not, assess the problem.

What are some challenges about working with friends?

I think the biggest challenge is comfort. It’s a bit too easy sometimes to stray from the task at hand when I’m with my friends. We have to be aligned with the goal. If it’s my event and they’re helping, they might not be as focused on the end game as I am.

With strangers, it’s even harder because I feel like I don’t know how far I can push a stranger. I don’t know how directly I can say not to do something. I don’t know how fragile people are. You never know what people are going through or how they got to their process of handling things. With my friends, I know their love languages. I know how they want to be cared for and spoken to, and when I know how people like to be handled, I can actually do it.

A bunch of my friends helped me with a pop-up dinner a couple years ago, and it was one of the first big dinners I did. At the end, I was crying and they were hugging me. And they were like, “Hey, we do not mean this disrespectfully, but next time we help you—and we’re so down to help you—try saying please and thank you.” I was like, “Oh, I’ve never worked in a kitchen where people say that.” But I realized they’re not all professionally trained line cooks who’ve been in the trenches with only time for a few words. They’re actually my friends, so I will say please and thank you. Sometimes I say it to actual chefs and they’re like, “Stop saying that. You’re wasting time.” They think I’m being condescending, and I literally mean “thank you” and “please, can you do this.”

How do you balance friendship and collaborative projects with alone time?

I think it helps that I have a full-time job. I’m a writer and a chef, but outside of doing pop-ups and private events, which is my freelance work, I’m a full-time branded content editor at Time Out. That job is such a singular position. No one in my personal life really understands what I do there. In some ways, that makes it easier to separate.

It’s an interesting balance. Yesterday, I ran this pop-up event with all my friends, and then I woke up this morning and spent most of the day on my laptop doing my full-time job. That part of my life is a moment of peace, isolation, and routine. People always ask, “How are you doing a full-time job and all of this at the same time?” But my full-time job offers me so much stability and comfort while allowing me to use my brain in a different way. It’s also the only way I can have a real routine in my life. I go into the office twice a week. I wake up, make my coffee, sit at my laptop, and do the same work five days a week. It’s peaceful and monotonous, and I need that because nothing else in my life is necessarily peaceful or monotonous.

I hate to say that I balance my alone time with more work, but at this point, I do. I solo travel a lot. I prioritize taking trips alone. I’m about to spend six days in Tokyo by myself. This summer, I solo traveled through Europe for five weeks. I met up with some people in between, but for the most part, it was just me and the world. That’s how I reset my foundation.

Do you treat your art practice like a business? How did you figure out how to make a living through your creative work?

I went to school for media and professional writing, which is really close to what I do in my full-time job. I never thought I would cook for a living, but somehow, all signs pointed to cooking for me. I never thought I could make a career out of it. I was like, “I’m not going to be a chef. I don’t want to open a restaurant. I don’t want to be a line cook. I have no idea what this life looks like.” But somehow, I fell into it, super gratefully.

When I first moved to LA, I got a job at a bakery. The woman I worked with ended up getting a job at BuzzFeed, which was one of my bucket list goals. I really wanted to be part of a BuzzFeed cooking video. She invited me to do one, and that’s when I realized that food styling is a real job. You literally get paid to make food look good, even if no one is going to eat it. Turns out, it’s a lot harder than it seems, but I did it for years in LA for a bunch of different companies. It’s really one of those trust-based, word-of-mouth fields—one job turns into another because someone you assisted passes you a gig they can’t take.

There’s also this constant rebalancing of priorities, needs, and lifestyle practices. Sometimes I went three months with way less work, and I had to adjust. No going out, no trips. As a freelancer, you have to be really honest with yourself about what your means actually are. Sometimes I hate that I go out so much, but networking is essential, especially as a chef. So many of my gigs have come from just happening to be in a room with someone who introduces me to someone who needs a chef for an event, and then that event turns out to be one of the biggest of my life.

I will also say that recognizing my* why* has really helped—knowing why I do this and being able to explain it to people has changed a lot for me. Money is a circle. It comes back to you if you put it out into the world, if you put yourself out in the world. I still stand by that.

I always say, “You have to spend money to make money.” That’s such a 1%-er thing to say, but I really believe in putting good energy into the world. I’m always trying to be fair, to give back, to bring people in as much as possible. And I feel like I receive what I put out. Energy is a circle. Everything in life is a cycle. You can see that in nature, in science, in birth, and death.

I love the idea that we already have everything we need, as long as we’re putting back into the system as much as we’re taking out of it.

Yeah, but you have to find the balance for yourself. And you have to be honest with yourself. There are so many creatives out there trying to figure out what the fuck they’re doing and I think not knowing your why and not having a clear sense of purpose makes it really hard to stay true in these fields. The people who are the most successful—the ones who receive the most abundance—are the people who are true and honest with themselves.

What do you think your why is? What’s that purpose you always return to?

Figuring out my why, especially why I cook, was huge for me this past year. I spent six months living in Mexico City, and that really solidified a lot for me. My why is about furthering global understanding of ancestral practices in Black American cuisine. My family is so unique. I’m half Black and half Hungarian. The Hungarian side of my family are Holocaust survivors who left Budapest after the war. The Black side of my family are descendants of enslaved people from Arkansas. There’s oppression on both sides, and because of that, they see each other really well and that’s always inspired me. They recognize what the other side has been through. It’s kind of a “phoenix rising from the ashes” thing. They suffered; they worked so hard to get where they are. And I want to be a physical representation of that hard work. Through my work—through food and nourishment—I feel like I really am.

There’s so much misunderstanding of Black cuisine and Black American history in the U.S. I think you can teach people anything through food, so I use that. That’s my vessel. That’s what I was given and blessed with. The biggest part of my why is feeling my ancestors through me and making them proud through the way I nourish people.

How do you define success? And do you define failure at all?

Someone asked me what my deepest desire was recently, and I realized my deepest desire right now is to feel personally successful. And I do. But then I had to define that for myself. I think success is comfort, but it’s also about constantly pushing forward my truest self—showing up fully as me and not wavering on that. I feel most successful when I give myself the tools and resources I need to do my best work. Any time I show up as my best self, I consider that a success. Failure, to me, is when I don’t support myself. Like, if I went out for three martinis last night knowing I had a big day today, I wouldn’t be setting myself up for success.

I’ve had to stop defining my wins and losses by other people’s actions. If I hire someone and they make a mistake, that doesn’t mean I failed. Ideally, it becomes a foundation for them to grow, if we can have a conversation that makes space for that. I’ve had to let go of the idea that my success is tied to control—control over others, over outcomes.

Sometimes success is measured by how much power or control you have, but that’s never been my goal. I always joke, “Thank god I’m not a white man”—otherwise, I’d probably struggle with that a lot more. I don’t have this innate need to take credit for other people’s work or accumulate the most money in the world.

For me, success is living a life that feels true to myself. Toni Morrison talked about this in the documentary The Pieces I Am. She described waking up in her house by the water, making coffee, not calling anyone, writing for hours, making herself lunch, and then watching TV if she felt like it. Just doing what genuinely fulfills her. Not in a selfish way. She said, “My kids are grown; they’ll call me if they need me.” She had built a life that nourished her. That’s success to me. And failure? We’re failing upward. I haven’t failed down in years.

That’s such an interesting distinction. Say more about that.

I think people talk a lot about hitting rock bottom, but I see failure more as failing upwards. It’s like climbing a ladder, looking down, and realizing how high up I am—feeling scared, thinking, “If I fall, it’s over.” But the only way to keep that fear from coming true is to keep climbing, and the more you climb the closer and stronger you get. We all start on the ground.

Magdalena O’Neal recommends:

Solo trips: Traveling alone has not only broadened my perspective but has also fostered a greater comfort within my own thoughts. Over the past year, I’ve spent significant time by myself in vibrant cities like Mexico City, Berlin, London, and Tokyo. Each experience offered moments of introspection, free from outside distractions. Being solitary in unfamiliar places has empowered me to enjoy my own company, engage my creativity, and learn to support myself consistently—plus, I can indulge in whatever food I crave and linger in bed as long as I wish.

“Dancing On My Own” by Robyn: Whether it’s the fact that I’m rewatching Girls for the first time in over a decade or simply resonating with the lyrics, this song captures a feeling of longing and reflection perfectly. Dance alone to it, and you might just find the answers you seek.

Playing Monogamy by Simon(e) van Saarloos: I stumbled upon this insightful 130-page book in a small bookstore in Berlin during a moment of feeling isolated despite my professional success. The opening chapter, “The Single as Pariah,” critiques the notion that being a good person and diligent worker guarantees a fulfilling romantic relationship. It disassembles the idea of relationships as trophies and explores unhealthy attachments in a digestible and relatable way, far surpassing the insights of All About Love. Each chapter unveils the author’s vulnerabilities, providing valuable lessons for readers to reflect on in their own lives.

Wangechi Mutu and Santigold’s The End of eating Everything: Since first encountering this work in college, I’ve revisited it multiple times, each viewing revealing something new. Wangechi Mutu has long been an inspiration to me; her exhibit at The Legion of Honor in 2020 remains a favorite. The title of the exhibit, “I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?” evokes a profound engagement, prompting me to absorb the intricate details in each piece.

The Best American Food Writing (2019, 2022, and 2023): I may have “borrowed” the 2019 edition of this book from an Airbnb in Upstate New York, and if that copy belonged to you, I apologize—but I have no regrets. Samin Nosrat’s selections from the 2019 edition are filled with humor, emotion, and culinary wisdom. The 2022 edition, guest-edited by Sohla El-Waylly, and Mark Bittman’s 2023 edition continue to inspire me deeply. There’s nothing more motivating than discovering what fuels the creativity of those I admire.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Colleen Hamilton.

Beyond the Law: What It Means to Weaponize the Government

John W. Whitehead – Nisha Whitehead — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 05:55:41 +0000

Photo by Michael

President Trump’s declaration of war as a justification for using wartime powers to sidestep constitutional protections is indeed a war, but it is a war waged by the president against dissent, against due process, and against the very foundations of our constitutional republic.

This is what it means to weaponize the government.

When the government turns its power against its own people—through surveillance, retaliation, censorship, and intimidation—it ceases to serve the public and instead becomes a weapon of oppression.

Time and again, leaders have stretched—or outright shattered—the limits of power, weaponizing government power through unjust laws, surveillance, or outright suppression: John Adams silencing critics, Abraham Lincoln suspending rights, Woodrow Wilson jailing dissenters, FDR interning Japanese-Americans, Richard Nixon spying on political opponents, and so on.

Each power grab is a step toward the erosion of liberty.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who, having populated his administration with individuals more loyal to him than to the Constitution, is getting drunk on power.

The danger is not so much Trump as it is his enablers-to-abuse, the many minions within his administration and beyond who are eager to carry out unlawful orders, defy the courts, ignore Congress’ mandate, trample rights, and butcher the Constitution, all in the so-called name of putting America first.

If this keeps up, America, once looked upon as a bastion of freedom and economic opportunity, will be the last place anyone ever thinks of when they hear the words freedom, justice and equality.

Every action taken by the Trump administration in defiance of the rule of law—whether or not that action is motivated by a legitimate concern for national security—pushes us that much closer to the complete dismantling of our constitutional republic.

You can see the pattern forming already.

When anti-war protesters are made to disappear—snatched up late at night by plain-clothes men who refuse to identify themselves and then transported thousands of miles away, to a private prison in a state more favorable to dubious detentions—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When Venezuelan migrants are rounded up and deported out of the country, heads shaven and in chains, without any due process—without being identified, without being charged formally with a crime, without getting a chance to plead their innocence against those charges and, if found guilty, then convicted—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When Trump administration sycophants from the vice president on down are openly deriding and defying the courts while proclaiming the imperial supremacy of their exalted leader, we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

Trump, adept at twisting facts and spinning lies, is working hard to insist that these end-runs around the rule of law are for our safety.

Don’t believe him. Words are cheap.

More importantly, don’t trust him. Bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.

The only real protection we have against tyranny is the rule of law, provided that you have a populace and a system of government that holds the rule of law as inviolable.

That is our real power: the extent to which we hold fast to the Constitution and demand that the government and its agents do so, as well.

The moment that we relent in that commitment is the moment that the Constitution loses its power to protect us against tyranny.

That is what is unfolding right now.

This is the devil’s bargain that we are being asked to enter into with Trump: empty promises and a one-way street to a dictatorship in exchange for our freedoms.

There can be no doubt about the nature of what is taking place right now.

If the president refuses to be held accountable, if he insists that his power is supreme, if he abuses the power of his office to wreak havoc and revenge, if he reduces our republic to rubble and tramples over the Constitution and disregards the rule of law, he is aligning himself with every despot, dictator and tyrant to have walked the earth.

We’ve been here before. We know how this story ends.

It takes time and effort and a willingness on the part of “we the people” to look beyond our differences and stand united in opposition to oppression, but when we do that, freedom prevails in the end.

Next year will be the 250^th anniversary of the birth of this country, when America’s founders declared their independence from King George’s tyranny. What’s just as important, however, is what came before that: the small steps of rebellion, resistance and outrage that said, “enough is enough.”

Remember, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.”

Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us: our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.

If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests with us.

Ultimately, that’s what the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is all about: it affirms that “we the people” have all the power, and what powers we do not explicitly give to the federal government or the states, we retain. We may appoint government representatives to act in our stead, but we never relinquish that power altogether.

That’s where Trump and his Deep State handlers get it wrong. Speaking through him and his administration, they claim that this dismantling of the federal government is a bid to return power to local communities and state governments, but it’s not their government to dismantle, nor is it their power to return.

We are the government, and we are the power, and it’s time “we the people” reminded the government and its henchmen of that important fact.

The power still lies with us.

We must resist every attempt to erode our freedoms, demand accountability, and uphold the Constitution—before it’s too late.

The post Beyond the Law: What It Means to Weaponize the Government appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John W. Whitehead – Nisha Whitehead.

What It Means to Weaponize the Government

John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 16:09:17 +0000

This is what it means to weaponize the government.

According to the Political Dictionary:

The term ‘weaponize’ refers to the strategic manipulation or transformation of information, institutions, or social issues into tools for gaining political advantage. This could involve exploiting existing laws, harnessing social media algorithms for disinformation campaigns, or turning otherwise neutral or benign elements of governance into divisive issues for the purpose of delegitimizing opponents or rallying a base.

Time and again, leaders have stretched—or outright shattered—the limits of power, weaponizing government power through unjust laws, surveillance, or outright suppression.

Each power grab is a step toward the erosion of liberty.

John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to prosecute journalists and political opponents.

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, allowing the military to detain individuals without trail and suppressing Confederate sympathizers and political dissenters.

Under Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage and Sedition Acts were used to crack down on anti-war activists, socialists, and labor organizers, including Eugene V. Debs, who spoke out against World War I.

Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, based on suspicions of disloyalty, despite little to no evidence.

Richard Nixon harnessed the power of the FBI, CIA, and IRS, to harass, spy on and sabotage his political opponents and perceived enemies.

Spanning numerous presidential administrations, from FDR to Nixon, the FBI’s covert intelligence program COINTELPRO was used to infiltrate, discredit and disrupt civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and other political dissidents.

In a bid to fight so-called disinformation, Biden pressured social media companies to censor and suppress individuals expressing views perceived as conspiratorial or extremist, especially as they related to COVID-19.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who is setting new records for how far he’s willing to go to retaliate against his perceived enemies and sidestep the rule of law.

Indeed, Ken Hughes, an investigative journalist who spent two decades listening to Richard Nixon’s Secret White House Tapes, has concluded that Nixon’s abuses of presidential power—which included weaponizing the government to “sabotage Vietnam peace talks to damage the Democrats’ 1968 presidential campaign, to time his withdrawal from Vietnam to help his 1972 reelection campaign, and to spring former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa from prison in return for the union’s political support”—pale beside Trump’s abuses.

Trump, who once vowed to end government overreach and the weaponization of the federal government, now openly uses its full force against his critics, dismantling democratic norms, consolidating power in ways that defy the Constitution, and directing an all-out weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies, which translates to anyone who dares to oppose him.

If Trump were just a petty blowhard, that would be one thing.

Unfortunately, having populated his administration with individuals more loyal to him than to the Constitution, Trump is getting drunk on power.

If this keeps up, America, once looked upon as a bastion of freedom and economic opportunity, will be the last place anyone ever thinks of when they hear the words freedom, justice and equality.

Don’t be so carried away by fear-inducing tales of rapists and foreign invaders and corruption that you let the government get away with murder… the painful execution of our rights.

That way lies tyranny.

You can see the pattern forming already.

When major law firms are barred from interacting with federal agencies or entering federal buildings—an outright attempt to chill First Amendment activity and hamstring businesses that challenge government overreach—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When huge swaths of our nation’s history (including the Constitution and Bill of Rights) are being erased from websites, government buildings, archives, educational curriculum—in the so-called name of combatting discrimination—we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

When the president of the United States threatens other nations militarily, talks openly about seizing foreign lands, stirs up international tensions, and rattles the war drums, we are wading deep into authoritarian territory.

Trump, adept at twisting facts and spinning lies, is working hard to insist that these end-runs around the rule of law are for our safety.

Don’t believe him. Words are cheap.

More importantly, don’t trust him. Bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.

The only real protection we have against tyranny is the rule of law, provided that you have a populace and a system of government that holds the rule of law as inviolable.

That is our real power: the extent to which we hold fast to the Constitution and demand that the government and its agents do so, as well.

The moment that we relent in that commitment—the moment that we look the other way and let first a few encroachments slide, then ever more and more—is the moment that the Constitution loses its power to protect us against tyranny.

That is what is unfolding right now.

This is the devil’s bargain that we are being asked to enter into with Trump: empty promises and a one-way street to a dictatorship in exchange for our freedoms.

Watch out.

When any politician claims to be saving you money by imposing tariffs that ramp up inflation and cutting government programs aimed at educating the masses, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor, disabled and elderly, all the while spending taxpayer money on his own lavish lifestyle and self-serving government programs, you’d better beware. Your hard-earned dollars will be next in line to be seized, spent and squandered.

When any politician suggests that you relinquish your freedoms—of speech, assembly, due process, association, etc.—in exchange for promises of greater security, you’d better beware. Your freedoms will be next on the chopping block.

When any politician persuades you to look the other way while innocent individuals are rounded up alongside suspected criminals just because they look a certain way or talk a certain way or belong to a particular demographic, you’d better beware. Your right to due process will be next.

When any politician comes up with a vast array of reasons why he doesn’t need to obey court rulings—because they were issued verbally, because his power trumps that of the courts, because he doesn’t need to follow the law outside America’s borders—you’d better beware. This shifty reasoning for breaking the law could be used against you next.

There can be no doubt about the nature of what is taking place right now.

This is war.

President Trump’s justification for defying the courts and doing whatever he wants in pursuit of his political agenda (arresting protesters, carrying out mass arrests and deportations, muzzling critics, seizing funds, dismantling agencies, usurping congressional powers) is that “this is war.”

Here’s the thing, though: Trump may be using his war powers as commander-in-chief to bypass the Constitution at every turn, but the only war being waged is a war against the Constitution and the rule of law and the American people.

Congress, which has the sole power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, has yet to do so. And still Trump is using the emergency wartime powers of the presidency to sidestep accountability and due process.

In ruling after ruling, the courts, which have the judicial power to rein in overreach and misconduct, are repeatedly declaring unconstitutional the Trump administration’s steady dismantling of the government and refusal to stay within the purview of his official powers. And still Trump is unilaterally hacking away at the very foundations of our system of government.

We’ve been here before. We know how this story ends.

Next year will be the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country, when America’s founders declared their independence from King George’s tyranny. What’s just as important, however, is what came before that: the small steps of rebellion, resistance and outrage that said, “enough is enough.”

What we are now experiencing is a civil war, devised and instigated in part by the Deep State.

The objective: compliance and control.

The strategy: destabilize the economy, polarize the populace, escalate racial and political tensions, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.

The outcome for this particular conflict is already foregone: the Deep State wins.

The Deep State wins by ensuring that we are censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down. It wins by monitoring our speech and activities for any sign of “extremist” activity. It wins by ensuring that we are estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. It wins by saddling us with taxation without representation and a government without the consent of the governed.

It wins by terminating the Constitution (or rewriting the Constitution).

So where does that leave us?

“We” may have contributed to our downfall through our inaction and gullibility, but we are also the only hope for a free future.

After all, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.”

Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us: our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.

When we forget that, when we allow the “Me” of a self-absorbed, narcissistic, politically polarizing culture to override our civic duties as citizens to collectively stand up to tyranny and make the government play by the rules of the Constitution, that is when tyranny rises and freedom falls

Remember, there is power in numbers.

Not the kinds of numbers that Trump likes to spout about landslide victories and electoral mandates, but the most powerful numbers of all: the sheer, overwhelming mass of humanity that is “we the people” of these United States of America.

If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests with us.

We are the government, and we are the power, and it’s time “we the people” reminded the government and its henchmen of that important fact.

The power still lies with us.

We must resist every attempt to erode our freedoms, demand accountability, and uphold the Constitution—before it’s too late.

It’s time to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

Nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the Constitution.

Flood your representatives’ phone lines, inboxes and townhall meetings with your discontent.

Protest everything that tramples on the Constitution.

Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree.

Defend freedom at all costs. Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc.

Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it.

If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it.

Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it. That’s their job: make them do it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together. They fall together, as well.

The post What It Means to Weaponize the Government first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

What climate change means for bird flu — and the soaring price of eggs

Frida Garza — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:45:00 +0000

Buying eggs at the grocery store has become a major headache for U.S. consumers, with the average price of a dozen large eggs in a typical American city reaching $4.95 last month. Since the start of 2020, the cost of eggs has increased by nearly 240 percent, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recently, acquiring eggs has become a game of luck — as shoppers find barren cooler cases and limits on how many cartons they can buy at the grocery store. The kitchen staple has gotten so hard to come by that thieves stole 100,000 eggs — worth $40,000 — off of a distribution trailer in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

President Donald Trump ran his reelection campaign on, among other things, a promise to bring down the cost of groceries. But in the first two months of 2025, egg prices have continued to climb, sending government officials in search of answers and interventions.

Jay Rosen, a Democratic senator from Nevada, urged Trump’s agriculture secretary this month to investigate whether egg producers are price-gouging. Administration officials, like Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, have pinned the problem on Biden-era policies and pointed the finger at inflation. But the rise of egg prices is both more and less complicated than that. Most inflation over the past few years has been caused by a mix of supply chain disruptions, rising demand, labor shortages, climate change, and fiscal policy. But the record-high cost of eggs today has been driven, primarily, by the spread of avian influenza on U.S. farms.

The current outbreak of bird flu in the U.S. was first registered by U.S. officials in 2022. Various strains of avian influenza are naturally found in the wild, and when ducks, geese, sparrows, robins, and other birds carrying the disease migrate around the country, they bring the virus with them and spread it to other birds — including poultry. The highly lethal strain currently infecting birds on U.S. farms — H5N1 — has been found in all 50 states and led to a precipitous decline in the population of egg-laying hens, sharply reducing the supply of eggs nationwide.

“Since 2021, we’re down 7 percent of our supply” of egg-laying hens, said Jada Thompson, an associate professor of agribusiness at the University of Arkansas with a focus on poultry economics. “That’s a huge amount of supply being down — and growing — right now.”

Over 160 million farmed and wild birds have gotten sick, died, or been slaughtered after exposure to the H5 strains of avian influenza, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The number of wild birds that have succumbed to the disease are likely severely undercounted, since birds in the wild are monitored far less closely than birds raised for profit. The last six months of the spread of the disease have been particularly brutal for farmers. In just the first two months of 2025, 22 million egg-laying hens have been impacted, said Thompson, already more than the number affected in the last quarter of 2024.

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Sunrise Farms in California, which lost 550,000 chickens to avian flu in December 2023.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

In fact, egg-laying hen populations in the U.S. are likely the lowest they’ve been in the last decade, said Maurice Pitesky, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, who has studied how avian influenza has spread from wild to domestic bird populations.

This — along with seasonal factors like the rise in demand for eggs over the holidays — has caused wholesale and retail prices of eggs to spike. “I think there’s a very strong relationship between egg prices and highly pathogenic avian influenza,” said Pitesky, using another name for H5 strains of the disease.

Climate change is also playing a role in rising egg prices — albeit differently from how it’s increased the price of other kinds of food. In recent years, extreme weather events like drought and flooding have disrupted food supply chains and sent shock waves through the economy that end up hitting grocery shoppers. In 2022, the Mississippi River entered a period of such extreme drought that ships transporting crops for cattle feed couldn’t navigate its channels. Meanwhile, in California, flooding and extreme heat hit some of the nation’s biggest suppliers of lettuce. As a result, the price of salad greens and some dairy and meat products rose. A study published last year projected that extreme heat driven by climate change will exacerbate overall inflation in nearly every country in the world by 2035.

When it comes to eggs, climate change is affecting supply more indirectly — by changing the migratory patterns and nesting habits of birds that carry avian influenza. As global average temperatures rise and extreme weather events scramble animal migration patterns and force some species north toward increasingly temperate climes, animals are crossing paths in entirely new configurations, making it easier for them to swap diseases.

Because bird flu evolves quickly and mostly in the wild, it’s hard for researchers to pinpoint exactly where and how climate change may be affecting its spread. What the handful of scientists who work on this topic can say for certain is that warming temperatures and rising sea levels are changing when and how birds move across continents, which may be influencing the unusually fast-paced and large outbreaks of bird flu that have been occurring for the past half decade or so.

On average, birds are embarking on their migratory journeys from south to north earlier each season due to warmer spring temperatures in the northern hemisphere, extending the season for bird flu. Sea birds are building their nests further from the coastline as sea level inch higher, forcing these birds into closer contact with other species. The fact that these outbreaks are affecting not just birds but also grizzly bears, seals, sea lions, dolphins, foxes, and ferrets — not to mention dairy cows, household pets, and humans — is also an indication that the virus is getting better at hopping between different types of animals.

“Climate change clearly affected patterns of migrations, and there are many references for this,” Marius Gilbert, a spatial epidemiologist at the National Fund for Scientific Research in Brussels, told Grist via email in 2023. “Demonstrating how this may have affected transmission patterns is far more complicated to establish scientifically.” Gilbert coauthored a study published in 2008 that projected that the most tangible effect of climate change on avian influenza would be to shift transmission among wild birds.

Eggs on sale for $12.99 in Monterey Park, California. Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images

Other factors also contribute to the spread of bird flu. Pitesky argued that land management — for example, how closely farms are built to wetlands and other waterfowl habitats — can contribute to higher rates of H5N1 among domestic bird populations. So in order to curb the spread of avian influenza, which he said is endemic and never going to fully go away, policymakers could pay closer attention to where farms are located.

For shoppers wondering when egg prices will drop, relief may not arrive for some time. “I would expect prices to come back down at some point,” said Thompson, adding that egg prices are not “sticky” — they don’t jump up and stay high. Over time, they recover.

When that happens depends on future outbreaks and how quickly the egg industry can restore its flocks of hens. Farmers can take stricter biosecurity measures to keep their flocks safe, like making sure wild birds can’t get into chicken coops or feeding bins and limiting outside visitors. The federal government also seems to be considering vaccinating poultry, but industry groups say it would negatively impact overseas sales. If, hypothetically, there were no more avian influenza cases starting tomorrow, it might take the egg industry about six months to recover, said Thompson. But that’s unlikely — and with Easter just a couple of months away, consumers can expect to see another increase in demand for eggs.

“Just how deep that recovery will happen and how soon that will happen is the question on everybody’s mind,” said Thompson. “I don’t think anybody can tell you with accuracy” when it will happen.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What climate change means for bird flu — and the soaring price of eggs on Feb 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

Trump 2.0 chaos and destruction — what it means Down Under

APR editor — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 21:45:38 +0000

What will happen to Australia — and New Zealand — once the superpower that has been followed into endless battles, the United States, finally unravels?

COMMENTARY: By Michelle Pini, managing editor of Independent Australia

With President Donald Trump now into his second week in the White House, horrific fires have continued to rage across Los Angeles and the details of Elon Musk’s allegedly dodgy Twitter takeover began to emerge, the world sits anxiously by.

The consequences of a second Trump term will reverberate globally, not only among Western nations. But given the deeply entrenched Americanisation of much of the Western world, this is about how it will navigate the after-shocks once the United States finally unravels — for unravel it surely will.

Leading with chaos
Now that the world’s biggest superpower and war machine has a deranged criminal at the helm — for a second time — none of us know the lengths to which Trump (and his puppet masters) will go as his fingers brush dangerously close to the nuclear codes. Will he be more emboldened?

The signs are certainly there.

President Donald Trump 2.0 . . . will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division? Image: ABC News screenshot IA

So far, Trump — who had already led the insurrection of a democratically elected government — has threatened to exit the nuclear arms pact with Russia, talked up a trade war with China and declared “all hell will break out” in the Middle East if Hamas hadn’t returned the Israeli hostages.

Will his cruelty towards migrants and refugees escalate, matched only by his fuelling of racial division?

This, too, appears to be already happening.

Trump’s rants leading up to his inauguration last week had been a steady stream of crazed declarations, each one more unhinged than the last.

He wants to buy Greenland. He wishes to overturn birthright citizenship in order to deport even more migrant children, such as “pet-eating Haitians” and “insane Hannibal Lecters” because America has been “invaded”.

It will be interesting to see whether his planned evictions of Mexicans will include the firefighters Mexico sent to Los Angeles’ aid.

At the same time, Trump wants to turn Canada into the 51st state, because, he said,

“It would make a great state. And the people of Canada like it.”

Will sexual predator Trump’s level of misogyny sink to even lower depths post Roe v Wade?

Probably.

Denial of catastrophic climate consequences
And will Trump be in even further denial over the catastrophic consequences of climate change than during his last term? Even as Los Angeles grapples with a still climbing death toll of 25 lives lost, 12,000 homes, businesses and other structures destroyed and 16,425 hectares (about the size of Washington DC) wiped out so far in the latest climactic disaster?

The fires are, of course, symptomatic of the many years of criminal negligence on global warming. But since Trump instead accused California officials of “prioritising environmental policies over public safety” while his buddy and head of government “efficiency”, Musk blamed black firefighters for the fires, it would appear so.

Will the madman, for surely he is one, also gift even greater protections to oligarchs like Musk?

Trump has already appointed billionaire buddies Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to:

“…pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure Federal agencies”.

So, this too is already happening.

All of these actions will combine to create a scenario of destruction that will see the implosion of the US as we know it, though the details are yet to emerge.

The flawed AUKUS pact sinking quickly . . . Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with outgoing President Joe Biden, will Australia have the mettle to be bigger than Trump. Image: Independent Australia

What happens Down Under?
US allies — like Australia — have already been thoroughly indoctrinated by American pop culture in order to complement the many army bases they house and the defence agreements they have signed.

Though Trump hasn’t shown any interest in making it a 52nd state, Australia has been tucked up in bed with the United States since the Cold War. Our foreign policy has hinged on this alliance, which also significantly affects Australia’s trade and economy, not to mention our entire cultural identity, mired as it is in US-style fast food dependence and reality TV. Would you like Vegemite McShaker Fries with that?

So what will happen to Australia once the superpower we have followed into endless battles finally breaks down?

As Dr Martin Hirst wrote in November:

‘Trump has promised chaos and chaos is what he’ll deliver.’

His rise to power will embolden the rabid Far-Right in the US but will this be mirrored here? And will Australia follow the US example and this year elect our very own (admittedly scaled down) version of Trump, personified by none other than the Trump-loving Peter Dutton?

If any of his wild announcements are to be believed, between building walls and evicting even US nationals he doesn’t like, while simultaneously making Canadians US citizens, Trump will be extremely busy.

There will be little time even to consider Australia, let alone come to our rescue should we ever need the might of the US war machine — no matter whether it is an Albanese or sycophantic Dutton leadership.

It is a given, however, that we would be required to honour all defence agreements should our ally demand it.

It would be great if, as psychologists urge us to do when children act up, our leaders could simply ignore and refuse to engage with him, but it remains to be seen whether Australia will have the mettle to be bigger than Trump.

Republished from the Independent Australia with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Hurting Part: This ‘Wait’ That Almost Always Means ‘Never’

Abby Zimet — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 07:13:52 +0000

On Monday we mourned and honored the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., preacher, radical, orator, warrior and leader of America's civil rights movement; on the same dark day, of course, a loathsome churl, antithetical in every way, came to power. In the hope that love and justice will one day prevail - and honoring King's prescient warnings of "a time when silence is betrayal" - we summon his spirit. "We must accept finite disappointment," he said, "but never lose infinite hope."

Painfully, King's anniversary comes as a nation "whipsawed by a madman" moves toward rebuilding the walls of racism, classism, patriarchy and inequity that King and so many righteous Americans fought so hard to tear down. Not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, notes Robert Reich, has the country seen such "vast conspicuous displays" of unaccountable wealth and political power flaunted "unapologetically, unashamedly, defiantly" in the name of helping a racist, hate-mongering demagogue recreate state-sanctioned discrimination, inequality and suffering for the vulnerable among us. Trump's crass, clueless bigotry - calling Black Nazi Mark Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids," claiming "nobody has crowds bigger than me," even "Martin Luther King, when he did his speech" - just highlights the tragedy that is his effectiveness at re-inflaming the hate King spent his life seeking to quell.

Almost exactly 60 years ago, King led thousands of allies on a pivotal, five-day, 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery to protest Jim Crow laws blocking them from voting. Days before, marchers led by John Lewis had been attacked and beaten by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what became known as Bloody Sunday; Lewis had his skull fractured and later said he was sure he'd die that day. King set out with twice as many marchers, but having reached a compromise with LBJ, stopped at the bridge where police again awaited, led the crowd in prayer, and before marching back to Selma proclaimed, "All the world knows that we are here, we are standing before the forces of power (and) we are not about to turn around...we are on the move now, like an idea whose time has come." Amidst cries of "Yes, sir!" and "Amen!" he told those asking "how long?" that, "No lie can live forever...because you shall reap what you sow."

Those marching from Selma, said Linda Lowery, 74, "wanted America to change for the better." She was 14 when she marched with Lewis across the bridge; chased by a Selma deputy and a state trooper, she ran into a plume of tear gas and was struck from behind before state troopers beat and kicked her so hard she "rose off the ground" and passed out. She woke up on a stretcher being loaded into a hearse, jumped off, and ran. Almost 60 years later, she still remembers the faces of the men beating her; she says they had the same arrogant, impervious look as Derek Chauvin while he knelt on the neck of George Floyd in 2020. "I could not see where anything we had done had made a difference in the hearts of people," she said, other than some "cosmetic" changes. "People gave their lives to make a change. But it has not changed, and that is the hurting part. America has gotten where it is because there is still hate in people’s hearts."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Trump, of course, is the arbiter of that hate, its awful exemplar, its malignant founding father. Could King, the ever-hopeful believer, have believed there could ever be a Trump, eagerly marshaling a barren, regressive clutch of bigots, fools and con-men to follow him? "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that," he preached. "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." He praised "the brave children of Birmingham and Selma for putting the 'unity' in 'community.'" "Anybody can serve," he asserted. "You only need a heart full of grace." "Only" seems the operative word here: For some time now, grace has been exceedingly rare on the right side of our political landscape. In truth, King remained aware of the fragility and capriciousness of the movement's white allies, never so elegantly, courteously, wearily expressed in his famed Letter from Birmingham Jail after he was arrested for peacefully protesting segregation.

Responding to a statement of "concern" by eight white Southern church leaders suggesting the protests were “unwise and untimely," King wrote a long impassioned defense essentially arguing, "The time is always right to do what is right." He allowed himself both snark - "Never before have I written so long a letter (but) what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?" - and bitter, "disappointed" criticism of white faith leaders "more devoted to 'order' than to justice." The pastors had commended Birmingham police for their restraint; he noted they may not have "if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes." Having negotiated with the city's business leaders, "Our hopes had been blasted...promises made, promises broken," and they took to direct action to "present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the community."

To the classic charge he and the activists were "outsiders," he said, "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here... Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." As to "unwise," he insisted, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." And "well-timed" protests don't exist: "For years now I have heard the word 'Wait!' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. We have waited for more than 340 years for our Constitutional and God given rights...This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'" Years later, his friend and fierce supporter Harry Belafonte told a panel the last thing King said to him before his assassination was that he worried "we are leading the nation on an integration trip that has us integrating into a burning house." "Most politicians I know make promises and then walk into the faces of power and deny us," Belafonte said. "I'm here to look through the ravages of the Democratic party and see if anything is really worth salvaging."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Today, of course, both he and King would find virtually nothing worth salvaging in a GOP now greedily cojoined by tech oligarchs Elmo, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook et al. "Everybody is coming!" Trump crowed as they trudged to kiss the stubby ring. Their lurch rightward was so dramatic an exultant Three-Shirts Bannon called it "an official surrender" akin to the Japanese surrender to Allied forces in 1945. And the money keeps coming. Hours before taking office, Trump raked in $58 billion, at least on paper, after issuing a $TRUMP meme coin, whatever that is, which accounts for almost 90% of his net worth. The move, which means “anyone in the world" can deposit money into his bank account, was blasted by ethics experts as "the single worst conflict of interest in the modern history of the presidency." Still, meme-based cryptocurrencies are so volatile that, hours after $MELANIA's token landed - Be Best - $TRUMP plummeted 50% from $75 to $30. Cry me a (teeny, surreal) river.

When Martin Luther King Jr. died, he had a net worth of less than $6,000. As radically anti-capitalism as anti-war, he often railed against "excessive materialism" and the false god of money as "a power that corrupts and an instrument of exploitation." Weeks before his murder, he was preparing to launch a Poor People’s Campaign to gain economic justice for "The Other America,” those people, often of color, who "find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity." Citing government help deemed "subsidized" for the rich and "welfare" for the poor, he decried "socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.” "God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty," he said. "The problems of racial and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of wealth for all God's children."

What would he make of today's madness - the obscene economic excess and inequity, the flagrant racism and fear-mongering, a political rise celebrated by white supremacist Proud Boys and an unhinged oligarch giving a Nazi salute - no, two Nazi salutes - a new emperor's regime so petty, vindictive and void of substance that within hours he took down the new portrait of a general who criticized him and a government website advising women of their reproductive rights. What a falling off was there. Still, a glimmer of light: Literally minutes before he left office, Biden commuted the life sentence of native rights advocate and political prisoner Leonard Peltier, now 80 and in poor health, to serve the rest of his sentence at home. For 50 years, Peltier had proclaimed his innocence and intergenerational advocates had vowed, "Our resistance will never stop." Peltier: "It's finally over. I'm going home." Martin Luther King Jr.: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Take care of yourselves and each other. Given the lack of alternatives, onward.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

Who Should Get a Presidential Pardon but Won’t!

Charles Pierce — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 21:28:17 +0000

President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, after having repeatedly promised that he would not. Biden justifies this act based upon his presumption (likely accurate) that Hunter’s denial of a plea deal was on account of political opposition from Trump Republicans. Nevertheless, Hunter’s consideration for a lenient plea deal was undoubtedly influenced by his status (white privileged son of a prominent politician), whereas such leniency would be far less likely to be considered for a poor racial minority person guilty of similar crimes likewise motivated by the stresses of drug addiction. Similar favoritism for family members manifested: with Bill Clinton’s pardon for his half-brother’s drug-crime conviction, and Donald Trump’s pardon for his son-in-law’s father’s conviction of tax evasion and witness-tampering. Both Presidents Bush gave pardons to close political associates. In fact, who does or does not receive leniency (including pardons) is determined almost entirely by class privilege or lack thereof.

Abuse and impunity.

Especially concerning, in the Hunter Biden case, is that said pardon preemptively covers all possible federal crimes with which Hunter could possibly be charged, if committed at any time during the past 11 years. And there are unresolved questions concerning his shady business dealings during Joe Biden’s Vice-Presidency. Moreover, unlike Biden, previous Presidents (including Trump) had (with the exception of the political crimes of one ex-President) always followed precedent by limiting their pardons to crimes for which the accused had been actually prosecuted. Biden now sets a corrupt example which Trump will almost certainly copy as he (Trump) pardons those whose yet-to-be-charged crimes (including violent ones) were perpetrated by his supporters.

Meanwhile, crimes perpetrated by Joe Biden and other US government decision-makers against people of color in other countries get, not lenient treatment, but absolute impunity. Among their never-to-be-prosecuted crimes, Biden (and Harris) are full participants with the fascist settler-colonialist state in its genocidal mass murder, rooted in their de facto embrace of the proposition that Zionists are entitled to treat the resistant indigenous population of Palestine as white American expansionists had treated the indigenous nations of this continent.

As for the liberal left, they (being more concerned over possibly somewhat increased repression of liberal dissent in the US than over actual US-backed fascist repression and mass murder elsewhere) shelved their anti-racism and anti-imperialism as they campaigned for the center right Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton ticket. Left liberal fervor to elect the Democrat ticket was despite: Biden-Harris and other centrist Democrat politicians’ complicity in the existing domestic repression of pro-Palestine and other anti-imperialist dissent, as well as their decision to obstruct access to due process for most migrant and asylum-seeking people of color. Thusly the liberal left has given its allegiance to centrist Democrat politicians, whose opposition to racism and repression is, like that of Trump, entirely expedient and selective.

Will Biden provide clemency for US prisoners who are not of the privileged class? Consider the US political prisoners, unjustly convicted in rigged political trials, victims who have languished for decades in US prisons! As these were prosecuted on account of their having acted in opposition to the regime to which Biden et al are committed, it is very unlikely that Biden will pardon them. Three current examples follow.

[1] Extraordinary prosecution: Ricardo Palmera

Context. Colombia has been almost continuously torn apart by civil war since 1948 when Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (the populist Liberal Party candidate for President) was assassinated by a lone gunman. As a proponent of land reform and with a history of advocacy for workers’ rights, Gaitán had incurred the enmity of the ruling elites and of US-based transnational capital. At the time of his assassination, he was opposing the US project for the formation of the Organization of American States which would be a tool for facilitating US domination and for suppressing “Communist” influence in Latin America. The assassination provoked armed civil conflict among political factions. Eventually, rightwing forces gained control of the Liberal Party which then entered into a ruling coalition with the Conservative Party. The conflict then evolved into one between:

the central government (controlled by the oligarch-dominated ruling coalition and relying upon police, armed forces, and right-wing paramilitaries); and
leftist guerrilla armies.

The latter eventually consisted mainly of:

the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] which had begun as an offshoot of the Colombian Communist Party, and
the National Liberation Army [ELN].

Both sides in this civil war had engaged in practices which were widely condemned as human rights violations: the FARC for ransom kidnappings and extortions; the government (and its rightwing paramilitary death squads) for brutal repression, torture, and assassinations of peasant and labor leaders and other noncombatant left-leaning activists. The two sides had sometimes engaged in peace talks. While a negotiated truce was in effect from 1984 until 1987, leftist groups (including the FARC) formed the Patriotic Union [UP] to seek social and political reforms thru peaceful political processes. In the 1986 elections UP candidates achieved victories in many of the local contests. The ruling oligarchs became alarmed, and over the following years some 4,000 to 6,000 UP members (including its 1986 and 1990 Presidential candidates) were murdered (with near-universal impunity) by rightwing paramilitaries backed by oligarchs. The US has actively intervened (since 1964) with material assistance to the armed forces of the central government. In 2004 the US targeted FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera.

Ricardo Palmera (a.k.a. Simón Trinidad) had worked as a professor of economic history and had participated in the 1986 UP election campaign. As the death squads assassinated leftist leaders and activists with impunity, Palmera decided (in 1987) to join the FARC. He rose to a position of leadership and served as a negotiator for the FARC during the 1998 to 2002 peace process. He went to Quito, Ecuador (in 2004 January) to meet with James Lemoyne, a United Nations special advisor on peace processes to facilitate a prisoner exchange. At the behest of the CIA, the Ecuadoran government arrested Palmera and turned him over to the Colombian government, which then conspired with the US (which had no charges against him at the time) to invent a case for his extradition for trial in the US.

The case. The US DoJ [Dept of Justice] then subjected Palmera to four illegitimate trials on inappropriate charges. Specifics follow.

(1) The US misclassified FARC revolutionaries as “terrorists”; but, under international law captured participants in a revolutionary civil war are entitled to prisoner-of-war [POW] status. By prosecuting Palmera for participation in the armed conflict, the US has violated his right to POW status.

(2) The prosecution charged complicity in hostage-taking based on the FARC’s shoot-down and capture of three US contractors on a reconnaissance mission over FARC-held territory in 2003. Thus, the prosecution misrepresented a legitimate act of war as being a crime.

(3) Even if the capture and detention of the contractors were a crime, the US had no jurisdiction over the area where the event occurred. Moreover, Palmera had no command authority over the relevant FARC forces or advance knowledge of their operations.

(4) The prosecution charged complicity in “narco-trafficking”, but US government sources had determined: that, although it taxed operators profiting from cocaine production, the FARC did not engage in or control Colombian drug trafficking; and that, meanwhile, many of the rightwing paramilitaries opposed to the FARC were employed by the drug traffickers. In four trials the DoJ was unable to get a conviction on this accusation.

(5) In the first trial (2006) the jury deadlocked on all charges. At its conclusion the judge illicitly questioned the jurors in order to obtain information to help the prosecution obtain convictions in the next trial. Consequently, a new judge had to be found for the subsequent trials.

(6) In the second trial the jury told the judge that they were at an impasse and unable to agree upon a verdict. The judge required them to continue deliberations until, after another four days, they consented to a guilty verdict on one of five counts – conspiracy to hold three US citizens hostage. However, there was no evidence of any act by Palmera that involved the capture or detention of the three US citizens. Consequently, this conviction could only be a verdict of guilt-by-association.

(7) The third and fourth trials on narco-trafficking charges ended with deadlocked juries, and the prosecution then dismissed those charges.

(8) In 2008 Palmera was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He has been held in solitary confinement with very limited access to his lawyer for nearly all of his 20 years in US detention.

[2] Repressing resistance in the First Nations: Leonard Peltier

Historical context. The US government has a long history of atrocious abuse of the indigenous nations and their peoples throughout its territory. These abuses include: genocidal wars, ethnic cleansings, coerced assimilation with suppression of the native languages and cultures, forcing their peoples into conditions of degrading poverty, imposition of fraudulent and inequitable treaties, subjugation as subordinate nations, routine violations of treaty rights, corrupt governance, theft of their land and resources thru outright seizures and thru imposition of inequitable leases to US capitalists, and so forth.

In mid-20th century, Amerindian resistance grew and produced a number of activist organizations. The American Indian Movement [AIM] (founded in 1968) adopted a militant posture and gained nationwide prominence. The poverty and lack of opportunity on reservations had induced many Amerindians to move to urban areas where they concentrated in urban slums and suffered the afflictions common to other disadvantaged racial minorities. AIM responded by starting remedial projects: health programs, education and job training programs, legal rights centers, and so forth. In 1969 AIM joined Fred Hampton’s original revolutionary Rainbow Coalition. During the next few years AIM brought public attention to Amerindian grievances thru participation in a series of militant protest actions including: the occupation of Alcatraz (1969—71), the Thanksgiving Day occupation of the replica Mayflower (1970), the occupation of Mount Rushmore (1971), a brief occupation of US Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] headquarters (1971), the “Trail of Broken Treaties” cross-country caravan and protest which included the occupation of the BIA offices (1972). The US Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] and DoJ decided that AIM was a “threat to national security” and set out to destroy it.

Repression on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Tribal members on the (Oglala Lakota) Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota had formed the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization [OSCRO]:

to seek justice for Oglala victims of racist attacks in neighboring off-reservation communities where the white perpetrators were routinely given impunity or biased leniency, even in murder cases; and
to seek reform of tribal government then ruled by a corrupt and autocratic tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, who engaged in blatant favoritism, with respect to jobs and other benefits, for his relatives and cronies.

In 1973 some tribal councilors brought misconduct charges against Wilson (who held the chairmanship from 1972 until 1976), and the tribal council then voted 11 to 7 to suspend him, but he managed to have his impeachment trial stopped. Wilson had already organized his own private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation [GOONs], which he illegally paid with tribal funds and used to suppress his political opponents. When several hundred Oglala gathered to protest the quashing of the impeachment trial, the BIA sent in a force of the US Marshals Service [USMS] to sustain Wilson’s position.

A few days after the foiled impeachment trial, some 200 local protestors and AIM activists occupied the remote Reservation village of Wounded Knee (site of the 1890 massacre of over 200 Lakota men, women, and children by a trigger-happy US Cavalry Regiment). Using the action to publicize Amerindian grievances, the occupiers demanded: the removal of Wilson, and negotiations to address US violation of its treaty obligations. USMS, FBI, and other police cordoned the area thereby creating a standoff with frequent shooting from both sides. After 71 days the occupiers ended the occupation and withdrew. One FBI agent, two occupiers, and one visitor had been killed; and 13 individuals wounded.

During and after the Wounded Knee siege, the Wilson regime and his GOONs intensified repression of his political opponents of whom more than 60 were killed during the following 3 years, while the Reservation’s homicide rate grew to 17 times the US average. Meanwhile, the DoJ indicted 185 individuals for alleged crimes involving their actions in occupying Wounded Knee; these included: arson, theft, assault, and interfering with federal officers. Numerous trials followed, the most prominent being the government’s 1974 show trial of AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means. This (8 ½ month) trial ended when the judge ruled that the prosecution had committed such egregious misconduct, including withholding of evidence and use of perjured witness testimony, that dismissal was the only appropriate outcome. Nevertheless, the DoJ persisted in its persecution of AIM leaders.

From the start of the conflict between Dick Wilson with his supporters and his opponents (including OSCRO and AIM), the federal agencies (BIA, FBI, USMS, and DoJ) naturally sided with the Wilson regime which leased tribal lands to nearby white ranchers and politically influential American capitalists under inequitable contracts deemed unfair to reservation residents. The FBI provided Wilson’s GOONs with intelligence on AIM activists and other opponents of the Wilson regime and looked away while the GOONs assaulted, terrorized, and murdered Wilson’s critics. The FBI also perpetrated warrantless no-knock assaults on homes as it used the Pine Ridge Reservation to train its first militarized commando (i.e. SWAT) teams. Meanwhile, the FBI and DoJ targeted AIM members and supporters for prosecution on any and every possible charge. This hostile environment created the tension which eventually erupted into the shootout at the Jumping Bull Ranch. The DoJ ultimately obtained a fraudulent murder conviction against Leonard Peltier.

Subject events. In 1975 June 26, two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, in unmarked cars were following a red pickup truck which they believed belonged to an Oglala alleged to have stolen a pair of cowboy boots. As they entered the Jumping Bull Ranch (where several AIM members were camped) shots were fired, and a shootout then ensued between the feds and the AIM activists. There were more than 30 people at the ranch including women, children, and other non-belligerents. By the end of the confrontation, the ranch was surrounded by some 150 armed agents (FBI, BIA, local police, and GOONs). Which side fired first is in dispute. Casualties: the two FBI men were wounded by fire from the AIM side and then killed execution-style by person unknown; AIM member, Joe Stuntz, was killed by a government sniper.

FBI investigators and DoJ prosecutors, embarrassed by their failures to obtain convictions of AIM leaders involved in the Wounded Knee occupation, responded by pursuing only prominent AIM members, the objective being to convict some AIM leaders on charges of having murdered the two FBI men. For this purpose, they indicted three prominent AIM members who had participated in the shootout, namely: Leonard Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Darrelle Butler.

Trials. In September Butler and Robideau were arrested. Peltier fled to Canada, where he was arrested and extradited to the US (1976 December). While Peltier was not yet in custody, Robideau and Butler were tried and acquitted (1976 July, with Judge McManus presiding) when their jury concluded that, with the level of violence and government intimidation on the Reservation, they could plausibly claim to have acted in self-defense during the exchange of gunfire.

Peltier was extradited and subjected to a rigged trial (in Fargo, ND in 1977) before an all-white jury which convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder. The judge then sentenced him to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment. The improprieties in the legal proceedings were as follows.

(1) The FBI coerced one, Myrtle Poor Bear, to allege in a signed affidavit that she had been Peltier’s girlfriend and had seen him kill the two FBI men. In fact, she had never met Peltier and was not present at the shootout. The FBI then used this false affidavit to obtain Peltier’s extradition from Canada.

(2) Ms Poor Bear recanted her allegations against Peltier, but the judge refused to permit the defense to present her as a witness (claiming: that she was too mentally unstable to provide competent testimony, and that exposure of the FBI’s extradition fraud would prejudice the jury against the prosecution). The judge also refused to allow the defense to present evidence of other cases where the FBI had been rebuked for tampering with evidence and witnesses.

(3) An FBI agent changed his story by testifying at trial that the vehicle, which the two agents had pursued and whose occupant had fired at them, was Peltier’s red and white van. In fact, the two FBI agents had identified the pursued vehicle as a red pickup truck, and it was red pickup trucks which the FBI first sought and searched after the shootout.

(4) The prosecution alleged at trial that the two FBI agents had been killed by Peltier’s AR-15 rifle. The prosecution also asserted that Peltier’s AR-15 was the only one present, but it was later compelled to admit to the appellate judge that several other AR-15 rifles were present in the area and possibly present at the shootout. An FBI ballistics expert testified that extractor marks on a shell casing found at the scene matched Peltier’s rifle; he also testified that a more accurate firing pin test had not been performed because of damage to Peltier’s gun. Some years after Peltier’s conviction, a FOIA request produced documentation of a pre-trial FBI ballistics test on the firing pin which proved that the shell casing had not been fired by Peltier’s AR-15. The DoJ had withheld this crucial exculpatory evidence from the defense during trial.

(5) No trial witness identified Peltier as the person who killed the FBI men. And during Peltier’s appeal (in 1986), the prosecution admitted that it had no real evidence to establish who fired the fatal shots. Nevertheless, the appellate court refused to overturn the conviction based on the prosecutor’s new assertion that the jury had found Peltier guilty of “aiding and abetting” the murders, notwithstanding that the prosecution had never actually pursued that issue at trial. Moreover, this allegation would have applied equally to Robideau and Butler, whose jury (having heard all of the defense case) had acquitted them.

(6) Other apparent violations of Peltier’s rights to a fair trial include: the arbitrary and never-explained replacement of the originally assigned judge (McManus) by another judge (Benson) more disposed to exclude evidence favorable to the defendant, an undisclosed FBI pre-trial meeting with trial judge Benson, infiltration of FBI informants into the defense team, the presentation of coerced testimony by juvenile witnesses who had been intimidated by the FBI, and the DoJ use of tactics to frighten and bias the jury by always transporting them to and from court under escort by a SWAT team.

Evaluation. Many organizations and individuals have examined the case and concluded: that the DoJ and federal courts violated Peltier’s right to a fair trial, that he was targeted and convicted for his political associations, that the government has no evidence that he committed the murders for which he was convicted, and that he should be immediately released from prison. These include: Amnesty International, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Robert F Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, European parliament, Belgian parliament, Italian parliament, several Nobel Prize winners, and many other well-known advocates for human rights.

Frame-up in Milwaukee. 2 ½ years prior to the 1975 shoot-out, AIM activist Leonard Peltier, was sitting in a Milwaukee restaurant where 2 off duty cops (in 1972 November) picked a quarrel with him. Then, as he was leaving, the same 2 cops jumped and beat Peltier. They then arrested Peltier on a charge of attempted murder (of themselves) with what was later shown to be a nonfunctional gun. Fearing that he would be killed or railroaded to prison on perjured police testimony, Peltier obtained release on bond and then fled. In 1978, while in prison following his frame-up conviction for the premeditated murders of the two FBI agents, he was finally brought to trial on this “attempted murder” charge. At trial the girlfriend of one of the two cops testified that her cop friend had shown her a photo of Peltier prior to the incident and had told her that “he was going to help the FBI get a big one”. Thus, it became clear that the entire incident had been a set-up and fraud. The prosecution’s case then collapsed, and the jury acquitted this “notorious AIM felon”.

Sources

[2] International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee: Facts (accessed 2024 Dec).

[3] Criminalizing Muslim charities

The Holy Land Foundation [HLF] was the largest Islamic charity in the US in 2000. It distributed charity (food, clothing, healthcare services, et cetera) thru established local zakat [charity] committees in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine. Because it provided charitable relief to victims of Israeli persecution, HLF was targeted first by American Zionists and then, at their behest, by the US government.

Islam in Palestine. 90% of Palestinian Arabs are Muslim. Naturally, they vary widely in their devotion to religious prescriptions. Until the PLO’s capitulation and corruption cost it most of its popular sympathy, Hamas had the allegiance of only a small minority of Palestinian Muslims. Hamas, which is a political and social force within Palestinian Muslim communities, was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the (Islamist Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood [MB]. Until 1987, MB in Palestine maintained peaceful relations with the Zionist state, and its leaders had met regularly with Israeli officials. Because said MB was hostile to the secular and leftist Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], the Israeli state: had happily encouraged the former as a potential alternative Palestinian leadership to that of the PLO, and had refrained from interfering when MB Islamists perpetrated violent attacks against secular groups aligned with the PLO. However, violent Israeli repression impacted all Palestinians (including MB adherents) in the occupied territories; and overwhelming Palestinian support for the First Intifada (1987—93 civil disobedience campaign) finally induced Palestinian MB, reconstituted as Hamas, to embrace the resistance to Israeli occupation. When Hamas responded to Israeli violence by forming a military arm to retaliate with its own violent counterattacks upon Israelis, the Zionist state branded it as a “terrorist” organization. In 1995 the US accommodated its Israeli ally by also branding Hamas as a “terrorist” organization.

Target. Although a Hamas fundraiser, Musa Abu-Marzuk, had provided financial support at its founding (in 1989), HLF was not an affiliate of Hamas, and its actual activities had nothing to do with violent resistance to Zionist oppressions. Nevertheless, Zionist groups targeted HLF with smears and demands for revocation of its tax-exemption. HLF continued its charitable work until 2001, when the US government used the 9-11 Al-Qaeda attacks as pretext for a so-called “war on terror” which became largely an attack upon civil liberties with widespread targeting of (mostly innocent) Arab-American activists and US-based Islamic institutions. One such target was HLF. The federal government (in 2001 December): seized its assets, shut down its operations, and branded it as a “terrorist” organization.

Prosecution. In 2007 the DoJ brought the HLF and five of its principal officers (now known as the Holy Land Five) to trial on allegations of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization (meaning Hamas). In this trial (which included violations of the defendants’ due process rights), the jury acquitted on some counts and deadlocked on the others. A more egregiously rigged retrial in 2008 resulted in convictions on all remaining counts. Specific violations of due process follow.

(1) The prosecution contended that, by providing charity to needy Palestinians thru the local charity committees which the prosecution alleged were controlled by Hamas, HLF was bolstering Hamas’ popularity and thereby providing material support for “terrorism”. Thus, the prosecution sought conviction of the accused based upon guilt-by-association.

(2) The prosecution’s classification of the local charities as agents of “terrorism” was baseless. The relevant facts: (1^st) the local committees were independent entities devoted to charitable purposes, and their leaders included individuals with no ties to Hamas as well as those who were members or sympathizers with Hamas; (2^nd) immediately after the US had listed Hamas as “terrorist”, HLF had sought advice from the federal government as to which, if any, of the charities were deemed unacceptable; (3^rd) none of the charity committees was listed by the US as a terrorist organization; (4^th) the US (thru its USAID program) had provided funding for many of the same local charity committees until 2006 (for five years after the HLF had been shut down); and (5^th) the prosecution acknowledged that none of the funding of the charities was used for acts which the US deemed to be “terrorist”.

(3) The prosecution was permitted, over defense objections, to present two unidentified Israeli state security agents as “expert” witnesses for the purpose of tying the charity committees to Hamas. The anonymity of these “experts” prevented effective defense cross-examination to challenge their credentials and the validity of their assertions thereby violating the defendants’ 6^th Amendment rights to confront and rebut their accusers.

(4) In the retrial the only significant change in the prosecution’s presentation was its move to bolster its case by introducing additional “evidence” which consisted of untestable assertions, hearsay, and irrelevant material, all of which served only to prejudice the jury against the defendants. The appeals court (in 2011): ruled this additional “evidence” inadmissible, then astonishingly asserted that its use did not affect the outcome, and finally refused to overturn the convictions.

(Ω) The Holy Land Five are: Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mohammad El-Mezain. Their prison sentences were: 65 years for each of the first two, 20 years for the third, and 15 years for the remaining two.

Source

For more on Hamas, see Pierce, Charles: Gaza War: Palestine, Zionism, imperialism, Hamas, previous wars, atrocities. What are the relevant actual facts?.

Conclusion

For 3 reasons (their liberal capitalist indoctrination, their attachment to their own privileges and entitlements, and their dependency upon their capitalist campaign funders), governing centrist Democrat politicians are incapable of providing: equal justice in law enforcement, or consistent enforcement of the civil rights of opponents of their imperial and capital-serving policies. Moreover, any concessions (reforms) which they offer, in support of greater social justice, will always be limited to what does not seriously impinge against the interests of powerful factions of the ruling class.

The post Who Should Get a Presidential Pardon but Won’t! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Charles Pierce.

What the fall of the French government means for New Caledonia

APR editor — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 22:52:11 +0000

By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

As French Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s government has fallen to a motion of no confidence just three months after coming to office, New Caledonia is among the major casualties of France’s ongoing political instability.

New Caledonia’s post-riots situation was already difficult, with an economy on its knees and an estimated €2.2 billion (NZ$3.9 billion) in damage because of the burning and looting that erupted on May 13.

More than 600 businesses have been destroyed, making thousands of people jobless, and forcing companies to shut down.

Last week, several business leaders groups were complaining that even the packages promised by Paris were slow to arrive and that they needed “visibility” to start re-investing and rebuilding.

The recovery process had been difficult to kick-start with much-needed financial assistance from France.

One month after the riots, French President Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly and call for snap elections.

Until September, New Caledonia’s political leaders found it difficult to negotiate with a caretaker government, until Macron appointed Barnier as Prime Minister, on 5 September 2024.

Barnier appointed PM on September 5
From day one, Barnier announced that a controversial constitutional amendment to modify eligibility conditions at New Caledonia’s local elections was not to be pursued.

He also appointed François-Noël Buffet as his Overseas Minister, particularly in charge of New Caledonia, announced a “dialogue and concertation [cooperation]” mission led by both presidents of France’s Houses of Parliament, Gérard Larcher (Senate) and Yaël Braun-Pivet (National Assembly).

Larcher and Braun-Pivet both visited New Caledonia in November to pave the ground for a resumption of political dialogue regarding New Caledonia’s future status, strongly hinting on a notion of “shared sovereignty” while at the same time assuring of their support to New Caledonia.

Over the past few months, France’s financial assistance to help New Caledonia recover and rebuild has been slowly taking shape.

The long-term financial package, among other measures, included a credit line of up to €1 billion (NZ$1.8 billion), with a guarantee from the French State, to be mainly activated through the French Development Agency (Agence Française de Développement, AFD).

New Caledonia’s ‘PS2R’ plan
On New Caledonia’s side, the government and its President Louis Mapou have been working on a “PS2R” (Plan de Sauvegarde, de Refondation et de Reconstruction [Salvage, Refoundation and Reconstruction Plan]), which intends to rebuild and reform New Caledonia’s economic fabric, making it leaner and more flexible.

Another mechanism, made up of a cross-partisan group of local parliamentarians, was also seeking French finance, but with a different approach than that of Mapou — it intends to mainly obtain not loans, but grants, based on the idea that the French loans would bring New Caledonia to an unsustainable level of debt.

As Mapou returned from Paris last week with a French reaffirmation of its assistance and loan package, the “pro-grants” bipartisan group was still there this week to ensure that France’s 2025 Appropriation Bill (budget) effectively contains amendments specifically related to New Caledonia.

Now that this Bill is effectively no more, due to Barnier and his government’s downfall, New Caledonia’s political and business leaders feel the whole work has to be started all over again.

“Our overseas territories will pay the hard price. This will pause many crucial measures with a direct impact on their economic, social and environmental development”, Buffet anticipated in a release on Tuesday, ahead of the no-confidence vote.

He said the repercussions were going to be “very serious”.

A last-minute Bill for emergency expenses
The only short-term hope would be that the French National Assembly passes an “end of management” Bill 2024 that would, at least, allow extremely urgent finances to be made available for New Caledonia, including French assistance mobilised until the end of this year.

“Without this, as soon as mid-December 2024, New Caledonia would be faced with dramatic consequences such as the inability to pay public servants’ salaries, including health doctors, or to pay unemployment benefits or to fund the production of energy”, New Caledonian representative MP in the National Assembly Nicolas Metzdorf explained on Tuesday.

The crucial “end of management” 2024 Bill, which is worth some US$237.6 million, is expected to be put to the vote and hopefully endorsed before the no confidence vote and before the current session goes into recess.

On Tuesday, Metzdorf and his colleague, Senator Georges Naturel, also jointly warned on the very real risks associated with the downfall of the present French government.

“Over the last few weeks, the Barnier government has demonstrated it had the capacity to listen and act for New Caledonia”, they jointly stated.

“Now if his government is unseated, for us, this will mean more business will shut down, thousands of New Caledonian employees who will no longer receive their partial or total unemployment benefits, families to jump into despair and an extremely precarious situation”.

Fears for ‘hunger riots’
Over the past few weeks, several New Caledonian politicians have warned of a serious risk for what they term “hunger riots” in the French Pacific archipelago, following the economic situation caused by the May 13 insurrection and destruction.

New Caledonia’s parliamentarians, both pro-France and pro-independence, were all saying they did not support the no-confidence motion against Barnier.

“We’ve already seen what impact the [June] dissolution has caused and how difficult it was to engage in talks [with France]”, pro-independence MP for New Caledonia at the National Assembly Emmanuel Tjibaou said in Paris.

“With this 2024 Appropriation Bill, at least we had something, even if it was not perfect. Now here we no longer have anything”, said New Caledonian politician Philippe Dunoyer (from the moderate pro-French Calédonie Ensemble party).

Impact on political talks
Dunoyer also pointed out this is not only about financial assistance, but about politics, as local parties were preparing to resume crucial talks regarding New Caledonia’s long-term political future status.

“We are engaged in an approach to go back to talks. And we don’t have much time to reach an agreement”.

He and others are pointing the finger at a necessary “stability” for talks to resume.

New Caledonia’s Congress is also working on endorsing, as fast as possible, as many resolutions that would allow to “seal” as many French financial commitments as possible so it would maximise as many sources of income as possible.

“We really didn’t need this, nothing has been spared to us during this mandate,” Metzdorf said earlier this week.

“But we’ll keep doing as we always do — we’ll fight,” he said in Paris.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

What Jimmy Lai’s ‘sham’ trial means for Hong Kong’s freedom: RFA Insider #20

Radio Free Asia — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 21:50:04 +0000

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

What Jimmy Lai’s ‘sham’ trial means for Hong Kong’s freedom: RFA Insider #20

Amy Lee for RFA Insider — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 21:31:26 +0000

In the wake of Hong Kong’s largest trial thus far under the national security law, which saw 45 pro-democracy activists handed jail sentences, Eugene and Amy turn their attention to the ongoing trial of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai.

Off Beat

As the founder of popular clothing retailer Giordano and media company Next Digital, businessman Jimmy Lai had established himself as a household name in Hong Kong long before the world began to learn of him following his arrest in 2020. Under the newly passed National Security Law, Lai and other executives of his Apple Daily newspaper, an independent outlet with a pro-democracy bend, were arrested and charged on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces. Other charges were soon stacked upon Lai, including “unlawful assembly” for participating in the 2019 protests and a Tiananmen candlelight vigil in 2020.

Lai, whose trial has stretched on for nearly 100 days now, took to the stand to give his first testimony on November 20. RFA Insider invited Mark Clifford, a former board member of Next Digital and president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, to share what he expects the outcome of the trial to be, as well as his thoughts on the future of press freedom in Hong Kong.

Podcast Free Asia

Creative Multimedia Producer Lauren Kim spices things up on this week’s Podcast Free Asia by turning the conversation to the ubiquitous Korean accompaniment, kimchi!

With November 22 designated as Kimchi Day in several states, Lauren explains the history behind the holiday and the role kimchi has in her life as a Korean-American. To commemorate Kimchi Day, Lauren produced a video showcasing the preparation and taste-testing of North and South Korean-style kimchi.

Ever wondered about North Korean kimchi? Watch the video to learn the differences between North and South Korean kimchi.

The Rundown

The first story arrives from the touristy town of Vang Vieng, Laos, where six (five at the time of recording) backpackers have died due to suspected methanol poisoning after a night out drinking. Many of the victims had been staying at the same hostel and were rushed to the hospital the following morning, when staff noticed that the victims had failed to check out of their accommodation. Thai police confirmed that autopsies showed that at least several victims died from brain swelling caused by methanol, a clear, tasteless liquid used in household and industrial products such as paint strippers and insecticides. Methanol, which is much cheaper than drinking alcohol, is sometimes added to mixed drinks to boost the alcohol content, often with fatal consequences.

In the world of martial arts, a series of taekwon-do moves named the “unification” pattern is being renamed by the North Korea-backed federation for political reasons. The “unification” pattern will be referred to instead as the “Chang Hon” pattern after Gen. Choi Hong Hi, the founder of taekwon-do, as a sign of North Korean leadership moving away from its long-stated aim of eventual unification with South Korea.

The change is being implemented by one faction of the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF), which was established by Choi in Seoul in the 1960s. However, when Choi expressed his intention to include North Korea in the ITF’s international outreach, South Korea refused and he went into exile in Canada. Meanwhile South Korea established the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF), which is currently known as World Taekwondo (WT).

Choi eventually became a citizen of North Korea and moved the ITF’s headquarters to Vienna. Later, his death further splintered the sport as three individuals claimed to be Choi’s legitimate successor as the ITF president, and each established rival world headquarters in Vienna, Toronto and Poland. North Korea endorses the Vienna-based ITF, which is the faction that is re-naming the “unification” pattern.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Amy Lee for RFA Insider.

What a Second Trump Administration Means for Medicaid

Mike Ervin — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:57:32 +0000

Republicans will use block grants to gut the health care program.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Mike Ervin.

This is what an Open Border Means

VICE News — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:00:22 +0000

This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

What a Trump Administration Means for the Environment

Human Rights Watch — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:59:42 +0000

This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

What a Trump Administration Means for Women’s Rights

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:47:37 +0000

This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

What a Trump Administration Means for Latin America

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:46:02 +0000

This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

What a Trump Administration Means for Ukraine

Human Rights Watch — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:42:39 +0000

This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

What a Trump administration means for the United States

Human Rights Watch — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 10:51:55 +0000

This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

[Russell Means] Welcome to the Reservation

info@alternativeradio.org — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 21:00:56 +0000

Indigenous communities are among the poorest in the U.S. This is one of many persistent symptoms of the colonial relationship imposed by force upon Indigenous peoples. As famed historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Neither arcane colonial laws nor the historical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time and certainly not when conditions of life and consciousness perpetuate them.” From the earliest days of colonial settlement, a theme of eliminating Indians in the name of expansion and settler opportunity became embedded into the U.S. political system and culture. The violence unleashed on the largely defenseless Indian nations had few parallels in history. Treaties and policies involving Indigenous peoples have consistently been designed to disadvantage them, locking them into suppressed social status and codifying their dependence on the U.S. government. Recorded at Bowdoin College.

This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.

What the Armenian American Vote Means for the 2024 Election

Ella Chakarian — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:59:12 +0000

If Harris continues to support the status quo on Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Israel, it could cost her the Armenian American vote.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Ella Chakarian.

Author and critic Vinson Cunningham on figuring out what beauty means to you

Arriel Vinson — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 07:00:00 +0000

How do you balance writing novels and writing criticism, and do you feel like you’re flexing a different muscle when writing either?

I had been working on a book that was kind of like this, but then I scrapped all but one page of 7,500. That was in 2016 when I signed my first contract to be a staff writer at The New Yorker. So they’ve always been concurrent for me, and they’ve always seemed like two sides of the same coin. My writing is just my writing. It’s just like, what am I directing it towards? Who is this narrator? Is he paying attention to art as a critic? Is he following along with some person of note as a profiler? Is he telling you a story as a novelist? All of these things are quite mutually implicated, and I think at least that you can read my work and see mutual interests swimming back and forth between whatever you think of as genres.

In terms of balance, though, I’m more of a fanatic than a balanced person. When I still had full-time jobs, all of my writing would happen at night and during the weekends, whether it was novels, freelance assignments for magazines, whatever. I’ve got that structure in my head, and I did a lot of that in terms of finishing my novel at the same time as working on New Yorker work and teaching and all the other things that I have done over the past couple of years. It’s a matter of waking up early or going to sleep later. Something’s got to give, but for me, it’s all coming from the same source of energy.

How was the idea for Great Expectations born?

It’s interesting. I obviously had this experience of working on the first Obama campaign. I did that when I was 22, 23 years old. The story of a campaign was never the most action-packed, riveting thing such that I must turn it into a novel. That was never the idea. I had an idea for this narrator, David Hammond, the protagonist, who would think about national themes and think about America and try to weave his observations about his country together with reminiscences about his personal history and little acts of criticism. Whether they be cultural or artistic criticism, trying to synthesize and understand the world he was born in and the world in which he is finally growing up.

I was trying to figure out where that voice, that intelligence, that mind could fit. And it suddenly struck me: a presidential campaign, because presidential candidates are the people that purport to tell us what the country’s about. On some level, a successful political campaign is an act of criticism. It’s like the person who best defines America and its challenges and struggles, its opportunities, is the person that gets their “message across.” Often, when I hear people talk about their work in fiction, the setting and scenario come first. But I guess it was a little bit backwards for me.

In most of your writing, politics is a focal point. How do politics shape your writing? And did you know early in your writing career that politics would shape your work?

I wanted to be a writer before I ever wanted to work in a political campaign. I was always attentive to politics in the way that most people who think of themselves as responsible citizens are. I remember, I think I’ve written about this, one election day I wrote a column about Langston Hughes and his weird Democratic pageants. These plays were all about the history of the country, they’re really interesting. In that piece, I wrote about my mother taking me into the voting booth. My mom cares and always knows what’s happening in the news and what’s happening in Washington. She stressed for me that my vote was won, that people like us didn’t always get the vote. In that way, the political has always been important to me–I belong to this place and therefore I have something to do with its fate.

Of course I have my ideas, we all do, but more important to me is–whether it’s criticism or the novel–I want to put forward a capital I, a narratorial voice that doesn’t just seem like it popped up out of nowhere. I’m telling you about this play, or I’m telling you about this television show, but I walked into the theater on a day where things happened. I read the news that morning, and then I walked through the streets and had observations about the city as I walked: the homeless on the street, the mentally ill struggles on the subway, the awkward nature of New York’s public transportation. In that context is how I saw this thing. For me, politics as a context is the thing that happens before the speaker opens his or her mouth and speaks or sings. That’s what’s interesting to me. That nobody speaks out of a void, that we all have the pressures of the day at our backs when we finally do the literary act.

You write about theater, politics, the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef. Tell me about how your writing practice became this expansive and how you maintain curiosity in your writing.

I have many interests and my way of understanding everything is to write about it. I often don’t have strong opinions about things until I write about them. Writing is how I figure out how I feel, and therefore, in order to complete the circle of my interest, the writing act becomes important.

It’s also institutional because you have to have places that allow you to express all those things. Often, venues try to slot us into categories. You’re on the race beat, you’re a sports writer, you’re this, you’re that. I have to express my gratitude to the New Yorker that the idea, at least in my experience, is that they want whatever I’m thinking about. Whatever I am most interested in is what the magazine is most interested in from me.

That has been really wonderful and helped me develop as a writer who has his ear open for many different kinds of phenomena. I was one of the two theater critics for about five years, which was a serious education for me and has really helped define me as a writer. Now, I am one of two television critics and have been encouraged to take that as wide as possible. Sports happen on television, news happens on television, politics happens on television. That’s why that Kendrick Lamar piece was a TV piece, because I watched that video on a screen.

This new critical role will help continue that pattern of opening up, seeing what else I can fit into my gaze. I’m interested in a lot of things, but I’m interested in this country, and I think that paying close attention to our TV entertainment will be a really interesting way to continue to ask questions about where I’m from and where we’re all headed.

You said that being a theater critic was an education for you. Tell me more about what that education looked like for your writing and for how you view the world.

I ended up just being an American literature major in college but before that, for a while, I had a double major with theater. So I studied a lot of plays. Reading plays more than seeing them was a big part of my literary education.

Lorrie Moore has this book, See What Can Be Done and it is a collection of primarily pieces that she wrote for the New York Review of Books. In the introduction, she talks about how she wrote about many things that she did not know about. Criticism is not expertise. And when people get that mixed up, when people want to read the critic and have them be a PhD in theater studies–of course, sometimes the scholar can also be a good critic, but those two things are not the same.

So she found herself, she says in this piece, learning things. It was her writing pieces for the New York Review that became her education in the humanities. That is a model that I can relate to. What I bring to this is I can write and I feel very confident about that. I can grab insights out of new things, I can make music out of other people’s music. Therefore I can go into a situation and be humble enough to learn. Researching the pieces and finding out ways to present them, build a hard-won expertise that has more to do with experience than it has to do with formal study. That is one of the benefits of criticism–you can accrue that kind of individual expertise piece by piece by piece.

What is the recipe for compelling criticism and how have you learned or practiced it over the years?

Honesty is one thing. Rigor in terms of getting things right, and fairness in terms of the empathetic act of understanding somebody else’s intentions. Those are important. But the most important thing is style. Yeah, I want to be the walker in the street looking around, gathering new facts, hoarding new experiences, and turning them into a form of entertainment for others. But I also, in the classic sense, want to be dressed well myself. I want to convey style even as I’m pulling things in.

I think what people come to, not only criticism, but all forms of writing for is the feeling of an individual. I’m sure the judge is somewhere in there with criticism, but I don’t like the judge metaphor because what is the judge? Somebody who puts on a black robe and in so doing symbolizes that they’re an agent of the state. Whereas the critic is somebody who shows up in their own clothes. I quote this in the novel, and it’s one of my favorite moments in all literature, it’s The Bostonians by Henry James. A bunch of people are waiting for a speech to begin and somebody cries out in anticipation, “A voice, a human voice is what we want.” That’s what criticism is. A human voice.

How does teaching inform your writing practice?

Teaching, much like writing but in a very different way, helps you clarify what you actually think. You say things, and if you’re like me, you’re very skeptical of the idea that writing is simply a set of tools that you can pick from one mind and give to another person. It’s more about like, hey, read this, or here’s a sensibility that might match with yours. In doing that, I end up saying a lot of things that sometimes mid-sentence, I’ll be like, wait, did I really think that? And if I do, then that’s important because then that might show up in my work.

It’s also the act of putting together a syllabus as a way of drawing connections between this piece and that piece, between not only different genres or different forms, but also over time, creating temporal connections. That’s why it’s exciting to me. It’s about trying to create an open space where people can bring in their findings from the outside world that we can all learn.

That’s so important because when I was in grad school, I looked at everything you all taught me as “This is good.” Instead of, “this is something I can learn from and this is the way I can learn from it.”

Before you get published, before anybody acknowledges that what you have is valuable, you think of anything that’s published as almost a guidebook. But once you start on your own path, that particular anxiety about these played-out notions of quality–I believe in quality, don’t get me wrong–and emotions of anything that is published is therefore valuable, then you can relax into your own taste and style. It’s weird because at the beginning of your life as a writer, you love reading more than anything. When you start having aspirations and hopes to be a writer, reading becomes this weird, painful thing that reminds you of what you’re not.

All of a sudden reading hurts because it’s like, can I do that? Should I do that? But what I have found is that once you’re down your own path, reading becomes joyfully pleasurable again, even more than it was when you were a child, because you can relax and trust. It becomes, again, this generous fountain for you.

What have you learned from writing your novel, and what do you think other debut novelists should know?

What I learned is trust: the connections I want to make, the rhythms I want to put down on the page, the sounds that I want to hear, which is for me what writing is about. You have to trust those, and you have to trust that all your reading, all of your writing of other things before this, are what have prepared you to make something that matters to you and to other people.

All I care about is I want to make one beautiful thing. And I feel that I have done that. I feel that I was able to do that because I had honed and really devoted myself to figuring out what beauty meant to me in the first place, such that while I was writing, in the good moments, I could just trust that I had my own self as a guide as opposed to all the other hierarchies that you can imagine that always get into our brains.

So I have started to–and I say start seriously, because I’m too young to be as good at writing as I’m ever going to be–write in a way that truly is self-expression and not trying to meet some external standard. It’s very freeing. I think it’s good to remind oneself that we’re making art, and there is freedom in that.

As for the specific process of debuting, treat every single milestone like it’s your birthday. Every single thing. You sign a contract, you finish a draft, anything that seems important to you, it’s celebrated. Because there’s no guarantee that anybody else will but also, it’s important to remind yourself that this is meaningful to you. Most people who write for a living dreamed of writing for a living before they ever did, and therefore, we can forget that “I’m doing something I really always wanted to do, shout out to me.”

Vinson Cunningham recommends:

Aaron Copland, especially for ideas about tone, phrasing, America, and how to introduce and then develop a new thought. I love his Four Piano Blues.

James Schuyler, for pleasing and perfecting your ear.

The Gwendolyn Brooks masterpiece Maud Martha, in case you’re worried that language and memory are not enough.

I’m still listening to D’Angelo’s 2014 album Black Messiah. Impossible to believe that that record is already a decade old. If you liked it back then but haven’t heard it in a while, give it another spin. It holds up! If you haven’t heard it yet, I envy you.

The thought that slips into your mind when you think you’re “distracted” probably belongs in the piece.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Arriel Vinson.

Indigenous voters worry a Harris presidency means endangering sacred lands

Taylar Dawn Stagner — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

At an August rally in Glendale, Arizona, the rowdiness of the crowd suggested a rockstar was about to take the stage. Instead, a booming voice welcomed the spectators with a full-throated endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris: “She is the right person at the right time to be our country’s 47th president!” The voice belonged to Governor of the Gila River Indian Community Stephen Roe Lewis, a tribal leader who helped resolve long overdue water rights in the state for the tribe last year. “Skoden!”

Later on, after a warm-up speech from running mate Tim Walz, Vice President Harris took the stage, saying she would “always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination,” (The 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona make an Indigenous voting block that proved essential to President Joe Biden’s win in the swing state in 2020.) On her campaign website, she maintains that she will work to secure America’s industrial future by investing in clean energy — but clean-energy development often negatively impacts sites on federal lands that are sacred to Indigenous peoples.

The Biden-Harris administration has been one of the most supportive of Native peoples, investing millions of dollars of federal funding for climate resilience and green energy initiatives. Still, the Indigenous vote for Harris in 2024 is far from assured. While the U.S. has big goals on its path to a clean-energy future, those plans have to compete against the preservation of tribal lands — an issue Harris has stumbled over in her political career, dating back to her time as California’s attorney general.

Almost 80 miles east of the Arizona rally, a sacred site is in danger. Oak Flat, a swath of national forest land in the high desert, has been an important spiritual site for tribes like the San Carlos Apache for centuries, and is used for ceremonies and gathering medicines like sage, bear root, and greasewood. Yet the area is under threat — Rio Tinto, an international mining company, has been fighting to put a copper mine there for more than a decade. Oak Flat is home to one of the planet’s largest undeveloped copper reserves, and the metal is critical to making the electric batteries necessary for the shift to cleaner energy sources.

Oak Flat and other sacred sites have not been given enough federal protections, activists say, despite intense advocacy from the tribal nations affected. Much of the U.S. has already been built and powered at the expense of tribal lands and peoples. To reach its goal of 80 percent renewable energy generation by 2030, and carbon-free electricity five years after that, the U.S. needs big investments and robust policy support. While Harris says she is the candidate in the best position to achieve those goals, there is a concern among Indigenous communities that doing so will continue to exploit tribal homelands — most of the minerals needed for the energy transition are located within 35 miles of away from tribal communities, on lands originally stolen from them.

Taylar Dawn Stagner

“They definitely are hard to do at the same time. That’s the conflict,” said Dov Kroff-Korn, an attorney at Lakota People’s Law and Sacred Defense Fund, of the balance between extracting the minerals critical to the energy transition and protecting tribal lands where many such minerals are located. He mentioned that Harris has few environmental policies of her own to critique, and that, policy-wise, the broader Biden-Harris administration has been a mixed bag. “There’s been a lot of positive signs that should be recognized and applauded. But it’s also been a continuation of a lot of the same old extractive policies that have powered America for pretty much its entire history.”

In a bid to protect some places from industry, President Biden flexed his ability to make national monuments out of sacred sites, such as the Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument — or Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — as well as to fully restore the boundaries of the Bears Ears monument in Utah from a Trump-era rollback. Biden also appointed the first-ever Native American to his Cabinet — Deb Haaland, Pueblo of Laguna — as the head of the Department of Interior. In her role, Haaland has instructed federal agencies to incorporate traditional knowledge in order to better protect Indigenous sacred sites on public land.

During her tenure as vice president, Harris has been party to the administration’s push to produce more oil and gas than ever, despite promises to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Last year, the Biden administration also gave the green light to the Willow project, an $8 billion dollar drilling operation on Alaska’s North Slope that some, but not all, tribes were against. Throughout her presidential campaign, and in a reversal of her previous stance, Harris has showed support for fracking, a controversial drilling method that extracts oil and natural gas from deep within the ground.

Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a member of the Occoneechee Band of the Saponi Nation in South Carolina, is the cofounder of 7 Directions of Service, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization. She’s concerned that the Mountain Valley Pipeline, currently a 303-mile system that runs through West Virginia and Virginia, will permanently damage the sacred Haw River where she has many memories with her family. Over the years, the beleaguered river has been polluted by chemicals and is now threatened by the pipeline, which began operations in June.

In 2020, Cavalier-Keck campaigned for Biden in South Carolina but didn’t see movement on the environmental protections she wanted after he got elected. She said she will still vote for Harris in November but feels like her concerns are not being talked about. “There’s not much at all on her environmental policies,” she said. “They’re saying the right buzzwords, like ‘clean, renewable, forward.’ But where’s the meat of it?”

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She lives about a two-hour drive from where Hurricane Helene has claimed more than 100 lives in North Carolina, and she worries that the next big climate disaster will reach her community. Cavalier-Keck said that her tribe has had issues accessing the roughly $120 million in federal funding to help tribes build climate resilience.

During Harris’ time as attorney general of California, she argued against tribes putting land into trust, a process that can protect land as well as allow economic development like casinos where gambling might be banned, claiming the situation only applies if a tribe was “under federal jurisdiction” when the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in the 1930s. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Harris and the state, but had she won the case, about 100 tribes in California would not have been allowed to benefit from trust lands.

Still, Lael Echo Hawk, who is Pawnee and an expert in tribal law, says Harris’ decisions as attorney general aren’t reflective of what she might be capable of as president. She pointed out that as attorney general, Harris helped pass a red flag law in California to take away firearms from people deemed dangerous. Plus, she called on the U.S. Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act — an issue important in Native communities, where women go missing and are the survivors of violence at a rate higher than the national average. Echo Hawk also knows of tribes concerned with border issues and immigration that are endorsing Harris. “These are important issues that I think better demonstrate her commitment to advancing and protecting tribal sovereignty,” Echo Hawk said.

But for Nick Estes, a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and a professor at the University of Minnesota, Harris might just be a continuation of the Biden administration, which he maintains has taken advantage of tribal lands. As it stands today, 1.6 million surface and subsurface acres of land within 83 reservations have non-Natives benefiting from oil, gas, and mining operations, among other extractive industries.

“You can’t just have a vibes-based environmental policy. It actually needs to be concrete,” said Estes. “What we’ve seen is just service to industry at the expense of Native lands and livelihoods.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous voters worry a Harris presidency means endangering sacred lands on Oct 7, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

Saving ginseng means balancing conservation and culture

Katie Myers — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 08:15:00 +0000

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Each fall, hopeful foragers throughout the Appalachian mountains don heavy work pants and sturdy boots to clamber into dark, steep, moisture-laden coves in hopes of finding Old Man Sang.

The name is a colloquialism for ginseng, a perennial with a gnarled and bulbous root prized for its medicinal qualities. The plant, a staple of traditional medicine and flavorful addition to many recipes, can reach 80 years of age but grows so slowly it takes five to reach maturity. Demand is so great that it has largely been extirpated in Asia, driving prices for American varieties to $1,000 a pound. That’s got conservationists concerned that overzealous diggers could be pinching them out of existence as they harvest plants too early and too often.

“When it got really valuable, it was just too many people going over and over to the same ground,” said North Carolina ethnobotanist David Cozzo. “There never was a chance for it to recover.”

Although found in much of the eastern United States, ginseng is most prevalent in Appalachia and the Ozarks. The risk of excessive foraging is particularly great in Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, something one expert on the subject attributes to the high unemployment and widespread poverty found there. In response, the Forest Service has taken the step of limiting harvesting on public lands. Although Nantahala and Pisgah national forests have been closed indefinitely in the wake of Hurricane Helene, a federal ban on harvesting the root there will remain in place for at least another year. Getting caught digging up the plant, found primarily in deciduous hardwood forests, can result in a fine of $5,000 and six months in a federal prison.

The Forest Service has said the prohibition, which began in 2021, could last up to a decade. Taking such a step requires balancing the preservation of a valuable resource and respecting a practice intertwined with the region’s history. “Sanging” is for many people a way of life, one that has supplemented rural incomes for generations, particularly in areas dependent on the volatile coal industry.

The Appalachian relationship with east Asian markets extends over 200 years. The Cherokee, who used the root medicinally, took advantage of the globalizing world that colonization thrust them into and started shipping ginseng root to China by the middle of the 1700s. Revenue from such deals helped the tribe buy back a small portion of its ancestral lands in the 1870s, establishing the trust on which the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians now lives, said Cozzo, who is also the director emeritus of the Traditional Cherokee Artisan Resources Program.

Formerly enslaved people, unmarried women, and even entire towns cultivated ginseng in the forests of Appalachia throughout the 19th and and early 20th centuries, harvesting the roots alongside things like cohosh and mayapple and establishing a thriving industry in places known for timbering and mining. Even now, Cozzo recalls talking to high-mountain diggers who used their autumn haul to pay for their kids’ school clothes and other expenses. Historians have attempted to rectify the stereotype of the ignorant, backward harvester, and have attributed some responsibility for ginseng’s decline to poaching and to habitat destruction driven by the coal and timber industries.

In some communities, mineworkers and their families supplemented their incomes foraging for ginseng and other forest products, particularly as work-related disabilities like black-lung disease took hold. “These guys who got black lung from the mines, they might go out in the morning when it was still cool and they could breathe,” Cozzo said.

A 2020 Smithsonian oral history project features people from throughout the region describing foraging and selling what they’d picked or pulled alongside furs and skins to support themselves during unemployment or retirement and to supplement the wages of full-time work. One participant, Carol Judy, a digger and environmental activist who sanged in the mountains around the coal community of Eagan, Tennessee until she died in 2017, is described as a believer in the power of agroforestry to provide for communities struggling to meet their needs, particularly in light of coal’s decline. A friend recalled Carol Judy’s hope of fostering a foraging culture that looks “seven generations forward and seven generations back.”

John-Paul Schmidt, a University of Georgia ecologist who has studied the factors contributing to overharvesting on public lands, noted that stress on the plant’s numbers often correlates with high unemployment and low incomes, particularly in southern Appalachia. That, he said, suggests harvesters compelled by need will find ways around a ban. A wiser policy, he said, would be to explore funding education and pathways to sustainable forest farming, something many harvesters already practice. “There’s a real missed opportunity to really promote active wild cultivation of these plants,” he said.

Katie Myers

Many old-time diggers, particularly Indigenous people, have patches they tend. Cozzo’s oral histories tell of people returning to the same patch every five to seven years, giving it plenty of time to recover. Careful harvesters save the seeds and plant them an inch deep, making it more likely that they’ll sprout. “Old-timers knew this, and they managed the woods, and they managed the forest,” Cozzo said.

Greater education around sustainable harvesting is needed, particularly as diggers are less likely to have a long-term relationship to the land and more likely to be driven by the value of the root. “All it takes is one generation to skip knowing how to do things properly,” said Cozzo.

The hope behind the ban, said Forest Service botanist Gary Kauffman, is to give these fragile plants time to flourish, particularly older specimens that are key to the root’s survival. “It’s the older individuals that produce more seed and actually regenerate the plant,” Kauffman said. The Forest Service is monitoring more than 100 ginseng plots across Nantahala and Pisgah national forests. It also is working with a seed nursery at the North Carolina State Extension to increase the number of seedbeds in the biodiverse, nutrient-rich soils in which ginseng thrives.

Sustainable harvesters know to seek plants at least five and ideally over 10 years old with clear signs of maturity: red berries, stem scars, and three to five leaflets. Healthy ginseng communities consist of about 50 to 100 plants, Kauffman said, but many have closer to 25 — a good basis for growth, but not enough to allow harvesting. That’s got the Forest Service thinking that its conservation efforts could last at least a few years, and possibly longer. That may frustrate diggers and herbalists, he said, but it’s necessary to protect a historically important plant..

“It’s very important to look at that and try to preserve some of that culture,” Kauffman said. “To think of how we can preserve it in the future, so our kids and grandkids can also go out and see ginseng, and maybe in the future, harvest some ginseng.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Saving ginseng means balancing conservation and culture on Oct 3, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State

John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 22:02:38 +0000

Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.

—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

It’s not easy being a child in the American police state.

Danger lurks around every corner and comes at you from every direction, especially when Big Brother is involved.

Out on the streets, you’ve got the menace posed by police officers who shoot first and ask questions later. In your neighborhoods, you’ve got to worry about the Nanny State and its network of busybodies turning parents in for allowing their children to walk to school alone, walk to the park alone, play at the beach alone, or even play in their own yard alone.

The tentacles of the police state even intrude on the sanctity of one’s home, with the government believing it knows better than you—the parent—what is best for your child. This criminalization of parenthood has run the gamut in recent years from parents being arrested for attempting to walk their kids home from school to parents being fined and threatened with jail time for their kids’ bad behavior or tardiness at school.

This doesn’t even touch on what happens to your kids when they’re at school—especially the public schools—where parents have little to no control over what their kids are taught, how they are taught, how and why they are disciplined, and the extent to which they are being indoctrinated into marching in lockstep with the government’s authoritarian playbook.

The message is chillingly clear: your children are not your own but are, in fact, wards of the state who have been temporarily entrusted to your care. Should you fail to carry out your duties to the government’s satisfaction, the children in your care will be re-assigned elsewhere.

This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today: where parents have to worry about school resource officers who taser teenagers and handcuff kindergartners, school officials who have criminalized childhood behavior, school lockdowns and terror drills that teach your children to fear and comply, and a police state mindset that has transformed the schools into quasi-prisons.

Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.

Indeed, while young people today are learning first-hand what it means to be at the epicenter of politically charged culture wars, test scores indicate that students are not learning how to succeed in social studies, math and reading. Rather, government officials are churning out compliant drones who know little to nothing about their history or their freedoms.

In turn, these young people are being brainwashed into adopting a worldview in which rights are negotiable rather than inalienable; free speech is dangerous; the virtual world is preferable to the real world; and history can be extinguished when inconvenient or offensive.

What does it mean for the future of freedom at large when these young people, trained to be mindless automatons, are someday running the government?

Under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of:

draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior,
overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech,
school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students,
standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking,
politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them,
and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

This is how you groom young people to march in lockstep with a police state.

As Deborah Cadbury writes for The Washington Post, “Authoritarian rulers have long tried to assert control over the classroom as part of their totalitarian governments.”

In Nazi Germany, the schools became indoctrination centers, breeding grounds for intolerance and compliance.

In the American police state, the schools have become increasingly hostile to those who dare to question or challenge the status quo.

America’s young people have become casualties of a post-9/11 mindset that has transformed the country into a locked-down, militarized, crisis-fueled mockery of a representative government.

Roped into the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, disease, and weapons, America’s schools have transformed themselves into quasi-prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

Students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but the punishments have become far more severe, shifting from detention and visits to the principal’s office into misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.

Students have been suspended under school zero tolerance policies for bringing to school “look alike substances” such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.

Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in hot water, in some cases getting them expelled from school or charged with a crime.

Not even good deeds go unpunished.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

Having police in the schools only adds to the danger.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting.

Indeed, the growing presence of police in the nation’s schools is resulting in greater police “involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers have become de facto wardens in elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepper spray, batons and brute force.

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

Not even the younger, elementary school-aged kids are being spared these “hardening” tactics.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids—some as young as 4 and 5 years old—for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

This is what happens when you introduce police and police tactics into the schools.

Paradoxically, by the time you add in the lockdowns and active shooter drills, instead of making the schools safer, school officials have succeeded in creating an environment in which children are so traumatized that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, anxiety, mistrust of adults in authority, as well as feelings of anger, depression, humiliation, despair and delusion.

For example, a middle school in Washington State went on lockdown after a student brought a toy gun to class. A Boston high school went into lockdown for four hours after a bullet was discovered in a classroom. A North Carolina elementary school locked down and called in police after a fifth grader reported seeing an unfamiliar man in the school (it turned out to be a parent).

Police officers at a Florida middle school carried out an active shooter drill in an effort to educate students about how to respond in the event of an actual shooting crisis. Two armed officers, guns loaded and drawn, burst into classrooms, terrorizing the students and placing the school into lockdown mode.

These police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

The fallout has been what you’d expect, with the nation’s young people treated like hardened criminals: handcuffed, arrested, tasered, tackled and taught the painful lesson that the Constitution (especially the Fourth Amendment) doesn’t mean much in the American police state.

Likewise, the harm caused by attitudes and policies that treat America’s young people as government property is not merely a short-term deprivation of individual rights. It is also a long-term effort to brainwash our young people into believing that civil liberties are luxuries that can and will be discarded at the whim and caprice of government officials if they deem doing so is for the so-called “greater good” (in other words, that which perpetuates the aims and goals of the police state).

What we’re dealing with is a draconian mindset that sees young people as wards of the state—and the source of potential income—to do with as they will in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents. However, this is in keeping with the government’s approach towards individual freedoms in general.

Surveillance cameras, government agents listening in on your phone calls, reading your emails and text messages and monitoring your spending, mandatory health care, sugary soda bans, anti-bullying laws, zero tolerance policies, political correctness: these are all outward signs of a government—i.e., a monied elite—that believes it knows what is best for you and can do a better job of managing your life than you can.

This is tyranny disguised as “the better good.”

Indeed, this is the tyranny of the Nanny State: marketed as benevolence, enforced with armed police, and inflicted on all those who do not belong to the elite ruling class that gets to call the shots.

This is what the world looks like when bureaucrats not only think they know better than the average citizen but are empowered to inflict their viewpoints on the rest of the populace on penalty of fines, arrest or death.

So, what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now but for the future of this country, when these same young people are someday in charge?

How do you convince someone who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when, for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, we must start by running the schools like freedom forums.

The post What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

DNC protests begin: ‘Reproductive justice means free Palestine!’

The Real News Network — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 15:45:44 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

Climate crisis means the future looks grim. But there are reasons for hope

Paul Rogers — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 10:17:47 +0000

A world of devastating weather events, unliveable cities, gross food shortages, and global marginalisation beckons

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Paul Rogers.

When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.

by Lisa Song — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000

by Lisa Song

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

They argue that “recyclable” should apply to anything that’s capable of being recycled. And they point to newer technologies that have been able to remake plastic bags into new products.

I spent months investigating one of those technologies, a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis, only to find that it is largely a mirage. It’s inefficient, dirty and so limited in capacity that no one expects it to process meaningful amounts of plastic waste any time soon.

That shouldn’t matter, say proponents of the industry’s argument. If it’s physically capable of being recycled — even in extremely limited scenarios — it should be labeled “recyclable.”

They are laying out their case in comments to the Federal Trade Commission as it revises its Green Guides, documents that define how companies can use marketing labels like “recyclable” or “compostable.” The guides are meant to curb greenwashing — deceptive advertising that exaggerates the sustainability of products. They were last updated in 2012, before the explosion of social media advertising and green influencers; the agency declined to answer questions about the revision or give an idea of when it will be done.

The push for a looser definition of “recyclable” highlights a conundrum faced not just by companies represented by the Plastics Industry Association, but by members of the Consumer Brands Association, whose plastic-packaged products fill grocery shelves across the world. (Neither trade group, nor ExxonMobil, wanted to elaborate on their positions advocating for a more liberal use of the word “recyclable.”)

Under increasing pressure to reckon with the global plastics crisis, companies want to rely on recycling as the answer. But turning old plastic into new plastic is really, really hard.

Products made with dyes, flame retardants and other toxic chemicals create a health hazard when they’re heated for recycling. That severely limits the types of products you can make from recycled plastic. And most items are too small for companies in the recycling business to bother sorting and processing, or they are assembled in a way that would make it far more costly to strip them down to their useful elements than to just make new plastic. Plastic forks? Straws? Toys given out in fast food meals and party favor bags? Never actually recycled. In fact, only 5% of Americans’ plastic finds new life.

Environmental experts worry that if the FTC sides with the industry, companies could slap the “recyclable” label on virtually anything.

Though the agency only pursues a few greenwashing cases a year, its guides — which are guidelines instead of laws — are the only national benchmark for evaluating recycling claims.

They’re used by companies that want to market their products in an honest way. They also serve as a reference for state officials who are drafting laws to try to reduce plastic waste.

By 2032, for example, most single-use packaging sold in California will need to be recyclable or compostable.

What good will such laws be, environmental experts worry, if those words mean nothing?

For at least three decades, the industry has misled the public about what really is recyclable.

Take a close look at any plastic product and you’ll likely see a little number stamped on it called a resin identification code; it distinguishes what kind of plastic it’s made of. Plastic bags, for example, are labeled No. 4. Only some No. 1 and No. 2 plastics are widely recyclable. In each case, the number is surrounded by the iconic “chasing arrows” symbol, which has come to denote recyclability, regardless of whether that product can actually be recycled.

The design was created in the 1980s by a group of chemical companies working with Exxon and BP; Grist recently published a fascinating story about the effort.

Around that time, the plastic industry was contending with the nation’s growing awareness that its products were the root of an intractable pollution problem. States were weighing legislation to deal with it. And the American Plastics Council was convening meetings to head off threats. The council discussed the arrows, which they described as “consumer tested,” according to meeting notes obtained by the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group that works to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable.

The industry persuaded 39 states to require the use of the symbols. Their purpose, the notes said: “to prevent bans.” They pursued the strategy despite warnings from state regulators who predicted the arrows would lead consumers to overestimate the recyclability of plastic packaging.

By 1995, state attorneys general were telling the FTC that’s exactly what was happening.

The agency ruled in 1998 that brands could continue using the codes with the recycling symbol, but could only display them prominently — by printing them next to the brand name, for example — if the product was recyclable for a “substantial majority” of consumers. If not, the symbols could be stamped in a less obvious place, like the bottom of containers.

These mandates did little to ease consumers’ confusion. “You mean we’re not supposed to throw plastic bags in recycling bins?” a colleague recently asked me.

During a tour of the New York facility that sorts the city’s recyclables, I saw the result of a million well-intentioned mistakes — countless bags sloshing over conveyor belts like the unwanted dregs at the bottom of a cereal bowl.

A conveyor belt at the Brooklyn facility that sorts most of the material collected via curbside recycling in New York City (Sharon Lerner/ProPublica)

They’re notorious for clogging equipment. Sometimes, they start fires. And when they get stuck between layers of paper, the bags end up contaminating bales of paper that are actually recyclable, condemning much of it to the landfill.

If companies started printing the word “recyclable” on them, I wondered, how much worse could this get?

When you see something labeled as “recyclable,” it’s reasonable to expect it will be made into something new after you toss it in the nearest recycling bin.

You would be wrong.

The current Green Guides allow companies to make blanket “recyclable” claims if 60% of consumers or communities have access to recycling facilities that will take the product. The guides don’t specify whether facilities can just accept the item, or if there needs to be a reasonable assurance that the item will be made into a new product.

When the agency invited the public to comment in late 2022 on how the guides should be revised, FTC Chair Lina M. Khan predicted that one of the main issues would be “whether claims that a product is recyclable should reflect where a product ultimately ends up, not just whether it gets picked up from the curb.”

Strangely, that statement ignored the agency’s own guidance. An FTC supplement to the 2012 Green Guides stated that “recyclable” items must go to facilities “that will actually recycle” them, “not accept and ultimately discard” them.

The industry disagrees with the position.

“Recent case law confirms that the term ‘recyclable’ means ‘capable of being recycled,’ and that it is an attribute, not a guarantee,” said a comment from the Plastics Industry Association. Forcing the material to be “actually recovered” is “unnecessarily burdensome.”

Citing a consumer survey, ExxonMobil told the FTC that the majority of respondents “agreed that it was appropriate to label an item as recyclable if a product can be recycled, even if access to recycling facilities across the country varies.” The company’s comments argued against “arbitrary minimum” thresholds like the 60% rule.

The FTC also received comments urging the agency to tighten the rules. A letter from the attorneys general of 15 states and the District of Columbia suggested increasing the 60% minimum to 90%. And the Environmental Protection Agency told the FTC that “recyclable” is only valid if the facilities that collect those products can reliably make more money by selling them for recycling than by throwing them away in a landfill.

The industry argues that recycling is never guaranteed. Market changes like the pandemic could force facilities to discard material that is technically recyclable, wrote the Consumer Brands Association. There is “simply no consumer deception in a claim that clearly identifies that a product is capable of being recycled,” the group wrote, despite the fact that “an external factor several times removed from the manufacturer results in it ultimately not being recycled.”

And what if consumers stopped seeing as many products marketed as recyclable? That could “dramatically” lower recycling rates, the group wrote, because consumers would get confused, seeming to imply people wouldn’t know if they could recycle anything at all.

“Wow, that’s some weird acrobatics,” Lynn Hoffman, strategic adviser at the Alliance for Mission-Based Recycling, said of the industry’s uncertainty argument. The group is a network of nonprofit recyclers that supports a zero-waste future.

Hoffman acknowledged the inefficiencies in the system. The solution, she said, is to improve the true recyclability of products that can be reliably processed, like soda bottles, by tracking them as they pass through the supply chain, being transparent about where they end up and removing toxic chemicals from products.

Calling everything “recyclable” would be a huge mistake, she said. “We have to be realistic about the role that recycling plays,” she added.

No matter how well done, it doesn’t fix the bigger crisis. Not the microplastics infiltrating our bodies or “plastic smog” in the oceans or poisoned families living in the shadow of the chemical plants that produce it.

In fact, research has shown people can produce more waste when they think it will be recycled. When North Carolina began rolling out curbside recycling in different towns, researchers analyzed data on household waste before and after the change. They found that overall waste — the total amount of trash plus stuff in the recycling bin — rose by up to 10% after recycling became available, possibly because consumers felt less guilty.

“They get their blue bins, and they worry less about the amount of trash they generate,” said one of the researchers, Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “I’m probably guilty of that too.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lisa Song.

Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel

Dissident Voice Communications — Fri, 03 May 2024 21:34:22 +0000

In a letter 18 April to President Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace cited existing federal law that gives the President “…no discretion whatsoever to allow any military assistance of any form to be delivered to Israel,” based on that country’s “serial violations of the Symington-Glenn Amendments, codified at 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa.”

The letter cites a lengthy list of credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, goes into effect, including:

termination of assistance under the Foreign Assistance Act, except for humanitarian assistance or food or other agricultural commodities;
termination of defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports;
termination of foreign military financing;
denial of U.S. government credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance (except for medical and humanitarian assistance and agricultural exports from the United States);
U.S. government opposition to any loan or financial or technical assistance from international financial institutions (IFIs);
prohibition of any loan or credit from U.S. banks to the foreign government (except for the purchase of food or other agricultural commodities); and
prohibition under the Export Administration Act of exports to that state of specific goods and technology licensed by the Commerce Department (except for food and other agricultural commodities).

The letter states, “The President may not waive the cutoff of the above aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the President to waive some or all of these sanctions.”

VFP National Director, Mike Ferner, said, “Israel’s possession of The Bomb and the U.S.’ refusal to take appropriate action is yet another example of how the Madmen Arsonists – the Raytheons, Boeings, General Dynamics – actually govern our country and determine policy. The law is quite simple – Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘will you obey the law or the Madmen?’”

Ferner added, “This election year our members will ask their Congressional representatives, ‘Will you hold hearings to enforce existing law, or let the Madmen Arsonists continue to run our country?’”

Highlights of the letter:

Senator John Glenn was prompted to seek a change in the law because of a reported theft of 100 kg of highly enriched uranium from an NRC vendor in 1968, later traced to the Dimona reactor complex in Israel. (pg. 3)
Repeated CIA assessments and remarks of Colin Powell in 2016 that the U.S. knew Israel had at least 200 warheads at that time. (pgs. 4-9)
Israel prosecuted and jailed Mordecai Vanunu for his courageous whistleblowing disclosure in the 1980’s that Israel has The Bomb. (pg. 7)
Benjamin Netanyahu was identified by the FBI as being directly involved in an Israeli smuggling operation in the 1980’s that successfully stole 800 krytrons, a prized device used for triggers in nuclear weapons. (pg. 7)
The Symington-Glenn amendment has been implemented by previous administrations. (pg. 4)
What the President must do (pg. 10)
Contrary to other instances where the Biden administration is allowed to ignore aid limitations, this one may be litigable in court. (pg. 10)

Veterans For Peace members across the U.S. are telling their members of Congress to vote NO on any more weapons for Israel and hold hearings to hold the Biden administration accountable They have participated in numerous protests and acts of civil disobedience to highlight Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.

The post Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dissident Voice Communications.

Ruling by ICJ Means Canada and the U.S. Could be Complicit in Gaza Genocide

Heidi Matthews, Faisal A. Bhabha and Mohammad Fadel — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 06:45:24 +0000

The International Court of Justice has issued a ground-breaking decision in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, ordering Israel to comply with six provisional measures to safeguard the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocidal violence.

The court’s order is binding on Israel and formalizes the international legal obligations of other countries that are parties to the UN Genocide Convention.

Properly understood, the order should dramatically alter both the foreign and domestic policy decisions of Israel’s allies, including Canada and the United States.

Israel and its allies cannot dismiss or minimize the importance of this decision. In granting interim relief, the court concluded that South Africa’s allegations of genocide are, at a minimum, legally and factually plausible.

Other countries must act

Crucially, the court expressly concluded, by an overwhelming majority, that Palestinians in Gaza face a “real and imminent risk” of genocide. This puts other countries on notice that they have an international legal duty to take steps to prevent genocide in Gaza in accordance with the court’s order.

As the court stated in a 2007 ruling when Bosnia accused Serbia of genocide, countries that are parties to the Genocide Convention have an obligation to prevent and a corresponding duty to act “the instant that the state learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed.”

Both Canada and the U.S. have construed the court’s decision narrowly, suggesting it merely reiterates Israel’s right of self-defence and obligation to comply with international humanitarian law.

This is a legally indefensible reading of the court’s ruling.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration says it believes the court’s decision is consistent with existing American policy on Israel and that it continues to view South Africa’s case as “meritless.”

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly reiterated that Canada’s “support for the ICJ does not mean that we accept the premise of the case.”

Statements of political support by the U.S. and Canada that Israel is abiding by the laws of war — contrary to the facts — cannot shield Israel or its allies from their legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. Those obligations — including to prevent genocide — are created via treaty and are interpreted by courts, the highest of which is the International Court of Justice.

The obligation to prevent genocide, combined with the court’s finding of a serious risk of genocide, means that all parties to the Genocide Convention must refrain from taking steps that would actively frustrate the effective implementation of the court’s order.

Canada in violation of its obligations

As South Africa stated, “the ICJ has determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza are plausibly genocidal and has indicated provisional measures on that basis.”

Among other measures, the court directed Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission” of acts of genocide, to prevent and punish incitement to genocide and to “enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

The court emphasized evidence from the World Health Organization indicating that “93 per cent of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger” and “that maternal and newborn death rates are expected to increase due to the lack of access to medical care.”

But just hours after the court’s ruling, the U.S. announced it was suspending funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

The funding cuts came after Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas against Israel. UNRWA has terminated the accused employees and launched an investigation.

The U.S. is the biggest financial contributor to UNRWA. Several other key donor countries, including Canada, quickly followed suit.

UNRWA is the largest aid provider in Gaza and a trusted lifeline to civilians in the territory. Even if the allegations are true, defunding the entire organization openly defies the court’s order and amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population in Gaza.

Disturbingly, moves to defund UNRWA appear to help implement Israeli government plans to undermine the organization’s capacity to deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier this month, policy experts told the Knesset that UNRWA “must be dismantled and thrown in the dustbin of history” and that “no country that is a friend of Israel should provide them any money.”

The ICJ found that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further,” plausibly inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.

Accordingly, any country’s action knowingly contributing to further deterioration would violate the obligation to prevent genocide and could amount to complicity in genocide.

Canada must halt arms sales to Israel

The court’s provisional measures also impact Canada’s compliance with its own laws on military exports.

In 2022, Canada sent more than $21 million worth of military exports to Israel. The Export and Import Permits Act forbids arms permits to be issued if there’s a “substantial risk” that the goods could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.

Because the ICJ found a serious risk of genocide in Gaza, continuing to export arms to Israel would be illegal. It would also be flagrantly inconsistent with Canada’s obligation to prevent genocide, and could expose Canada and Canadian officials to liability for participation in genocide.

We must reject the politics of deliberate indifference to atrocity currently on display in the Canadian government’s reactions to the ICJ ruling.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Heidi Matthews, Faisal A. Bhabha and Mohammad Fadel.

Dear Biden Apologists: Reproductive Justice Means Fighting for Gaza’s Women and Children

Natasha Lennard — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 20:32:47 +0000

A pro-Palestinian demonstrator interrupts President Joe Biden’s remarks during a campaign event in support of abortion rights at George Mason University in Manassas, Va., on Jan. 23, 2024.

Photo: Craig Hudson/Sipa via AP Images

Protesters calling for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza confronted President Joe Biden earlier this week at his first major campaign rally, a Virginia event focused on abortion rights. As Biden spoke in favor of returning the baseline yet crucial protections of Roe v. Wade, demonstrators interrupted him every few sentences, shouting, “Genocide Joe!” and “ceasefire now!” One called out, “Israel kills two mothers every hour!”

In response, other crowd members cheered for the president and chanted, “Four more years!” — a particularly callous response to calls for an end to indiscriminate mass slaughter.

The event crystallized a false choice at the center of Biden’s presidential bid. As a rematch with Donald Trump looms, mainstream Democrats invoke the precarious state of U.S. reproductive rights to scold those who object to Biden based on his unending support for Israel’s genocidal war. Left-wing calls for a ceasefire in Gaza have been framed as a roadblock, one that stands in conflict with Biden’s fight to protect abortion access from further Republican decimation.

But feminists who protest Biden over Gaza — even those who say they will likely not vote for him — are not blind to the dangers of a second Trump presidency. They are not myopic single-issue voters, willing to throw reproductive rights under the bus. Feminists opposing Biden in the name of Palestinian liberation are highlighting the cynicism of a Democratic campaign running on women’s rights at home while enabling the systematic annihilation of women and children abroad.

Humanitarian agencies this month reported a 300 percent rise in the miscarriage rate in Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began. More than 10,000 children have been killed, and there is not a safe place in the besieged strip for a person to give birth. More than half of Gaza’s hospitals are completely shuttered, and the rest are barely functional; cesarean sections are performed without anesthesia. Alongside a lack of clean water, food, and medical supplies, menstrual products are largely inaccessible to Palestinians in Gaza, of whom 1.7 million have been internally displaced. The protester who shouted out “Israel kills two mothers every hour” was citing statistics from a case brought by South Africa this month, charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Apologists for the president are demanding that for the sake of our own imperiled reproductive freedoms, we must disregard the very meaning of reproductive justice when applied to the people of Gaza.

Young voters, in particular, are not convinced. “I think it would be hypocritical of me to use reproductive rights as a way to justify voting for Biden,” said Saba Saed, a young woman from Michigan, when interviewed by CBS’s “Face the Nation” last week. “Biden is aiding and sending military aid to Israel, which is airstriking Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid leading to women there who are pregnant either getting C-sections without anesthesia, not being able to be provided with prenatal care.”

After Saed’s interview clip drew ire from some Biden supporters, she posted a follow-up on X: “Biden caring about reproductive rights,” she wrote, “should be because he believes we need to have them, not because it guarantees votes.”

There can be no doubt that a Trump presidency and a Republican-led Congress would see an end to the shreds of abortion protections currently in place in this country. Just this week, Republicans in Tennessee and Oklahoma introduced travel ban bills that would make it a felony to help a minor leave the state to access abortion care. Nearly 65,000 pregnancies associated with rape occurred in the 14 states that have enacted abortion bans since the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe in 2022.

Biden warning’s that it could get far worse under Trump is as uninspiring as it is gravely real. It is all the more grim coming from a sitting president, who, in his own words, is “not big on abortion” and failed to expand federal abortion protections and provisions to their fullest possible extent in his current term.

The Roe v. Wade decision itself was always limited in its ability to support the bodily autonomy, health, and safety of women, particularly women of color. In the years following the 1973 ruling, Black feminist organizers led the demand for a framework of “reproductive justice” beyond reproductive rights, which encompasses far more than the right to end a pregnancy.

The fight for reproductive justice is the fight to produce, reproduce, and sustain life in conditions of freedom and safety — the very conditions the current administration is rendering impossible, from its own borders to Gaza. Accessing abortion in Palestine was extremely challenging prior to the war; now the challenge is staying alive to navigate any such choices and challenges at all.

Accessing abortion in Palestine was extremely challenging prior to the war; now the challenge is staying alive to navigate any such choices and challenges at all.

Asking feminists to limit their concerns to abortion access in the U.S. is to push a liberal nationalist feminism that simply inverts the Christo-fascism of white women Trump voters. Both are predicated on exclusionary border regimes, scarcity logic, and violence against women.

It’s not a good argument, however true it might be, that Trump would be just as devastating for Palestine. Inconvenient as it may be for his apologists, it is Biden who is currently president and who could at any point choose to be accountable to the vast majority of Democratic voters who want a ceasefire. It is Biden who claims to stand for women’s rights. It is not his protesters who are inconsistent on matters of justice. As Saed, the voter from Michigan interviewed on CBS, tweeted, “Do not blame me, blame Biden.”

Join The Conversation

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

International Order Means Playing by the Rules

Alfred de Zayas — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 06:52:46 +0000

When eight billion human beings have to live on a common planet, it is necessary to establish rules of the game, a certain modus vivendi to avoid chaos and violence. Coherent rules enable a peaceful local, regional and international development based on cooperation rather than confrontation. These rules have to be observed in good faith. Cheating is not allowed[1]. Double standards destroy the trust that we place on the institutions that administer the rules.

In the 21^st Century, we know multiple rules-based orders. Internationally we have the United Nations Charter, which is akin to a world constitution. The United Nations agencies such as ILO, UNESCO and WHO have their own constitutions and enforcement organs. Regional orders are based on treaties, e.g. the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Treaties of Lisbon and Maestricht for the European Union, the Charter of the African Union, etc.

Subsidiary organs also have their statutes or “terms of reference”, e.g. the International Court of Justice, which entered into force on 24 October 1945, together with the UN Charter, the International Criminal Court, which functions on the basis of the Statute of Rome of July 1998. The Human Rights Council works on the basis of a 2006 General Assembly Resolution, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the basis of a 1993 GA resolution[2].

Common to all international and regional orders is the commitment of all States members to abide by the established rules. Antony Blinken’s call for an “rules-based international order” is redundant, because we already have the UN Charter, whose article 103, the supremacy clause, states that the Charter takes priority over all other “orders” such as the Treaties of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Treaties of the European Union. This can be changed, but only pursuant to an amendment to the Charter under its article 108.

The authority and credibility of all “orders” and all organizations established to implement the agreed “order” depends on uniform application of the norms and good faith enforcement of the “object and purpose” of the organizations. In this essay, I will illustrate some problems that plague the work of two important United Nations institutions – the Human Rights Council and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

On March 2006 the General Assembly decided to establish the Human Rights Council to replace the much-maligned Commission on Human Rights. Upon the adoption of the Resolution, the then Swiss Ambassador to the UN Peter Maurer welcomed it as a “good compromise which created a framework for a “fresh start”, for exploring new forms of engagement, and provided an opportunity to build trust, by addressing human rights in a spirit of fairness, equal treatment and avoidance of double standards. Maurer added, “it is our sincere hope that we will not fall back into old patterns of behavior”.

Maurer warned “We do not share the intransigent and maximalist approaches of certain delegations, who want to make us believe that they are the only ones fighting for ambitious human rights machinery. All too often, high ambitions are cover-ups for less noble aims and oriented, not at improving the United Nations, but at belittling and weakening it.” He stressed that the adoption of the GA resolution was an important strategic achievement for the overall United Nations reform process, adding “Indeed, change is a process, not an event”.

My own experience with the Commission on Human Rights as a staff member of the OHCHR for more than two decades, and with the new Council as the first UN Independent Expert on International Order (2012-18) confirms the concerns expressed by Ambassador Maurer. I would dare say, that the new Council has less authority and credibility than the Commission, and that the level of weaponization of human rights has reached new peaks in the Council. Double standards are not the exception, but the daily fare of the house.

The practice of “naming and shaming” frequently poisons the atmosphere in the Council, precisely because of its confrontational quality, which leaves no room for honest dialogue with an animus to reach solutions based on goodwill and common sense. Currently, the Universal Periodic Review of State reports, the reports of the mandate holders under the Special Procedures system is characterized by invective and evidence-free allegations.

What is needed is a Council that endeavors to discover the root causes of problems and is capable of formulating concrete preventive and corrective strategies. The all-too-present practice of “naming and shaming”, advocated by some delegations and even by non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – who should know better — has proven to be largely counterproductive[3], because more often than not the countries engaging in the “naming” have lots of skeletons in their own closets[4], and the countries being “named” have no inclination to accept the skewed narratives presented in the Council by their accusers and by their complicit helping assistants in the NGO community. Thus, the “tactic” of pointing fingers actually backfires and makes the targeted governments retrench rather than open-up.

What is needed is effective advisory services and technical assistance, a pro-active Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that will show governments how to eliminate obstacles to the enjoyment of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights by the persons under their jurisdiction.

Back in 2006 the Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz had expressed the hope that the new Council would not be befallen by the “political manipulation, hypocrisy and double standards imposed on its work by the United States and the European Union”. Ambassador Malmierca observed that the new Council was by no means a sufficient response to addressing that challenge and that nothing in the creation of the new Council would prevent a repeat of the tradition of maneuvering by the powers of the North, to unjustly condemn third-world countries[5].

Cuba had proposed the establishment of a body that would contribute to strengthening the international system of promoting and protecting human rights, through genuine cooperation, but the United States and its allies had insisted on making the “punitive and sanctioning” approach prevail, this time evinced by a provision in the text, which allowed for the suspension of the rights of those who questioned, interfered, or just disagreed, with the “hegemonic domination plans of the Empire”.

When it comes to Special Procedures, the Council would perform better, if it concentrated on thematic mandates such as the Rapporteur on Torture, Violence against Women, Independence of Judges and Lawyers, the Right to Food, the Right to Health, the Right to Development, etc. and gradually phase out the hostile country mandates, which more often than not tend to exacerbate matters. Country mandates are sensible if the purpose of the mandate is to help the country improve its human rights performance through advisory services and technical assistance, through a good faith examination of the root causes of grievances and an effort to find viable solutions. Country mandates are a waste of time and resources when the countries concerned refuse to cooperate with the country’s Rapporteur, who is perceived – sometimes with good reason (I could name many examples) — as a priori biased against them. When a country feels “picked on” and unjustly targeted, it will certainly not comply with the recommendations of any Rapporteur or “Fact-Finding Commission”. This is so because other countries whose human rights records are objectively worse, escape scrutiny and are not subject to blackballing in the institutional incarnation of a Rapporteur.

It is essential that the OHCHR and the HR Council observe a code of deontology and never, I mean never, apply double standards. The authority and credibility of OHCHR and HR Council stand and fall with the professionalism of the staff and the objectivity of its methodology[6]. It is not acceptable to focus on the violations of certain countries only, and to pass over the violations by other countries, notably the large donors to the OHCHR.

It is the responsibility of States, not only the 47 member States of the Council, to ensure that the Council is depoliticized, that it be people-centered, that it formulates constructive proposals and establishes follow-up mechanisms. While the Universal Periodic Review is useful, it must not overlap with or duplicate the work of the UN treaty bodies such as the UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Moreover, it must go beyond being a mere diplomatic ritual and an opportunity for some countries to advance geopolitical agendas and score points against other States. When it comes to Special Procedures, the Rapporteurs and Independent Experts must rigorously adhere to their code of conduct under Council resolution 5/2.

International Order means International Cooperation

The key principle of international order must be the principle of cooperation on the basis of the UN Charter, the recognition of the sovereign equality of States and the self-determination of peoples. Let us start by recalling the commitment of all States under the UN Charter, Art. 55, to cooperate with each other in achieving peace and human rights:

“With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote: …. solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational cooperation”

Many UN resolutions and declarations emphasize the importance of international cooperation. The 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action reaffirms in its preamble “the commitment contained in article 56 of the Charter of the United Nations to take joint and separate action, placing proper emphasis on developing effective international cooperation.”[7] Operative paragraph 4 further states: “The promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms must be considered as a priority objective of the United Nations in accordance with its purposes and principles, in particular the purpose of international cooperation.

In the framework of these purposes and principles, the promotion and protection of all human rights is an erga omnes obligation of the international community. The organs and specialized agencies related to human rights should therefore further enhance the coordination of their activities based on the consistent and objective application of international human rights instruments.” Operative paragraph 10 reaffirms the right to development and stipulates “States should cooperate with each other in ensuring development and eliminating obstacles to development. The international community should promote an effective international cooperation for the realization of the right to development and the elimination of obstacles to development.”

Paragraphs 5 and 6 of the Outcome Document of the World Summit of 2005, Res. 60/1, emphasizes the importance of multilateralism and international cooperation.

5. We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States, respect their territorial integrity and political independence, to refrain in our international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations, to uphold resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation, non-interference in the internal affairs of States, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for the equal rights of all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion, international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and the fulfillment in good faith of the obligations assumed in accordance with the Charter.

6. We reaffirm the vital importance of an effective multilateral system, in accordance with international law, in order to better address the multifaceted and interconnected challenges and threats confronting our world…

Paragraph 48 highlights the importance of the right to development. “We reaffirm our commitment to achieve the goal of sustainable development, including through the implementation of Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation. To this end, we commit ourselves to undertaking concrete actions and measures at all levels and to enhancing international cooperation, taking into account the Rio principles.”[8]

In this context, it is also pertinent to recall the language of the revised draft UN Declaration on the Right to International Solidarity[9], which expands on the original draft contained in the 2017 report of the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on International Solidarity, Virginia Dandan [10].

Article 1 stipulates

International solidarity is an expression of unity by which peoples and individuals enjoy the benefits of a peaceful, just and equitable international order, secure their human rights and ensure sustainable development. 2. In accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, States, international organizations and non-State actors can, through cooperation in good faith, achieve common goals and solve global challenges. 3. International solidarity is a central principle in contemporary international law, based on and in furtherance of: (a) Justice, peace, sustainable development and equitable and fair partnerships between States as a basis for international cooperation…

Article 3 stipulates

The general objectives of international solidarity are to create an enabling environment for: 1. Promoting the realization and enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms; 2. Engendering trust and mutual respect to foster peace and security, promote early response and prevention of conflict, provide humanitarian assistance and engage in peacebuilding…

Article 7 stipulates

States undertake to cooperate with each other and with non-State actors to implement the right to international solidarity to prevent and overcome global challenges…. 4. States agree to take appropriate, transparent and inclusive action to ensure the active, free and meaningful participation of all individuals and peoples, including younger generations, in decision-making processes at the national, bilateral, regional and international levels on matters that affect their enjoyment of solidarity. 5. States agree to adopt and effectively implement policies and programmes, both domestically and transnationally, to promote and protect solidarity based on cultural diversity, engagement and exchange.

As an Independent Expert on International Order, I participated in the drafting of this document and advocated its adoption by the General Assembly. It is a disgrace, that to this day the Declaration on the Right to International Solidarity has not been adopted, although it eloquently expresses the most noble principles of the UN Charter. Who opposes this Declaration? The United States, the United Kingdom and the States members of the European Union. In this context, it is instructive to study the voting record on many resolutions before the General Assembly and Human Rights Council. This will reveal who is really in favour of a rules based international order, and who is ultimately against the sovereign equality of States, and human rights for all members of the human family.[11]

The High Commissioner for Human Rights

It is opportune to focus on the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Following up on the recommendations of the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the General Assembly adopted on 20 December 1993 Resolution 48/141 creating the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In its preambular paragraphs, the Resolution recalls “that one of the purposes of the United Nations enshrined in the Charter is to achieve international cooperation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights”. In operative paragraph 4, the resolution enumerates the responsibilities of the High Commissioner, including “To enhance international cooperation for the promotion and protection of all human rights”[12].

According to its terms of reference, the raison d’être of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is to advance human rights by means of international cooperation, advisory services and technical assistance. It is regrettable that the secretariat of the OHCHR and the Human Rights Council seem to have forgotten this core vocation of the mandate and prefer to engage in confrontational politicking.

This is not to say that the OHCHR and the HRC should keep silent about violations of human rights wherever they occur. But the condemnation of abuses and crimes by governments cannot be the object and purpose of the OHCHR and HRC. It is crucial that the common effort to advance the enjoyment of human rights not be limited to rhetoric and lip-service to human dignity. The HR Council has proven to be largely ineffective because it is not a forum of civilized dialogue but rather an arena of gladiators where the knives are out and there are no doctors around.

Obstacles to international cooperation

Among the many obstacles to peace and international cooperation is the ongoing information war, the very high level of fake news, fake history and fake law disseminated by a complicit media that acts as an echo chamber for governments[13].

In the paragraphs above I have flagged some problems in the functioning of the HR Council’s UPR, notably the confrontational approach instead of cooperation based on the UN Charter. Double standards destroy the authority and credibility of the institutions. The “weaponization of human rights” means that human rights are being instrumentalized as weapons to attack other countries. This corruption of a noble humanistic principle is tantamount to blasphemy and sacrilege.

Conclusions and recommendations

I propose that the HR Council’s thematic mandates be strengthened, that confrontational country mandate be phased out. All UN mandate holders must rigorously observe the code of conduct (Resolution 5/2). A code of conduct for NGOs should be drafted and adopted by the General Assembly. Ngo’s that violate their code of conduct should be promptly stripped of consultative status, especially when they have engaged in ad hominem attacks or disseminated evidence-free allegations. The procedures of the UPR process should be revised to avoid duplication and to ensure constructive discussion and avoid the petulant and hypocritical tactic of “naming and shaming”. The method of appointing Rapporteurs should be revised to ensure that the best candidates are selected and not the “politically correct” candidates, not only the US and Europe-centered candidates (regardless of nationality). It is crucial to democratize the HR Council’s “Special Procedures” by ensuring that there is not only gender-balance, but also a balance of legal approaches and philosophies. An “Observatory” to ensure that double standards are not accepted in the debates should be established, a kind of “double-standards watch”. A follow-up procedure should be set up to monitor whether any of the recommendations of Rapporteurs are actually being followed, or whether the rapporteurs are just an assembly of loud-mouthed “namers and shamers” or even worse – irrelevant Cassandras.

Bottom line: International order means international cooperation. This entails goodwill, which currently is in short supply. It entails a commitment to playing by the same rules and not constantly trying to take advantage of the other guy.

Civil society should contribute to a rediscovery of the spirituality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, demand that their governments channel their tribal instincts into constructive cooperation paradigms. I cannot help but think of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and Homo Deus. Indeed, if we want to survive the 21^st century, we had better get our act together and rediscover the advantages of cooperation and compromise.

Notes.

[1] See « A Culture of Cheating” https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/28/a-culture-of-cheating-on-the-origins-of-the-crisis-in-ukraine/

[2] https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FRES%2F48%2F141&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop&LangRequested=False

[3] https://publicseminar.org/essays/why-naming-and-shaming-is-a-tactic-that-often-backfires-in-international-relations/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1369148120948361

[4] https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2013/11/statement-alfred-maurice-de-zayas-independent-expert-promotion-democratic-and

[embedded content]

[5] https://press.un.org/en/2006/ga10449.doc.htm

[6] See Chapters 2 and 3 of Alfred de Zayas, The Human Rights Industry, Clarity Press, 2023. https://www.claritypress.com/product/building-a-just-world-order/

[7] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/vienna-declaration-and-programme-action

[8] https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FRES%2F2625(XXV)&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop&LangRequested=False

[9] https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/solidarity/reviseddraftdeclarationrightInternationalsolidarity.pdf.

[10] Annex to Report A/HRC/35/35.

https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G17/099/39/PDF/G1709939.pdf?OpenElement

[11] A de Zayas, The Human Rights Industry, Chapter 8, “The Bottom Line”, Clarity Press, 2023.

[12] https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?Final

[13] A de Zayas, chapter 7 The Human Rights Industry, Clarity Press, 2023.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alfred de Zayas.

‘A permanent ceasefire means a free Palestine!’ Voices from the March on Washington for Gaza

The Real News Network — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 14:28:57 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

They Deem Us Weeds: This Is What It Means To Be Unspeakable

Abby Zimet — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 08:02:29 +0000

Sorry to those weary. But the horror in Gaza churns on, and we can't look away. Israel's emblematic killing of three of their own - pleading in Hebrew - is one awful sliver. Add killing 109 members of one extended family, a mother and daughter in a Catholic church, a 12-year-old being treated for an amputated leg; hospitals already a "bloodbath" stormed, bombed, its medical staff detained; hunger, hubris, lies; broken children pulling friends from rubble, and "human cruelties (too) intolerable to utter aloud."

"There is nowhere for flesh to hide in Gaza; nothing with a pulse is spared," writes one appalled observer. "Explosions merge into one another, and vibrant lives are burned, mangled and turned into unidentifiable carnage." In this "war against defenseless civilians" whose death toll now creeps up to 20,000 - now 19,453, 70% women and children - it was perhaps foreseeable Israeli soldiers would eventually kill three captives "mistakenly identified as a threat." What made it shocking was the revelation that Yotam Haim, Samar Al Talalka and Alon Shamriz, men in their 20s from Kibbutz Kfar Azza and Hura, were deliberately shirtless to show they were unarmed, shouting "Help us" in Hebrew, and holding a makeshift white flag. They had even scrawled "SOS" and "Help, Three Hostages" in Hebrew on a nearby wall; ever-discriminating Israeli soldiers thought it was a Hamas trap.

In a rare move, Israel officials actually acknowledged their error. An IDF spokesman expressed "deep remorse over the tragic incident," said troops didn't follow rules of engagement (but he "understood" the conditions that led to their act), declared a "comprehensive investigation (with) full responsibility and transparency,” and said "immediate lessons from the event had been learned," if grievously belatedly and largely ignored. Many remained unassuaged. Shamriz' brother charged the IDF with "abandoning," then “murdering” him (true); his father called his death "an execution - literally." A CAIR spokesman echoed many by noting the killing of unarmed, shirtless men waving a white flag "is deadly confirmation that Israeli troops are shooting anything that moves in Gaza," while thousands of furious Israelis turned out to chant "Deal Now!" and call for a ceasefire.

A shameless Netanyahu said their deaths “broke the hearts of the nation” - "If only something had been different," he bleated. "We were so close to embracing them" - before quickly pivoting to, "But this is war" and returning to the hollow vow to "continue until 'victory.'" Israeli president Isaac Herzog similarly prattled, "We all embrace at this time the families whose worlds were destroyed" before declaring, "The righteousness of the way is clear and does not change for a moment." Again, many were skeptical. The UK's former defense secretary argued that Israel's “original legal authority of self-defense is being undermined by its own actions," and in the wake of Netanyahu’s many failures, if he thinks a killing rage will rectify matters, then he is very wrong." Instead, he suggested, His tactics will fuel the conflict for another 50 years."

Hamas itself seemed to confirm that. After their armed wing posted a video on Telegram of three elderly Israeli hostages pleading they be spared death amidst Israeli air strikes - “We do not understand why we have been abandoned here" - a Hamas official held a news conference in Beirut following one by Israel's and America's defense chiefs vowing solidarity. "These are the invaders the sands of Gaza will swallow," he said, pondering what "experience" the US is sharing with Israel. "Are we talking about the victories in Vietnam? Or their victory in Afghanistan after 20 years? The only experience to be shared is killing women and children, and destroying hospitals, houses and schools." They could have added Israel's genocidal rhetoric on Gaza: "Just like mowing your front lawn, this is constant hard work. If you fail to do so, weeds grow wild and snakes begin to slither around in the brush."

And so to the unspeakable. In a clear but confoundingly ongoing war crime, Israel is targeting, bombing and dismantling the health system, where a handful of barely functioning hospitals survive in an enclave that once held 36. They' are all at 200% capacity, with thousands of displaced people seeking shelter along with wounded patients; many lack electricity, food, water, pain medication; conditions are "unbearable," over 300 medical staff have been killed; many more have been arrested or forced to evacuate. When UN workers recently got into Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital to deliver supplies, they described "a bloodbath" and "horror scene," with so many trauma and other critical patients being treated on the floor health workers must step around them: "They’re basically just bleeding on the floor.” Monday, the head of Shifa's emergency department was killed in an air strike with his wife and 5 children.

Israeli drones just hit Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, home to 3,000 displaced people, 100 staff, 65 patients and 12 children in intensive care; then soldiers stormed inside, forcing out those sheltering, arresting over half its staff and its director, now missing. At Al-Ahli Hospital, they attacked, rounded up wounded patients, arrested most of the staff and two doctors. Tanks shelled Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 12-year-old Donia Abu Mohsen, getting treatment for a leg amputated after being hit in an earlier airstrike that killed her parents and siblings. At besieged al-Awda Hospital, staff reported an Israeli sniper "who kills everyone who moves," including a nurse and pregnant woman with her sister-in-law; its medical staff were stripped, detained, interrogated; its hospital director was the third to be arrested and taken to an unknown location.

Meanwhile, renewed shelling is killing hundreds more Palestinians. They include veteran Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaga, 45, hit by a strike on a UN school in Khan Younis and left to bleed out for five hours while IDF soldiers fired on medics trying to reach him; Al Jazeera is reporting his murder to the ICC. Mass deaths were also reported in strikes on Jabalia and Nuseirat refugee camps. An IDF sniper killed a mother and daughter inside Gaza's Holy Family Parish, where Christian families have sought refuge; one was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety; seven more were wounded as they protected others in the church. Earlier, IDF rocket fire targeted the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa, home to 54 now-homeless disabled people, and destroyed their generator, solar panels, water tanks. The Pope finally lamented that "unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire.”

Another mass grave - adding to 122 so far - was uncovered at the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School with the remains of dozens of civilians. The IDF is detaining Palestinian children as young as 12 and adults as old as 70; hundreds are held handcuffed, blindfolded, shirtless in a facility near Beersheba. The UNRWA chief warns that, for the first time, Gazans "could start dying of hunger...We are now going into starvation." The head of an Israeli local council called for Gaza to be "flattened completely, just like Auschwitz," with Gazans "loaded" on ships and taken to camps elsewhere "so the whole world will learn what Israel can do." Israel's Air Force insists they use only "high-precision" bombs and don't "need to change our principles." The UN Security Council postponed a vote after the U.S. rejected a call for a "cessation of hostilities" but said it might accept a "suspension of hostilities." (Jesus Fucking Christ.)

A drone strike near Nuseirat Refugee Camp killed five children, ages 8 to 13, playing outside their home. A young woman described an air strike she survived with, "The night was horrible. The bombing was everywhere. We are scared." A woman whose children were all killed asked, "Are we not human?" A father searched for four days to bring his daughter some bread. Nearby children cried for water. A mother pined for death to join her children. A child who survived too many - any - airstrikes said, "We have aged beyond our years." A Knesset member proclaimed, "The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves." And a Palestinian academic charged Zionism's cynical "weaponizing of collective Jewish trauma to justify cruelties committed against others" has created the "hellscape" that is Gaza - for children, "the waking nightmare that has encapsulated their entire lives.".

"Children in Gaza close their eyes and see nothing but devastation. They open their eyes to the same," writes Dina Elmuti, a trauma clinician living in Chicago, of a land where childhood is perennially disrupted and "horror stories rest beneath every square inch of debris." "They distinguish between the sounds of Israel’s weaponized aerial drones and warplanes," she writes. "Children write their names on their limbs to be identified should they be dismembered or separated from their family following bombardments. These are the soul-shattering lessons that no child should ever have to learn, but children in Gaza learn them alongside the alphabet." "In Gaza, children grow up fluent in a language of grief and trauma," she says. "The images of mutilated corpses, the odor of decaying bodies, will stay with them." This "is what it means to be unspeakable." One weeps.

— (@)

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

[Russell Means] Knowing Who You Are: Lessons from Native America

info@alternativeradio.org — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 22:00:51 +0000

For years the indigenous peoples of the U.S., after having been dispersed and decimated and relegated to reservations, were reduced to caricatures. We all knew Indians and their culture. There was the familiar medicine man, the trading post, Geronimo and Crazy Horse, papooses and squaws, tepees and tomahawks, war dances and war parties. Tonto was the epitome of faithfulness and subservience. The formation and rise of the American Indian Movement, AIM, in the late 1960s and early 1970s did much to break down conventional stereotypes. AIM, through its actions at Wounded Knee, Alcatraz, Mount Rushmore and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, demonstrated that Native Americans could and would fight back against racism and oppression. Recorded at the Boulder Public Library.

This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.

[Russell Means] Knowing Who You Are: Lessons from Native America

info@alternativeradio.org — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 22:00:51 +0000

This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.

Solving the climate crisis means ending our addiction to economic growth

Emilia Reyes — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:05:11 +0000

But degrowth in the Global North will not work unless it is done alongside reparations for the Global South

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Emilia Reyes.

What The Israel-Hamas War Means For China #Israel #Hamas #China #Palestine

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 10:00:04 +0000

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Conservation in the 21st century means looking beyond the environment

Grist Creative — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 14:32:46 +0000

To combat the biodiversity crisis, the Sierra Club supports establishing a national goal to conserve at least 30 percent of U.S. land, and 30 percent of U.S. ocean areas by 2030. Known as the 30×30 Agenda, this campaign has the potential to not only benefit wildlife, but improve outdoor equity and expand representation of historically marginalized groups on public lands. This three-part series explores the potential implications of such measures from locations across the country.

Growing up in the shadows of the Castner Range near El Paso, Texas, Ángel Peña saw the mountain range on his way home from elementary school every day. Where Mexican yellow poppies once bloomed every spring, he watched developments rise, with the high desert shrinking by almost half over the course of his lifetime.

Now the executive director of the non-profit Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, he says, “I grew up there on Dyer Street, near the range, and never really understood its importance until I became an adult, and until I became a parent.”

For decades, local activists like Peña have organized to try to protect the remaining ecosystem as a national monument. He’s now leading Nuestra Tierra’s “Protect Castner” campaign, which emphasizes both the landscape and the unique multiculturalism that comes with it.

The area is predominately Hispanic, and home to many immigrants. The community holds strong ties to their Chihuahuan landscape, which has defined many families on the Frontera since before the Castner Range was given to the U.S. military in 1939.

Under its ownership, citizens couldn’t visit the range, and residents feared the constant threat of the Department of Defense selling the land to the highest bidder. People like Peña argued that by protecting the nearby desert, the area could increase outdoor accessibility for this underprivileged community.

Hopes surged when in Biden’s first few weeks in office, he signed an ambitious executive order, announcing a national goal of protecting a third of the country’s lands and oceans by 2030. He also launched the Justice 40 initiative, which aims to help marginalized communities through investment in climate-resilient infrastructure. The orders aimed to not only reduce climate impacts but strengthen cultural connections to wild places. This March, the Biden administration officially designated the Castner Range, along with Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada, as monuments.

President Biden announces the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument and the Castner Range National Monument in March 2023. Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images

The timing couldn’t be more urgent. Throughout the Southwest, landscapes are urbanizing, and finding places to get outside has become more difficult. “There is a huge lack of access to natural places, especially if you live in a bigger city,” said Skylar Begay, the director of tribal collaboration and outreach at Archaeology Southwest, a non-profit preservation group based in Tucson, Arizona.

Begay also highlights the ways class and climate injustice intersect, explaining how people from low-income communities bear the brunt of climate change. “Economic status plays a big part in access to these places,” Begay adds, citing city greenery structures as an example. “A lot of green spaces are in affluent places, and in the poorest parts of the city where a lot of marginalized communities often live, there are not even sidewalks, trees along the road, or access to shade.”

Physical inequalities within urban spaces are compounded by the expense it can take to get outside into wilderness. “In a lot of places, the activities you do outdoors require a big investment in gear, like snowsports,” Begay explains.

For communities who have lived and cultivated on these lands for centuries, the lack of accessibility prevents them from preserving their cultural traditions and architecture. This is the case for the Great Bend of the Gila, a sprawling stretch of the Sonoran desert that extends through rural Arizona, creating uneven mountains between the cities of Yuma and Phoenix. The land holds thousands of historical petroglyphs, some of which date back as early as 1699.

Today, thirteen nationally recognized tribes in the region have connections to the area, but as Phoenix expands, the desert is disappearing. Even though it is under federal stewardship, Begay says it needs to be better protected. “The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages its lands for multiple uses and sustained yield. There is a chance that these lands could be used for extraction and resource purposes,” Begay explains. Allowing mining in the area would cause the area to transition from something that “contributes to the climate crisis, rather than slows it down,” he adds.

Begay hopes to increase tribal involvement in how this land is managed. Advocates like the non-profits Respect Great Bend and Archeology Southwest are working to influence BLM decisions about the land. Their hope is that the land will eventually also be designated as a national monument.

As local campaigns for monuments finally succeed, thinking about ways that cultural values can be included in land management is a top priority for these communities. In a region like El Paso, Texas, and its neighboring urban area, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the Castner Range symbolizes the coveted “American dream,” Peña says. As something you can see from across the southern border, he explains “The mountain signified opportunity, an opportunity to put your family in a better place.”

While it took over 50 years to get the range protected, Peña says, “Now that we have a star on the map, we can begin to really tell the full story of our landscapes and our community.”

Scientists say we need to safeguard 30 percent of America’s land by 2030 to avoid mass extinction and climate catastrophe. The U.S. ranks as one of the top countries in the world when it comes to wilderness-quality land. Right now, roughly 12 percent of that is protected land—and the Sierra Club has played a role in saving nearly all of it. That means we have to protect more lands in the next decade than we did in the last century. With an ambitious agenda and strong local advocacy, we can still conserve much of these natural areas. Every acre counts.

LEARN MORE

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Conservation in the 21st century means looking beyond the environment on Oct 30, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist Creative.

What Ukraine’s operation against Russian-occupied Crimea means for the war

Isobel Koshiw — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 13:53:56 +0000

Ukraine has targeted the annexed peninsula of Crimea – on jet skis. But is it enough to turn the tide?

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Isobel Koshiw.

Letter from London: More Efficient Means for Going Backwards

Peter Bach — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 05:50:21 +0000

Did technology do a rare thing and actually take a turn for the better last week when a deal was signed for the UK to rejoin the EU’s important £80bn Horizon science collaboration? To some it was like finding a key to the back door of Europe for the first time since Brexit. Or like smuggling oneself out of Prison Brexit under the belly of a truly worthy fact-checking vehicle. (The UK research community is said to be elated over this.) More

The post Letter from London: More Efficient Means for Going Backwards appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Bach.

Musician Kristian Matsson on redefining what it means to be successful

Miriam Garcia — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 07:00:00 +0000

You play different instruments, but I’m curious to know about your relationship with your voice and with singing. I’ve been listening to your albums and I’ve noticed how it’s changed. Was singing something that you were comfortable doing from the beginning? How has this relationship with your voice evolved over the years?

I’ve been comfortable with singing all the time. I come from a garage rock and punk background. So in the beginning, I didn’t care about singing pretty, and I am super grateful that I have this thing in my life that I can express myself in such an abstract way. Even if I write a song and have the lyrics, the song can be different every night because I can sing it in a different way. In the early records, I was super into lo-fi recordings, so I would record myself on these old tape recorders that always weren’t true to speed or pitch when you played it back. And the recordings had a special timbre.

But then also at the beginning when I started playing as Tallest Man on Earth, I played in very small venues with really bad PAs or not a PA at all. And I came from a punk background where I just needed to be heard. And I would project my voice just to make it cut through. And it worked. I could put on a little rock show, even though I was seemingly a little singer-songwriter. But I could run around, I could yell because I had to, that was the only way to be heard. But over the years, I’ve started to play at bigger venues with great PAs where I don’t have to yell. And I would happily adapt to that because then I could finally have some dynamics and have so many different voices that we have throughout music history that I love that I could try to be inspired from.

You also are good at engaging with the audience and working with the crowd. Is there something that you learned throughout the years on how to engage with the audience?

When I played in a rock band I didn’t have to play guitar. I could literally be out in the crowd and I could be very close to the audience. So I took that with me when I started playing this kind of music. I don’t consider a show where it’s just me standing on stage, singing any song, and expecting people to just witness that. My philosophy around any show is that it can’t happen without us all being in the same room. I can’t just close my eyes and sing the songs, I need to ride the energy of the whole room.

The show is created by everyone in the room. And that’s why some songs sound different. I play an old song with a slightly different energy because that is the energy of the room. Because if I connect to the energy of the room, then my performance will be more powerful. It’s really important to me to make people feel like they’re a part of the show. And it’s something that on another scale, it’s a pretty amazing thing that a stranger and I can stare into each other’s eyes. It’s a safe space to do that because I can’t really do that in the street. But at a show, I can do that. And it’s okay for everyone to stare at me. It’s a different type of meeting that I don’t have access to anywhere else.

In your previous albums, you were mostly working solo, and part of it was because you thought that you didn’t know what you were doing, so you would prefer to do everything yourself. Is there freedom in creating from an unknown place? How was that process of allowing others to join and share creative experiences, energy, and collaboration?

In the early days, when I just started, I had a creative freedom that I am now constantly working to find. And I do find my way back to it, but now it’s a more deliberate process of trying to trick myself into getting into that state of just playfulness and not caring about anything. When I started doing The Tallest Man on Earth songs, I had no plan of releasing them or thought this would be a career because I was in a rock band. I was just having fun on the side. I was listening to a lot of folk music and old field recordings. I was just having fun and not thinking about what it would become.

When I was younger, I was skateboarding a lot. I was listening to music and skateboarding. There were two songs, that are widely different: DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” And I remember skateboarding to them and they made me just stop. And the world felt so cool. I would look at the horizon and be like, “Wow, the world…” That feeling of just the world getting bigger just from a song. Then I toyed with it like, “Maybe I can do that one day, I’m just going to do the things that I feel most passionate about.” And I did that and I had this beautiful freedom of creativity because there was no product, or it was just having fun or just having an outpour of somewhere to channel anxiety and how weird life is. It was just this amazing thing. And then someone asked me to do a show and I did it, I wrote more songs, I released albums, and then here I am.

Now, I sit in the studio and I hear myself write a song and say to myself, “Oh, this is good, Kristian, yeah, this is great,” and then I realize that I’m making a cover of myself on an old song that worked in the past, and I have to fight that. I have to forget that I have a career. Forget about all the things that have been given to me. I come from a country where we are very well taken care of. And I had a lot of jobs and I’ve gotten security from what I do. But I just have to forget about that when I create. I can’t think about, “Oh, you have a very secure and great life and people like you. So write stuff that will keep that going.” Because that never works.

Then I catch myself and I realize, “Oh, this is bullshit. This is not great.” It can become a self-torturous, this greater process of having to deal with your little ghosts and fears all the time. And that has probably also led to not having the greatest confidence. If you have to spend time with your own thoughts things get harder, all the best things happen when you don’t listen to your thoughts. When you’re in the moment, in the flow.

I have so many talented friends. They write amazing songs and are great, amazing musicians. And I never thought of myself as that. So then it was just easier instead of like, “Oh, I could book that great studio and I could ask these people if they want to play on this record” to be more like, “I’m not sure if this song is good, so I’ll just do it myself.”

So that’s been the process. And I’m happy with every album I made because it’s been a little snapshot of what happened there and then. But then I came to a point during the pandemic when, after a while of not writing at all, I was just stuck on my little farm in Sweden and didn’t see any people, and I realized that writing music has always been me being inspired by interactions with other people. With friends, strangers, and things that have happened with friends, strangers, or lovers.

And, for most of my adult life, I’ve been traveling and at one point I didn’t do it, so I just stopped writing because everything I wrote was just dark and depressing, and no one wanted to hear that. I realized that I was going to get to do it again. Life is too short to fall into self-pity of just thinking you’re not good. So, for the first time, I asked the people that I look up to, and we went to this amazing studio. From that moment, it was just something that just let go of me, let go of myself and felt this new freedom and felt this confidence, and could just lean into this amazing thing that is creating together with others.

There’s stuff that I would never have been able to imagine, myself, from my creativity. It’s beautiful, it wasn’t hard at all, because people were super into playing. I was just at that point when I realized I was going to get to do this again, I was going to get to tour again, then something else happened. I don’t care if I’m popular, I’m just going to do this. I’m a lifer in this. I’m going to do this forever.

You mentioned this fact of realizing that you were creating a song, but it was a cover of what you previously created. How were you able to fight or break that habit of redoing the same thing?

I would just throw those songs away. I found this weird indicator in me when I know that something is what I think is a good song. It’s always when I sit and I play something that I’m feeling really good in my body when playing it. But then also a little ashamed, I feel like almost blushing, like, “This is stupid. This is silly. I could never record this.” And I have many of those on my new album. But I’ve learned over the years when I get that feeling of shame and that’s silly, that it’s good. But there’s something in me, call it ego or whatever, that just wants to be safe, just wants to not push in any new direction or show real emotion or just do something that’s safe. And that is the part of you that wants to write covers of yourself, and who gets upset inside of you when you try to go with what you want to do.

On your most recent album, Henry St, there’s a song that has the same name that is about being a person in this world. What was the process of writing this song?

Well, when I write a song, it’s not just about me. My personal life is in there, but it’s also a lot from observing the world around me. And that’s why it’s in “Henry St,” because I was observing a lot of people from the windows of my apartment, and spending time with others in different careers in the city. That’s how the song starts, just living in this society where individualism has been the work and the path in capitalism, where you need to be important, and you need to sell your brand. In this view, success is that you are seen. It sounds lame coming from a white middle-aged man who has had success, but I still observe that. And then it’s not working out, it’s those struggles and we find success and we’re still not happy, we don’t know what we’re looking for because we’re chasing this thing that we think is happiness.

I used to live a very conditional life. I just needed to figure out the place where, the right family situation, and the right love, and then after that, I would be happy. But you just walk around being miserable, because you’ll never really get to a point where life is super easy. So the song it’s about that struggle. I’m trying to still be hopeful in a pretty messed up world. And then in that song, there is some glimmer of hope out there that is not expressed in the lyrics, it’s in the piano outro. But there’s something thankfully stubborn in your head that still believes in true love, in the good man, the good in yourself.

You have been thinking about what success looks like.

With this new peace and confidence in my life, I know what is important. Success to me is that now, I sit on this great tour bus, my crew is some of my dearest friends, my front of house, my sound engineer. That is success, that we get to have a very cool job that we get to do together. And I can employ people that get to do what they love and what they’re good at. Success is that we can play in many venues and that so many people come to my shows. That is enabling many of us to do the job we love. In the beginning, or when my career took off around, I was playing solo with a very small crew. I remember this vividly. The first time I played at the Sydney Opera House I was just there myself with this little crew. Then after the show, there was no one in there, I was just by myself in the green room, because my little crew had to get all the stuff and there was no one to celebrate this moment with. I was just like, “Oh, so this is success. This is actually not that fun.”

I can imagine you in the green room.

It looks probably what you’re thinking. It’s like a massive Steinway, with a grand piano in there and champagne and a champagne bucket. And there’s a panoramic view over the bridge and you’re just like, “Okay, well, I can tell people now that I played here, and they will think it’s grand and all, but this is not creating peace in me or anything, or feeling better than I did before.” So the next time I went to Sydney Opera, I had a full band, probably because of that moment where I was just like, “I need to have some camaraderie in this, someone to share these things with.” So that has been success for me, to have amazing people around me to do this together.

At a show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, you also mentioned that in 2008 you played there for the first time when you were the opening act for Bon Iver. If you could go back and say something to 2008 you, what would you say to him?

Well, it was also such a lovely and way scarier time. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I do take inspiration from that little guy. Because I was ashamed of playing some of my earlier songs, not on stage, I always feel great playing them. I was just a little ashamed because young 22-year-old Kristian didn’t know English so well and just made these songs to play them. But I realized that in 2008 Kristian was also kind of fearless. Just saying yes to that, to work. I had never toured in America before and never played in that kind of venue before. But I said yes to it and I did it, and I wrote those songs just because I didn’t care. Young Kristian has been a good inspiration to just, to get back to that, that’s that state of fearlessness. I should be inspired by that little dude.

Kristian Matsson Recommends:

Jan Johansson’s Jazz på svenska

Merlin Bird ID app

Swedish Lapland — the Arctic part of Sweden!

Air-fried pointed cabbage with butter

Independence Day and Independence Day: Resurgence

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Miriam Garcia.

Two Clarifications on What it Means to Meaningfully Refuse American Fascism

Paul Street — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 05:59:51 +0000

This might be a good moment for some clarification. I have spent a lot of time describing Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump and his backers and party as fascist over the last seven years. I’m serious about that description. I’ve published numerous essays and book chapters explaining how Trump and his party have More

The post Two Clarifications on What it Means to Meaningfully Refuse American Fascism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Street.

What Prigozhin’s death means for Russia

Jeremy Morris — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 16:51:16 +0000

There is some ambiguity around how, exactly, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed. But that is useful to Putin

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Jeremy Morris.

On Maui, returning home means confronting toxic risks

Lylla Younes — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 08:30:00 +0000

Steve McQueen walked through the rubble of his neighbor’s home last Friday under the late afternoon sun, clad in a pair of slippers and loose fitting blue jeans. After fleeing from the fire that razed parts of Lahaina in West Maui two weeks ago, the 31-year-old returned to a neighborhood that he didn’t recognize anymore. The front yards, once awash with the shouts of children playing, were silent. The homes directly across from his were eviscerated; Others, like his family’s, remained intact. His parents started sleeping five miles away at the hotel where his father works, but he decided to stay put to help older neighbors on his street.

“If my neighbors don’t leave, I’m not gonna leave them,” McQueen said. “I’m the youngest [left] in this neighborhood.”

Destroyed houses and cars lie across from Steve McQueen’s home in Lahaina. Gabriela Aoun / Grist

But staying put comes with its own set of risks. A growing body of research has demonstrated that wildfires leave a trail of toxic chemicals behind. If local governments don’t take proper precautions to contain and eliminate the contamination, residents risk being exposed to dangerous concentrations of air and water borne chemicals for months or years, even if their homes escaped damage from the fires. According to disaster relief experts, quickly communicating these risks to locals is the best way to keep people safe.

The Hawai’i Department of Health and Maui County have tested the water for some contaminants, warned residents not to drink tap water even if it’s boiled, and recommended people wear personal protective equipment when sifting through debris. But people living in parts of West Maui and the island’s Upcountry region told Grist that what they’ve heard from local officials has been spotty and confusing, leading some to continue bathing and washing dishes in water that could be contaminated. Many say they feel that local officials have left them to fend for themselves.

“Number one, they are overwhelmed,” said Kurt Kowar, the director of public works in Louisville, Colorado, referring to officials at the Hawai’i Department of Health and the local water utility in West Maui. “And number two, they don’t really understand the science on this yet. There’s no manual to pull off the shelf.”

Search and rescue team members work in a residential area devastated by a wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. The blaze damaged hundreds of drinking water pipes, resulting in a loss of pressure that likely allowed toxic chemicals along with metals and bacteria into water lines. Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

Much of what is known about post-wildfire contamination is relatively new. In October 2017, the Tubbs Fire shot through Santa Rosa, California, destroying more than 5,000 homes and buildings and burning more than 36,000 acres. When residents began to trickle back into Santa Rosa a month later, the local water utility got a call about a bad smelling tap and decided to conduct some precautionary testing. To their surprise, the results revealed concentrations of the toxic chemical benzene at levels that the state deems unsafe for consumption.

Benzene is a cancer-causing compound that has been linked to reproductive health problems and blood disorders such as leukemia and anemia. Federal standards caution against drinking water with a benzene concentration above 5 parts per billion; In some parts of Santa Rosa, officials measured concentrations as high as 40,000 parts per billion. The utility quickly changed the local water advisory from “boil before use” to “do not drink,” a status that would remain in parts of the system for more than a year.

The events in Santa Rosa encouraged water utilities in other parts of the country to begin testing their systems for contaminants after wildfires. From central Oregon to northern Colorado, officials discovered that blazes had poisoned their water lines with chemicals like benzene, styrene, and naphthalene. The mechanisms of this contamination varied from place to place. When too many homes in an area are toppled, the pressure inside water distribution networks can plunge, allowing toxic gasses to get sucked into the system. In Santa Rosa, the intense heat from the fire caused plastic in underground pipes to absorb chemicals that continued to leach into the drinking water long after the fires were extinguished.

Anita Hofschneider

As climate change fuels more frequent and deadly blazes across the country, many officials are encountering risks that they didn’t know existed a few years ago.

“After disasters, there are no laws that require certain actions about drinking water safety,” said Andrew Whelton, a scientist at Purdue University and the country’s lead researcher on post-wildfire contamination. As a result, state and local officials that oversee water systems often “have little or no experience in making decisions [about] what to actually test for.”

The Hawai’i Department of Health and the Maui Water Department tested the drinking water around Lahaina for 23 different chemicals and found that none exceeded federal health limits, according to John Stufflebean, the head of the water utility. The few chemicals that were detected, such as benzene, were found in very low levels. He called the results “encouraging,” and added that the county and state plan to do several more rounds of testing and expand the number of chemicals tested before advising residents to drink the water again.

Whelton told Grist that any robust water sampling should include the more than 100 chemicals that have been discovered in drinking water systems after wildfires. Officials often to focus on benzene, Whelton explained, but burning materials found in homes— cleaning supplies, gym equipment— can produce all kinds of toxic compounds. He gave the example of a recent fire in Oregon in which benzene was not present in the water supply, but tests revealed other likely carcinogens, such as methylene chloride and tetrahydrofuran (chemicals not included in Maui’s initial round of testing).

Stufflebean said in the initial days after the fire, his agency was focused on securing the water system and taking samples, but now will be focused on getting information to the public. “We’re doing everything we can to get the word out,” he said, adding that they had been strapped for resources since a couple of his staff, including his lab manager, lost their homes.

Cheryl Brown filled jugs of water from a tanker near her home in Kula. Gabriela Aoun / Grist

After a wildfire, dangerous chemicals can also show up throughout houses — even those untouched by flames. Some of the earliest research into the impact of wildfires on indoor air quality was conducted just two years ago, after the Marshall Fire scorched more than 6,000 acres in Colorado in 2021. Researchers sampled the air inside fully intact homes and found that concentrations of pollutants were higher than they were outdoors. They also discovered that chemicals in the smoke that swept through those buildings had seeped into porous surfaces like furniture and insulation, and were slowly evaporating back into the air weeks after the fire.

Depending on the direction of the wind during a fire, “there could be lots of gasses and particles that [residents] really want to take care of and clean up carefully,” said Colleen Reid, a public health scholar at the University of Colorado, Boulder and one of the researchers who studied indoor air pollution after the Marshall Fire. She said she’d heard the reports of people moving back into neighborhoods ravaged by fire in Lahaina and said she was concerned about the kind of contamination they could face. “A community who doesn’t realize the danger of what they’re exposed to — that’s what I’m worried about here.”

Ideally, residents would not return until they are certain that their homes are safe, but that’s often not what happens. Insurance companies don’t always pay for temporary lodging, and locals are usually eager to check out the damage to their homes and start cleaning up, said Tricia Wachtendorf, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware who studies disaster relief.

“Some might have nowhere else to stay or feel compelled to stay on-site for emotional reasons, particularly if those they care about are still missing,” Wachtendorf wrote in an email.

Steve McQueen and his parents, Noralyn and Edgardo Orosco Molina, outside their home in Lahaina. Gabriela Aoun / Grist

McQueen said he feels like his neighbors in Lahaina could use his help. Every day, he hoses down the road in front of the house, hoping to get rid of the putrid smell that hangs in the air, which he attributes to rotting garbage that no one’s come to pick up. He’s spent the past week gathering supplies people may need — medications and vitamins, bottles of Ensure, a wheelchair. He found out that he shouldn’t drink from the tap after he saw a man sampling the water from a nearby hydrant, and asked him about it. Afterwards, he said he didn’t want his parents to come visit anymore and risk exposure to toxic chemicals.

A few blocks over, the Chen family was busy cleaning out the inside of their home, directly next to a house that burned down. “The air does not smell the best,” said Serena, 10, whose school was destroyed in the blaze. Her father, Adam, paused between carrying piles of belongings —couch cushions, trash— to the curb. “The air is not important right now, we want to come back and be normal,” he said, his voice betraying his frustration. The family’s restaurant burned to the ground in the fire.

The Chens spent the weekend cleaning out their home, which sits next to a burned-down house. Gabriela Aoun / Grist

Further up the hill in the neighborhood of Kelawea Mauka off Lahainaluna Road, James Tanaka, known to locals as Uncle Booboo, has been living in the same house for the past 33 years. Last Friday, he and his neighbor, Alex Freeman, said that they planned to stay in their homes because they were worried about looters, a fear echoed by numerous locals that Grist spoke to in the area. They wished that they had a clearer sense of how to protect themselves and their families from any potential contamination. With cable and internet down and no radio, they have been relying on word of mouth to understand their risks.

Communications from the government “haven’t been bad, they’ve been non-existent,” Tanaka said. Over the weekend, a family member sent him a map of the “affected areas” on the Maui county website — his house is just outside of it. As a result, he told Grist that he will go back to drinking water from the tap.

“I do not understand what data is available to make decisions [like that],” Whelton said of the map Tanaka’s family sent, adding that he hopes to learn more when he meets with the utility this week.

At a distribution center in Lahaina last week, volunteers were handing out baby formula, bottled water and other necessities. A notice warned people against drinking tap water, even if it had been boiled. Those who could get online could have found a warning on the state Department of Health’s website saying that bottled water should be used for “all drinking, brushing teeth, ice making, and food preparation.” The county website was later updated to advise residents to take short showers and not use hot tap water. But multiple experts that Grist spoke to said that the state Department of Health should go a step further and tell residents not to use the water for anything other than flushing the toilet.

James Tanaka, known as Uncle Booboo, has not left his home in Lahaina since the fires began. Gabriela Aoun / Grist

“I would caution people not to bathe in the water until some testing has been done to determine the extent of contamination,” said Kowar, who oversaw the response to the 2021 Marshall Fire, the deadliest and most costly blaze in Colorado’s history. Whelton echoed Kowar’s advice on avoiding skin contact with the water and added that residents should try not to run their taps too much, because any toxic chemicals within the water line could permanently contaminate their plumbing.

Experts frequently hail officials’ efficient and transparent response to the Marshall Fire as an example for the country. Kowar’s team moved fast to isolate parts of the water system that could contain toxic chemicals, and ran 80 to 100 samples every few days to determine the extent of contamination. According to Kowar, individual houses were marked with red tags if the sampling revealed elevated chemical levels, and the utility didn’t turn the water back on until their lines were flushed and tests determined it was safe.

Joost de Gauw, a chemist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studied indoor air quality after the Marshall Fire, said that a proactive approach is important since many people won’t be thinking about contamination right after a fire. Almost two years after blazes tore through towns in Boulder County, his team is still getting questions from residents whose houses were spared about whether lingering contamination could be connected to their emerging health problems. He assumes the same thing will happen on Maui.

“Right now, of course, it’s the trauma,” de Gauw said, “but with time, the people who did well are going to worry about this more.”

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Housing on Maui is scarce. Where will fire survivors go?

Jake Bittle

Two weeks after flames engulfed Lahaina, transforming entire neighborhoods into scenes reminiscent of war zones, the historic town is at the beginning of a years-long process of rebuilding that will force residents to confront difficult decisions and new realities. Despite that, many locals are determined to stay put, no matter what level of contamination they may face.

“We are Lahaina. The people are Lahaina,” Tanaka said. “We might have lost houses and stuff, but you cannot pull that out of us, you know what I mean? I touched it. I breathed, I bled it. I cried for it. There’s nothing else.”

Anita Hofschneider contributed reporting from Oahu and Gabriela Aoun Angueira from Maui.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline On Maui, returning home means confronting toxic risks on Aug 22, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

Cuba’s Worsening Food Crisis Means US Blockade Must End Now, Not Later

W. T. Whitney — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 05:59:59 +0000

Cubans individually had consumed only 438 grams of animal protein per month in 2022, and in May 2023, only 347 grams; recommendations call for ingestion of 5 kg monthly. Not enough chickens were been raised; poultry meat and eggs were scarce. Yields of corn, soy, sorghum and other crops are reduced and animal feed is mostly unavailable. Therefore, pork production is down, milk is unavailable to adults, and fewer cattle are being raised. Pasturage is poor, due to drought and no fertilizer.
More

The post Cuba’s Worsening Food Crisis Means US Blockade Must End Now, Not Later appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

Cuba’s Worsening Food Crisis Means US Blockade Must End Now, Not Later

W. T. Whitney — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 05:59:59 +0000

The post Cuba’s Worsening Food Crisis Means US Blockade Must End Now, Not Later appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by W. T. Whitney.

The ocean is shattering heat records. Here’s what that means for fisheries.

Max Graham — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 08:45:00 +0000

Scientists first spotted the Blob in late 2013. The sprawling patch of unusually tepid water in the Gulf of Alaska grew, and grew some more, until it covered an area about the size of the continental United States. Over the course of two years, one million seabirds died, kelp forests withered, and sea lion pups got stranded.

But you could have easily missed it. A heatwave in the ocean is not like one on land. What happens on the 70 percent of the planet covered by saltwater is mostly out of sight. There’s no melting asphalt, no straining electrical grids, no sweating through shirts. Just a deep-red splotch on a scientist’s map telling everyone it’s hot out there, and perhaps a photo of birds washed up on a faraway beach to prove it.

Yet marine heatwaves can “inject a lot of chaos,” said Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It’s not just gulls and sea snails that suffer. Some 100 million Pacific cod, commonly used in fish and chips, vanished in the Gulf of Alaska during the Blob. In British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, salmon runs – and the fishing industry that depends on them – floundered. The acute warming also triggered a toxic algal bloom that disrupted the West Coast’s lucrative Dungeness crab business.

“It occurred in this place where we have some of the best-managed fisheries in the world, and it still created all these impacts,” Free said.

The Blob was the largest and longest-lasting marine heatwave on record. It might also have been an early glimpse of what’s to come. Fish farms in Chile, scallop operations in Australia, and snow crab pots in Alaska have already fallen victim to oceanic overheating. The economic toll from a single occurrence on fisheries and coastal economies can be as hefty as $3.1 billion. The northeastern Pacific Ocean has experienced several hot spells over the past decade — including the Blob 2.0 — and it’s still experiencing one. As a result, six of the last seven Dungeness crab seasons in California have been delayed. Scientists predict more fisheries will collapse in coming years as climate change — and the ongoing El Niño weather pattern warming the Pacific — spurs more marine heatwaves

“I’m really worried,” said William Cheung, director of the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia. “This year we already know the temperature is crazy high.”

As the planet warms, marine heatwaves have grown more frequent and more severe. The world’s oceans have absorbed 90 percent of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses, and are as hot as humans have ever measured them. During a hotspot in late July, water off the southern tip of Florida reached 101 degrees Fahrenheit — toasty enough to fill a hot tub.

“That’s the highest water temperature I’ve ever heard of in the ocean,” said Steve Murawski, a fisheries biologist at the University of South Florida who has studied oceans for 50 years. “Fish species in particular are great canaries in our collective coal mine.”

Marine heatwaves can form in a number of ways, but in general they’re caused by changes in how the air and ocean currents move. When the wind weakens, the sea temperature tends to rise because warm surface water doesn’t evaporate as easily, and colder water doesn’t get churned up from the deep.

Shifts beneath the surface can trigger heatwaves, too. One appeared off the west coast of Australia in 2011 when a streak of warm water, some 100 miles wide and 3,000 miles long, surged south. It brought so much warmth from the tropics that ocean temperatures in the region rose almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. The extreme conditions stuck around for about three months, killing shellfish and forcing scallop and crab fisheries to close. To this day, the kelp forests, which provide crucial habitat for marine creatures like lobsters, haven’t recovered, said Alex Sen Gupta, an ocean and climate scientist at the University of New South Wales.

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Julia O’Malley

As the sea grows warmer, marine heatwaves are more likely to tip temperatures past the threshold at which coral, kelp, and other marine life can survive. In western Australia, heatwaves as intense as the one in 2011 occur roughly once every 80 years. They could arrive as often as once a year by 2100 if countries continue pumping carbon dioxide and methane into the air at high levels. Researchers pegged the chances of the Blob having re-emerged as strongly as it did in the Pacific Ocean in 2019 at less than 1 percent if it weren’t for human-caused warming.

How global warming alters the wind and ocean patterns that spawn marine heatwaves remains an “open question,” said Mike Alexander, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. Yet he and Sen Gupta don’t doubt that planetary warming and rising ocean temperatures are making marine heatwaves worse.

Fish that prefer cold water, like cod and salmon, are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves. Warm water forces them to work harder, which means they need more food to sustain themselves. At the same time, it can make prey less accessible — say, by keeping the zooplankton salmon feast upon from rising to the surface for an easy supper.

The heat also can restrict Pacific cod spawning habitat. Amid extreme heat in the Gulf of Alaska, their numbers tanked between 2013 and 2017. The population struggled to recover, so in 2020 the federal government closed the commercial season for the first time. The fish hauled out of the Gulf of Alaska have accounted for as much as 18 percent of the Pacific cod caught around the world. “It’s kind of devastating,” longtime cod fisherman Frank Miles, based in Kodiak, Alaska, told NPR at the time.

The cod harvest has since reopened, but other fisheries haven’t been as resilient. In 2021, Canada closed 60 percent of its commercial Pacific salmon harvests, which support an industry that employs more than 6,000 people in British Columbia.

As many as 30 million sockeye salmon migrated up British Columbia’s Fraser River in 2010. A decade later, only 291,000 salmon returned. The fish are declining for a number of reasons, but scientists say extreme ocean heat is a major culprit.

“We’re really seeing substantial declines in salmon productivity,” said Catherine Michielsens, chief of fisheries management science at the Pacific Salmon Commission. She said there’s a “real concern” that British Columbia is witnessing the end of its commercial salmon fisheries.

A researcher holds a Pacific cod after putting a satellite tag on it. NOAA Fisheries

It’s easy to focus on the heat during a heatwave, but high temperatures aren’t the only threat to fisheries. These weather patterns can cause a cascade of ecosystem changes, from algal blooms to shifting whale feeding grounds, that can wreak havoc on the fishing industry. That’s what happened in late 2015, at the tail end of the Blob. California, Oregon, and Washington delayed their Dungeness crab seasons — one of the West Coast’s most valuable seafood harvests — because the warm water spurred the growth of toxic algae, which catapulted a neurotoxin called domoic acid up the food chain. The crabs were more or less fine, but anyone who ate one might have wound up in the emergency room vomiting, lost some short-term memories, or even died.

When California finally opened its crab season after a four-month closure, West Coast fisherfolk had lost an estimated $97.5 million compared to the previous year. But the Blob added more trouble to the mix. The warm water pushed krill, humpback whales’ main grub, toward the coast and into crabbers’ territory. “There was this intense overlap between the Dungeness crab fishery and humpback whales that led to an enormous spike in humpback whale entanglements in crab-fishing gear,” Free said.

California’s Dungeness harvest rebounded with a strong catch in late 2016 and 2017, but it continues to face closures and delays due to concerns about toxic algae and trapped whales — a stark contrast from the pre-Blob era, when there were very few closures, Free said. “It’s putting the fishery on sort of a precipice right now.”

Chris Swim and Nick White stack crab traps in the parking lot of the Pillar Point Harbor on November 5, 2015 in Half Moon Bay, California. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The northeastern Pacific is not the only place where fisheries are feeling the heat. One place of particular concern is the Gulf of Maine — in the northwest Atlantic Ocean — which has experienced a marine heatwave every year since 2012, according to Kathy Mills, a fisheries ecologist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The Gulf of Maine is like a sink with two faucets: one has cold water moving south from the Labrador Sea, the other has warm water from the tropics moving north along the Gulf Stream. But in recent years the Gulf Stream, a strong current that travels from the Caribbean up the East Coast and across the North Atlantic to Europe, has shifted northward, and the Labrador Current has gotten warmer, Mills said. “Instead of turning them on in the balance they used to be on, now we’re turning on the hot water more, and the cold water is not as cold as it used to be.”

The result is that Maine lobsters, a bounty worth $725 million last year, have been growing faster and shedding their shells earlier. In the short term, the heat has been a boon for those who pluck them from the water, as it spurs growth and boosts lobster numbers. Business has been “booming,” Mills said. But if the trend continues, the critters might be forced to expend so much energy that they won’t be able consume enough food to reproduce or survive.

“Now we’re getting to a point where the temperatures have been so warm for so long, and they are continuing to increase,” Mills said. “We might already be seeing signs that the population is turning off its growth trajectory because of temperature.” One of those signs is that lobster babies are becoming less prevalent. The heat appears to be a reason, among others, that lobster fisheries have already collapsed farther south, where the ocean is warmer, in southern New England.

Frank Gotwals, a lobsterman and musican, plays guitar near the lobster traps he uses in the Gulf of Maine on July 9, 2019 in Stonington, Maine. Joe Raedle / Getty Images

There’s a silver lining, though: Lobsters that forage on cooler seabeds farther north, off the coast of Canada, might benefit from the heat; in fact, those populations have already been turning up in larger numbers. At the same time, “a whole suite” of species from warmer waters in the mid-Atlantic, such as longfin squid and black sea bass, both of which support multi-million-dollar commercial fisheries, have appeared a lot more frequently in the Gulf of Maine, where they used to be quite rare, said Mills.

On the West Coast, a similar range shift is happening with California market squid — footlong, white-and-purple mollusks. (You may have tasted the mild meat of a market squid if you enjoy calamari.) Ever since the Blob, the squid have been seen as far north as Alaska, well beyond their usual habitat in the seas off Mexico and California. The heatwave has ended, but the squid are still hanging out up north. There is talk of opening a new fishery.

“There are always going to be winners and losers,” Murawski said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The ocean is shattering heat records. Here’s what that means for fisheries. on Aug 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Max Graham.

War By Other Means: Short Selling JPMorgan

Ellen Brown — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 06:03:59 +0000

When the FDIC put Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank into receivership in March, a study reported on the Social Science Research Network found that nearly 200 mid-sized U.S. banks were similarly vulnerable to bank runs. First Republic Bank went into receivership in May, but the feared contagion of runs did not otherwise occur. Why not? As was said of Lehman Brothers fifteen years earlier, the targeted banks did not fall; they were pushed, or so it seems. One blogger shows how even JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, could be pushed — not perhaps by local short-sellers, but by China. And that is another good reason not to provoke the Chinese Dragon into “war by other means.”

The Targeted Crypto Banks

SVB, Signature and First Republic were not insolvent: they had sufficient assets (largely long-term Treasuries) to match their liabilities. They were just “illiquid”: they lacked enough readily available funds to meet the unanticipated deluge of deposit withdrawals in March. In fact, no bank could withstand a bank run in which 85% of its depositors demanded their money back in the space of three days, as happened to SVB that month.

As of December 31, 2022, SVB had roughly $211 billion in assets, which were primarily offset by $173 billion in deposit liabilities; but it had only $13.8 billion in actual cash and “equivalents” – liquid money available to meet withdrawals. It had been flooded with deposits from tech startups funded by venture capitalists, and the startups did not need loans. The deposited reserves had therefore been used to buy Treasury securities, at a time when interest rates were so low that only long-term securities provided an adequate return. Some were marked “hold to maturity,” meaning they could not be sold at all; and the rest could be sold only at a major loss, since old bonds attracted few buyers after interest rates on new bonds shot up in the last year.

Yet many other banks had followed that path, investing in long-term assets that could not be liquidated or could be liquidated only at a substantial loss. So why did only SVB, Signature and First Republic wind up in government receivership? As explained in my earlier article here, they were considered “crypto-friendly” banks. In a revealing article called “Operation Choke Point 2.0 Is Underway, and Crypto Is in Its Crosshairs,” blogger Nic Carter details the “coordinated, ongoing effort across virtually every US financial regulator to deny crypto firms access to banking services.”

Whoever instigated the raid on the three targeted banks, their stock was heavily short-sold, driving share prices down. This alarmed the venture capitalists, who alerted their tech startup clients. Word spread quickly by social media, and the bank runs were on.

The Infamous Bear Raid

In a 2010 article titled “Wall Street’s Naked Swindle,” Matt Taibbi showed that the bankruptcies of both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which triggered the banking crisis of 2008-09, were the result of targeted short sales. He wrote:

[W]hen Bear and Lehman made their final leap off the cliff of history, both undeniably got a push —especially in the form of a flat-out counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling.… Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.

Even countries have been victims of targeted short-selling of their currencies. One infamous case occurred in 1992. According to Investopedia:

George Soros is said to have “broken” the Bank of England and precipitated “Black Wednesday” in the U.K. in September 1992 as a result of massive bets he made against the British pound.… As a consequence, the pound rapidly devalued, leading to an estimated $1 billion profit for Soros and his Quantum Fund.

Bear raids were also responsible for the “Asian Crisis” of 1997-98. Again according to Investopedia:

The crisis started in Thailand when the government ended the local currency’s de facto peg to the U.S. dollar after depleting much of the country’s foreign exchange reserves trying to defend it against months of speculative pressure.

Just weeks after Thailand stopped defending its currency, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia were also compelled to let their currencies fall as speculative market pressure built. By October, the crisis spread to South Korea, where a balance-of-payments crisis brought the government to the brink of default.

No Bank Is Safe from a Targeted Takedown

Which brings us to the largest U.S. bank, J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM). First Republic, SVB and Signature were not small banks. The country’s second, third, and fourth largest bank failures, they had assets of $229B, $209B and $118B respectively. But unlike JPM, they were not GSIBs — Globally Systemically Important Banks. Credit Suisse, however, was; and it too went bankrupt after it was subjected to massive short selling and deposit withdrawals in March 2023. Even GSIBs can be vulnerable.

JPM, however, is the fifth largest bank in the world, with assets of $3.7 trillion. Who could possibly bring that behemoth down or have the motivation or assets to do it? In a March 28, 2023 post titled “How to Wreck a Big Old GSIB Bank,” an anonymous blogger going by the pen name “DeepThroat IPO” laid out a plausible scenario. He observed:

Interestingly enough, JPM has about the same amount of cash on hand (available for immediate wire out) as SVB did when it blew up … $ 27.7 Billion.

However, he wrote, it has other liquid assets, totalling about $884 billion. That sounds like a lot, but

JPM has about “$2.34 Trillion in hair trigger Deposit liabilities (gulp) on the books — 15% of the total $16T deposits sitting on the books of the 2,135 U.S. Banks with assets over $ 300 million — that can move anywhere in the world with a few mouse clicks.”

DeepThroatIPO argues that China has U.S. assets sufficient to trigger a bear raid on this gargantuan bank, largely because of the unique way it handles its own currency. In the domestic Chinese economy, yuan are used, and the PBOC can print them at will. Merchants exporting to the U.S. take their dollars to the bank, trade them for yuan, and pay their workers and suppliers in yuan, leaving the PBOC with “free” U.S. dollars. This maneuver is confirmed in Investopedia:

One major task of the Chinese central bank, the PBOC, is to absorb the large inflows of foreign capital from China’s trade surplus. The PBOC purchases foreign currency from exporters and issues that currency in local yuan currency. The PBOC is free to publish any amount of local currency and have it exchanged for forex [foreign exchange]. This publishing of local currency notes ensures that forex rates remain fixed or in a tight range. It ensures that Chinese exports remain cheaper, and China maintains its edge as a manufacturing, export-oriented economy. Above all, China tightly controls the foreign money coming into the country, which impacts its money supply.

Printing domestic currency is another measure applied by China. The PBOC can print yuan as needed, although this can lead to high inflation. However, China has tight state-dominated controls on its economy, which enables it to control inflation differently compared to other countries. [Emphasis added.]

DeepThroatIPO comments:

The key, for China, Russia, Middle East regimes, etc., is to set up these export relationships with legitimate Western Businesses, continually collect Western Currency, maintain a significant trade surplus, and reinvest the currency in Western Assets, while keeping the RMB/Yuan “walled off”.…

The goal is not “free trade”. The goal, from the Chinese-axis perspective, is the accumulation of Western currency and financial assets … and it’s been working beautifully for more than twenty-five years … and it will continue to work as long as the Chinese-axis Trade Surplus with the rest of the world continues to remain substantially positive….

We know that the Party has been successfully walling off the currency since there are no meaningful RMB/Yuan balances anywhere on the planet (other than the mainland). There’s no need … because nobody uses Chinese currency for commerce/investing (… other than on Mainland China). Today, the World’s 2nd Largest Economy only lets about 2% of global settlements occur in RMB/Yuan.

The Chinese government and affiliated Chinese entities have purchased not just U.S. Treasuries with their dollars, but U.S. stocks, real estate, farmland and other assets. DeepThroatIPO calculates that the Chinese have “accomplished constructive control of approximately $58.58 Trillion of Western Financial Assets, stealthily hiding in Western Financial Markets, likely in plain sight.… [T]hat $58.58 Trillion, focused directly on select targets … is more than enough to sink our previously thought unsinkable fleet of battleship banks.”

Not that China would, but it could. In peaceful times, it profits from trade with the U.S., just as we need Chinese goods. But “all is fair in war,” and it is prudent to be aware of these covert potential weapons before fanning the flames of aggression. Cooperation serves the people on both sides of the conflict better than war.

Other Defenses

DeepThroatIPO admonishes that when a financial institution perceives that it is under attack, there needs to be a “circuit breaker”:

Our Banks should NOT blindly wire out all of the current withdrawal requests (or accept the incoming wires).… Whenever withdrawals or deposits breach normal daily volume by a significant amount, at any particular institution we need to stop.…

We cannot continue to come to the nebulous conclusion that “Oh boy … it looks like we a need another systemic liquidity boost” and blindly provide it. We need to slow the entire process down.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPM, argues that shortselling bank stock should be banned. Better yet, as argued in my earlier article here, would be to make all shortselling illegal.

Another possibility comes to mind. Banks are vulnerable to shortselling only if they are publicly-traded. State-owned or city-owned banks are impervious to that sort of attack. The Bank of North Dakota, our one and only state-owned bank, is a stellar example. It cannot be short sold and it is not vulnerable to bank runs, since over 95% of its deposits come from the state itself. The Bank of North Dakota also acts as a mini-Fed for local North Dakota banks, extending a lifeline in the event of capital or liquidity shortages.

Like the U.S., China has a vast network of local banks; but most of its banks are government-owned. We may need to follow suit as a matter of defense. We need to ensure, however, that the governments owning our local banks actually represent the people. Banks should be public utilities, serving the public interest.

• This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ellen Brown.

War By Other Means: Short Selling JPMorgan Chase

Ellen Brown — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 05:39:46 +0000

When the FDIC put Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank into receivership in March, a study reported on the Social Science Research Network found that nearly 200 midsized U.S. banks were similarly vulnerable to bank runs. First Republic Bank went into receivership in May, but the feared contagion of runs did not otherwise occur. More

The post War By Other Means: Short Selling JPMorgan Chase appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ellen Brown.

Right-wing extremism means homeschooling surge in US should concern us all

Chrissy Stroop — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:18:21 +0000

With the book-banning right targeting mainstream schools, homeschooling is surging. More regulation is needed

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Chrissy Stroop.

Anti-espionage means YOU!

By Chris Taylor for RFA — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 06:08:00 +0000

China's security ministry has opened its official account on the country's popular everything app, urging its citizens to participate in counter-espionage work.

“Counter-espionage requires the mobilization of [the] entire society,” the Ministry of State Security said on WeChat on Tuesday.

WeChat has more than 1.3 billion active monthly users – think of it as Twitter, Facebook and daily banking all rolled into one.

The ministry calls on citizenry to “creatively carry out education about enemies [as defined by national security] and rule of law propaganda, strengthen case law interpretation, educate the masses through typical cases, enhance the awareness of counterespionage of the whole society, and form a strong joint force to maintain national security.”

State nationalist tabloid the Global Times opined, "National security is the foundation of national rejuvenation.”

It added that putting all of China on an anti-espionage footing is a result of new “criminal activities” that endanger national security.

These, the tabloid wrote, include “setting up illegal maritime surveillance to steal China's military information, flipping Chinese scientists in the aerospace field with illicit payments, and concocting ‘forced labor’ lies about Xinjiang.”

Western China observers called the move “chilling.”

“This literally sent chills down my spine. The Chinese Ministry of State Security calls on all Chinese citizens to participate in counter-espionage work; in other words, spying on fellow citizens and foreigners,” said Strategy Risks CEO Isaac Stone Fish on Tuesday.

This week’s move follows last month’s passing of a Foreign Relations Law that redefined espionage.

The newly revised law – which has caused much consternation among foreign businesses operating in China as it theoretically labels the gathering of any information as espionage – gives Chinese law enforcement greater investigative powers. It took effect in July.

The U.S. and China are arguably locked into an escalating collision of their respective security interests, and as the U.S. ups the ante with, for example, restrictions on exports of sensitive technology to China, Beijing counters tick-for-tack.

An all-society drive to nab enemies of the state – not entirely new; China has long employed a “vacuum cleaner” approach to spycraft – suggests the escalation is not poised to abate.

In May this year, Chinese state media reported President Xi Jinping as saying that China’s national security issues were “considerably more complex and much more difficult” to deal with, adding that China needed to be ready to deal with “worst-case and most extreme scenarios”, in order to withstand “high winds and waves and even perilous storms.”

Last week, Beijing reacted strongly to CIA director William Burns’ comments at the Aspen Security Forum about “progress” in rebuilding its spy networks in China.

China would take measures “to firmly safeguard our national security,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She also noted the hypocrisy of spying on China, while criticizing China for engaging in espionage on the U.S.

U.S. ‘empire of hacking’

China frequently accuses the U.S. as being an evil “empire of hacking.”

On recent occasions the U.S. has accused China of infiltrating its emails and most recently installing malware that may compromise military and civilian power grids, communications systems and water supplies, China has lashed back, calling the U.S. “the world’s No.1 hacking group.”

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, recently told Radio Free Asia that the U.S. was “actually the biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief” and added that the U.S. government should stop “spreading disinformation [about cyber-spying on emails] to deflect public attention.”

A woman walks past WeChat mascots inside TIT Creativity Industry Zone where the Tencent office is located in Guangzhou, China May 9, 2017. Credit: Reuters

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, China’s Ministry of State Security was not coy about calling on citizens countrywide to become loyal spies for the motherland in its WeChat post. The ministry said citizens “should be encouraged to participate in counter-espionage work and should be commended, rewarded and protected,” Reuters reported.

In July, Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote in a Chinese legal magazine that political security is “core” to the security of the security of China’s political system,

“The most fundamental is to safeguard the leadership and ruling position of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics,” Chen wrote.

Arbitrary detentions

The U.S. State Department has urged Americans to reconsider travel to China over concerns of arbitrary detention as well as the use of exit bans.

Visiting Beijing in June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised three cases of wrongfully detained U.S. citizens. One is Kai Li, a Shanghai-born American businessman detained in 2016 and sentenced to 10 years in prison on spying charges.

Cheng Lei, a Chinese-born Australian journalist for CGTN, the English-language channel of China Central Television, attends a public event in Beijing on Aug. 12, 2020. Credit: AP

In March, Australian ambassador to China Graham Fletcher said he was denied permission to sit in the public gallery for the trial of Australian national and Chinese state TV anchor Cheng Lei on charges of alleged breaches of the national security law.

Cheng was detained on suspicion of “spying” in August 2020, and continues to be held incommunicado for two years since.

Most recently, in July, Taiwan businessman Lee Meng-chu, also known as Morrison Lee, was allowed to leave China for Japan after serving nearly two years in prison for “spying.”

Lee told RFA that he was a political hostage targeted due to anger in Beijing over Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s vocal support for the Hong Kong protest movement, and her government’s criticism of the Hong Kong authorities’ response.

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chris Taylor for RFA.

Our global culture of war means guaranteed profits for the arms industry

Paul Rogers — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:20:57 +0000

For the arms industry to flourish, it needs wars, preferably protracted, destructive stalemates in far-off places

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Paul Rogers.

Labor Movement Means More Than Unions

Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 23:25:24 +0000

Since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, headlines have focused on union organizing victories at Starbucks and Amazon. But a recent New York Times story declaring “New York Delivery Workers Are Getting a Bump in Pay” reminds us that workers outside the union movement are part of the labor movement too. However important, unions are just one part of a larger labor movement that consists of all workers who collectively struggle to improve their conditions of employment, whether through union based collective bargaining or by taking to the streets for political action. New York’s delivery workers provide a good example of the latter.

New York City’s more than 60,000 gig delivery workers, who navigate through hazardous traffic on electric bikes, currently net about $11 per hour, including tips, after deducting expenses. That’s significantly less than New York’s $15-hour minimum wage. But not for much longer. On June 12, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DWCP) announced that the minimum wage for food delivery workers in New York City will be $17.96 per hour before tips beginning on July 12, 2023, and increase to $19.96 on April 1, 2025. Thanks to the political efforts of the delivery workers, New York has now become the first major city in the country to guarantee a minimum wage for gig delivery workers.

How did the delivery workers achieve this milestone? Delivery gig workers are independent contractors who work primarily for Door Dash and Grub Hub. Since they are not employees, they are not protected by federal labor laws. They lack collective bargaining rights and do not have unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation. To get a decent minimum wage and better working conditions, political action was their only option. They turned to the City government for relief. The Workers Justice Project (WJP) – a workers’ center funded in part by the City Council – assisted first by creating an educational center in Brooklyn to inform these mostly immigrant workers of their legal rights as workers. The WJP then initiated a successful organizing campaign that eventually enabled workers to form a new organization, Los Deliveristas Unidos. With the backing of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and support from a coalition of community groups, the delivery workers launched a political campaign. They lobbied the Council and held mass public demonstrations designed to bring their plight to the public. In September of 2021, the City Council responded to their efforts by passing six bills that provided a decent minimum wage, public shelters with bathrooms, and more transparency from the company apps that track their activity and pay them. The DWCP delayed implementation until July 12, 2023, in order to review thousands of public comments. The May 23 issue of CUNY’s New Labor Forum provides a detailed analysis of the workers’ successful struggle. But the point of the case is clear: unions played an important role in the workers’ battle, but workers had to take political action independent of SEIU and TWU. In short, the labor movement means more than the union movement.

While New York’s delivery workers were making real gains through political action, union efforts at Amazon and Starbucks have stalled. Despite all the media attention, only one Amazon warehouse is unionized, and it has not yet negotiated a first contract. Several other organizing attempts at Amazon failed, including a nearly 2 to1 union defeat at a warehouse near the unionized plant on Staten Island. The Starbucks union drive has organized about 300 stores of its more than 15,000 locations, but not one of these newly unionized Starbucks stores has negotiated a first contract. Advised by the high-powered union busting law firm of Littler-Mendelson, Starbucks uses the strategy of delay to fight unionization. The company doesn’t negotiate in good faith, harasses current union workers until they quit, and replaces them with new employees less amenable to unions. This anti-union strategy is working: several of the unionized Starbucks, including one of the first to vote in a union, have recently voted to decertify. If workers don’t give up and kick the union out, Starbucks can close stores, which is just what it did to all the company’s locations in Ithaca, New York, a big college town. Closing stores doesn’t violate labor laws; harassing workers for their union activities does, but legal remedies are slow and unpredictable. Without labor law reform making organizing easier and providing more protections for union activists, the deck remains stacked against unions.

In contrast, New York’s delivery workers are not alone in using their collective power in the political arena to gain a decent minimum wage and improve their terms and conditions of employment on an industry-wide basis. Gig and fast-food workers across the United States – often with the help of unions – have had equal success by taking to the streets to pressure local and state governing bodies. With federal labor law reform unlikely, Starbucks and Amazon workers should consider adding concerted political action to their arsenal of organizing strategies. Collective bargaining is not the only path to a decent wage and good working conditions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

For Media, ‘Border Crisis’ Means Migrants Coming—Not Migrants Dying

Julie Hollar — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 19:37:30 +0000

As the pandemic-era border policy known as Title 42 ended last month, news outlets spent a great deal of time caterwauling about a “border crisis” and a “surge” that never materialized. But when an actual migrant child died in custody at the border, media concern was conspicuously muted, demonstrating once again that centrist media’s definition of a “border crisis” has less to do with human lives and more to do with partisan politics.

Title 42, an ostensible public health measure initially invoked under President Donald Trump, allowed the US government to expel migrants without due process or access to asylum (AP, 5/12/23). Though experts and even some judges declared it both illegal and inhumane, the Biden administration had continued the policy for all migrants except for unaccompanied youth (FAIR.org, 3/25/21). But when President Joe Biden announced an official end date to the federal Covid-19 public health emergency—May 11—Title 42 was scheduled to end with it.

‘Mobs and even rioters’

Time (5/8/23) reported that “on Thursday, May 11, one emergency will officially end and another may begin”—but what that new emergency might be was never spelled out.

The nativist right was predictably apocalyptic about the coming border policy change. Fox News, which mainstreamed the Great Replacement Theory with its regularly scheduled fearmongering about invading migrants (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), even put a doomsday clock on the lower-right corner of its screen for maximum effect.

The New York Post (5/12/23) ran a lengthy piece promoting frenzied warnings about potential “mobs and even rioters,” including the Border Patrol union’s assessment that without Trump’s border policies in place, “the American public is going to suffer,” and its prediction that “nobody except the cartel thugs is prepared for what’s about to hit us.”

But some centrist outlets played up a looming “surge” as well. On May 11, CBS Evening News warned that “the clock is ticking.” Time (5/8/23) offered the headline “Why the US May Be Days Away From a Border Crisis.” The article began, “At 11:59 pm on Thursday, May 11, one emergency will officially end and another may begin.” The emergency that’s officially ending, of course, would be the Covid-19 public health emergency; the one that “may begin” was an imagined border emergency precipitated by the US removing one controversial tool from its immigration policy toolkit.

The Time piece never quite spelled out exactly what that “emergency” might be beyond “a surge of people” attempting to cross the border, though it did quote a press release from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis warning of “catastrophic fallout at the border” without a Title 42–like policy in place.

‘Going to be chaotic’

Right-wing outlets like the New York Post (4/18/23) were delighted to hear Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeating their language.

Such coverage was due in no small part to the Biden administration’s own framing of the situation. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas described the federal government’s sending of troops to the border with the same “surge” language media used (ABC, 5/5/23): “What we are seeing is an operation that was stood up in 72 hours by the United States Border Patrol to address a surge.” Biden himself prepared the public for the worst: “It’s going to be chaotic for a while.”

But, while no one could have predicted exactly what would happen when Title 42 ended, the policies Biden had announced to replace Title 42 certainly appeared draconian enough to prevent the kind of migration apocalypse that media outlets anticipated (WOLA, 5/9/23). Biden planned to return to Title 8—normal US immigration law—but also introduced several new policies to make seeking asylum more difficult.

For instance, migrants now must show that they sought and were denied asylum in every country they passed through on their way to the US (a slightly modified version of Trump’s transit ban). They also must book an elusive appointment through the glitchy new CBPOne app, or be blocked from entering the US for five years.

While border apprehensions did increase in the days leading up to May 12, there was no massive “surge” after Fox‘s clock reached zero. Instead, border encounters actually dropped.

‘Barbaric and cruel’

Title 42 “is being replaced with restrictive and harsh policies that are going to make it very difficult for asylum seekers to be able to have a fair chance at seeking asylum in the United States,” an immigrant advocate told Source NM (5/12/23).

While the Post‘s “mobs and rioters” never materialized, it’s clear there continues to be a crisis at the border—a humanitarian crisis that will not be resolved by the end of Title 42 (FAIR.org, 3/25/21, 5/24/21). Source NM (5/12/23) reported that immigration rights advocates expected due process to continue to be subverted for those seeking asylum, “sacrificing protection in the name of speed.”

A delegation of rights groups (Human Rights First, 5/18/23) that visited the border as the new policies were implemented called them “barbaric and cruel” and expressed “grave concerns” that they

will endanger the lives of people seeking asylum, discriminate against many of the most vulnerable people seeking asylum, and vastly complicate asylum adjudications down the road.

Human Rights Watch (5/11/23) similarly warned that Biden’s new set of policies

will almost certainly lead to a rise in the already record number of migrants dying at the United States southern border, enrich criminal cartels, and return refugees to likely harm.

‘Crisis’ defined

One aspect of the humanitarian crisis continues to be the inhumane conditions at CBP detention centers. In one extreme example, eight-year-old Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez died in Border Patrol custody in Texas on May 17.

“She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her,” Anadith Reyes’ mother said of Border Patrol agents (CBS, 5/22/23).

The girl had been taken into CBP custody, along with her parents and siblings, eight days earlier after crossing the border, and had been diagnosed with influenza a few days later. (Migrants are not supposed to be held more than 72 hours.) The day of her death, her mother brought her to a medical unit three times, where she said agents refused to take Anadith to a hospital (Newsweek, 5/20/23).

This happened only a week after 17-year-old Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza died on May 10, in CBP custody in Florida.

A search of the Nexis news database found Anadith’s name mentioned on air twice across all major outlets: once on MSNBC (All In, 5/23/23) and once on the CBS Evening News (5/22/23). A search of Time‘s website for “Anadith” turns up no results.

The New York Times put border stories on its front page eight times in the three weeks starting May 5, the day Mayorkas warned of a “surge,” but the story of Anadith’s death never made it to the paper’s front page. At the Washington Post, border stories made front-page news six times during that period; as at the Times, the child’s death was not among them.

That lack of concern reveals corporate media’s true priorities. What is the “crisis” at the border if not the death of a child?

The post For Media, ‘Border Crisis’ Means Migrants Coming—Not Migrants Dying appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

What the Supreme Court’s ruling means for the future of wetlands

Lyric Aquino — Fri, 26 May 2023 10:15:00 +0000

On Thursday, the Supreme Court tightened the federal government’s ability to police water pollution, ruling that the Clean Water Act does not allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

The case, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, centered on an Idaho couple, Michael and Chantell Sackett, who tried to build a house on property they purchased in 2005. The property contained a marshland, and in 2007, the couple filled a soggy part of the property with sand gravel to prepare for construction. The EPA ordered them to stop construction and return the property to its original state. The Sacketts, instead, sued the agency.

In a 5-4 vote, the Court determined that wetlands, like the property owned by the Sacketts, can only be regulated under the Clean Water Act if they have a “continuous surface connection” to larger, regulated bodies of water,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito. Because there is no such connection on the Sacketts’ property, the ruling is in their favor.

The implications are far reaching: it’s estimated that more than half of the nation’s wetlands don’t meet the Court’s criteria, meaning developers, oil companies, farmers, etc. can contaminate clean water on unconnected wetlands without permits and would not be required to restore said wetlands if damaged.

The problem with unregulated development in wetlands, said David Dana, a law professor at Northwestern University, is how pollution moves. Because contamination can occur in underground connected water ways, discharge in wetlands, marshes and streams can still pollute larger bodies of water. Wetlands also provide food and habitat for plants and animals, and act as buffers to flooding and erosion. Once polluted, wetlands become toxic to the organisms that once thrived there, deteriorating their ability to provide protection from decay.

“The biggest concern is that wetlands preservation is very important to preserving water quality in different waterways and ultimately it affects drinking water,” said Dana. “It’s becoming harder to maintain water safety standards.”

According to Sera Young, the director of water insecurity for the Center for Water Research, there’s a disconnect between the United States and the importance of accessible water as 98% of the planet’s water is undrinkable or frozen.

“We’re relaxed about contaminating our water. It surprises me over and over again that water is not recognized as the public good that it is and we’re happy to deregulate which is going to come back and bite us,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What the Supreme Court’s ruling means for the future of wetlands on May 26, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lyric Aquino.

"By Any Means Necessary": Watch Malcolm X’s Speech on Racism & Self-Defense at Audubon Ballroom

Democracy Now! — Fri, 19 May 2023 14:07:09 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“By Any Means Necessary”: Watch Malcolm X’s Speech on Racism & Self-Defense at Audubon Ballroom

Democracy Now! — Fri, 19 May 2023 12:54:24 +0000

Malcolm X was born 98 years ago today, on May 19, 1925, and assassinated at age 39 on February 21, 1965, as he spoke before a packed audience in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. We end today’s show remembering his life and legacy with an excerpt of a speech Malcolm X gave at the Audubon Ballroom about half a year earlier called “By Any Means Necessary.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

When ‘Decorum’ Means ‘Mob Rule,’ It’s Time to Break It

Karen Dolan — Mon, 08 May 2023 18:26:19 +0000

In Tennessee and Montana, Republicans silenced the voices of three young lawmakers because they dared to challenge the undemocratic status quo.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Karen Dolan.

Raab’s right about the case against him – but not in the way he means

Adam Ramsay — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 11:50:08 +0000

OPINION: People who cheer as the government threatens to drown refugees can’t abide the idea of a minister being rude

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

The EHRC wants to redefine sex. Here’s what it means for trans people

Jess O'Thomson — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 12:25:41 +0000

OPINION: Proposal to rewrite the Equality Act is part of the right’s ideological war on trans people’s right to exist

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Jess O'Thomson.

What Chicago’s new mayor means for environmental justice

Siri Chilukuri — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 10:15:00 +0000

Brandon Johnson, the newly elected mayor of Chicago who won a tight race on Tuesday, campaigned on crime and education but he also talked about something else: environmental justice.

Johnson, 47, is a former teacher and union organizer and currently serves as a Cook County commissioner. His campaign promises included making Chicago a leader in sustainability and addressing pollution-burdened neighborhoods in the city.

His opponent in the run-off election, Paul Vallas, 69, is the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and ran on a tough-on-crime platform.

While environmental activists are cheered by his mayoral win, they and other observers also know the reality.

“He’s basically supportive of the environment, particularly equity….but he wasn’t elected on the environment, ” said Dick Simpson, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a former alderman.

So progress might depend on one thing: pressure.

“I think it’s important to put pressure on the new administration, by climate activists,” said Simpson. “Without vocal, continual pressure by both citizens and aldermen in the city council, it will remain a quite secondary issue.”

Communities in Chicago have risen up in recent years to fight back against environmental injustice, with the most recent struggle garnering national attention when residents of the Southeast Side protested against the proposed location of a scrapyard in their already polluted neighborhood.

Activists were eventually successful at preventing the move but only after years of actions that included hunger strikes.

One of those hunger strikers was Óscar Sanchez, an organizer at the Southeast Environmental Taskforce.

“We should be thinking of Brandon as a friend,” he said. “But we also hold our friends accountable.”

So activists will be watching to see if Johnson hews to his campaign promises, notably his claim that he would bring back Chicago’s Department of Environment which was eliminated in 2011 by a previous administration. The current mayor, Lori Lightfoot, also promised to bring back the Department of Environment but failed to deliver.

Without that department in place, polluters in Chicago have largely gone unpunished according to a report by Neighbors for Environmental Justice. The local group reviewed data from 20 years and found that after the Department of Environment was shuttered, environmental violations fell by 50 percent and air quality citations fell by 90 percent.

In the meantime, Chicago’s air quality has declined. A recent Guardian analysis of air quality data found that Chicago’s South and West Sides ranks third in the nation for worst air quality in the United States.

For Sanchez, these issues of pollution and environmental justice are deeply connected to other issues in the city.

“Environmental justice encompasses housing, it encompasses our energy burden, it encompasses our availability to have clean water in our home, it encompasses being able to send our children to school without worrying about diesel trucks,” he said.

Editor’s note: The Natural Resources Defense Council is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers play no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Chicago’s new mayor means for environmental justice on Apr 6, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Siri Chilukuri.

Influx of Chinese nationals means tough competition for merchants in Laos

By RFA Lao — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 18:37:34 +0000

An influx of Chinese investors and business owners to Laos in recent years is crowding out Lao entrepreneurs, who say the visitors have an unfair advantage in capital and are taking away their clientele.

Some 7,500 Chinese nationals have settled in Laos within the last 4-5 years, according to official estimates – most following the opening of a U.S.$6 billion high-speed railway connecting the two Communist neighbors in December 2021.

While the railway promises to offer land-locked Laos closer integration with the world’s second largest economy, most of the trade has been one way – with China exporting its machinery, auto parts, electronics and consumer goods. Laotian exports, on the other hand, were hindered by China’s strict COVID policies at the border.

But now, business owners say another Chinese export is driving up competition in their own country: Chinese people.

“Chinese merchants compete for customers with Lao merchants, making Lao merchants earn less income,” said one Lao entrepreneur who, like others interviewed by Radio Free Asia for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal.

The entrepreneur said there are now Chinese merchants in “most markets” in the country, adding that with their higher amounts of capital and know-how, “we won’t be able to compete with them.”

Prior to the influx, there were already 31 Chinese companies operating within Laos and 20 Chinese-led projects underway in the capital Vientiane. But sources said Chinese nationals operating independently are increasingly entering into sectors previously dominated by Laotians, such as guesthouses, restaurants, and grocery stores.

At the same time as Chinese businesses are thriving, Lao businesses are beginning to shrink in places like Vientiane, said another Lao entrepreneur.

“Stores that sell clothes and food now mostly belong to Chinese and Vietnamese merchants,” he said. “Most Lao merchants are now forced to sell their goods at markets outside the city, while Chinese and Vietnamese merchants run the markets inside the city.”

Other Lao merchants noted that their Chinese counterparts tend to operate within their own community in Laos, keeping their profits within a sort of enclave.

A leg up in local markets

When asked whether Chinese merchants have any specific advantages over their Lao counterparts in Laos, one Chinese national told RFA that the playing field is equal, as both must adhere to the same regulations.

“My store pays the same import fees and taxes as stores owned by Laotians,” he said. “We enjoy no special privileges.”

But Lao store owners said that a strong yuan and weak kip has given Chinese nationals a leg up in local markets.

“[While] the rental rate is the same for both Lao and Chinese store owners, the rent is high at markets in the city” and Chinese entrepreneurs can more easily afford it, said another Lao businessman.

A Lao intellectual who focuses on the relationship between social and economic matters in the country told RFA that the increase in Chinese entrepreneurs has affected Laos in both positive and negative ways.

“[Chinese investment] is developing the cities, but the bad part is that Lao merchants can’t compete with them,” he said. “When we talk about investment know-how and experience in trade, Lao merchants have less than them.”

And the size of China’s footprint is only growing in Laos.

Kham Jane Vong Phosy, the Lao minister of planning and investment, told a meeting of government officials in July that there have been a total of 933 Chinese-led projects launched in Laos since 2015, valued at around U.S.$16.4 billion. Among the projects are new rail lines, highways, and dams.

As more Chinese flock to Laos, a Lao trade official told RFA that the government is monitoring the newcomers to ensure they play by the rules.

“In the past, we have received reports that some Chinese investors have violated our rules and regulations,” he said. “Trade officials strictly monitor Chinese investment in Laos in order to make sure investors are following the rules, and if we find any violations, authorities will address the problem.”

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.

Making War Usually Means More War

Ron Jacobs — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 05:55:29 +0000

Paying attention to the news today is a lesson in how far those who desire war will go to convince the rest of us that war is the best means to solve problems between nations. This is despite the fact that history shows us time and time again that war most often does the exact More

The post Making War Usually Means More War appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

What It Means for Trump’s Campaign to Start In Waco

Mike Giglio — Sat, 25 Mar 2023 13:50:16 +0000

Every revolutionary movement needs martyrs. The modern U.S. militant right has long had its own, and the most important among them have been dead for three decades: the 70-plus men, women, and children killed in the spring of 1993 at the conclusion of a 51-day government siege at a compound outside the Central Texas city of Waco. They were members of an armed Christian sect, unfamiliar and isolated, and for many Americans, Waco was another footnote in the country’s long history of violence. In the worldview of right-wing militancy, however, Waco is foundational — a gory testament to the dangers of gun control and the deadly power of federal authorities. Waco fueled the rise of the militia movement in the 1990s and inspired the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995; it continues to influence contemporary militant thinking. All of this should be borne in mind when Donald Trump holds the first official rally of his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco on Saturday.

In the run-up to the rally, Trump hasn’t mentioned the events of 1993. Instead, he has grabbed hold of the news cycle by warning of his potential indictment and arrest over an alleged campaign-finance violation in 2016 and evoking the specter of violence. He urged his followers to “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” He warned that an indictment could lead to “death and destruction” and “create years of hatred, chaos, and turmoil.” He added: “They are not coming after me. They are coming after you. I’m just standing in their way.” These statements channel the same anxieties that Waco has long stirred about the existential danger of a federal government controlled by Democrats.

Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — who was convicted last fall of seditious conspiracy for his role on January 6, 2021, the last time Trump called on his followers to defend him — told me in an interview before his arrest that he’d seen the “existential slaughter” of Waco as “a huge wake-up call.” Mike Vanderboegh, founder of the Three Percenters, another national militant group whose members were charged over January 6, viewed Waco similarly. It made him and other militia leaders believe they could be the government’s next victims. Before his 2016 death, Vanderboegh told the historian Robert Churchill of Waco: “It scared the crap out of us, and we couldn’t count on anybody but ourselves.” Trump’s message to militants on the right has long been that they can count on him. He speaks their language about the deep state, traitorous liberals, and the potential for civil violence. His presidency marked the first time militant groups felt they had an ally in the White House; neither Vanderboegh nor Rhodes had love for either Bush administration. This was why people from a constellation of groups, from Oath Keepers and Three Percenters to small, little-known outfits around the country, joined the crowd at the Capitol on January 6.

Look just beneath the surface and you can see Trump and his allies playing directly into the particular fears and narratives of right-wing militancy. On November 19, 2020, Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani unleashed his campaign’s master theory of how the election had been stolen. It went something like this: America’s foreign adversaries, including Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China, had teamed up with powerful business interests and politicians to hack Dominion voting machines. It may have sounded strange, but it also fit the outlines of something called the New World Order conspiracy theory. The militant right has been fascinated by this for decades, including in the post-Vietnam era, when the movement was dominated by Ku Klux Klan paramilitaries. The theory can take several forms, the most virulent of which holds that a cabal of elite Jewish businessmen are trying to undermine America and other Western democracies from within to establish a global tyranny; they pay off politicians and sow chaos via animalistic hordes of immigrants and racial and religious minorities. The more palatable version of the story does away with race and religion and keeps the focus on the threat of tyranny at the hands of a globalist elite intent on taking away the rights of patriotic Americans, starting with guns. Rhodes expressed sympathy with the latter version, and Vanderboegh with a less conspiratorial reading of it. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was a believer in the former. He thought that Waco previewed a coming battle against the New World Order. In the lead-up to his rally there, Trump and his allies have echoed the New World Order theory, claiming that George Soros, the Jewish American investor and philanthropist, is behind the pending charges against him. Trump called Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney leading the investigation, who is Black, a “SOROS BACKED ANIMAL.” The Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance accused Bragg of being “bought by George Soros,” pursuing baseless charges against Trump while he “allows violent criminals to walk the streets.”

The investigation, which centers on an alleged hush-money payment by Trump to porn star Stormy Daniels, is arguably the least serious of the litany he faces. This has made it even easier for Trump to bring rank-and-file Republican leaders such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on board with his persecution narrative. It’s the typical dynamic with Trump: an opposition that seems to inadvertently strengthen his hand while he lines up the backing of deeply irresponsible and cynical Republican allies. Yet Trump has been signaling that this campaign will be different from his last two: more divisive and violent in its rhetoric, more revolutionary in its aims, and more openly intertwined with right-wing militancy and its apocalyptic mindset. In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, he called his 2024 campaign “the final battle.”

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” he said at the conference. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

“A Coded Message of Revolution”

Trump’s campaign has denied choosing to hold the rally in Waco because of its history. But the event, which will be held at the city’s airport, comes as the violence of 1993 resurfaces in the public consciousness. Last month marked 30 years since the start of the siege, an anniversary that will continue until April 19. Two television series have been launched to coincide with it: a six-part dramatization on Showtime and a three-part documentary on Netflix called “Waco: American Apocalypse.”

Back in 1993, the people living in a compound known as Mount Carmel on the outskirts of Waco were members of the Branch Davidians. Their leader, David Koresh, said he was a prophet and that God had spoken to him, telling him to prepare his followers for an apocalyptic battle. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives suspected the Davidians of having an illegal weapons cache in the compound that included machine guns and grenades. Instead of speaking with Koresh, the ATF sent agents to raid the compound in a military-like operation. Four were killed in the ensuing fight, which ended in a ceasefire, requested by the ATF so it could evacuate its wounded and dead. A joint siege of the compound by the ATF and FBI followed, featuring armored vehicles, heavily armed federal agents, and a crush of TV news teams. Then-President Bill Clinton had come into office a month earlier with promises of stricter gun control; some Americans saw their worst fears about gun confiscation and federal overreach coming true. The siege reached its ugly conclusion on April 19, as federal agents again went on the offensive, sparking another shootout and a massive fire inside the compound. The number of Branch Davidians who died was deemed unsettled in a special counsel’s report because some of the bodies were commingled and burned beyond recognition.

On the far right, the Waco dead became martyrs for gun rights and a scare story about the willingness of a Democratic-controlled federal government to violently crush resistance.

On the far right, the Waco dead became martyrs for gun rights and a scare story about the willingness of a Democratic-controlled federal government to violently crush resistance. Militia groups mobilized. Churchill, the historian who interviewed key militia leaders from this period for his definitive book on the movement, put Waco at the center of their motivations, tied closely to Clinton’s gun-control push, the steady militarization of law enforcement agencies, and an earlier federal raid that had killed the wife and child of a white supremacist in Ruby Ridge in Idaho. The movement was rooted, Churchill wrote, “in its members’ perception that their government had turned increasingly violent.” One militia leader told him, “Waco was the second shot heard round the world.”

McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran and white nationalist in his 20s, had visited Waco during the siege and was incensed by its bloody outcome. When he set off a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, he billed it as revenge for Waco. He did it on April 19, 1995, the two-year anniversary of the mass death at Mount Carmel.

Militia leaders of the 1990s condemned McVeigh, but as fears of right-wing militancy spiked and investigative pressure intensified, the movement dwindled. Yet Waco remained central to the militant movement’s belief system when it reemerged in 2009 after Barack Obama’s election. Vanderboegh, who’d first become a leader in the 1990s, told Churchill, in an interview the historian shared with me, that he believed the government had sent a message: From now on, it would be “operating by Waco rules. It’s this catch-22: ‘We will do anything that you can’t keep us from doing.’ And it told the rest of us out here, you know, we’re kind of paying attention and we’re saying, ‘We’re next year’s Davidians, or the year after that. Somebody has got to do something.’”

This created a mindset across the movement, Vanderboegh added, that “[an] attack on one is an attack on all.”

Vanderboegh went on to found the Three Percenters, one of the two largest militant organizations in the post-2009 wave, alongside Rhodes’s Oath Keepers. Rhodes hadn’t been involved in the movement’s earlier iteration but remembered well watching Waco play out on TV as a young libertarian working at a gun store in Nevada. He often cited a quote attributed to Vanderboegh: “No more free Wacos.” For Rhodes, it wasn’t that the Branch Davidians or Koresh were heroes. In his telling, the story was primarily about the bad guys: the Clinton-led government and mainstream politicians and journalists who, as he saw it, “dehumanized” the hard-line Christian gun owners cordoned off in their compound. This dehumanization, he believed, helped to pave the way for the government violence that followed. He worried about a similar dynamic playing out in the political and media climate of the present day. Rhodes, who has a law degree from Yale and is of Mexican descent, seemed to sympathize with one Waco victim in particular: Douglas Wayne Martin, a Black, Harvard-educated attorney in his 40s. Martin called police when the initial ATF raid began, claiming the government had fired the first shots, and then called a city council member, asking him to contact the media. He died in the compound on April 19, along with three of his children.

In an interview in the summer of 2021, as he braced for his own possible arrest, Rhodes recounted the arsenal government forces brought in for the Waco siege and raid — armored vehicles, helicopters from the National Guard — and the violence that followed. He saw the heavy-handed government tactics at Waco as designed “to prove a point, set an example.” I asked him what point they were making. His response: “Don’t fuck with us.” On trial last fall for seditious conspiracy, Rhodes cited Waco again, saying that when he’d infamously gotten the Oath Keepers involved in the Bundy Ranch standoff with federal authorities in 2014, it was to keep the Bundy family “from being Waco’d.”

The contradiction, of course, is that there is no overreach greater than overturning an election, which is what Trump tried to do — and what Rhodes aimed to help him accomplish. In open letters in the buildup to January 6, Rhodes asked Trump to overturn the vote and deploy the National Guard to administer a new election, then call the Oath Keepers and other armed Americans to help put down any pushback. Trump’s segment of the right, Rhodes included, spent 2020 dehumanizing liberals as traitors and Black Lives Matter protesters as domestic terrorists. The idea that America is already in or approaching a form of autocracy was necessary to justify the idea of launching an anti-democratic power grab of their own.

Tom O’Connor, who was an expert on right-wing militant violence in the FBI before retiring in 2019, recalled how Trump’s infamous request in a 2020 debate for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” had been taken by members of the group as a call to action. He worried that — whatever Trump might have intended with the rally’s location and whatever he might say on Saturday evening — the decision to hold it in Waco will send a powerful signal to those who are listening for it: “It will be perceived as a coded message of revolution to those on the extreme.”

Tactical Patience

I had called up a different former FBI agent, Michael German, after Powell and Giuliani gave their Dominion press conference in November of 2020. German had gone undercover in militia groups in the post-Waco era, and he recalled the times during his embeds when the faxes would begin to whir with rumors of black helicopters and warnings that the globalist invasion by forces of the New World Order was finally happening. These were the most dangerous moments, he told me — when militiamen were so paranoid that violence felt more likely. Only in late 2020, the rumor-mongering was happening on a national scale, and the messages were coming from the president and his legal team. As January 6 approached, Rhodes published an open letter urging his members to D.C., “to stand tall in support of President Trump’s fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup.”

At Rhodes’s trial, this letter and other extreme rhetoric were used against him. The prosecution never proved that there’d been a plan among Rhodes and the Oath Keepers to storm the Capitol — a fact that gave pause to some journalists observing the proceedings, including me. Prosecutors focused instead on the general sense that Rhodes had given his members that they needed to do something to stop the transfer of power and halt the conspiracy he believed was playing out before it was too late. Trump, more than anyone else, created this sense, yet the buck has not stopped anywhere close to that high. And now again, Trump is asking his supporters to rally to his defense. It reminds me of something Rhodes told me days before his arrest: that Trump had used the Oath Keepers as “cannon fodder.” After Rhodes’s arrest, Powell reportedly stepped in to fund Rhodes’s legal defense. Trump has since vowed that he will pardon January 6 convicts if he returns to the presidency.

“They’re not anti-government. They’re anti-Democrat.”

I was talking recently about militancy with Eric Robinson, a lawyer who was an official with the Joint Special Operations Command until 2018 and before that worked at the National Counterterrorism Center. His professional focus was overseas, and his study of American militancy is personal in nature. It comes from growing up with an interest in America’s Civil War and then seeing one for himself as a captain with the 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad, where he learned, he says, “what civil war thinks and talks like.” Robinson noted how poorly the typical label of “anti-government” fits the militant groups on the right today. “They’re not anti-government. They’re anti-Democrat,” he said. They see themselves, he added, “as the legitimate authority” in America, awaiting the time when they will come to power.

One trait of a successful insurgency is what military strategists call tactical patience. The Taliban had this mindset. So did insurgents in Iraq: Defeats were temporary, and eventually the war would tilt back in their favor. Members of Al Qaeda in Iraq who were imprisoned during the U.S. occupation could wait it out until their side regained enough power to spring them; one of the first things ISIS did when it took the city of Mosul in 2014 was open the jails. This is not to ascribe any similarity between people convicted over January 6 and jailed Islamist militants, except for one: Both are cadres of the committed. I imagine Rhodes and others will be paying close attention to Trump’s inaugural rally and wondering what it means for the once and perhaps future president to be giving his speech at the airport in Waco. They might be thinking that all along, time has been on their side.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Mike Giglio.

[Manning Marable] By Any Means Necessary: Malcolm X

info@alternativeradio.org — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 21:46:44 +0000

The singular voice of Malcolm X speaks today to more people than ever before. He endures as a powerful and inspirational figure. It's not hard to understand why. With his mesmerizing oratorical style and cadence, it was Malcolm who redefined the discourse on race. He moved the discussion from notions of "prejudice" and "discrimination" to racism. It was Malcolm who articulated concepts like "community control" and "white power structure" and “the field Negro and the house Negro.” It was Malcolm who made it clear that Blacks were the victims of a system of domination and exploitation that was not regional but national, not superficial but structural, not episodic but ongoing and intentional. His uncompromising critical analysis gave Malcolm his moral authority. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965, but as new generations discover him, his ideas live on. Recorded at Metro State College.

This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.

We Asked Conservatives at CPAC What Woke Means

VICE News — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:00:16 +0000

This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.

Defining What It Means to Care

Leah Harris — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 18:16:23 +0000

Alberta Lessard never stopped fighting for compassionate mental health care.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Leah Harris.

Why I Am Anti-war (and What That Means)

Thomas Knapp — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 06:54:11 +0000

As the post-Russian-invasion phase of the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its first year (its previous, lower-intensity, phase blazed into military flame in 2014), I continually find my own position pigeon-holed into convenient categories by those who hold other positions on it. Some who claim to be “anti-war” accuse me of supporting Russian More

The post Why I Am Anti-war (and What That Means) appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

Fiji’s coalition trinity means ‘more cooks’ but Rabuka confident on future

APR editor — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 02:02:13 +0000

The first time Sitiveni Rabuka was elected into office was more than 30 years ago. Today marks a little over a month since he became Fiji’s Prime Minister for a second time. He catches up with Tagata Pasifika’s John Pulu to discuss his return to office, Fiji’s covid-19 recovery and the investigation of Fiji’s former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

By John Pulu, Tagata Pasifika presenter/reporter/director

It’s been a busy start for the newly elected leader of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka.

And while he’s only held the role for a little over a month, walking into the Prime Minister’s office felt familiar for the leader of the People’s Alliance (PA) party.

“The office dynamics are still the same,” he says.

PUBLIC INTEREST JOURNALISM FUND

“It was just like going back to an old car or an old bicycle that you have driven before or ridden before.

“The people are new…[there’s] possible generational difficulties and views but I have not encountered any since the month I came into the office.”

However, his journey into office was not an easy one. After the initial tally of votes at last years’ December election, neither Rabuka nor his predecessor Voreqe Bainimarama had gained a comfortable majority to take Parliament.

Sodelpa (Social Democratic Liberal Party) became the kingmakers, voting to form a coalition with the PA, and they were joined by the National Federation Party (NFP).

Bainimarama out of office
For the first time since 2014, Bainimarama was out of office. Rabuka says they have not spoken since the election.

“There has been no communication since the outcome,” he says.

“It was something I tried to encourage when I was in the opposition and opposition leader, for across-the-floor discussions on matters that affect the nation.

“We grew up in the same profession…we are friends,” Rabuka insists.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka talking to Tagata Pasifika . . . returning to office as PM is like “going back to an old car . . . you have driven before”. Image: TP Plus screenshot APR

However, there’s plenty else to keep Rabuka busy at this time.

The coalition trinity means more cooks in the kitchen, but Rabuka is confident that they can work together to lead Fiji.

“I worked with the National Federation Party in 1999. Sodelpa was the party I helped to register,” he recalls.

‘Differences in past’
“There might have been differences in the past but we are still family and it’s only natural for us to come together and work together again.”

They’ve already enacted a number of changes including lifting a ban on a number of Fijians who were exiled by the previous government.

“It’s interesting that many of those returning thought they were on a blacklist,” Rabuka muses.

“When we asked Immigration, Immigration [said] ‘there is no such thing as a blacklist, or anyone being prohibited from coming back’.

“They all came back and they were very happy. But it also reflected the freedom in the atmosphere.”

And speaking of freedom, investigations into former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum have reportedly been suspended.

Under investigation
According to FBC News, Sayed-Khaiyum was under investigation for allegedly inciting communal antagonism.

Rabuka says Sayed-Khaiyum is a person of interest, but isn’t yet subjected to any prosecution processes at this time.

“But if it develops from there, there might be restrictions on his movement – particularly out of Fiji.”

Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Republished from Tagata Pasifika with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

What the House speaker’s deal with ultraconservatives means for climate

Zoya Teirstein — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 11:45:00 +0000

Kevin McCarthy, U.S. representative from California and the leader of the House Republican Conference, has been one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington for more than a decade. But McCarthy spent the first week of the 118th Congress in a severely diminished state.

Early on Saturday morning, McCarthy was elected speaker of the House after a grueling, historic, and humiliating 15 rounds of voting. For five days, a group of Republican hard-liners blocked his bid for House speaker. The Californian made a series of extraordinary concessions to win support from his ultraconservative colleagues. Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican from Florida and one of McCarthy’s toughest holdouts, said he finally gave in because “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”

On Monday night, House Republicans voted 220-213 to enshrine some of the concessions into the chamber’s rules. The measure, which dictates how the 118th Congress operates, includes an addendum that enumerates other concessions that McCarthy agreed to. And House lawmakers told the New York Times they were worried that the speaker had agreed to even more handshake agreements that weren’t reflected in the written package.

The compromises McCarthy made in exchange for the speaker’s gavel could reshape the way the lower chamber operates. Among other concessions, McCarthy agreed to let any member call for a vote to unseat the speaker at any time; to give members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative bloc within the House, seats on powerful committees; and to allow lawmakers to propose more amendments on the chamber floor. Some of McCarthy’s compromises may have ramifications, as well, for climate policy.

“Kevin McCarthy has ceded his speakership and control of the House Republican agenda to the most extreme fringe faction of his party,” Josh Freed, the senior vice president for climate and energy at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Third Way, told Grist. “There’s a real chance that Republicans are going to try to gut really important government investment on everything, including clean energy and climate.”

Freed is referring to a plank of the deal McCarthy struck with his hard-right colleagues to put a cap on discretionary spending — money approved by Congress and the president every year through the annual appropriations process. Discretionary spending includes all federal expenditures that aren’t funded by their own law. About 30 percent of the government’s overall spending is discretionary, including funding for many climate and environmental programs. New limits on that funding could affect clean energy research overseen by the Department of Energy, limit the Interior Department’s conservation efforts, and restrict disaster recovery distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, among other projects.

Other elements of the deal, such as putting members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus on the House Rules Committee, which plays a pivotal role in influencing how legislation moves through the House, could have an indirect impact on climate policy by affecting the legislation lawmakers even get to vote on.

Prior to McCarthy’s capitulations to the most extreme wing of his party, there was a slight possibility that Democrats and Republicans could have found common ground on some key measures. McCarthy has his own climate agenda that he’s been honing for a handful of years — a response, in part, to the popularity of progressive Democrats’ Green New Deal. That plan, like other Republican climate policy proposals to date, fails to address the root causes of global warming or to slash emissions in line with scientists’ recommendations. Last summer, McCarthy unveiled a climate strategy that called for increasing domestic production of fossil fuels and exports of natural gas and speeding up the permitting process for big infrastructure projects.

Streamlining permitting is something members of both parties have said they’ve wanted to accomplish for years. In the last Congress, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin tried to move a bipartisan permitting reform bill forward but wasn’t able to garner enough support. Such a bill would have helped realize the full potential of the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate spending bill passed by Democrats last year, by making it easier to build transmission lines to carry renewable power to customers.

Permitting reform might have been something that was addressed again this Congress, but Freed said McCarthy’s compromises make that prospect even more remote by ceding middle ground to the hard right. “It puts the possibility of legislating on issues like permitting reform, where there otherwise could have been a bipartisan solution that was conceivable, at extreme risk,” he said.

When it comes to passing climate policy, Representative Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois who has a background in clean energy development and just secured his third term in the House (and used to write for this publication), said it’s a foregone conclusion that a Republican House majority equals a lack of action on climate change. What McCarthy promised ultraconservatives doesn’t affect that equation much, in his view. Many Republican members of the House who are in powerful positions or sit on important committees represent fossil fuel producing regions and take hundreds of thousands of dollars from fossil fuel companies.

McCarthy himself hails from Bakersfield, California, a city so steeped in oil that its high-school football team, which McCarthy played on as a teenager, is called “the Drillers.” He received more money from oil and gas interests during the 2022 campaign than any other member of the House — more than $500,000.

“They are, understandably, hostile to anything that would reduce demand for fossil fuels or reduce the price of fossil fuels,” Casten said. “Progress on climate isn’t going to happen with Republicans in the majority.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What the House speaker’s deal with ultraconservatives means for climate on Jan 10, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

30×30 is conservation’s flashy new goal. Now countries need to figure out what it actually means.

Blanca Begert — Mon, 09 Jan 2023 11:45:00 +0000

Last month, right before the holidays, nearly 200 countries announced a breakthrough deal to protect Earth’s plants and animals. Of the 22 targets established at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP15, one stood out: an agreement to conserve 30 percent of land and seas by the year 2030.

The goal, commonly known as 30×30, has been around for a few years, slowly gaining traction in environmental circles since it was first proposed in the journal Science Advances in 2019. It draws inspiration from research by famed biologist E.O. Wilson that at least half the planet needs to be conserved in some way to protect 80 percent of species. The formal adoption of 30×30 by nearly all of the world’s governments at COP15 turned it into the official guiding star for the global conservation movement, with some leaders comparing it to the Paris Agreement in terms of significance.

Now, with negotiators at home and a new year underway, countries face the monumental task of figuring out what one of the most ambitious goals in conservation history actually means, in practice.

One of the toughest questions yet to be answered is: What exactly counts towards the 30 percent? Can certain conservation-minded agricultural methods that protect soil and promote a diversity of crops be included, or do only strictly protected areas like national parks count? To what degree will Indigenous territories be considered conserved land? And how will areas that connect fragments and contain the rarest, most species-rich ecosystems be prioritized under the goal? The final language in last month’s global agreement was vague on many of these topics.

“Underneath that [30×30] number is a huge amount of complexity,” said Claire Kremen, a conservation biology professor at the University of British Columbia who researches how to reconcile biodiversity conservation with agriculture. “It all depends on where and how you do this protection and there hasn’t been a lot of clarity on these points.”

The United States, while not technically part of last month’s global pact (the Senate since 1993 has refused to join the biodiversity convention), has been wrestling with these same questions independently. President Biden committed to the 30×30 goal within U.S. borders via executive order during his first week in office. And many states have also committed to the target, including California, Maine, New York, Hawaii, and New Mexico.

Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve is a national park in northern Alaska. Sean Tevebaugh, National Park Service

Just as negotiators at COP15 struggled to come to an agreement about what types of ecosystems and actions should count towards the global goal, the U.S. government has yet to define what “conserved” land and sea means under 30×30.

Currently, the U.S. has a variety of different protected area designations that are regulated in different ways. Most federal land, which makes up 27 percent of the country, is managed under some form of conservation, be it national parks and wilderness areas or, more commonly, a “mixed-use” mandate that allows for what the government determines to be sustainable levels of extractive activities like forestry and grazing. Add state parks and private land under conservation easements to the mix, and we’ve easily already met the 30 percent target, says Forrest Fleischman, a professor of environmental policy and forest governance at the University of Minnesota.

But most 30×30 advocates don’t think that all those lands should count towards the target, whose main goal is to protect biodiversity. While the U.S. Geological Survey’s Protected Area Database considers more than 31 percent of the country’s land under some form of protection, only 13 percent has strict mandates for biodiversity protection that don’t allow for any extractive activity.

“There’s habitat value to be found in all sorts of lands,” said Helen O’Shea, an expert on land-use and conservation issues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, “but the 30×30 effort is about creating a system that’s protected and ecologically representative. A connected system that’s going to link up areas that are solely being looked at for conservation purposes.”

For others, however, the answer isn’t as simple as just increasing the amount of land under strict protection. “If the goal is to move another 17 percent of the U.S. into something equivalent to a national forest or wilderness area, that seems unrealistic,” said Fleischman, who is part of group of experts working to understand the social implications of 30×30, funded by the Science for Nature and People Partnership.

When the 30×30 goal was first announced in the U.S., it received significant pushback from ranching communities and private landowners, who were concerned about impacts to rural economies like grazing and logging. Many also argued that certain productive land uses, especially when planned with biodiversity in mind, are compatible with conservation of species and ecosystems. While the white spotted owl can’t live in logged forests of the Pacific Northwest, for example, open grazing helps to maintain prairie habitats. Some grassland birds also thrive in the early successional forests that grow after timber harvest.

“It’s a very complicated, site-specific issue,” said Tom Cors, director of U.S. government relations for The Nature Conservancy. “Some places might have adequate ‘protection,’ but they need more management,” he added, referencing the need to conduct more prescribed burning to support ecosystem function in Western forests.

Mixed variety cover crops on a farm near St. John, Washington protect and enrich the soil. VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Globally, the most significant critique of the 30×30 initiative has come from Indigenous peoples, who warn that the protected area conservation model has allowed governments and nonprofit groups to seize control of natural resources and, in many cases, violently remove Indigenous peoples from their lands, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Nepal to Peru. Tribes in the U.S. that have historically been excluded from conservation planning, decision-making, and funding wanted to make sure the country’s 30×30 goal didn’t repeat these patterns.

In an effort to address those concerns, the Biden administration framed its 30×30 pledge as a “collaborative and inclusive approach to conservation,” with topline goals of honoring tribal sovereignty, supporting the priorities of tribal nations, respecting private property rights, and supporting the voluntary efforts of landowners, all with science as a guide. A May 2021 report from the Department of the Interior emphasized the concept of “conservation” rather than “protection,” “recognizing that many uses of our lands and waters, including of working lands, can be consistent with the long-term health and sustainability of natural systems.”

An interagency working group is trying to account for different types of land uses while building the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas, a tool to represent the amount and types of lands and waters that are currently conserved or restored. Part of the group’s mandate is to figure out how contributions from farmers, ranchers, and forest owners, as well as the conservation strategies of Tribal Nations, will count toward the 30×30 goal. A December 2021 progress report did not include a number for how much land and water is currently managed for conservation; in an email to Grist, a Department of the Interior, or DOI, spokesperson had no updates on the Atlas timeline.

Beyond “what actions count,” land managers are also thinking about “which lands and waters should be protected?” towards the 30-percent target. Biodiversity tends to be concentrated in certain areas and ecosystem types, so where land protection happens is important. In its comments on the Atlas, The Nature Conservancy recommended distributing conserved areas among 68 ecoregions of the U.S. — the Central Appalachians, Northern tallgrass prairie, and California central coast, for example — and protecting 30 percent of each.

In the U.S., it’s private lands that contain most of the country’s biodiversity; these also play a role in connecting protected areas, which conservation groups have emphasized as an important priority for the Atlas, as habitat connectivity has been shown to be critical for species’ survival. In addition, the Biden administration wants the tool to promote equity, increasing access to nature in historically marginalized communities, often in urban areas. Yet as the DOI itself notes, “there is no single metric — including a percentage target — that could fully measure progress toward the fulfillment of those interrelated goals [of doing better for people, for fish and wildlife, and for the planet].”

The 30×30 target established at the U.N. biodiversity conference is global, meaning that countries can sign onto it without necessarily committing to conserve 30-percent of land and waters within their borders. Still, many countries have issued their own 30×30 commitments, including Canada, Australia, Costa Rica, and France. The United Kingdom has been criticized for claiming to protect 28 percent of its land when the included national parks and “areas of outstanding natural beauty” fail to address poor farming practices, pollution, and invasive species. In July, Colombia announced that it had already met the target for land and sea.

The final agreement reached at COP15 nodded to the inclusion of working lands and the importance of protecting ecologically-representative and high-biodiversity habitats, without setting clear guidelines. It “recognized and respected” the rights of Indigenous peoples, who steward 80% of the world’s biodiversity on their lands, without establishing their territories as a specific category of conserved area, leaving them vulnerable to human rights violations.

For Fleischman, having a “political slogan” without a clear meaning isn’t necessarily helpful for achieving biodiversity and environmental justice goals. “Advocates say, ‘Look beyond the numeric spatial target at the language which is about finding ways to pursue conservation at a whole landscape level while taking into account social equity issues such as [urban] parks,’” he said. “But if that’s the case, what is the point of saying ‘30 x 30’? ‘Healthy nature everywhere’ might be a better goal.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 30×30 is conservation’s flashy new goal. Now countries need to figure out what it actually means. on Jan 9, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Blanca Begert.

The GOP’s Kevin McCarthy Debacle Is an Insurrection by Other Means

James Risen — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 14:54:35 +0000

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., talks on the phone ahead of the ninth round of voting for speaker, as the House of Representatives meets for the third day to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.

Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

Reps. Andy Biggs and Scott Perry, two Republican House members leading the effort to block Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker, were among four GOP members of Congress referred to the House Ethics Committee for their roles in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Rep. Jim Jordan, who Republican holdouts briefly tried to install as an alternative speaker this week, was also referred by the House January 6 Committee; so was McCarthy himself.

The intraparty battle for control of the House of Representatives is not a fight between pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps. There are no real anti-Trump moderates left in the Republican House caucus. This is not a matter of competing political ideologies.

The speaker’s battle would make a perfect “Seinfeld” episode: It is a fight about nothing.

And that’s what makes it so dangerous.

Neither the pro-McCarthy camp nor the anti-McCarthy insurgents have any real policy goals for how to make the government more effective. The goal of the insurgents is to stop the government from working at all. Yet that is true of McCarthy and his supporters as well.

The only thing they are really fighting over is personal political power. Nothing more. And that makes it very difficult for McCarthy to appease the Republicans who oppose him.

It is fitting that the battle for control of the House comes exactly two years after the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The speakership fight is a continuation of that struggle for personal power. This is an insurrection by other means.

Even if the speakership is decided in the coming days, this battle shows just how paralyzed Congress will be over the next two years.

This is the paralysis that the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress tried to prepare for in December, when the frenetic activity in the House gave off an apocalyptic vibe. Every move was hurried, with an eye on the clock and the knowledge that darkness was looming.

During the lame-duck session, the House Ways and Means Committee released a report about Trump’s long-hidden tax returns; the House January 6 Committee held its final hearing and voted to issue criminal referrals of Trump and others to the Justice Department; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress; and heavily bundled legislation that included continued funding for U.S. aid to Ukraine and new legal protections for the election of American presidents worked its way across Capitol Hill and was signed into law by Biden.

None of those things could wait any longer. The insurgents were about to take over the House.

In November, Republicans suffered some of the worst midterm results for an opposition party in modern American history, thanks to their turn toward right-wing extremism. The Republican-dominated Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and many Republican candidates in key races were election deniers hand-picked by Trump. The Republican Party lacked a coherent policy agenda other than “owning the libs.” Voters were turned off, and, despite high inflation and a worsening economy, Democrats won key races around the country, retaining control of the Senate while losing the House by the narrowest of margins.

Yet the great irony is that the very narrowness of the Republican margin of victory in the House is what is now giving outsized influence to the extremist forces that cost the GOP so dearly.

Rather than fight back, McCarthy gave in to extremism years ago, and became one of Trump’s most prominent enablers. His craven willingness to appease the ex-president and the insurgents in the House means that no one fears him. He is the Neville Chamberlain of the House, and even if he ultimately becomes speaker, he will not really be calling the shots. The insurgents will be in charge, and no one else in the Republican caucus is likely to challenge them.

With de facto control over the House, they will focus on the right-wing political equivalent of performance art: a national abortion ban that will go nowhere, investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop, and other “anti-woke” ways to own the libs. They will not focus on governing.

So if Trump’s taxes, hidden throughout his presidency, were ever going to see the light of day, it had to be before the new Congress convened. It took years for the Ways and Means Committee to get the returns, and then only after a lengthy court battle, which ended in November when the Supreme Court refused to block the documents’ release. Once the committee prevailed in court, it had to release Trump’s taxes and related information before House Republicans had the chance to suppress them.

The committee voted to release Trump’s taxes and also offered some bombshells, revealing that the Internal Revenue Service did not audit Trump during the first two years of his presidency — and didn’t begin to do so until the day in 2019 when the House asked for his tax returns and questioned whether any audits of Trump had been conducted. The IRS had failed to audit the sitting president’s taxes even though it was mandated to do so, and even though it audited the taxes of both presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The committee also found that Trump paid no federal income tax in 2020, while he was president.

The House January 6 Committee also had to wrap up its business during the lame-duck session or see its work shut down after Republicans took over. In fact, rather than continue to investigate the insurrection, House Republicans are vowing to investigate the January 6 committee itself.

So after issuing criminal referrals for Trump and others, the January 6 committee released a final report and handed over all its evidence to the Justice Department and the special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. Among the committee’s final disclosures was that its star witness, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said that her former lawyer advised her not to tell the committee the whole truth.

The threats posed by House Republicans on so many fronts help explain why many Senate Republicans joined Democrats in December to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package. That legislation included aid for Ukraine, which many right-wing House Republicans want to block or at least scale back, and changes to the electoral reform act, which governs how presidential elections are finalized and includes changes designed to make it harder for Trump or someone like him to overturn future elections.

Senate Republicans voted for the legislation in the face of furious opposition from their pro-Trump counterparts in the House, perhaps a sign that at least some Senate Republicans no longer fear Trump and his minions.

In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has become more openly anti-Trump since the midterms, when Trump-backed fringe candidates lost key contests and cost the GOP control of the Senate. While McCarthy was fighting for the speakership in the House this week, McConnell made a move heavy with symbolism: He appeared in Kentucky with Biden to showcase a major federal infrastructure investment in a bridge across the Ohio River.

The question now is whether Biden can count on a relatively sane Senate to check the worst impulses of the unstable House.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by James Risen.

More War Means Higher Inflation on a Persistent Basis

Nouriel Roubini — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 13:00:02 +0000

Inflation rose sharply throughout 2022 across both advanced economies and emerging markets. Structural trends suggest that the problem will be secular, rather than transitory. Specifically, many countries are now engaged in various "wars"—some real, some metaphorical—that will lead to even larger fiscal deficits, more debt monetization, and higher inflation in the future.

Cold and hot wars are on the rise.

The world is going through a form of "geopolitical depression" topped by the escalating rivalry between the West and aligned (if not allied) revisionist powers such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. Cold and hot wars are on the rise. Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine could still expand and involve NATO. Israel—and thus the United States—is on a collision course with Iran, which is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear-armed state. The broader Middle East is a powder keg. And the US and China are facing off over the questions of who will dominate Asia and whether Taiwan will be forcibly reunited with the mainland.

Accordingly, the US, Europe, and NATO are re-arming, as is pretty much everyone in the Middle East and Asia, including Japan, which has embarked on its biggest military build-up in many decades. Higher levels of spending on conventional and unconventional weapons (including nuclear, cyber, bio, and chemical) are all but assured, and these expenditures will weigh on the public purse.

The global war against climate change will also be expensive—for both the public and private sectors. Climate-change mitigation and adaptation could costtrillions of dollars per year for decades to come, and it is silly to think that all these investments will boost growth. After a real war that destroys much of a country's physical capital, a surge of investment can of course produce an economic expansion; nonetheless, the country is poorer for having lost a large share of its wealth. The same is true of climate investments. A significant share of the existing capital stock will have to be replaced, either because it has become obsolete or because it has been destroyed by climate-driven events.

We are also now waging a costly war against future pandemics. For a variety of reasons—some of them related to climate change—disease outbreaks with the potential to become pandemics will become more frequent. Whether countries invest in prevention or deal with future health crises after the fact, they will be incurring higher costs on a perpetual basis, and these will add to the growing burden associated with societal aging and pay-as-you-go health-care systems and pension plans. Already, this implicit unfunded debt load is estimated to be close to thelevel of explicit public debt for most advanced economies.

Moreover, we will increasingly find ourselves fighting a war against the disruptive effects of "globotics": the combination of globalization and automation (including artificial intelligence and robotics) that is threatening a growing number of blue- and white-collar occupations. Governments will be under pressure to help those left behind, whether through basic-income schemes, massive fiscal transfers, or vastly expanded public services.

These costs will remain large even if automation leads to a surge in economic growth. For example, supporting a meager universal basic income of $1,000 per month would cost the US about20% of its GDP.

Finally, we also must fight an urgent (and related) war against rising income and wealth inequality. Otherwise, the malaise afflicting young people and many middle- and working-class households will continue to drive a backlash against liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. To prevent populist regimes from coming to power and pursuing reckless, unsustainable economic policies, liberal democracies will need to spend a fortune to reinforce their social safety nets—as many are already doing.

Fighting these five "wars" will be expensive, and economic and political factors will constrain governments' ability to finance them with higher taxes. Tax-to-GDP ratios are already high in most advanced economies—especially Europe—and tax evasion, avoidance, and arbitrage will further complicate efforts to increase taxes on high incomes and capital (assuming such measures could even get past the lobbyists or secure buy-in from center-right parties).

Thus, waging these necessary wars will increase government spending and transfers as a share of GDP, and without a commensurate increase in tax revenues. Structural budget deficits will grow even larger than they already are, potentially leading to unsustainable debt ratios that will increase borrowing costs and culminate in debt crises, with obvious adverse effects on economic growth.

For countries that borrow in their own currencies, the expedient option will be to allow higher inflation to reduce the real value of long-term fixed-rate nominal debt. This approach functions as a capital levy against savers and creditors in favor of borrowers and debtors, and it can be combined with complementary, draconian measures such as financial repression, taxes on capital, and outright default (for countries that borrow in foreign currencies or whose debt is largely short-term or indexed to inflation). Because the "inflation tax" is a subtle and sneaky form of taxation that doesn't require legislative or executive approval, it is the default path of least resistance when deficits and debts are increasingly unsustainable.

I have focused primarily on demand-side factors that will lead to higher spending, deficits, debt monetization, and inflation. But there are also manymedium-term negative aggregate supply shocks that could add to today's stagflationary pressures, increasing the risk of recession and cascadingdebt crises. The Great Moderation is dead and buried; theGreat Stagflationary Debt Crisis is upon us.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Nouriel Roubini.

Biden’s “Diplomacy” in Yemen Means Taking Saudi Arabia’s Side — and Could Spark All-Out War

Shuaib Almosawa — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:00:11 +0000

When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for a vote on a war powers resolution that would block U.S. support for the Saudi-led war effort in Yemen, the Biden administration immediately pushed back. The resolution, the White House warned, would upset diplomatic efforts and bring about the war it was trying to end.

“The Administration strongly opposes the Yemen War Powers Resolution on a number of grounds, but the bottom line is that this resolution is unnecessary and would greatly complicate the intense and ongoing diplomacy to truly bring an end to the conflict,” read White House talking points circulated privately. “In 2019, diplomacy was absent and the war was raging. That is not the case now. Thanks to our diplomacy which remains ongoing and delicate, the violence over nearly nine months has effectively stopped.”

The White House’s claims that its diplomacy is working, however, are undercut by its own political moves and the reality on the ground. President Joe Biden’s envoy for the conflict has consistently sided with the Saudi coalition against the Houthi movement that controls much of the country. And though a ceasefire during the spring and summer provided a respite in civilian casualties due to bombings, the ongoing Saudi blockade and economic warfare against Yemenis perpetuates the humanitarian crisis in the country — which the United Nations has deemed the worst in the world.

Without taking an even-handed approach to the conflict in search of a political solution and the mitigation of the humanitarian crisis, the Biden administration’s machinations can hardly be considered good-faith efforts at diplomacy, critics of U.S. policy in the conflict said.

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever,” Jamal Benomar, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen until 2015, told The Intercept. “There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them. So an all-out war can resume at any time.”

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever. There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them.”

The divisions in Yemen — with the Saudi coalition controlling southern oil fields and ports, and the Houthi-led government controlling territory in the north that houses some 80 percent of the country’s 30 million residents — are only growing more entrenched. Instead of asking concessions of its allies in the Saudi coalition, the administration’s one-sidedness has contributed to the breakdown of diplomacy.

Though violence has not returned to earlier levels since the expiration of the ceasefire in October, fighting continues along some of the war’s frontlines. The Houthis have warned that their restraint won’t last long amid the current impasse and continued blockade of fuel imports; if the embargo is not eased, they said, they will reciprocally blockade a nearby waterway crucial to the global oil markets. The situation is only growing more explosive.

“There’s been a lull in the fighting, but since there was no concerted effort to move the political process forward, the lull is a temporary one and all sides are preparing for the worst,” said Benomar. “The situation is extremely fragile because Yemen has fragmented now and you have different areas of Yemen under the control of different warlords.”

Truce

The largely diplomatic push cited by the White House in opposing the Sanders war powers resolution — a so-far ineffective push that gives Saudi Arabia room to maneuver — follows a pattern it has held since early in the administration, when Biden pledged to work toward ending “offensive operations” to the Yemen war, and Saudi Arabia engaged in its most aggressive bombing campaign under the rubric of “defensive operations.”

Under such conditions, progress toward a treaty has remained elusive. While the Houthi movement has steadily gained territory — and political support in the country — the Saudi-backed government and other allied militia groups maintained control of oil-rich areas and ports in the south, enabling the punishing blockade. Biden balked at calls to pressure Saudi into easing the blockade when it sparked the worst fuel crisis in Yemeni history. Instead, when administration officials have commented, they have avoided naming the Saudis, calling instead on “all parties” to allow unhindered import of fuel.

As the blockade continued and the fuel crisis worsened, the Houthis attacked the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in late January 2022 in two separate attacks, with one reaching a U.S. military base. In March, the Houthis targeted a storage site belonging to the Saudi national oil company, marking the second boldest attack against Saudi oil facilities. Instead of convincing the Saudis to deescalate, the Biden administration pledged to defend Riyadh and Abu Dhabi against what they’ve called the “terrorist” attacks.

Yet the threat to the global oil supply was becoming clear, a risk the White House was uninterested in running amid both a midterm election and a war between Russia and Ukraine. A week after the attack on Saudi’s oil infrastructure, the United Nations, backed by the U.S., managed to have all parties agree on a truce that would allow for talks on a settlement to the yearslong conflict. “The Saudis accepted the truce after belatedly realizing that they were losing in an expensive quagmire,” said Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA analyst and Brookings Institution senior fellow, in an email. “Biden’s team helped get them to that point along with a lot of help from the UN and Oman.”

The two-month truce allowed for a halt to all Saudi airstrikes and ground fighting and an ease on fuel imports to north Yemen, in return for a halt to Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia.

No Renewal

The ceasefire largely held up and kept getting renewed until October 2, when the Houthi government refused to renew it again.

The Houthi government laid blame with Riyadh and the U.S. for avoiding the issue most important to the Houthi-led coalition: monthly salary payments of the state employees. Since 2016, the Saudi-backed government relocated the Central Bank of Yemen to territory it controls, accusing the Houthi government of diverting the bank’s funds to the war effort, a charge international observers and aid groups found baseless. The Saudi-backed government promised to keep the bank’s policy of paying all public servants, estimated at 1 million employees who support around 10 million others, but it broke its word, denying millions of Yemenis their only source of income.

The Houthi-led coalition put the salary payment issue as a condition to renew the deal, but the Saudis agreed only on paying workers in the health and educational sectors. The Houthis maintained that the revenues from oil exports in areas under the Saudi-backed government, which would account for nearly 70 percent of Yemen’s budget, should be allocated for the pay of all public servants. No Biden-led diplomacy — intense, delicate, ongoing, or otherwise — could persuade the Saudis to stop diverting Yemeni public-servant money back to Riyadh.

Little progress has been made on the question of paying public servants. The U.N. Security Council, Britain, the European Union, and the U.S. called the Houthi government demand to pay all public servants “unrealistic” and “maximalist.” During a congressional hearing in December, Biden’s Yemen envoy Tim Lenderking blamed the Houthi government for the current impasse, slamming “the last-minute Houthi demand that the Yemeni Government divert its limited oil export revenues to pay the salaries of active Houthi combatants.”

What the U.S. deemed unrealistic has in fact been a demand of Democrats on Capitol Hill. What Sanaa demanded as a condition to renew the deal wasn’t impossible or even unrealistic. A group of 16 senators — along with many aid groups — called on Biden in May 2021 to end the Saudi blockade. While the Biden administration angled to keep the blockade as leverage in negotiations, the senators said the embargo “must end today and be decoupled from ongoing negotiations.”

For critics, the Biden administration’s stance — considering the payments to Yemeni public servants too great a cost for establishing a new ceasefire — isn’t a serious approach to ending the war.

“These demands benefit ordinary Yemeni workers, not the Sana’a government itself,” said Shireen Al-Adeimi, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, referring to the Houthi government in the capital of Sana’a. “What’s ‘unrealistic’ and even cruel, however, is to continue denying millions of public servants their salaries for multiple years and to derail ceasefire negotiations because of a humanitarian, not a political or military, demand.”

Diplomacy to Nowhere

The relative calm in fighting and a halt to bombing witnessed since April has been rare. Its impact on the most vulnerable, however, has been small. Much of the Yemeni suffering has been caused by the blockade and other economic warfare tactics, not the bullets and bombs.

The status quo leaves the Houthis little incentive to maintain a truce that delivers misery to the population it governs without any serious concessions around the blockade or payments to public-service employee payments. In return, the Houthi government has offered to cease its bombings of Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners. Saudi, emboldened by White House support, agreed on only easing restrictions on fuel imports.

Late last month, Omani negotiators were back in northern Yemen, urging the Houthis to sit down with the Saudis to discuss both issues. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, the Houthi movement’s leader and the one calling the shots, rejected the offer as another Saudi bid to evade addressing the economic crisis first, which he and his aides stressed should be decoupled from any other issues being negotiated. The Houthi message was simple, according to a source briefed on the talks: Pay the salaries of all public servants, lift the blockade on the northern port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport, and then the parties can sit together to negotiate other terms.

The Saudis and the Emirates, however, seem unlikely to budge. So far, they have only granted concessions in the face of violence directed at Abu Dhabi and at Saudi oil fields, not through Biden-led negotiations.

That may be the dynamic at the heart of the White House’s opposition to the Sanders war powers resolution: Without U.S. support for its warplanes, the Saudis would be effectively grounded, perhaps emboldening the Houthis, who are poised to relaunch strikes and send global oil markets spinning to win an end to the blockade. So far, Houthi attacks intended as warnings have dissuaded tanker captains from offloading millions of barrels of crude oil that would have otherwise benefited the Saudi-backed government.

Facing the reality of the Houthis escalating their attacks, the Biden administration could dig in and refuse to meet reasonable Houthi demands while fending off congressional opposition to the war. Or the White House could pressure the Saudis into a genuine end to the war. In fighting the Sanders resolution, the White House has chosen to dig in. The Biden administration diplomacy is “ongoing,” but it’s not clear it’s going anywhere — making a resurgence of violence now seem inevitable.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Shuaib Almosawa.

Biden’s “Diplomacy” in Yemen Means Taking Saudi Arabia’s Side — and Could Spark All-Out War

Shuaib Almosawa — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:00:11 +0000

“There’s been no diplomatic progress whatsoever. There’s been no political process, no negotiations, or even a prospect of them.”

Truce

No Renewal

The ceasefire largely held up and kept getting renewed until October 2, when the Houthi government refused to renew it again.

Diplomacy to Nowhere

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Shuaib Almosawa.

House Panel Releases Six Years of Donald Trump’s Tax Returns

Jake Johnson — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 14:43:31 +0000

After a protracted legal fight and relentless obstruction by the former president, the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday finally released six years of Donald Trump's individual and business tax returns.

"It is a bittersweet moment," Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a member of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee, wrote on Twitter, lamenting how long it took for lawmakers to obtain the documents and make them public. "I will read through them today and you should too. Every American deserves this sunlight. This is what democracy is about."

A download link for the returns, which span 2015 to 2020 and are redacted to conceal sensitive personal information such as Social Security numbers, is here (warning: the file is very large—1.1 GB—and in ZIP format).

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) also published the documents as more easily downloadable PDFs on its website.

The long-awaited release of the documents came after the House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to make them public. The committee also published a summary confirming that Trump—who broke with longstanding tradition by refusing to release the documents voluntarily—paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and $0 in 2020.

The summary made clear that Trump turned to avoidance tactics that the ultra-rich often use to slash their tax bills. In the years covered by the newly published documents, the former president reported massive net operating losses, allowing him to dramatically reduce or completely zero out his tax liabilities.

The House committee, which Democrats control until next week, also revealed earlier this month that the IRS didn't begin auditing Trump's taxes until 2019, despite the agency's mandatory presidential audit policy.

"Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the House tax panel, said in a statement Friday. "As the public will now be able to see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax in several of the years examined."

"These findings underscore the fact that our tax laws are often inequitable, and that enforcement of them is often unjust," Beyer continued. "Trump was able to bypass even the mandatory IRS presidential audit program for years, but many other wealthy and powerful people evade billions in tax dues every year through more quotidian tax avoidance. Congress has so much work to do to make tax enforcement in this country fairer."

In response to the release of his returns, Trump—a 2024 presidential candidate—proudly touted his expansive use of deductions to lower his tax bills.

"The 'Trump' tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises," the former president said.

"The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything," he fumed, "but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!"

The former president's returns show that he personally benefited from some of the provisions of the tax-cut measure he signed into law in 2017. As Bloombergnoted, Trump took advantage of the law's "expanded write-offs for business expenses" and "the scaling back of the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, allowing him to claim more individual deductions."

"Trump acted as though he had something to hide, a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud."

Writing for The Atlantic on Friday, CREW president Noah Bookbinder urged the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the IRS' failure to audit Trump in the early years of his presidency.

"The public needs to know whether one more key government function was politicized, allowing a president to shield possible conflicts of interest and escape accountability," Bookbinder wrote. "The American people need reassurances that transparency, oversight, and accountability will once again become matters of course rather than subjects of prolonged litigation."

"Donald Trump attempted to hijack the United States government to keep himself in power, and American democracy almost didn't survive," he added. "His tax returns may have been another part of that effort. That merits investigation—not over another six years, but now."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Clean Energy or New Weapons: What the Fusion Breakthrough Really Means

M.V. Ramana — Fri, 23 Dec 2022 06:54:34 +0000

On December 13, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had reached a “milestone”: the achievement of “ignition” in nuclear fusion earlier in the month. That announcement was hailed by many as a step into a fossil fuel-free energy future. US Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, for example, claimed that we were “on the More

The post Clean Energy or New Weapons: What the Fusion Breakthrough Really Means appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by M.V. Ramana.

Congress Decides Corporate Tax Cuts Are Too Expensive If It Means Also Helping Children

Joe Hughes — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 20:14:17 +0000

Late Monday afternoon, Congressional leaders announced their long-awaited omnibus spending package which will fund the government through September 2023. The good news: the bill does not include needless corporate tax giveaways. The bad news: it also leaves out any expansion of the Child Tax Credit.

Ultimately, the conservative position on the credit triumphed. The credit was not worth the cost if it cost, well anything.

This fall, as lobbyists descended on the Hill to pressure Congress into passing a set of corporate tax breaks before the year’s end, some progressive activists and lawmakers settled on a strategy to make any potential tax package at least mildly palatable: Tax breaks for businesses must be paired with an extension of the Child Tax Credit enhancements that were enacted in 2021.

Those enhancements increased the credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and to $3,600 for children under age 6, but more significantly, they removed limits on the refundable part of the credit, which helps families who most need it. Under permanent law (the credit that was in effect for years before and after 2021), the tax code actually states that certain families make too little money to receive the full credit. That is, a credit which is supposed to help children is denied to them if they are too poor. Last year, all children could receive the full credit if their family income was less than $150,000 (or less than $112,500 for most single parents). The 2021 credit enhancement also made the credit available to families in monthly installments to help match their normal household expenses rather than as a year-end lump sum.

The results of the credit enhancements were dramatic and immediate. Child poverty was cut nearly in half. The 2021 credit pulled more people above the poverty line than SNAP and unemployment insurance combined. The enhanced credit was especially important for Black and Hispanic families. As a result of Congress’s failure to extend the credit enhancements, ITEP estimates that 45 percent of Black children and 42 percent of Hispanic children will not receive the full credit next year because the arbitrary limits on the refundable portion of the credit are in effect again.

Given the enormous success of the 2021 credit, many progressive groups were at least open to an unsavory package of tax breaks for big businesses if lawmakers would in turn help children and families by enhancing the Child Tax Credit. The tax package pushed by corporate lobbyists included a deduction for “research” that was promoted by companies making frozen foods and casino games, an interest deduction that would encourage private equity funds to load up companies with debt, and a bonus depreciation break that would accomplish little aside from allowing big companies to save billions on their tax bills.

Sen. Sherrod Brown framed the position of many progressives succinctly this September when he said, “No more tax breaks for big corporations and the wealthy unless the Child Tax Credit is with it. I’ll lay down in front of a bulldozer on that one.”

Conservative lawmakers dutifully expressed their own position on the issue. Cutting child poverty was not worth it if it could even be theorized that rich people might end up slightly less rich. The White House, for its part, signaled that it could be flexible on the details of a CTC expansion that could be part of such a deal.

But ultimately, the conservative position on the credit triumphed. The credit was not worth the cost if it cost, well anything. That included Republicans giving up their own package of corporate tax breaks. Perhaps they believe they can get a better deal next Congress with the House Republican majority. Let’s hope that Sen. Brown carries his promise into the new year.

In the end, there should be few tears shed that the corporate lobbyists lost on this one. But there is a certain amount of ire that rises up inside one’s heart knowing the only thing that could kill Congress’ appetite for corporate tax breaks is a simple request that they boost the economic security of children and families as well.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Joe Hughes.

Congress Decides Corporate Tax Cuts Are Too Expensive If It Means Also Helping Children

Joe Hughes — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 19:14:17 +0000

Ultimately, the conservative position on the credit triumphed. The credit was not worth the cost if it cost, well anything.

This fall, as lobbyists descended on the Hill to pressure Congress into passing a set of corporate tax breaks before the year's end, some progressive activists and lawmakers settled on a strategy to make any potential tax package at least mildly palatable: Tax breaks for businesses must be paired with an extension of the Child Tax Credit enhancements that were enacted in 2021.

The results of the credit enhancements were dramatic and immediate. Child poverty was cut nearly in half. The 2021 credit pulled more people above the poverty line than SNAP and unemployment insurance combined. The enhanced credit was especially important for Black and Hispanic families. As a result of Congress's failure to extend the credit enhancements, ITEP estimates that 45 percent of Black children and 42 percent of Hispanic children will not receive the full credit next year because the arbitrary limits on the refundable portion of the credit are in effect again.

Given the enormous success of the 2021 credit, many progressive groups were at least open to an unsavory package of tax breaks for big businesses if lawmakers would in turn help children and families by enhancing the Child Tax Credit. The tax package pushed by corporate lobbyists included a deduction for "research" that was promoted by companies making frozen foods and casino games, an interest deduction that would encourage private equity funds to load up companies with debt, and a bonus depreciation break that would accomplish little aside from allowing big companies to save billions on their tax bills.

Sen. Sherrod Brown framed the position of many progressives succinctly this September when he said, "No more tax breaks for big corporations and the wealthy unless the Child Tax Credit is with it. I'll lay down in front of a bulldozer on that one."

But ultimately, the conservative position on the credit triumphed. The credit was not worth the cost if it cost, well anything. That included Republicans giving up their own package of corporate tax breaks. Perhaps they believe they can get a better deal next Congress with the House Republican majority. Let's hope that Sen. Brown carries his promise into the new year.

In the end, there should be few tears shed that the corporate lobbyists lost on this one. But there is a certain amount of ire that rises up inside one's heart knowing the only thing that could kill Congress' appetite for corporate tax breaks is a simple request that they boost the economic security of children and families as well.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Joe Hughes.

Fighting Poverty Means Targeting the Very Wealthy

Sam Pizzigati — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 15:37:17 +0000

Some conflicts we can see—and understand—rather easily. Their raw rhetoric will typically help us identify the opposing players and what they’re fighting over.

But sometimes the rhetoric never gets raw. The dominant players smother real differences with appeals to vague values. They paper over real conflicts and choices and leave the general public unaware and uninvolved.

Exhibit A in this sort of smothering? The international dialogue over “sustainable development.”

Ever-heavier concentrations of income and wealth, researchers have shown over recent years, erode social cohesion and democracy.

Over the past decade, nations worldwide have been gathering at a series of global confabs to hammer out what we all ought to be doing to save our planet and bring all peoples living on it up to a decent standard of living. These huddles, back in 2015, appeared to have scored an unprecedented breakthrough.

That September, our global heads of state gathered at the UN in New York and announced they had “adopted a historic decision on a comprehensive, far-reaching, and people-centered set” of goals and targets that would, among other noble outcomes, “build peaceful, just, and inclusive societies” and ensure our Earth’s “lasting protection.”

“We envisage a world in which every country enjoys sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth and decent work for all,” the assembled dignitaries declared. “A world in which consumption and production patterns and use of all natural resources—from air to land, from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to oceans and seas—are sustainable.”

“We commit ourselves,” the dignitaries added, “to working tirelessly for the full implementation of this Agenda by 2030.”

We’ve now come about halfway through the years those leaders figured that “full implementation” would take. But that glorious global end state they originally promised, researchers at the Geneva-based UN Research Institute for Social Development noted earlier this fall, now seems frighteningly distant.

“With only eight years remaining to make this ambition a reality,” the UNISD observes in a powerful new report that has so far received far too little global attention, “the context for achieving the vision of Agenda 2030 has never been more daunting.”

Direct and difficult challenges to the goals world leaders so triumphantly announced in 2015 now seem everywhere. The rise of austerity. The backlash against egalitarian and human rights discourses and movements. The worsening climate crisis “threatening our very existence.”

We have, the UN researchers conclude, “a world in a state of fracture, and at its heart is inequality.”

The spirited new report from these researchers, Crises of Inequality: Shifting Power for a New Eco-Social Contract, frames our globe’s continuing maldistribution of income and wealth as the most formidable obstacle the world now faces to a safe and decent future.

“Our current system perpetuates a trickle-up of wealth to the top, leaving no possibilities for shared prosperity,” advises UN Research Institute director Paul Ladd. “It destroys our environment and climate through over-consumption and pollution and offloads the steep costs onto those who consume little and pollute the least.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has of late been sounding similar themes.

“Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider. Challenges are spreading farther,” Guterres told the UN General Assembly this past September. “We have a duty to act. And yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction.”

Both this bluntness from Guterres and the UN Research Institute’s new report reflect somewhat of a desperate desire for the sort of debate the world’s rich and powerful—and the nations they call home—so desperately want to avoid.

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, a former UN human development official and currently a professor of international affairs at The New School in New York, has been tracking the internal international community debates that have ended up papering over the dangers of concentrated income and wealth. She sums up her research in a revealing analysis that appears in the new Crises of Inequality report.

The current “Sustainable Development Goal” discourse on “inequality,” Fukuda-Parr points out, fixates almost exclusively “on those who are excluded, marginalized, and living below the poverty line.” This same discourse gives “little attention” to those at “the top of the distribution: the rich and powerful.”

Why speak of “inequality” but essentially address only poverty? The international negotiators who delivered up the new Sustainable Development Goals knew their work had to somehow address the inequity of our global income and wealth distribution. Their predecessors who had produced the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, Fukuda-Parr notes, had come under heavy fire for their “glaring failure to include inequality.”

But how to include inequality became the central question. Would the new Sustainable Development Goals directly address the impact and extent of all the wealth and income that has settled into super-rich pockets? Or would the goals only focus on the “exclusion” of vulnerable and marginalized poor people from economic “opportunity.”

The first approach threatened the privileged status of the world’s wealthiest. The second ignored it. The second won out—by setting targets for the Sustainable Development Goals, Fukuda-Parr explains, that “do not take into account the distribution of wealth within and between countries or make reference to extreme inequality.”

Fukuda-Parr goes into helpful detail on the behind-the-scenes struggle that generated this outcome. Global economic justice groups and some national delegations to the global negotiations wanted the goals to include statistical yardsticks that could tell us whether income and wealth distributions are becoming more or less concentrated. One such yardstick, the Palma ratio, lets societies compare over time the incomes going to a nation’s richest 10 percent and poorest 40 percent.

But the dominant national players in these negotiations rejected any indicator that might show the rich gaining at the expense of everyone else. Their preferred approach: tracking whether or not the incomes of the poor were increasing faster than the national average. Societies where the incomes of the poor were rising faster than that national average, the argument went, were moving smartly to “shared prosperity.”

This narrow perspective on inequality would end up dominating the negotiations. The problem? By conflating “inequality” and “poverty,” as Fukuda-Parr helps us understand, those negotiators most defensive about their home nation’s extreme concentrations of income and wealth had come up with a global framework that “excludes from the narrative the problems of extreme inequality and the power of the wealthy.”

And that exclusion comes with a heavy cost. Ever-heavier concentrations of income and wealth, researchers have shown over recent years, erode social cohesion and democracy, invite monopoly power, and even dampen the economic growth that cheerleaders for grand fortune claim we gain when wealth concentrates.

The poor don’t gain, in short, when societies ignore the rich. The rich just amass more of the clout and power they need to keep getting richer off the poor—and everyone else.

The new UN Research Institute for Social Development report recognizes that reality. Let’s hope this research gains much more global attention. But let’s not just hope. Let’s do whatever we can to help that gain along.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Sam Pizzigati.

What the Success of Michigan’s Prop 3 Means for Abortion Rights

Molly Wadzeck Kraus — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 18:54:49 +0000

The ‘Dobbs’ decision activated a new bipartisan coalition of pro-choice Midwesterners. Their grassroots efforts paid off on Election Day.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Molly Wadzeck Kraus.

‘We Need to Transform What It Means to Be an Academic Worker; the Status Quo Is Untenable’ – CounterSpin interview with Nelson Lichtenstein on UC strike

Janine Jackson — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 20:46:26 +0000

Janine Jackson interviewed UC Santa Barbara’s Nelson Lichtenstein about the University of California strike for the December 2, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

CounterSpin221202Lichtenstein.mp3

Janine Jackson: When it comes to corporate news media coverage of labor actions, there are unfortunately a few tropes to look out for, even in 2022.

First, while strikes in other countries may be presented as signs of freedom, in the US they will often be presented in terms of the disruption they cause.

New York Times (11/14/22)

The New York Times’ November 14 report on the strike by some 48,000 University of California teaching assistants, researchers and others gave skimming readers the shorthand “highlight” that these people “walked off the job Monday, forcing some classes to be canceled.”

“Classes were disrupted, research slowed and office hours canceled,” the paper noted, “only a few weeks away from final examinations.”

Whatever an article goes on to say, the “harmful disruption” presentation encourages readers to understand that the status quo before the action was not harmful and did not disrupt, and that worker actions are therefore willful, selfish and possibly malignant.

Elite media’s other big idea in these circumstances is to present the idea that, as CNN had it in their very brief mention, UC workers are “demanding higher pay”—”workers demand/owners offer” being among the hardiest perennial media narrative frames. It implies a context of scarcity in which we are to imagine that the money needed to allow academic employees to make their rent would have to be swiped from the pockets of small children or something.

Of course, the major weapon big media have is the spotlight, which they can shine or shutter as they choose.

So here to help us see what’s happening and what’s at stake in the largest strike in the history of American higher education is Nelson Lichtenstein. He’s professor of history at the University of California/Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy.

He’s also author or editor of a number of books, including Beyond the New Deal Order: US Politics From the Great Depression to the Great Recession, and A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, which is forthcoming in 2023.

He joins us now by phone from Santa Barbara. Welcome to CounterSpin, Nelson Lichtenstein.

Nelson Lichtenstein: Glad to be here.

Truthout (6/10/19)

JJ: Pay is absolutely a key part of this labor action at the University of California, but it’s not as though these are people who are really well-off and looking for still more. The folks teaching at these elite institutions, some of them are living in their cars, but many of them, enough of them, are seriously struggling, as I understand it, to keep a roof over their heads.

So when we say it’s about money, it’s about the money it takes to live a life, right?

NL: Right. I mean, this strike has been developing for several years, and the one spur to it has been the enormous increase in housing costs and rents.

And that’s partly pandemic-induced. That is, lots of people who used to work in downtown LA or New York, they want to, “Let’s get a house on the California coast, or something, and Zoom in to work.” Well, that’s jacked up, generally, housing costs in California. And so that’s one spur to it.

I think everyone in California, from the left to the right to the governor on down, knows that housing is just an enormous crisis. And here, of course, teaching assistants and other graduate students, they’ve seen their rents go way, way up. And there’s been an erosion in their pay, small as it was, over the last decade or so. And in the last two years, the inflationary spike has done that.

Now, it used to be that there was an implicit kind of ivory tower bargain: OK, you go to the university, you work for five or six years at low pay as a kind of apprentice, and then you end up with a good job, a high-prestige job, a tenure job, etc.

Dissent (11/22/22)

Well, that bargain has been broken for decades. And the UC’s (I think admirable) recruitment of working-class people and working-class people of color into the university has exacerbated that, because they aren’t ivory tower types, they aren’t Ivy League types. They’re working Americans.

And so this pressure for a recalibration of the wages and working conditions of thousands and thousands of the people who really stand at the heart of the university—the tenure track professors, they just become a minority, a small minority.

And it takes these academic researchers, postdocs, mainly in the sciences, and then of course the teaching assistants, to really make the university go. And we can no longer have this contingent labor model that people accept because there’s some reward at the other end. That’s not the case.

This is their life. And if you’re in your 20s, you have the right to get married, to have kids if you want to. We don’t live in a kind of Victorian Era anymore.

So this strike is quite large. It has support. Your introductory comments were on target, but this strike actually has support from an enormous range of people.

The Los Angeles Times endorsed the aims of the strike. And I think it has the potential to really transform, not just higher education, but really well beyond that.

JJ: And the strike does have support, which I think is so key, in part because that support is in the face of, if we just talk about big media, a kind of, “Oh, this doesn’t work. This is a problem.”

The wave of labor actions that we’ve seen in the last couple of years have been such a heartening sign of people, not just standing up for their rights, but also talking back in the face of a narrative that’s been pushed on us for a long time.

And part of that has been, as with Uber drivers and others, and certainly with journalists, we’ve seen a lot of “they aren’t even workers,” and the workers themselves saying, “Well, we’re not workers, we’re individuals; it’s not like we’re building cars.”

And there’s kind of a push against organizing among so-called culture workers or intellectual workers.

NL: Right. Glad you brought that up, because I think one of the many sins of former President Trump was to recreate an imagery of what a worker was, a very retrograde image: you know, a white male coal miner or steel worker or something like that. Those are the only people who are really workers.

And of course, that’s so antiquated and out of date. American culture and political culture has to come to terms with the fact that, today, the heart of the working class in the United States are people who are in the service sector, who do everything from retail work, but also to hospitals, to the media, the universities, etc.

I mean, the biggest unions in the country today are the teachers unions—mainly secondary, but also higher education.

So, yes, this is very important. Just to get your head around a sense of “who is a worker?” And take them seriously as a person who works for a living.

My spouse, Eileen Boris, who teaches feminist studies, did a wonderful little kind of performative act at a rally where faculty were urged to wear their academic regalia, which really comes out of the medieval time.

So we’re all wearing our gown and our hats, and my spouse, she said, “OK, yes, I’m a distinguished professor, with a chair and everything.”

And then she took off her gown, and there was a union T-shirt. “But really, I’m a worker.”

And I think that’s what has to happen in the whole cultural world, that whether you’re museum curators or in the university or any other area of cultural production, that, really, we are in fact workers.

Prosaic demands for wages and better working conditions are important.

By the way, the interesting thing about this strike is that the people who are actually on strike are very variegated, cultural, political, racial, gendered, very hip kind of people. But what is their demand? The demand is extraordinarily conventional. It is for higher wages. Nothing could be more conventional than that in terms of labor.

But that’s essential to their dignity and their capacity, actually, to do their jobs. To write, for example, a dissertation, you have to have time to do it. You can’t be bussing dishes at a restaurant in addition to your job as teaching assistant. You have to have time to write.

So this is what they’re really demanding.

JJ: And then in terms of broader implications, I read an article that said, “Campus-area housing has long been a policy concern, vexing state lawmakers and inciting town/gown legal battles.”

Now, I’m not saying that that’s inaccurate, but it does make it sound like a fight that I don’t necessarily have a dog in, you know?

But there are broader implications of this strike that go beyond the workers, extending, minimally, to all of their students and their potential students.

One source says, “I can’t in good conscience tell anyone to come here for their PhD,” because “the cost of living is unsustainable.”

Nelson Lichtenstein: “This is the way issues get put on the agenda, on the state and the national agenda, by making social disruptions.”

NL: Yes, right, yeah. The housing crisis is really a labor question in California. I mean, people commuting from the Central Valley to work in Silicon Valley, that’s a two-hour commute. Well, why are they doing that? Because they can’t afford the housing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Obviously that’s also true in the university. We have people, both staff and academic people, who are commuting 40, 50 miles to work at the university.

This is all because of housing. Everyone recognizes in California this gigantic crisis. It’s this great state with tremendous industries and a really liberal political culture. But the Achilles heel of this state is housing, the housing crisis. And the students here at UC, grad students and others, are really putting this on the agenda, as “you have to do something about it.”

Now, one way is, you pay us more, you know? OK. And if you don’t want to do that, then you have to figure out some way to reduce the cost of housing. Housing’s at least 40% of the inflationary spike, probably more in California. So something has to be done.

And I think this is the way issues get put on the agenda, on the state and the national agenda, by making social disruptions.

And that’s what’s been happening for the last three weeks here at UC.

JJ: I wanted to point out one article, a New York Times piece by Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, and it was not about UC; it was about adjunct strikes at the New School (where I got my graduate degree).

And it was unusual, because it introduced the topic of administrator salaries, and it quoted someone who had looked at compensation data, saying, “The administrators seem to view themselves as essential and everyone else as inessential.”

New York Times (1/16/22)

Without that kind of context, reports on the strike, and “these workers want more pay,” it’s kind of like giving the ball score, “Red Sox six,” you know. You’re missing the context in which more money is being called for.

And it makes it sound like they’re asking for money to be created out of thin air, when we’re talking about power.

NL: That’s true. Administrators proliferated. But I would make this point: Some on the left who are supportive of the strike, and supportive of the grad students, would say, “Oh, the money is there. Let’s just take it out of this bloated administrative overhead.”

And that’s true. You can get some of it. But that’s not going to solve the problem.

What will solve the problem is we’ve had 40 years of austerity from state legislatures, and the national government as well, in terms of funding higher education.

What we need to do is to go to the legislatures and have progressive taxation. We have Elon Musk here in California. We have the Facebook people, etc.

We need to have a revision of the tax code which returns us to the world of 1955, which was a much more progressive era when it came to taxes. And that’s where the money is. That’s where the really big money is. That’s where the billions and billions are.

And stop this starving of higher education; decade by decade, a smaller portion of the actual operating funds of all the state universities have come from the general tax revenues. We need to reverse that. And a strike like this puts that issue on the agenda, and I think that’s where the money’s going to come from.

JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, and you’ve just hinted towards it: Do you have thoughts about what truly responsible, thoughtful news media coverage would look like, things it would include, and maybe some things it would leave out?

NL: Well, yes, actually you indicated that the obstacle to this settlement of the strike is the administration, the people who run it, who want to maintain and continue this untenable model of a kind of impoverished, precarious, large group of grad students in a kind of limbo, they want to continue that, and think that’s tenable. It’s not tenable.

We need a breakthrough which is going to transform the meaning of what it means to be an academic worker. The status quo is untenable. And I think the facts of this crisis needs to be up front in terms of media coverage of this strike, and many others of that sort.

We’ve come to a period of increasing inequality and increasing stress at work, and the pandemic demonstrated that, but it’s there. It’s untenable for the future.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Nelson Lichtenstein. His article, “The Largest Strike in the History of American Higher Ed,” can be found at DissentMagazine.org. Nelson Lichtenstein, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

NL: You’re welcome, Janine.

The post ‘We Need to Transform What It Means to Be an Academic Worker; the Status Quo Is Untenable’ appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

The Ruling Class Broke the Railway Strike—Because That’s What It Means to Be the Ruling Class

Chris Hedges — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 17:47:05 +0000

The Congressional decision to prohibit railroad workers from going on strike and force them to accept a contract that meets few of their demands is part of the class war that has defined American politics for decades. The two ruling political parties differ only in rhetoric. They are bonded in their determination to reduce wages; dismantle social programs, which the Bill Clinton administration did with welfare; and thwart unions and prohibit strikes, the only tool workers have to pressure employers. This latest move against the railroad unions, where working conditions have descended into a special kind of hell with massive layoffs, the denial of even a single day of paid sick leave, and punishing work schedules that include being forced to "always be on call," is one more blow to the working class and our anemic democracy.

The rich, throughout history, have subjugated and re-subjugated the populations they control.

The rage by workers towards the Democratic Party, which once defended their interests, is legitimate, even if, at times, it is expressed by embracing proto-fascists and Donald Trump-like demagogues. Dating back to the Clinton administration with NAFTA, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the Democratic Party has become a full partner in the corporate assault on workers. The cloying feel-your-pain rhetoric, a staple of the Joe Biden White House, is offset by a hypocritical subservience to the billionaire class.

In 1926, the havoc wreaked by rail strikes led to the federal government passing the Railway Labor Act to give itself the power to impose labor settlements on the rail industry. The Biden administration used this authority to broker a tentative labor agreement that would ensure a 24 percent pay increase by 2024, annual $1,000 bonuses and a freeze on rising health care costs. But workers would be permitted only one paid personal day and no paid sick leave. Of 12 unions voting on the deal, four of them—representing 56 percent of union membership in the industry—refused to ratify it. Biden signed the legislation into law on Friday.

The railroad barons refuse to permit sick days because they have stripped the railroads down to skeleton crews in a process known as precision scheduled railroading, or PSR. In essence, no spare labor is available, which is why the reduced labor force is subjected to such punishingly short periods of time off and onerous working conditions.

Class struggle defines human history. We are dominated by a seemingly omnipotent corporate elite. Hostile to our most basic rights, this elite is disemboweling the nation; destroying basic institutions that foster the common good, including public schools, the postal service and health care; and is incapable of reforming itself. The only weapon left to thwart this ongoing pillage is the strike. Workers have the collective power to slash profits and cripple industry, which is why the ruling class has gone to such lengths to defang unions and outlaw strikes. A rail freight strike, it is estimated, would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion a day, with daily losses increasing the longer a strike continued.

The few unions that remain—only 10.7 percent of the workforce is unionized—have been largely domesticated, demoted into obsequious junior partners in the capitalist system. As of January 2022, private-sector unionization stood at its lowest point since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. And yet, 48 percent of U.S. workers say they would like to belong to a union.

Railroad workers have been especially hard hit. The workforce has shrunk from nearly 540,000 in 1980 to some 130,000 today. The consolidation of the rail industry means there are only seven Class I freight companies, with four of those companies controlling 83 percent of rail traffic. Service on the nation's rail lines, along with working conditions and wages, has deteriorated as Wall Street squeezes the big railroad conglomerates for greater and greater profits. Indeed, the fragility of the rail system led to huge backlogs and delays during the pandemic.

The Democrats insist they are the party of the working class. Joe Biden calls himself "a proud pro-labor president." But they pile up one empty promise after another. In 2020, they promised, for example, that with control of the White House and both branches of Congress, they would pass a law to strengthen collective bargaining. Instead, they revoked the collective bargaining power of one of the few unionized industries that retains it.

They promised to raise the minimum wage. They failed. They promised a national paid family and medical leave program allowing all employees to take up to 12 weeks of paid time off. It never happened. They promised to impose a federal tax rate on corporations ranging from 21 percent to 28 percent, so that "wealthy Americans and big corporations pay their fair share." The proposed tax increase was scuttled. They promised to pass legislation to ensure that super PACs "are wholly independent of campaigns and political parties." It went nowhere. They then mounted a midterm election campaign, which cost both parties a staggering $16.7 billion and was funded by massive infusions of PAC money.

The Democrats routinely say the right thing and do the wrong thing, and this is true for its tiny progressive minority, which dutifully votes to funnel billions to the war industry, including the war in Ukraine. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and most other progressive House members voted for the anti-union legislation while also voting for a separate resolution that would have given rail workers seven days of paid sick leave. The unions were demanding 14. The second resolution died in the Senate, as they knew it would, leaving workers with a woefully inadequate, pro-management deal that over half of them had already rejected. To his credit, Bernie Sanders voted against the bill when the sick leave amendment from the House, which he backed, was rejected in the Senate.

Why does any legislator believe railroad workers should be forced to use what few vacation days they may have if they fall sick and request permission to be absent days in advance, as if illnesses are scheduled events? Congress members and their staff do not work under these conditions.

"In a statement that perfectly captured the yawning gap between Democratic Party rhetoric and behavior," Binyamin Appelbaum, the lead writer on economics and business for the New York Times editorial board, wrote in the newspaper, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced railroad companies as rapacious profiteers who 'have been selling out to Wall Street to boost their bottom lines, making obscene profits while demanding more and more from railroad workers.' Then, just one sentence later, she announced that House Democrats would stand with the profiteers."

What are we to make of a Congress that refuses to support a single day of paid sick leave for 115,000 freight railroad workers, while the combined net income of the railroad industry is $27 billion — double what it was in 2013?

What are we to make of a Congress that in its latest military policy legislation sets the appropriation at $45 billion above the Pentagon's request?

What are we to make of a Congress that refuses to pass gun control legislation despite 600 mass shootings this year, more than one per day?

What are we to make of a Congress that defunds the Internal Revenue Service, making it only practical to investigate those earning middle and lower incomes and near impossible to investigate tens of billions of dollars in tax evasion by corporations and the rich?

What are we to make of a Congress that rewrites the tax code on behalf of lobbyists so 55 of the largest corporations that collectively made over $40 billion in pre-tax income in 2020 – paid no federal income tax and received $3.5 billion in tax rebates.

What are we to make of a Congress, more than half of whose members are millionaires, who flagrantly use their committee assignments, inside knowledge of proposed legislation and classified intelligence reports to carry out insider trading to increase their wealth? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband invested millions of dollars in computer-chip stocks as the Democratic leadership was formulating a plan to subsidize the chip-manufacturing industry.

Most political theorists, including Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Karl Polanyi and Max Weber, started from the premise that there is a natural antagonism between owners and workers. They understood that if the oligarchs shook off all restraints to the accumulation of wealth, it would destroy the political order. The ruling class masks its greed behind ideologies—in our nation's case, free market capitalism and neoliberal globalization. Neoliberalism never made any economic sense. But it was disseminated by compliant academics, the media and political theorists because, to quote Marx, it allowed "the dominant material relationships" to be "grasped as ideas."

"We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are," Wendell Berry wrote. "Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so, and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing."

All the advances we made in the early 20th century through union strikes, government regulation, the New Deal, a fair tax code, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning American workers—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into serfs, kept in check by onerous anti-union laws, militarized police, the world's largest prison system, an electoral system dominated by corporate money and the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history.

The rich, throughout history, have subjugated and re-subjugated the populations they control. And the public, throughout history, has awakened to the class war waged by the oligarchs and plutocrats and revolted. Let us hope that defying Congress, freight railroad workers carry out a strike. A strike will at least expose the fangs of the ruling class, the courts, law enforcement and the National Guard, much as they did during labor unrest in the 20th century, and broadcast a very public message about whose interests they serve. Besides, a strike might work. Nothing else will.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Chris Hedges.

David Dayen on Rail Contract, Respect for Marriage Act, Debt Ceiling & What a GOP Congress Means

Democracy Now! — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 14:54:56 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

David Dayen on Rail Contract Bill, Respect for Marriage Act, Debt Ceiling & What a GOP Congress Means

Democracy Now! — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 13:28:22 +0000

With a new Congress being sworn in next month, Democratic lawmakers have a busy lame-duck session during which they will try to pass as many bills as possible before losing their majority in the House of Representatives. The Senate has just passed the historic Respect for Marriage Act in a 61-36 vote that protects marriage equality, and lawmakers are also moving to impose a controversial contract on the freight rail industry to avert a possible strike by thousands of rail workers who are demanding sick days and other improvements. Meanwhile, a fight is looming over a funding bill to avoid a government shutdown. For more, we speak with journalist David Dayen, whose recent piece for The American Prospect is headlined “Reconciliation Is Available to End Debt Limit Hostage-Taking.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Explained: What the Supreme Court decision means for Scottish independence

Adam Ramsay — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 14:55:02 +0000

While the question of Scotland’s independence won’t be solved by a British court, the ruling could cause chaos

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

Critical Media Literacy Education is a Peaceful Means to Humanitarian Ends

Project Censored — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 23:17:03 +0000

The 2022 Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas took place in Oakland, CA in late October. This week’s Project Censored Show presents excerpts from the plenary roundtable that addressed shortcomings of corporate media, each from a different perspective, and explained how a more critically media literate public and robust independent press could foster real humanitarian progress as we face multiple existential crises. Mickey Huff moderated the roundtable discussion which included Robin Anderson, who writes the media watch group FAIR, and for Project Censored; she is professor emerita at Fordham University; Maximilian Alvarez, editor-in-chief at The Real News Network; Eduardo Garcia; a freelance environmental journalist who writes on the climate crisis; and Mnar Adley, CEO and editor-in-chief at MintPress News.

Music-break information:

“The Resistance” by 2 Cellos

The Project Censored Show:

Hosts: Mickey Huff & Eleanor Goldfield

Producers: Anthony Fest & Eleanor Goldfield

The post Critical Media Literacy Education is a Peaceful Means to Humanitarian Ends appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Project Censored.

‘Democracy Won’: Cortez Masto Victory Means Democrats Keep Control of Senate

Brett Wilkins — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 15:22:01 +0000

Democracy defenders breathed a collective deep sigh of relief Saturday night as Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was projected to win reelection, ensuring Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate regardless of the results of next month's Georgia runoff.

"Voters sided with democracy and delivered a resounding defeat to Republican extremism this week," tweeted Swing Left, a group working to elect congressional Democrats in swing states and districts. "There's more to do, but this is critical progress—thanks to you."

Cortez Masto's imminent victory over former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt—a purveyor of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 election was fraudulent—means the upper chamber's Democratic caucus will have at least 50 members, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

"This morning the sky is blue! Democracy itself was on the ballot and democracy won because Democrats held the Senate," Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) tweeted Sunday. "Special thanks to Gen Z-er's for their turnout. You are the future!"

Charles Booker, the Kentucky progressive defeated by incumbent Republican Sen. Rand Paul last week, tweeted: "Mitch McConnell just learned he will not be majority leader. Enjoy your evening, America."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) congratulated Cortez Masto, tweeting: "This is great news for the country. Great news for our democracy."

"But," he added, "there's a big difference between 51 and 50. BIG. Let's keep going and win the Georgia runoff."

That election will take place on December 6. Money for ads and campaign operatives from both sides are already pouring into Georgia, where neither incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock—who with 99% of ballots counted, received 49.4% of the votes—nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker, with 48.5%, reached the 50% threshold required for outright victory.

The Washington Post reports:

Even though Democrats have held their majority in the Senate, with Vice President [Kamala] Harris able to cast tie-breaking votes, picking up a 51st vote in Georgia would offer a cushion for key legislation. During the past two years, Democrats have been unable to move forward with some agenda items, including voting rights and a sweeping climate and social spending bill, because they couldn't always get the votes of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.).

Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the pro-democracy New Georgia Project, told the Post that it would be "super-shortsighted" for Democrats to not aggressively campaign for Warnock.

"It's like if you're playing a football game and you're winning by three and you have the opportunity to score a touchdown—and you're like, 'Oh, no, I'm already winning by three,' but there's like 10 minutes on the clock," Cotton said. "You look stuck on stupid. Score a touchdown."

Control of the House of Representatives, meanwhile, remained up in the air Sunday, with 20 races—10 in which Democrats are leading, and 10 in which the GOP candidate has the advantage—still undecided.

"Regardless of what happens to the House, Democrats still have defied the odds and it's a big deal," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted Sunday.

"My heart is filled with gratitude for our candidates, campaign staffers, voters, donators, state party leaders, DNC, DCCC, DSCC and grassroots orgs," she added. "We broke a huge trend y'all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

‘Accident Prevention Month’ means police extort more than usual in North Korea

By Chang Gyu Ahn for RFA Korean — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 18:55:00 +0000

November is “Accident Prevention Measures Month” in North Korea – which means that police are shaking down citizens for fines and bribes more than usual, sources in the isolated country told Radio Free Asia.

Paying off the cops is a way of life in North Korea.

Since most North Koreans can barely survive on the salaries of their government-assigned jobs – which in 2018 averaged about U.S.$4 per month – many families have side jobs, buying and selling goods as merchants or providing services.

Police officers and other authority figures, however, use their positions to extract bribes or fine people and pocket the money when they are in violation of minor safety codes.

November and May are government-sponsored accident prevention months, so people need to be especially careful because raids and crackdowns are more frequent, a resident in the city of Tanchon in the eastern province of South Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

The official line is that the extra attention is to boost traffic safety. But in reality, police officers “tyrannically exploit people under the pretext of preventing accidents,” the source said. “People complain that this is going too far.”

People go so far as to liken police officers to thieves or “Oppashi,” a villainous Japanese police officer from a popular North Korean film set during the time Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula.

Police will vigorously ticket every little violation they can find, scanning car and motorcycle license plates to make sure they are up to date, the source said.

Even bicycle license plates are scrutinized. “Bicycle license plates used to be issued after the owner registered the bicycle at the local police office, but nobody has been doing that since the early 2000s,” she said. “So you either make your own or buy it from the market and attach it to the front of the bike.”

If found without a plate, bike owners can expect to pay 1,000 won (12 cents) for regular bicycles and 10,000 won ($1.21) for electric ones, according to the source.

At the end of the month, the local security department with the fewest accidents during the month is considered to have done a good job, sources said.

Authorities also check for workplace violations, a resident of Chongjin in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. If the police spot a violation, businesses can be forced to temporarily close.

“Security guards have been inspecting commercial service facilities such as restaurants and public baths,” the second source said.

To avoid the penalty, business owners can offer the police a bribe.

A restaurant owner in the Kyo-dong neighborhood got out of having to shut down due to a potential fire hazard by serving the inspecting security agent a bowl of dangogi-jang, an expensive stew made with dog meat, and 100,000 won ($12) in cash, she said.

“The public is on the verge of explosion due to their extreme dissatisfaction with the security agents who viciously extort residents to fill their pockets,” she said.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chang Gyu Ahn for RFA Korean.

Brexit means less hope for multiculturalism in the EU

Tariq Modood — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 06:31:07 +0000

The UK didn’t need the EU to enjoy multiculturalism – quite the reverse

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Tariq Modood.

Election Administrators Are Under Attack. Here’s What That Means for the Upcoming Midterms.

by Jeremy Schwartz — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:00:00 +0000

by Jeremy Schwartz

Sign up for ProPublica’s User’s Guide to Democracy, a series of personalized emails that help you understand the upcoming election, from who’s on your ballot to how to cast your vote.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

With the 2022 midterms less than a month away, election administrators in Texas and elsewhere continue to face a level of harassment and threats that experts say had never been experienced before the November 2020 presidential election.

In August, the entire staff of the elections office in Gillespie County, about 80 miles west of Austin, resigned, citing threats, “dangerous misinformation” and a lack of resources. The same month, Bexar County elections administrator Jacque Callanen told KSAT, a San Antonio news station, that her department was confronting similar challenges.

“We’re under attack,” Callanen said.“Threats, meanness, ugliness.” She added that staff members were drowning in frivolous open-records requests for mail ballots and applications. Texas is one of several states targeted by right-wing activists who are seeking to throw out voter registrations and ballots, according to The New York Times.

Last month, angry activists disrupted a routine event in which officials publicly test voting equipment outside of Austin, swarming the Hays County elections administrator and Texas Secretary of State John Scott, a Republican, while alleging unproven election law violations.

The instances follow reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, which last year detailed the case of Michele Carew, an elections administrator in Hood County, a staunchly Republican area an hour southwest of Fort Worth. Then-President Donald Trump received 81% of the vote in Hood County in 2020. But Trump loyalists mounted a monthslong effort to oust Carew, a Republican, alleging disloyalty and liberal bias. Carew defended herself from the attacks, surviving a motion to terminate her, before resigning from the position in October 2021.

Elections officials like Carew are increasingly feeling pressure to prioritize partisan interests over a fair democratic elections process, according to a study released last year by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice and the Bipartisan Policy Center. The study, which interviewed more than three dozen elections administrators, found that 78% believe misinformation and disinformation spread on social media has made their jobs harder, with more than half saying the position has become more dangerous.

In Texas, about one-third of election administrators have left their jobs in the past two years, according to surveys conducted this year by the secretary of state’s office. State officials said data prior to 2020 is less reliable, making it difficult to compare the rates over time.

The levels of distrust that have come to dominate the political landscape in Texas, a state that Trump carried with relative ease, should be cause for concern, says David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit focused on ensuring accessible and secure elections for all eligible voters. He previously directed the elections program at Pew Charitable Trusts, where he led development of the Electronic Registration Information Center, which has helped 33 states, some led by Democrats and others by Republicans, update millions of out-of-date voter records. Before that, Becker helped oversee voting rights enforcement for the Department of Justice under Presidents Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and George W. Bush, a Republican.

I recently sat down with Becker, the coauthor of the book “The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie,” to talk about the realities facing elections administrators in Texas and across the country ahead of the 2022 midterms.

When we talked a year ago about Michele Carew, you said Texas’ new voting restrictions, a push by GOP activists to seize control of local party precincts and efforts to delegitimize the elections process in places like Hood County could have a chilling effect that drives out a generation of independent elections administrators. Do you feel like that is coming to fruition?

I think the risk definitely is still there. It is very difficult to get hard quantitative data on this, mainly because the definition of an election administrator is not always consistent across the states. We won’t really get a good sense of that until after the [2022] election.

What I do know is, on a state-by-state basis, I’ve heard pretty good evidence that states like California, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and several other states are seeing unprecedented departures of chief county election officials. In some cases, somewhere in the range of around 30% or 45% are leaving in a two-year period. That’s very, very high. I know from talking to election officials privately that many of them are considering whether or not they can stay in these jobs, because the harassment is so great.

Being an election official is not a path to fame and fortune. People don’t become election officials because they see something in it for them. In fact, if you ask most election officials how they got into being an election official, they’ll tell you it was by accident. They applied for a job, and it just looked like a pretty good job. And they stayed because they found a calling. That’s true of conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and everything in between.

The best-case scenario for election officials on the Wednesday after an election is anonymity. No one’s talking about the election because everything went smoothly and everyone’s moved on.

We’ve been in a position where election officials actually achieved probably the greatest success in American democratic process in history [in 2020]. They somehow managed the highest turnout we’ve ever had, during a global pandemic, and withstood incredible scrutiny. And, despite that success, the exact opposite has been spread about them. They are suffering an enormous amount of stress and harassment and abuse, and in some cases threats. So it’s normal for them to ask, “Should I keep doing this? Can I do this to my family?”

We are seeing candidates who have denied the outcome of the 2020 election now running for secretary of state, attorney general and election management positions at the county and precinct level around the country. Are you concerned about what this could mean for elections in the future?

I think it’s important to assess where the risks actually are. It is difficult — not impossible, but difficult — to anoint the loser of an election as the winner. We saw that in 2020. Even under enormous stress, with the White House itself being behind a lot of it, the courts have held up.

We have a lot of paper ballots, we have a lot of transparency, and so there’s a lot of evidence. So it’s very hard to anoint the loser as the winner.

I don’t want to say I’m completely sanguine about that not happening, but I think it’s a lower concern for me than the concern of the rhetoric being used by someone in a position of power, as we saw with former President Trump.

If you have someone in a position of power who is spreading lies about an election, who’s trying to create an incendiary environment where the supporters of a losing candidate are going to get more upset, we could see a lot of little Jan. 6s all over the place. (This refers to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.)

You write in your book that election denialism and skepticism have only grown among some Republicans since 2020, despite evidence that the presidential election was not marred by widespread fraud. Why do you believe the sentiment increased?

This is about the outcome being dissatisfying to some, and then looking for some reason to distrust the process. Because there’s no other way to explain it other than the fact that the losing presidential candidate got 7 million fewer votes than the winning presidential candidate, which is in fact what did happen.

We are almost exactly 700 days since the November 2020 election, and the losing presidential candidate has had an opportunity to present and find as much evidence as possible. He had over 60 courts to do that in, including in front of judges appointed by himself. He has had months and months to collect evidence. In 700 days, they’ve gotten nothing. Literally, not a shred of evidence has been demonstrated to indicate the outcome was wrong.

Nevertheless, the doubts have persisted, if not grown. I think it comes from the fact that there is kind of a warped incentive structure where the losing presidential candidate is getting rich off of spreading the lies, so he’s going to keep doing it. And then the ecosystem of grifters that surround him are also getting rich; they’re lining their pockets with small donations from people who are sincerely disappointed about the outcome of the election.

I think that’s a really key point here. Seventy-four million people voted for the loser. Not all of them are insurrectionists. Not all of them are bad Americans. In fact, the vast majority of them are good Americans who just wanted a different outcome in the election.

Who among us hasn’t suffered a bitter electoral disappointment in the last decade? But they have been targeted and taken advantage of, exploited because they live largely in media silos where they’re only hearing the echo chamber that the election was stolen because that comforts them, and the grifters know that. And so they know they can keep them bitter and angry and divided and donating.

As long as that incentive structure continues, I think the lies are going to persist. We now live in a country where, for many, a secure election is defined only as an election in which my candidate has won. That’s ridiculous. We need to change that incentive structure so that people stop exploiting their own supporters in order to make a buck.

Given some of the nationwide turnover in election administrators, what’s your level of optimism that the 2022 midterms will be carried out without major issues?

I’m very worried, but I’m not pessimistic, if that makes sense. I don’t think we’re inevitably heading towards conflict. I don’t think we’re heading inevitably towards political violence. But all of the ingredients are there. The gasoline has been poured. The question is, is there going to be a spark? And if there is going to be a spark, are there going to be enough of us who will act as firemen?

Where I find optimism is in institutions that have withheld so far, like the judiciary. I also find the most inspiration from election officials and others who have stood for a sense of duty to the Constitution.

But make no mistake: We are in a precarious moment. And that precarious moment is not going to wait for November 2024. We are in the middle of it right now. What happens in November and December of 2022 could show what path we’re on.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Schwartz.

‘Cave Means Grave’: Jan. 6 Audio Shows Oath Keepers Emboldened By Trump Tweet

Jake Johnson — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:33:44 +0000

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack released an audio recording Thursday in which members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia react in real-time to one of former President Donald Trump's tweets as his supporters stormed and ransacked the U.S. Capitol.

The new audio makes clear the militia members were emboldened by Trump's response to the attack, which urged rioters to "please support our Capitol Police, they are on our side."

Communicating via a walkie-talkie app, Oath Keepers who were inside the Capitol and in other locations responded positively to Trump's message, with one noting that "he didn't say not to do anything to the congressmen."

"He did not ask them to stand down," said another person on the recording.

After one militia member read off a news alert that lawmakers had been evacuated to a safe room, another replied, "There's no safe place in the United States for any of these motherfuckers right now, let me tell you."

"Military principle 105," the man added. "Cave means grave."

A number of Oath Keepers, including the group's founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, have been charged with seditious conspiracy and other crimes in connection to their roles in the January 6 insurrection.

"January 6th was a coordinated attack, fueled by the former president and the Big Lie," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) tweeted Thursday. "Everyone involved must be held accountable to the full extent of the law."

The House January 6 committee published the Oath Keepers audio recording as it prepares to hold its second round of public hearings on the Capitol attack on September 28.

The Justice Department, which has been observing the January 6 hearings and examining the committee's findings, is currently investigating Trump directly as part of its criminal probe of the Capitol attack.

In an interview earlier Thursday with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump threatened "big problems" if the Justice Department chooses to indict him over the January 6 attack, which he helped incite with constant lies about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump, who is also facing a Justice Department investigation for removing classified documents from the White House, said a DOJ indictment would not stop him from running for president in 2024.

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote on Twitter that "Trump warning of 'big problems' if he's indicted is incredibly troubling, given his past history of inciting an insurrection."

"This is dangerous rhetoric from him," Bookbinder added, "and underscores once again his lack of regard for democracy and the rule of law."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

What 9/11 means to me in 2022

Mickey Z. — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 13:25:03 +0000

September 11, 2001. Ani DiFranco called it “A day that America fell to its knees/After strutting around for a century without saying thank you or please.”

I’ve spilled gallons of ink writing about 9/11 and countless related issues — usually from a geo-political angle. This time, however, I’d like to narrow my focus down to a very personal level by talking about one of three people I knew who died in the towers that day.

Eddie was the oldest son of a woman named Ginger. My Mom and Ginger were friends since they were tots. Ginger got married, moved to New Jersey, and had seven kids. As the years passed, our families socialized less and less — thanks to geography and busy lives — but my Mom and Ginger remained close right up to the end (hold that thought).

I clearly recall the last time we visited Ginger’s family when I was about 13 or 14. After all the usual formalities, my sister went off to hang out with the oldest daughters and their neighborhood friends. I was sort of matched up with Jay, the second oldest son.

Jay was a little younger than me but instantly decided to challenge me to a fight. I was riding the swing in his backyard, so I jumped off at my highest peak and landed on him. In a flash, I had him in a headlock — but what I didn’t know was that Big Brother was indeed watching. (It wasn’t until many years later that I’d learn of Eddie’s enduring reputation as everyone’s “Big Protector.” )

Eddie was 17 then and he was huge. High school football star huge. He played on both the offensive and defensive lines. As I worked to get Jay to tap out, I suddenly felt two powerful hands grab hold of me. I let go of Jay to defend myself but Eddie lifted me over his head. I didn’t know yet that he was a gentle giant so I had visions of a hospital visit at that point.

After making me promise to not fight with his brother, Eddie casually placed me back down on the grass. I suppose I had won his respect since he invited me back to his room (without Jay) to check out his record collection. Being a huge music fan, my eyes hungrily scanned the rows and rows of albums. “Whaddya wanna hear? Eddie asked. I requested the live version of “Inside Looking Out” by Grand Funk Railroad.

“No way,” Eddie whispered. “My Dad would kill me if I played it while he was home. They mention reefer in that song.”

I was long-haired punk who was free to listen to whatever music he chose so Eddie’s admission took me aback. He was practically an adult, had all these albums and a kick-ass stereo, but he wouldn’t dream of breaking a house rule.

Since I never really got to know Eddie any further after that afternoon, this episode remained burned in my memory bank without further context.

Until September 11, 2001.

Eddie worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His office was in the basement of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He had already lived through the 1993 WTC bombing when he helped a crew of men smash through walls to rescue workers. However, Eddie lost five co-workers that day — including a close friend named Monica Smith. She was a 35-year-old secretary who was seven months pregnant and her death impacted Eddie deeply.

Fast forward eight years and the gentle giant was again at his desk when the first plane hit the North Tower. Eddie sprung into action to discover what was going on and then to begin getting people out to safety. Protecting, saving lives.

Here’s how a local New Jersey newspaper described what happened next:

“Around 9:30 a.m. Eddie took a quick second to return a phone call from [his wife] Jane, telling her he was all right, but that he had work to do. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he promised. In a documentary film later produced by French filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet, who had been in New York on Sept. 11 to make a short movie about rookie New York City firefighters, there is a brief glimpse of Eddie, bullhorn in hand, herding lines of office workers out of the burning South Tower.”

“Undoubtedly, he was still there at his post, saving as many lives as he could, perhaps even shielding some of them with his ‘Big Protector’ body when, at 9:59 AM, with a rush and a roar, the 109 stories above him collapsed, pancaking to earth at a rate of one floor per second, settling into a 10-story high inferno of flame and rubble.”

Yes, he followed house rules. And he saved lives. There are times when you put aside any potential political views and simply bow your head in respect to a hero.

In her eulogy, Eddie’s sister Theresa explained: “He would never have just run out of those towers. We knew that he would have done everything in his power to save lives, even at the risk of his own. That is the kind of man that my big brother was. Eddie would have never been able to live with himself if he had not done what he did.”

Fast forward to January 2008. My beloved mother was in hospice. My parents were living outside Houston by then, having followed my sister to Texas. By coincidence, Ginger and her husband had moved to Dallas.

As my mother’s illness progressed, she asked me to manage her email updates. I reconnected with Ginger this way and we developed a sweet, casual rapport. When my Mom was moved to hospice, of course, I let Ginger know she had one chance to say goodbye.

My Mom was slipping deeper into palliative sedation when Ginger and her husband arrived from Dallas. I can close my eyes and still see and hear what happened next. My Mom suddenly came to life and called out in a strong, happy voice: “Oh, Ginger!”

Nearly seven decades of friendship can do that.

We all left the room to give the two women space for a final chat. I don’t know what was said and I don’t need to know. What I do know is that when Ginger emerged, she sought me out. A mother who would mourn her son forever. A son just days away from losing his Mom.

The puzzle pieces fit.

“Come here,” she said as she pulled me into a long, tear-filled, healing hug.

Today, amidst the madness and tyranny, 9/11 now feels like a time for me to remember my Mom and Ginger’s last chat.

A time to remember Eddie lifting me over his head to protect his little brother and decades later, lifting a bullhorn to save lives inside a hellish inferno.

It’s also a time to appreciate all the unsung heroes out there right now who are doing “everything in their power to save lives” — to help, protect, inform, and fight for a better world.

The post What 9/11 means to me in 2022 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

Art therapist and artist Olivia Clear on rethinking what it means to be creative

Grashina Gabelmann — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 07:00:00 +0000

What does your practice as a creator and as an art therapist look like?

So, as a creative, I work with multiple types of media. Lately, I’ve been most into collage and lost wax casting jewelry. But I also just took a Raku ceramics class, I work with watercolors, intuitive painting, abstract kind of stuff…

As a professional, creativity is woven into the fabric of my work as a ketamine therapist, art therapist, and clinical counselor. Creativity is such a part of what really connects us to our aliveness and our humanness. There’s a drive within every person to connect to themself self as a creator.

And so, with my clients, we might explore images that come up during non-ordinary states of consciousness or dreams. They might do a process I call intuitive collage. They may draw, paint, sculpt. It really depends on what they resonate with and what materials they feel called to work with.

One question that pops up immediately, because you say that we all have this creativity in us, yet many people struggle to access that creativity or don’t see themselves as a creative being. Maybe someone told them they weren’t good at drawing when they were young or maybe we have unrealistic expectations of what a creative person should be able to do. Do you have clients who don’t think they are creative?

A lot of adults don’t think they’re creative. It’s a really sad thing. And many of us have some sort of messaging we got when we were younger from adults in our lives, from art teachers, from parents, people looking at our creations and trying to interpret them or put their own meaning onto them. You drew a dog and your mom thinks it’s a cat or whatever. We can really hold onto those messages for a really long time. And as we get older, a lot of times we’ll get ideas about what we want to make and how we want it to look. And most adults have the same sort of level of artistic abilities, unless they’ve gone through advanced training, as an 11 or 12 year old. Because a lot of times that’s when we stop focusing on art classes in our schools.

Oh, wow. I never thought of that.

Some people study art through high school but unless you practice, most of us have the drawing level of kids. And it’s really normal, but we feel like we should have these advanced level skills cause we’re adults, but how do we accumulate those skills? As kids, it comes really naturally, right? You’re probably practicing making art on a daily basis. And it’s very tied into the way you process and see the world for most kids. Creativity is encouraged in kids and in youth, but not as much as we get older. For some of my clients, it’s just connecting to their experiences. And sometimes that’s through visualization or through exploring dreams or exploring sensations in the body. So maybe it’s noticing a feeling and then talking about what that feeling looks like, if you were to imagine it to be in color shapes, lines forms. And sort of getting into a sculptural approach with what’s happening somatically.

For those who are curious about art, I remind them we’re not here in this process to make beautiful images or masterpieces. We’re here for expression and we’re here for the process. And the product, while we can explore it and relate to it, everything that we need is going to be there, even if it doesn’t look the way that they want it to.

A lot of suffering in the creative process comes from having this very strict idea about how a thing has to be, and then measuring it the whole way along like, “It’s not there yet, but if I do this or that it’s going to fix it.” There’s so much pain and suffering that comes in these comparison points and really holding ourselves to these strict ideas about what we’re making and why. Versus really allowing ourselves to experience what wants to come through us. What wants to come out of us just as it is without judgment or without criticism or without shoulds or ideas about how things need to go. Then just receiving that expression. So a lot of times when I’m guiding people in a creative process, I begin with a meditation by asking them to drop into a part of the self that is potentially less judgemental and to work from sort of an intuitive place, if they can access it, where they don’t know what they’re going to make, they don’t know how it’s going to turn out, they’re just sort of feeling into like, “Oh, this color feels really good right now or loving that shape or that form.” Or by allowing themselves just to be with the materials with the process and not worry about how it’s going to end up.

So you use meditation as a tool to assist your clients in getting what wants to get out to get out?

Sometimes it’s just a simple grounding meditation of just like, “Hey, let’s drop into the body. Let’s drop into being here. Let’s drop into a state of receptivity and explore what it feels like to just be present in this moment.” A lot of times that can allow people to go into more of a sense of flow when they’re coming from this more grounded present place, versus having all these anxieties about the future. Sometimes it’s a little deeper than that and more of an invitation to really allow the process to unfold organically and call in a lot of self-compassion. And a lot of, receptivity Whether it’s with psychedelics or with art, we’re receiving from the collective, from the world around us, from our deeper inner self and our guidance from the healing intelligence that lives in all of us.

Is it part of the process to analyze with the client what they’ve made or is it more about just doing it and it doesn’t even matter so much what gets made in the end?

We relate to the images that we make. Sometimes I will tell clients, “If you do this process by yourself and you want to bring it to session afterward. Great. If not, that’s okay too. So you can have that one on one more private relationship with whatever you’ve made or we can talk about it if you’re up for it.”

And a lot of times it’s about receiving from the image. So looking at the image from a distance maybe. Talking about, to start, what was that process like? What came up for you? How did it feel to be in this process? When you look at this image, what comes up in your body? What does it feel like to look at these colors or these shapes or these forms? Or how does it feel to be in relationship to an image versus like, “Oh, what is this image? You drew mountain? What do mountains mean to you?” kind of thing.

What’s it like to work with clients who are trained to create products? Or who have a training in art making?

When you go to art school or you work as a creative, that’s your creative output into the world. And I think there’s even more of that process of self-evaluation throughout art therapy and evaluation of the product. Sometimes I’m like, “Go to a recycle bin, grab some random stuff and put it together. And that can be what you’re making for right now. And just know that it’s going to go right back into the recycle bin. Or make something out of twigs and sticks and things that will get sort of taken up by the earth again.”

Taking the pressure away to make something that has to last and be perfect…It can get complicated to remain playful once you start earning money with art.

I think creativity is energy that’s moving through us. And at times when we’re doing work that monetizes the flow of that energy, it can be hard to remember that there’s so much more of it that exists. I believe we can access infinite creative energy, if we’re not just accessing it from inside of ourselves. The universe is a creator, right. The world’s a creator, we’re all creators in the world and there’s kind of this flow within the collective consciousness of all of this creative content.

It can be difficult to remember that when that’s our jobs. So really stepping into something that is outside of that way we usually work. As well as working with things that exist in the world and relating to them. Like sculpture is a really great way to do that. Also making blackout poems where you grab a piece of text and you color over the different words in it and leave those negative space words to create poetry. Or create collages with images that are already out there. So just taking things that you’re already in relationship to and recalibrating them and changing them up and making them into something new. So it’s not just having to come from, “Oh, I’ve got this idea and I’m going to sit here with my blank canvas and my brushes and make a thing from my mind.”

It could be a bit more reassuring to work with something that’s already there.

It’s a collaboration with the world around us. I think we forget how many collaborations there can be. And we think we’re all alone in our creative process. The idea has to be wholly original and it has to come from me and come from my mind and then I have to make this out of nothing. That’s never the case, we’re always destroying something else to create something new. And we’re always in these relationships.

That’s a really beautiful way of looking at it. And to remind ourselves of that. Everything is connected to something else. You cannot have a wholly original idea unless you grew up in a cave on your own…and even then you’re relating to the cave.

You’re potentially relating to your ancestors, right? You’re relating to epigenetics. You’re relating to the way your brain developed and formed.

It’s beautiful to remember that we are never acting on our own and to look at collaborating in a different way. We’re not just collaborating with humans but with everything really.

That’s really important to remember. There can be something kind of isolating when you think everything has to come from within or else you’re not original or what you are making is not worthy.

I think it’s such a narrative about why we shouldn’t be creative. A way we sort of block ourselves and make it be more complicated than it should be, or it needs to be by using this frame, this narrative that really constricts us and constricts what we can do and gives us impossible tasks. So we have an excuse not to do it. We can just stay where we are. Not expand at all, you know?

Yeah. Exactly. It seems so impossible that you just might as well not even try. Whereas kids just do it for the sake of doing it.

And I think we can all find that capacity within us. Just doing it for the sake of doing. But there’s a lot that is in the way of that. There’s a lot that we have to adjust about our frame and the way we relate to and receive what’s around us and what’s within us and what’s outside of us and what we can take in.

I can paralyze my creation process by thinking “I don’t see the bigger purpose of this.” I think existing in a Western capitalistic society plays into that because we are groomed to be productive and do things that ‘make sense’.

It’s again because we’re looking with this very narrow narrative, right? It’s got to make sense cognitively… it’s got to make sense to the mind. But some part of your soul wants to express something. There’s a reason for that. There’s sense in just that. It’s not just this meaningless thing that you’re out outputting into the world that you have no connection to or no relationship to. Even if you can’t make meaning I would imagine there’s multiple other layers of meaning. You could be moving energy or you could be connecting to a somatic sensation. You could be connecting to the collective. There’s so many ways we just think about the meaning being something within our heads, versus, all the layers of connecting to the creative process and connecting to the work we make.

I think you’re absolutely right… the first thing that comes up for me is about capitalism and the way we’re so trained to be good little workers and put out things other people will use or need or can make our brains hurt because we’re thinking so hard about it. Whereas there’s so much less of an emphasis on, “Oh, go engage in a process that feeds your soul. That feels really good for you. That feels really affirming, that connects you to what’s alive within your soul and within your being.” That’s meaningful. And it’s ultimately also very good for society overall and a service to everyone but it doesn’t get seen that way. I think anytime we’re connecting to those more intuitive parts of ourselves or those parts of ourselves that allow us to feel free and alive and allow us to feel the richness of our human experience we’re shifting the consciousness of everybody. We’re actually doing healing work through creativity.

Olivia Clear Recommends:

A favorite for playful beauty

Seeking a little written magic

If you’re looking for more info about psychedelic therapy or to find a practitioner, this is a great resource

If you have to buy things…buy them used. Go to thrift stores, check out craigslist free, go to the library, join a local ‘buy nothing’ group, ask your friends if they have what you need…slow down your consumption and get creative with what is already available. Seek connection with friends and perhaps even strangers who are yet to become friends.

Keeping a box of costumes in your closet and opening it on a random Tuesday night to see what it feels like to incorporate more play into your life.

Prisms

Writing poetry and making collages after non-ordinary states of consciousness

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Grashina Gabelmann.

Why the US Pivot to Asia Means War for Filipinos

Sarah Raymundo — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 05:51:22 +0000

Photograph Source: U.S. State Department – Public Domain

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Philippines to meet the newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. just as the Rim of the Pacific exercise, or RIMPAC, ends. As the world’s largest maritime military exercises, RIMPAC has intensified the militarization of the Asia-Pacific region since 1971 and has further strengthened the alignment of the newly-minted Marcos Jr. regime with U.S. military interests.

Just as it did in the Pacific War against Japan during World War II, the Philippines is again playing an important anchor for U.S. economic and military interests in Southeast Asia in its standoff against China. The consequences for the Filipino people and environment are devastating.

For over a century, the United States has had a heavy hand in the Philippines. In 1947, the two countries signed the Philippines-U.S. Military Bases Agreement, which placed 20,000 military and Defense Department personnel on the islands, including at least 10,000 sailors and marines, and over 25,000 U.S. military and civilian dependents. The United States operates 20 bases and military facilities on Philippine territory, occupying 90,000 hectares of land.

For more than 40 years, the U.S. military played a central role in aiding and reinforcing land grabs from indigenous communities in the Philippines to make way for foreign direct investment in mining and logging. U.S. bases throughout the Philippines became hot spots for toxic and radioactive waste that poisoned nearby residents, who continue to experience severe illness and birth defects. As at other U.S. bases throughout the Asia-Pacific, U.S. soldiers committed violent crimes against civilians, including the rape and murder of prostituted Filipino women. Not a single one of these U.S. perpetrators have been brought to justice.

In 1991, after the expiration of the 1947 basing agreement, the mass mobilization of people’s movements led the Philippine Senate to reject the renewal of the military bases treaty. The opposition to the U.S. military presence reflected not just the rejection of its control over the country but the irreconcilability between U.S. militarism and the Filipino people’s struggles for national sovereignty, ecological, and economic justice. “The U.S. government views the Philippines not as an equal sovereign country but as a mere military base in Asia,” said Joan Salvador, then Secretary General of GABRIELA, a grassroots alliance of Filipino women’s organizations. “As we remember the historic rejection of US military intrusion, we also continue our battle in demanding freedom from US intervention in all fronts: militarily, economically, culturally, and politically.”

The U.S. withdrawal from its bases in the Philippines is a myth. U.S. military engagement was restored by subsequent agreements between the two governments including a Visiting Forces Agreement that granted U.S. ships and personnel access to Philippine military installations. U.S. bases were converted into “free trade zones,” union-free economic zones with highly exploitative working conditions and environmental destruction. To this day, there has not been a comprehensive clean-up or remediation plan to address the massive damage caused by the U.S. military bases.

In 2017, the Philippines military finally confirmed that the U.S. military, although no longer present in the form of U.S. bases, continued to build facilities and have troops in different regions. Under the guise of fighting the “war on terror,” specifically Islamic militants in Marawi City, Mindanao, the Trump administration sent $36 million in military equipment to the Duterte government for the “Battle of Marawi.” In 2020, Trump sent another $29 million in military equipment to symbolize the strength of the alliance. Duterte has continued to receive support from the Biden administration. In 2021, on his visit to the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin commended Duterte for his commitment to bolstering the U.S.-Philippines 70-year old military alliance by upholding the Visiting Forces Agreement.

The most recent U.S. military exercise on Philippine soil took place in March-April, 2022. A total of 5,100 U.S. military personnel joined 3,800 Filipino soldiers for training on maritime security, amphibious operations, live-fire training, urban operations, aviation operations, counterterrorism, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in what is called the Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises.

As the Duterte regime continued to maintain a strong military alliance with Washington, it also accommodated Beijing’s extraterritorial claim on the West Philippine Sea, which led to China’s occupation of the Scarborough Shoal since 2012. This occupation had dire consequences for the surrounding fishing villages in Zambales and Pangasinan in Central Luzon. When Filipino fishermen attempted to fish in the Scarborough Shoal, Chinese naval vessels physically harmed them. This has forced owners and financiers of large fishing operations to sell their boats and equipment and turn to poultry and pork farms. Fishermen without capital have resorted to becoming part-time tricycle drivers to augment their diminished incomes. The lack of steady income has forced women in households to seek employment as domestic helpers in countries like Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. This is the consequence of conceding national sovereignty to foreign expansionism: diminished livelihoods and dislocated families among the poorest.

Great power conflict between Washington and Bejing has created conditions to justify U.S. troop encroachment, an increased budget in Manila for counterinsurgency that invokes national security and “terrorism” to punish those who expose and oppose the state sellout of national sovereignty, and the erosion of the principle of independent foreign policy enshrined in the Philippine constitution.

Marcos, Jr. seeks to maintain China as a close partner despite its expansionist interests, while also maintaining his allegiance to U.S. strategic interests in the Pacific. This imperils the Philippine government’s ability to resist being the target and host of a proxy war between two foreign rivals that have sought to plunder the country.

Over a decade ago, the U.S. official announcement of a pivot to Asia promised a balanced economic, diplomatic, and security approach. Today, it is very clear that this U.S. rebalance has the primary goal of frustrating the economic and political rise of China. RIMPAC demonstrates that the United States intends to achieve this goal through the promotion of war. War has neither future nor value for the vast majority of the world’s population who are demanding free access to healthcare, education, housing, living wages, the right to own and cultivate land, climate justice, the right to self-determination, and an end to endless U.S. wars.

This first appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sarah Raymundo.

Why January 6 Means More to Washington than It Does to America

Nicky Reid — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 05:48:50 +0000

“It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.” -George Orwell “Togetherness is beating More

The post Why January 6 Means More to Washington than It Does to America appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nicky Reid.

No Means Yes to Abortion: Kansas Votes on Confusing GOP-Backed Constitutional Amdt. to Ban Abortion

Democracy Now! — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 13:58:15 +0000

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

No Means Yes to Abortion: Kansas Votes on Confusing GOP-Backed Constitutional Amdt. to Ban Abortion

Democracy Now! — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 12:37:07 +0000

We go to Kansas, where voters today are deciding whether to pass a constitutional amendment that would override a 2019 state Supreme Court ruling establishing a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. If the amendment passes, it will clear the way for Republican state lawmakers to ban the procedure, which they have vowed to do. Kansas is the first state in the country to vote on the right to abortion and one of the last states in the region to still allow abortion, with clinics there having reported an influx of patients from neighboring states, including Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, after the Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade. Republicans are “strategically using tactics of voter suppression” to ensure the amendment passes by requiring strict registration guidelines and drafting “incredibly confusing” language in the amendment, says reproductive health reporter Amy Littlefield. Despite this, she says the abortion rights community feels “cautiously optimistic” that the enormous grassroots mobiliziation in response to the overruling of Roe “might just be enough” to strike down the amendment.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Economists Say Slowing Wage Growth Means Fed Must Pump Brakes on Rate Hikes

Jake Johnson — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 14:33:05 +0000

New figures published Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that wage growth continued to decelerate last month, prompting economists to redouble their warnings that additional large interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve could undermine the solid job market and hurl the country into recession.

Average hourly wages in the U.S. rose 0.3% in June, according to the Labor Department data, which showed that hiring remained strong last month and the official unemployment rate held steady at a historically low 3.6%.

"If they go too far too fast, the shining achievement of a rapid recovery from a horrendous economic shock could be squandered."

Over the past year through June, average hourly earnings are up 5.1%, a slight decrease from the past 12 months through May, a period in which wages rose 5.1%.

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, noted in an analysis of the government numbers that "the annualized rate of wage growth, comparing the last three months (April, May, June) with the prior three months (January, February, March), was 4.3%."

"That is down from an annualized rate of 6.1%, comparing the winter (November, December, January) to the fall (August, September, October)," Baker observed. "This is a huge deal because the Fed's plans for aggressive rate hikes were based on a concern for a 1970s-type wage-price spiral. It is impossible to have a wage-price spiral when wage growth is slowing."

The Economic Policy Institute's (EPI) Heidi Shierholz reacted similarly to the fresh report, writing that nominal wage growth is "clearly decelerating, which is enormously consequential for Fed policy."

"Make no mistake, we want positive real wage growth for workers," Shierholz continued, alluding to the fact that wage gains have been eroded significantly by inflation. "But—and this is hugely important—this decelerating wage growth means the Fed doesn't need more interest rate increases to contain inflation."

Supreme Court’s Attack on Regulatory State Means Senate Filibuster Must Go

Robert Reich — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 10:33:23 +0000

Today the Supreme Court—again, with the 6 Republican appointees on one side and the 3 Democratic appointees on the other—limited the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants. This ruling deals a major blow to America's (and the world's) efforts to address climate change. Also—as with its decision reversing Roe v. Wade—today's ruling has far larger implications than the EPA and the environment.

The financial backers of the Republican Party are getting exactly what they paid for.

West Virginia v. EPA is the latest battle pitting America's big businesses (in this case Big Oil) against the needs of average Americans. In this Supreme Court—containing three Trump appointees, two George W. Bush appointees, and one George H.W. Bush appointee—big business is winning big time. The financial backers of the Republican Party are getting exactly what they paid for.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts admitted that "capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible 'solution to the crisis of the day.'" But then came the kicker: "But it is not plausible," he wrote, "that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme."

Not plausible? Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970. As with all laws, Congress left it to an administrative agency—in this case, the EPA—to decide how that Act was to be implemented and applied. That's what regulations do: They implement laws.

For the Supreme Court to give itself the authority to say whether Congress intended to delegate this much regulatory authority to the EPA is a truly radical act—more radical than any Supreme Court in modern history. If Congress has been unhappy with decades of EPA regulation, Congress surely has had the power to pull that authority back. But it has not.

As Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, countered: "The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening."

The implications of the ruling extend to all administrative agencies in the federal government—to the Securities and Exchange Commission implementing the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934, to the Federal Trade Commission applying the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, to the Department of Labor implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and so on, across the entire range of government—and the entire range of regulations designed to protect consumers, investors, workers, and the environment. (This same Supreme Court has ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not authorized to impose a moratorium on evictions and that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was powerless to tell large employers to have their workers be vaccinated or undergo frequent testing.)

In passing laws to protect the public, Congress cannot possibly foresee all ways in which those laws might be implemented and all circumstances in which the public might need the protections such laws accord. Starting today, though, all federal regulations will be under a cloud of uncertainty—and potential litigation.

A final implication of today's ruling is that the filibuster has to go. If the Supreme Court is going to require that Congress be more active and specific in protecting the environment or anything else, such a goal is implausible when 60 senators are necessary to enact it. Senate Democrats now have it in their power to abolish the filibuster. Today's case should convince them they must.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Robert Reich.

What the Reversal of Roe Means for the LGBTQ+ Community

Grace Vedock — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 17:00:00 +0000

It’s becoming clear that the undermining of abortion rights and attacks against trans folks share significant overlap.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Grace Vedock.

Manchin Pushes Even More Healthcare Means Testing as West Virginians Suffer

Jake Johnson — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:31:36 +0000

Having tanked his party's effort to expand Medicare and close the Medicaid coverage gap, Sen. Joe Manchin is now dangling his support for an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies as massive premium hikes loom for millions of people who buy insurance on the exchanges.

Insider reported Wednesday that Manchin has "signaled he's open to extending enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would help Democrats avert a huge political threat in the November midterms."

The American Rescue Plan—a Covid-19 relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law last year—included provisions that boosted ACA subsidies for low-income people and ended the income cap on subsidies. The changes were aimed at ensuring no one is forced to pay more than 8.5% of their total income to purchase health coverage in the ACA marketplace, which can be prohibitively expensive without federal subsidies.

But the provisions are set to expire at the end of the year in the absence of congressional action, sticking the roughly 14 million people who buy insurance on the ACA exchanges with dramatically higher premiums. Notifications of premium increases would begin going out in October, just ahead of the crucial midterm elections.

Even though eligibility for ACA subsidies—which progressives often characterize as gifts to the insurance industry—is already restricted on the basis of income, Manchin told Insider that he wants even more means testing, which he called "the main thing."

"We should be helping the people who really need it the most and are really having the hardest time," said Manchin, who supported the ACA subsidy boost in the American Rescue Plan. "With healthcare, people need help. They really do."

That's certainly true of people in his home state of West Virginia. After visiting a free medical clinic located just miles from Manchin's riverfront home in Charleston, The Lever's Andrew Perez reported earlier this week that one resident, Charles Combs, "has resorted to extracting his own teeth because dental care is too expensive."

Traditional Medicare currently doesn't cover dental services. Late last year, Manchin blocked an effort—spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—to expand the program to cover dental, vision, and hearing.

"The Charleston clinic made clear just how badly people need such care—and not just seniors, and not just West Virginians. Combs, for instance, is still in his 50s, while the clinic saw patients of all ages driving hours from Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia," Perez noted. "The [Remote Area Medical] clinic hinted at the kind of universal healthcare system America could have, if not for senators like Manchin and their healthcare industry donors."

"The organization doesn't ask patients about what its team calls the 'three I's': identification, income, or insurance," Perez continued. "Patients are treated with kindness, compassion, and professionalism—and fairly quickly. All services are free."

In an interview with Punchbowl News this week, Manchin voiced concerns about the price tag of extending the ACA subsidies—scrutiny he has not applied to the trillions of dollars in Pentagon spending he's voted for over the past decade.

"The bottom line is there's only so many dollars to go around," Manchin said.

According to a recent analysis by Families USA, the roughly 23,000 West Virginians who buy health insurance coverage on the ACA exchanges will see their annual premiums rise by an average of $1,536—63%—if Congress lets the subsidy provisions expire.

"With little debate or media focus, Democrats are on the verge of dooming millions of Americans to huge new healthcare bills, which will in turn serve to ruin any hope Democrats have of winning the midterms," journalist Jon Walker warned in The American Prospect earlier this year. "Beyond broadly hurting 14 million people, the end of these subsidies will create thousands of uniquely horrific stories of financial devastation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

‘Disastrous for press freedom’: What Russia’s goal of an isolated internet means for journalists

Alicia Ceccanese — Mon, 23 May 2022 17:30:50 +0000

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a danger not only for reporters operating in the war zone. The campaign could also pose a broader threat to press freedoms and other civil liberties if it brings the Kremlin closer to its dream of creating a domestically controlled internet.

Russia’s internet regulator, Rozkomnadzor, has long been able to compel internet service providers to block content or reroute traffic. In 2019, the “sovereign internet” bill took state control a step further by empowering authorities to sever Russian internet infrastructure from the global internet during an emergency or security threat.

Concerns about a fractured internet ecosystem, or “splinternet,” have only grown since the invasion. Russia has banned Twitter, Facebook, and more than a dozen independent media organizations. Meanwhile, after U.S.-based software firms and internet carriers started pulling out of Russia, CPJ and other civil society groups warned that restricting access could backfire by isolating the Russian people and journalists. That helped prompt a U.S. government order allowing telecom companies to operate in Russia despite sanctions.

Russia is now seeking to export its state-controlled version of the internet on the global stage, promoting its own candidate to lead the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the agency responsible for information and communication technology. That could shift control of internet operations away from the U.S.-based non-profit, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which coordinates the internet’s naming system and develops policy on the internet’s unique identifiers.

Russia is not alone in pursuing domestic internet control. China’s Great Firewall is perhaps the best known, while Iran’s National Information Network (the “Halal Network”), North Korea’s national intranet, and Cambodia’s forthcoming National Internet Gateway all seek the same end, with slightly different means.

CPJ emailed Rozkomnadzor’s press office for comment on Russia’s intentions regarding its plans for a sovereign internet and the ITU candidacy, but did not receive a response.

CPJ spoke with Justin Sherman, a nonresident fellow at U.S.-based think tank the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, by phone about the splinternet and its implications for the future of the internet and press freedom. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Justin Sherman, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. (Photo: Atlantic Council)

What is the splinternet?

When the internet first started spreading around the world, most countries welcomed it. They wanted the interconnection, the open flow of online goods, research, and information. The splinternet is emerging in response to that globalization. Over the past two decades, a number of countries have wanted to control that flow of data, and so have worked to isolate and repress their online environment.

The internet is splintering in different ways. In some countries, if you pull up the internet, you’re going to be viewing an entirely different thing than you are in the rest of the world. In China, for example, you’re seeing a heavily censored version of what everyone else sees on the internet. You can’t pull up foreign news websites. Your email application might not work well. And the state is imposing tons of censorship on the internet in its country. Another example is what the Russian government is doing, pushing to actually be able to cut off their internet from the globe.

How is the cutting off the internet different than what China is doing?

Russia is not nearly [able to cut itself off from the internet] yet. China, largely speaking, is fine with just content censorship. Their state control goes all the way down to the wires and cables. But their main focus is making sure that you can’t access state critical information, that you can’t access foreign news websites. The Russian government wants to go all the way down to the deepest levels and actually cut off the entire internet in Russia from the rest of the world with the flip of the switch. It’s going far below that content level and actually trying to isolate the infrastructure and the architecture.

How has the Ukraine conflict hastened a potential splinternet?

The Russian government, since its illegal war in Ukraine, has engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on the internet. Domestically, they have targeted journalists. They have targeted dissidents. They have targeted ordinary citizens who asked questions about the war. They have targeted foreign technology and internet companies. On the flip side, many Western internet companies have restricted Russian access to their services or pulled out of Russia altogether. Some of this is sanctions compliance. Some of this is convenient PR, where they can say, “We’re doing a good thing.” They can say to Western governments, “We do support Democratic values.” The problem is, if you’re making a decision like pulling internet services from a country based on PR, you’re not actually considering the impacts on press freedom and on civil liberties in that country. There are a lot of Western internet companies pulling out of Russia and causing severe damage to journalists and dissidents in civil society.

If Russia were to self-isolate, does that have any effect on the overall framework that governs the internet or on structures like security certificates and IP addresses?

For several reasons, yes. One is Russia isolating its internet completely would set a very dangerous precedent and example for other countries. We already see lots of countries that are former Soviet republics copying Moscow’s internet control model. The Russian government, when it talks about an isolated internet, talks about its own protocols, about controlling Russian internet domains. Recent events like the Ukrainian government asking ICANN to discontinue service to .ru addresses, which ICANN promptly declined, plays into the Kremlin’s paranoia, this belief that Russia needs to be isolated because other countries are attacking us online.

What’s the worst-case scenario if a Russian “hermit internet” were to emerge?

The worst case is the Russian government is able to isolate its internet. You would have diminished global insight into what’s happening in Russia, including human rights and press abuses. Civil society groups and actors from journalists to dissidents in Russia would have a harder time accessing free information. And because so many companies pulled out of Russia or are blocked, more and more Russians are going to turn to domestic Russian internet platforms. And the reality is that something like [Russian social media network] VK is far more censored and surveilled by the Russian government than literally any platform the West is providing for Russia. There’s a reason a lot of Russian journalists are active on things like Twitter and Facebook and are not necessarily going on VK and blasting these articles exposing corruption.

Are there particular countries that are more apt to adopt a hermit internet approach?

The Iranian government is partly there. There is access to the global internet in Iran, though it’s heavily filtered. And there is also a domestic internet, the National Information Network, that’s been around about a decade now and hosts mostly state-approved domestic content. The government tries to get people to use this domestic internet by making it cheaper and faster than accessing global content.

But Russia stands out in really wanting to deeply and fundamentally isolate its domestic internet. Not every country wants to go to that depth, because you get extraordinary economic benefits from global internet connectivity. But you have plenty of countries who will take pieces of what Russia and Iran are doing. And you might have other states who are run by authoritarian regimes, who are extremely paranoid and security focused, and who don’t care as much about the economic benefits of the internet because they are under such heavy sanctions by foreign countries.

Are there other implications for press freedom should a hermit internet emerge, inside or outside of Russia?

Journalists in Russia are going to have a far harder time to do reporting and get that reporting out to other citizens, because more people will be using domestic platforms that the state has infiltrated, or will not have access to foreign platforms and websites. On the external side, it’s harder for journalists globally to get information into Russia on things that are going on, not just in Russia, but around the world.

More internet isolation in Russia would be disastrous for press freedom. It was already extremely dangerous to be an independent journalist in Russia. That environment has gotten much worse in recent weeks, with many long-time Russian analysts talking about totalitarianism. It’s going to be harder for those journalists to do their jobs independently and safely if they lose more access to online platforms and services.

Does the threat of a splinternet impact the importance of the ITU candidacy?

The Russian government has been disturbingly successful in the last three or four years in getting repressive internet proposals passed in the U.N. In December 2019, you had the Russian government get a bunch of countries who historically supported a free, open internet, like India, to sign onto a proposal with China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. The war on Ukraine has changed that. In recent weeks, Russian delegates have been kicked out of internet working groups, and there is much less interest in places like the ITU to allow the Russian government any sort of leadership role. That said, they’re continuing to push for it, and there are plenty of countries, including those they are targeting with propaganda, who support the war in Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Alicia Ceccanese.

‘Cancel It, Don’t Means Test It!’ Omar Says of Student Debt

Jessica Corbett — Mon, 16 May 2022 21:25:16 +0000

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Monday echoed recent criticism of the Biden administration's secretive attempts to limit student debt cancellation based on income and instead called for full loan forgiveness for federal borrowers.

"Cancel it, don't means test it!" tweeted the Minnesota Democrat, pointing to Politico reporting from Friday.

Fellow "Squad" member and a leading student debt cancellation advocate Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had responded similarly to the reporting on social media Saturday.

"Income is not wealth. If you have student debt, you need relief in the form of cancellation—period," said Pressley, adding that President Joe Biden "must #CancelStudentDebt and be as broad and inclusive as possible."

Politico reported that implementing a debt relief program that involves means testing would be a "nightmare" because the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) lacks income information for most of the 45 million federal borrowers:

The Internal Revenue Service has relied on Americans' prior-year tax information to dole out benefits tied to income, such as stimulus checks and Democrats' expanded Child Tax Credit payments. The Education Department, by contrast, does not have access to that trove of income data. Federal law tightly restricts how the IRS can share taxpayer information with other agencies.
The result, Education Department officials have concluded, is that the agency is unable to cancel federal student loans based on a borrower's income level without requiring some action from the borrower. Department officials have told the White House they would need to set up some sort of application process to determine whether borrowers qualify for relief, according to the people familiar with the discussions.
That added layer of bureaucracy would likely take longer for the Education Department to implement compared with across-the-board forgiveness, and it would mean that borrowers would miss out on the benefit if they don't know to sign up or apply for it.

"Another potential pitfall: A crush of borrowers all at once seeking to find out whether they're eligible for some loan forgiveness could also overwhelm the call centers of the Education Department's contracted loan servicers, who have reduced staffing over the last two years since most federal loan repayments have been frozen," Politico added.

David Dayen warned in The American Prospect earlier this month that "we have a severe problem with how we finance higher education. If the program that tries to finally spur the political class to action on fixing it ends up a failure, the problem will just metastasize. Those are the stakes for getting student debt relief wrong. And means testing is a perfect way to do that."

In response to recent reporting that Biden was weighing means testing, the Debt Collective argued in a petition that "student loan debt is already means-tested by design: The rich have no student debt. And the government's ongoing issues with their failing relief programs show those don't work, either. We need to cancel all student loan debt."

Progressives in Congress have made similar points the past few days.

"The average federal student loan debt balance is $37,014," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Canceling student loan debt will provide a lifeline to millions of Americans, lifting this crushing weight. It's time to cancel federal student loan debt."

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) highlighted that about 40% of people with student debt don't have their college diploma and declared that "canceling student debt is about helping the working and middle class."

Both Khanna and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) pointed out that the vast majority of people with student loan debt didn't go to Ivy League Schools. Lee asserted that "canceling student loan debt is not a windfall for the rich. It's a lifeline for working Americans."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Control Over Capitalism or Techno-Feudalism Means Getting Control Over Language

Laurel Thompson — Fri, 13 May 2022 08:39:45 +0000

“The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.”[1] This is William James at the beginning of the 20th century. He was ruminating on the relationship between language and perception because he was trying to figure out how to More

The post Control Over Capitalism or Techno-Feudalism Means Getting Control Over Language appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Laurel Thompson.

What overturning Roe v. Wade means for pregnant people in pollution hotspots

Naveena Sadasivam — Thu, 12 May 2022 10:45:00 +0000

For many pregnant people in Baytown, Texas, there aren’t a whole lot of options. That’s not just in terms of seeking services for reproductive health like abortion care, although there is certainly a dearth of local providers for that particular need. But the town, which sits on the eastern edge of Harris County, abutting the Houston Ship Channel and the San Jacinto River, is a known pollution hotspot. Keeping yourself and a developing fetus safe from toxic exposures can be a real challenge — and it’s just one example of how environmental and reproductive justice issues collide in “fenceline” communities.

Baytown’s legacy of pollution largely comes back to its high concentration of chemical facilities, including an ExxonMobil refinery that routinely spews hazardous chemicals and most recently caught fire in 2021. A notoriously leaky Superfund site that sits in the middle of the San Jacinto River contaminates the water and seafood in the area.

Petrochemical facilities in Harris County routinely emit “chemicals like benzene, toluene, and xylene that cause developmental and reproductive issues in human bodies,” said Nalleli Hidalgo, a community outreach and education liaison at the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, a Houston-based nonprofit.

While exposure to harmful chemicals isn’t good for anyone, pregnant people and children are especially vulnerable. Because children’s bodies are smaller and still developing, they can become sick faster and at lower levels of exposure. Similarly, pregnant people experience physical and hormonal changes that make them particularly sensitive to pollution. Research shows that those who live close to pollution — whether that’s from oil and gas fields or traffic on roads and highways — suffer worse maternal health outcomes compared to those further away, with higher likelihoods of developing hypertension, having low birth weight babies, and giving birth early. And of course, pregnancy itself can be dangerous without proper care – conditions like preeclampsia and maternal hemorrhage can potentially result in disability or death.

In parts of Baytown, the rate of maternal morbidity, a term that describes unexpected outcomes at the time of labor and delivery and lead to significant consequences for health, is almost double the state average. In a 2018 study, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin found that on average maternal morbidity rates in Texas in 2016 were about 17 per 1,000 deliveries. But in Baytown the rate was as high as 31 cases of severe maternal morbidity per 1,000 deliveries. The outcomes are more severe for people of color: Statewide maternal morbidity rates in Texas are 2.1 times higher for non-Hispanic Black women.

A fire burns at an ExxonMobil plant in Baytown, Texas in 2019. Lao Chengyue / Xinhua / Getty

A lack of access to abortion care will likely exacerbate these outcomes. Last week, Politico published a draft opinion from a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court justices overturning Roe v. Wade, the precedent-setting legal ruling that made access to abortion the law of the land almost 50 years ago. While the opinion isn’t final, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe this summer, potentially allowing states to determine whether abortion is legal within their own borders.

If finalized, a ruling reversing Roe would place additional burdens on those living in environmental justice and frontline communities. About 25 states look set to ban abortions if Roe is overturned, and many of these states are in the South and along the Gulf Coast, where communities of color already face disproportionate environmental and climate burdens. These are also some of the very same states where access to healthcare and family planning services is limited, uninsured populations are high, and maternal health outcomes are lacking.

“We know that being low income and being a person of color in the U.S. predisposes you to having lower access to health care,” said Hailey Duncan, formerly an environmental justice policy analyst with the nonprofit Moms Clean Air Force. The “compounding factors” of being a person of color, living next to a polluting site like an oil and gas facility, and not having access to health care has an effect on pregnancy, she said.

Texas is one of the 13 states that have “trigger laws” that will automatically completely ban abortion as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, which means that if you are a person seeking an abortion who lives in Baytown, you will have to travel out of state. (Texas already has a law on the books outlawing abortion past six weeks; reversing Roe would eliminate even this early window).

Since almost all states bordering Texas are also trigger law states, you will have to travel a significant distance. One Marketwatch piece on the price of an out-of-state abortion — including travel, lodging, and lost wages — found that they cost thousands of dollars. One patient, who had to seek a complicated second-trimester operation, ended up incurring costs upward of $14,000. Even a $400 emergency cost would force 18 percent of households to borrow to cover it, and 12 percent would be unable to cover it altogether.

There is a refrain in the abortion rights movement that legally banning the procedure does not effectively end the practice of abortion; it simply limits who will be able to get them, or get them without fear of prosecution or governmental interference. That is, those who have the freedom and financial means to travel, take time off work, and cover medical costs will always be able to get an abortion if needed. And those who don’t will be left with few, if any, options.

Protesters march outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston, MA in response to the leaked draft decision by the Supreme Court that suggested the justices are poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion nationwide. Craig F. Walker / The Boston Globe / Getty

Research abounds showing that those who live in the immediate vicinity of polluting sites tend to be lower income and disproportionately people of color — populations that are more likely to need abortion care in the first place. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 75 percent of abortion patients are poor or low income, and 61 percent are people of color.

Furthermore, those in environmental justice communities are often unable to move due to financial constraints, low valuation of their property due to contamination, and social or family ties. In Baytown, for example, the median household income is around $54,000, lower than both the national and state median of Texas; the median home value is $126,500, one third of the national median home price; and seventeen percent of Baytown households live under the poverty line, 1.5 times the national poverty rate.

“Low-income households are much more likely to be women-led,” said Khalil Shahyd, managing director of environmental and equity strategies at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. “Whether we’re talking about the risk of natural disaster and flooding or displacement from homes, those homes that are typically at the highest risk are going to be lower-income homes, which are predominantly led by female heads of household.”

And then, not to pile further onto the embattled Baytown, there is the issue of climate impacts. The aftermath of Hurricane Harvey unveiled brutal inequities in community recovery from severe rain and flooding, where poor households in Harris County actually received less federal assistance than financially secure ones. In addition, it is the more socially vulnerable communities that live in the greater Houston area’s high-risk flood zones, as shown by ongoing Rice University research. Heat waves, which pose health risks to both pregnant people and their fetuses, are also predicted to become both more frequent and extreme along the already-sweltering Gulf Coast.

During Hurricane Harvey, pregnant people and those with young children had to swim to safety, recalled Erandi Treviño, a community organizer in Houston with Moms Clean Air Force. Basic necessities such as clean drinking water were hard to find. The added stress of trying to keep yourself and your child safe during a hurricane is harmful to pregnant people, she said. “Having to live under these conditions creates stress which turns into ailments.”

Hidalgo, with Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, said that in the aftermath of hurricanes, she often has to remind pregnant people to avoid venturing outside if they smell unpleasant odors. Petrochemical facilities often shut down during hurricanes for safety reasons. When they start back up, they release millions of pounds of harmful chemicals. “We always remind people that if they plan to go outside for a walk or for a jog, to not go whenever there’s a chemical fire, or to look for other areas that might not be as contaminated because it’s a danger to not only them but also to their developing child,” she said.

The climate is changing, and everyone on Earth will have to deal with that reality as it develops. When activists emphasize that social, environmental, and economic inequities are all connected, it can feel overwhelming to grasp the vast and fundamental features of our society that must change. But it simply means that there is a version of our future in which additional burdens — barriers to reproductive healthcare, lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages — make all of the challenges of climate change acutely worse for already vulnerable communities, and there is one in which those burdens are alleviated by intentional, forward-thinking, and realistic policy.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What overturning Roe v. Wade means for pregnant people in pollution hotspots on May 12, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

The End of Roe: Saving Abortion Rights Means Taking Them Into Our Own Hands

Natasha Lennard — Tue, 03 May 2022 15:33:15 +0000

A police officer carries a barricade as demonstrators gather to protest a leaked draft opinion poised to strike down the right to abortion in the U.S. in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 2022.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

For months now, if not years, front-line abortion providers and advocates for access have been writing about the fall of Roe v. Wade as a “when,” not an “if.” The end of Roe has already arrived in dozens of states where Republicans have forged a post-Roe reality by cutting off access to abortion and criminalizing its provision.

Yet the unprecedented leak Monday night of a Supreme Court draft opinion, signaling the final and unambiguous undoing of already weak constitutional abortion protections, curdles the blood even of those who saw it coming. More women and pregnant people will suffer and die; poor people of color will be affected in disproportionate numbers.

The blame lies squarely with the powerful Christian right, aided and abetted by cynical fascoid right-wingers, who have set their sights on pregnant peoples’ bodily autonomy for decades. They will not respond to our rage and protests. They will push on with their authoritarian agenda. Despite claims to states’ rights in the leaked opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, there is clear evidence that if Republicans retake Congress in November, they will seek to pass a federal abortion ban.

There is no reasoning with fascists. Our energies must go elsewhere: placing fierce and unwavering pressure on Democrats, spineless as they have been, to act on this issue while they still have some control of the legislature. It should never have come to this — the end of Roe with zero nationwide legislative protections for abortion access.

Democrats in Congress should have long ago codified the right to abortion access, as the party’s left flank has urged, but they didn’t. If they don’t act now to end the filibuster and pass abortion protection laws, they will deserve something approaching the same level of blame directed at anti-abortion Republicans.

Democrats will not take the lead. Instead, it is up to us — it always has been.

After Texas passed an effective abortion ban last year, which was ruled unconstitutional by a state judge in December, President Joe Biden vowed to “launch a whole-of-government effort” to protect the right to abortion in the state. We are yet to see any such effort, even though, as I wrote at the time, there are a number of steps his administration could immediately take.

If — and this really is an if — the fear of a nationwide abortion ban and the shock of Roe’s undoing galvanizes Democratic voters in November, these will once again be votes against a greater evil, rather than votes the Democrats have earned. Just as today’s Democratic Party has refused to take the lead on this issue even as abortion access has fallen apart in so many places, they will not take the lead now. Instead, it is up to us — it always has been.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the draft opinion on overturning Roe v. Wade, photographed in Washington, D.C., on April 23, 2021.

Photo: Erin Schaff/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Since we cannot rely on Democratic leaders, we must — following the example of organizers on the front lines of this struggle — work around the law, exploiting the coming interstate jurisdictional chaos around abortion law that the end of Roe will bring into even sharper relief. The fight for free and accessible abortions has always required solidarity, risk, and cunning. To keep reproductive justice alive, we must fight on terrain beyond the law, in contravention of certain laws, or in post-Roe legal gray areas.

The end of Roe, as a forthcoming and crucial paper in the Columbia Law Review notes, will bring forth an entirely new battleground of interstate juridical conflict. States that support access rights will move to pass laws that protect abortion providers who treat out-of-state patients, while anti-abortion states will seek to pass laws to prosecute out-of-state providers.

This clashing bifurcation is already beginning to unfold: Legislators in Connecticut passed a bill last week designed to protect abortion providers that assist patients seeking refuge from abortion-ban states. Other blue states should follow this lead.

Meanwhile, 26 states are ready with laws to enact abortion bans when Roe is undone and are passing ever more elaborate ways to criminalize abortions. Over a dozen of these states recently passed bans in their legislatures; other laws predate Roe but remain on the books and could snap back into effect. At present, only 16 states and Washington, D.C., have laws that actively protect the right to abortion.

Major interstate court battles along these lines are set to erupt after Roe — from the policing of women and other pregnant peoples’ interstate travel, to the functioning of telehealth services that can prescribe abortion pills across state lines, to the criminalization of those who share resources and material support to aid abortions.

The Columbia Law Review paper’s authors highlight that these fights will make a mockery of Republican claims that Roe has made abortion law more, rather than less, complicated. If legal confusions produce openings after Roe — spaces to set up new access sites and build greater networks, while finding new loopholes and ways to be ungovernable against repressive government action — we must take such advantage where we can.

Reproductive rights demonstrators protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 2022.

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

It’s already clear that there will be more arrests, prosecutions, and imprisonments of abortion providers, supporters, and seekers. A recent attempt by a local law enforcement agency in Texas to charge a young woman, Lizelle Herrera, with murder in connection to a “self-induced abortion” failed because no such murder statute for charging pregnant people currently exists in the state. We have seen, though, how swiftly such laws are changing for the worse.

The policing of this post-Roe world gives us much reason to fear — but even more reason to resist, and fight with and for the communities with the least power, who will no doubt be the most targeted.

Networks already exist to send abortion medication to jurisdictions where it has been made illegal. These will have to grow, using various online tools and techniques, physical mailing systems, and assistance with transportation — especially to ensure that those with the fewest resources are reached.

Crucially, though, this fight is something to join, not invent anew. Many will be shocked by the end of Roe, but they need to realize that there are existing efforts and groups on the ground that need support, more so than major organizations like Planned Parenthood.

Contrary to liberal mythologizing, the battle for bodily autonomy and justice did not begin at the Supreme Court, and it will not end there.

One thing that is abundantly clear in this still-emerging landscape is that we cannot focus solely on the law. Republican terror tactics against abortions have not hewed to existing statute; they have forged new realities to de facto ban abortion through brutal state action in clear violation of existing constitutional law and done so in the knowledge that these constitutional protections were on their last legs. The same extralegal Republican approach informs the right’s attacks on trans lives, and they are constantly pushing it further.

In his draft opinion, Alito also criticizes Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated sodomy law, and Obergefell v. Hodges, the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. “[N]one of these rights,” the justice wrote, “has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.” This is what fascists and their allies are fighting for: not just an end to abortions, horrifying enough as that is, but the palingenesis of a nation, in which the only rights permitted to stand are those that protect property, patriarchy, and whiteness — such, in Alito’s own framing, is the rooting of U.S. history.

Contrary to liberal mythologizing, the battle for bodily autonomy and justice was never won in the Supreme Court. The fight did not begin at the court, and it will not end there. On Monday night, a crowd of many hundreds gathered outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, chanting, “Fascist scum have got to go.” It is certainly in this antifascist spirit that the fight must go on.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

‘No Means Testing. Do It for Everyone’: Biden Urged to Go Big on Student Debt Cancellation

Jake Johnson — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:35:02 +0000

Progressive lawmakers, advocates, and deeply indebted Americans ramped up their calls Friday for President Joe Biden to cancel all outstanding federal student loan debt amid reports that his administration is considering income limits and other restrictions on eligibility for any potential relief.

"If we can bail out banks that destroyed the economy because of their illegal activity, we can cancel all student debt."

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Biden's advisers are weighing a number of means tests including "an income threshold" and a provision "limiting forgiveness to undergraduate loans" with the stated goal of ensuring that the "bulk of the benefits go to lower-to-middle-income borrowers."

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Biden himself said he is "not considering $50,000 debt reduction"—a signal that he remains unwilling to go beyond his initial promise of $10,000 in forgiveness per borrower.

But campaigners, led by the Debt Collective, argued that limiting relief to $10,000 and adding means testing to the equation would unnecessarily deny benefits to millions of people across the United States who are being crushed by student debt. Borrowers in the U.S. currently hold over $1.8 trillion combined in student debt, which has increased by 91% over the past decade.

"For millions of borrowers, many of whom owe six figures, 10k or 50k of relief barely provides a dent in the amount of debt they hold," the Debt Collective, the nation's first debtors' union, writes in a new petition. "For many, it won't touch a cent of their monthly payments. If Biden were to cancel 10K for all 45 million borrowers—we'd still have a massive student debt crisis on our hands."

"Student loan debt is already means-tested by design: the rich have no student debt," the petition continues. "And the government's ongoing issues with their failing relief programs show those don't work, either. We need to cancel all student loan debt."

The Biden administration has extended a moratorium on student debt repayments and interest four times, with the latest set to expire on August 31—just ahead of the critical November midterms. The moratorium has been in place since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

While progressives have welcomed the extensions—particularly given that half of all U.S. student loan borrowers say they would not currently be able to afford a single monthly payment—they've argued that merely delaying the moratorium's eventual end without canceling any debt does nothing to provide lasting relief.

"Think big or go home. Cancel all of it."

Earlier this week, Biden told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in a private meeting that he is considering unilaterally forgiving at least some student loan debt—comments that advocates cautiously praised while vowing to keep up the pressure.

But the White House quickly made clear that Biden is still not yet on board with total student debt cancellation or even $50,000 in forgiveness via executive action, a step top Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have urged him to take.

During a briefing on Thursday, Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that Biden is examining "how to provide additional relief to many Americans who... still have student loans."

Asked whether any such relief would be means-tested, Psaki replied, "That's certainly something he would be looking at."

But the specific means tests that Biden is reportedly considering would exclude many "nurses, teachers, public defenders, social workers, and anyone who went to grad school," Jane Fox, a public defender with the Legal Aid Society, noted, referring specifically to the Journal's report on the proposed undergrad-only restriction.

"Oh and then also throw everyone who went to a college that cost more than $10,000 under the bus," Fox added.

Warren Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), argued on Twitter late Thursday that it doesn't make political sense for Biden to cancel a small portion of student loan debt, as "Republicans will attack forgiving $10,000 in student debt as voraciously as if Biden canceled all student debt while demoralizing tens of millions who will still be drowning in it."

On Wednesday, a group of Republican senators introduced legislation that would bar the president from canceling student loan debt through executive action—inadvertently admitting that Biden has the authority to do so.

"Think big or go home," Gunnels wrote. "Cancel all of it."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, echoed Gunnels on Friday, writing, "One person holds the power to cancel student debt for 45 million Americans."

"Get it done, President Biden," the Washington Democrat added.

Jayapal was among a number of progressive lawmakers who attended a rally near the White House earlier this week in support of total student debt cancellation.

In his remarks at the demonstration, Sanders—the chair of the Senate Budget Committee—characterized the student debt issue as "a fight over national priorities."

"If we can bail out banks that destroyed the economy because of their illegal activity," Sanders said, "we can cancel all student debt."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

What Germany’s Rearmament Means for World Peace

Michael Makowski — Wed, 27 Apr 2022 18:48:36 +0000

The so-called Zeitenwende is Germany’s biggest rearmament since World War II and makes its military budget the third largest in the world.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Michael Makowski.

What Macron’s reelection means for climate action in France

Shannon Osaka — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 10:15:00 +0000

Just a few days before France’s presidential election, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and President Emmanuel Macron spent 20 minutes debating the best way to get France off of fossil fuels. Le Pen, a French nationalist representing the National Rally Party, called Macron a “climate hypocrite.” He jabbed back, dubbing Le Pen a “climate skeptic.”

For the moment, Macron has won out. On Sunday, the sitting French president defeated Le Pen with 58.5 percent of the vote — provoking a sigh of relief from many environmental activists, despite their quarrels with Macron during his previous 5-year term.

Le Pen’s energy plan had called for exiting the European Union’s electricity market, accelerating the development of nuclear power, and establishing a moratorium on wind and solar development. (Nuclear currently provides about 70 percent of the country’s electricity; wind and solar combined provide only about 10 percent.) “Wind turbines are ugly and they ruin our landscapes,” Le Pen said in the April 20 debate. The far-right candidate had also vowed to cut the value-added tax on gas, electricity, and oil from 20 percent to 5.5 percent — a move that would have cost the government up to 12 billion euros (nearly $12.9 billion) and boosted demand for fossil fuels.

Macron, on the other hand, vowed to turn France, the world’s seventh-largest economy, into a “great environmental nation.” He pledged to accelerate the country’s pace of decarbonization twofold, create a new leasing system for electric cars, and retrofit 700,000 French homes a year with better insulation.

The president’s climate policies could also spill over into neighboring European countries. France is currently the leader of the European Union Council, which is tasked with implementing Europe’s “Green Deal” — a massive spending package designed to help the continent get off fossil fuels. And Macron has been one of the most outspoken critics of using Russian coal and oil in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, calling for an outright blockade on the import of those fuels into the E.U. “The results of elections in France always reverberate way beyond the country’s borders,” Lucie Mattera, head of European politics at the think tank E3G, told E&E News last week. “And 2022 is no exception.”

But critics have argued that the president struggled to implement his climate agenda during his first term. After promising to cut emissions in his first presidential election, in 2017, Macron instituted increases in France’s fuel tax, with the aim of reducing emissions from the transportation sector. The resulting price hike sparked the gilet jaunes, or “yellow vests” movement, with hundreds of thousands of French citizens protesting in the streets.

Chagrined, Macron repealed the tax increases and launched a program of public participation in government — including a Citizens’ Convention on Climate, a randomly selected group of 150 voters tasked with helping the country create new climate policy. The president promised to pass their proposals on to the legislature or to a referendum “without filter” — but there, too, he ran into conflict. After the convention released its 149 proposals, Macron preemptively vetoed three of them, including a tax on corporate profits to fund clean energy. Only a few dozen of the citizens’ suggestions ended up in France’s sweeping 2021 climate law, and those often in watered-down form.

In the short term, the reelected president has promised to create a new prime minister position focused on “ecological planning” and increase investments in renewable technologies. Part of that may be an act of political expediency: Macron was shifted left during the campaign by the popular primary run of the leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who attracted many young voters with his calls for a 200 billion euro ($214 billion) investment in green infrastructure and a constitutional amendment to protect biodiversity. The support for Mélenchon, Macron said in a speech last week, had sent a “powerful message.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline What Macron’s reelection means for climate action in France on Apr 26, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Shannon Osaka.

What Russia-Ukraine war means for disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory

Knar Khudoyan, Constant Leon — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:46:51 +0000

Thousands of Russians have fled to the Armenian capital of Yerevan. But the war has far bigger implications for the Caucasus than migration

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Knar Khudoyan, Constant Leon.

What Russia-Ukraine war means for disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory

Knar Khudoyan, Constant Leon — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:46:51 +0000

Thousands of Russians have fled to the Armenian capital of Yerevan. But the war has far bigger implications for the Caucasus than migration

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Knar Khudoyan, Constant Leon.

What the Ukraine War Means for China: a View From Beijing

Tom Clifford — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 08:49:28 +0000

“Embassy alley” in Beijing, in reality a patchwork of tree-lined streets with two story houses, mostly built in the 1960s in a style reminiscent of the 1930s, seems far from the madding crowds. Heavily guarded and monitored, it does not attract, let alone welcome, casual strollers. Which is why few people in the city have More

The post What the Ukraine War Means for China: a View From Beijing appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tom Clifford.

Cracking Down on Russian Oligarchs Means Cracking Down on U.S. Tax Havens

Chuck Collins — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 08:58:18 +0000

Targeting Russia’s elites, who have stolen trillions from their own people, is an important strategy to pressure Putin, who himself may be among the wealthiest people on the planet. But the U.S. faces a major obstacle in this effort, which is our country has become a major destination tax haven for criminal and oligarch wealth from around the world, not just Russians. More

The post Cracking Down on Russian Oligarchs Means Cracking Down on U.S. Tax Havens appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Chuck Collins.

Artist Chitra Ganesh on the value of process and what success actually means

Anupa Mistry — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Your work connects histories of surrealism, mythology, and cultural iconography with contemporary comics and sci-fi aesthetics. What do you recall as your earliest aesthetic interests that connect to the work that you’re making now?

Graffiti on the subway. Painted movie posters I saw when I spent time in India as a kid. I would also say textiles and everyday household bling like glitter and sequins, pom poms, iridescent nail polish. I was also drawn to how everyday objects and icons adorned one another, whether it was how our neighbors decorated their homes and backyards during Christmas, or the roses and textiles that accompanied idols of deities we had at home. With the graffiti and the movie posters specifically, it was as much about the experience of witnessing the work being made on site–seeing artists creating in an urban public place, climbing scaffolds and running in and out of subway tunnels as part of their process. In both cases, I was drawn to the presence of the hand, which at that time was obviously more common. These painted marks made by human hands were like fingerprints of their own to me, and through them you could feel a physical, bodily connection to the work.

At what point did these ideas, or observations really, become a guiding ethos for the work that you’re making now? When did you begin to “intellectualize” these influences?

My own material process helped give things an intellectual framework, thinking through ideas of representation, colonialism, sexuality, and power. The way that I approached collage in my early to mid-20s allowed me to use the process as a way of engaging and coalescing wildly different visual registers, histories, time periods, and modes of representation. With making comics, things tend to come together when I have enough time away and I’m able to look again with fresh eyes. I have new insights or new ways of thinking based on the present and what I am thinking about now and what other representations are out there.

I was rereading those Amar Chitra Katha comics, [a long-running Indian educational comic book series about history, myth, and culture, foregrounding Hinduism], and some of the comics of the Hernandez Brothers, who I love and grew up reading. Love and Rockets is about a Latino working-class neighborhood, or a class-diverse neighborhood, and there are a lot of female characters and a lot of sex. It’s very erotic and bawdy. There are these two characters, Maggie, a mechanic, and Hopey, her friend. They were something in between friends and lovers, and often portrayed as a couple. I was just thinking about that and the place that those stories had in 1991, when there were not that many other representations out there. You know? Looking at things like skin color and the portrayal of women and how that had larger significations that I didn’t understand until I looked back on it with adult eyes.

You draw, paint, and also work with animation, video, and installation. Are there any drawbacks to having a practice that’s so varied?

Even though the practice appears varied in that way of producing works across a broad range of media, there are some core threads and interests that run through it all. For example, an interest in the presence of the hand and in figuration, and how bodies that are gendered or mis/read as female often serve as the site where material violence and social conflict get played out. I’m also thinking about the shape-shifting possibilities of myth, the physical and psychic limits of the body, the idea of circular or non-teleological time, and new ways of embodying desire. The way you would talk about time in painting or poetry would be different than in animation, although all three are excellent media through which to think about the passage of time.

And is there a process of kind of familiarizing yourself or acquainting yourself with a different medium before you make work in it?

Oh, yeah. Printmaking is something that I did for the first time in fifth grade, and I’m very familiar with linoleum carving and cutting and ideas of positive and negative space. But with something like animation, I came to the process through familiarizing myself with it over time, slowly augmented by doing things like taking classes, watching a lot of animation with an eye to understanding how different techniques and formal strategies work, and spending as much time as I can with other material and the media that I enjoy. I also work with others to produce the work in the media I have less familiarity with. The contemporary art world might still extend aspects of the myth of artistic genius by exalting select voices and a star system, but all large-scale art projects and exhibitions are, in reality, borne through collaboration.

How do you start a new project?

I don’t know. How do you start a project?

It’s hard. Sometimes it’s like I come across something that allows me to make real an idea that I’ve been thinking about.

Mm-hmm. And don’t you feel like there’s always some kind of seed, but the seed is different every time? The seed for me, for example, could be a conversation I had, a textile pattern or sci-fi movie poster I saw, or a news story I’ve been following for months. There’s also the question of how a project can both express and evolve ideas that tend to be an organic outgrowth of my interests at that time. Sometimes the projects I start remain behind the scenes for quite a while, years even, whereas others are realized on a more compressed timeline.

And how do you know when a project is done? I feel like this is hard for people.

Sometimes it’s about time. When the completion is dictated by some kind of deadline-based condition, then I feel like I know it’s done when there’s the right balance of things in the work. Sometimes that means having to remove a chapter or a figure or a whole set of ideas from the work because there wasn’t enough time and space for all of those things to be treated with equal sensitivity and care, or because keeping every element in the mix would obfuscate or dilute what was at the core of the work. To help me arrive at a state of “doneness” or resolution, I do have a few people that I trust and share my work with. You have to be able to take criticism, ideally from comrades and colleagues whose values are aligned with yours. It’s not just about what it looks like, but trying to understand how a project can help me evolve larger guiding principles.

ASMR was part of the inspiration for your series Chitra Ganesh: Her Garden, a Mirror. In another interview you were speaking about your references and included an amazing South Indian DIY cooking video called “Watermelon Chicken By My Granny” as an example of skills-sharing and amplifying unheard voices. How do you think about voicing the unheard via ASMR?

The idea of voicing the unheard wasn’t what motivated the ASMR project. I was moved by a desire to trace and locate the impulses towards collective skill sharing and knowledge transfer that animate Sultana’s Dream, a work of Bengali feminist science fiction from 1905, around which the Her Garden, a mirror exhibition evolved. I wanted to focus on the idea of collective skill sharing and knowledge transfer by and for women, queer, and trans folks through channels located outside of traditional pedagogical or governmental contexts. Like people teaching each other how to compost when there’s no infrastructure for garbage pickup, or teaching older women how to ride motorcycles so that they feel more autonomous and less dependent. There are also a lot of hierarchies of food and assumptions around sustaining ourselves that we can see differently through ASMR videos.

When you actually watch someone in process, you’re engaging in kinesthetic learning and knowledge is being transferred through the body. The most important thing you should be able to have now, as an artist, is the ability to find the knowledge—not the knowledge itself. Because the technologies keep changing, you know? Knowledge isn’t stable. So what’s more important? It’s about how to find process, and keep learning process, and being open to keep learning process.

Do you think it’s hard for people to be open to process?

No. I think it’s difficult to know how to engage process when everything in our capitalist product-oriented world seeks to conceal the processes and labor behind innovation and beauty. But I think people love process. I mean, there’s process porn. There’s food videos. There’s people painting their toes. There’s entire communities and conversations that are generated in the space-time vortex of braiding hair. Process is refreshing because it has the possibility to interrupt, by pointing to a slowed down accumulation of looking and engagement. Sounds, smells, or quality of air that one associates with certain processes, specifically related to food or touch, linger on a much deeper affective and psychic level.

There’s also a sense of concealment that is encouraged in order to emerge fully-formed or create something fully-formed, which does encourage a kind of veiling. Those contrasting impulses are actually really interesting.

Yeah, and not just concealment for our artwork, but for every commodity we buy. Everything is very presentational. And I think the presentational part of say, food, is fun and important, but it’s not everything. It’s just plating. And also with the granny making the watermelon chicken video, I just feel like when you get really specific like that, another piece of work that it does is upending a lot of stereotypes held within the west and pockets of the diaspora. With that video specifically: that Indian food is Punjabi food, that Indians are vegetarians, that South Indians are vegetarians, that Tamils are Brahmins. Just by watching that one video you see nothing is true, you know? That’s also something that drew me to ASMR videos.

Do you have any thoughts on what young people are broadly referring to as “diaspora art” these days?

In the United States right now, all political discourse, including racial discourse, has a tendency to be flattened and presented in very polarized or binary terms. There has been a long history of Asian invisibility and a disregard towards anti-Asian violence that makes itself apparent in the demographics and representational trends within contemporary art as well. The last 20 years of race in America has been thoroughly underwritten by Islamophobia, and there is barely any Muslim representation within contemporary art as well. Questions around Indigeneity, Palestine, and Blackness tend to take a front seat because these are the places where American guilt is immediately located, and has historically been implicated, you know? It’s hard to know how the category of diaspora translates in this particular moment, and my sense is that it would be very different actually in Canada or the UK.

Well, that’s actually why I wanted to ask you about “diaspora art,” because one of my criticisms is the impulse to oversimplify a range of cultural motifs, political contexts, and migration histories as a way of reclaiming personal identity.

Some of this work exists because there have been multiple generations that have come about since, you know? It seems to be work that’s a little bit less specifically tied to the country of origin, and maybe more tied to how some symbols and signifiers have permeated the landscape, albeit retaining a sense of marginality. On the other hand, there is a small corner where I feel greatly comforted to see a deep engagement with history, politics, and aesthetics in South Asia, rather than a self-aggrandizing presentation of individual identity markers, or performances of vulnerability that could be commodified or cannibalized. I am thinking about what the remarkable messaging of @SouthAsia.art or @Brownhistory have shared in response to the lurch toward authoritarianism—developing a citizenship that is exclusionary and anti-Muslim above all, happening in India.

One concern is art that is not in conversation with or unaware of the work that’s come before it, that seems unaware of the generations of queer south Asians in the diaspora that preceded and made space for this contemporary moment. How do we generate a sense of movement in work that touches on these identities, which aren’t static? I think in part by placing them in conversation with one another across generations and seeing what we see. And also by placing them in context with current politics. In my own work, I’ve tried to expand on and move into and away from certain mythological iconographies because I cannot get involved in something that’s being recuperated by Hindutva right now. It won’t be the story forever for all of Hindu iconography. But let’s think about what’s going on with authoritarianism and cultural hegemony in South Asia, and how that looks different with work being made now versus work that was made 40 years ago or before the neo-liberalization of India in the ’80s.

How do you define success?

That’s hard. Over the years, I have had to periodically re-evaluate these markers—they have shifted to accommodate my own autoimmunity and chronic health issues, as well as the structural conditions that continue to shape the trajectories available for women artists in a field that continues to be largely white and male. Now, success means: Being able to devote a majority of your time and headspace to what you do and also maintain an intellectual or artistic space that can be yours or that can be private, or that cannot be co-opted. Being able to have a full life and fall in love and have all kinds of registers of experience that are outside of the career. Being there for the long haul and the slow burn, year after year, and trying to have structures in place including friendship, artist centered non-for-profit spaces, collaboration, teaching and writing.

Chitra Ganesh Recommends:

Making time for people and love outside of your work life/structures/world
Resisting the worldwide lurch towards global authoritarianism, like the current Indian government’s moves to build a brutal authoritarian and exclusionary citizenship in India. New modes of visuality are being diverted to help fascism take root in in India, via surveillance technologies that profile protestors, stoking a climate of fear and policing dissent.
Music in the studio. This song by Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will scrape your insides clean if you let it.
Long walks around the city, especially my favorite winding walks in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
Reading in bed and on the subway:

Marlon James, Black Leopard Red Wolf
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Imani Perry, Looking For Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
Nayanika Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971
Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda, Monstress

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Anupa Mistry.

The census undercounted people of color. Here’s what that means for environmental justice.

Adam Mahoney — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 10:45:00 +0000

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the U.S. census in guiding how the country is governed. A granular enumeration of the national population that’s undertaken once per decade, the census count is intended to apportion political representation and guide the fair distribution of trillions of dollars in government funding to cities, states, and tribes. The 2020 census results, which were announced last year, are also poised to play a key role in the Biden administration’s signature environmental justice program, which promises that at least 40 percent of the benefits of government spending on infrastructure, clean energy, and other climate-related programs will be directed to disadvantaged census tracts.

Given the high stakes involved, even minor deviations between the census count and the country’s actual demographics can have substantial knock-on effects. On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau released a statistical analysis that illuminated a persistent trend in the undertaking: the undercounting of people of color. Black Americans, Latinos, and Indigenous people living on reservations were undercounted by roughly 3, 5, and 6 percent, respectively. Those undercounts are consistent with 2010 results, though Latinos experienced a far greater undercount than in 2010, when it was just 1.5 percent. White Americans and Asian Americans, on the other hand, were overcounted in the most recent census.

Census undercounts happen for several reasons: language barriers, variable literacy rates, lack of internet access, and distrust of the federal government, which may have played an outsize role in 2020. The Census Bureau was able to pinpoint miscounts with a post-census survey asking a sample of people where they were living on the day of the census and matching their responses to information collected during the initial effort.

Given the persistence of extreme residential segregation in the U.S., low population tallies in communities of color can drive divestment and divert much-needed dollars for things like affordable housing, transportation, health care, and environmental remediation. Environmental justice projects like replacing lead pipes, cleaning up contaminated soil, updating failing sewage systems, and fortifying housing stocks against heat waves, storms, and floods could also suffer. Finally, undercounts can lead to communities of color having diluted political representation if districts are drawn based on incomplete data.

Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, issued a statement last week saying the results “confirm our worst fears.”

“Despite the challenges of the 2020 Census, [American Indians and Alaska Natives] living on reservation lands deserve to be counted and to receive their fair share of federal resources,” she added.

Even beyond the undercounts, population trends underscored by the most recent census could have destabilizing effects on environmental policymaking. For example, nine out of the ten U.S. cities with the largest Black populations have experienced substantial drops in Black residents since 2000. Topping that list, Detroit and Chicago lost over 250,000 Black residents each during that time period. Across the country, Black residents are moving out of big cities because of worries around violence, access to safe and affordable housing, and the health and economic issues stemming from their disproportionate exposure to the most toxic and polluted urban areas.

In one census tract in Chicago’s Englewood community, which was 97 percent Black in 2010, the exodus is particularly apparent. Just a decade ago, the corner of 57th Street and Normal Boulevard was adorned by greenery and homes. Since then, however, 400 homes have been demolished to make way for the expansion of a freight yard. In that time, the area’s census tract lost 1,600 Black residents, though its total population only declined by 1,400 overall because of increases in white and Latino residents.

The corner of 57th Street and Normal Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois, in 2007 (left) and 2021 (right). Grist / Adam Mahoney / Google

The railyard’s expansion exacerbated pollution in the community, which already suffered from proximity to hazardous waste and experienced more diesel pollution than roughly 95 percent of the country, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. Longtime Englewood resident Deborah Payne told Grist that she was forced to move out after the community around her disappeared to make way for the railway. In many ways, she added, the pollution helped drive the exodus around her.

“We were always affected by dust and pollution,” she said. “It was noisy and dusty, they didn’t do anything to keep up greenery, and it affected the community because a lot of people around there would go up on most freight trains and open them up to take things.”

While environmental issues might be driving some of the migration of Black people out of cities, the suburbs to which they’re moving don’t reliably offer refuge. In Chicago’s case, thousands of Black residents are choosing to move to neighboring areas facing their own acute environmental challenges: Joliet, Illinois, a warehouse and logistics hub where industry has left the city in dire need of new water sources, has grown by just 3,000 residents since 2010, but its Black population has grown by 2,200.

In other words, while census undercounts jeopardize the tool’s effectiveness, the count has nevertheless illuminated patterns and challenges that policymakers will want to take into account.

“How could anyone not be concerned?” Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said of the shortcomings when announcing the Bureau’s analysis last week. “These findings will put some of those concerns to rest and leave others for further exploration.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The census undercounted people of color. Here’s what that means for environmental justice. on Mar 16, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Adam Mahoney.

Reckless Complacency by Wealthy Nations Means the Covid-19 Pandemic Is Far From Over

Winnie Byanyima — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 17:34:14 +0000

Like many of the world's crises, we would be in a better place in this pandemic had we listened to the countries most affected by vaccine inequity.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Winnie Byanyima.

When Attending College Means Losing Your Home

Tina Kelley — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:34:13 +0000

Nearly 60 percent of college students report struggling to access basic necessities, including food and housing. A national program is providing emergency funds to change that.

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Tina Kelley.

Pacific Climate Warrior on what the latest IPCC report means for the region

APR editor — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 22:19:23 +0000

The United Nations chief scientific agency on climate change released its latest report on Monday.

The IPCC Working Group II report on climate impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability says man-made climate change is causing unprecedented damage to the natural environment and the livelihoods of billions of people.

It also says global warming is set to rise beyond 1.5 deg C by 2040 unless the world commits to drastically reduce its carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

For nations on the frontlines in the Pacific the consequences will be disastrous with an increase in climate hazards such as sea-level rise, more frequent and severe extreme weather events including flooding, and droughts.

350 Pacific Climate Warriors council of elders member Brianna Fruean says the findings in the report are not new for the region.

Fruean is a prominent youth voice in international climate advocacy and spoke to RNZ Pacific’s regional correspondent Kelvin Anthony about what the report means for Pacific people.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Climate Change 2022 … the full report.

Tarawa street scene with a king tide on Friday, 30 August 2019. Image: Pelenise Alofa/KiriCAN

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Lesson From Ukraine: Breaking Promises to Small Countries Means They’ll Never Give Up Nukes

Murtaza Hussain — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 12:00:58 +0000

An engineer examines the engine of an SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missile in Dnipro, Ukraine, on July 26, 1996.

Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP

Ukraine was once home to thousands of nuclear weapons. The weapons were stationed there by the Soviet Union and inherited by Ukraine when, at the end of the Cold War, it became independent. It was the third-largest nuclear arsenal on Earth. During an optimistic moment in the early 1990s, Ukraine’s leadership made what today seems like a fateful decision: to disarm the country and abandon those terrifying weapons, in exchange for signed guarantees from the international community ensuring its future security.

The decision to disarm was portrayed at the time as a means of ensuring Ukraine’s security through agreements with the international community — which was exerting pressure over the issue — rather than through the more economically and politically costly path of maintaining its own nuclear program. Today, with Ukraine being swarmed by heavily armed invading Russian troops bristling with weaponry and little prospect of defense from its erstwhile friends abroad, that decision is looking like a bad one.

Nations that sacrifice their nuclear deterrents in exchange for promises of goodwill are often signing their own death warrants.

The tragedy now unfolding in Ukraine is underlining a broader principle clearly seen around the world: Nations that sacrifice their nuclear deterrents in exchange for promises of international goodwill are often signing their own death warrants. In a world bristling with weapons with the potential to end human civilization, nonproliferation itself is a morally worthwhile and even necessary goal. But the experience of countries that actually have disarmed is likely to lead more of them to conclude otherwise in future.

The betrayal of Ukrainians in particular cannot be understated. In 1994, the Ukrainian government signed a memorandum that brought its country into the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while formally relinquishing its status as a nuclear state. The text of that agreement stated that in exchange for the step, the “Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s territorial integrity has not been much respected since. After the 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea by Russia — which brought no serious international response — Ukrainian leaders had already begun to think twice about the virtues of the agreement they had signed just two decades earlier. Today they sound positively bitter about it.

“We gave away the capability for nothing,” Andriy Zahorodniuk, a former defense minister of Ukraine, said this month about his nation’s former nuclear weapons. “Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”

Ukrainians are not the only ones who have come to regret signing away their nuclear weapons. In 2003, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi made a surprise announcement that his nation would abandon its nuclear program and chemical weapons in exchange for normalization with the West.

“Libya stands as one of the few countries to have voluntarily abandoned its WMD programs,” wrote Judith Miller a few years later in an article about the decision headlined “Gadhafi’s Leap of Faith.” Miller, then just out of the New York Times, added that the White House had opted “to make Libya a true model for the region” by helping encourage other states with nuclear programs to follow Gaddafi’s example.

Libya kept moving forward. It signed on to an additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency allowing for extensive international monitoring of nuclear reserves. In return, sanctions against the country were lifted and relations between Washington and Tripoli, severed during the Cold War, were reestablished. Gaddafi and his family spent a few years building ties with Western elites, and all seemed to be going well for the Libyan dictator.

Then came the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Gaddafi found that the same world leaders who had ostensibly become his economic partners and diplomatic allies were suddenly providing decisive military aid to his opposition — even cheering on his own death.

Promises, betrayals, aggression: It’s a pattern that extends even to countries that have merely considered foreclosing their avenues to a nuclear deterrent.

Missile silos abandoned by the Gaddafi regime are left in the desert at a military base in Lona, Libya, on Sept. 29, 2011.

Photo: John Cantlie/Getty Images

Take Iran: In 2015, the Islamic Republic signed a comprehensive nuclear deal with the U.S. that limited its possible breakout capacity toward building a nuclear weapon and provided extensive monitoring of its civilian nuclear program. Not long afterward, the agreement was violated by the Trump administration, despite the country’s own continued compliance. Since 2016, when Trump left the deal, Iran has been hit with crushing international sanctions that have devastated its economy and been subjected to a campaign of assassination targeting its senior military leadership.

To date, no nuclear-armed state has ever faced a full-scale invasion by a foreign power, regardless of its own actions.

The nuclear deal was characterized at the time as the first step toward a broader set of talks over regional disputes between Iranian and U.S. leaders, who had been alienated since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Instead, the deal marked another bitter chapter in the long-troubled relationship between the two countries.

To date, no nuclear-armed state has ever faced a full-scale invasion by a foreign power, regardless of its own actions. North Korea has managed to keep its hermetic political system intact for decades despite tensions with the international community. North Korean officials have even cited the example of Libya in discussing their own weapons. In 2011, as bombs rained down on Gaddafi’s government, a North Korean foreign ministry official said, “The Libyan crisis is teaching the international community a grave lesson.” That official went on to refer to giving up weapons in signed agreements as “an invasion tactic to disarm the country.”

Perhaps the starkest contrast to the treatment of Ukraine, Libya, and Iran, however, is Pakistan, which developed nuclear weapons decades ago in defiance of the United States. Despite being criticized at the time for contributing to nuclear proliferation and facing periodic sanctions, Pakistan has managed to insulate itself from attack or even serious ostracism by the U.S. despite several flagrant provocations in the decades since. Today Pakistan even remains a security partner of the U.S., having received billions of dollars of military aid over the past several decades.

Given the mortal hazards that nuclear weapons pose to life on Earth, nonproliferation remains a worthwhile collective goal. Humanity will not benefit from a renewal of the nuclear arms race, and the ideals behind a U.S.-backed rules-based liberal order are morally attractive. A world in which they were truly applied would probably be a fairer and more peaceful one than what has existed in the past, yet we must also recognize that the liberal order can and will fail. That lesson is especially true for small nations outmatched by great powers.

Given the tragedy we are witnessing in Ukraine today — where, despite its past assurances, the international community has remained a passive observer — leaders of small countries must be forgiven for thinking twice before sacrificing their deterrent, regardless of what the leaders of great powers already armed with nuclear weaponry may say.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Murtaza Hussain.

Creating Peace Means Changing the World

Robert Koehler — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 09:47:53 +0000

Only threat, pain and inflicted hell preserve peace, right? Get the bad guy! Russia: bad. If it invades Ukraine, such a “voluntary war of aggression,” according to David Leonhardt of the New York Times, “would be a sign that Putin believed that Pax Americana was over and that the U.S., the European Union and their allies More

The post Creating Peace Means Changing the World appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Koehler.

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